The Truman Show with J.D. Amato

11:15David Sims:But they also clearly will cast people for new roles.

11:18Griffin Newman:Right, but any of these people, I'm just like, how do they get stuff in? How do they get food in? Well, here's the interesting thing. You know, how do they get all the ecosystem in? You guys were just talking about watching the special features. like the making of thing.

11:32David Sims:It's one of the privileges of being early to this podcast is you can throw on a couple special features. Oh my God. Check with Griffin and David. There's people who are listening to this episode for the first time who they think Griffin's whole thing is that he's on time. It's the second decade of dreams. Punctual Griff. But Peter Weir talks about a lot of the world that they built and how they envisioned this coming to be. And something I thought was fascinating is that they hint at in the movie. And once I heard Peter Weir explain, And I was like, oh, right. This is what they're hinting at. Originally, the Truman Show, as they saw it, started with just an infant.

12:06It was a way to sell baby products.

12:08Griffin Newman:Yeah. And so it was just... Because you are like, who watched the show when it was just a baby? But then I'm like, at every pass with the Truman Show, I'm like, now I'd watch it. Like every single time. You know, when I was a kid, I used to be like, no one would watch it. Now I'm like, everyone would watch this.

12:21David Sims:The brilliant thing about this movie is that the internal logic is really tight on... It starts and you're like, how could they have constructed all of this? And the answer is what Christoph had to pitch to someone originally was really small, contained and cheap. We pick whatever they say, four or five pregnant mothers. We follow them. We follow a baby. If a baby's awareness is so low, we don't have to construct fiction around them in the same kind of way. And then at every age he gets older, the bigger the show becomes, the more money they can raise, the more they can build around him. Well, then what Peter Weir said was that in their internal logic was that they added a garage that you could see the dad coming home so they could sell garage products to men.

13:02And then they started like, oh, well, we'll just keep increasing it.

13:04Griffin Newman:We'll make a town. And they sort of hint to that. And they have the flashback when he's a kid and you hear construction going on over there. I mean, 100 % over the hill, which where they're like, Truman, get off those rocks. The most scary image in that montage is when he's in the crib and he sees the cameras in the mobile. It's so good. I think it freaks me out so much. Yeah. because it is the innocence of a baby where they're like, yeah, they wouldn't know what that is. You know what I think is the single... Of course, I do watch my child through a camera.

13:29David Sims:I do. Yeah. But I don't broadcast it. And your children listen to Blank Track, so they're... No, they do not. Hearing you. They are certainly not allowed to do that. Through AirPods or Raycons, maybe, if they prefer. David's children won't know podcasts exist until they're 18. I love the idea of David... I've thought about it. Out of professional shame, needing to create his version of a we don't have TV in our home. Yeah, you can watch as much R-rated movies as you like. Radio goes out over broadcast signals. Yeah, well. And you have to listen to it at the time. Ben, don't you put this out over any broadcasts, okay?

14:02David Sims:No AM. All right. No FM. I promise. I think the single best choice Weir makes in a lot of ways with this movie is that Kristoff isn't the obvious root one, crass TV entrepreneur sleazeball that he thinks is buying his own bullshit of... Of course. This was like a conceptual artist... Right.

14:25Griffin Newman:The way he dresses, exactly. He's like some fucking Soho art guy.

14:29David Sims:And you're genuinely like, this guy was probably doing performance art and large installations and whatever for like 20 years. I mean, he's based off the fucking Gates guy, which when the Gates happened in New York, I was like, oh, retroactively, that's what Ed Harris was playing. But then he comes up with this idea that's like, this is such a big project, but also I could make money doing it. And he, in his final speech to Truman, is like really buying his own shit that this is the most profound work of the human condition. He's been waiting to tell Truman

14:56Griffin Newman:this for his whole life. Yes. Like he's excited to do it

14:59David Sims:and he thinks obviously that Truman will be happy to hear it. And he thinks he has done something kind for Truman and made humanity better at the same time while also making the most profound work of heart and history. Maybe he did. Maybe it's good. Maybe I'm reversing my opinion. Truman showed good? Yeah. Truman showed good? Truman showed good. And I think especially the casting of Ed Harris you could cast someone to say those exact lines and do that exact thing that plays it more like a, hey, I'm a TV director guy, you know? And it would come off - Which was a big 80s trope, right? Of the like, listen, I'm just like a TV guy and it's all about ratings, ratings, ratings.

15:37Even Running Man is doing it again in 2025

15:40David Sims:in a way where you're just sort of like, this isn't really the archetype anymore. No, and I think the more evil than the ratings go up guy is the no, no, no. What I'm creating is actually important art. Because that guy's just like, it's business, baby. Like people want it. I'm serving them the slop. This guy is so pretentious. And there are also other people and we'll get to like the Hopper thing. But there are other people who could have played the character in this form once Weir identified the shape of him. And it would have read more like parody versus Harris is so incapable of being sort of tongue-in-cheek and sincere, that he's lending everything he's saying with the most gravitas it could possibly be given.

16:24Yes. I mean, it's... God, this is such a wonderful movie. I love this movie. I also think it's a movie that... I don't even know how to categorize this, and maybe you guys can help me conceptualize this. There are movies that just, when they come out, they become their own conceptual entities that feel like they've been around forever. It's like The Matrix, you know what I mean? Where it's like, but when The Matrix comes out, you're sort of like, oh yeah, like that idea that there's this world beneath the world that is operating above and beyond, you know, that it becomes so like, yeah, of course, that's a trope in whatever.

16:58Griffin Newman:Right, you live in a simulation.

17:00David Sims:Yeah. You texted me last night, the Truman Show Matrix one-two punch was the season-ending philosophical cliffhanger that brought us the mess that was the 2000s and set the stage for the 2020s. I agree with that. Now, here's a bigger question. that sparked in me. Has there been an idea that big in movies that has burrowed that deeply into our collective consciousness since those two? Like, has there in the 21st century... So, I'm just... Well, Ernest Goes to Jail was before that.

17:30Griffin Newman:I'm just going to hit pause a little bit because I'm like, the Matrix idea, I think, is the idea you're talking about. The idea that we live in a simulation. I just mean... I know it. I want to finish this thought. Like, and I feel like the Matrix, like you say, but they became like a cultural. The Truman Show idea, yes, there's the, oh, what if your life was a TV? But I think it speaks to the much deeper feeling that everyone has had at some point, which is, am I the protagonist of reality? Like, everyone's had that sort of fantasy nightmare. It's such a part of being a person. 100%. Especially being a growing person.

18:06Griffin Newman:It's in the dossier

18:07David Sims:that Andrew McNichol was like, that's where it came from. Andrew McNichol. Sorry. No, Mick. I was going to make a joke and then I realized if you just spotlight that part of the name that I got wrong, it sounds like a slur. For the Irish! Ben Hosley, right here. Easy. Wow. I'm not saying it. I think everyone needs to settle down. I think you really saw it. You really saw it by pointing it at someone directly.

18:32Griffin Newman:Is there an idea since that has entered the cultural consciousness? So I would have to think. I don't know.

18:38David Sims:I was just reading through the dossier And how Andrew Nichol came up with this idea and talking about it being an extension of when you're a child and you reckon with that, like, am I the center of the universe? You know, your awareness, your understanding expands, but they're always it lingers as like a paranoia. And that he was just like, I wrote this down on a piece of paper, knew I had a fucking bulletproof idea. You know, I send like one page out to all the studios and people were like, you have struck gold. and I don't know even just in like you and I David reading fucking deadline and everything and when there's like the new hot project in town like the bidding war over this I can't remember the last time a movie had like a sentence like this that immediately everyone went holy shit I would have to think there's gotta be something well I yeah I also think too what I meant even more so than just the premise of the the Matrix and the Truman Show being similar in the sense that there's these sort of alternate universes, of just them as artistic objects feeling so primary to culture.

19:44Like in a way that I think you could throw Titanic in there or something. What if Batman begun? Yes, exactly. We'd only seen him middle before. Well, because here's the thing with the Truman Show, it's not like this idea hadn't been done before in some ways. Right. There had been a lineage of TV shows and movies that were sort of like, oh, what if

20:02David Sims:a Shandling show is a guy knows that his life is a TV show.

20:06Griffin Newman:What's the BBC series? Seven Up. Seven Up. Sure. Right? That had been around. Of course. Yes. They're still around. Which I... Every seven years? And I also re-watched it after, because I watched the Truman Show of whatever, a couple months ago when we agreed to do this. I was like, I watched the Truman Show then, because I was excited. And then I was like, I want to watch the Seven Up series again. Because I was also going down the sort of philosophical rabbit hole of like, how... What does it mean to point a camera at someone and document their life? Yes. And how does it change their life and all that?

20:38In what ways have we attempted to do things like this and succeeded in the family? What were the real ramifications? I feel like the 7-Up series is the closest thing to this that we have as a culture.

20:50Griffin Newman:Do you find having, when you watch, so you watch 7-Up, which is just, I just find the most profoundly moving document. It's so interesting. It's such a portrait of Britain, you know, at the time and the class system and all that. And then you watch 14 and 21 and you're like, I can't watch this. It's so uncomfortable. These poor kids. I would argue. And then you get past that and then you're like, now it's pretty juicy again. Like now it's really interesting to see how shit shook out. I have always argued.

21:16David Sims:It's those middle ones that are tough. That Linklater's boyhood has this exact problem where there are a couple years in the middle where you're like, it is too painful to watch. Get a camera off him. Anyone at that age.

21:25Griffin Newman:Yeah, it's tough.

21:26David Sims:Yeah. And boyhood like just ends when you're like, maybe this guy's chilling out a bit. There's a French movie called Etre et Avoir,

21:33Griffin Newman:a documentary to be in. That's a very good film. It is, but there is, which is about a one-room schoolhouse in rural France taught by this very engaging, interesting teacher. I forgot about that movie. It's a great movie, but it is one of those movies where you're like, I think it was fundamentally unethical to make this. I think this is like, this shouldn't have been allowed.

21:54David Sims:I was just listening to Our Friends, The Big Picture. It will be months old at the time this episode comes out. But they did an episode where they were talking through the 2026 Best Documentary nominees. And how they were like, every one of these movies feels potentially unethical to me. Sure. Yeah.

22:11Griffin Newman:Maybe we're all being too woke.

22:14David Sims:Well, but they were sort of just like in this weird world we live in where now everyone is like public. Everyone is like to some degree front facing. Cameras are everywhere. Somehow also it feels like the lines are more blurred than ever in what is supposed to be a sort of controlled, ethical, delineated documentary form. and especially for these like highbrow Oscar docs that are like issues movies. They're like all five of these are like very, not self-righteous, but like this matters and we need to bring light to the subject. And they're like every one of these I watched tensing up about like, is this actually moral to do to these people?

22:54David Sims:And that just feels like an extension of life at large now. Yeah, and I think, I mean, listen, that pointing a camera at something is a subjective action no matter what you do. Yeah. And that subjectivity is radioactive, no matter what, because it's something that people are projecting onto.

23:10Griffin Newman:When they pointed a camera at Ed, you know, for his TV, his mom, you know, reveals the affair. I don't think what else happens in Ed TV. I don't remember all the TV. Well, I know Dennis Hopper. He sleeps with his girlfriend, his brother's girlfriend, Jenna Elfman. Yes. Dennis Hopper plays Ed's dad in that? And Martin Landau's his stepfather? Correct. Hopper comes out of the woodwork.

23:34David Sims:It's just interesting that this is a movie where Truman's dad comes out of the woodwork and Hopper was originally cast to play Ed Harris. We can talk about that, but of course the big difference is

23:43Griffin Newman:that Truman's dad is not his dad.

23:45David Sims:I know, but I'm just saying, interesting parallels. That's the only difference between Ed TV and The Truman Show.

23:49Griffin Newman:Well, I mean, I think Ed TV must be discussed, obviously, when you're talking about The Truman Show, but it's the other. Ed TV's the opposite.

23:56David Sims:Let's also say Pleasantville. All three of them were lumped together. They're very different, but there's like a tapestry there.

24:03Griffin Newman:Because Pleasantville has the right, the sort of the American small town, like fantasy thing. Pleasantville is full magical.

24:10David Sims:Yeah. Like, you know, at one end, what if you lived in a 50s TV show? TV is just what if a guy allowed people to film him all the time? And then Truman Show is what if they constructed a fake reality that kind of was inspired by 50s sitcoms. And that was televised on notes to this man. It was just fascinating that all three of these movies came out and it was seen as this real, like, what feels incredibly, like, naive in 1998, we need to reckon with how much cameras are a part of our lives, not knowing how fucking insane things we're going to get over the next three decades. But that it felt urgent enough in 1998 that it's like our relationship to media, to watching other people's lives, to our lives, to the 15 minutes of fame thing, to all of this is hitting a crisis point.

24:57David Sims:And it was abstracted into, like, three different takes. Yeah, 100%. And I also think there's something interesting that after that period of time, what transpired, especially in television, was an exploration of all these concepts that actually took it, you know, in... In great ways, great directions. Perfect. In really problematic directions, obviously. You don't endorse the actions of television? I mean, I'm one to speak, you know what I mean? I look I'm not going to talk in a term but I've been he's been known to make a TV show or two in his day but you know what I mean like I think what's interesting is that a lot of projects start with this idea of observing reality yeah and the thing that people find is that reality itself can be both most fascinating thing but also is not controllable in the ways that you want I think that's one of the fascinating things about the 7up series right is that the 7-Up series is not the Truman Show, right?

25:57It's not necessarily... No. It's not aspirational. It's not intruding on them much either, obviously. But I mean, in terms of the thematic, what you feel, right? Because you feel this great melancholy. There's this beauty that can bring you to tears because you're seeing that life has these twists and turns and a lot of the beauty of it comes from the simplicity of it and the moments of calm, right? It's not the big story moments that are the thing that that make that interesting.

26:25David Sims:But also, like, I'm someone who doesn't cry a ton at movies, despite loving movies and being a very emotional person. But if I were to try to actually take a tally of all the movies that, like, made me shed a tear or got me within that zone, I would guess a disproportionate amount of them are documentaries because there is an added juice to me of being like, I can't believe they got this. In documentaries, I feel like it hits me when I watch a documentary that doesn't feel manicured manipulated and something happens that feels so raw and can often be a tiny moment. But I'm just like the fact that this was actually caught.

27:02Is it the Harvard Ethnography Lab?

27:05David Sims:Which I'm obsessed with. So one of one of a film that I put in my top 10 films of all time. Big Sam. And it's a result of Griffin was that Griffin and I went and saw a screening of Monocamana when it came out.

27:19Griffin Newman:You've talked about this on the show before. Nepalese cable. Oh, yeah. And honestly, it's a movie where I have not laughed as hard with an audience. We all shed tears at this. Like, for something that is, you know, 10 shots doing its best to observe and curate reality in some way.

27:39David Sims:I brought it up before, but just to fill in listeners, because also anytime I say the name, people are like, what the fuck is the title of this film? It's called Mana Ka Mana, essentially, is how you would say it. M-A-N-A-K-A-M-A-N-A. Correct.

27:51Griffin Newman:Which is, it's a cable car in Nepal.

27:53David Sims:They placed a camera in a cable car in Nepal that goes up and down this mountain. And they literally just, it was months of, you know, doing trial runs and casting other people and whatever. But what you watch are just 10 unbroken takes. Five trips up, five trips down. Yeah. Of the loops of this thing. And it's one roll of film, no editing, single shot. and yet the curation of those 10 trips told the story about the human experience that is still subjective because it's curating those 10 trips. They're trying to make it as... Exactly.

28:27Griffin Newman:The film Leviathan which is also by the Sensory Ethnography Lab is a film I really like. Stanford? Is it Stanford Ethnography Lab? No, it's Harvard. It's called the Sensory Ethnography Lab is the program you're referring to. It's led by Lucian Custin-Taylor who's very interested in all this kind of hidden camera kind of can we just document life?

28:43David Sims:But I went to see Monica Monica because I was like, I'm hearing good things about this and I buy my ticket. I go see it at IFC by myself and I'm three minutes in like, have I made a mistake? Was this me being high minded and I'm about to be fucking bored?

28:56Griffin Newman:Did I forget I don't like this stuff? You gotta, it's the meditative thing of like you just gotta, you gotta, you know, give yourself over to it, chill out for a minute. You guys ever float in a tank? No, never. So I did an isolation tank for the first time recently. Yeah, did you go to Vessel? Yeah. Yeah, that place is great. It was excellent. I think that, how did you like it? I only did 30 minutes. Sure. Did you go full black? That's what I was going to say. I had to kind of slowly ease into it. So I started initially with light while also having some ambient sound, but then removed the light, had a little bit more time with the sound.

29:33Griffin Newman:And then, you know, my goal was to do 30 minutes of just complete darkness, no input. It was crazy, but I got into it. I got really lost in it. That's what Griffin's talking about. Sorry, finish your thought, Griffin.

29:45David Sims:I see this. I totally get on its wavelength. I walk out. I have like one of the most profound like feelings leaving the theater I've ever had from a movie. What's best about my movie? I text you almost immediately and I'm like, JD, I just saw this thing. I need to see it again and I really think you need to see it. Can we figure out a day? We go see it again. I see it like twice in one week and I'm there with JD and I'm sort of like, was what happened here collectively with this audience a one-off experience. I need to test if the exact same arc of this will happen. Watch the first one, there's like no talking.

30:17David Sims:And you're like, is this literally just going to be fly on the wall of people not communicating in a cable car? And then I think it's the second ride, there's an old man and a little boy. That's what's on the poster. Yes. And like minutes into it, the entire audience all starts laughing at the same time. And nothing funny has happened, but it's like your brain is adjusting to what's going on and suddenly you're asking all these questions about the two of them. And it's like, what is their relationship? Are they like grandfather and son? Are they strangers? Like, how do they know each other? Have they gotten here?

30:51David Sims:Are they silent because they have no familiarity with each other? Because they have profound familiarity with each other? The little boy, I think, is wearing a Tom and Jerry hat. Yes. And you're like, wait a second. Does he know what Tom and Jerry are? Do Tom and Jerry exist in Nepal? Why am I asking that question? What don't I know about like Nepalese like relationships to American media? And suddenly you're projecting all this stuff onto it, asking yourself all these questions. And there is just kind of the funny awkwardness of the two of them sitting there in silence. And then you're like, oh, right.

31:21David Sims:Every movie I watch is communicating like 80 ,000 things to me at once, whether intentional or unintentional. The choices of the music and the image and the performance and the costuming and the set dressing and the writing and the dialogue is working like overtime to convey ideas, story, feelings to me. And I'm watching like two people sitting in silence and suddenly asking incredibly wide-ranging questions. And that experience is kind of like, you know, ghost hunters listening to static, right? Where if you just listen to static for a long enough time, you start to pick up on it. But because our life is so full of noise, you don't pick up on these little changes.

32:02So those changes seem unusual when you focus on them. Totally.

32:05David Sims:And then like five rides in, it's like two American tourist girls. And they're talking, but you've readjusted to how you listen to people speak because you've been deprived of that. And then there's a ride that's just a bunch of goats. And suddenly it's the most captivating thing you've ever seen because you've met the movie on its level. And now you're like, wow, the way goats interact is not that different than the way humans interact. And like, we are just animals. And what's the difference? Like, you go into all of these places. You imagine Christoph being like, we're just going to film a baby and people are like, film a baby.

32:34David Sims:Well, I got to tune in to see what this is like. And then they just can't stop watching. But here's what I think is interesting that Truman Show taps in on, right? Is Christoph is not just observing reality. No, he's not. He's doing the thing that we have done through the history of media, which is we take the beauty of life that we see, which is a bunch of goats riding a cable car. And instead we go, well, surely I know how to make that better. I know how to control that, Yeah, he's doing The Village. Which is the history of what happened to documentary and reality TV. I mean, we're in a place right now where documentary film is in a really, really dark place because it's been taken over by this sense of control and ownership.

33:14Griffin Newman:We also, and this is something I've been talking to my therapist about, we make our own stories up to process our own lives. like the way that I'm remembering things, but even experiencing things, I've like built up these stories.

33:32David Sims:Well, also the psychological phenomenon that if you tell a story to someone about something that happened to you, your memory of the actual event is immediately replaced with the story you just told. It basically overrides it. So the more you tell a story of your life, the more you're actually remembering your own telling of the story, which is how these things iterate. We're like, we were texting the other day, David, in the Blank Check thread about Robert Altman losing Best Director for Gosford Park because Marie was asking, how in the world did Apollo 13 not win Best Picture? And David and I swing in with our, like, we're ready to answer this.

34:07David Sims:We're thinking about this all the time, right? And we're like, well, Apollo 13, it was like this and then that. And then, of course, like Braveheart's this sort of surprise. And it spoke to how powerful Mel Gibson was at that moment. And Marie was like, so is that why Beautiful Mind won so big. And we were like, there was definitely that element of him being overdue, but also the Crow thing and this and that. And then I said, remember how Robert Altman was seen as the frontrunner for Best Director that year for Gosford Park because it was kind of a lifetime anointment. And then he made a speech at the Golden Globes that was anti-Bush and anti-war.

34:42David Sims:And immediately his campaign was tanked. And David was like, yes. I was like, yeah, that sounds right. And I quoted back a thing from it.

34:49Griffin Newman:Looked up the, no I didn't quote back I think but I looked up then I looked up the speech and I was like no this speech is totally normal

34:54David Sims:you said chickens come home to roost was the thing you remember

34:57Griffin Newman:no no I wasn't quoting him I was just saying like he did didn't he do like a chickens coming home to roost thing yeah but he did but not at the Golden Globes

35:04David Sims:right but I said that and you accepted it and we're like yeah 100 %

35:09Griffin Newman:yes we are yes we are our own myth makers David's a bit of a Kristoff wait so what what have you what have you been exploring in therapy about that I feel like you can finish your Um, well, it's just like how I thought of myself as a kid and felt like an outsider. A perfect example is I have this memory of being invited to a birthday party by a cool girl. Okay. Okay. Flex on us, King. And I felt humiliated and I still showed up, but I felt like she was taking pity on me. and now I'm revisiting and I'm like, what if maybe this girl was interested in me? What if she actually was like, kind of thought I was funny and I was so in my head and telling my own story about who I am.

35:58Griffin Newman:Like I'm an outsider. I'm an uncool kid. Right. That was your little myth. Like, right.

36:04David Sims:Can I ask, was she wearing a how's it going to end button? Fuck, she was. And do you still have her cardigan? Of course. You keep it in your basement next to a collage you've tried to construct of her face from women's magazines taped behind a portrait of your wife. Yeah, I mean, it's normal. And of course, I'm going to pick up a wet garment.

36:25Griffin Newman:When did you see the Truman Show? And you saw it in theaters? I did. Griffin, I assume, as well.

36:30David Sims:I saw it in theaters. Yeah, yeah, yeah. My family, we've talked about this before, hated Jim Carrey so much. Yes, they rejected him. My parents fell into the classic sort of, this guy's an overactor. He's so obnoxious. He's so annoying. It was like when that run of Jim Carrey movies is happening where he's the dominant comedy star, they were like, we don't see Jim Carrey movies. Sit there and watch your Steve Martin movies for the 40th time. We went to see this opening weekend. My parents took my brother and I. My brother would have been six. It felt like a profound cultural moment. Where even for like Jim Carrey haters, it was like, that's such a good idea for a movie.

37:07David Sims:Peter Weir is a good director. and we all want to see if Jim Carrey can actually tone it down, which was so much of the marketing hook of this movie. Like, don't you want to see if he can pull it off?

37:17Griffin Newman:Sure, he's leveling up to a more serious project. Can he do it?

37:21David Sims:And at that moment, Hanks is kind of like the reigning king of Hollywood. Jim Carrey's sort of overtaken him as the box office king. But everyone's like, that's the model. Can he like speed run the Hanks thing? You saw this in theaters, I assume? No, I feel like I saw this. I mean, you're probably...

37:39Griffin Newman:How old were you? Because you're... I was born 88. And I feel like I was 12 when this came out. You're 10. You know what I mean? It's like, at that point, that's a big difference. Well, so it's a funny thing. Because also, Ben, I relate to what you're talking about. You know, my family moved around a lot when I was younger. And then we landed... On the run for the law? Yeah. There was a lot of law stuff we were trying to get away from. And when it finally caught up to us, we were in the suburb of Chicago. And the thing that was consistent in that was that we would have these, like, family movie nights.

38:08And this was an era of the like video store era, right? Of course.

38:11Griffin Newman:We're all going to go to the store and we're going to pick one movie we can all agree on. Yes. With these. Or often it would be my mom or dad coming home from work with, you know, the bag of the, you know, the blue plastic case VHSs and you being like, oh man, what did they get? And it'd be like, well, two of these are for mom and dad, but one of these is for the kids. You might like this. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And I feel like The Truman Show was a movie that we watched on, it probably would have been VHS at the time. And I think because of my age, The Truman Show might have been one of the first movies that I remember watching that I was like, this is a grown-up movie.

38:48David Sims:Sure, right. It's on that edge. That was another feeling of like, this was released in the summer. It was like a big box office play, but I had the distinct feeling of my parents taking me to see this opening weekend and feeling like, this is the kind of movie they nominate for Oscars. Did they like it? your parents? They did, but they were like, I still don't know about Jim Carrey. They kind of were like, maybe Peter Weir tricked him and some of it, he's still over the top. Well, sure. What's so interesting is...

39:14Griffin Newman:Did I see this with my dad? I feel like I may have just seen this by myself. How? So, I know Griffin. You're, you know, you... He's over there.

39:21David Sims:Our guest today, by the way, is J.D. Amato. He is the writer of The Endless Game. We gotta plug his book! The Endless Game! Jesus Christ! We're holding copies of his new, do we call it a middle grade graphic novel? It's a middle grade graphic novel. It's out now. Sort of a Scott Pilgrim size. Now, this is an advanced reviewer copy. That's what you're holding. I'm being told that final interiors will be full color. Yes, it's whatever. A 250 page. Turns black and white. Very pleasant, Phil. This is the advanced copy only. That's the advanced reader copy. It's an uncorrected proof. The actual, the book will be, it's like it's a 250 page middle grade graphic novel, full color, illustrated by the great Sophie Morse, who is an amazing illustrator.

40:02Did she work on

40:03Griffin Newman:what's the show does she work on a TV show the art style is familiar this is her debut it's a double debut for both her and I Simon & Schuster in stores now available wherever you buy books is it available digitally? it's available actually I don't know if it's available digitally I don't believe it is tactile physical media and it's soft it's a paperback but get a hard copy But this is the debut. So please buy a copy. Please go read JD's book. And buy it too. We've been getting very positive reviews and very positive feedback. And I think if you're an adult that likes graphic novels, it works.

40:47But also if you have someone that is 7 to 12 or if you're a voracious reader that's younger, that's fine too. I think it's a very good intro. The middle grade graphic novel space is kind of something that didn't exist when I was a kid, which is that sort of the step between, you know, comic books and like prose storytelling. So it's a place to sort of explore a story, but not have it just be a wall of prose.

41:20David Sims:David? Yes. Got any big summer plans? Sleep. Your plan is to sleep for the whole summer, Rip Van Winkle style? Sounds good. I'll tell you what my plan is. What's that? To drink AG1 every morning. Of course. Well, you better or else you're going to crumble into dust. This is the problem. Any other plans I make would be foolish, foolhardy, if I weren't also planning to regulate my system with AG1. Because it doesn't matter if you're traveling, you got late nights, packed weekends, zero structure, any of those, keeping AG1 in your routine helps you stay consistent. That's a loaded word right there, consistent.

41:57David Sims:Yes. When everything else gets, and here's another loaded word, unpredictable.

42:02Griffin Newman:Oh, I don't want that. And I know you don't either. Look, it's a daily health drink with a multivitamin. Yep. Pre and probiotics. Yep. Superfoods. Mm-hmm. And antioxidants.

42:14David Sims:It's an all-star lineup. One scoop, eight ounces of water. You just shake it up. There you go. That's it. You drink it. It takes 30 seconds. Now, the summer's where you want to get a little lax and you want to let yourself go and have fun. but just these 30 seconds a day help keep everything else in shape.

42:30Griffin Newman:This is kind of like an old-fashioned formula with like one to two ingredients, right?

42:34David Sims:No, no, no. Wait a second, what? David, I'm laughing so hard at your ignorance. This is a next-gen formula that delivers 75-plus ingredients backed by four clinical trials, clinically shown to support gut health, fill common nutrient gaps, and improve key nutrient levels within three months. and I want to thank the announcer from Bar Rescue for jumping in for that one section.

42:58Griffin Newman:Very exciting. Look, late nights, long weekends, spontaneous plans, life happens. AG1's going to help you keep things consistent like Griffin's saying. Consistent. Give you high quality nutritional support every single day, no matter where you're starting your morning. I know you drink it every single day. What's your favorite flavor right now?

43:16David Sims:Right now, I'm actually really big into berry. I've been cycling through them and I've really been enjoying this berry phase. I will say this as well, David. Yes. You said it wherever you are. I'm about to go away for six weeks and you better believe I just ordered a whole box of travel packs so that I don't have to travel unarmed.

43:35Griffin Newman:I had no doubt. Visit drinkag1.com slash check to get your free morning person hat and free AG1 flavor sampler in your welcome kit with your first AG1 subscription. That's an$82 value. That's drinkag1.com slash check.

43:53David Sims:When I wear that hat, it's going to be so ironic. Yes.

44:06The question that I have is that I know Griffin grew up with movies and cinema fluency. His parents are in the movies. Yeah, talking about it constantly.

44:18David Sims:I would ask questions and they would explain it to me. And I was constantly searching for more answers. The idea of a director is not something that I even understood, I think, until, you know, George Lucas or Steven Spielberg. Sure, sure. You know?

44:30Griffin Newman:When's early. What was your guy's childhood? Like, because again, in my family, it was, you'd watch a movie and you'd talk about, was that a good movie? Like, was that a good movie or not? And that was kind of it. It's a good question. Like, when did I first become aware of directors or whatever? I'm not sure. My dad was very into movies, but both my parents were. but my dad was very into movies and I feel like I was so obsessed with the Oscars so I start watching the Oscars where I'm like six or seven so it's already very present to me the idea of the director and like the people behind the movies because of that I guess would be the first thing but like I saw the Truman Show because of Jim Carrey I definitely had not seen a Peter Weir movie well I also think Peter Weir and you guys are in the Peter Weir series is I feel like he is a director that through my Maybe I'd seen Dead Poets.

45:18But yeah.

45:19Griffin Newman:Maybe. Through my adult eyes, I can look back and go, oh my, you know, see his career. But he was not someone who was a name director. The movies were not sold on him. Not really. I mean, this one sure wasn't, but that's obviously a Jim Carrey movie. You guys, Ben, I assume also were like, you were, you know, it was a big Jim Carrey movie. That's why you saw it. Definitely. Yeah.

45:39David Sims:I remember having a profound, almost light coming out of the sky, reality being changed for me moment. This very year, 1998, when I, my two favorite movies of 98, unquestionably, would have been Small Soldiers and There's Something About Mary. Probably followed closely by A Bug's Life and then this. But I realized, despite now being like so obsessed with like Joe Dante and the Farrelly brothers as directors and my idea of like, there's a sensibility now that I can track across multiple movies with these guys who I like, paying attention to the credits in a rewatch and being like, wait, what the fuck?

46:20David Sims:They didn't write these movies? Oh, sure. And asking my parents, like, what does a director actually do then if they're not writing it? Because in my conception up until this point, probably through seeing this movie, I'm like, well, it's like Kristoff. He's like whispering in a guy's ear, like, say this. Kind of a classic question. What does the director do? Like you're improvising a movie in real time and just going like, my ideas are perfect. Go do this. Pull this. like yeah and i think i i you know for me i feel like i had that same experience where when i was a kid what interested me in movies was that you know you got to be luke skywalker that that that world existed right and when you i understood movies were made but i think that you know when you're a kid you have this sort of fuzzy line between reality and fiction where you're like Like, right, I get that Star Wars isn't real, but it was, they made it.

47:11So like, it's real somewhere. And they're like, yeah, yeah, people made that. And so those people get to live in that world. And I feel like there's this, you know, that childlike version of your, you know, very young where you don't totally understand it. I think that's what led me down the interest of making movies. I was like, I need to learn more. And then I think once you actually start learning the process, it's a very tedious, detail-oriented, very slow methodical process. And so I feel like for a lot of people, the people that end up in the industry are people for whom those two circles overlap, for whom a tedious methodical process is fulfilling in the same way that living in a fantasy world is fulfilling.

47:48David Sims:Right, it can't be, to actually follow through on doing it, it can't just be an obsession with the final product. You also kind of have to be obsessed with the process. But the process has to be a match. But I think the thing that a lot of people are always in seek of, in seek of, in search of. Seeking. In seek of. In seek of. The thing that people are in seek of is an experience that feels like you get to live in that universe. And what's interesting with the Truman Show is hearing a lot of the actors talk about their experiences is that they basically just lived in that town and they would be shooting stuff so much and pulling things that like, they got to live that experience a little bit that was Truman Show-esque of you never leave set.

48:31You never, you're always in this universe, which is, I think part, for some people, that is a thing that you sort of hope for, which I think why you get the Christophs of the world that want to try to control these universes because there is something interesting. I know for myself, as someone who grew up very anxious and very, you know, having moved a lot, I just always felt like I didn't know the rules of wherever I was. and so I sort of felt like an outsider in that way and so the idea of a limited universe where you can understand the rules feels very very exciting to me very comfortable

49:11Griffin Newman:it's intoxicating even and I think that's part of what Drew and you get to boss Paul Giamatti around yes which that's what I've been trying to figure out and get to that position and I I got there once

49:22David Sims:you did you said get in that dumpster and he was like

49:25Griffin Newman:a little nicer please and you're like oh I'm really sorry no further context clues boss. That was a beg. That was beg and it wasn't, I didn't even have the status to make that ask. You bring up Star Wars though,

49:34David Sims:right? That's almost like the definitive cultural touchpoint of now. There have been like five plus generations who talk about seeing that movie, it exploding kind of their consciousness in a way and having this like how could I be inside of this, right? Whether or not they end up working in film in any way, it does feel like Star Wars remains this kind of like switch flip of like, wait a second and I'm trying to understand what the reality is that I'm seeing here. Well, that was the Muppets and Star Wars for me because I was like, okay, this is, you know, being very young, being like, what is real and what is not real if I'm seeing all these puppets?

50:11David Sims:Right. And Star Wars is the classic you read or listen to interviews with anyone, particularly the actors who worked on the original film and are filming in like Tunisia in 1976. And like the, the space between a kid watching that and just being like, I just want to be Luke Skywalker and I want to exist in this world. And then Mark Hamill being interviewed about it 50 years later and being like, everything felt ridiculous when we were doing it. Yeah. You know, like, the sets ended two inches over here. Darth Vader's voice is like a British bodybuilder. Everything's falling apart. We're hitting each other with sticks.

50:49David Sims:Like, the reality of making something like that doesn't reflect the final feeling that you convey onto people who want to live in that world. and the world is not livable in that sense. And part of what Truman Show is providing is like, what if that world was created for you? Isn't that actually a benevolent act? Like, that's what Christoph's saying is like, what if I could just fine tune a reality for a person? I mean, he's right. And create almost a psychological experiment to give someone the influences to be a good person. He's right.

51:19Griffin Newman:Like, he's not, I'm not saying he's morally right, but he's like, I have created a safe world for you in which you are like, you know, your every need is taken care of. And of course I had to lie to you because if you knew about it, it would destroy your sense of reality. Right, and so you're going to leave and you're going to go into a world that's much more hostile and all that. Like, he's not wrong about that, but it's like, hey, baby, this is why we live life, right? Yeah, but it's also, I think that's the thing with all of this, right? Is we can't keep our grubby fingers off reality. And so as much as we try to observe it, document it, no matter what, we start putting our spin on it.

51:52Our fingerprints alone are enough to We suck.

51:55Griffin Newman:We should give it back to the bugs. Ben? So I want to answer your question. I am, I think, different than you guys, right? Where for me, I am not engaging with a movie and then afterwards being like, how did they make it? I'm just like, this is beautiful fantasy. I wish I could live in that fantasy. I want to pretend. I want to imagine I'm in that world. you're in the dark alley with spawn not being like well how did they make it yeah I'm like how do I throw on I was also a little less how did they make it than you guys what I was trying to describe is that I wasn't how do they make it at all yeah you were like I want to be honest that wasn't my dad was a college football player and that was there was no what do you play what's that what position he was a quarterback in high school and then he was a receiver he hated football sounds like a fucking Chad though yeah I mean if I showed you if I showed you a photo yeah What's that?

52:54Big tall guy. Big tall guy. Big tall strong. My dad was the scary. Big tall strong. My dad was... I would say my dad was the scary dad among... You know, I feel like a group of friends, that's the parent that you're like...

53:04Griffin Newman:I don't want to piss that dad off. He might be too grumpy or stern or whatever. Yes, I know what you're talking about. But my dad was also very goofy. But I say that not to disparage him saying he was a college football, but to say that there was zero... I would say there was zero level of like, let's talk about the art and craft of this. And it was like, man, it would be cool to have the spawn cape. And it wasn't until teenage and adulthood that I got into.

53:26David Sims:My parents, look, were providing that. And I was talking to Phenasy. And he was like, it's interesting the way you talk about your dad on the podcast and make it sound like he was disappointed that you weren't a sports kid. But then yet he had like an understanding and the language to talk to you in the thing that you were obsessed with. And I don't want to make it sound like I was like, God fucking damn it. Hopefully the next one's a jock. dynamic in my childhood. But there was that thing of like, it's not, it was never his greatest passion. And my mother had like, sort of felt defeated by trying to pursue a career in the arts at the time that like I was born.

54:06David Sims:But there was almost a sense of like, less than, I'm so happy to share our passion with you. It was more like, thank God we happen to know the only fucking thing you want to talk about.

54:17Griffin Newman:We can at least answer your question.

54:18David Sims:You know? And like my siblings are like, more savvy about the industry than most kids would be because they grew up in a household where that was a language. But it truly felt like my parents were like, God, if he were just like fucking into animals and that was the only thing he wanted to talk about, we'd be fucked. Yeah, I feel like for me, I grew up with parents who my dad was a reluctant college athlete who I think wished he could engage more in the weird arts and music. And I think, you know, I think that's the stuff that he was actually more interested in. And, you know, the movies that were on the pedestal in our household were, as I've joked, the Ernest movies, all the Muppet movies.

54:58My mom was a huge Star Trek fan. She was the type of kid who, like, she would sit outside in her yard and, like, wait for the Enterprise to pick her up. Like, it was like, that was our universe. And then, you know, we would once a week or every couple of weeks, you know, we'd get pizza and rent a movie. And that was, like, you know, sacrosanct.

55:16David Sims:But J.D., the only reason your father wasn't a movie guy when you were growing up is because Real Steel hadn't been made yet. Yes. The Griffins referencing the fact that my dad's a big guy. My stealer. I would say that's an understatement. Yes. My dad. Yes. I just talked to this on podcast The Ride, but my dad did for my birthday get me all the action figures of all the Real Steel robots. It's a real Griff move to be like, I got you a present. It's that thing that I like.

55:46Griffin Newman:I'm going to open the dossier guys about the Truman Show because we should look at it because JJ did do all this work I assume maybe he didn't maybe he fucking thrown this one in

55:54David Sims:can I front load one thing I just I want to say to Ben because I've been wanting to say this and it's like part of what's fascinating about how kind of like airtight this movie is and it's world building this movie is this very bizarre set of circumstances wherein and then we'll jump back to the beginning of the dossier 1994 Jim Carrey has his crazy year that we've talked about many times, where Ace Ventura, The Mask, and Dumb and Dumber all come out in the same calendar year, and he immediately becomes the biggest star in Hollywood. He is so in demand that he lines up so many projects right away.

56:27David Sims:So he basically, by the end of 95, beginning of 96, has agreed to Batman Forever, Ace Ventura 2. They're trying to get him to do Mask and Dumb and Dumber sequels. Liar, liar, end this. And so Peter Weir basically knows he has Jim Carrey, who is an automatic green light. The studio is 100 % behind it, but he's not going to be able to film for like two and a half years. And so rarely has someone been given this much runway to just fucking fine tune a thing before filming with full studio backing. Where you got Carrie as long as you're willing to wait. Before any of that makes Fearless.

57:07Griffin Newman:This is prior film. After Fearless. What do you think Fearless? I have not seen Fearless. You should check it out. I think it would resonate with you.

57:14David Sims:Major influence on David's recent sunglass purchasing.

57:17Griffin Newman:That's true. There in my other jacket though. Peter Weir picks up a bad case of the Attachies. It's tough. or perhaps a case of the Circles or the Mentionees. All right, JJ. JJ, what does that mean? So the Attaches is basically like you make a movie people like or maybe, you know, like suddenly you're attached to a bunch of stuff that never had happened. Gamma del Toro has terminal Attaches. Well, he's shaking it a little bit, but post like Pan's Labyrinth, it was so bad. Right. Where he was like attached to like 18 super ambitious projects. Every other week. How could you do this? Yeah. So most serious of these is called The Playmaker based on a novel by Thomas Kennelly.

57:54Griffin Newman:Kennelly? I can't remember. Kennelly, I think. Which is about the first play ever performed in Australia in 1789 after the year after the colony was founded. So sort of like an Australian historical drama because Post when he comes to Hollywood, he never returns to Australia really to make movies about it again. And he made movies about like Australian like life and identity. Well, which I think is interesting because we're talking about so much of our discussion here is about and through an American context. And I feel like that's also something you can't, you know, discount about. No, you can't.

58:29Griffin Newman:But it feels like what he never quite got to make the one more sort of like, I really want to make another movie about Australia project. This sounds like that might have been it.

58:39David Sims:We talked about this in our episode with Jennifer Kent on Gallipoli, but he is an interesting case of a filmmaker who feels like he has a really bifurcated career, but it's not that the second act of his career is like a disappointment. And we were like, it's sort of like Fritz Lang who has like all these insane bold German films and then goes over to Hollywood and makes great noir movies. But it does feel like kind of two distinct things. There's themes that are, you can tell he's gravitating towards the same themes of these sort of, yeah. And a lot of the Australian films, which I'd never seen before, there's so much dealing with the weirdness of the reality of Australia as this kind of like overtaken prison colony, you know, like building a culture on top of the Aboriginal and sort of denying it and all of that.

59:30David Sims:And his movies always have this kind of like realities butting up against each other.

59:35Griffin Newman:Some other stuff. He was briefly the top choice to replace Ron Howard making The Chamber, John Grisham movie. Eventually that got made by Jim Foley. Bad movie. He was attached to The Alienist, which was the Caleb Carr book that was like in development hell for 20 years before it turned into a like TNT miniseries.

59:53David Sims:One of the ultimate attachy bait projects.

59:57Griffin Newman:Yes, exactly. He was, I don't know. There's the moviegoer. A lot of these are, yeah, a lot of these are kind of variety articles. It's like Peter Weir may direct the moviegoer, the Walker Percy novel. Moviegoer is fascinating

1:00:08David Sims:because so many major filmmakers have been attached to that. Had Julia Roberts and Tim Robbins attached. Altman was at one point going to do that. Bruce Beresford. I don't know. Malick almost made that the movie he came out of retirement for as well, which is fascinating.

1:00:21Griffin Newman:Yeah. But I think he's just in that classic place where he's like a really established name who makes good movies. So he's looking at so many scripts and he's bored by most of them.

1:00:31David Sims:And Fearless was seen as kind of a flop, but not in a way that puts him in movie jail and still gets an Oscar nomination. Yeah. But he doesn't have... But it's a weird movie. Right. He's not holding like a blank check power necessarily at that moment.

1:00:44Griffin Newman:Maybe not. The way he puts it, though, is when people ask, what are you looking for? He'd say, I'm looking for trouble. Wants to be scared. That's kind of a cool way to put it. What's the challenge? And he said, like, all these screenplays I read, they're remakes. Even if they're not actual remakes, they feel like remakes. There's a lack of what I call unconscious writing. There's very, you know, scripts are very conscious. They're designed to please financiers. Luckily, Hollywood has been cured of all of that and none of that pervades in the industry anymore. No, it's good. We fixed it. Scott Rudin.

1:01:11Griffin Newman:Famously normal guy. Sorry, David was holding for applause. Sends him The Truman Show. Andrew Nicol, of course, who is from New Zealand, people forget. So another person from that side of the globe, you know, is a guy who left New Zealand in his 20s. He became a commercial director, starts writing screenplays.

1:01:30David Sims:He's mostly writing screenplays to try to pin to his aspirations to... To direct. To jump to directing. He mostly is a director. Totally. It's just interesting that I feel like he becomes known as the incredible one sentence pitch guy where you're like, that feels like an obvious. This guy just has an endless well of ideas. Right. But he really was just like, can I come up with hooks that are so good? They have to let me direct. You were going to say the best.

1:01:56Griffin Newman:The best thing he ever did was the Truman Show, which he didn't direct, which might weigh on you if you're Andrew Nichol. I don't know because he made good movies and plenty of bad ones. Well, we're all entirely in control of our careers at all times. It's completely autonomous decisions. He pitched this idea to his manager in the early 90s. The Malcolm Show, it was called back then, but it is the Truman Show.

1:02:16David Sims:You just have to imagine that everyone literally fucking starts jumping up and down with that one sentence. He wrote this before he wrote Gattaca,

1:02:24Griffin Newman:which is, of course, his directorial debut, which comes out before the Truman Show.

1:02:28David Sims:But he wrote this first. The Truman Show period is so long off the heat of having Carrie attached, he's able to set up Gattaca and get it made as a director before this even...

1:02:38Griffin Newman:I can tell you, Scott Rudin buys the screenplay for a million dollars in 1993. Paramount comes aboard. He does a screen test. Nickel directs a screen text with tests starring Gary Oldman. He's trying to convince him he can do it. They look at the screen test and they say, Andrew, you will not be getting$80 million. I'm sorry to tell you this now, but like, no, we will not let you direct this.

1:02:59David Sims:This is too big for a first time director.

1:03:00Griffin Newman:As he puts it, I made the mistake of writing my most expensive film first, which is a good way to put it.

1:03:05David Sims:And another example of how Hollywood has fixed itself, Now they don't make the mistake of even letting a first-time director do a screen test for an$80 million movie. They just give$200 million to first-time directors right off the bat. Like who? The Maleficent guy. Yeah, I love him. Joseph Kaczynski. Disney was really kind of very guilty of doing it for a while. Right, right. Yeah.

1:03:28Griffin Newman:So some of the people are considered. Brian De Palma. Makes sense. Makes sense. Voyeurism. Cameras. Brian Singer. Uh-oh. Cameras. Surveillance. David Cronenberg. Again, makes sense, although you cannot imagine him being handed a big budget.

1:03:42David Sims:The cameras are in your nipples. A Cronenberg Truman Show would be fascinating. Yeah. It would. It would be interesting. Yeah. And the Bryan Singer Truman Show would have gotten 10 ,000 people arrested.

1:03:56Griffin Newman:Weir reads the script, thinks it's interesting, and is like, I think it's too challenging. I think suspension of belief is just too challenging. Like, I don't think I can convince people that this would exist. Which is the trick with Truman Show, that it kind of does get you on board with like, yeah, yeah, this is real.

1:04:13David Sims:And if you're off by a hair,

1:04:14Griffin Newman:this financially sustains itself.

1:04:15David Sims:The whole thing is going to collapse. If people are too busy getting hung up on questions that the movie can't answer, the answers aren't satisfying. But he can't get it out of his mind.

1:04:23Griffin Newman:Can't stop thinking about it. So he says they went through 14 drafts. Original draft is much darker. In the original script, there was an innocent passenger attacked on a subway as a way to test his courage. He has a relationship with a sex worker who he dresses up as Sylvia. Like, you know, like they make the magazine thing more literal. The original movie script that he has a drinking problem, like, you know, it was grimmer. And Weir was just like, no one would watch this show. Like, it's too grim. The whole point is the show needs to be attractive to people.

1:05:00David Sims:Well, also beyond that, like when he pitches it to his manager, the quick log line is like Malcolm is the star of a 24 hour continuous soap opera in the future but he doesn't know it he has been filmed by hidden cameras every second of his life the Malcolm show has been running since his birth the show has 16 producers all his family and friends are actors all the strangers that he sees in the streets are extras and he immediately goes obviously this should be a paranoid thriller paranoid thriller set in New York City right starts writing it as and like pretty quickly even before directors are coming on Rudin is like Like, is that really the tone?

1:05:34David Sims:And there was like versions of it where it's like, it's a twist that's revealed to the audience halfway through, you know? I think he just kept thinking of it in the most serious execution of that idea.

1:05:45Griffin Newman:It's funny, though, hearing this, because reality television, the ecosystem of it, isn't it just all basically alcoholics misbehaving? Wait, what? Those guys are up to no good?

1:05:57David Sims:They're in trouble?

1:05:58Griffin Newman:And like physically attacking each other. Exactly. Like, it's just so delightful that it's like, well, reality television, people would love to see people being nice to each other. Right.

1:06:07David Sims:In a quaint little town. It's like, couldn't be completely the opposite. Giant pin in this. Yeah. Yes. Giant pin in this. Giant pin in this. But it's also funny that, like, they're like, they had this whole plot line where Truman is, like, having a sort of non-physical affair with a sex worker who he makes wear the cardigan of the Natasha MacEllone character and, like, act like her so he can pretend he's still with her. and he thinks it's his dirty secret, but he doesn't know the world is like seeing him have this sort of emotional affair. And they were just sort of like, this feels like too much for the audience to be like watching and would they root against Truman?

1:06:42David Sims:And then I'm like, wasn't Skandavall the single most important thing, I guess, that happened in America in the last 10 years? I have so many thoughts on that. Certainly was treated that way. Anyway, go on. So another giant pen. Sure.

1:06:57Griffin Newman:Justin Skandavall. Weir starts thinking harder about like Kristoff, you know, like we've talked about this a little bit already. And the vanity of this guy, how he feels like he's creating the ideal human being, the true man and making a ton of money at the same time. True man, you say? Exactly. And so, you know, he doesn't want it to be like a polemical movie. He wants it to be an entertaining movie, which is great. But I think that's the right approach. Like, I think if it was too hectoring, which I think is the problem with every single Andrew Nichol movie. when Nickel is just in charge of it, that's the problem.

1:07:31Griffin Newman:What if time was money, though? Sim, Sim 1, or Simone, you know, like, you know, like all these movies where I'm like, great pitch. And then he's like, do you get my pitch? And I'm like, I got your pitch. Lord of War, he's made of bullets! Like, you know, just shh, Andrew, quiet.

1:07:47David Sims:This is why I'm, like, pinpointing, spotlighting the thriller thing, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Is that, like, all of his movies he directs, I like Gattaca a lot. Gattaca is his best movie, obviously. But otherwise, you're like, what an incredible concept. And you kind of have the exact wrong approach to what the most interesting version of that story is. The concept is like so powerful. And then like dramatically, he's like attacking it from the wrong angle. And it's not like he's always taking the same wrong approach. It just always feels like his direction was off. And I think this is one of the best examples of good Hollywood development.

1:08:25like this is the rare case of every starting idea was powerful but off and every choice they make

1:08:34David Sims:off of that massaging it for three years is like what fixes it well there's a funny meta thing too because like the discussion you're having right now about that is like in its own way a play acting of the discussion tv executives might have over the development of a show like the truman show and what's I think interesting is that no matter how much you try to put a veneer of like, no, no, no, no, it can't be that. It has to be, we have to, we have to make it happy and good and whatever. As we discussed at the beginning of this, like that darkness will find, you know, life, life's going to find a way through the cracks of whatever you try to patch over.

1:09:08Okay, Ian Malcolm. Okay, you've called me Ian Malcolm so many times.

1:09:12Griffin Newman:You haven't been, five o 'clock shadow, he's got kind of an Ian Malcolm thing going on right now. Well, listen.

1:09:18David Sims:Lanky, handsome. I just don't understand why you keep calling me Dennis Nedry. Yes, I'm wearing a raincoat and I'm covered in dinosaur ink all over my face. Yes, you're wet for no reason. Scott Rudin.

1:09:30Griffin Newman:Stay away from me. Before Scott Rudin even starts talking to Peter Weir, he's circling Jim Carrey. But then he does say to Weir, like, look, you might not know who Jim Carrey is. And Weir is like, no, no, no. I like Jim Carrey. It would be funny for Peter Weir to be like, I've never heard of this Jim Carrey guy. Well, I think Scott Rudin, because remember, it's the earlier 90s. I think Scott Rudin's thinking, like, you're too crass to have seen like Ace Ventura, right? I mean, like, sorry, you're not, like that movie's too crass for you.

1:09:54David Sims:But it's also, it's like within that year when he's exploding. He's hot. Like, is that guy paying attention to like what are seen as juvenile comedies? Peter Weir.

1:10:04Griffin Newman:To quote Peter Weir. Okay. I'd seen a poster in the video store of Ace Ventura and I liked the look of the guy in it. I sensed an energy I was to see in the film. He says, four minutes into Ace Ventura, it was apparent this man was remarkable. and I thought how fascinating he's interested in the Truman Show. Like, I guess he's basically like, he's got live energy I want to tap. I imagine that Peter Weir is staring at a poster of Jim Carrey talking through his butt. The poster of Ace Ventura is him holding up the cards. The big card. The first four minutes of Ace Ventura, which are one of the best parts of the movie, is him with the box.

1:10:40David Sims:Yeah, he's the fake UPS guy. There's some rough stuff in that. In the opening? In the opening, there's some rough stuff. Wait, really? Yeah, I rewatched it. I mean, I can't remember. I just remember re-watching it and the first four minutes going, interesting.

1:10:53Griffin Newman:The box, I remember just, that's just like pure Carrie comedy. That's so good. It's him going full blast. Him getting the blowjob from the client, like, come on, what are you talking about? There's just a handful. Yeah, listen, who knows? Why I like The Adventure Now is because it's such a dark, nasty movie. It's so weird. Like, it is, and like, it doesn't, yes, it's problematic. It's a movie without flaw, as we've established. Yeah, we're all on the same page about this. I can't believe this was a four quadrant hit because it's like a nasty movie. Yes. And I'm sure I, little nine-year-old J.E.

1:11:24was watching that. I fucking loved it.

1:11:25Griffin Newman:And like all the nasty shit just flew right over my head. Like truly. They made a Sunday cartoon out of it. They did.

1:11:31David Sims:It was a Saturday morning. They wouldn't put it on the Lord's Day. Yeah, that doesn't belong there. You're right. He just needs his own day. I mean, this is the other stupid stat I love to bring up when we talk about how big Carrie's 95 was. he has three ginormous hits in one calendar year all three of which were so big that a year later they all have Saturday morning cartoons there was Mask Dumb and Dumber and Ace Ventura cartoons airing simultaneously on three different networks

1:11:57Griffin Newman:I truly challenge our listeners to clip out the amount of times Griff has said that on this podcast I hope it's a five times it's a lot what's the last movie what's the last adult movie it's a Dennis Hopper film the last movie oh that's it yeah okay great the last movie the last adult movie to become a Saturday morning cartoon. Oh. You know, not, not, because obviously I'm not going to count like Boss Baby or like whatever. The Saturday morning cartoon basically doesn't exist anymore. It kind of doesn't exist anymore, right?

1:12:23David Sims:I would say the answer is Netflix did do like 60 episodes of a terrible CGI Fast and Furious cartoon.

1:12:30Griffin Newman:Another thing Griffin's brought up, I would like people to clip out

1:12:32David Sims:several times. I'm very disappointed with that show. I wish they had brought me in. I had a lot of big ideas.

1:12:37Griffin Newman:So, Peter Weir's interested in Jim Carrey, you know, says he's like a wicked, naughty boy in a man's body. He has a real electricity that could crack glass. I mean, that's all interesting.

1:12:45David Sims:At first, you're like surprising. And then what suddenly becomes clear and perfectly fits vocabulary I've just been gifted? Is Ace Ventura a bit of a larrikin? Is Jim Carrey a bit of an American larrikin?

1:13:04Griffin Newman:Larrikin, to be clear, J-Key, in case you don't. J-T. J-T. J-D. J-Key. I thought you said J-King. J-King. help take. Well, there's only one king. It's sort of an Australian word for like a rascal. Like, kind of like a ne 'er-do-well.

1:13:20David Sims:Jennifer Kent told us and now I'm going to use it the way Nick Weiger uses Inga Pachka.

1:13:25Griffin Newman:That's great. I love it. So, first meeting, Jim's kind of nervous and so he says, let's go to the bathroom and let's fuck around and he does the soap thing. No, like, Carrie's like, you know how normal meeting goes. Hey, let's go to the bathroom and fuck around. Carrie pitches like, stuff. Weir pitches Carrie like, I think your character would be doing weird things in the mirror. And Carrie's like, okay. And they go to the bathroom mirror and he does the soap thing.

1:13:48David Sims:I walk in, I'm watching deleted scenes. Ben goes, man, this is why you hire Jim Carrey here. And it's just raw footage of him doing extra mirror stuff. And I'm like, Ben, literally, I'll tell you on mic. But it was the first thing Carrie came up with and shows him in real time. The thing in here that Weir said that makes so much fucking sense to me beyond just like the energy and his talent and his box office viability, but that he's like, there is a kind of like uncanniness to Jim Carrey. He feels kind of like a fake person where even if you tell him to tone down the theatrics, it feels like someone doing an impression of a normal guy.

1:14:26Which I think is why this is such an excellent first foray into non-primarily comedic acting work for Jim Carrey is because Truman Burbank's a weird guy. He's not a normal guy. No, how could he be really? Exactly. And so any inconsistencies in the performance that feel sort of like a little extra fit right in with this character, which is why it's like a perfect casting is because he can be Jim Carrey and bring that Jim Carrey energy. And you're like, yeah, that's how a kid who grew up in a weird faux 1950s on TV all the time universe would act and behave. And so it fits right into the pocket of excellent performance because even if he veers into Jim Carrey stuff, you're like, yeah, Truman Burbank's a weird guy.

1:15:14David Sims:Jim Carrey's also just like a peak kind of raised by TV guy, right? Like, not, he talks a lot about his parents. It's not like they were absentee, but it, you know, it's like that generation of people who were just like, we learned the world through media. We had more media than anyone had ever had before. and here's a guy who like becomes a comedian getting up on stage and doing impressions of like 70 different actors and making his name off of that. He's clearly in this loop of like referencing and warping the media he grew up in. And yeah, it's like what we're smart about is, you know, I'm fascinated by like any time a comedian tries a big dramatic performance for the first time, especially if it's not like, we're going to put like John Candy in one scene of JFK.

1:16:02David Sims:it's like still a vehicle. And the people who survive that translation, people who don't, is that often I think without a steady hand behind them, comedians will just be like, got it, I just need to turn down the energy. And then people are just boring, right? Sure, right. They're like, well, I need to play it serious. And then they just like crank their motor down to one. And then they're just kind of giving a sleepy performance because they're so... The steep curl. Is the ultimate example where I'm just like, I think he's a very good actor. But it feels like he's self-conscious about not letting the comedy creep into his performances anymore.

1:16:38David Sims:Whereas like Little Miss Sunshine is like, to me, an excellent dramatic performance where he's recognizing that that guy has humor in him as a person without being a sketch character. And Truman is like such a smart use of him where it's like you're not taking Carrie's energy away. You're sort of redirecting it. Well, I also think we're going to start seeing that less and less because we're in a period of time where, as we're discussing... Well, comedy is illegal. Comedy is illegal. Yeah, that's what I'm getting at. Yeah. No, but it's what we're discussing before this, which is the state of the television and film industry is such that, you know, being in a movie or on a TV show is not a life-changing step up in your career.

1:17:17and for a lot of comedians especially it's actually more of a a fun thing they do on the side that is separate from the thing that actually makes them their money and is their main career because you know there was a period of time in the 90s where it was like you know the dream was you're this comedian who has this comedy career and then you get absorbed into the mainstream world of film and television and now you're on easy street and now you're like a big celebrity and that's turned on his head. I think if anything, that exploration to film and TV is more of like a side hobby or an exploration more than it's a chance to level up because for a lot of comedians, they make a better living doing the thing that they do.

1:17:58David Sims:Right, which can mean any number of things. But the A-list thing too of, and there are two, three people left who have this, I would say, where it's like every year I am making one big chess move on the board. I am thinking thoroughly about the weight of what I pick. And that represents like, this is the Jim Carrey movie of this year. And people are waiting. And is it going to be building on what we already like from the guy? Or is it going to be a subversion? And like part of the whole like weird cable guy backlash was people being like, I don't like this darkness put on top of Manic Carrey. And it's like, got it, got it, got it.

1:18:37David Sims:We're switching. Liar, liar. Scary part is gone. he's just doing funny stuff. And so it is part of like this movie being announced of like, Harry wants to like do something different. Everyone is leaning in to see what that is. It means something rather than like, Jason Bateman has done like four different TV shows where he plays a psychopath. And it's never treated as like, holy shit, Jason Bateman went dark. Well, yeah, because he's really plausible as psychopath. Well, yes. But I don't think there's a single person who could do that today and it would be mind-blowing. And part of that is we don't have like A-list comedy movie stars.

1:19:15David Sims:Yeah. Right. Yeah. It's interesting because you're right. It's not even... Back then it wasn't even, oh, you're a stand-up, you're a this, and you're going into movie and TVs. He was a comedic movie star who was just changing genres.

1:19:28Griffin Newman:But he's a very fresh one. Like as much, you know, so he's still pretty fresh.

1:19:32David Sims:It's... This is this first batch. Like 95 is this weird like parallel thinking. The industry is like coalescing around him as... No, 94. Sorry, thank you. 95 is Batman Forever. We have good scripts. This guy's talented. He doesn't cost much. And suddenly all of those movies hit. Right? And then, right, this lineup of things that are him trying to test like, okay, every move I make now is going to have the eyes of the world on it. A little bit. Well, 95 is Batman Forever

1:20:01Griffin Newman:when nature calls. When nature calls he's like, ugh, I don't want that to happen to me again. No more sequels. Bows out a mask in Dumb and Dumber 2. Right. Cable guy people don't like it that much. Bit of a cult hit. He does Liar Liar. He becomes the first

1:20:14David Sims:$20 million star in Hollywood. He becomes the symbol of the top of the pyramid. The guy who, yeah, is covering half the budget just for the salary.

1:20:24Griffin Newman:Liar Liar. We have to admit it. You can't lie. I feel like he barely... Don't lie to us, David. He barely ever lies in that movie. David? You can't lie. He barely ever lies. Trust me. Trust him. Trust me. We're doing the... Your Honor, I object. Why? For what reason? Because it's devastating to my case. That's my favorite joke in Liar Liar. Like, and he's so good at all that shit. Like, he's compelled to say the truth shit. I feel like we've talked about this, and forgive me if we've done it before on the podcast, but like, especially in the like early... And he says overruled, and he goes, good call.

1:20:58Yeah, especially in the early 2000s, there's lines from trailers that are stuck in my mind, and that's one of them, is I feel like there was a trailer where that line pops up. There's also like... The one that I always love referencing is the like, you put the wrong and fastest on the wrong syllable, which is a movie that like, pause listeners. I mean, I think blank check listeners will know, but like the average person's like, I know that line, but what movie is that from? And you're like, Bruno Barreto's A View from the Top, obviously. Yeah, A View from the Top, duh.

1:21:27David Sims:Yeah. The golden age of trailers. But that's another example of like, that's not a holy shit they struck like gold, Truman Show like deep premise. But the second America was told, here's the movie, Jim Carrey can't lie. He can't lie. He's a lawyer. And he can't lie. What do lawyers do? Oh, my gosh. They were sending money to the theater in advance. That's all I need to hear. Yeah. I can fill in the blanks. He's just going to do shit for 90 minutes. He can't lie. But then what happens if he gets a speeding ticket? Oh, my God. Surely in that situation, he'd lie. I like that they were like, everyone loves Jim Carrey for his physical comedy.

1:22:07David Sims:but this movie is premised on a verbal trait and they were like don't worry am I crazy that there's like three movies of that with him that are like it's like that me myself and Irene correct and then there's another one which are like all very like I can't say no he's gotta say yes yes man sucks because yes man yes man does suck yes man is like there's a guru I think it's Terrence Stamp yeah who he's just like listening to the advice writes a book that's like philosophy of yes and he's like I'm gonna do that yes

1:22:36Griffin Newman:But what's good about Me, Myself, and Irene, which is a flawed movie, but I don't like that movie. Right. But the physical comedy in it is strong because it's like, it is beyond his control what's happening. And Carrie can play that very funny. That's what he's always been good at. His performance is very good. His body is overtaken. Right. Because Me, Myself, and Irene is like... It's a nuanced portrayal of split personalities. Yes. Right. Yeah, it was a nice one and a mean one.

1:22:57David Sims:Disassociative identity disorder. It's Charlie and... Hank. Hank is not a nice guy. Okay, wait. And the premise of Yes Man is that this is like more of like a self-help thing that he's doing? He goes to a self-help seminar. This guy wrote a book on the power of yes. And he's like, I'm going to do that. And then the rest of the movie, everyone's like, just stop. And he's like, no. Well, I guess he says he refuses to answer the question. Right there. OK, here's the pitch. There's a point in Yes Man where he's gotten himself into like immense legal trouble. And his best friend is Bradley Cooper, who's a lawyer.

1:23:32David Sims:and he has to show up and say, I'm sorry. He made this stupid deal with himself that he's going to say yes to everything. And remind me, liar, liar, what's the magical? It's like a birthday. His son makes a wish when he blows out the candles on his birthday cake for the party that his father didn't attend. His father said, of course I'll be there. And then meanwhile...

1:23:55Griffin Newman:He says, I wish for one day. Like, you know, my dad could not lie. Okay, I got a pitch. Go ahead. He goes to the self-help seminar. this is going to be my year of yes. As he is starting that journey, suddenly it's birthday time. Candles go out. He gets liar-liired in the middle of the year of yes.

1:24:14David Sims:Yeah. You're like, this man can only say yes to things and he cannot lie. So he's saying no to everything. So chaos is going to unfold. He doesn't want to say yes. You're like, it couldn't get any crazier than this. And what does he see on the ground? What? A green mask. Oh my God. What happens when the mask can't lie and can't say no? This is really good. What would it be called? It would be called?

1:24:38Griffin Newman:No, honestly, smoke it. No, honestly, smoke it. That's his catchphrase. I'm good. All right. Okay. Okay. Everyone shut up. Steve Corey. Wait, why did this make you mad? Because we're so off the rails. Why did this make you mad? We're good. We're good. Carrie, I want to say this. Okay. I think this is important. Yeah. Kerry's biggest inspiration for his performance in The Truman Show is his father, who he says was very much like that. The kind of like, hi, how are you? You know, starts laughing before you even tell him how things are doing. That kind of like mega friendly ray of sunshine affable kind of guy.

1:25:17Griffin Newman:He said his whole family are like, are you doing that? Yeah, he almost drowned in the water tank. That's a big part of the lore of this movie.

1:25:24David Sims:Well, he did. And that was when they replaced him with the first Jim Carrey clone. Right, exactly. who runs from 99 to 2005.

1:25:31Griffin Newman:We're not quite sure when, right? No, because Poppers was a new guy.

1:25:34David Sims:Yeah.

1:25:35Griffin Newman:Yeah. And he was settling in.

1:25:38David Sims:That one was not well calibrated. Poppers is like the Bond who did one and then was that last. Poppers is last.

1:25:44Griffin Newman:They fucking chucked this one out. It didn't work. Originally cast as Kristoff, as Griffin noted, as Dennis Hopper. Very different energy. Very different. To imagine like Hopper in that role. come on you fucking assholes like just screaming at everyone Truman talk you can hear me I can hear you Weir says I cast him before I really had an idea of who Kristoff was going to be when you know by the time we came to filming differences arose is how he put it he says that Dennis Hopper he says that Dennis was understanding and gracious Hopper did film I think so I mean they started filming yeah released the Hopper cut he toyed Weir toyed with playing the role himself which is really interesting because he's like, as director, it did kind of occur to me that like, whoa, there's like that kind of God complex.

1:26:34Griffin Newman:That would have been fascinating. It's also the... What director hasn't wanted to say cue the son is what is like his joke. There is, yes.

1:26:42David Sims:This surprising thing about Weird that we found is that he like basically started in sketch comedy.

1:26:47Griffin Newman:Yeah, he did. Although it's because in Australia, that seemed to be the only way to do anything in the 70s. What were you going to say? Well, it's funny because I'm not that, I wasn't that tapped into Peter Weir in his whole life and universe. And the more I heard about it, I was like... Kind of parallel to you. Yeah, I was like, is this kind of... Is Peter Weir kind of the career that I wish that I could have? It doesn't sound like he... I mean, of course, he's one of the most incredible directors.

1:27:11David Sims:It doesn't sound like he ever had designs on performing professionally, but it does sound like he was performing as much in comedy as you were around the UCB and everything. And then so you're like, you have to imagine there's some innate ability he would have to just kind of like hold the camera. He's also so fascinating in interviews. Like he does have such an interesting energy. Good energy. But it's the Tootsie thing. The Tootsie dynamic where Hoffman like begged fucking Sidney Pollack to play his agent because he was like, I want to have these scenes be with someone who actually holds power over me.

1:27:59David?

1:28:00David Sims:Yes? I know what your problem is. Uh-oh. You're getting too much sleep. All right. I have trouble to sleep.

1:28:07Griffin Newman:What can I do?

1:28:08David Sims:Well, this is a lifelong issue, but now you also got a house full of handfuls. It makes the sleep you can get all the more precious, does it not? Of course. Of course. And, you know,

1:28:19Griffin Newman:what's the most important thing about sleep, Griffin?

1:28:22David Sims:Most important thing about sleep. Sawing logs, counting sheep, honkshu, honkshu. I would say closing your eyes. Wearing a sleeping cap.

1:28:30Griffin Newman:These things are all very important, but no. It's the mattress atop which you sleep. And I have a Lisa mattress. Thanks to their wonderful partnership with us, I believe. I'm sleeping on a king-size Lisa mattress. I want to make sure I say exactly the brand I have. I believe it's the Legend. I think that's what it's called. Yes. The Hybrid Chill. Maybe it's just the Hybrid. I'm not sure if I got the chill. I got the chill because I'm a hot sleeper. I wanted to chill out. So the whole thing with Lisa is they've got all kinds of, you know, shapes and sizes for you, right? You know, if you want a little more firm, you want a little more soft.

1:29:12Griffin Newman:It's the best hack to improve your sleep. It's to address what you're sleeping on. I for a long time was on a less good mattress that wasn't as big I switched to a king I switched to a very nice Lisa mattress you're a tall man you have a tall wife it is one of the best single life decisions I ever made in terms of just improving my quality of life you genuinely seem so relaxed

1:29:36David Sims:even just recounting this

1:29:37Griffin Newman:I love to be in my bed now and like of course I always like bed bed's fun yeah great to be in bed but now I'm like how long till I can get my bed in fact we have to record an episode after this and I'm like so many hours from bed

1:29:51David Sims:bed is great and you know we've covered some of the worst beds in movies on this podcast Will Dormer falling asleep on a dock or a pile of garbage Rooster Cogburn Bed of Ropes you don't want to be like those guys those guys didn't have happy ends you want to be like a king a legendary king sleeping on a Lisa. So, you know, just for some things you want to know.

1:30:19Griffin Newman:Oh, please. I want to know some things. These are beautifully crafted mattresses. They're tailored to how you sleep. They're designed with specific sleep positions and feel preferences in mind. You know, you'll sort of do a sleep quiz at the site to find your perfect match in less than two minutes. They've got free shipping, easy returns, an 120-night sleep trial, been awarded the best hybrid of memory foam mattresses by Wirecutter of the New York Times, featured by West Elm as their go-to mattress partner. and we work with local nonprofits across the U.S. to donate thousands of mattresses each year to families in need with over 43 ,000 mattresses donated to date.

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1:31:32Griffin Newman:we're wanted alan alda after hopper gets fired which more matches obviously what they're going worked for Christophe. Sherry Lansing, who ran Universal at the time, I assume, wanted a bigger star. Ed Harris is... This is Paramount. Oh, is it Paramount? Yeah, it's Paramount. Of course it's Paramount. Yeah, sorry, Paramount. Ed Harris, it is truly like, he's like, I got a phone call on a Friday, I started working on a Monday. And he's incredible in this? It's obviously, it's an incredible performance.

1:32:00David Sims:One of his best performances?

1:32:01Griffin Newman:It is. He probably should have won the Oscar. I was thinking the same thing. Is this the Coburn year? It's the Kevin Spacey is the first. It's the Coburn year, which is, you know, honestly, Affliction is a bit of a forgotten movie. Coburn is good in it. Obviously, Coburn was a well-known, you know, like, it's a bit of a career war, but he's really good in that movie. And he doesn't make many films after that. James Coburn? Yes. No, he was elderly. You know, he was on the way out there. I'm just saying,

1:32:33David Sims:it was like, there wasn't going to be another chance to give it to him. The other thing...

1:32:39Griffin Newman:I know, but look, this is so rude of me to say because James Coburn's a good actor. James Coburn is not the level of actor where I'm like,

1:32:45David Sims:he had to have an Oscar before he died. I agree with you. I also think Ed Harris was in this zone at this point in time where people were like... He'll win. He's going to win like any day now. And then it's like he hasn't been nominated in over 20 years, close to 25. But in the 90s... He got four noms total

1:33:05Griffin Newman:because it's... So it's Apollo 13 before this, which he also should have won for. Truman, hours, Pollock. Then Truman, then Pollock, then the hours. Yeah. The hours, I don't like that performance very much. The others, he's an arguable winner every time. But that's... When I interviewed him, he looked like Kristoff and was so scary. He was notoriously one of the scariest men. What's the most scared you've been in an interview? That one. Really? Without a doubt, I was so scared to interview because I've always heard how scary he is. Uniformly,

1:33:33David Sims:everyone says he is like the most intense. It's also just like he's got Ed Harris energy all the time. Super, super, super, super serious. If you're like a PA and they go like, hey, can you tell Ed we're like five minutes away from camera up? They're like shivering just because you have to walk up to that guy. What's your interview foreplay? Like when someone says... I just kind of like caress the thigh, you know,

1:33:55Griffin Newman:and then I just kind of I'm like, is this okay? And then I sort of start to... No, you said foreplay. I don't know. I just chit chat. and like Ed Harris was not interested in chit-chatting with me but he wasn't rude he was fine luckily Aaron Sorkin was also there who likes to talk gap gap gap gap gap but like all of his answers were interesting and he was super chill he just looked like Kristoff do you write down your questions before you do an interview no I write down questions that I can refer to if I get stuck because I was going to say sometimes if you get scared you just like want a piece of paper and you're like okay here's the question yes but I find that um so I'm yeah like that That makes people like uncomfortable.

1:34:34Griffin Newman:Jump out the window. I feel like that would make Ed Harris bite your head off. Possibly.

1:34:39David Sims:What were you interviewing him for? With Sorkin? To Kill a Mockingbird. Oh, of course. For a job.

1:34:43Griffin Newman:I was interviewing them to work at my Dunkin' Donuts that I own at the Fulton Street Transit Center. Which, that's the thing that people don't know about David. He does have a Dunkin' Donuts at the Fulton Center. I do have a Dunkin' Donuts. He won. He's won. It was for Harris was taking over for Jeff Daniels and To Kill a Mockingbird. And they pitched me on like, can you interview Sorkin and Harris about like the process of him playing Atticus. And I was like... Talk to the Mockingbird. I was like, yeah. Keep moving. Bring out the Mockingbird. I was like, honestly, I just want to interview them.

1:35:12Griffin Newman:So sure. It did rock because we were at the theater, which is one of the greatest, you know, one of the biggest theaters on Broadway. And it was empty. And Sorkin comes out first. And then he's like, check this out. And we walk over. I've said this before on the podcast, I think. To the little step, because people come in through the audience in that play and in many plays, the tiny little step that gets you from the audience to the stage that's like half your foot max. And he was just like, how do they not fucking fall on this thing? And then like we get up on the stage and he's walking around and he was just so energetic and like excited about theater, which was cool.

1:35:46Griffin Newman:And he had just finished shooting Chicago 7. Oh, sure. And so he was talking to Ed Harris about that a lot because it was like he was coming back because he's not on, you know, the play was running. Harris was the one who was like, getting into, and he played Atticus Finch like a terrifying motherfucker. It was a weird performance. It wasn't bad, but it was definitely not like Gregory Peck energy. Anyway, I would give Harris Best Supporting Actor for Pop 13, which is one of my favorite screen performances of all

1:36:13David Sims:time. But he's incredible. It's what you're saying of, he would have been a good win in any of those four years. Probably. And he was in borderline auto-nomination territory where it's like, we're going to have so many chances to give it to him, and there kept being some kind of emotional choice above him. And now I, not that he's taken it for granted, but I think people like almost autocorrect and assume he won an Oscar 20 years ago. The weird Coburn stat is that he had like debilitating arthritis and basically disappeared for all of the 80s and then found some miracle cure and comes back in the 90s and there was a big emotional kind of like, Coburn's back, now he's like a steady elder state's been supporting hand.

1:36:53David Sims:Now he's given this like dramatic showcase role. But he, I mean, Coburn won zero precursors. Ed Harris was not even nominated for the SAG. Like, it was a weird supporting actor field.

1:37:05Griffin Newman:I should dig in. I should dig in. But he did lose and he shouldn't have lost. I think it should have been him or Billy Bob, but Billy Bob had just won an Oscar. But Billy Bob's obviously amazing in a simple plan, which is that year as well.

1:37:17David Sims:I don't know. You know what? I'm sorry. Golden Globes gave it to Ed Harris. SAG gave it to Robert Duvall for a civil action. Great performance. And then the Academy gives it to James Coburn.

1:37:27Griffin Newman:Laura Linney, we had seen her in Primal Fear, which she's very good in. And she did an incredible audition. Obviously, having Laura Linney in this role is just like having fucking Tim Duncan on the 99 Spurs or whatever. We're just like, well, we just got her early.

1:37:43David Sims:Seeing this movie as a nine-year-old, the amount of actors I'm exposed to for the first time where I'm just like, well, these are people who aren't in movies for children. I'm seeing Laura Linney and Paul Giamatti and Holland Taylor and Noah Emmerich like all these fucking like heavyweights and like character actor greats who I love who I just still kind of associate with like Laura Linney yeah of course the wife from the Truman Show well I was watching that behind the scenes feature up thing and one of the things I think is fascinating that comes through in the performance but until you hear her talk about it I did not zero in on is that Peter Weir wrote for Kristoff an entire sort of like backstory and history of Christoph.

1:38:24And then he had the actors for themselves come up with their own backstories. And her backstory was that her, the actress that she was portraying that, you know, was cast to be on the Truman Show was like a, like a... I can tell you, I have it here, but you want it?

1:38:40Griffin Newman:Go for it. Failed child actress, someone who always wanted to play Annie and never got to play Annie, had become like an Oprah-esque kind of shrewd businesswoman who is like really behind the product placement stuff. Yeah, so who she said like in her mind, in between when she was on the show, she'd be at like a conference room working with people to like deal, figure out product placement and all this stuff. She was like a business person first and foremost.

1:39:04David Sims:Basically like secures her position as you are the permanent Truman wife through selling her value to the show and all these other ways and being like so locked in on the whole business model in a way. Or like the flip where she uses that role to then become a huge product spokesperson.

1:39:23Griffin Newman:But I mean, she just plays it like a living animatronic. It's so good.

1:39:27David Sims:Yes. And it's just so unreal. I also love that the movie opens with the opening credits to the Truman Show, the show rather than the movie. And we're watching these direct address statements. And you're seeing how kind of pretentious she is about the art of what she's accomplishing. And you're like, there's this innate sadness to you being like, it's the greatest role of all time. And being like, you don't have a life. What are you talking about? You're like in a loveless marriage. And she kind of doesn't respect or even really like Truman. No, she's disgusted by him.

1:40:02Griffin Newman:She knows she hates him. Right, which is to that scene that we were talking about that's so disconcerting is it's the first time you see her mask drop where she's like, she's not concerned about him. She's concerned about herself first and foremost and this whole thing. And that's why she's willing to - you would tell him he was on a TV show. Yes, exactly.

1:40:20David Sims:Right away. Not to justify the action, but part of what drives him is that he's increasingly, like there is no universe and what is happening isn't also, that you're not also a party to what's happening.

1:40:33Griffin Newman:You have to be a part of it, which makes it even scarier. I mean, the thing that we never actually see him confront totally is that Noah Emmerich is part of it, which is the most devastating because he has this feature where he's like, I've been your best friend since we're seven years old. and it is the most chilling thing and that was his character story he was like a child actor who then got cast in this role and because they kept extending it he kept becoming more and more ingrained he becomes his best friend like and it's actually more villainous in a way that he is unwilling to drop that and in fact weaponizes it against Truman at some point like at least with Laurel Linney she immediately the moment things get weird she's like I'm out I'm done this is unprofessional I can't work like this I would say things got weird before such as when she married him and lives with him every day.

1:41:18Griffin Newman:Yes, but I'm kidding. Sleeps with him. Sleeps with him. It's just, it's so wild. And clearly it's like, if I'm going to get pregnant, you better fucking live. Well, and that's what she says. And the thing is, she's like, in my mind, every time I sleep with him, I get a pay bump. Right. The way you're describing her character, I just wanted to say, is sort of like an influencer. Yeah. Like in the 90s shopping channel kind of way. Sure, sure.

1:41:43David Sims:But I also think the Noammer character, what's fascinating is that he's a little tragic and that it does feel like these lines are genuinely blurred for him. Whereas she's like, this is a role I'm playing and I'll cross my fingers when we kiss at the altar. I think Noah Emmerich would be like, Truman, of course, is my best friend. Because he is. And because it seems like in the world of this film, he was with Truman since they were like toddlers. Whereas she was cast into the role when they were like cleaning. When they were in college. The scene where she's trying so hard to be like, how do I pop here?

1:42:13David Sims:You know? At the high school, the marching band. Right, maybe it's late high school.

1:42:16Griffin Newman:But like the idea is Natasha McElhone is an extra who falls in love with him. But of course, anyone who actually liked him again would be like, well, I have to take care of you. And the first thing we're going to do is get you off of the Truman Show. Yes, which is what they have to find someone who's, you know, at cross purposes with him. Which is why this movie is so good is because we're able to have this discussion within the bounds of its reality. And for a lot of movies, the moment you start discussing it like this, it falls apart because you're like, well, you got to take some leaps of logic.

1:42:43Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's so fun because you can talk about it with such depth.

1:42:48Griffin Newman:I think you have to make leaps of logic on, of course, this would not be, you could not. Wouldn't be financially viable. But like, I think that's a leap of logic you can make. And it's partly satirical anyway, the whole idea of like, you can see it from space or whatever. You know, like, and what I love the most about the Truman Show is that the audience watches and loves it, but is rooting for him to escape it at the end because that is what like watching sports is or watching almost any reality TV is where you're like, this is great and it entertains me. And then when like the scales start to fall off and people are like, I don't like this.

1:43:24Griffin Newman:People are like, I love that you're saying that. Like Alyssa Lu just now winning the Olympic medal, which I have watched her skate many times and cried. I don't know what's going on with me. Where she's like, I love that I did that and it was great. but this world sucks and I quit it because it was so horrible. And I wasn't allowed to drink water because of water weight. And people are like, we love that you're doing that. We also love watching you skate. I don't know how to reconcile those two things. I love Truman. I love watching him be Truman. I want him to overthrow though as well. Alyssa Lou,

1:43:56David Sims:this last Olympic run basically had the Truman walking through the door moment. Totally. What if I do it my way? I'll try to do it my way. I would like to believe

1:44:03Griffin Newman:that's exactly what she did. It seems like it is. But I think that's the aspirational beauty of the Truman Show, right? Is that it represents this thing that even within the fictional construct of what the show represents within the fictional world that it exists, is this idea that we all live in this life that part of what we seek in media sometimes is the idea that maybe we're going to be able to overcome whatever the boxes that we are put into. And so we just keep trying to find these boxes and see people overcome them in some way. And so even if you find escapism in the comfort of Truman, the fact that he's trying to escape becomes something that you're like, well, that's also engaging to me because I also want or hope or believe that my life is larger than whatever this, my version of a town square is.

1:44:50David Sims:It is part of the developed backstory thing, but I also, people have said it was part of the script at one point, like it was developed into the film proper, but the Noah Emmerich character, his sort of established backstories that this guy has had a years-long drinking problem. The actor, largely because of the guilt of how he is being used to contain Truman, and that part of his job being like, I have to fill vending machines around the world, was that he'd have to be justified to disappear for rehab trips and things like that. But also that there's this married thing that he's used as a mechanism to sell beer for the show.

1:45:27David Sims:Of course. So that there's kind of like the running segment of, of, well, when Truman needs, like, a trusty ear, of course Lewis is going to show up with a six-pack, which then becomes, like, part of their behavioral mechanism where he's over-drinking to deal with the guilt over the advice he gives Truman that is actually Kristoff in an earpiece. So then he needs to get, like, rehab off of the show and then continue selling beer to an audience. And this is what I think is great about Peter Weir, right? Is there some people that would put all of that into the movie. And Weir allows a lot of this stuff.

1:45:59And this is... Yeah, to just be unspoken or thought about.

1:46:02Griffin Newman:I mean, like there's the line that I love, like parsing this movie because I've seen it so, so, so many times where he talks about, remember when I got pneumonia and Truman's like, yeah, you were out of school for a month and they're laughing about it and you don't notice it. But like, then you're like, what do you mean he was out of school for a month? And you're like, oh, that was for some, you know, extra reality reason, right? And it's just shit like that. But then when I was, so when I first saw this movie, when the rain falls on Truman in a column before it, kicks off, right? One of his many moments of like reality is not right.

1:46:35Griffin Newman:Obviously, the first one is the light falling from the ceiling.

1:46:38David Sims:Yeah, which happens less than three minutes into the movie. Right away.

1:46:41Griffin Newman:It is astonishing.

1:46:42David Sims:Pin in that.

1:46:42Griffin Newman:Yeah, big pin. So many pins. I immediately start being like, well, why can't they just raise Truman to think that rain falls in a column? And why can't they train him to think that like, yeah, there's lights in the sky that might fall down or whatever. Like, why can't they just? And then like, as I grow older, I'm like, right, because then we wouldn't like the show. The show needs to reflect reality. Because it's not for Truman. None of this was for Truman. This was all for everyone else. Yeah, because like if he was just taught in school, like, well, rain falls in a column and you can't get on boats, like, and you can't leave your town.

1:47:11Griffin Newman:People would just like, you know, whatever. Like it just would break the way that people experience him.

1:47:16David Sims:Well, it's also like our relationship to this movie, which is like the buy-in, the suspension of disbelief, right? Like what are the questions you need to answer, the things you need to explain to get people to accept the rules of your universe? and this is such an excellent example of it gives you a satisfying answer for just what you need to be able to engage with the story and it's really smart about when it does not like info dumps but like how it distributes the information so you don't have to deal with 30 minutes of explanation you don't have to deal with the last 30 minutes is just uncovering everything but also the answers it gives are so satisfying and are so often like show don't tell that you start to be able to just infer.

1:47:59David Sims:You can fill in the blanks. And more than anything, you can tell that there are internal answers that they don't feel the need to communicate to you. Well, like one thing that I was watching the second time last night is I was like, oh, how much of the cameras are justified? Right? How much is an omniscient camera that is the movie's movie? And how much is it justified within the Truman Show? Yeah. It's mostly all in the world of the Truman Show. I think other than when it goes to like, you know, Kristoff and people watching on TV and whatever. In past times, I'd heard Weir say that was a big thing that he like tried to design the coverage of where the cameras would be.

1:48:35David Sims:And previous times I've watched this movie, I'm like, well, there are the obvious shots where clearly that's a weird angle. That's a hidden camera. You see the obstruction of a leaf in front of it or whatever. Now watching it this time, I'm like, I think basically every single setup within the bubble of The Truman Show, 100 % is a very specifically justified camera angle. even down to when it feels like the movie is doing more traditional coverage, that is coverage in what would be the main locations of his life, in the setups where they would have to invest the time and energy and technology to get a really high-quality, unobstructed two-shot.

1:49:11Well, they showed the trick off in one of the first interactions when the neighbor comes up and talks to him, is that they have a tracking shot that's sort of this handheld tracking shot that walks up to Truman. He's getting into his car. And in my brain, I'm like, well, of course they wouldn't have tracking shots. And then they obviously cut to the reverse and you see him holding up a trash can with a clearly a big lens that's very obvious on it to sort of teach the audience, hey, these are always going to be justified. And then throughout this, like, I remember there was the scene where he's running through the hospital and I was kind of like, I was like, all right, well, here's one place where they're kind of stretching the credulity of that because he's running and there's a camera following him.

1:49:46And then they cut to a nurse running behind him and you're like, right, there's...

1:49:50Griffin Newman:And there's cameras in all their clothes, essentially. Yes, and you can tell they just took the time for every shot to go. Even if they go, we want this coverage, they go, okay, but how would we justify that with this? And then they put it in there in some way, which is such great, fun, specific film.

1:50:02David Sims:When he's in his home, it can be as polished as like Friends because they've refined that. Yes. And when he gets into wilder environments, they're improvising, you know, they're like manipulating things. But you start to see the recurring design element of what are clearly the hidden cameras, which are like these black domes, which are in the lining of the buildings, the houses on the street, the signposts. You know, they're like all over everything. Someone's ring, there's one moment where it's like... How are they getting the sound?

1:50:32Griffin Newman:Everyone's mic'd as well.

1:50:33David Sims:It's all ADR. That's so true. The Truman Show airs at a five-minute delay. And someone's just like,

1:50:40Griffin Newman:oh, hi, I'm Truman. They probably just have booms hidden all over. Yeah. You can just do directional mics far away, pointing, you know, everywhere. Yeah. Yeah, so you just get total coverage. Yeah. Seaside, Florida is this creepy, crazy town where they filmed it, obviously, which is a town that was basically built in the 1980s to look like a, quote, neo-traditional community. It produced Matt Gaetz, who lived in the house that Truman lives in. Which I... Love. Which makes you happy. Well, you endorse it. Because you like thinking about him. Well, I think it's actually a very interesting cultural...

1:51:17I don't even know how to describe it. Go off? The fact that that is the childhood home of a famous, infamous Republican politician. Sure, famous-ish.

1:51:29David Sims:A lot of different words you could say here. Yes. And I'm, you know, exactly. So I think it's actually very interesting because the whole point of the Truman Show is that it's this enclosed universe that is controlled to make the people in it believe, or one person in it, believe that the world exists in a very specific way. and obviously we know that, you know, there's a certain positive aspiration of the idea of someone like Truman going out into the real world and now he's going to get to see what real life is like, but that's actually going to be a very pretty traumatic process.

1:52:02Griffin Newman:I think he's going to be okay, which I've thought about this a lot over the years because Natasha Ecclellan's going to get him. Like, and because I used to think like, oh, he's so fucked. What? He's going to walk out. Immediately some agent will approach him. Some, you know, like, and then I remember like, no, I forget that like, we're being shown, Natasha's going to get him. And she knows him and she knows what's going to happen. She knows the real world and she knows his world. And she's going to be the bridge that will, I think, make him upset.

1:52:29David Sims:Yes, but it's going to be like a hero. But all that aside,

1:52:33Griffin Newman:it'll be, sure. I'm just saying like, it's a very fundamental thing to me in the movie that their journeys are intercut. All that aside, I think there are strings that you could tie between someone growing up an environment like Seaside, Florida. that is Truman Show-esque that then holds beliefs that are very extreme and maybe don't interact with the full diversity of life as it unfolds in the rest of the country. We should all live in places like C. Disconnected from most people's reality. A little bit. Yes. They wanted a Norman Rockwell heightened reality, right? Like, I mean, that's what they were looking for.

1:53:11Yes, and I guess my point is like, of course that's where someone like that came from, right? Like, of course, that's one of the issues that we have, right? is that you can grow up in these bubbles where you see the world in a very specific point of view. And then when you get into the real world and that's different, right? And then this thing that has been constructed to make you believe that this is the utopian idyllic life. Yeah, there's going to be people who react to that different ways. And some of them it is through, you know.

1:53:36Griffin Newman:I think Matt Gaetz, he's doing good. Seems really balanced to me.

1:53:40David Sims:All right, well, that's David Sims of The Atlantic. I'm going to say that I don't endorse him. The funniest thing about Matt Gaetz to me

1:53:46Griffin Newman:is that Trump, like, you know, has violated every norm in existence and appointed psychopaths. And like, he was like, what about Matt Gaetz? Everyone was like, buddy. And he was like, all right, all right. Not Matt Gaetz. That's the one. That's too far. Like the only one. I don't know. There's something, there's something interesting about the fact that that's the home. That's like, I think it's interesting. I think we should move on. Yeah, I agree. Can I say, can I just say off the thread of like,

1:54:12David Sims:I know this is jumping to the end of the movie, but like, is he going to be okay? I was thinking about jury duty while watching this, which we were talking about right before recording, right? And how they have a second season coming out. And it's one of those like, how could they possibly pull that off a second time? But everyone who worked on that show talked about that they like shot it two times before it worked. Like, I think one time incomplete, one time maybe borderline complete, where they like picked the wrong person. I think one time the person figured out and the other time they were just like, this is not compelling television.

1:54:44David Sims:And then they found someone who was not only compelling, but like kept kind of making the moral humane choice in these insane circumstances. And then they were like, oh, the show's actually more interesting if the guy is like passing these morality tests rather than falling into the chaos of the situation. and they're like rewriting it in time in a Truman Show way to try to like guide him towards like presenting him as like a moral beacon of like you won this show by being unwavering in your humanity. And then he has talked about when the show ended, he like could not readjust to reality for like a year.

1:55:23David Sims:And it's not like that was all consuming in the same kind of way. And he knew he was on camera. He thought it was just a documentary series. And by the time the show premiered, he had worked through this and time had passed, but was like, I, for like the next couple of months, kept thinking it was still going on. Right. That was like three weeks of this guy's life. Totally. That even when that final episode is like, congratulations, you're a good human. This was a TV show. It's a comedy. Go on. He's like back to spending time with his parents. And he's like, but are my parents in on this? Were they in on this?

1:55:57David Sims:How far did this reach? Would that be an interesting like finale for the show? Or is that the midpoint and I'm still in it. That, you know, to the Truman point, it's like, you're right that he kind of is set up in the best way he could to transition out of this. But God, is there going to be fucking damage on him? Of course. I'm not saying,

1:56:17Griffin Newman:I'm saying, the point I was making was not actually, I don't think you can actually I'm not fighting you on it. I just, I just, think about that guy. I want, I want to say that Peter Weir took the, like, commercials, wanted the movie to look like commercials because he's like, everything needs to be really brightly lit, right? Because, again, the way the world would function.

1:56:36David Sims:How do you light exteriors like their interiors?

1:56:39Griffin Newman:He had one crazy idea that he wanted a video camera installed in every theater the film was going to be seen and when the movie ended, he was going to switch the feed to the people being filmed.

1:56:48David Sims:Kind of a cool idea. There was a live interactive... Love that idea. Adaptive, but I think they were just like, this is impossible logistically to pull off.

1:56:55Griffin Newman:Well, obviously that's ridiculous, but it would be so cool.

1:56:57David Sims:I like that, like, 30 years later, Coppola could barely pull off. a guy stands in front of a screen and asks like,

1:57:04Griffin Newman:what do you believe art is? Or whatever that question is. Well, it happened to me twice. Once I was watching, I was at a screening of Gremlins 2 and it was like that they actually, in the film, they set the movie on fire. Yeah, they set the movie on fire.

1:57:17David Sims:That is so crazy. The same thing happened to me when I saw Gremlins 2 in the theaters. When it happened a second time when I was watching the Muppet movie. Yeah. And, has anyone done that recently? Do you know what's even crazier? Is, Gremlins 2, I see it. The Gremlins got into the projection booth. They ripped through the film. You wouldn't believe what happened in mine. Who fixed it? Well, I don't want to one-up you here. I don't want to big-dog you, but my screening was the Hulkster. No way, Dan. Wait a second.

1:57:45Griffin Newman:Guys, I have a question for you to get you off of this. If we do Dante, will you want to do Gremlins 2? Oh, I mean... Or is there a different Dante? Because Dante does feel JD... Dante, I would want to do The Explorers. Hell yeah. There you go. That was... That's great. That would give that up a boost. That was a movie that I watched constantly growing up. And that was like... Never seen. You've never seen it? No. I haven't seen a lot. I don't mean that. I'm just saying that's... I mean, it's... I haven't seen a lot of those 80s kid movies because I was too young for them. And then I didn't have the sort of whatever cable TV American life that I guess kept the Goonies and its many...

1:58:22Yeah, that was video store for me. We would rent The Explorers, Neverending Story, Labyrinth, Right. Goonies like on loop. And like I've seen those four movies

1:58:32Griffin Newman:a grand total of three times. You know what I mean? But you haven't seen Explorers ever. No.

1:58:36David Sims:That's what I'm saying. Explorers is the left-handed one. The thing with Explorers that's interesting very quickly, David, is it basically is like a fucking snowman Harry Hole thing where they just didn't let him finish the movie. And so Explorers had to be kind of like stitched together. He never got to shoot everything that was written. Wait, what's the snowman thing? The movie The Snowman just like ran out of time. We gave you all the clues. Oh, that one. I thought you were talking about the animated short film. Oh, no. I was like, I was like, the movie. Yeah. That one feels finished. That one's pretty finished.

1:59:04It's pretty short too.

1:59:05Griffin Newman:You know, Snowman. I will say, no joke, creatively in my life, I, one of my, the references I've referenced the most is the 30 second live action opening to the Snowman. Because it taps into a feeling that is so specific that I have, it has been a part of several things where I'm like, we want that feeling. You know who's big for me was Corduroy, the TV version of Corduroy.

1:59:27David Sims:Oh, with the live action one? Yeah.

1:59:28Griffin Newman:Yeah, it was really good. I don't know if that was weird. The puppeteered one? Yeah, because it's also

1:59:31David Sims:an animated corduroy.

1:59:32Griffin Newman:No, fuck that.

1:59:33David Sims:I don't think I know what corduroy is.

1:59:35Griffin Newman:Corduroy's a children's book about a little bear in a toy store who comes to life. Tim Story was announced

1:59:40David Sims:to do a big budget. No, he should. Oh, that sounds fun. That sounds like

1:59:42Griffin Newman:it'd be really calm and relaxing.

1:59:44David Sims:I know we got to get back to Truman Show. We do. Can I just say craziest thing? So I see Gremlins 2 in a theater, right? So the Truman Show... And I'm like,

1:59:57David Sims:crazy screen, but I'd love to see what happened in the missing scenes when they bit through the film. So I rented it on VHS. Yeah, and you got to see it unbroken all the way through. JD, the craziest thing happened on the VHS. What's that? My player Gremlins 2, the Gremlins broke into the TV. Did it stay broken? It was staticky. And then they were in other movies. They changed the channels to Western films and stuff. And then the movie just went back.

2:00:27Griffin Newman:I can't do that bit on Gremlins 2 now. Crazy. We'll do it again. Trust me. Five times. This is a show that's never done a bit twice.

2:00:34David Sims:David is tightly hugging his baby Joey. Who is that? He's from Superman. You see the new Superman movie? I did not. David loves baby Joey. I love him. I think in Tug is you're holding him in a way that shows that.

2:00:47Griffin Newman:The Truman Show, I'm going to unpin one of your big pins. Yes. Begins almost immediately with the light falling from the sky. Which, I've been on this show before ranting about story structure. And what I love about the Truman Show is that I think there's a version of this movie where you do this, like, all right, let's spend 10 minutes with seeing Truman's life. It's the big question. And it's like, no. Right, how quickly do you start to break it? And how quickly do you, you know, unattach from his reality? All that stuff. And what I love about the arc of this movie is that that happens within whatever, one minute of the movie beginning, is that immediately it starts falling apart.

2:01:23and you're not, we don't have to live in the Truman world for 10 minutes before he starts to notice. It's like, it's risky

2:01:29Griffin Newman:because like, yeah, you do have that fear of like, will audiences accept this reality as we begin to break it? Right? Like, but I think you do. I think they do such a good job explaining how everything works. Yes. And then the movie runs for an hour. Yeah. And then we take a 10 minute break to have an interview with Kristoff. It's a good, solid time right before we finally are like, okay, all right. It's the movie has felt like it's about to fall off its hinges.

2:01:55David Sims:They save the day and then suddenly it's like, we're actually going to unpack this now. But they've given you so much information already up until that point that it's just hard data points you need and it works because it's still dramatized because you're learning about the guy who made the thing. All of his answers. You don't see Kristoff until an hour into the film. Opening shot. Opening shot. And then not until an hour. And then not until an hour. He's in less than 10 minutes of the movie.

2:02:21Griffin Newman:I think it's one reason he didn't win the Oscar. Because there would be a version of this movie, I agree. Where you keep cutting back to him and you're seeing him. Well, the other thing that interests, yeah, of course, that it's about him. But then the movie's more about him, obviously. Right, which is what's brilliant because that's what the movie isn't about him. I agree. Christoph thinks it's about him. Sure. But it's not. To some extent.

2:02:40David Sims:But that's the moment when it finally slows down. David is very annoyed that the podcast might take us out. I'm just trying to make a point and I don't want to forget the point. Please make it. Please make it.

2:02:47Griffin Newman:when they have sex, you cut to Flattop from Brooklyn Nine-Nine and the other guy. Yeah. Where he explains like, but you never see anything. They point the camera away. The wind blows. The curtain. It's a very funny moment. That's one of the very few moments that they cut to the audience before the reality breaks and then we're cutting to them all the time. And it's the first time. They don't explain it. It's the first time and they kind of don't do it again for like a long while.

2:03:08David Sims:Just forgetting they show the bar with Olan Jones because when they get to Natasha McElehon. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They show, yeah. But that's later. That's later. Yes, this is the first one. That's the first one. But it's very brief. They add more people post-reveal, of course, Napoleon and such. They do, but they do it slowly,

2:03:25Griffin Newman:but they do do it before the Kristoff moment, which is the full kind of like, okay, pause. And what I think is really bold about that cutaway, right, is it's not like, I don't believe, maybe I'm going to say this and I'm wrong, but as I remember it, it's just a hard cut right to those people going, nah, you never really see anything. It is. It's like, you don't cut to the TV. No, you never see the TV. You just know that the audience is going to pick up. They're going to be jarred for a second to be like, what am I watching? It's like, oh, these are people watching the show. And it's just interesting.

2:03:55Griffin Newman:And maybe it was a studio note of like, can we please, like just a tiny, tiny, tiny bits of context, please. Like it's too overwhelming. Maybe not. Maybe they just editing wise were like, no, no, no. It belongs there. Like we need it a little bit.

2:04:07David Sims:It feels to me like you need to ease the audience into that as a language that's going to exist because also at that point, the audience is starting to wonder how do people watch this? Like, what is their relationship to this? That becomes as pressing a question as the reality of how the show is made is like, so are they watching it like it's sports? Are they watching it like it's a soap opera? You know?

2:04:32Griffin Newman:To me, you would just have it on, right? Like that, like, obviously maybe sometimes you do lock in with the Truman Show and I have questions of like, do they do like a highlight reel? during primetime show. I think it's streaming. I think it's what we sort of now have. But then they do the flashbacks. It's a channel with flashbacks. I'm going to unpin one of the other big things. Obviously, one of my... I say obviously, Griffin probably. I'm obsessed with the early 2000s era of reality TV and what turned into it. And especially the big swings that turned into disasters in a lot of ways. And what's so interesting, is that the state of reality TV now versus what it was in 2003, I think because there's this sort of like boiling a frog element to it, like you think that it's like always been like this.

2:05:21But if you go back and you watch season one of The Real World or Survivor, you're like, oh my gosh, it feels like a documentary. And back then, people was like, oh, this is a spectacle.

2:05:32David Sims:Well, that's even like 20 years past in American Family, which was presented as a similarly high-minded PBS thing. And people got into like debates of whether it was exploitive or ethical. And then by the time the real world premieres, it's like, well, that was an interesting artistic experiment, much like 7-Up. And the real world is crass and exploitative. And so there was all these different folds of reality television, which I'm fascinated with because I think there are these weird cultural mirrors in a lot of strange ways. But some of them that are interesting is obviously like Big Brother played around with the streaming aspect of stuff.

2:06:04I'm not a Big Brother guy. A friend of the show, Zach Cherry, is a huge Big Brother guy. He's tried to get me into it.

2:06:09Griffin Newman:It's the only reality TV show I ever watched. First season of UK Big Brother. Well, I tried to start watching season one and then Zach got mad at me. He's like, don't watch season one. And so it was a whole thing. But one of my favorite things that then, in turn, I got Zach into was Utopia. So the Truman Show, as it exists, right? Is this premise that, okay, there's a show that's on 24 hours a day. I think they would do it like they did Utopia or some other shows. I think Big Brother does at a time where you could tune in and watch some of the webcams. The way Big Brother worked was every day there was a digest.

2:06:40Griffin Newman:But there was, yes, you could tune to E4 and watch the live stream, which was incredibly boring.

2:06:45David Sims:And in the States, it was similarly a website where with some censoring, there was more raw feed, but you were getting the edited... It was always so boring. Yeah. Because like, it's just people sitting around. Well, so that's the thing is that I think is interesting is that in the fictional reality of the Truman Show, right? This is something people are engaged with. In reality, what transpired is that anyone that tried to do anything like this, it ended up not working in a lot of ways. And that's why I think the closest thing is 7-Up because they really, you know, So that was a pure... It's a different thing.

2:07:13And 7-Up is owning that it's a documentary. And the thing that's interesting about reality TV is just like our discussion about the Truman Show of being like, oh, it has to be this certain way. People put their fingerprints on it too much, right? Well, they all know they're doing it. They all know they're doing it, but then also the construct of it is always, there's interference. So Utopia, because Ben, I saw you looking quizzically at Utopia. Utopia was, at the time, it was the highest budget, one of the highest budget reality programs ever made that Fox was putting out. I was obsessed with it as well.

2:07:48I was, I was, me and Emily were two of the five viewers.

2:07:51Griffin Newman:It was based on a Dutch show, I think. Yes. Yes, which is so often true. Big Brother was also based, like, the Dutch would start with these crazy concepts. Yes, that happens a lot. And so, one of the, the premise of Utopia was, we're going to take a plot of land and we're going to put people there and we're going to give them basically, like, none of the major things that they have that come from the public constructs. Water, gas, electricity, food. And they're going to have to form their own utopia society and solve these problems. And they can build their own internal government and their own way to make decisions and all this stuff, right?

2:08:21The idea is cool. You see the vision of it. But then this was a Fox product at a time when that sort of that Fox reality programming had to be, it had to be about conflict and sex and drama and all of this stuff. And so, number one, they ended up casting people who were diametrically opposed, right? It would be like, we're going to form a utopia society. And here's a conservative preacher and a woman who is a polyamorous stripper. And here's a racist guy. And here, you know, I'm a racist guy. I mean, but it's like that was 100 percent. Of course. Yeah. And so, of course, the show is just replete with people at each other's throats arguing and no one can really figure things out.

2:08:59But the premise of it is they spent all this money making this space. It was just outside of Los Angeles. And they had cameras everywhere. And like Truman Show, the idea was that you could log in online, watch Utopia 24 hours a day, and sort of see what they're up to. And then twice a week, they do these digest episodes where they told you what big things happened. What did they accomplish? What did they accomplish?

2:09:21David Sims:They find the compelling dramatic strains within all the footage. So right off the bat, people aren't that interested because it just feels like regular sort of reality shock. that's my editorializing of it is that it's just the same people arguing and you know not much happening and then there's people that are online watching it 24 hours a day and then there's a lot of people that are just like waiting for the women to like take baths and like watch them naked it's that level of polarization of like the level of interest in this is not Truman Show.

2:09:53Griffin Newman:I was bath hunter one two three on those boards but that's like that if you try to when will they take baths here's the thing David Bath Hunter is so funny it's just like such a hilariously kind of old fashioned like the fucking horizon in American Psycho was like I like to watch a woman take a bath

2:10:13David Sims:it's like Mr. Skin but it's just about dirty bath water it's the fucking tub report the other day I met someone and I was I was describing this show to them and I was describing David and like describing blank check to them well yeah and they weren't piecing it together I was like, David Sims, Atlanta, and they're like, then they're like, oh, Bath Hunter. And I was like, oh, I didn't, yeah, yeah, you know him best as Bath Hunter. Right, right. My earlier internet career. I'm not picturing. I'm a bath hunter. David dressed up like Dog the Bounty Hunter with a bunch of bath paraphernalia. Fucking loofah.

2:10:46With night vision goggles. So anyways, the show is not succeeding.

2:10:53Griffin Newman:Make Bath Hunter fan. It lasted for like 13 episodes. It lasted like 13 episodes. What's funny is that if you try to find the episodes online, what comes up is people being like, hey, does anyone have the footage of them taking baths? And it's like David replying being like, yeah, mate, I gotcha. And he replies like,

2:11:08David Sims:really, really fast. Like, even if it's not in like a designated place. You want to see the racist guy? Like a lot of him. He was really taking a lot of baths. It's a lot of David dropping the address to the Blank Check Studio being like, meet me here, bring a hard drive. Bring bath. Yeah, bring bath, bring water, bring soap, bring hard drive. In many terabytes, you can't upload it. It has to be transferred. No, exactly. And right now in the studio, it's hot because these are on 24 hours a day. We got tops running. It's like an AI processing farm.

2:11:36Griffin Newman:I'm going to have to ask you to finish this tangent. Just so we can discuss other things in the Truman Show. So, Utopia ends up starting to fall apart. One of the things that I think is fascinating about Utopia is that the people on the show were told this is going to be a Truman Show-esque thing that is going to sweep the nation. Yeah, right. So, throughout the show, they keep going, guys, the world is watching us. It's crazy how famous we are right now. Well, they keep going, we have to figure this out. The world is watching. Right. And what they didn't realize that this was... 1.2 in the demo.

2:12:01And so then they start trying to do these weird things to sort of bring up ratings. They start having these ads that are like, very like, is someone going to die? Like, one of the last episodes was Halloween themed and the host is dressed like Dracula. And I remember the promo for it was like, will someone die tonight on Utopia? And the answer was like, no, they won't. Of course not. But it was just like the P.T. Barnum like, will you see this? and the show ended after like 10 episodes. It was 12 episodes. Yeah. But it's fascinating because to me, it's exactly why the Truman Show couldn't exist in real life, right?

2:12:34Because number one, no one would have the patience to actually let real life unfold. And two, if they did have the patience to let real life unfold and not put their finger on the scale, I don't know that people would watch it. So I think the Truman Show would succeed.

2:12:46Griffin Newman:You do? Yes. Because I think the difference, obviously, he doesn't know. He doesn't know it's a TV show. Yes. I guess that is a different. that. So when this movie came out, everyone was like, well, this would never, no one would watch it. Too boring. Everyone would watch it. And I'm like, no, everyone would watch it because it would be a window into a life we want. Into a fantasy. A lot of YouTube social media stuff is the Truman Show. What's that Japanese show where everyone's nice to each other in a house? Terrace House? Boys and Girls in the City? Yes. Terrace House. Terrace House colon Boys and Girls in the City was the first one.

2:13:17Griffin Newman:Okay, fair enough. But those shows where people, I crave calm. I crave quiet. and like it just feels like all the people watching right like the audiences there's like the nice old ladies there's the the security guards

2:13:32David Sims:it's the whole slow TV phenomenon which is much bigger in other countries than it is here but then Netflix started licensing it and it's really fucking big I just can't get on board with slow programming okay what about oh yeah 12 hour a day everyone listened they put out a new episode recently didn't they someone who does an episode is 12 hours also obviously the holiday season you want to slow things down in terms of what you listen to You'd be like, yeah, well, that's a good point.

2:13:54Griffin Newman:Yeah. Wouldn't you maybe just get home and be like, what's Truman doing? Yes. You know, flick it on. Yes. Yeah, listen, I could see you being someone who would be like, oh, the eight-year-old Truman's doing homework. I'm going to turn that on in the background while I make dinner.

2:14:06David Sims:David would be obsessed with Truman and would be like, you guys need to watch this. He took a bath. Yeah, no, I'm joking. Let's drop that bit. Why are you telling us to drop the bit? Can you drop the bit? No, no. Let's focus on the podcast and maybe spend a little less time on your bathtub whip. But yeah, David, I'm going to shorten this up so we get back to the show.

2:14:23Griffin Newman:Do you figure that there is? Because they say like we've never stopped transmission, right? So do you figure there's like there's a channel that's just the live show, but then there's maybe another channel that has like flashbacks, old stuff, like, you know, like compilations of what happened today. This is like the Manning cast and like the like actual football game.

2:14:43David Sims:I imagine it's like a syndication deal where one of the networks is airing the package, the best of, their rerun rotations, and then this channel is the raw feed. I also think that they... Which then will cut in flashbacks at relevant moments when what he's going through is boring. Yes, I also think when he's sleeping and stuff, they're playing best of and they're playing... Right, yes. And behind-the-scenes interviews like we're seeing. Can watch him sleep. Yes, and it's... But in the movie, we see it's like a picture-in-picture where they're like showing in the corner the raw feed of him sleeping while doing the Kristoff interview.

2:15:15I was recently... I forgot that I did this, but I was recently, it was brought up that I did a project back in the day where I would broadcast myself sleeping. And the idea was called Please Influence My Dreams, where I would sleep. And then there was a system where you could come on and you could, if you would take turns being able to speak through speakers that spoke to me when I slept. And people watched it.

2:15:37David Sims:I wonder why we asked you to be the guest on this episode. Because this is, because there's a part of my life that I'm like, Christoph's a bad guy. as I'm like slowly marching my way towards trying to become Kristoff. Kristoff and Truman at the same time. Can I pull down a pen? I think what's interesting about this movie is there is something... He's on the air unaware. Well, of course. That was very interesting. That's why they put it on the poster and it opened to a robust$35 million,$40 million. I think there's something that feels naive about this movie's understanding of how we'd want to watch other people's lives, which isn't to say that people wouldn't watch.

2:16:17David Sims:I agree with you. But the way the television industry has curdled and adjusted to what people are telling them they want and vice versa has led things into like an insane direction. And I think there is this turning point of Survivors 2000 and I think the first American Big Brother season is 2001. Something like that. First UK Big Brother was,

2:16:37Griffin Newman:I was like 13 or 14.

2:16:39David Sims:And that concept felt insane of like we're putting people on an island. There is like not a fake reality, but there's a forced reality on them. We're taking people out of their element and you're going to watch human behavior and how they survive. And Richard Hatch, who ends up winning that first Survivor, comes in and is like, this is a game. Yeah, Survivor is a game. I need to win a million dollars. Right, right. But you watch that first season and most of the people are just like, this is interesting. I hang out on an island and I guess at the end of every week, there's a popularity contest and someone gets a million dollars at the end.

2:17:10David Sims:That's the bait to get someone to sign up for this. Why else would you do it? And he immediately is like, this is a game, you play it. People were aghast that Richard was lying.

2:17:18Griffin Newman:Right. I know. In Britain, British Big Brother was Nasty Nick was the Richard. This is the thing.

2:17:23David Sims:And then Big Brother has to do the same and people become like, I don't think they have to do the same.

2:17:27Griffin Newman:People just play it like a game because it is a game because there's a prize. But that's why I brought up Utopias because I generally think if they had just not cast for conflict and they put together a group of people to try to actually do this, I think it might have actually been engaging television. Possibly. But in a television context where they were like, no, no, no, we need conflict drama. We need ratings.

2:17:48David Sims:The juice of Survivor and Big Brother and the copycat shows ultimately becomes the contestants inside of it manipulating reality. The audience seeing the way that they are working things to their own advantage, right? And then that, in my opinion, morphs into the modern era of the Bravo reality show and the similar shows to that, which are presenting to you something almost as if it is the Truman Show, where these people are acting like they are not constantly being followed by cameras, other than when they're doing the direct address moments. They're acting oblivious to it. They're letting people into their homes.

2:18:25David Sims:Their homes are outfitted with cameras, both hidden and right around them. And there are manipulated plot lines. You have producers going... Because they're scripted, right. Right, 100%. And it's the fascinating inverse of this, where we now have these shows where like... You know, they walk among us. It happens in our reality. It is constructed in every step of the way and is presented to us as you're just seeing a raw feed of people behaving. But also it has the same kind of weird gamesmanship inside of it without the prizes of I need to pop. If I get a two-episode contract on this, does it lead to a spinoff?

2:19:03David Sims:Does that lead to me being able to start my own fucking lifestyle brand, right? And I had this moment the other day in the supermarket where I was like buying soda, my beloved like fucking digestive sodas. I'm constantly trying every probiotic soda brand to see if anything fixes my body. And there's like a mother, a father and a young child. And the mother is talking about like, oh, Olipop. I love these sodas, but they're so expensive. We could never buy a six pack here. And then he goes like, well, you don't buy him a Target. Yeah, they're much cheaper at and name some website where you can get them sent direct.

2:19:38David Sims:And then he calls cut and he's like, yeah, I think that's good. And she was like doing a Truman show ad read in real life. And I'm like, this is some family influencer account in which they're shopping at big box stores and then acting out scripted scenarios of their deciding prices based on who's paying the most to sponsor, buying from them instead. And I'm like, we now, it's flipped into people are acting fake in our real world, broadcasting that stuff back out to us and we are obsessively watching all of it. Yeah, it's the Truman Show without Truman. Yes. It's fascinating to me. I hear you.

2:20:19David Sims:And what we don't want is the like idyllic, can we just watch a person like grow and learn thing? Yeah, and that's, I think that's what I, why I bring up this, the seven up series is because I think it's so beautiful in that it's the, it is the irregularity of real life. Right. And what's so fascinating is when you watch, especially the most recent one, it's, it's really powerful to watch because you realize, um, both how predictable, how unpredictable, how fickle, how solid, all of it together is what life is. And the fact that it goes in these directions that only real life could is what's so fascinating.

2:21:00And the moment you try to control it, it becomes this weird sort of, you know, it's a reflection over reflection over reflection. Yeah, you're living. It's not even the uncanny valley. It's just like on the other side of the graph. It's just not real.

2:21:14David Sims:This also, this movie comes out the same year as 42 up. You know, it's like Andrew Nichols sells his script, I think the same year that 36 up comes out. 35. Thank you. I'm not good at math. Which is basically like the age Carrie is when he's doing this movie. Like the one model of, I'm not saying he was even directly inspired, but the one model of following someone for this long is basically concurrent with the age of this character.

2:21:41Griffin Newman:Ben, what did you want to say?

2:21:42David Sims:You put a pin in Skandaval. That was all the stuff I wanted. That pin is gone. Can we talk about the Truman Show? I think we're clear. Okay, good. I didn't watch it.

2:21:51Griffin Newman:When you say talk about Truman Show, plot stuff? The movie, yes. You want to dive in. Yes. Because we're at about two hours ago. We sure are. Yes.

2:21:58David Sims:Can I talk about the trailers I saw before Truman Show? No, you cannot. Silence. I think there was a Rugrats movie teaser. Be quiet. Because that was Paramount's big holiday release. I did not think this would be a long episode for the record. So I think we kind of touched on... Just because I think it's an incredible film. Yeah, we're going to be done in like two minutes. We're so close to ending this episode.

2:22:16Griffin Newman:We've literally got to the light fell. So let's pick up there. That's exactly what I'm saying. as much as yes, it can be interesting to talk about reality like in life and all this stuff. Like we should talk more about the movie which is clockwork construction as J.D. pointed out and just has like a million bits like that, you know, we should consider. So he drives to work. We see, we get a taste of what his life is like. Ben angrily going through the plot points of the Truman Show.

2:22:43David Sims:May I run through some time code things as a way of getting us from plot points because it's also just fascinating like at what moments the movie reveals certain things. Okay, sure. So you open with the opening credit interview stuff, right? Yes. Light falls at... Score is amazing, by the way.

2:23:00Griffin Newman:Yes. The score is weird because it's largely other music. It's largely Philip Glass music from Mishima and from Paukatsi. But then also some original Philip Glass tracks. No. Original Burkhardt Dahlwitz is the guy who's doing the... Trimming sleeves? That stuff is not, I think...

2:23:17David Sims:Well, now I want to look it up. because I met this girl online who told me that she wrote Truman Sleeves. Yeah, and I... Did you get that?

2:23:25Griffin Newman:I didn't. You have to explain it to me. That's the inciting incident in Catfish the movie. I have not seen that. Okay, so Griff has now checked the bingo card of the two things he texted me that he wanted to talk about today.

2:23:38David Sims:Okay. He's like texting with this woman and he's like, she's a musician. Listen to this thing she wrote and it's fucking Truman Sleeves. Okay, stop.

2:23:43Griffin Newman:Okay, all right. So after he goes to work, I swear to God. That was written by Philip Glass, correct? Truman Sleeps is written. But so, yes, he must have done some new stuff. David, what if I got you a crossing guard stop sign? That would rock.

2:23:57David Sims:That would fucking rock. Truman Sleeps written by Philip Glass and that girl from Facebook. The light falls out at three minutes, right? Under 10 minutes, he can't get on the boat. Like, you're introducing that so early.

2:24:08Griffin Newman:So he goes to work. He's doing the, you know, making, tearing out the pages of the magazine, which you're kind of like. I thought you were doing a lawnmower motion there.

2:24:20David Sims:Peter Krause comes over, the great Peter Krause. His catchphrase-y routines of the banter with the magazine guy about for the wife and the greeting to the neighbors.

2:24:29Griffin Newman:But yes, Krause comes out to give him the challenge. It's basically like, here's today's drama. He's going to have to go to the island to do a sales pitch or whatever, and he can't do it.

2:24:41David Sims:It is fascinating to consider. It's beautifully played by Carrie.

2:24:43Griffin Newman:The way he holds on to the little post.

2:24:47David Sims:on the dock. Fascinating to consider that like the way they enforce his fears is to constantly test them rather than

2:24:55Griffin Newman:They have to test them but I also think it's that they need something interesting to happen today. Like he can't just go to work every day. The thing I like the most in that scene is is that the guys on the boat are like, hey, do you need help? Which is like a normal thing to do and you're like, they're actors and they're like, what are they thinking about? Am I wrong though that also before this Truman starts talking about how he wants to see the world? And so a part of me It happens right after. Basically nothing has happened. Because I felt like he made some reference to it and that's why they're sort of inserting like remind him that he hates traveling.

2:25:25After that he has

2:25:27David Sims:it just feels like right this is a thing they do on some schedule every four months or whatever to like reestablish it whether for the audience or for him. Because after that is Laura Linney arrives

2:25:37Griffin Newman:with the Dicer Slicer you know and then it's him and Noah Emmerich. What is his character name? Lewis.

2:25:43David Sims:But that's when he's like the golf ball talking about running to town. that's when he does the Fiji does the around and then the movie gives you the first flashback of his dad drowning right which at that point in the movie you maybe think that's just movie language rather than understanding that would be part of the broadcast but then as you said like the security guards are the first audience members you see it like 15 minutes in they then basically immediately go into well he sees his dad the next thing is he sees his dad what do you want to say J.D. I also think and sees his dad and then talks to his mom right after that.

2:26:19Griffin Newman:No, no, but the, no, the sees his dad sequence is so awesome because it's like you watch reality warp. Yes, the thing that I want to talk about a little briefly though is that in the flashback of the dad, the thing that is set up that is like so horrific is it's not just that his dad died. He begged his dad to take him out. And that they set it up so that it's Truman's fault. It's the worst. It's like so horrifying. It really upset me watching it this time now that I have kids. Like in a new, like freaky way.

2:26:46David Sims:It is fascinating character motivation shit where they're like, well, you sit down, you write a screenplay. There's nothing immoral about it because you're not fucking dealing with a real life. But at a certain point, they understand this falls apart if he ever has the desire to reach further beyond the reality we can construct. So we have to narrativize what are the like incidents of motivation that would cripple him this thoroughly. Which I think is such a crazy ethical thing to put on screen is because, right, to the actors in it, they're like, well, this isn't real. You know, I'm performing a role.

2:27:23But to this kid, it is real. His dad, he watched his dad die. You know what I mean? Like, to Truman, this is all real, which is what's so fascinating because I think that's also a thing that TV uses a lot where it's like, you know, it's like the this is a prank thing where it's like, it's a prank, it's a prank. It's like, well, no, you actually did that shitty thing to that person.

2:27:41David Sims:But also, this is how we talk about movies every fucking, you know, several times a week in this room where you're like, do you buy that he's like too scared to travel? And you go like, yeah, because, you know, if it was just that his dad drowned, that'd be one thing. But the fact that he wanted the dad to take him on the trip, that makes it personal. You're like, right, that's a good writing.

2:27:59Griffin Newman:Is Holland Taylor's character kind of the most horrifying to consider? I think so. The mom. The mom, sorry. Like, because she's essentially raised this child since birth, but she's not his mom.

2:28:14David Sims:And she seems to have no lingering guilt about it. No, and she plays all the lies very well. Well, and she seems very proud of the fact that she's Truman Burbank's mom. Yeah. Like, that's her role. She's very good. Like, when he's missing, she has that line where she's like, let me say his name. It's in a way that's, like, chilling. But it also feels like you don't want to see her do talking head interviews because that becomes too depressing. Like, it's kind of a good judgment on we're...

2:28:41Griffin Newman:The other thing I think about of, like, how often does he see his mom? Let's say once a week, a couple times a week, right? So what does she do otherwise? Does she leave? And that's the question for all of this, is, like, what is the schedule of their lives? Right. That's why it's, like, fascinating when that elevator door opens and you see people in, like, this little mini green room. Well, that I love, but I love the bus driver. Yeah. Where I'm like, so do they just sit there all the time in case Truman wants to take a bus or did they get kind of assembled there or does he drive the bus? My reading.

2:29:11Griffin Newman:Does he kind of just drive it off and drive it back? There's the part where he is starting to realize. He tries to drive the boat and he says, I'm the bus driver because I love that part. Well, no, I was though more referencing the part where Carrie starts to realize that people are just on a loop. Yeah, people are on loops. Right, and they do their loops. The bus driver just might have his route and he just does it every day. They have their first position which clearly is like, oh, this is where we start our day. Start 6 a.m. And you probably have an eight-hour shift where you do X, Y, and Z.

2:29:39Griffin Newman:Wait, and if you think about it, our lives, it's almost kind of like we're showing up to first position. Ben! That's true. Especially when you run a podcast. That's true. Very true. Slaves to the wage! When I walked in late, you guys were all frozen in place. And then when I opened the door, you were able to start moving.

2:29:58David Sims:15 minutes in is the mom, right? Then Laura Linney comes down with a slice and dicer.

2:30:03Griffin Newman:Yeah.

2:30:04David Sims:takes out the cardigan and that's when we cut to the bar for the first time. And you do the big flashback, long flashback. We also went over, I know David wanted to talk about seeing the dad for the first time because that is...

2:30:14Griffin Newman:Oh, I just love the way that, like, without us listening to Christoph and watching him direct traffic, we're watching traffic get directed against him. Yes, it's brilliant. The runners coming out and blocking him, like, the way people just suck him into a bus, just like, just paranoia, baby. Well, you know. You're experiencing the world from Truman's point of view because if you kept cutting to Kristoff and him going, send out the runner, send out the this, you wouldn't be experiencing it. You wouldn't be having the same journey Truman's having, which is like, whoa, whoa, whoa. This is starting to fall apart.

2:30:42Also, what I love about the dad is he's kind of just like standing there in a very strange way, dressed in very, you know.

2:30:50Griffin Newman:Well, because I think he got in

2:30:51David Sims:pretending to be like a hobo or something. Right, but he's just standing there. And his plan is to seemingly not interact with him or he's gauging whether or not it's the right move. Yes, right, right. And then when Truman looks at him, He's like, this is my shot. Right, because he knows if he just ran up to him, then he'll get taken out. That's part of what's, I think the movie very wisely understands. Almost 20 minutes in, if we start thinking about the immorality of what's happening here, it could get too depressing. And so you need an interception from the outside world to be like, there are people who are morally conflicted about what's going on here.

2:31:27David Sims:and so the idea that this moment with the dad you're like has he been in the system for months or years just observing him from a distance and this is the first time he's actually like gotten close enough to him I don't think so I think it's pretty recent it seems like day five and this has been his plan the whole time the town is small he's not getting that day yeah like it's like it's not that big and we'll get to it but one of my favorite details of it that I think answers a lot of those questions in the simplest way possible is they show the two clips of the person parachuting in and the person jumping out of the Christmas present.

2:32:00And those are two things that like, the inclusion of those two things implies a whole universe that's happening in the real world of people who are like, this is horrific that you're doing this and you have to stop it.

2:32:10Griffin Newman:The person who parachutes seems to want to save him a little bit more. The person who pops out of the present says, I'm on TV! I did it! I did it! I made it! I'm on the Truman Show. It's the baseball streaker. Exactly. Like the guy who's like, I can't believe it.

2:32:24David Sims:But even Natasha Michael Hone. Michael Hone. The pin feels like it's part of a movement. I think so. Isn't looking to completely destroy the show, but is sort of like. Is obsessed. Is obsessed. How is it going to end? With the ethics of it. Right. And that she, she's not waiting for him to interact with her. And in fact, she's sort of freaked out by like, I've clearly wanted this, but I wasn't planning to like breach the seal here.

2:32:50Griffin Newman:The question of how's it going to end, the implication to me could mean like they're not, you know, they're obsessed with the show. It could also mean the big question of the Truman Show, which is like, are we going to watch him die one day? And how? Is that the end of the show? What is it? You know? Now, we're not asking the biggest question. Poop? Sorry. No, that one doesn't bother me. What do you mean? Oh, sure. Jacking it. How much is he jacking it? Well, the wind blows the crew. And what do they do? Right.

2:33:18David Sims:He buys women's magazines and he makes collage art and he never touches his privates. He might not. I mean, he's a pretty uptight guy. I don't know. He has rote sex with Laura Linney who's crossing all fingers on all hands, crossing her toes. Yeah, it's rough out there. A funny detail.

2:33:37Griffin Newman:Just like the idea where like, oh, he made a show about a guy. You're like, oh, yeah, what's it like? He jerks off a lot. What was like 13 to 19? He jerks off a lot. 13 to 19. It must have really cut to a lot of flashbacks. Yeah, 13 to 19, we had to hire extra editors to put some packages of baseball games and stuff. Yeah, right. But there's also... Truman's remembering his third birthday party again. Interesting.

2:34:01David Sims:You can ask like dog-tooth style questions about the world where you're like, right, rain can't exist in a narrow silo because that disconnects us from our reality. But if these are the things you don't want to show on television, then maybe in sex ed class, they're like... And of course, sexual intercourse is when you touch someone else's hand. And then every night he and Laura Linney just like shake hands and he never considers his penises for anything other than peeing. I think these are the big questions this movie asks. I'm sure there's like fan fiction about it, but it would be interesting like to see the movie from the perspective of like a hired actor who's just like a kid in his class.

2:34:37He's fascinating to consider all that shit.

2:34:39Griffin Newman:Exactly. Like what was his classroom like? How did those kids not talk to him? It seems insane. And those kids just had to like show up and live that life. In the same way that like, you know, when you look at child actors, they're like, well, my whole life was on set. I didn't get to have a child. I don't know. And all these kids not only didn't get to have a childhood, they they had to have Truman Burbank's childhood.

2:34:58David Sims:Well, and even the Noammer character, it's like like Topanga on Boy Meets World was like a one episode character named Weird Girl. And then they were like, Weird Girl is good. And then they like bring her back for more. and then it develops into a romance and the entire show is about them as a couple and she spent eight years growing up on like American screens. They deleted the scene, but there's a scene from the Truman Show where he, one of his neighbors comes over and like knocks over a bunch of stuff and is like, did I do that? And then like everyone went nuts and like people were like, people were trying to tear down the dome because they wanted more of him.

2:35:31David Sims:He like goes inside and then you hear like a lot of machines whirring and then a similar looking guy comes out, but he's really cool. Yeah.

2:35:38Griffin Newman:so after this sort of first half hour which is like Truman like the scene Truman it's a great bit it's a great bit I support the bit thank you but it's funny I mean what those guys did on Family Matters that was so great the greatest bit of writing

2:35:54David Sims:but it's that kind of thing where you must be like was Noah Emmerich hired to be his best friend no I think Noah Emmerich popped exactly

2:36:02Griffin Newman:like that's what it is he had chemistry with them and they were like great okay you'll be the friend yeah so after that first half hour is when Truman, so we're just like, in which we vaguely feel narrative, you know, that's right, the scenes of reality. 30 minutes is the moment where he starts pushing against it, where he's stopping the traffic. He goes through the revolving door, comes out the other side, Philip Glass's anthem starts playing the dun-dun-dun-dun, and he stops the buses and all that.

2:36:27David Sims:And we introduce the bar on either side of the sort of flashback thing of them being like, oh, there's a new hire who doesn't, isn't up with the Truman lore. and all the other staff members at the Truman Bar are like, this is the fuck, I can't believe you don't know the plot line about the woman. Oh, and the great Owen. But there's, the great. He starts having that realization because the system starts breaking. The light falls, the radio tuner changes.

2:36:51Griffin Newman:That happens later, the radio thing, but yes, yeah, absolutely. There's one or two other things that happen that are.

2:36:55David Sims:Dad is two and radio tuner is three. Dad is two, dad is two. It's what I love. I think this movie is perfectly dialed in on are I hate movies in which people figure things out too quickly, but I hate even more movies in which people continue to not get smart about the reality about them. And I think like a lot of modern horror, elevated horror in particular, has this problem where characters just keep going like, that was weird, and then go back to reality. And this is a movie where it's like, if the light flies out of the sky, he doesn't immediately go, oh my God, my life's been a TV show. But when three things happen within two days, it's just enough to start him testing, like, what are the limits of this?

2:37:36But what I also think is fascinating about this and why I think it resonates so much, right, is that how many systems this is related to, right, where people try to create a sense of control to create some sort of thing that is this is the way the world works. And then people's journey is that they start to see the cracks of that. And it's that system, it's impossible to create a system that permanently embubbles someone, whether it's a religion or a society. or schooling or family. It's like, that's such a universal feeling that you start seeing the cracks and the seams where you didn't.

2:38:07Griffin Newman:The more you, you know, enclose, the more people will push back. What do you make of... I love the photo album scene, obviously, because the fake Mount Rushmore is so funny. Yeah. But then she's lost

2:38:17David Sims:the whole car ride.

2:38:18Griffin Newman:It also... She's lost the whole car ride. It also presupposes that they're sort of like, oh, shoot, we need some of this stuff. And like, we don't really have the budget to really go for this. So like, we can probably just get this out of the way now, right?

2:38:29David Sims:It's earlier days of the show and also can the family go on this many trips so he doesn't grow up and go like, you know, I've never actually been. They can just kind of rely on his fuzzy childhood memories.

2:38:40Griffin Newman:Where I start, I'm like, but how would he know that families go on trips? But again, I feel like they're just like, everyone should talk to him like he's normal. Right. Laura Linney, they're looking at the wedding photos and Laura Linney points to these three girls and she goes like, Judy, Jody, Joanne. It's a weird gag because it's never like, but are those like runner up Laura Linney types? Like, who are they? They're just like the lame supporting cast she used to have or maybe not used much anymore.

2:39:06David Sims:When you get to the flashback and Linny is like faking the injury to fall into his arms, you go like, is this an actress who's really enterprising? Or did she go through all the levels of casting? It feels more like the second. Perfect, you're the one. And now you have to win him over. And they're panicking in real time that he's naturally looking somewhere else.

2:39:24Griffin Newman:Because like when Laura has left him, and they introduced the new love interest, clearly like she's been pre-selected because you have to pick someone who will play the game yes like you can't just you know what he has chemistry with natasha mackalhound now we'll figure it out so he keeps pressing against reality he goes to the hospital to look at the operation which is so funny the guy being like i'll just it kind of reminds me incision here now and he does

2:39:54David Sims:she freaks out and they put the gas mask on her and he goes we'll have someone else clean this up Someone else will clean this up. And Laura Linney's like, this is really good. You handled that really well. Where it's just like, yeah, an actor has to stay in the reality. If pushed to the limits,

2:40:07Griffin Newman:you have to make an incision on this one. The travel agency where every poster is like, you could die. It's like lightning striking a plane. Yes. What I also think is fascinating is that

2:40:19David Sims:Fiji's booked out for a month. It's the busy season.

2:40:22Griffin Newman:I actually sympathize with the fake travel agency there where she's like, we live in some type, you want to go to fucking Fiji? how many flights to Fiji are there well that's the thing is I'm also I'm like we live in New York City and it's like to get to Fiji would be like three planes oh yeah I'm sure yeah exactly let's see but I think something that resonates to me about Truman's experience and being slightly tangential to the immersive theater world in New York and things like that right like everybody's first instinct when they when they realize there's a system or something to explore is you you start trying to find the places where you it could break to see where it could go, right?

2:40:59Like when you go to sleep no more, it's like, yeah, there's the instinct where you want to follow the main characters, but there's also an instinct where you're like, I want to go find the room that no one else is in. I want to see where the boundaries of this thing are. And so I love the fact that when he starts realizing what's going on, his instinct is like, let me sprint towards the things that I've never seen. Or like, let me see where the boundaries of this are.

2:41:19David Sims:I think it's such a good detail that he's like, I'm running into the office building. That's not the one I work at, the place I never have a reason to go into. He pushes the limits. He sees the elevator. People get in. The doors close. Like they were prepared enough for that. What they weren't prepared enough for was the feeling that that wasn't enough because everyone loosens up after that moment when the security guards are getting through to be like, well, we don't have to fake it again. Yes, and I also love the idea that it sort of begs the question. And again, this is all subtext, which is so fun about it, is that he goes to the hospital and you can kind of tell everyone's like, oh, normally we just like, kind of hang out here and wait until it's time for, you know, us to interact with Truman again.

2:42:01David Sims:I think that's what they do, right? That's, back to the Holland Taylor question. It's like, okay, what does she do? Does she only, like, she's a higher level. Yeah.

2:42:10Griffin Newman:Truman could have to call his mom at any point. Totally. If you work at the, I feel like the hospital might be empty unless he starts going near it and then they're like, fuck, get people over the hospital. Which it seems is the energy at the hospital. Everyone's like, uh, what's going on here?

2:42:21David Sims:I love to think about it. I think it's more like the people at the hospital are like Broadway, standbys. And they're like prepped for this day, but it's rarely tested. Yes. Because it's like they're ready enough to have someone on an operating table, all the equipment, the set going that deep, like all of that. The thing is that it's just like they're kind of out of practice and he usually settles for seeing far less. One of my core childhood memories is there's a period of time where I was dealing with a lot of anxiety and a lot of sleep issue stuff and I worked with a therapist who like tried to like get me into like lucid dreaming.

2:42:55stuff. And whether I was actually lucid dreaming or if I was like dreaming that I was lucid dreaming, who knows what the difference is. And later you let people influence your dreams. Yes, exactly. But one of the things that I remember, it's a dream that like stays with me and might have brought this up. People are like, oh, I've had a similar dream where it's like I was in a dream and then I was like, I want to go explore the city. And then like my dream was like, no, no, no, you're supposed to be in this storyline. But I was like, no, I want to go like climb a building and jump off of it and see if I can fly.

2:43:20And like the dream kind of being like, you're not supposed to. And so I feel like that Truman experience is this like relatable feeling that's so core of like, all right, there's this path you're supposed to go on and what happens if you just run in a different direction.

2:43:33Griffin Newman:I looked it up. All right, the flight's in an hour. So I don't think I could make it. But I could go to Fiji. When would you get there? So I would leave now 4.30 p.m. from John F. Kennedy International Airport. 3.30 p.m. You're forgetting daylight savings time. No, what?

2:43:50David Sims:What do you mean I'm forgetting that? It already happened. I'm saying it is 3.30 p.m.

2:43:55Griffin Newman:Oh, you're saying the flight's at 4.30. I'm so sorry. It would get me there 5.45 a.m. two days later. There's one stop, just one stop at Dallas-Fort Worth. Is it at Seahaven? Yeah, it's at Seahaven. American Airlines, and then I switched to Fiji Airways. And how long is the second leg? It says the entire thing would take me 21 hours and 15 minutes, which is not short. It's not short. And that the way back, also just one stop, but that one seems to have a longer stopover so it's a 30 hours. Sorry,

2:44:24David Sims:I just have to correct you, David. Way back is Peter Weir's final film. And we will be discussing it

2:44:28Griffin Newman:in just one, two weeks. And you know who takes that trip all the time? Who? Jeff Probst. Probably, right? Because he has to go to Fiji all the time. And it's$1 ,100 which is not that much money considering you're going to fucking Fiji. No. It's not nothing. I'm just going to say it right now. It's economy. Should we all Truman show ourselves? Should we just get up and go to Fiji right now? Oh, so So to you, Truman Show yourself, it's not like be the star of a show. I love the Truman Show. It's try desperately at all costs to go to Fiji.

2:44:57David Sims:It's now like a medical term for like a psychological condition. And we're going to take it back and being like, I'm going to do a Truman Show. Just get on a flight to Fiji.

2:45:04Griffin Newman:If I'm a travel agent and a guy walks in in shorts with one small suitcase and is like, Fiji today, please. I might be like, are you okay? No, let's all. Okay, let's do a Truman Show day where we bum rush a surgery. Yeah. and then try to go to Fiji as fast as possible. No, no, try to go to Fiji, pivot to Chicago, and then pivot to, I feel like he just kind of pivots to like New Orleans, right? That's his next...

2:45:27David Sims:I also, I love that Fiji is like a panic improv Atlantic City, then New Orleans. From the dad, right? The Truman Show Challenge is you have to bum rush a surgery and then get away from a landmass. Plane, boat, car. It's like you try plane,

2:45:41Griffin Newman:then try bus, then try car.

2:45:42David Sims:Press elevator buttons and a bunch of random office building lobbies. Yes. Make sure no one's drinking coffee. You have to go past security guards in an office building, bum rush a surgery. Buy one magazine for your wife. So after the bus. I just want to see the Fiji thing. Oh, sure. I think that moment is so effective where like Natasha McElhone is like in true conspiracy thriller. This is about to end any moment kind of panic that he's oblivious to. The dad comes, is playing it really well. Yeah, he's like,

2:46:11Griffin Newman:sorry, mentally ill.

2:46:12David Sims:Like, you know, these things happen. You're not the first guy she's taken to the beach. And the dad does not feel like an actor. The dad feels like someone who's part of the security detail of the show. Actually, he won an Emmy back here. Right. I'm seeing here. And he's prepped with the things to say and then Truman goes like, well, can I call tomorrow to see how she's doing? And he goes like, no, we're moving to Fiji tomorrow. The Fiji is such a panic. It's why he calls Fiji like directory. But Fiji is a bad lie that now he's hyper fixated on for 20 years.

2:46:44Griffin Newman:Which I love because, again, I think... Not 20. Truman's not that old. No, no, like 10. Like, Truman's maybe 29 or 30. Like, he's pretty young. I think he's 30. No, they keep saying 30. That's his 30th year. Okay, he's 30. Yeah. But what I love is that you get the sense that this guy is not an actor. He's not a... He's someone who is probably part of the security detail. He's a production team or something. And so, the fact that in that moment, he's like, she's like, find me. And he's like, trying to figure out how to solve this. But he's not a creative guy. He's like, we're just going to Fiji.

2:47:13The fact that that becomes now imprinted lore and the history of this show is so amazing.

2:47:18David Sims:But it's like fucking like kryptonite being invented because the guy doing the Superman radio show needed an excuse to take vacations. And they were like, sometimes Superman gets really tired for two weeks. Right. It's day 10 ,909.

2:47:30Griffin Newman:Yes. And that's 29 years and eight-ish months. Because they keep talking in the interviews about our 30th year of doing this show. I guess he's mid-30s when they film it. Maybe. But like the show started. She's like, we're going to have a baby soon. Or carry out. The show started before he was born.

2:47:45David Sims:Yeah. Yes, the first. It started with one camera. That's true. And this movie was filmed before our current Jim Carrey was born. Right. Jim Carrey 5.

2:47:54Griffin Newman:Oh, got it. Yes. Right, right.

2:47:55David Sims:Carrey 5.0.

2:47:56Griffin Newman:So wait. Okay, got it. Weapon B.

2:47:59David Sims:Can I say, I just don't understand why that is breaking people's brains where I'm like, every famous person looks weird now. Every famous. Well, no, it's not just that. Remember when Tom Cruise looked kind of weird?

2:48:09Griffin Newman:Yeah. Have you seen pictures of him recently? He looks better. Right. He was at the hockey game

2:48:12David Sims:and it was like, the work hasn't settled yet.

2:48:14Griffin Newman:They get Botox or they get an old, you know, something

2:48:16David Sims:and like, it looks weird for a bit. He didn't even seem like himself, though. It's a different guy. And I'm like, he challenged himself to give a speech in French, not his native language. He is the weirdest, most inconsistent man in the world who's been very open with his like mental health struggles. Like the idea that people are like, there is no other explanation. Well, it's also, I don't think it's any of our business how people choose to look. I don't either. Any of the reasons any people feel like they need to change their look is because of people commenting and talking about it constantly over and over again where I'm like, it's that self-fulfilling thing where you're like, yeah, that's the hell cycle.

2:48:51You're curious why celebrities are changing how they look because of this conversation.

2:48:54David Sims:Okay.

2:48:55Griffin Newman:Jim Carrey, sorry, Truman, after all this, takes Laura Linney in the car to show her the loops, like the cars coming out and the disappearing. Her name is Meryl. Yeah, so the actress is Hannah.

2:49:09David Sims:The character is Meryl. He's gone from hospital to the bus. He's tried to escape immediately. And then he's right. And then they drive over the bridge.

2:49:17Griffin Newman:He still thinks he can maybe trust her. They drive over the bridge together. They're kind of in it together, which I do like. And she has a moment where she's like, oh, Truman. There's that part when they hit the bridge where she's like, yeah, you could never do this. And it's like, kind of sinister. And you'll do it. Oh, sweetheart. Right. You can't get out.

2:49:34David Sims:She is a good actor where she knows what to say to psychologically manipulate him in behavior, not in like telling him what to do. But she kind of likes that they make it over together. like he's like we did it yeah and then there's the fire you know they have to like drive through the fire right and I love that he keeps pointing out like look at that timing it's so perfect right you know the traffic jam and then no no then it's the cop

2:49:58Griffin Newman:no the traffic jam already happened the fire and then the cop who's like whole area's been evacuated chemical spill he's like alright the guy's like no problem Truman which I just love that you're like it would happen it would happen because also these guys these guys are not called upon the last line of defense These guys who are, their job is to show up and eat donuts all day and they're like, oh no, we have to do the thing today. And so then the guys in the hazmat suits get him.

2:50:20David Sims:But he's never been this.

2:50:21Griffin Newman:He's never been this. Right. Yeah, paranoid. And then we have the moment Ben called out where he fully like blips out, grabs her. And it's a terrifying moment. It's the moment in which you're like, this is a not well person who's been broken by all of this. I guess maybe I just wanted them to cut to the viewer at home witnessing that. There's just something about it to me that it doesn't feel like it's passing enough judgment on that action. Ben, I want to say he does not hold the thing to her. She's pointing it at him and he grabs her by the arm and pulls her up to him. And then disarms her. He takes it out.

2:51:06Griffin Newman:He's not threatening her with the blade. She's coming at him. She's threatening him. I remember when his friend comes in, he has it pointed at her. Yes. No, she she pointed at him. Right. Wait, wait. No, this has later. He has his arm around her. She says do something. Right here. Well, no, he's again. He's no, he's not pointing it.

2:51:25David Sims:I know, but he's holding her. I know. I mean, we're arguing Samantha. I'm sorry. He's holding her. She says do something. When she says that, he lets go and he's like, what the fuck is going on? And then she's like, I didn't say anything. I didn't say anything.

2:51:37Griffin Newman:Like, you know, and like is trying to go back to normal mode. And then what I love is how can they expect me to carry on into these conditions? The most like actorly way to put like, I can't do my job anymore. Right. Then she goes, it's unprofessional.

2:51:50David Sims:It's unprofessional. When Noah Emmerich comes in, Ben, she's like trying to leave. He's holding her against the wall and he's got the dicer in his hand. So it's kind of in the touchy area of like, he's holding the weapon because he had to take it away from her. And he's physically losing it. and she feels threatened by the fact that there's a sharp thing near her.

2:52:09Griffin Newman:He knows that he's lost his trust in her. Right. He's going crazy. It's important that we're pointing it out. It's still upsetting. Yes, it's upsetting. I think supposed to resonate of domestic violence. It's upsetting. You know what I mean? It's like it's... We go right to another upsetting thing which is Noah Emmerich's like let's go have a beer.

2:52:29David Sims:Well, and I also just want to say that when Noah Emmerich comes in when he hears the knock at the door and he's like it's going to be more men in suits or whatever that's the one time he sticks the dicer out. He does, yeah. Not at her, at the door where he's like someone worse is about to come in. But then it's so depressing

2:52:43Griffin Newman:that it's like they go sit, they have the beers and no, I'm extremely usual. Like, you know, we all feel this way and we, you know, like, but you're cutting now to Giamatti and Christoph beating him the lines. And you're just like, right. And what he's saying is there's no sincerity to it. Is if everyone's in on it, Truman. I would have to be in on it. And then of course, they're like, and now here's your dad. Like, and that's how, So this is where we're going to cut.

2:53:06David Sims:This is one hour into the movie. It's also like a Mulholland Drive moment where Kristoff's giving him this like somewhat boilerplate dialogue. And he's tweaking it a little bit. And Emmerich's also like grounding it in something real. And he changes words and stuff. And it's like clearly he has the latitude to do that. And when you hear him say, if everyone's in on it, that would mean I'm in on Truman. It's heartbreaking because he's found a way to make that line feel honest. But it also probably is reflective of the fact that this guy feels so fucking guilty that he's having to say this to this guy and he is on.

2:53:36Griffin Newman:They have the reunion with the dad. And it's like you're playing the evil, like the number one card. Your father who died is alive. He also must be feeling shame because everyone's watching him at home do this shit. And this is where the reality breaks where you're like, Congress, I know Congress isn't always number one. But wouldn't someone have objected

2:54:01David Sims:to this sick freak show? very close. Like at some point shortly. So when Andrew Nichol pitched this film, it was pitched as in the near future. Yeah, yeah, yeah. A man lives unwillingly, unknowingly in a 24-hour soap opera. This movie doesn't really make it clear what year it is. No, it doesn't. I'm not saying it's secretly 3057. No, because like everyone seems pretty modern, like contemporary. But it's another line of dialogue that we're almost at that I think about so much where Harry Shearer's doing this kind of victory lap interview with Kristoff to like address how close the show came to going off the rails and how they like snatched it from the jaws of defeat.

2:54:37David Sims:And he goes, Truman was the first child legally adopted by a corporation. Isn't that true? And he goes, that's right. And they don't tell you that it's happened many other times since then, but it's presented as like, and people might not remember that was the first time that ever happened.

2:54:54Griffin Newman:You're right that you could take it that way, right? It's sort of like, was this the beginning of some?

2:54:58David Sims:So the ripple effects of it, especially not seeing broadly the outside world. I'm not like this is happening 80 ,000 cases all over the place. But when you're like, why is Congress intervening or not? You're like, to some degree, he's crossed all those barriers and continued to get approval collusion. You know, I I also think with the reunion of the dad and all that stuff, I think part of the point of the violent scene between him and the wife where it's like it it is violent and scary is that there's no you can't go back from that. You can't go. She's gone. You can't go back into normalcy. Even the relationship.

2:55:35Your relationship will never be the same if you've had that interaction. And so it's like...

2:55:38Griffin Newman:Also, if you basically accused your wife of being a pod person. Well, that's what I'm saying. An actor. All of this stuff has... They've now crossed the line where there's no world in which they can go back to happy 50s universe unless they make quote-unquote major rewrites. Which Crystal acknowledges

2:55:54David Sims:where Harry Shearer is like a masterstroke. How did you come up with that to bring the dad back? And he's like, look, everything started going kind of sideways because of the dad. So the only way to resolve this was to like bring it full circle. The best line in the movie though is when it's like, and how are you going to explain?

2:56:09Griffin Newman:He's like, amnesia. And they're like, brilliant. It's so fucking close. And so the dad wanted to get back on the show. Yeah, he was doing that independently and obviously Christoph is like, all right.

2:56:18David Sims:It's like Christoph would have said a week ago that would destroy reality under no circumstances. And now he's pushed into a situation where he's like, we have to bring the dad in. So at this point,

2:56:28Griffin Newman:there's 30 minutes left in the movie. Yeah. And you have the whole Kristoff sequence is about 10 minutes. The sort of Harry Shearer interview stuff. And you have just a few minutes of like, okay, he's sleeping. Things are back to normal. He does the soap in the mirror. Truman's back. Kristoff strokes his big face. That's after the Harry Shearer interview. That's basically when it's like Truman has woken up. Then we get the impression that maybe a little bit of time has passed because Laura Linney moves out. right so like maybe weeks have passed and he's being normal

2:57:03David Sims:I think we're said the movie is supposed to depict the last week of broadcasting

2:57:07Griffin Newman:on this show but like he digs you know like you know she moves out whatever you know something's going you know Harry Shearer interview serves to give us our first sort of temporal time right we can kind of like it answers a handful of the questions that that's how does this work Christmas present guy and all that stuff also a great side point of thing that when I was looking up actors last night I hope you say what I want to say. I think it is with the Matt Gatz of it all, the guy who paraglides into the home. Who's that? The actor's name is Marco Rubio. Are you serious? Yeah, but with an E. So Rubio or whatever.

2:57:43Wow. Fuck. But it was just funny. I was like, what if it was actually? Anyways. It should be Marco Rubio. But I think that's brilliant because also at that point, you go from this character having this extremely low low, this moment where this whole thing is falling apart. And then instead of feeling the panic and stress and the moral and ethical quandaries that this all, it's blowing up. Instead, it is a victory lap. It is a wow, Christoph. You are a genius.

2:58:13Griffin Newman:You did a great job. You've solved your problem. But then the next thing is Truman escaping and just being gone. The one past thing

2:58:19David Sims:I wanted to call it quickly, sorry, is an actress named Una Damon who is like the woman in the main console board with Kristoff and Giamatti. And I was like, why does this woman look so familiar? And she basically has a career in the 90s and early 2000s of constantly being the woman who stares at a screen and explains to the audience what's going on in like Gattaca and Deep Rising and Deep Impact. But the big thing why she's stuck in my brain is she is the person who explains the spider in Spider-Man. And that is the tour guide who goes like, 27 radioactive spiders. That's funny. Well, the reason I was on IMDb is because they have the call-in section there.

2:58:59And one of the callers is like, I forget the question, but it's like, hey, how do you do with da-da-da? And it's like, the voice is so unactually. And I was like, that's someone. And then I looked it up and he's the editor on the movie. So clearly it was a scratch track that they're like, I'll just keep that in. Yeah, yeah.

2:59:14David Sims:But yes, basically from the moment Kristoff has taken his victory lap, Truman, unbeknownst to them, has perfectly planned his escape. He knows. They think that they...

2:59:23Griffin Newman:He's not believing the dad thing.

2:59:24David Sims:They think they've reset the board. I love the moment with Giamatti and the other guy where they're watching him talk to the mirror and they're like, oh, fuck. He knows the camera's here. No, he's back to normal. He's playing the role. He's doing a bit. He's talking to the neighbors. That one's... After the thing, he goes like, that one's for free or whatever. Like, it's like he... Yeah, he's, you know... But it's... He's towing the line just enough that they don't need to flag it to Cristal. But we barely see anything. Because then it's just he's sleeping.

2:59:52Griffin Newman:Yeah, yeah. And then what I love is the no Truman section. Cue the sun. The moon turning into a spotlight. The actors just patrolling. Like just like the reality of the world completely falling apart.

3:00:04David Sims:Like arm in arm. Yes.

3:00:05Griffin Newman:All just like marching. Like the twins are like so mean. Yes. Yeah. I love those twins. Well, because there's also, there's a version of this, right? Where, great escape version of it, where we see Truman escaping and we see him hatching his plan. We see him pull it off. Totally. And you don't. No, he dug a tunnel. He figured out the tape recorder thing. Like, yeah, right. And the big narrative shift that's happened is the first hour, we're seeing the experience from the POV of Truman. The moment we do the Kristoff interview till the end, we are now seeing the experience from Kristoff's experience.

3:00:35David Sims:We're inside the moon looking down at Truman. Yes, and I think it's, I mean, both in terms of how they shot it and how, like, the moon turning into a spotlight obviously is great. That the moment of turn on the sun is like such a beautiful, iconic moment of that. You know, it's just like so, and that shot, how they got, you know, like, just like, oh, that's a practical effect. They are, they are moving a light on a crane past it. You know what I mean? It's like, it's so cool to see. Yeah. And the fact that all the actors are arm in arm and it's like, it feels like Disneyland where the ride is shut down.

3:01:08You know what I mean?

3:01:08Griffin Newman:Earlier in the movie too, they show a model that's so important to give you a sense of the geography. Because when he then tries to escape, you understand that, right? Like, there's nowhere to go. or there's nowhere to go.

3:01:20David Sims:And they say in the Harry Shearer thing that it's the only man-made structure or one of only three man-made structures. It's the Great Wall of China and the Truman Dome, basically, or the only two. Yeah, it's fascinating. And then the fact that they're walking around. And then that's where you start seeing the masks drop a lot of these actors and you start seeing, I love the fact that Emmerich, basically, you can tell he's kind of like stage manager that they've sort of entrusted him. I'm sure he gets a producer credit on the show in some way because they're talking to him as though he is the problem solver boots on the ground guy.

3:01:51And then I also love that you get that moment where they're all trying to find Truman and then you have both the mom and dad having this moment. He'll listen to me. Having this moment of vanity where the mom is like, well, surely if I say his name.

3:02:05Griffin Newman:Griffin mentioned this, I feel like. And then I love that the dad chimes in too and you can, you know, he's newly back in the cast, but now he's so proud of himself. And he's like, Truman boy. And you're like, oh my God, these people are disgusting. Well, and they try the three things. They look for him. Then they find he's on the boat. Okay. They do the weather. They try that to scare him. And the crew, though, is disgusted. Kristoff is pushing it way too far. But even Giamatti's character at one point earlier, he's looking at the classified section. He's done with this job. He hates it. It's awful.

3:02:35Griffin Newman:He's quietly training the guy where he's, when he's sitting eating the pizza, he's like, cut to this. And then Kristoff shows up and he, Giamatti has this little bit of lines where he's like, I was just trying to get him ready. And it's clearly like, oh, he's on the way out. He's sick of this. And Christoph comes in and is like, I want to review the footage for the big insurance conference tomorrow, the camera angles or whatever. And he's like, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. But then what I also like about that storm section, number one. We are in a world where practical water effects are happening less and less, right?

3:03:09Griffin Newman:Sure. They shot this in a tank. Like I said, they almost drowned Jim Carrey because they misinterpreted his I'm in distress signal, which was a closed fist. They thought he was just acting. Carry on. But it's beautiful to see because there is an animal part of our brains that's seeing water like that. There's something beautiful and captivating about it and wind and all that stuff together. I just love Christoph's godhood melting away. Like where he's like, oh, well, I'll scare him with the water. Like harder, harder. And then he realizes like, oh, this is now just down to do I kill him or not?

3:03:42David Sims:Because Truman would rather die than not know the answer. Right, right.

3:03:46Griffin Newman:And I love the moment. But then he tries his last thing, which is saying like, what if I just told you that you are safer here? Like, you have to believe me. The outside world sucks and I care about you. The also thing that I think is important is that he tells Giamatti to turn it up and Giamatti doesn't do it. Yeah, he doesn't. Kristoff does it. Yeah. Which is, I think, it's a small thing, but I'm like, it's important that Kristoff is the one. And it's like, everyone else is at this point like, hey.

3:04:11David Sims:I think Giamatti literally says there's nothing left to do but kill him. Right. Or something like that. Like, if I turn it up anymore. Yeah.

3:04:18Griffin Newman:And you're right. Perfect image of the sky turning into a painting. Like, the edge of the wall where it just looks a little shitty.

3:04:26David Sims:Well, the end of the ship puncturing through. It's all... I just want to say, to that end, this is a film that I think has like six or seven iconic images that are just, they're ingrained into film history of just like perfect, beautiful storytelling images. Though I made a list of us watching it. It Raining Just on Him is the first one that I think is like... Totally. And then the multiple shots, whether it's them on the pier or on the beach with the friend, and it's like the beautiful sunsets and they're talking, I think those are so just sort of like, connected to this movie. The moment when he stops the traffic is like, you know, that's like an icon.

3:05:06Griffin Newman:Him doing this with the bus. It's incredible. Kristoff watching Truman sleep, I think is such a beautiful, when he goes up and he hands, it's like that is so of that era that I love it. And then of course, the storm. What if you went to the end of the world? Oh my God. And it was a wall.

3:05:23David Sims:And you walk up the stairs. Yes. And what I love is I think when so much of cinema storytelling, right, is that you're trying to create these stories and this context so that you can have an image that in of itself is abstract, but that because you watch this entire movie, it has all of this meaning and that it becomes a haiku that represents that entire story. Just the image of the bow of a ship cracking through the edge of reality, That's the entire story of The Truman Show. That one shot tells the entire story of The Truman Show.

3:06:01Griffin Newman:Okay, now, I don't want to cheat. Oh, sorry.

3:06:04David Sims:No, I'm sorry. I need to call out. There's one important, iconic image that David would probably add to that list. Terry Camilleri in the bathtub watching The Truman Show. Oh, yeah.

3:06:14Griffin Newman:Some big bathtub action. Now, I don't want to change the movie. I think it's great. But I do kind of feel like it would have been cool if instead of poking through, he just sailed into whiteness, kind of like Looney Tunes style. like going on the you know what I'm saying or if the way he got out was that he drew a big if he painted a tunnel the tunnel and the train came through yeah yeah or if the sailboat took off into the air and started flying into the sky and then everyone waves as Truman flies away in his sky boat what have you sent us you monster okay so what I sent you is from the Paramount lot my parking spot for the past when I was running okay Mr.

3:06:54Griffin Newman:Parking Spot got his own parking spot Well, when you're the showrunner of a late night show that only exists for a year and a half. That CBS is eager to cancel. Yeah. So my parking spot was in the tank, which is... Now, it's interesting because there's conflicting reports as to whether they shot it in the Paramount tank or the Universal backlot. All the official reports say it was Paramount, but people claim it was Universal. And then in an interview I was reading with the DP, he referred to the Universal lot. but paramount has it on their tour and all the things online you will it'll people will correct and say it's paramount so i'm going to say that it was paramount but so every day i would drive into work and i would park beneath the wall where truman escaped and it was you know there's my first time working at a lot like this and it was you know uh one of the fun perks of that job was getting to have that lot experience and feeling like you know you're you're in the movie biz you're in the TV biz.

3:07:53So anyways, those are photos of my parking spot.

3:07:56Griffin Newman:Yeah, it was so cool. I mean, I talked to you on the phone sometimes when you were like walking the Paramount lot and I always thought the Paramount lot's so cool. Like it's like one of the true classic like old school movie lots. Yeah. And what's funny is, you know, I think originally they're talking about where they're going to shoot the film and they looked at all the lots of all the different studios to see could we shoot it in some of those studio lots. And they're originally going to and then they found Seaside or whatever. But yeah, I would, I would, When I was stressed out and wanted to talk to my friends, I think I've talked to all of you.

3:08:25And I know, David, I remember walking through the back lot and describing the fake New York City because our offices were right across.

3:08:33Griffin Newman:I said I know well because it's been used in so many things. Yeah, it was very surreal. A funny story that I can tell now because I'll never be back there again was that our staff was an amazing staff of people who loved to have a good time. And multiple times we had staff members get sent to Paramount Jail for... we would all go hang out in the fake New York City and you weren't allowed to do that. And so we had multiple members of our staff that got taken to Paramount jail for various reasons. And we had to go like... Free them. Yeah, you had to be like, no, we need them. No, they're necessary staff.

3:09:05You can't ban them from Paramount forever. Trying to think of who from Paramount

3:09:10Griffin Newman:would defend Paramount jail. Who's on the mountain, Griffin?

3:09:13David Sims:Who's on the mountain? Jean-Luc Picard. Eric Hartman. SpongeBob. And one of the Transformers. Yeah, yeah. I'd say probably Bumblebee. Yeah, they had a big Bumblebee there. Someone from Yellowstone. There'd be a Dutton. And then, of course, the T-Man himself. TC? Cruise Control. Yeah. Would it be all of his characters together? Would you pick one as a representative? I think it's him as a human man. Yeah. I think that's his actual job. All right. So, yeah. Wow. We got to a point where Ben is wrapping us up. You know you're in uncharted territory when Ben is wrapping things up. Just saying. When Mr.

3:09:49David Sims:Slow Christmas himself is like, Jamie, you know.

3:10:04Griffin Newman:No, the film ends with good afternoon, good evening, good night. I mean, is there anything you guys want to say about Truman's closing triumph before we talk about the reactions to this film?

3:10:15David Sims:No, it's just great that you, to mirror what you said earlier, that you are cross-cutting between him and...

3:10:22Griffin Newman:And then the viewers.

3:10:24David Sims:And then working Natasha McAlone really closely. We've been cutting to her intermittently, but it starts to become almost like an unknowing conversation between the two of them and her rooting for him. You see the bar that we keep cutting to. It's like packed now. Tubman and the security guards, you're like cutting back to all your established people. Tubman, we love Tubman. That they like love that like even unknowingly Truman understands how to end the show. Yes. That he like understands the most kind of like dramatically poignant kind of like concise narrative closure.

3:10:58Griffin Newman:What if it turned out they switched to another channel that's like a shittier Truman show where they're like, yeah, it's like six warehouses in fucking Louisiana. It's like the gym show. And it's like he kind of knows it's a TV show. We've done our best. It's the gym show. And Jim's kind of aware of it. and everyone's kind of like... There's like knockoff Truman shows. Anyway. He just plays paintball all day

3:11:19David Sims:and he's shooting people. Well, according to Jim, now this just sounds like... I mean, we're getting towards what YouTube is. Yeah. Pretty much. You're right. Yes. No, I just think it's great that he walks through the door that we don't see anything of what is beyond that frame for him. And then it's just like, it's an obvious joke, but it is the only way to end the movie is just people going, what else is on?

3:11:40Griffin Newman:Yeah, of course. But it's a great... It's perfect. It's perfect. It's perfect.

3:11:43David Sims:Because it's just flat top.

3:11:44Griffin Newman:the guy from it's just yeah

3:11:45David Sims:whatever it's Flapsop

3:11:46Griffin Newman:Dick Tracy I don't understand how this film did not get a nomination at the Academy Awards for Best Picture it gets three nominations well that's a big year for movies it's a big year for movies but I'll tell you who got Best Picture yeah who will be like what were the nominations so Truman's gets three nominations as Griff said director screenplay correct and and supporting actor what are the best picture nobs then I'll tell you in one second but I just want to say that this film got no craft nominations is pretty insane That's wild. It's like a pretty, like, high-level craft accomplishment. It just thinks like editing.

3:12:19But, you know, like... Well, I think weirdly, there was obviously the, like... I think there's a spillover distaste for TV at the time.

3:12:25Griffin Newman:Maybe. I think... Obviously, that Carrie was snubbed was like a huge story. He won the Golden Globe. Wasn't even nominated. I don't know who snuck in, but I guess it was Nick Nolte. It's a fairly strong... He's sneaking everywhere.

3:12:39David Sims:Don't mind me. it felt like a classic not yet real bath hunter behavior but I mean like Jim Carrey

3:12:48Griffin Newman:refused to let you have everything it was a you can't just right be a movie star and an Oscar like but it's like fucking crazy because of what a cultural like smash the movie was the five actor nominees are Roberto Benigni for Life is Beautiful which who wins which it's like in retrospect that's obviously all just really silly but he was gonna when he won I was about to do the exact same bit I was about to do the exact same bit I accept tastefully I walk up to the stage normal I was gonna say yeah but of course when he won he just walked up like a normal person I simply have one to two things

3:13:27David Sims:to say I was gonna say when he won he planted his feet on the ground and kept them there that's exactly took one floor step at a time

3:13:35Griffin Newman:Tom Hanks and Saving Private Ryan in Italy and Ian McKellen and Gods and Monsters which was obviously probably who should have won of the nominees great performance and a shoe and you know sort of like time for Ian McKellen to get recognized Edward Norton in American History X which is a very big visceral performance for me he's a big young actor and then Nolte in Affliction who I feel like is the one making it a little bit Best Picture Shakespeare in Love Wins obviously it's controversial in its own right great movie though and a big hit beat Saving Private Ryan Saving Private Ryan The Thin Red Line which it's kind of rocks that it got a bunch of Oscar nominations because it's a masterpiece Peace.

3:14:10Griffin Newman:Yep. Life is real. Okay. Okay. Like, that's one of those things where I'm like, I don't like that movie. I can at least understand the spell that was cast. It was a phenomenon. You know, by Harvey and it's a Holocaust film and there's nothing like it. And the fifth one is Elizabeth, which is a movie I think is pretty good. Like, it's a pretty good British costume drama with a good performance. But you're like, what crack was being smoked that they were like, I think Elizabeth needs to make the five.

3:14:38David Sims:Also, Truman Show is in psych textbooks for the rest of time.

3:14:42Griffin Newman:Yeah, and made$200 million. It's just like, what the fuck are we doing? This is maybe the first Oscars that I watched and tracked as a kid. Right, sure, makes sense. Because Truman Show is a movie. Because Truman Show might be the first movie that I was like, oh, I know that movie.

3:14:57David Sims:I think that sometimes, weirdly, the Academy has a hive mind. And we'll talk about them like they're one person, when obviously it's a bunch of disparate voters. but you think more of like the hive mind of the highest level people in Hollywood deciding how they communicate to the public what represents them. And Carrie just being a like, this guy kind of came out of nowhere. He wasn't selected. He runs the industry and now he wants to be serious too.

3:15:23Griffin Newman:He was in stupid movies basically up until this year. I'm sorry.

3:15:26David Sims:He pays our bills. Access denied. But we refuse to treat him seriously. And the noms that the Oscars give it feel backhanded towards Carrie. where they're like... We think Peter Weir and the script were great.

3:15:36Griffin Newman:Obviously, Ed carried all his stuff.

3:15:38David Sims:But it's like Peter Weir did a good job toning Jim Carrey down. The screenplay was a good concept and Ed Harris grounded the film. Jim Carrey is just kind of like... They treated him almost like he was like an animal performer. Where it's like they somehow tricked him into being a little bit normal. But you look at the other bodies and it like... It wins actor, supporting actor and score at the Golden Globes. they nominate it for picture, director, screenplay. The BAFTAs nominates it for film, director, supporting actor, screenplay, cinematography, production design, special effects. It wins director, screenplay, and production design.

3:16:16David Sims:Like, everyone was kind of more generous to it than the Oscars who felt like, don't tell us we have to treat this seriously. Yeah. And also that it was partially like, it's a big summer hit and all the critics are sort of going like, is Jim Carrey going to win an Oscar? And they're like, Don't fucking tell us. Don't make up our mind for us.

3:16:36Griffin Newman:The film opened June 5th, 1998. Number one at the box office. $31 million. Big hit. Makes$264 million worldwide. How much did it make? Domestic? $130 something. Yeah. That's a lot of money. A lot of money in 1998. Big hit. Number two at the box office. It's also new this week. It's a thriller for grownups. Our friend Sean Clements was just texting us about it. Our friend Sean Clements.

3:17:02David Sims:Fuck, I'm not up to date on the tax. That's so crazy to me. We think Truman Show would be direct to Apple TV in 2026. Don't even fucking talk about it. I'll tell myself right here. They're going to fucking announce it tomorrow. Yeah, Truman Show 14 part Peacock cum.

3:17:17Griffin Newman:Right, and the first season ends with Kristoff being born. Peacock is now straight to cum. It's just when you cum, you see it in the cum.

3:17:27Griffin Newman:I've been broadcasting for three hours. They've done such a poor job. I just like the silence we all gave David to work that out. You know, it's just like, what if we could put TV on to vomit? Anytime anyone vomits, they watch an ad.

3:17:42David Sims:Guys, we spent six or seven years trying to get people to sign up and pay money for Peacock and they're not biting. So give it to them for free in their comp. We're buying ball real estate. What is this bit? It's like the U2 album. Don't worry about it. It's free. You come and get a little Peacock. I'm stressed by the state of modern media. But how do we make money? Well, every time they vomit, we show them an ad. That's what I'm saying. That was my joke. It's free in the cum, but when you vomit, you see that.

3:18:09Griffin Newman:I will say this about number two at the box office. It's a thriller. I would say somewhat of a forgotten movie. It's a remake of a classic. You know, it has movie stars in it or whatever. It's not the Jackal. No. It's just one of those movies where like, I don't think anyone really remembers this one. It made$70 million domestically, 128 worldwide. Like for a pretty forgotten movie. Now, it had a big star And the big male star is someone who knows his way around a sort of grown-up thriller.

3:18:36David Sims:It's not a forward. It's not a gear.

3:18:38Griffin Newman:Big male star. You mean Mr. McFeely? Wow. That was pretty good. It was really good. It was better than my cum thing. No, the cum thing is good. The big female star is going to win an Oscar this year.

3:18:51David Sims:She's going to win an Oscar. She's on the up and up. And this is her big star year. It's a Helen Hunt? Nope. No, no. It's the year before. It's Gwyneth. You're after Gwyneth Paltrow. It's a perfect murder. A perfect murder. You're right. I did catch those texts.

3:19:04Griffin Newman:Which is an Andrew Davis remake of Hitchcock's Dalim for Murder. I always forget it's a remake. With Michael Douglas, Gwyneth Paltrow, and a youngish Viggo Mortensen. I say youngish because he actually had been around for a while, but you know. But it's just one of those things where no one remembers that. I'm like, I kind of made money. Wow. Number three, The Boxed Office is a film that I'm sure we all as children were very excited about. And maybe we enjoyed it. Maybe we were disappointed. I was pretty into it. Summer 98. Yeah. Big, big, big, big blockbuster. It's a big hit.

3:19:34David Sims:It does hit.

3:19:34Griffin Newman:It works. It was a hit. I think it's pretty quickly recognized as not big enough of a hit, but it made$136 million domestic, close to$400 worldwide. It's not Batman and Robin. No. That's the year before. Disappointment. It's the latest. It's a reboot-ish of a franchise, I guess. Sort of. It's not Godzilla.

3:19:56David Sims:It is. It is Godzilla. It's Golden and Ricks Godzilla. It is Godzilla. Yeah. It is a movie I watch basically every five years and go, am I going to like it this time? And you're always kind of like, it's okay. There are things about it that I really like in its jankiness, and I have such a role in Emmerich's soft spot, but I always go like, has the nostalgia cycle hit where I'll just appreciate everything in its brokenness for just representing this time? And some of it is so insane. That's a movie that I remember. I can see me watching it on my TV with my mom and my sister. Totally. And me questioning how Godzilla's size keeps changing so much throughout the film.

3:20:35It's one of many problems.

3:20:37Griffin Newman:He's like, sometimes he's skyscraper size, sometimes he's much smaller. It's very strange.

3:20:41David Sims:Sometimes he's like a man. Also, he's a she. Right, that's the great Matthew Broderick performance where he's like testing all the blood samples they got. And they're like, so what do you know about him? And they're like, well, he's 8 ,000 feet tall. He weighs 400 pounds and he's pregnant? Ben, do you like Godzilla? big thank you Ben's lost it

3:21:02Griffin Newman:fourth at the box office is a movie about girls okay I'm listening sort of a you know chick flick classic chick flick it's a classic romantic drama it's it's not how Stella got her groove back no that's a good movie I would say this movie I've never seen it's got an interesting director in a way an actor it's not Hope Floats

3:21:26David Sims:it is Hope Floats it is Hope Hope Floats. Sandra Bullock. Do you know who directed Hope Floats? Harry Connick Jr. Ben, JD, do either of you want to wage a guess as to who directed Hope Floats? No, I don't. I'll tell you, it's the guy who directed Waiting to Exhale. It's the same director you're saying? Yes. Does that solve anything for either of you? It doesn't hit me. He was fired off of directing the Fat Albert movie.

3:21:49Griffin Newman:Bill Cosby? No, by Bill Cosby. Or sort of.

3:21:53David Sims:He did rebound by directing First Daughter, the Katie Holmes presence daughter comedy. It's crazy. Forrest Whitaker. Forrest Whitaker is the director. Forrest Whitaker just directed all of those movies.

3:22:07Griffin Newman:I had no idea. Forrest Whitaker had a side career directing pretty good kind of female-centric romantic dramas for a while. It felt like he's steady studio hand.

3:22:18David Sims:He gets fired off of Fat Albert. You keep bringing this up. And it's like, oh, is his directing career kind of over? And then just like fucking wins an Oscar for best actor for playing Idi Amin and getting a fart pushed out of his body. And also he was in Rogue One. Great career. Enviable. Enviable.

3:22:37Griffin Newman:Hope votes is number four. So that one, it's like Sandra Bullock is a housewife and then her mean husband reveals that he's cheating on her on like Ricky Lake, like a Ricky Lake show. And so she goes to her small town where she grew up and she's got this old friend, like Harry Connick Jr. And like, are they going to fall in love?

3:22:58David Sims:And she's got like a big box of hope in the basement. And she's like, fuck this. I got to get rid of this. So she goes to the river and she's like, I'm just going to throw this over. I will say to the bottom.

3:23:08Griffin Newman:I love Sandra Bullock. It feels like one of those movies where I'm like, that thing could have made twice as much money if you didn't call it Hope Floats. Yeah. There's got to be a better title out there. This is also that era, like you're saying, where there's all these movies that you're like, have you ever heard of this movie? It's like, no. It's like, well, it made$170 million. A little bit.

3:23:24David Sims:What was the final total?

3:23:26Griffin Newman:It made 60 domestic.

3:23:28David Sims:It made 81 worldwide. It has a terrible title and the poster was just, here is Sandra Bullock and people are like, that's worth testing out.

3:23:34Griffin Newman:She's getting a hug from Connick.

3:23:36David Sims:That's all they needed to say. A little Connick embrace. Is the 2026 equivalent of these YouTube channels that you're like, you've never heard of it, but it has 4 billion followers. Sure. I don't know. Bubby Man has 4 million followers and he like... Well, no, Bubby Man's earned those followers. Yeah, exactly. He's put in the work.

3:23:53Griffin Newman:Number five at the box office is another big blockbuster that also, like, slightly disappointed.

3:23:59David Sims:Slightly disappointed.

3:24:00Griffin Newman:Directed by a woman. Not a lot of those. Is it Deep Impact? Deep Impact. I would say that didn't disappoint. It's just that Armageddon ate its lunch. Armageddon ate its lunch. I think it did okay. It made 140 domestic. You know, I think that was seen as, like, maybe it's the Armageddon thing of, like, okay, you know, like, it's not fair to compare them. There was a feeling that...

3:24:20David Sims:You could compare them because they are kind of the same thing. I think there was a feeling that one of them would flop. They couldn't both succeed. Yeah, you're right that it did totally good. Deep Impact did well and then Armageddon came in and big dog did. I kind of like Deep Impact.

3:24:33Griffin Newman:I've still never seen it. I told Mimi when I interviewed her that it was kind of like important to me as sort of a different kind of movie because it's very emotional. I don't remember the difference between Deep Impact and Armageddon. The big difference is that obviously Armageddon feels like it was written by monkeys doing coke. But beyond that... Armageddon is... Bruce Willis, Ben Affleck. Yes. Armageddon is... What's the story of Deep Impact, though? I forget what that is. You know what? We don't have to get into the story of Deep Impact. I keep trying to say it and everyone is just... I could just do it.

3:25:02Griffin Newman:Armageddon is, there's an asteroid coming. We need to deal with it. And obviously, the best way to do that is to hire drillers who yell at each other. That's Deep Impact. No, that's Armageddon. That's what I thought. Yes. Deep Impact has this much more like weird unfolding where it's like, it's about a journalist who's on a story of a presidential cover-up that she thinks is an affair and it turns out it's like, no, we've realized an asteroid is going to blow up the Earth and we are basically trying to figure out how to evacuate a million people underground. Got it. Okay. And then they do sort of stop it, but in deep impact, the asteroid hits.

3:25:31Griffin Newman:Got it. In Armageddon, spoiler alert, it does not. Also in the top 10, you got The Horse Whisperer.

3:25:41Griffin Newman:You've got Bullworth.

3:25:43David Sims:Warren Beatty's Bullworth. A movie I love and I hope we get to talk about it.

3:25:47Griffin Newman:We're going to cover it someday. It's a movie that I have a lot of fondness for. I watched it, like, you know, within the last five years and was like, okay, some notes. I am sure.

3:25:56David Sims:Some notes. I'm sure it's pissing on a bunch of third rails.

3:26:00Griffin Newman:Yeah, but, you know, I'm glad it exists. Yeah. What was the song from it? Ghetto Superstar. Ghetto Superstar. That's the only reason, I've never even seen the movie. The only reason why I know of it. The whole soundtrack is great. Number eight is Titanic. Titanic. Heard of it. Oh, still in there. Still came out in December. So this, yes, seven months in. Number nine is, oh, hell yeah, a movie that should be remade instantly. The crime comedy film, I Got the Hookup, starring Master P. I have not seen, I don't think ever in full, but I've seen some of it on TV. I think we need to bring back I Got the Hookup.

3:26:34Griffin Newman:Number 10, the animated film, Quest for Camelot. Which one is that? Which studio is that trying to break in? That's a bad Warner Brothers run.

3:26:41David Sims:That bombs so hard that Iron Giant is basically told, like, you're the last one. or closing up shop. It's like, they found it. He's like, but this one's good and they're like, shh. Quest for Camelot is like them very much trying to do the Disney model and have like big ballads and emotional romance story in front of a backdrop but then funny animal characters. Then it's like Iron Giant is him trying to do this thing off to the side and then I think Osmosis Jones is truly the last one but is only half animated. Because it did too well.

3:27:15Griffin Newman:Osmosis Jones told too many truths. about the cops that live in our body. Yeah. I rewatched that recently. It's like 2026. Like that is like what a lot of our society believes is happening. RFK. It's true. We have to stop osmosis. Chris Rock lives in my body.

3:27:31David Sims:He's a policeman. RFK is going to enforce one viewing of osmosis drones to every American citizen. Griffin, did you just say you watched it recently? I did.

3:27:39Griffin Newman:And how was it? It is very odd. I remember that the animated stuff is pretty cool. I would agree. And that the live action stuff is pretty dreadful. The live-action stuff is, like, repellent.

3:27:49David Sims:There is...

3:27:50Griffin Newman:Bill Murray... Because it's mostly Bill Murray burping.

3:27:52David Sims:Being like, it feels like Chris Rock's in here. It's like half the movie... It feels like a buddy comedy is happening in my digestion. Half the movie is, like, an animated movie. The other half is, like, footage of a sick man. Basically. He's the grossest man who ever lives even before he gets sick. or something? Correct. Chris Elliott. Right. And his daughter cares about his health and he won't listen to her. And he's eating a hard-boiled egg and he's by the monkey cage trying to feed them. And then the egg slips out of his hand. It falls into the cage. He reaches into the cage to pick it up.

3:28:23David Sims:He takes it out. It's covered in like monkey hair and like dirt and bacteria. And he's like, it's still good. And he eats it. And that's the inciting incident of Osmosis Jones is that's what makes him sick. And it is it is grosser than anything that John Waters has ever put on film. It is the most repellent thing I have ever seen. And the movie is just, yeah, it's very bizarre. but I was I was like going to do Scott Hasn't Seen and Aukerman sent me the list of movies to choose from and I was like Osmosis Jones is on here I did weirdly watch it in the last 48 hours but I can't tell if I would not be able to contain my thoughts to four hours or if I will run out after five minutes yeah right where you're like yeah it's like what you think it is yeah yeah

3:29:09Griffin Newman:Osmosis Jones

3:29:10David Sims:yeah

3:29:10Griffin Newman:my favorite movie of all time I'm glad we finally fucking mentioned it finally this was the Osmosis Jones series? Yeah, this is the Osmosis Jones series. We will do Osmosis Jones if we ever do the Farrelly brothers.

3:29:21David Sims:Yeah.

3:29:22Griffin Newman:Because they did direct the live-action portions.

3:29:24David Sims:And part of their contract was that the animation director wouldn't get credited as director. Which I think is good. They are the only directors on the movie, even though they came on and shot one week eight months after the animation was locked. It's insane. That, like, the whole structure of that movie was we only have to animate half a movie, and then when we have the animation, will shop it around and try to get a fancy live action director to agree to do the other part. Osmosis Jones.

3:29:53Griffin Newman:Osmosis Jones. JD, your book is called The Endless Game and it is available. Is there anything else you would like to plug on this podcast? No, that's it. I mean, one half hours into its running time. No, I would really like people to buy The Endless Game for a child in their lives. It's a really fun book. It's based loosely on my, you know, I moved around as a kid and it's about a kid moves around a lot and ends up in a town where every kid in the town is part of a game of capture the flag that's been going on for 80 years and passed down from generation to generation. And so this entire universe unfolding where kids sort of have to find their role within this game.

3:30:28I think it's a fun story and I think kids will like it. I'd love for y 'all to read it. There's a link in the description. Thank you. And watch the undercovers on Amazon Prime Sports. Oh, yeah. Do watch that. It's its own little Truman show

3:30:42David Sims:in a way. Yeah. thank you all for listening please remember to rate review and subscribe tune in next week for Mastering Commander that's right it is Mando I watched it for the first time oh you're right

3:30:54Griffin Newman:it's Mando

3:30:56David Sims:next week oh boy this this is a wild one to punch for weeks then yeah Gethard coming on oh my gosh that's gonna be to talk Star Wars boy I just looked at the running time and imagined a higher one

3:31:10Griffin Newman:that's a lot of podcasts me and you should just get beds for our stations. Or I think we can just have a break. Because we can just be like, all right, and we'll check in with you guys tomorrow wherever you guys are at in that part of the conversation. Yeah, that works. It's a 12-hour day crossover. Yeah, that's wild. That's a crazy one-two punch of episodes here. I legit thought this was going to be a short episode. Because I'm like, there's so much to talk about, but it's not like a rambly movie. But we just love talking about it.

3:31:34David Sims:I think it was a really good episode. I think we nailed it.

3:31:36Griffin Newman:I definitely thought this was going to be a long episode. It's a big one. Also, I was texting David. I watched Master and Commander for the first time. That is a great movie. I thought it was a different kind of movie. And I watched it and it's so good. I know you're going to talk all about it.

3:31:49David Sims:I have not seen it since theaters. And at the time I went, not my kind of movie. And so I'm very eager. I've been saving the rewatch knowing that Weir was inevitable and that it's such a beloved David favorite. I watch that now and I'm like, Weir is a master. Tune in next week for The Mandalorian and Grogu, a movie we're so excited for.

3:32:07Griffin Newman:What if it's pretty enjoyable?

3:32:10David Sims:I would love nothing more.

3:32:10Griffin Newman:Because like Jon Favreau tends to be okay at making a pretty enjoyable movie. I saw the trailer with my daughter in front of Hoppers. Yeah. And I was not like, wow, this looks awesome. But I was like, I mean, I guess they'll like fly a spaceship and baby Yoda will eat a cracker. Like, I guess it'll be okay.

3:32:27David Sims:We've talked about it before, but every time I see that trailer, I am astounded by how nothing I feel. I'm not like dreading it. I'm not like this looks like shit. I'm just like, okay. And I saw Hoppers with David Ehrlich and his son. And Ehrlich just immediately went like, ugh. And his son starts pumping his fists. And I'm like, oh. He literally points at the screen and goes, Star Wars, that's my favorite movie. And he's never seen Star Wars in a theater before. What if Mandalorian Grogu is that there's a transporter ride you can take to Jabba's Pass with eight and a half minutes? And so it's just 10 trips, five trips up, five trips back.

3:33:04That should be your Star Wars movie you pitch. I actually...

3:33:09Griffin Newman:Speaking of new movies, over on Patreon. In a few days, we're going to be releasing an episode. It's the final in our Mortal Kombat commentary series. We're going to be putting out an episode about the new Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2. I will say every Mortal Kombat movie is good.

3:33:25David Sims:Have you watched Annihilation recently? Yes, I have. And is it not good? Yes. But is it also good? Yes.

3:33:31Griffin Newman:Okay. Annihilation is not so good. I will say. It's a rough one. With respect to all of the great... I've talked about this before. the first Mortal Kombat ending is one of my favorite endings to a film of all time and I think if every film ended like that it would be perfect so you must love

3:33:45David Sims:the opening of Mortal Kombat Annihilation yes I do the opening must work when you are a kid that is all you want is for a cliffhanger to pick up right in the fucking next movie that is a good point anyway go over to patreon.com slash blank check do it that's awesome and as always good afternoon good evening and good night

3:34:08Griffin Newman:Blank Check with Griffin and David is hosted by Griffin Newman and David Sims. Our executive producer is me, Ben Hosley. Our creative producer is Marie Barty Salinas. And our associate producer is AJ McKeon. This show is mixed and edited by AJ McKeon and Alan Smithy. Research by JJ Birch. Our theme song is by Lane Montgomery and the Great American Novel. With additional music by Alex Mitchell. Artwork by Joe Bowen, Ollie Moss, and Pat Reynolds. Our production assistant is Minnick. Special thanks to David Cho, Jordan Fish, and Nate Patterson for their production help. Head over to BlankCheckPod.com for links to all of the real nerdy shit.

3:34:47Griffin Newman:Join our Patreon, Blank Check Special Features, for exclusive franchise commentaries and bonus episodes. Follow us on social at BlankCheckPod. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter, Checkbook, on Substack. This podcast is created and produced by Blank Check Productions. All right, I started rolling. Okay. Are you going to send it to me, Griff?

3:35:08David Sims:Yeah. Okay. And I trust your improv skills to make the necessary word substitutions. Yes, I'm not going to say the word, though. No. You know what I mean? I'm not going to say the P word. Right, but like replace camera with microphone. Yes, exactly. Exactly, exactly, exactly. Great. This is UCB training right here. Okay. Where is this? I like how we act like it's a secret. There's nothing secret about it. Okay. I'm airdropping. Except. This is the actual script? Yeah. Okay. What page is that on? Let's start on 105. Okay. Ready? uh no i have to find page one you sent me an 100 page document let's see original script okay do you want me to start in 105 no i'm starting wait who are who's who you're truman why you should be truman you think i should be truman okay because the whole thing okay the whole thing is that you launch into the instead of good afternoon evening good morning and good night, you launch into your thing.

3:36:28David Sims:Okay. Right? Okay, sure. Do you need a minute to adjust? Yeah, just give me one second. I think there's also, I think there's a line for David in here too. Or Ben. Which is... Is there a Giamatti in here? No, in the actual edit, it cuts to someone watching TV, watching it, and they're like, just do it. Just do it.

3:36:57Griffin Newman:I don't think that's too confusing, I think. Yeah. Let's just do this. Okay, great.

3:37:02David Sims:Okay, ready? Truman. Truman. Hold on, I'm going to reset. Should it be my name? Oh, yeah. It just hit me. Yep, yep, yep. Okay, ready? Sorry, that's on me. I fucked up already. No, no, it's good. Griffin. Griffin. Griffin. You can speak. I can hear you. Who are you? I'm the creator. Creator of what? A show that gives hope and joy and inspiration to millions. I take that again with podcasts. But it's a show. Make a podcast. Okay, take it from the top. Okay. But I was not going to say the P word. I think you have to if we're doing it. Okay, fine. Fine. Okay. Sorry, guys. This is the artistic process at work.

3:37:55The actor becomes the director. Okay. Griffin. Griffin. You can speak. I can hear you. Who are you? I'm the creator. Creator of what? A podcast. That gives hope and joy and inspiration to millions. Millions sounds a little high.

3:38:22David Sims:A podcast? And who am I? You're the star, or one of them. Nothing was real. It was all bits. No, you were real. That's what made you so good to listen to. The eyes are everywhere. Our ears are not on video. Listen to me, Griffin. You can leave if you want. I won't try to stop you. But you won't survive out there. you don't know what to do where to go I have a dossier Truman I've watched you here a whole life take that again also that's not in the actual movie I'm adding certain lines instead of man what do you mean oh this whole section is not in the movie they cut it okay we'll just do it okay keep going

3:39:13Griffin Newman:using this script may have been a mistake yeah that's what I think what would you have suggested the IMDB thing what would I have suggested

3:39:18David Sims:just doing the normal

3:39:19Griffin Newman:is IMDB gonna have

3:39:20David Sims:all of this

3:39:21Griffin Newman:I have no idea, but I would assume yes. Okay, okay. Come on, guys. Reset. Reset. From the top.

3:39:27David Sims:Should I go to IMDb and try to find it? Let me find it for you right now. You could have just asked. Yeah, because you famously look it up and offer everything.

3:39:36Griffin Newman:I don't look it up and offer every week, but I'm sure I could. I have a computer right here. You just asked. Griffin sent the shooting script that has like... It still has like Hopper in it.

3:39:48David Sims:I feel like usually they don't ask. they don't

3:39:51Griffin Newman:I yes I don't think they have all of it back and forth yeah I mean they yeah I mean how many well at least Ben has the cold clothes now yes I do for sure yeah you guys just gotta do what you gotta do I hear you're you're working off the shooting script I guess I know okay okay wait wait I got it is that okay I was like I was like there's just lines in here that aren't didn't make the final edit of the movie I mean they wisely cut it down exactly dramatically weighty exactly now do we want to start from the top or just pick up no we're starting from the top let's start from page one let's do it no no no actually you're right I got it I got it the Truman Show

3:40:32David Sims:I got it okay just remember Griffin instead of Truman podcast instead of show yeah okay okay ready