The Way Back with Alex Ross Perry

8:17Griffin Newman:Yeah, I meant to put the sound all the way up, the gain, so that it just, the whole episode sounded blown out and just like really harsh and hard to listen to. Good, good. So that it mirrors the movie. Yes. Oh, sure. Yeah, okay. Yes. And then should our faces like kind of crinkle and get all dried up and our lips get all like chapped and fucked up?

8:37David Sims:If we want to get an Oscar nomination, sure. Best Makeup. This movie is only major nomination.

8:42Griffin Newman:I'm going to have to confiscate all of the liquids.

8:44David Sims:Yeah. No one's drinking. I watched on the Blu-ray there was a featurette. There was like a 30-minute making of with all the actors. And Ed Harris has the most blown out audio I have ever heard. It sounds like he was recording in the middle of a tornado. It is insane because you're watching and you're like, oh, I guess they must have done this one over Zoom or something. And then you're like, no, it was 2010. It's crazy. What's the excuse? You're talking in special features. Making of. I'm talking making of. Ben's talking about the movie. Yeah.

9:12Griffin Newman:The movie itself. Yeah. Also bad. Yeah. So maybe it was the same sound guy, same sound department. They were filming in pretty harsh conditions. It's a windy movie. Yeah, sure. You don't have to fuck with windscreens in here. It would be funny if they all had windscreens. Yeah. This is a windscreen. Yeah. No, no, I mean in the movie. Oh, sure. Like Colin Farrell's like, I'll knife you. And he's holding up a windscreen. It's not an important thing.

9:33David Sims:It would be funny if they were all like holding up lovs between their fingers, even though the clip is the part that's supposed to go on your shirt. But they were doing like the TikToker thing.

9:40Griffin Newman:That's what the TikTokers do.

9:40David Sims:That's what the TikTokers do.

9:42Griffin Newman:You know who doesn't know about TikTokers? The characters of the way back.

9:45David Sims:Yeah. Here's an immediate... That was deft. An immediate reveal of how little I had ever engaged with this movie until watching it last night, like seriously engaged. It starts. And like from that first title card, I was like, oh, this movie isn't about Irish people. I just assumed you got Colin Farrell.

10:03Griffin Newman:Because Colin and Saoirse are involved.

10:05David Sims:And I'm like, Sturgis swings Irish a lot. I know he's actually British, but I feel like he plays Irish a lot. He's definitely played Irish, I think. Right. And I'm like, Ed Harris could play Irish. I was so confident this was a movie about like the fucking potato famine or something.

10:19Griffin Newman:it is one of those movies with a poster you're like i don't know it looks looks like these guys are having a bad time doing something you know like i don't know why level of engagement with

10:27David Sims:this movie is these characters are struggling these actors on the poster are struggling in some way and i think they're walking a lot that has the same game that that sometimes we do a movie like not not this but bigger ones like um you could say to like uh somebody before they watched The Year of Living Dangerously. Sure. What do you think this movie's about? Yes. And it's one of those things where people are like, I don't know. I've heard of this title forever. Right, right. You know, maybe it's about like an alcoholic relationship of people that really, you know, it's a Days of Wine and Roses kind of thing.

10:59Griffin Newman:Or it could be like, Yes Man, it's like he does one year living really dangerously. He says the most... He does the most dangerous way of doing everything. Sometimes we throw that out as a challenge when we're watching something like famously at home, Anna had never seen Rain Man. Mm-hmm. And before I started it, this was years ago, I said, what do you think this movie's about? She said, it's about like a guy who's like a savant at gambling and he makes it rain in Las Vegas. Because all she'd ever seen was the shot in the casino. And I was like, that's what you think this entire movie's about?

11:28This is like a gambling 21 to bring... And that's why it's called Rain Man. 21's Jim Sturgis, right?

11:33David Sims:It is. Okay, so she thought it was like 21. Like a guy who fixes gambling. I was looking at the timeline. Because Social Network comes out the same year as this movie. 2010 sure yeah yeah Andrew Garfield just fucking blew Jim Sturgis to the black wall I was like who

11:52Griffin Newman:market corrected Jim Sturgis like I was looking at that I was like he was

11:56David Sims:really they were pushing him hard and then I felt like completely slipped into oblivion and I watching it I was just like oh this brand of like intense sensitivity in the face of adversity became you know like one Andrew Garfield superpowers.

12:13Griffin Newman:I neglected to look up Jim Sturgis so that we could have the fun of him. We'll have a look at Jim. Because it is, like, my wife was like, who's that? You know, because it's like Colin Farrell. Whoa, Saoirse wrote into this, and she's like, and who's that? And I'm like, Jim Sturgis. But I might as well just be going like, like, it's just like, it's like the name of a handsome sounding guy. But like, four years was a thing. Are we going to say he was a... Across the universe? No, we're going to do his career. I'm arguing, like, was he ever a thing? Hollywood was trying to make him a thing There was a thought that he could be a thing

12:44David Sims:I think Hollywood was acting like he already was a thing

12:47Griffin Newman:But that's what they do all the time And sometimes it works And sometimes it's the Colin Farrell thing Where people are like We sort of agreed that he was a thing But you're trying a little too hard to make him a thing Put him away And then after a few years they're like Let's get him back Open up the box

13:03David Sims:We'll do it but it's so funny to actually go through The Colin Farrell filmography item by item because you think of it in your mind as like, oh, and then he totally bottomed out and then he had a clean comeback and then he bottomed out. It's always up and down. He never stops working, but it's always like a good choice, a bad choice, two good choices, three bad choices. Yeah. Feels like someone paying the bills. I think if he had been, if Colin Farrell here in this movie, five years earlier or five years later, people would have really lined up for him. Yeah. Yeah. Like earlier, it's like, man, this guy can do anything.

13:38and later it would be like Colin Farrell's like always kind of good and like it's cool that he's in this big auteur movie in a small part we love Colin Farrell he's fantastic in this but at this point people were kind of like that's enough of this guy

13:50David Sims:yeah also it's like five years earlier he would have been the Jim Sturgis part unless he would have been legitimate I mean

13:55Griffin Newman:Colin being in this movie was so excited to David Sims yeah so exciting you didn't see it for 14 years but this is what I'm saying it's wild it's like Peter Weir is making his follow up to Master and Commander I'm like sounds good and they're like It's like a true story drama. And I'm like, okay, sounds fine. But Colin Farrell's in it. I was like, I love that. He's got the and. He's got the right. He's got the sort of plum supporting role. Peter Wears let him do a character actor part. And then the film came out and everyone was like, it's okay, sort of handsome. And I was like, oh. And then it was gone from theaters.

14:29Griffin Newman:And I was like, okay, well, I guess I missed it. Yeah. I guess I'll wait for Peter Wears' next movie. Never. Still waiting. I have very clear memory of trying to see this at Union Square and just not getting around to it. Like you were like walking around the hallways? No, I just like back in the back at that time, like you would just you would just write down. You just write down showtimes and be like, yeah, this week I could go see. And I just I just remember Post-it note, Union Square, the way back, you know, like Memento style. I could go see that like this week or next week because I really want to go see it.

15:00Yes. Didn't happen. Never happened. I saw it years ago. But you didn't see it. Years after that.

15:06Griffin Newman:Well, I assume you saw it as part of one of your sort of projects. Yes. And we can talk about that, but we should first say what the podcast is. Project of watching good movies. Of course. The eternal project we're all part of.

15:17David Sims:What's the podcast? This podcast is called Blank Check with Griffin and David. I'm Griffin. I'm David. You almost just fell for it. You almost, you started looking at an email. You almost missed the cue.

15:26Griffin Newman:I almost did.

15:27David Sims:You were like three seconds slow.

15:28Griffin Newman:Someone actually texted me, who do you think will win Blank Check March Madness? Carbon date this episode record. Right. And I was like, ooh. And I had a little, my brain did a little thought. I should vote while you guys are on some tangent.

15:39David Sims:Who texted you and how are you going to answer?

15:41Griffin Newman:Ellen Cushing, host of Hits Different. Your secret podcast. It's not a secret. I want everyone to listen to it. But I said, I'm still thinking it's going to be Marty Tony. And I think I'd bet Tony, but very soft. Like, I'd put a flutter down. Like a 10 bucks on Tony.

15:59David Sims:Like, I'm not feeling too secure. Also, much like Wes Anderson movies often have one burst of a static violence.

16:07Griffin Newman:Yeah, right.

16:08David Sims:Perhaps he just shanks Tony Scott.

16:10Griffin Newman:It would be funny if we're like, oh, Tony's a juggernaut. And then, right, like he gets blown in half by Wes Anderson in a very artful way. Yeah. But no, I think that would be my guess. I mean, what's your guess? Is it for Carbond dating the episode now?

16:24David Sims:I feel like it's swinging Tony, but maybe I'm very wrong about this.

16:28Griffin Newman:I'm just making the Tony guess on the, we've already said the sort of like, well, there's just the mildest backlash to Marty the Juggernaut. And so maybe Tony benefits. Don't tell me who I'm going to vote for. But that's, I don't really know. Yeah. I can't keep, I can't get in the brains of these crazy people. They voted for Chris fucking Columbus over Oliver Stone. Here we go. I was going to tee you up for that. You can't get, you can't, you can't predict anything. And I think he's, he's going to sneak by whoever he's up against today. Gus Van Sant, right? Yeah. That was a war crime to watch.

16:56Speaking of sending to the Gulag, like 5 ,000 Gulag seats needed for people that looked at the last 10 years of Columbus and were like, that would be— I voted for Chris Columbus. Yeah, I really want them to cover Pixels and Christmas Chronicles 2, but not one.

17:12David Sims:A Pixels episode would go fairly hard. Pixels episode will be a year. Christmas Chronicles will be a nightmare. There's a couple in between. And the fucking Thursday Murder Club. Oh, yeah, Jesus. Yeah, the Netflix run is really bad. But I mean, Chris Columbus is currently like a folding Gus Van Sant, like one of his flannel shirts. Here's the insane thing to me. I think he's edging by. He's not folding. Obviously, my support of you guys doing Oliver Stone needs no introduction at this point. Here's the insane thing about people voting for Chris Columbus. You'd have to keep covering his movies.

17:43It is true that we would be setting up. Don't they realize that this guy makes like a Netflix piece of shit every two years?

17:48Griffin Newman:I'm happy to report this. I wish him no ill will. He seems very healthy. He does. I'm not looking at Chris Columbus being like this guy's near retirement. He seems like he's in great shape. He's got four decades of bullshit left. But he could honestly like, you know, he could, there's no bottom to what he could end up making next. Now I want to share with you, Alex. He's adding to the ledger. Oh yeah. JJ. JJ Brick. In our group thread, our researcher was saying he secretly wants Columbus to win. Yeah.

18:13David Sims:In fact, he prefaced it with, I'm keeping quiet about this. So it's really, it's a kindness of us to share it online. So that he can have several months off because you guys would cover someone no one writes about or gives a fuck about.

18:23Griffin Newman:Right. His dossiers would be like one page. It'd be like, yeah. Pixels was released on this date. Christmas Chronicles 2 was based on a dumb idea Adam Sandler had.

18:32David Sims:He's figured out the way to like Bialystok his job. Yeah, this movie had one public screening. It was like the Family Heartland Gala at the Nebraska Film Festival. Columbus did one interview for it. Here it is. It won the Family Heartland Gala. It won like the Dove Family Gentleness Award.

18:49Griffin Newman:Chris Columbus has made three of the most successful films ever made in the history of Hollywood. We're saying Home Alone. As a commercial enterprise. Home Alone, Mrs. Doubtfire, and Harry fucking Potter. Sure.

19:00David Sims:But two Harry Potters, two Home Alones, Mrs. Doubtfire.

19:04Griffin Newman:Exactly. The sequels, which are less exciting.

19:06David Sims:But five of the highest grossing films in history. I mean, I love you.

19:08Griffin Newman:Beth Cooper made a Bill 5, right?

19:10David Sims:It did, but that's the rust bump. We can't give that to him. Yeah, we could have rust on that episode. We could. I have no idea how he feels about that movie. I think he probably wants to do Percy Jackson instead. This is a podcast about filmographies. Directors who have massive success early on in their careers and are given a series of blank checks to make whatever crazy passion products they want. And sometimes those checks clear and sometimes they walk a really fucking long way. This movie should be called The Long Walk, right? I assume they could be because of the fucking Stephen King book.

19:39Griffin Newman:I assume so. Obviously, it is based on a book called The Long Walk. So it's interesting that they did not. But yeah, maybe they were worried they would come off as an adaptation of a Stephen King story.

19:50David Sims:Call it the longest walk or something. I'm like, the way back tells me nothing. And this movie starts and I'm like, oh, the premises, they have to walk. They're also not going back anywhere. They're going somewhere none of them have been before.

19:59Griffin Newman:No. That is true. I think this is like a fairly good movie. I think it's fairly well done. We gotta get it. It's well made. I think the answer to all of our questions is like, don't make this movie. Make something else. Just make something else. Who are you talking to in this scenario? Peter Weir. where I'm just like, if this is going to be your last thing and you're going to put a lot of effort into it,

20:18David Sims:I think you should do something else. But do you think he called this was his last thing? I'm not sure that he did. Here's a theory I want to put forward. Do we think, Ethan Hawke gave this interview recently, because this is a miniseries on the films of Peter Weir. It's called Podnick at Hanging Cast. Our guest today, of course, is Alex Ross Perry. Returning after my banishment has been lifted. Pin in this.

20:39Griffin Newman:Pin. I have some news. In this, what? This is his 10th episode. Is that right? Of main feed. Wow. Of main feed, unless I'm wrong about something, I'm going to read them out now. And I brought gifts for you guys.

20:50David Sims:Can I try to guess them? Sure. Fuck. You want to go in order? I forgot to wear my Hollow Man hat today. I was going to do that to memorialize your run. Okay. So it starts with... Insomnia. It starts with Insomnia, which I rewatched recently. Good movie. Yeah. Because my insomnia has been out of control and I was like, it's time to check in with me. Detective Dorm. Let me sleep.

21:16Griffin Newman:Garbage bags! The garbage scene is in the Skarsgård version. Yeah. When I rewatched the original, Insomnia, because it's on Criterion, I bought it at some point.

21:26David Sims:And just announced as a new deluxe Second Sight 4-kit package. That's okay.

21:30Griffin Newman:I'm fine with my Criterion Blu-ray. But there's the scene where Skarsgård's picking up garbage. I'm like, wow, this is just all in the original.

21:38David Sims:I do think the Nolan's better.

21:39Griffin Newman:I agree. Yes, it is definitely better. Scar Scar's really good in it.

21:43David Sims:Insomnia. Then it's... Is it Hollow Man and then The Keep? Hollow Man and then... Taking Woodstock. There you go. Taking Woodstock and then The Keep. Those are the ones I remember doing at Audioboom. Those are the first four in studio. The fifth was a remote episode. And that was always when it was, can I pick the least relevant film? Which I have done, again, I argue. We've come back around to it because then when we get onto Zoom, it swings into... Well, Lucky Numbers was irrelevant. Oh, you're right. So that was fifth. That's the end of the irrelevancy. That's a Ben's landlord who bought the tape and kept it sealed.

22:17But it's irrelevant to most people.

22:18David Sims:We still have it here in the office. Yeah. On DVD and VHS. Yeah. Well, I brought the DVD and then Ben brought the tape. And then it swings around to four of the most important movies in your history as a person. So then it's Halloween. Right? Halloween? Correct. Into Fight Club. Nope.

22:36Griffin Newman:You're missing one. Bit of a contentious episode. Now I have to think of what we did at Ben's house. Clockwork Orange. Correct. And so the Halloween and Clockwork Orange, those were at Ben's place. Sure. And then the most recent two, he did. I think Clockwork Orange was here. Nope. No. It was at Ben's house that I drove you home after. Okay. That must have been a fun ride home. I have referenced this on the podcast before. It was. You worked it out. We didn't have to work out anything. Everything was fine. Everyone on this Reddit is always like, Jesus, you could cut the tension in the room. Right, we got home and in the drive, we analyzed the career of Macaulay Culkin.

23:09Yeah, perfect. while David blasted the prodigy and said I listen to this song every day

23:14Griffin Newman:I wasn't like Alex it was really fucked up in there I'm really mad at you like there was no atmosphere except in the room when I was like Jesus Christ when MC Max and reality entered into this particular phase of his rhymes

23:28David Sims:but wait there was one after Fight Club right?

23:31Griffin Newman:correct his most recent episode so that's 9 and this is 10 and you are back to maybe the less relevant episode Perhaps, perhaps. But I've also never done the last movie. You've never done the last film? Never been here for a ranking.

23:46David Sims:Oh, that's right. Although we're going to have to fit our ranking in, record it later. Yeah, we probably... Oh, because you haven't watched all the movies yet.

23:52Griffin Newman:I haven't... I mean, I've seen all the movies, but I haven't re-watched Year of Living Dangerously yet. I've only seen that film once.

23:58David Sims:I've never seen that, and I've only seen Master and Commander once, so I desperately need to re-watch before I rank.

24:04Griffin Newman:I have a feeling that Master and Commander might be number one on my list, not to spoil. Interesting. You guys haven't done those episodes yet.

24:12David Sims:Those are the two we haven't done. Correct. Were either of you present at Lincoln Center for the Peter Weir retrospective around when this movie came out? No. He was there.

24:21Griffin Newman:He came. He made it weird. It was like a week of Q &As. Yeah, that's what it was called. Yeah. But it was centered around this. I believe so. I could be wrong. In my mind, it was 2010. So I think it was sort of in conjunction with this movie. If he was doing a retrospective, I mean, that makes sense. Yes, it was January 2011. Which is when this... I mean, it was when this is probably going wide. This film came out... Oh, no, I didn't mean to. Isn't it early 2011? Came out early 2011. Yeah, so it was like...

24:50David Sims:So it has a qualifying run in 2010, gets nominated. No, it didn't have... No, wait, did it? I think it's a festival, 2010. It's a festival, 2010. It's a festival, 2010. It's a proper theatrical 2011.

25:02Griffin Newman:Right, because it loses to the Wolfman for makeup. Okay. Right? Yes. And that's the, no, that is the 20th. So it must have had some like pathetic qualifying run.

25:11David Sims:It must have had a pathetic piece of shit qualifying run.

25:15Griffin Newman:I mean, truly, yes, Griffin. December 29th, 2010, Los Angeles, California. Like, they don't even allow that at the Oscars anymore. They're kind of like, what? We coughed it onto theaters for like one day on like New Year's Eve.

25:27David Sims:I mean, this was an image and new market co-distribution deal.

25:33Griffin Newman:Yeah. Yeah. But it came out, and it's not even wide, but like sort of 600 screens January 2011. So neither one of you, you were not present at this retrospective. No, I didn't have any money. It was, well, I mean, you can go see a movie.

25:46David Sims:You're forgetting, Alex, it did infamously cost$1 million a ticket for the Peter Weir retrospective. It was great, but he was there for almost all the Q &As. I saw him do a Q &A at a double feature of Year of Living Dangerously and The Mosquito Coast. That's cool. And then I think he just gave like a talk. I think there was like a 90 minute like discussion some other day. His muggiest movies. Yeah.

26:09Griffin Newman:Those are the two most kind of like damp aired films that he made. I had already liked those movies, but seeing them at Walter Reed on film with him, it was like, man, these are the best. Like this guy's, I saw Gallipoli there. I saw a bunch of movies because I was kind of filling in the gap. Sure. And it was a really, a really successful series for me. I mean, he's, this has been a successful series for us. made really interesting, great movies, some of which I know well, some of which I'd seen zero to one times. And they were all rewarding. And even this, which was the true, oh, I'll get to it.

26:44Griffin Newman:I know I should see. I know Peter Weir made it. Basically, for the last 15 years, I've been like, no, no, no, I'm planning on getting to that. That's strange, because to me, this is an incredibly easy to watch movie. I found this film so hard to watch. Like, the I'm getting to that is like, well, it's 170 minutes long. Everybody thinks it's bad. This is 133. Yeah, but that's short. Yeah, but it's rock 'em sock 'em. I would say very early in the movie. You just described this movie as rock 'em sock 'em. I did not find it as hard as I'm unsurprised to learn Griffin found it.

27:14David Sims:I don't think this is a bad film. And it wasn't like I was squirming in my seat in discomfort. But I did find it to be a bit of a slog. A handsome, well-intentioned slog. Would you have enjoyed this more in a 4DX re-release? No question. This movie would... If the steps were happening, the subtle steps...

27:30Griffin Newman:Or like a... It's like you coughing. The seat coughs for you. A treadmill screening.

27:34David Sims:Yes, I'd love a slow treadmill screening. It would spray dirty water in your face. Yeah, mosquitoes would come out. But imagine how satisfying it would be when they get to the water in the middle of the desert and suddenly they're just spraying water directly into your mouth.

27:48Griffin Newman:Like a fucking water fountain. I would say I thought this film was going to be a little more like brutal and tough to watch and slow. And I was when I watched it. I was like, no, this moves. Because I'm like, right, because Peter Weir's like a good director. and like this isn't quite the slug I thought it was going to be. I would not call it Rock 'em Sock 'em. You don't think the Gulag break is Rock 'em Sock 'em?

28:09David Sims:I've reserved that term for robots only. Yeah. Real Steel is a Rock 'em Sock 'em movie. Yes. It is.

28:16Griffin Newman:I mean, if it wasn't, then they really blew the assignment. I'm not saying it's good, but it does have that Sean Levy feeling.

28:26David Sims:You saying I would tell Peter Weir just make something else, right? I think so. I was watching this 30-minute making-of thing, and everyone is talking about how difficult an experience this film was. But they're talking about it in the window between when they have wrapped and when the movie is released, and they all clearly feel like this is going to be a historic effort. Everyone is going to talk about, you know, they're not like... There's no reason not to think that. He had achieved that at this point for almost 30 years straight. But this was like a four-month shoot of them fighting the elements.

29:02David Sims:Sounds good. You know? And they're all like, and by like day 20, the line between acting and reality is blurred. And we're feeling the real things. And we're all in it together. No one has any egos. And we felt such a responsibility to tell this story. To like go through such a Herculean effort to make this movie and then have it treated with such a shrug. you know just like a complete kind of it just it doesn't exist ethan hawk in that interview i play this movie in cinematrix all the time it's a smart play it's a good play ethan hawk had that interview that gets recirculated all the time where he said like oh my buddy peter weir's retired after years of people being like is peter weir gonna make anything again and he said peter's retired and the industry kind of broke him and it stopped knowing how to make the kind of movies that he wants to make and he's good at.

29:52David Sims:And also, he got broken by, like, movie star egos. And the two things he cited were how difficult a time he had working with Crow on Master and Commander. And that the other thing, was it supposed to be after this that he was going to make Shantaram? That certainly was.

30:07Griffin Newman:We can talk about it.

30:08David Sims:I'm sure that's in the research. That was Johnny Depp's passion project. And he said the process of dealing with Depp in development for, like, two years broke him. Now, that's interesting. I haven't heard anything about Johnny Depp being tough to deal with. And Ethan Hawke pinned it just on. The industry changed. And he stopped being able to deal with A-list leading men who were no longer collaborators, who were sort of, you know, dictators, right? Whereas before he had been this guy where A-list men would trust him to mold them. I also, I watched this and I'm like, I get why he retired. To put this much into making this.

30:37David Sims:Right. And just have it treated with a shrug. Right. It seems like he, from, you guys have more research hopefully than I do, which is zero. seemed like he tried other things after this. He wasn't like... I think there was...

30:50Griffin Newman:Right. There was some sort of... But he's now just said, like, I don't have the energy. Right. And, like, it's interesting because Master and Commander is now... A movie that was liked at the time has now become this, like, canonical movie. I think he appreciates that, but then there's also the kind of... The sort of melancholy of, like, I didn't get to make another one. I wanted to. Like... Master and Commander had, like, eight Oscar nominations, right? Ten. It's crazy that... It just went up against Return of the King. And it still snuck a couple wins. Aside from it just not winning, but it's just crazy that that catapulted him to nothing.

31:23That makes me feel like Shantatram might have, or whatever. Shantaram. Shantaram. Good thing that didn't get me. I mean, I think that became a TV show. It became an Apple Plus original series, of course. It was Charlie Hunnam. Yeah, we all know.

31:33David Sims:It was almost Miranair, Peter Weir, and I think there was a third major director who almost made it with Johnny Depp, and then like 10 years later, it became an Apple Plus series that no one watched. It was a good thing we didn't have to learn how to actually say that. I just think Do you remember Yes, what?

31:46Griffin Newman:That there was a Hulu original series about Sean Penn going to Mars in which they never actually went to Mars because in classic streaming series you know, fashion season one ends with them like going to go to Mars tomorrow We discovered a new planet in our telescope And then like they're like no one watches season two has been canceled so you didn't actually even get to watch Sean Penn go to Mars It was called The First It was a Bo Williman show, right? Yes, that's right Yes

32:11David Sims:I truly forgot that existed until you mentioned it right now. I think that's what he was promoting when he was on Maren saying he's retiring. Yes. It's like I've done everything. Smelting his Oscars or whatever. This part full-time into books. We all love his books. Yeah, of course. Bob Honey who do stuff. You read, both of you read Bob Honey who do stuff to your daughters every night, right? Every day. Honey, honey. Sean, honey. Sean, Ben, Ben. This is real. Look up the cover of Bob Honey who do stuff. Look up. Bob Honey who do stuff. Google Bob Honey. Hang on, hang on, hang on. I'm going to just do stuff.

32:43Hang on. How do you think you spell honey in the title of Sean Penn's novel? Like honey. No, no. Think a little bit more Winnie the Pooh. H-U-N-N. You're on the right track. E-E? I don't know. It's something like that. Yeah.

32:56Griffin Newman:I'm seeing that it's honey spelled regular. I will. I refuse to revise my memory of what the title is.

33:03David Sims:That's a true show that doesn't exist, David. And I want to correct myself.

33:06Griffin Newman:As is Shantaram with Charlie Hunnam or whatever.

33:08David Sims:I think my joke about the first was too kind. Season one would end with someone making the telescope. This is for kids? Season two would end with them. No, no, it's how you introduce your kids to sophisticated political satire. This is a book for grown-ass people. I think he's written multiple Bob Honey. I think so. The Bob Honey Kremlin. It's like some kind of, it's not Forrest Gump-y, but it's like some kind of character who like drifts through history, I think. Everything I'm pulling is from a 10-year-old episode of WTM. But like a Forrest Gump-esque character. I don't know. Yeah, sure. this was and don't correct me this was him saying I'm done with movies fuck them I'm doing this full time I did this Hulu show that's my final thing as an actor and then he won a third Oscar and didn't show up

33:53Griffin Newman:there are eight actors in history with three acting Oscars he is the eighth he won it for an incredible performance in a movie that I think will be very well remembered that won best picture and when he won everyone was like and he didn't show up it being his third award

34:09David Sims:and him not showing up, people will forget that he won. I think truly it will become a like, who won Best Supporting Actor that year?

34:16Griffin Newman:And like, apart from Walter Brennan, who God bless him, we love him. Walter Brennan. He's the weirdest of the winners.

34:21David Sims:Ingrid Bergman, Katherine Hepburn, Jack Nicholson. Correct. I mean, Sean Penn is five. Ben's friend. Ben's friend, Daniel Day-Lewis. Yep. Meryl Streep. Mm-hmm. And there's one more. Mm-hmm. McDormand. She's got a bit of a hard face these days. Framing McDormand.

34:37Griffin Newman:A bit of a fix, you know, a tough stare. And she even has four Academy Awards. No, she has three. I guess four if you count her producing.

34:45David Sims:Yeah. She has three acting awards. She has three acting wins and a best picture. You would think Penn and Weir would have overlapped. You would.

34:51Griffin Newman:They kind of hit the same. You're very right about it. Hit the same stride around the same time. I mean, yeah, I wonder if he ever even considered him for one of the most big movies. Something I always loved about Peter Weir, younger, watching these movies is what you just said. Like, man, he really just has these, like, awesome men at the center. Yeah. every time. And they're just doing some of their best work consistently. The crazy thing is that Brennan won three Oscars in a span of five years. Yes. For playing, I mean, I haven't seen all the movies that he won Oscars for, but I assume basically doing the same shit every time because that's what Walter Brennan always did.

35:24Griffin Newman:Yeah. And he was only nominated one other time. So he has a 75 % track record of winning if nominated. Meryl Streep, you're like three Oscars. Yeah, 21 noms. She sucks. I don't mean to be. She's always striking out.

35:35David Sims:I don't mean to be rude. Yes. Is there not some weird explanation for the Walter Brennan thing that the rules of the Academy changed?

35:43Griffin Newman:You're thinking of possibly. Well, wasn't there a thing where he was nominated for both lead and supporting or something like that? Just pin that I tried to steer the conversation back to Peter Weir and David immediately brought it back to this trivia factoid that we're all tired of hearing at the end of Oscar season. It is. It is true that Oscar season's over and it is kind of like, who cares? That I very definitely tried to turn this Sean Penn. Well, Penn came up. What do you mean? We were on our great Penn run. But then I brought it back. The honey thing. I brought it back. And David, who likes things to keep going in a tangential direction, was like, hang on.

36:16We'll talk about Peter Weir in a second. Walter Brennan, who never worked with Peter Weir. That we know of.

36:22Griffin Newman:I'm going to solve this. I don't. I know. I feel like I know what you're talking about, Griff, but I'm not totally sure. Oh, yes. Oh, this is what it is. Yeah. In the early years, extras could vote. There we go. Which makes no sense because, like, what does that mean? Extras could vote. But they realized basically that he was always whipping votes from the extras. Because he was, like, a nice guy that everyone liked. So they were all like, oh, Walter Brennan. He'd saddle up next to them at lunch.

36:44David Sims:And they'd be like, he's a man of the people.

36:46Griffin Newman:Because there's the other thing where, like, what is it? Like, Bette Davis got a write-in vote. And then there's the other thing where, like, someone was nominated for both lead and supporting and won in support. I don't know. But that wasn't Walter Brennan. They had to clean up all the rules. But that's not Walter Brennan. No. Who was that? I don't fucking know. Please find out. It's Alex's 10th appearance on Blank Check. You're here, Alex. There's this false narrative. You're claiming you've been banned from the show. At some point in the last... You just didn't do an episode in 2025, but it's only March.

37:10But at some point in that year, both Emily Yoshida and I conferred that you guys had gotten too big for us.

37:16Griffin Newman:For sort of the twin flames of Blank Check. You had just outgrown some of your core voices. Okay, so... In favor of Heavies and Famos. Excuse me. I mean, what I realized is you guys both left the city. I mean, not to... No, no, no, no, no. There's a bigger thing here. Okay. Okay. Bigger thing is you were chasing clout and fame.

37:35David Sims:The bigger thing here is the Coen Brothers series and the early Spielberg series were both long, right? Those two series basically comprised a full year. We knew we were doing Lin Ramsey after Spielberg. Is that right on the timing? No.

37:51Griffin Newman:After Spielberg, then it's Heckerling, and then it's Coen's.

37:54David Sims:Oh, yes. I'm sorry. That's what it is. We knew we were doing Lynn Ramsey after Coen's. So we didn't book Yoshida on a Coen's because we knew she had to do more of her and cowler. Right. The thing with you is we have a group text called News and Deals. It is the three of us, Hitmaker Simons, David Lowery, and Sean Fennessey. Sean Hollywood Fennessey. Yes. Sean Hollywood Fennessey. Tim Hitmaker Simons. Yep. David, everything's bigger in Texas, Lowery.

38:22Griffin Newman:David, really lovely man, Lowery.

38:24David Sims:Gentle soul, Lowery.

38:26Griffin Newman:in a thread that's like heavy on shit talking, David's really there for like, I feel like a really more pure energy. I invited David to it because I was simultaneously getting a endless flurry of texts from this group text and David the day the first one battle after another trailer came out. And I was like, David, would you like to - Let's just combine these threads. This was similarly,

38:44David Sims:we had a group text with Fantasy. We had a group text with Tim. Right. Both of them were trending towards physical media news and deal announcements. We combined them. And then I had, This is maybe the single act I'm proudest of in my entire life. Wow. What are you going to say? One day I say to the group, what do you think about introducing ARP to this group text? It was important. Because things are a little too staid here. Right, we're all a little too aligned here.

39:10Griffin Newman:Everyone kind of agrees on everything. There's no spice. Like the biggest controversy is Hitmaker not liking Zodiac. Who cares? You know, we all know he's wrong. He's getting riled up about it. Right.

39:19David Sims:And it's been the greatest choice. You roll a grenade in there every other day. It's improved all of our lives. You bring us so much joy and happiness. I just don't have much else to do. So I can devote a lot of time and thought. You're a busy man. You're a father. But very often we will give news and deals first crack. That's true. If we've settled on a miniseries or we're like, hey, March Madness feels like it's trending this way. That happened in this miniseries and I said two movies and you're like, oh, that's gone already. Peter Weir? Yeah. What did he say? The second you said we're doing Weir, I was like, I just revisited Truman Show.

39:52You're like, JD's doing Truman Show. Yeah.

39:53David Sims:When the Coens looked like they were going to win March Madness, we threw out to you guys, what were your Coens picks? B. Everyone else has a choice. You say... Okay, he has it up. So this is going to be a verbatim line. Because Yoshida brought this up to me and was like, yeah, Arp and I have been complaining that we both feel like we've been shadowbanned. I'm like, you're doing an episode right now. As am I. And this is what Arp's not explaining to you. You said, I'd request Hail Caesar, a movie that so doesn't exist, it took me 20 minutes to remember. This is me talking. Yes. Yes. Then Sims says...

40:24Another great Cinematrix play. Because no one remembers all these people that are in the movie for one scene.

40:28David Sims:No, we thought you were just making a comment about the public rudely not remembering this film. Sims says... CBS Films failed that one. That's a great art... That was Inside Llewyn Davis. Okay, whatever. Hail Caesar was universal. Sure. David says, that's a great art pick. A great film. And then like a month later, I was listening to some other episode and someone, David's like, oh, I just got a text from a friend of mine. She's going to do Hail Caesar. And I was like, I guess that's... There goes that. I say five-star masterpiece. You give it a thumbs down. You respond another chance post-Holo Man to talk about what a dud Brolin is to me.

41:01David Sims:That's right. I say, Alex, you're coming in ice cold with this shit. You are. You were. I reversed course on Brolin for weapons. I really liked him in that.

41:10Griffin Newman:He's good in weapons. But then he was in something else after that that he was bad in again. What else was he in in the back half of last year? He was in The Running Man and Wake Up Dead Man. I was Wake Up Dead Man, but I was like, this is boring. I mean, I feel like Wake Up Dead Man, he has kind of a boring role.

41:24David Sims:Go ahead. Later, fantasy swinging in with his love of Buster Scruggs. You give that a thumbs down. Relevant for the film today, because this, to me, is almost as good of a last film as you guys have covered. And that is, to me, almost as bad of a last film as you guys have covered.

41:41Griffin Newman:This is exactly the kind of spice and flavor that Blank Check needs. You said that you can see watching this movie that Peter Weir felt like he was ready to hang it up, which is what I felt watching Buster Scruggs at Walter Reed a truly dispiriting screening. Fantasy says

41:53David Sims:at Alice Tully. The Netflix effect makes it non-existent sadly. You go that plus it's a gentleman six. It is so funny to me how unsuccessful how you don't drive away dolls are financially. I've seen neither. And then Sean Still true. Sean posts a picture of Tom Waits panning for gold and writes Alex looking for hot text.

42:13Griffin Newman:Solid little meme there. Yeah. Little group text meme.

42:17David Sims:Then Sims sends to me his breakout text with you one-on-one. We love it. Oh, from like years earlier? I think it's from years earlier, right. The Coen brothers are old guard with nothing new to offer. Buster Scruggs was embarrassing. Truly embarrassing. I dug it up. Hail Caesar should have been the last one. It's just Coen's by the numbers. That's right, yeah.

42:37Griffin Newman:Kind of, when they have numbers, they're pretty good at IMO.

42:40David Sims:Like four months ago, you texted us. You went, Fargo sucks. No, I didn't say it sucks. Embarrassing Francis McDormand. It is. That is an embarrassment. That is an embarrassing way. And then you spend six months being like, the blank check guys are big timing me. They won't have me on. You were saying every Coen Brothers thing is embarrassing. Not everyone. Just to me, like, Peter Weir is a guy. I don't think I have a movie of his in my brain that's below a three-star film. So great that we got you on for this series. That is true. I wanted you to do Weir for a long time. We're doing them. But to me, I feel like that is a body of work that has some real lows for me.

43:14Griffin Newman:I would agree that Peter Weir's basement is three stars. He simply can't make a bad movie, in my opinion. No, he did not make a bad movie. Largely because he changes what he's doing so much. Sure, yeah. And because oftentimes his instincts are just, this is what's so sad to me about the industry failing him, as Mr. Hawk pointed out, and as obvious from this movie's release and everything. Like, how can we fail a guy like this?

43:41David Sims:Sure. Did we fail him? He had an enormously successful career. But like the contraction that happened in the 2010s, you know, he's like the kind of guy you picture a scene, like some guy who's been at the company for 25 years has been a top salesman gets brought in. It's like, listen, we're just making some cuts and we got to let you go. And it's like, I've been here forever. I've done so much for you. And it's like, it's not personal. We just, we just got to kind of say goodbye. Like we're going to offer you an early retirement, but I still have work in me. It's like, no, I'm sorry. You just kind of have to go away.

44:12and he's someone it's like if even he couldn't get the means after and this is a good movie like this isn't like yikes Tarantino's right people really should hang it up this has everything in it that he's good at

44:25David Sims:yes this is a respectable final film right now I'm always saying

44:29Griffin Newman:Tarantino's right this is the moment for that he's right about everything he keeps getting more right I don't see anybody selling any Tarantino was a dope shirts maybe Paul Dano should sell some of his friend long year. Do you think McDormand's an embarrassing win because Emily Watson should have won? Sure. Emily Watson, obviously very powerful. Obviously, I hate this kind of like hindsight. Like, well, you know, she's going to get two more awards, but like she's barely in the movie for 30 minutes. Well, that's just crazy. I mean, you're just immediately, you're just on the crazy trip. If she won for supporting, I'd be like, fine, whatever.

45:02The Emily Watson performance in Breaking the Waves is, I think, one of the 10 best screen performances I have ever seen. It's an incredible performance, but this is just silly.

45:09Griffin Newman:It's like, it's the Oscars. The movie where Emily Watson is the - But I cannot believe that even got nominated. Is like, railed constantly because Stellan Skarsgård got paralyzed. Like, the fucking insane Lars von Trier movie. It's like, the nom is the reward. Like, stop being crazy.

45:24David Sims:You were also coming, you were coming in harsh on other areas of Fargo. You were coming in generally - My rewatch of it, I was really bored. And also like - It's a 98 minute movie. Yeah, I know. It's a masterpiece. I want you to understand that we don't shadow ban you from the show. Sometimes we strategically go, if you come on a Fargo episode and go obviously mid, I didn't want to come on a Fargo episode. They will rip you apart like Gladys. No, no, no. I didn't want to come on a Fargo episode. Also, at that time, I hadn't seen it in 15 years. And I'll say this. I asked after you guys roasted me on group chat.

45:54I asked every single person I worked at Kim's video with, what do you think of the Coen brothers and Fargo? This is like seven people I asked. every single one of them was like, nothing. I think nothing. This is maybe an example of... One person was like, I haven't seen it since it came out. No interest in revisiting. I stopped watching their movies. One person said, the best movies for normies. One person said... Now, wait, hold on. I'm just saying, I'm just saying... Hold on. This is why people hated going to fucking video stores. All I'm saying is that... Often, were they contrarian? No. Snarky.

46:30Snarky. Incredibly open-minded. open-hearted friendly cinema lovers okay I'm just saying front-facing yeah it's very interesting to me

46:41Griffin Newman:make strong eye contact yeah I'm simply saying it's very interesting to me that you can turn from one side to the other and have two 180 degree different opinions on the exact same body of work sure I was hearing opinions from my old co-workers that in other contexts would be sacrilegious I right and then

46:59David Sims:I would say yes you guys were saying opinions that if I brought to them they'd be like who are these fucking dorks? I agree with you that it is interesting that different people can share, can hold different opinions. I also think if our listenership was like, oh, great, I can't wait for the Fargo episode. No, Fargo, I never wanted to talk. No, no, he was never going to be. He's in Alex's defense. It's these later movies, Llewyn Davis aside, that I found dire. Yeah, I'm riding with all of them.

47:34David.

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48:43David Sims:That's the sound of me running the card against the chimes.

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49:45You know what the thing is about Hail Caesar that none of you brought up?

49:48David Sims:What? While we talk about the long walk? Fascistically muddled sense of the 1930s. You did write that in a text. Yeah, this drives me crazy that no one points this out. people who supposedly know what movies are, every time they go to a different movie in that, it's set in the 50s. Then why is there a fucking Esther Williams synchronized movie that hadn't made those for 15 years? Because it's funny.

50:06Griffin Newman:Who cares? I care. Well, clearly. I mean, that is obvious. Nothing in half of them. Million Dollar Mermaid was 1952, I will say. That is like, that's like saying never say never again was, you know. I believe that's exactly what it's like saying, but it just exists. It is like saying it. It's not presented as like, wow, we're making one more of these. And it's just crazy to me that this movie that's supposedly steeped in Hollywood history and the fucking, the Ray Fiennes thing, that is a 30s movie. He's visiting like a Ruben Mamoulian comedy of manners. And then they go to like a cinema. I think he's supposed to be a little bitch, but yeah, sure.

50:40That's also not in the 50s. Not really.

50:42Griffin Newman:I mean, they still kind of exist.

50:43David Sims:I'm having such a good time. Everything you're saying is like, the magic is back. These movies from the 30s coexist with these movies from the 50s

50:50Griffin Newman:in this pointless fantasia of nothingness. I know, nothing can be realistic like your favorite film of all time, Damien Chazelle's Babylon. Another film that I think presented Hollywood exactly as it was, right? Like that's an opinion you share. You're not saying anything so we'll carry on. Yeah, detestable work of art.

51:07David Sims:Alex's body is slowly from the toes to the top of his head turning red. It's working up his body like a thermostat.

51:15Griffin Newman:Hail Caesar. Look, you should yell all of this at the Coen and they probably go like, okay, yeah, I get so. But Griffin, only because Griffin said this is a movie you can feel the guy being like I'm kind of ready to hang it up and I don't feel that in this movie

51:29David Sims:No, no, no, I don't feel him saying that I don't feel the movie saying that I understand why the response to the movie would make him say that That's the point I'm trying to get Do you think he cared that much about the sort of fallout of his work after that much kind of career ups and downs? I think it was so much harder for him to get this movie made P.W. Than his other films, right? To discuss this to make it in a much scrappier way. It barely gets released. Guess who steps up to the plate? Image. Big yellow triangle. Second National Geographic film covered on Blank Check.

52:02Griffin Newman:I miss K-19 The Widowmaker. Yeah, and I would say, I can't believe you missed that logo because it's long. It's a really, really long pre-roll logo. But this movie really reminded me of K-19. I think it's better than K-19. Yeah. But similar kind of like, why did you think anyone was really going to be hot for this story. National Geographic. Like two movies where it's like, and then they suffered, and then they suffered some more. And let me tell you, it's true. They had this directive at the time of like, let's... It is dry. It's dry. Everyone's doing an accent, but they're different accents.

52:36David Sims:It's a lot of emotionally closed off Russians. Yeah, let's tell the Russian side of things. National Geographic's 2000s MO. And basically, what? Will you cover a third National Geographic film? Okay, what else is a National Geographic? Well, I looked it up, and I don't remember now. It's weird. I kind of thought maybe these were the only two, but there's actually others.

52:55Griffin Newman:I'm going to figure it out. I will figure that out, and I will crack open the dossier. Here are some other obvious ones. Of course, March of the Penguins. But we're not going to count. No, no. Let's not count the... Narrative historical. Yeah. Restrepo. Remember that one? That's a documentary, too, though. Yeah. There's really not much. This is kind of it. That's why I was fascinated to see that big yellow square come floating in again. There's the Justin Chadwick film, The First Grader. I think that is a drama, is about like Kenyan education. Okay. There's that movie Amrika. Remember that? No.

53:24Griffin Newman:Which is about like a Palestinian family moves to Chicago. These were all like good, you know, like, you know, civic kind of movies. You know what I mean? Like about like sort of weighty issues. Mostly it's documentaries. Yeah. So this is the final National Geographic film to be covered on Blank Check. That I think there's no question. All right. Well, then it's even more exciting. Unless we march with the penguins. Yeah. What would that be? We could do penguins Patreon. on? We've already done both happy feet. It's true. No, no. You farce of the penguins, march of the penguins. You march and then you farce.

53:57I mean, perfect series.

53:59Griffin Newman:A little this, a little that. Alright. So, following the release of Master and Commander, which Alex pointed out, got 10 Oscar nominations, 1-2, and was successful, although as I'm sure we discussed last week, was not hugely successful.

54:13David Sims:Incredibly expensive.

54:13Griffin Newman:It was very expensive and they wanted it to make more.

54:15David Sims:It was basically a financial break even and you You asking, like, why didn't he immediately gain, like, a new wave of momentum from Master and Commander? I think part of it was, well, is this a series that he's going to stay on? And then it was kind of in a place, a midpoint for a while of, like, we can't decide whether or not to make more of these.

54:33Griffin Newman:Yeah, and Crow is like, I'm only getting more addicted to sandwiches, guys. So if you want me, you know, to fit into that vest.

54:40David Sims:I'm either throwing foams or eating a hokey.

54:42Griffin Newman:Because Robin Hood, which is this year, I think, is 2010, right? Yeah. That's the last where he's like, I went back to the gym and it's like he at least like walked through the gym. He tightened it way up. As way up as he could.

54:54David Sims:But Body of Lies is right before that. And Body of Lies, he's...

54:57Griffin Newman:God bless. Well, it's just the character demanded. The character's on the phone all the time eating sandwiches. And I love sandwiches. I sent you last night in our text with Sean Clements.

55:09David Sims:Oh, that fucking Crow movie. What's it called? Yeah, I'm going to send you a Crow poster. I just want your reaction on mic to this. Alex Wall. What's the film called again?

55:17Griffin Newman:Let me just get there. So, yes. So, Peter Weir, you know, in between 74 and 86, he makes eight films. In between 87 and 20, 2003, he makes just five films. So, he's taking longer and longer to make movies. Takes him seven more years to make The Way Back. But in between, here are some of the things he was attached to. Because there were other projects. First is... I was surprised he did not have the beloved separate Wikipedia page of list of unmade and unrealized projects. He's a guy that should. He probably should. He has a ton. You know what? He deserves that. And if someone could get on that.

55:52Griffin Newman:Please, someone make it. First one is The War Magician. Right. A cruise Wagner at Paramount project based on a nonfiction book about a patriotic British stage magician who volunteered his illusionist abilities to help the Nazis. I mean, this sounds like Harvey Weinstein's like, let me out of prison. I can release that shit.

56:11David Sims:Am I insane for thinking that Benedict Cumberbatch has tried to revive that recently? Or is there a different... Benedict Cumberbatch wartime magician movie that is being made.

56:20Griffin Newman:Well, obviously he was a Doctor Strange who fought the Infinity War. Of course. This is what I love about Peter Weir is that there was this brand of like, well, this is a vast, historical, challenging thing that would have a lot of really great roles for our finest movie stars. He should do it. And he had all these projects for years.

56:37David Sims:Well, and Tom Cruise is a guy it's actually surprising he never worked with because it felt like Tom Cruise was a bit checklist-y at that point. Yeah, I mean, I imagine there's a... A guy who you would imagine he's both meeting with and saying, what do you want to do? And also anytime he options a book, he likes throwing it to Weir. When Cruz was doing that, Weir was in the kind of other key of Dead Poets and Green Card and Fearless. He's basically running through the early 2000s.

57:04Griffin Newman:But if Weir had just made more movies, but he just started taking a long time between projects. All right, look, Cruz had at one point been attached. At this point, he's just a producer on it. Cruise Wagner split from Paramount, obviously, in 2006. Amicably, I'm sure. Very chilling. There was no problem. Checks notes here. Cool and normal. At that point, Cruise actually reattaches to possibly starring, but we're lets it go. Mark Forster, your best friend, gets attached. And indeed, Benedict Cumberbatch was eyed to star. There we go. Now it is dead. The Swiss maestro himself. Just quick pause because I sent Alex a poster image and I want you to do...

57:45David Sims:It's called Bear Country. Your favorite Blank Check segment, describe a poster. So, all right, Kim, I get to do this. So Russell Crowe is doing a yoga pose. Well, what's the first thing right at the top of the poster? It says, from the director of Unhinged. Oh, that's the car movie that he made that came out that was, like, in theaters. It was in, like, 30 ,000 theaters. May 2020, let's put this thing wide. It got to break the record of being the first movie to new release to open in theaters. But, okay, from the director of Unhinged. That's, like, a scrappy, fucking schlocky, like, B-movie action film.

58:13David Sims:So what we have here is a guy. The tone you imagine is going to transfer to the rest of this post. Neon pink font with a kind of rounded look that says bear country. He's doing a yoga pose in front of a pool with a palm tree with the ocean behind him. What I can only imagine is Australia. I would argue he's dressed like DJ Khaled. I haven't gotten to the clothes yet. Okay. Because he has on... Noise-canceling headphones. Noise-canceling headphones, spiky, crazy hair. It's all gone Pete Tong for him, you might say. a kind of like velour looking tracksuit that is orange

58:46Griffin Newman:I would say Khaled-esque for sure but despite the yoga pose which conveys tranquility by his feet is a gun a hand gun that looks like it is a cartoon that was drawn onto this poster yeah it's not

59:00David Sims:the most realistic it's also just got like a couple loose bullets hanging by the gun Teresa Palmer is listed beneath that she's Australian

59:07Griffin Newman:Luke Evans also Australian is listed there he might be Australian. He definitely is. Or English. I thought he was Australian. And there's some other names and it says with Nina Dobrev. What am I talking about? And Aaron Paul. And Aaron Paul. Not necessarily who you want with the and to excite the movie. I had no offense to Aaron Paul but right, you do not want him in your and. And then there's some lady who's probably sexy but we can't see her in a lounge chair on the other side of the pool but she's blonde so you know she's Australian.

59:35David Sims:It might even be Teresa Palmer. It could be. Very possible. It could be. You could show me her face and I wouldn't be able to tell you. I was holding a lot of Teresa Palmer stock throughout the 2010s. We call those penny stocks. They were, but I was holding. Well, while we're on that subject, while David reads these off, above what Griffin just texted me is a series of unresponded to text messages where I was asking questions about gifts for Ben. This is a good... While Griffin has put me back, and it's just worth mentioning that Griffin doesn't respond to one-on-one texts, but if I ask the same question in a group text, he responds literally within seconds.

1:00:10Griffin Newman:It is an interesting phenomenon. So I was trying to spare everyone else an inventory of some objects for Ben, which I will now reveal. Okay, in the middle of the Attachies conversation, I guess we can just bring out a gift for Ben. It's a clean segue. So Ben, this is for you. Oh, shit.

1:00:26David Sims:Do you see what it is? Can you make out the proper name of this? Ben's going to come get this. This is a vintage boxed, dare I say really good condition, spawn action figure from T-Dog Mac. And what is the character name on here, Ben? Look on the side. And on the top right there.

1:00:47Griffin Newman:This is a future spawn. This is spawn from the future. So is this sort of like a spawn 2099 type situation? Yeah, but it's like a robo spawn, mecha spawn. There's a little like a sticker on the upper right hand that describes what his deal is. Part machine, part human, all spawn. That's very RoboCop-esque. Now it's funny you give me this, which thank you. This is awesome, Alex. I really appreciate it. I just feel like future spawn is in line with your pitches for spawn. They now have a future spawn series. Clearly they had it all along. And I just brought it here with me, Rat City. I just read the first six issues.

1:01:21Griffin Newman:It's great. I'm happy to give you this thing that I bought 30 years ago and immediately was like, this is going to be worth thousands one day.

1:01:29David Sims:Yeah, this is going to pay off. Has anything ever sounded more like a Ben Hossley pitch than, hey, I got a great idea for a comic book. It's Spawn in the Future. Yeah, so he's like a demon from hell, right? But yes, now he's in like a robot machine. Right, and you're like, cool. I assume it's called Future Spawn. No, it's called Rat City. That's what you would call it. I feel like Ben's always bringing lovely gifts, and I wanted to return the favor. There you go. That's very kind of you.

1:01:52Griffin Newman:This is so appreciated. Damn, there's some really good other toys here, too. Yeah, the line on the back promises a lot of good stuff.

1:01:59David Sims:Have I finally broken Ben into becoming an action figure collector? I'll never crack this guy. Do you see he's got a violator on the microphone? Yeah, no, I saw that. That's the bendy one. I just wanted to make sure I wasn't bringing you something you already had.

1:02:10Griffin Newman:Yeah. Damn, this is great. April 2004, Variety announced that Peter Weir... Put a picture of that in the carousel of content for himself. Peter Weir was attached to direct an adaptation of William Gibson's novel Pattern Recognition. Okay. In 2004, you said? Yes. This is right after Master and Commander. Yes. That, I feel like, that was a 2003 novel by Gibson. I feel like that was also a project that got passed around a lot. He rewrote it with D.B. Weiss. Okay. nothing ever came of it. He said, I couldn't get the script right and pulled back out of it. I don't know. Fair enough. The major one, of course, as we already mentioned, is that in October 2004, Warner Brothers purchases the film rights to the novel Shantaram for$2 million at the urging of Johnny Depp.

1:02:57Griffin Newman:It's a 1 ,000-page book. He wanted to beat out Russell Crowe, who was also really into that book. And now, I don't know what Depp saw in a role like this. An Australian heroin addict convicted of robbery escapes from a prison and flees to India and reinvents himself as a doctor in Bombay and gets involved in counterfeiting and smuggling and gun running which leads him to Afghanistan where he and a mob boss battle the Russians. That is what the book is about. I will say as a Weir fan at the time and a Depp fan at the time really I was like for sure a height of Depp I was truly like let's fucking go.

1:03:32I was going to say this sounds so good Weir's going to shoot all over the world it's going to be hard as hell

1:03:38David Sims:It's going to be like a hundred million plus budget for like an adult tentpole. Right. And this is, Johnny Depp is so at the peak of his powers right now that this isn't like, oh, fuck, Disney's agreeing to option Shantaram in order to make Jack Sparrow happy. This is Warner Brothers, a company he doesn't really do movies with. Everyone is just... He starts committing some crimes. Sure. Both real and on screen. Everyone's like, truly anything Depp wants to do, we will make and make at his requested budget level with whatever creative team he wants. Yeah, he wants to crack open the window.

1:04:14Griffin Newman:Yeah. The secret window. The secret window. I mean, it would be funny if in 2004, Depp had pitched The Crimes of Grindelwald and he'd be like, what? And he's like, don't worry about it. It's going to, we're going to make it. But this sounded great. This is all, I mean, I'm not encyclopedic. Sure, I mean, it sounds crazy, but sure. I'm not encyclopedic in the unmade projects of Weird, but this to me, it was always kind of like the great unmade one. Because he was really at peak of his powers, even though he's probably in his 60s by now. Yeah, he'd be in his like early 60s, I guess. But Truman and Master and Commander, it was like, man, this guy, he's still the best.

1:04:41Mosquito Coast at this point is 20 years ago, and he's still got this power over movie stars and environments.

1:04:48Griffin Newman:Eric Roth is brought in for a rewrite, so obviously this is being taken very seriously. It's a heavyweight screenwriter. In 2006, Weir does enter the project, but then apparently he and Johnny Depp were unable to get on the same page. And he decided the pairing wasn't meant to be.

1:05:03David Sims:The page was, how many bottles of wine should we drink an hour?

1:05:08Griffin Newman:Weir says, I was involved for a period. I went to India. I talked to Johnny Depp about it. It's his film. I just wasn't, you know, it wasn't the right combination.

1:05:14David Sims:That's him being very diplomatic. Correct. But I think it's going back to what we're saying, that it used to be like these guys would go to him with their passion projects and say, I want you to get something out of me that I don't know how to get out of myself. And now it's like people like Depp and Crow trying to call the shots. Yeah. And be like, no, you work for me.

1:05:33Griffin Newman:I think Weir also at that point is a little paralyzed by having made a couple really heavyweight movies and just being like, well, I want it to be really special. I want it to really... You know, he's not just like, well, let me make a movie because it's good to make a movie. He was Best Director nominated for Master and Commander. And for Truman Show. And for Truman Show. So it's two in a row.

1:05:52David Sims:And for Dead Poets and Witness? Does he have four? It's four total, I believe. Yes, those are the four, I think.

1:05:57Griffin Newman:He wasn't nominated for Green Card or Fearless.

1:06:00David Sims:But two consecutive Best Director nominees.

1:06:01Griffin Newman:Best Director nods. Truman was snubbed for Picture, but he was nominated. Yeah. Obviously, yeah, again, with Master and Commander, it's like, you know, he's a... He's undeniable. He's a six-time nominee total, because also a Best Picture nod for Commander and Writing nod for Green Card. He's just one of the best. Like, at this time, he's just undeniable, like, a totem of studio filmmaking, where at this time, the script is everything. I got to get a great script and a great star, and there's nothing more to it than that. And that was always his formula.

1:06:31David Sims:I've invoked it in other episodes, but it's a quote that stuck with me in that same Ethan Hawk interview, he goes, he was that rare thing, which is an actual popular artist. He was like an artist of like intelligence and skill who made entertainment. It's a weird thing for Ethan Hawk to respect so much.

1:06:52Griffin Newman:Some other minor ones that sort of cross his desk. The Fox 2000 Project Shadow Divers. Okay. Every part of that sentence. People discovering Hitler's lost sub. That sounds great. Fucking rules. Was anyone ever attached to that? I mean, that feels like another project that I would occasionally hear about. Because it would be these nonfiction bestsellers, right? Yeah. Usually about World War II. And, you know, it's like, yeah, why do they get optioned and they sort of pass it around? But no, it's never been made. So, Peter Weir says, the thing that changes, I no longer work with the studios, right?

1:07:29Griffin Newman:When is he saying this? Like, he's saying this in a 2012 interview. but he's saying like from witness through master and commander that's my studio period yeah they no longer make those kinds of films someone from a studio said to me recently we're not in that kind of business anymore i've watched the market change this is all from around right after right around when last uh when this movie comes out when he has not yet claimed he's not retired but he's like what's changing he says i watched the market change moving towards what i would call children's programming okay peter okay i'm surprised that even amongst acquaintances and my friends of my children in their 30s.

1:08:02Griffin Newman:You revisit childhood by going to the cinema as an adult. I find that quite fascinating. I feel like when he says, I find that quite fascinating, he means, I don't like that, or I think that's stupid. Anyway, so he doesn't really want to make what he thinks of as a kid's movie. He wants to make a large canvas movie, which is basically what he's been doing. So he's looking around. That is fascinating. As this contraction happens, that he's not like, I guess my move is looking at dead poets looking at a even something like fear like his move isn't like i you know i've done that really well also yeah i have made fairly small character dramas right like a kind of a more widely that seems like a lane i'm in now and i it's not like well i've grown out of that sure even truman show is kind of that even though it's fairly large movie the book he reads that he in classic peter weir fashion which i feel like is always the case with the movies he makes it's like he can't stop thinking about it, he can't let it go, is this book, The Long Walk, which allegedly details a true story, although it seems like it's a very kind of like, we're not really sure, totally sure how true it is.

1:09:07David Sims:Was it real? Did it happen to the guy who wrote it? Did he steal someone else's story? Was it like a folk tale? Right. And then Weir himself has admitted that basically he wrote a fictional movie

1:09:16Griffin Newman:based on the account that is questionable. What if you escape from a Soviet labor camp in Siberia and march by foot through Siberia, China, the Gobi Desert, Tibet, and the Himalayas, all the way to India. And he's... What if you had to walk so fucking far? He's like... He read Anne Applebaum, my co-worker Anne Applebaum, who works at the Atlantic, her book Gulag. He gets very interested in the Gulag and like, you know, all this. And then the feat of endurance and the tenacity of human beings and survival stories. I guess he's never really quite made that kind of a movie, but that was kind of a movie in the 90s.

1:09:52Griffin Newman:Early, right? Like, alive. Peter Weir says,

1:09:54David Sims:I've gotten really interested in gulags and American studio heads are salivating. Like, you could not be swinging further away from the interests of the studios at this moment. Yeah, they want, you know, Guantanamo. That's like a cool prison for us now. We don't want to see Russians in prison. In 2006. In any Guantanamo-related filming, this was an era where they were all hitting big at the box office. People wanted to see movies about... Peter, are you interested in imprisoning men from the Middle East or just Russians? Because we'll keep greenlighting those despite audiences telling us, please stop.

1:10:28Griffin Newman:Now, I can't, I will mispronounce the name of the author of this book, Slavomir Rojcic. I'm not sure. I think that's correct. But BBC Radio 4 in 2006 had attempted to verify his account. They walked away being like, this is likely not true. That's offensive also that they walked away because that's kind of like hitting them where it hurts. He was a prisoner in the gulag. We can't find evidence that he escaped. possibly someone else escaped and he's telling their story something like that so Weir gets jumpy and is kind of like okay well fucking like I don't want to do it then if it's like you know controversial but then he finds that three men had done a walk like this yes and they do more research and so he decides to kind of re-fictionalize it he wants that's why he retitles the movie not because of Stephen King okay because he's like I don't want to be presented really as like a straight adaptation of this book that's a little you know muddy he goes and talks to these people.

1:11:24Griffin Newman:He meets this guy Glinski, Wilto Glinski, who lives in Cornwall, Britain.

1:11:29David Sims:Who he said basically was like his first major hire and was the primary consultant on the movie. This making of thing on the Blu-ray has a lot of him talking to all the actors about how to do everything and what it physically felt like. Come on, guys. One foot in front of the other. You know the deal. But basically, yeah, this guy is like a survivalist. Right. Who decided to like it'd be an interesting challenge to see if we can do the thing from this book. Did it with a group of guys. And then he basically writes a fictional movie based on this guy's accounts of what the emotional experience was like.

1:12:04Griffin Newman:Right. And he meets other people who had maybe trekked through the Himalayas. But, you know, he's coming to it as truthful as he can. He also hired an Applebam. I should have emailed in. I mean, she's a bigger shot than me, but she does work at the Atlantic, and I've been on many a Zoom with her.

1:12:25David Sims:Is she in the Slack? Can you, like— She's in Slack. Yeah, I could probably Slack. Could you ask right now, like, hey, anything you want to tell us about gulags? Quick takes on gulags? She's on the gulag beat for the Atlantic, you're saying? Well, she writes about, like, political oppression in Eastern Europe, by and large.

1:12:40Griffin Newman:She writes a lot about Russia right now. She does man the gulag desk. I really, honestly, cannot be flippant about this. I'm not being slow. I think our joke is more that what she's doing sounds very serious. And I like the idea of someone talking about political oppression in Eastern Europe and you being like, so here's who has three Oscars and why. Anne says. David, I wrote the book on the gulag. Anne says that Peter. Please stop sending me memes in the Slack. Use them as a sounding board. You know, and then she and other professors direct them to survivors and all that. Look, the way back, what you're also hearing in my accounting of all this is this took years.

1:13:22Griffin Newman:His process just seems so slow because he's so meticulous about research. But that also used to be allowed. That also used to be forgivable for these filmmakers that prioritized authenticity, research, verisimilitude in their storytelling. It used to be like, you're vaguely being paid to develop this while you do research for two years. And I'm sure Master and Commander had a similar kind of heavy lift of like approaching the time period. We also talked about it.

1:13:50David Sims:Yeah, I think absolutely. On the Truman Show episode, but like because Carrie's dance card is so full, he gets two and a half years to prep that movie while he waits for him to run through his other contractual obligations. And like when movies have major budgets like this and people go, why did it cost this much? sometimes like those are major factors and those are things that studios refuse to spend money on now i would say basically is like we'll let you work for like a year and a half with like a small staff to just figure out how you're going to approach this yeah and he really did the most with that kind of thing and that's the kind of thing where if you had a list actors attached they would grant you that because they were like well if it's mel gibson if it's harrison ford if it's Russell Crowe, we think we will make back that investment.

1:14:36David Sims:Yeah. Right. The money we spend on your research will be repaid opening weekend. But I lament that it is obviously dead and gone that he represents is like, whether they knew it or not, almost every time, these were forever movies. Like, obviously, Year of Living Dangerously is not like, you know, a basic cable classic, but buying, you know, these movies last forever. Master Commander is a great example of that, where I'm just like, certain that movie has gone into profit many times over now at the time of release it was seen as a you know break even even like dead poets just becoming like what what it is and but that was a major hit at the time and then has just become like an enduring he really just had this instinct of making something that wouldn't age at all but that was not the way they were thinking at that time and you also imagine if peter weir's like cool i'm gonna like not rush and take my time to develop this movie every six months that he spends working on this film, the chances of this getting made in any traditional way are like cut in half.

1:15:35David Sims:Also, like this only gets more old out of fashion. That's what I'm saying. Yeah, it's just like each passing year. It's like you're losing the last development exec at each studio who would maybe green light something with this and have the power to do so.

1:15:48Griffin Newman:No studio is making this. Instead, it's funded by exclusive media group Spitfire Pictures, Image Nation Entertainment, which is the film division of Abu Dhabi and National Geographic. Image Nation is still very active. Yeah, it is. But none of these are obviously like... They pay for a lot of Shudder movies. You'll see that logo a lot. No, I know the logo very well. It's a very... I know the logo. And I think it's a very tasteful logo. You have a tattooed on your chest. That would be weird. But that's when shit gets very depressing for me of this generation or this level of filmmaker where you see the independent cobbled together financing from all the people who are probably in jail now for one reason or another.

1:16:28David Sims:Yes, the red granites of the world. Yeah, financial crimes in their own country. And just the idea that he's going hat in hand to the Middle East trying to get$5 million for a chunk of his epic. This is just really bad when this starts happening. I mean, but you asking... As we sit here in the shambles of Roque, the collapsing nature of being able to support things that are just obviously of interest to audiences.

1:16:53Griffin Newman:I haven't done a deep dive on Roque. Yeah. Well, we keep sending you the links. I know. What's holding you up? I looked at one of the articles, but like, it does seem like they were like, we think there's a market for this stuff that's not really getting picked up at film festivals right now. And then they're like, it turns out there's not a huge market. There might be a reason a lot of this stuff's not getting picked up. Yeah.

1:17:10David Sims:Roque distributor that has like... They did Dead Man's Wire, right?

1:17:13Griffin Newman:Right.

1:17:14David Sims:Basically, like formed a year ago where like we got a lot of financing and there's more product than there are distributors these days. there's stuff getting left at the table at festivals and also there's not enough stuff being put in the theaters we'll buy these movies and we'll back them fully and we'll overpay because we know we basically need to pay a tax on being so new that filmmakers are wary to trust that we'll support their film properly what they forgot is when you do that you have to fail for like two years right and instead they failed on one movie and are now insolvent and there are like five other movies they've bought that are now like, are we ever coming out?

1:17:53David Sims:I sent the best, the best triptych of images to illuminate this narrative. But New Market. The Duff. Yeah. 30 minutes later, out of business. Yes. But New Market is, to me, like seeing that logo and looking it up, this is their penultimate movie. Yeah. They're out of business. Yes. Probably when this movie's coming out. Right. Essentially. And this is just super depressing. Yes. And this is, I mean, Their final, do you know what, did you look up Newmarket? The Newmarket chronology? Because their first film, much like National Geographic, is another film you've covered. Memento? Yeah.

1:18:29Griffin Newman:I mean, that's what I... So they have this like 10-year miracle run that ends basically with this, followed by the Joseph Gordon-Levitt heavy metal movie, Hesher. Oh, right. And then they're done.

1:18:39David Sims:Because am I mistaken that they were a production company and they couldn't find a buyer for Memento and Bob Burney was like, fuck it, I'm going to figure out how to release this ourselves. What we now call a black bear. Yes, it's a bit of a black bear. If you can't find a buyer for the rivals of Amzaya King, fuck it. We'll release it ourselves. We'll show you guys how much money there is in beekeeping thrillers. They were primarily financier production company, but then they have this run of fucking Memento, Donnie Darko, Real Woman Have Curbs. Donnie Darko was a giant bomb, but Real Woman Have Curbs.

1:19:08Griffin Newman:I mean, Whale Rider was a good sleeper hit.

1:19:11David Sims:And then Passion of the Christ is the most successful independent film in history. They probably didn't have a very favorable split on that with Mel. No, Mel took home the lion's share, but it is crazy that they released Passion of the Christ. They successfully got that movie to, like, record-breaking numbers, records that still hold, and seven years later they were done. Yeah, no, they were a major player in this mid-aughts boom time of kind of, like, big, small movies. Yeah, but they could, like, last for years of struggle, whereas, like, Roque can't survive one movie. And if the Wayback screened at TIFF last year, Roque would have been the only place that offered.

1:19:51Yeah, or it's like the Eden, Ron Howard's movie that's kind of a similar Peter. I like that movie. I don't know if you guys saw it.

1:19:56Griffin Newman:I did not care for that movie at all. I think we can all agree it's very strong. But that is to me like... That was released by Vertical. Yes, but that is the state of the Peter Weir type of movie now. Is that it's like, why did this person make this? What were they thinking? who on earth would release this? And then it comes out and everyone's like, what is this? Well, and no,

1:20:17David Sims:to your earlier point where you're like, why wouldn't at this inflection point in the industry we're pivot back to something like Dead Poets Society that is easier to make. He could have made three more of those. Right, because it's like that movie had a budget that maybe a studio wouldn't give him, you know, in 2005. The answer is he doesn't want to do that anymore. He says, I want to work on a big canvas. I was about to say. Like, I'm not interested. Yeah. So, like, right. You could more easily make a cheaper version of Dead Poets Society than you can make a cheap version of The Way Back. But I do think there's almost, like, a lifestyle creep, a, like, scale creep.

1:20:47You're saying Peter Weir is balling. Like, he needs the money.

1:20:49David Sims:It's beyond that. I think these guys get addicted to the challenge of how difficult it is to mount these big productions, especially... No question he... But that's the thing, like... If you're successful at doing it, you know how to do it and, like, maintain the story thread within it and, like, hold on to dramatic, you know, and artistic integrity, then I think it's hard for you to scale down. Like, Ridley Scott is a weird... I thought a lot about Ridley Scott. who will just throw in a, like, fucking Goodyear in between his big ethics. I thought about Ridley Scott with this movie a lot because they're very similar in a lot of ways in the scope of what they do and in their kind of hit ratio of forever movies.

1:21:24And for some reason, Ridley Scott just figured out how to never slow down.

1:21:28Griffin Newman:Well, he works fast, and the movies he makes can be a little sloppy as a result, although often they really are good. He also, you know, works with big stars, which I feel like Peter Weir is clearly getting sick of. Eden I think is a really good comp for the way back because that movie is also really dreary and about survival and like you know it's these people who went to live on an island and it's like it's based on a true story and they're like what do you think happened when in 1931 like a bunch of randos decided to live on like a random island in the Galapagos Islands I'm like did it go badly and they're like oh yeah it did we were hoping to surprise you with that like you know what I mean where they're like 50 minutes in they're like it's starting to get worse and I was like, yeah, I called that from the beginning.

1:22:10Griffin Newman:Jude Law and Sidney Sweeney. We're not going to recreate society.

1:22:13David Sims:Sure, but that movie

1:22:14Griffin Newman:was also like,

1:22:14David Sims:hang on, two or five of the hottest people and they're going to be

1:22:16Griffin Newman:doing some sex stuff. They don't do sex stuff. Vanessa Kirby needed to restart society. Sidney Sweeney showed up. She shows up causing trouble. No, that's the thing. It's like, oh, it's Anna Dharmas and Sidney Sweeney and you're like, oh, do they look good? It's like, no. They're like starving and like their paces are dirty. God, David's really throwing some shade on these beautiful actresses here. I thought it was solid To a fault. This is the same with Nuremberg, where everyone's like, oh, Nuremberg was good, including our friend Alex. Number two. Second best movie of the year. And I'm like, no, you guys are forgetting how good these movies used to be.

1:22:48Griffin Newman:That movie stunk. Like, it's no good. And it's all gray. And like, it's... Anyway. Forgetting how good they used to be. The way back. There's always a temptation to cast a nationality, Weir says, but that gets impractical. Sure. He didn't want all American. He didn't want all English guys doing accents. So he wants a mix of guys. He sure gets a mix of that. When Ed Harris started talking, were you guys like, that's cool. He's just not doing a voice. I did briefly go like, oh, so right. Are we just doing, but then like Colin is like, oh, he's American. Colin's speaking Russian. And I'm like, okay, so we're not doing that.

1:23:21Griffin Newman:We're not doing everyone use their accent. I was going to respect it though.

1:23:23David Sims:Because I'm going into the movie originally thinking, I'm going to hear Ed Harris full Irish brogue for two hours and 10 minutes. And then the movie starts and I'm like, Ed Harris could be playing any nationality. I didn't know it got this cold in Ireland. It's great. I'm looking at this. I'm like, that's why the potatoes died. They froze. Looks like the Arctic Circle here. This is crazy.

1:23:43Griffin Newman:So Ed Harris is obviously has already worked with Peter Weir. They respect each other. Yeah. And so that's an easy decision there. Another Weir superpower is kind of keeping people, not forever, but a couple Fords, a couple Mel's. Sure. Couple Ed's. Yeah. Interesting that Ed. Wanted to have a couple Ed's.

1:23:59David Sims:But Ed's like his like in the pocket supporting MVP both times. Yeah, for sure. For sure. it might not surprise you guys to hear that in this making of a special feature Ed Harris seemed really activated by how difficult this shoot was

1:24:13Griffin Newman:and I'm not being no he was really into I think he's also just into Peter Weir because Peter Weir is similarly intense with like let's fucking figure out like what bread they ate or whatever you know what I mean like let's do deep research get into the character Ed Harris he's obviously in the news lately with arm candy for Amy Madigan he's just the fucking best he's so cool Just like one of these, like, has been, he's never, ever been bad. Truly. And has never really been given credit for how consistently awesome he has been. Okay, that's a great question. Forever. What's his worst performance?

1:24:46Griffin Newman:What is Ed Harrison where you're like, because he does a ton of movies where you're like, okay, he's phoning this in. But that is, to me, I stopped watching Westworld, but that's the point. No, but I loved him in Westworld. Yeah, but then he started giving interviews where he's like, well, I'm phoning it in now because they changed the character and I don't like this new character. Right. It is true that they kind of are like, twist, by the way, now you're a robot. and he said he was sick of it. He was still good. He was like, I signed up to play the man in black. Now I'm the man in white. I'm phoning it in now.

1:25:10David Sims:But like, I'm looking through here. Ian McKellen said that once upon a time. I don't think I have seen an embarrassing Ed Harris performance. He couldn't embarrass himself if he tried. Like, I haven't seen radio, but I imagine he acquits himself better than anyone else in the cast of that film. That's pretty close though,

1:25:27Griffin Newman:because I haven't seen that either. It's embarrassing that he's in it. Sure. I would say that's also the era the sort of post he gets a bunch of noms era that early 2000s where you kind of feel like him trying to sniff for an Oscar a little too hard he's on the poster there well Paul he got so close but then so you have Beautiful Mind which he's good in he's really good in and I mean at the Gates which rocks I was thinking about I mean at the Gates during this movie we're talking about great Russian war narratives The Hours which like is an undeserved Oscar nom he's not like bad in it but that's my least favorite part of The Hours and it's on a movie I like

1:26:01David Sims:That's when he felt like he's in autonomic territory and it's inevitable he's going to get one so soon.

1:26:06Griffin Newman:You know what I've never seen is The Human Stain, which is a book I love. Right, I've never seen that either. And he has the most interesting part in it, if it's the part from the book that I remember. But that was forgotten.

1:26:18David Sims:But I also think he's starting to get into this era where, like, Beautiful Mind, for whatever reason, I was, like, driven to rewatch the trailer recently because I was like, is my memory correct about this? that the marketing of the movie was just selling the fucking CIA shit so hard. He's the other name on the poster.

1:26:35Griffin Newman:Exactly. The poster is Russell Crowe,

1:26:37David Sims:Ed Harris, and the trailer.

1:26:39Griffin Newman:No, it's Russell Crowe, a beautiful mind guy, Ed Harris. It's a tiny little Ed Harris.

1:26:42David Sims:But like, Jennifer Connelly's barely in the trailer. Right. They obviously don't show the Paul Bettany stuff. Like, that movie was sold. But they can't. He's not real. Right. You can't put him in the trailer. That movie sold itself as a badass story about a cool CIA analyst. And so the trailer and all the marketing was so Ed Harris heavy and then you watch the movie and you're like, oh, Ed Harris is the red herring. And I feel like History of Violence is the same thing. Well, he's obviously remarkable in that movie. He's so good in that movie. But you're like, this should have been an Oscar nominee.

1:27:12David Sims:You're like, well, but then William Hurt comes in at the end. He got consumed by Hurt, yeah. Right, the same kind of thing happens with Jennifer Connelly and like, he's used in a way that's making it easy to take him for granted because you don't walk out of the movie thinking about his character. We haven't even started talking about it. Did you guys rewatch Pollock recently? No. No, I actually mean to.

1:27:31Griffin Newman:It is so good. Yeah, Pollock rocks. It is such a good movie. He's so good in it. Well, he directed Appaloosa. Did you ever see that? He wrote Appaloosa. I believe. Did he direct it too? I think he directed it. Let me look it up.

1:27:41David Sims:Did he direct the Beethoven movie? Beethoven's Second? Yeah, yeah. You both said the same thing. I'm trying to tee you up here. Oh, yeah.

1:27:51Griffin Newman:Yeah, written, directed. Written and directed. I saw Appaloosa. Appaloosa. Did you see Appaloosa? I've never seen Appaloosa. I saw Appaloosa. do love a modern western it's very solid it feels like he kind of wanted to make Vigo I always confuse it with Hidalgo because they both have Vigo and they both have names where you're like yeah Agneska Holland Appaloosa's a a place and Hidalgo's a horse correct yeah but those are the only two movies he directed it's interesting he hasn't done more of that he's just awesome I interviewed him and he was so scary as I brought up many times on this podcast

1:28:20David Sims:Jim Sturgis makes a comment in this special feature saying like I always pitied the PA who had to go up to Ed Harris and tell him cameras were ready. Pity the fool. He pities the fool. Did you see him in To Kill a Mockingbird? Yes, I interviewed him for To Kill a Mockingbird. That was why I interviewed him. He was good. You can't act like talking about Ed Harris isn't talking about this movie. Can I bring up the Ed Harris stuff relevant to this movie? I want to say, finish your anecdote.

1:28:45Griffin Newman:No, no, what? No, I'm sorry.

1:28:47David Sims:You interviewed Ed Harris.

1:28:48Griffin Newman:No, it's fine.

1:28:48David Sims:What were you going to say? He wants to talk Sturgis. What were you going to say? David loves Sturgis and he's got a lot of Sturgis things. No, that he was like, he likes the good burn so much that they talked about, they built a set for the woods where they could control the elements just in case like, you know, the scheduling didn't line up. They tried to shoot most of this movie chronologically. So they had a large indoor wood set that they could redress and have a snow machine or have sand or whatever the fuck. and Ed Harris would like get to set every day and he'd be like Peter come on let's just go out there let's just go out there and do it if it's snowing we'll wake all these guys up at 2 o 'clock in the morning everyone would do it that he like really wanted to be in pain yeah he's the best he was good in Love Lies Bleeding also

1:29:34Griffin Newman:he's great in Love Lies Bleeding he's a guy who's now DeVal the only problem with Love Lies Bleeding is he's like I'm your dad and I'm like you're like 78 years old he's so cool but it doesn't really matter yeah but that guy's still fucked it's like DeVal when we were saying after he died It's just like, this guy just was awesome forever. Duval was awesome forever. Just awesome forever. And also was a guy where everyone was like, yeah, but he's kind of scary and a pain in the ass. And you're like, yeah, well, I don't give a shit. Only because he has such an intense amount of integrity for the craft of acting.

1:30:00Yes.

1:30:01David Sims:The other Ed Harris anecdote was that he was like, they were saying that when they'd be setting up, Ed Harris would wander off like 100 miles away from where everyone else was. It's a far walk. And just stand by himself. And he was like, it's great being in nature. you're in these places where no one is and you can just like Clint Eastwood you can really hear

1:30:20Griffin Newman:well we're comparison to Clint Eastwood says like I think he has a bit of a Clint thing yeah he was

1:30:25David Sims:like this is the privilege of being away from all the noise and the cacophony and you can actually listen to nature except you make a movie and there's always 140 fucking people yapping about and then Jim Sturgis is like so one day Ed Harris like the PA comes over and Ed Harris just starts screaming, can everyone be quiet for five minutes? We need to connect to the land before we film. And then everyone's saying, like, and he was right. And it was incredible how different the next take was. Like, this is all the stuff in the interviews that felt very suicide squad tattoo.

1:31:01Griffin Newman:Yeah, like then in the way back, which of course I assume at this point has been nominated for 10 more Oscars.

1:31:06David Sims:Beyond that, it's like, do you know that, like, Vincent D 'Onofrio gained 60 pounds for Full Metal Jacket? Like, everyone assumes they're telling the stories that will go down in history about the commitment to the craft and the struggle in this movie.

1:31:27David Sims:David? Yes? Got an intentional air about you today.

1:31:30Griffin Newman:Well, I'm more intentional about what I wear day to day.

1:31:33David Sims:Oh, interesting. I like to lean into pieces that feel easy, comfortable, and put together. I'm sure you could get those from anywhere, right?

1:31:38Griffin Newman:No, Quince. Look, really, I am. Oh, he's showing tag. I'm literally wearing quits right now.

1:31:43David Sims:Listeners, he's showing tag on Maine.

1:31:45Griffin Newman:It's been my go-to because very clean fits. Very nice fabrics. They don't feel like cheap fabrics. I hate dirty fits. I hate cheap fabrics. We're in, you know, the weather's getting warmer. I really rely on my quince polo shirts for the kind of like, exactly like a formal enough piece of clothing that I can go to the office, but it's comfy. Yes, because we do have a dress code here at Blanktick Productions. Unlike Griffin and David, I love the beach. I recently got 100 % European linen drawstring beach pants. They're lightweight, breathable. They look good. You can wear it on the beach. You can wear it at the beach.

1:32:27Griffin Newman:Or you can wear it and slurp down some oysters. Everything at Quince, it's priced 50 % to 80 % less than what you'd find in similar brands because they work with those ethical factories. They cut out the middlemen getting premium materials without the markup. So refresh your everyday with luxury you actually use. Head to quince.com slash check for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. Now available in Canada too. That's quince.com slash check for free shipping and 365 day returns. quince.com slash check.

1:33:06David Sims:David? Yes? My name is Griffin Eamon and I love movies. What? That's not what you say. You say? Oh, my name is David Sims and I love movies. Blanket. Blanket! If you love movies like us, you should be listening to the Eye of the Duck podcast named after the Eye of the Duck scene. Do you know about this? Isn't it David Lynch? He said every movie has a scene that defines the whole, the way the Eye of the Duck represents the duck. Every time we do an ad read for our friends at Eye of the Duck.

1:33:34Griffin Newman:You try to remember this anecdote. I do.

1:33:36David Sims:But on each episode of their podcast, they explain the anecdote well and host Dom Nero and Adam Volrich, friends of the show, friends of my life, explore a movie by finding its most essential scene. And right now, Dom and Adam are celebrating the films of Studio Ghibli. You ever hear of them, David?

1:33:53Griffin Newman:I love those movies. And obviously, we've covered some of them on our show, but not all. Not all.

1:33:59David Sims:And in fact, I will be going on their show soon to cover a film that was not covered in our series that I have never seen before. I'll be watching Pompoco for the first time. Yes. One of the most testicle driven animated films ever made. Is that what do you say? It's got a lot of balls in it.

1:34:15Griffin Newman:It's got balls in it, right? We will, I guess maybe one day we'll cover Takahata, but who knows? So it'll be very exciting to listen to that.

1:34:22David Sims:This is their first series devoted completely to animation. I love that. And the work of a single studio. So join them as they enter the studio of dreams and madness. They're going long on masterpieces like Hayao Miyazaki's My Neighbor Totoro, Isao Takahata's Grave of the Fireflies. And do you want to take this one?

1:34:40Griffin Newman:Yoshifu Mikondo's Whisper of the Heart, which we covered way back when. We did. We did. Great movie. Country Roads, Take Me Home, etc. Begins the series beginning with the 1984 classic Nausicaä and the Valley of the Wind. Continues through all the way through Miyazaki's final question mark film. The boy and the heron. Who knows? Maybe he'll make another one. And for listeners who want to go even deeper, Adam and Dom are expanding on that lineup over on Patreon. I have the duck after hours. Five bucks a month. You can get exclusive coverage of Pre-Ghibli works like Lupin III, the Castle of Cagliostro, hidden gems like Hiroyuki, Morita's The Cat Returns.

1:35:14Griffin Newman:Great movie that I've seen 100 times. My daughter really likes it. Wow. And Studio Pono X, Mary and the Witch's Flower. Not as good? It's a pretty interesting movie. That's from a Miyazaki acolyte, you know, from a trainee. Yes. Whatever. like an apprentice. That's all you get from subscribing to After Hours. You also hear weekly analysis of industry news, thoughts on new releases in film and television, recommendations for it to watch or play, yes, even video games.

1:35:37David Sims:I've been on the show several times over the last five years. They've explored a lot of franchises that we've covered on the show. I've gone on specifically to cover some movies that we haven't in those franchises. So, when they did Toy Story, I did a Lightyear episode for people who ask, why no Lightyear on Blank Check? You can listen to To that, Dial of Destiny I did with Connor Ratliff. They've also done the Alien franchise, Mission Impossible, Evil Dead, Jurassic Park. And they also will catalog movements, things like 80s dark fantasy cyberpunk space films and movies about UFOs. Yes. So you can explore the scenes at the heart of your favorite movies and follow Eye of the Duck wherever you get your podcasts.

1:36:16David Sims:New episodes drop every Monday, brought to you by the Morbid Network. I like saying Morbid Network in such an uplifting way. Brought to you by the Morbid Network. The Morbid Network.

1:36:40Griffin Newman:Jim Sturgis. Ascendant, as we said, possibly. Weir says he saw across the universe. Okay, if you say so. You're questioning whether he saw it? It doesn't really feel like something he'd run to. Probably likes the Beatles. Yeah, maybe. Right. He thought he had a quality. And then he said in meeting him, he has a very interesting manner. He's got a kindness to him. I was keen to not have a typical hero. I'm willing to believe that Peter Weir feels this way. My whole thing with Jim Sturgis is I'm like, he never has read as much of anything to me. Even watching the movie. He's just like, he's fine.

1:37:13Griffin Newman:He's like an adequate looking guy who's fine. He blends in with like these other five guys in the movie, even though you know he's the lead. there's no doubt that at this time Weir's told like this is a guy that you really want to put in the center of the movie and probably like you know he'll do it like right he'll fucking do four months in Bulgaria for you he wants to do it he wants to be

1:37:31David Sims:like I'm I'm getting like the real serious actor heavy lift shit you also you talk about this phenomenon all the time Art but like the guy who is bankable who you can get a green light for any project with this guy for like exactly two weeks you know Where Hollywood's just like, we think if we invest in this guy now, two years from now, he will be worth five times as much as we paid. So he is like a go picture green light activator. I mean, and it's a guy who either has like hits that you can't credit to him or hasn't had a hit yet. But the charisma is so strong in movies that didn't make money.

1:38:11David Sims:But this is what I don't understand. Because he's not a charismatic man. No, so that's the thing. Okay, but we must remember. What Weir kind of wants here, clearly, is like Mel Gibson in Gallipoli. Yeah, sure.

1:38:19Griffin Newman:I want to be finding someone who's young but has a little bit of earth to him or something. But Across the Universe was a colossal bomb. It was incredibly expensive. Is that like 07? 07. Then in 2008, he's in The Other Boleyn Girl, which is a movie that I think made its budget back and did fine, but was really poorly received. I don't even remember him in that. He's the fucking... He's not on the poster. Isn't the poster Banna? Well, because Banner's doing this while girls are thinking. He's Anne Boleyn's brother. I was going to say, he's the other Boleyn guy.

1:38:49David Sims:He is the other Boleyn guy. But across the universe... Sort of the Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead of the other Boleyn franchise. He was a Julie Tamar discovery. This is Amy Pascal, our Sony. Across the universe is delayed for a long time. And Amy Pascal loved discovering stars and keeping them in the stable and betting on them. so they throw him on the 21 which is also Sony and he's the face of that movie like he's front and center

1:39:17Griffin Newman:on the post and that movie

1:39:18David Sims:is a hit

1:39:19Griffin Newman:yeah it's a solid hit well because they let him they let Spacey be frank in that movie there's only one reason you make the money let him be frank and so that movie has made money like it made like 80 mil domestic like it was like a and after that I mean I assume we're getting close to when this movie starts to be made but there's crossing over aka woke crash right which went no way That was also delayed for years. Right.

1:39:43David Sims:Because Sean Penn was in it and he demanded they cut him out of it. There was a whole plot line with Sean Penn where he didn't like the politics of the final movie. And he said he somehow had the power to get his whole story chunk removed. Bob, honey, do stuff.

1:39:58Griffin Newman:He was in the film Heartless, directed by the great Philip Ridley, which I've never seen, which is sort of like the last time Ridley made a movie. This year, obviously, has the insane one-two punch of way back in Legend of the Guardians, the Owls of Gahool. He's the main voice in Gahool. Right. I mean, so, I mean, at this point, his agent is basically just imagining, like, how big a vault will I need for the gold coins I'm going to be making off this guy?

1:40:20David Sims:And then One Day with Anne Hathaway and Cloud Atlas are, like, the last two movies of what feel like the things that he got on after 21.

1:40:28Griffin Newman:And Cloud Atlas is one of my favorite movies, and it's one of those things where you're like, oh, right, and Jim Sturgis. Yeah. You know, like all the other guys, you're like, cool, and then he's there too.

1:40:36David Sims:Because then it's five years of movies you haven't heard. And then like Dean Devlin tries to make him the hero at the center of Geostorm. And then it goes back into movies you've never heard of.

1:40:44Griffin Newman:I think he's done some TV. Has he? No way to know. There kind of is no way to know. But he was the star of Feed the Beast. Of course. On AMC. And then he was the star of Home Before Dark on Apple TV with Brooklyn Prince. Of course. And then he was the star of, Jesus, Mixtape. which premiered on Binge. Yeah, why are you saying things we all know? What the fuck is going on? You're wasting air time. Okay, so he cast Jim Sturgis. Like, that sounds great for him. It just feels very, yeah, like Griffin says. It's like, if you need a guy of this age, he's, I'm sure 10 people passed on this movie.

1:41:21David Sims:Right, but like 10 years earlier, it's, or not even, like five years earlier, it's Ewan McGregor or it's Colin Farrell or it's, you know. Gyllenhaal. Yeah.

1:41:29Griffin Newman:With Farrell, as we often will hear about Farrell, I feel like they meet and Peter Weir was like, he's really fucking fun to talk to. hang out with. He had the, I was not going in thinking this was his part. He walked out with the part. He's relishing. It feels like this opportunity. to Eastern Promises in terms of art? It was 07 maybe? Yeah, it is. Yeah, 07. Really? Yeah. I thought it was like nine or ten. Seven. Okay, so tolerance for like tattooed Russian convicts is high.

1:41:54David Sims:Through the roof. The cue score is immense. The public is demanding it. They're angry every time they show up in a theater and that kind of guy doesn't show up on screen. Where's the guy with like a weird knife that he talks to? This performance I found very subtle and moving.

1:42:08Griffin Newman:Oh, yeah? Ben. I do. I fucking love. What I love about the way back is that you're like, okay, then they're all gonna die. And Weir's like, no, actually only a couple. And some of them will just kind of stop walking for other reasons.

1:42:21David Sims:They're just like, you know what? I'm tapping out. Yeah, Farrell's just like, ah, Mongolia. I fucking love Stalin, though. I was like actually bummed he didn't get a big dramatic death scene. Or just a big dramatic anything. Yeah. Ben, this is a tattooed crazy convict whose best friend is a knife. He calls both. What did you think of this part of the movie and the general dryness of this movie?

1:42:42Griffin Newman:Well, it was a subtle performance. Best friend is a knife. His best friend is a knife. You know, it's like one of the few objects he has left. Yeah. So, of course, I understand why it's so important to him. Reminding him of, you know, before he became a gulag prisoner. If Farrell wasn't going big in this movie, it would be tough. Because, like, everyone else is pretty low-key in this movie.

1:43:06David Sims:Farrell getting the and in this movie, it starts immediately. Farrell has the juice, and I'm like, I'm going to hate it when he's out at the end of the first act. Right, right. Because he's so front-loaded that the only reason he would get the and is if he has an early exit.

1:43:20Griffin Newman:And instead it's no Mark Strong exits in the first act, and Farrell exits in the second act. Yes. Okay, but Russian prison tattoos are fucking awesome. and it was definitely something that went across my desk at one point in my life there was like that book that was everywhere exactly it was like Urban Outfitters on the Counter book of Russian tattoos that's why you have those diamonds on your kneecaps right well of course uh Saoirse Ronan I mean there's no you don't need to explain casting her yeah but as Peter Weir says she's got an old soul she's you know so talented blah blah I mean like obviously you fucking cast her

1:43:55David Sims:here was my experience watching this movie last night you see her just her frame off in the distance, right? The guys see someone walking towards them. And I was like, oh my God, yes, here we go, Saoirse. Oh, no, wait, this is one of those movies where she's still a child.

1:44:08Griffin Newman:Right.

1:44:09David Sims:Just immediately was like, oh, right, she's a little kid in this. Yeah, I mean, she's probably like 14 or 15. I think there's a Peggy Siegel, Jeffrey Epstein email to that same effect.

1:44:16Griffin Newman:Almost definitely. She would have been about 15 or 16 when she made it. Really? Yeah. Okay. Yeah, she's 15. When's Atonement? Isn't Atonement? Atonement's 07.

1:44:25David Sims:Your favorite, the year you can't remember. Right. And then Lovely Bones is 08 and City of Ember is 09. Well, everyone knows that. Everyone knows that.

1:44:33Griffin Newman:I haven't checked in with the City of Ember recently. Going great. So this film was shot in Bulgaria and Morocco. Some shooting in India, I think, right for the end. So the Bulgarian forest became the Siberian forest. Crazy. Morocco is the Gobi Desert. Crazy. Okay, cool. They weren't actually going to be able to film in the real Gobi Desert or Russia because of problems that would come up with doing that. Bulgaria obviously has like old Soviet era studios. They're being used now. I mean, this is how you make the fucking any movie these days. Sure. Yeah. And they, he had to shoot on location. It was an advantage visually.

1:45:09Griffin Newman:It was advantage psychologically. I wanted to create true emotion for the audience to connect with these people. I mean, you know, they're all, it's what you're talking about, Griffin. It's like, they're all talking about this movie with so much integrity and so seriously. seriously. And it was so fucking hard to make it. And they're all giving these interviews, I assume, because these interviews are all from January 2011, being like, but it was all worth it to make the way back.

1:45:35David Sims:I just want the listener to know that ARP has entered the bathroom. We just need to quickly, I think, give some space to make sure no toilets are broken. No oops are loudly uttered. I just want to, I just, we're a little bit on edge until we hear the flush right just knowing the history of arp in this bathroom um uh i was going to find if

1:45:59Griffin Newman:there's any other you know there's nothing else that's like really that interesting about how they made this movie to me honestly it it is they shot on location it was really hard yeah

1:46:10David Sims:we're kept saying uh he had this running bit and the making of thing about how he had to approach casting the locations like he was casting actors because they couldn't film in most of the real places that they walked through. So then it's like, which country is going to double for which other country? But this movie truly, like, had four months of filming across multiple continents.

1:46:38Griffin Newman:Right, right. And then the film exits production and doesn't have a distributor. Yeah. Like, they can't find a register. Now, it is like, it's post-recession, I guess. Like that's what we're is saying. Okay.

1:46:50David Sims:We're here in a flush. We're here in a flush. All good so far. Okay.

1:46:56Griffin Newman:The seat is down. Okay. But after like it basically takes until they play at the Telluride Film Festival and New Market signs on. So that's in September 2010. Right. So like it really was like touch and go if this was even going to get released in 2010, I guess.

1:47:14David Sims:Yeah. And I'm sure you remember it was just on all these lists of like, and maybe this is a chance for like an Ed Harris career.

1:47:21Griffin Newman:There wasn't like a focus to a campaign. Colin Comeback, Harris career capper, Peter Weir usually gets nods.

1:47:26David Sims:There's a Peter Weir movie that many people haven't seen, but like it might be able to score in a few categories. And then looking through it, it's like it basically got zero precursor noms anywhere, not even critics groups, and then just kind of got the surprise makeup nomination. You pointed out, like, both publicly and privately, that even by this time, the strategy of, like, the Oscar hopeful movie comes out December 25th was just kind of cooked. It's a nightmare. Even then, you couldn't... You couldn't do it. Put it in there that late, especially with, like, a distributor that probably, like, at that point, just one person sitting on the floor in an empty office answering the phone.

1:48:00Correct. Right, right.

1:48:00Griffin Newman:It's like, if you're going to do that, you need to push, like, an incredibly major campaign to get it, like, in front of everyone. one in this movie. It's like, no, but they walk, their skin got so dry and people were like, uh-huh. Ben, I mean, you like the dryness, right? One of the, one of the drier movies. It's very dry. Because you were probably, because you're watching Mosquito Coast, you're like, this is the damp and muggy, I don't like this. Yeah, no, it looked really unpleasant. Way too buggy. Except for the mosquito part of this movie, which is fucked up. It's so fucked up. I have to say that it looked unpleasant being in the desert.

1:48:33Griffin Newman:So you figured walking across the movie Maybe desert by yourself with no possessions would be easy. But actually, it seems like pretty shitty. Yes. Now, Ben, you were saying that you ran out of your lozenges that you're fixated on now. Have you considered sucking on pebbles? Hot pebbles? Not just any pebble. Yeah. It'll keep your mouth salivating.

1:48:52David Sims:Just get a little moisture out of it. You don't have to keep buying them. You can just find them and carry them around in your pocket. Yeah, you save money.

1:48:57Griffin Newman:Less sugar intake, too, by far. I kept thinking. You know, pebbles have almost no sugar. It's actually crazy we don't eat them all the time. I would surprise people if Ben came in one day saying like, you know what I've started doing is sucking on rocks. I think I'd be a little alarmed. I didn't say you'd be, wouldn't be alarmed. I said you wouldn't be surprised. And then we find out

1:49:14David Sims:he's selling bags of rocks. I become a rock influencer. It's my new diet trick. Yeah, rock sucking. Suck on rocks. I kept thinking.

1:49:21Griffin Newman:It works. I mean, everyone in this movie is shedding the pounds. That's true. Yeah. They're looking true. It'd be funny if like Gustav Sarsgaard kept getting fatter. I'm like, how are you doing this? Like there's one guy on the. He's got a stash of fluff for no sandwiches. I actually found a cotton candy machine. I haven't told you guys. That's always a good bit. David, did you overall like this movie? I think this movie's pretty good. Yes, I was basically dreading watching it a little bit and certainly there are parts of it that are sad and I was sad when people died and so on and so forth. But like the sort of procedural, I just felt like it wasn't too heavy on the Revenant style.

1:50:01Griffin Newman:this was so punishing you must be punished as they were punished I had this thought

1:50:07David Sims:many times while watching the film I definitely prefer this to The Revenant because it's not doing that it's not like shoving your face into the dog shit yeah

1:50:15Griffin Newman:and many a true story type movie don't you understand how bad this was and I'm like yes maybe it's because I've already seen this but I never thought this movie was that just because it was at a time where that wasn't really in vogue of like the point of this movie as a miserable experience. But my other fear, of course, was there's going to be kind of treacly of this sort of like, ah, the human spirit and endures, which it doesn't lean into that at all. It's not that at all. The end is truly like, all right, see you guys. Instead it has like lovely little moments that I like of dialogue and like, you know, character.

1:50:46There's so much stuff in the middle of the movie where like, just his eye is so great. Like his, some of the, like this is a guy, Peter Weir, you know he's making people wait around to get a 10 second shot at sunset. Totally. You know he's making everyone stand in one place for 45 minutes until the sun is perfect for a

1:51:02David Sims:shot that serves no narrative purpose. And the shot is worth it. It doesn't feel like it's indulgence, right? It doesn't feel like it's sort of him self-stylizing. And then Harris is there like shadowboxing being like, this is what we're here for. Just wait in the

1:51:14Griffin Newman:hot setting sun. I feel like everyone's on board in that way, right? Like, yes, this is what I want to be doing. They like the focus.

1:51:21David Sims:They like the discipline

1:51:22Griffin Newman:of it. Do you like survival? That's what I was going to ask these two. Prison break movies. Because you're talking about The Revenant, which doesn't occur to me at all. I'm watching this thinking like Papillon, Runaway Train. I'm thinking of like people who break out of jail and the movie is like, if you don't keep moving, you will get caught and you will die. Because you guys famously are outdoorsy people, love hiking.

1:51:44David Sims:I was wondering how you related to that aspect of the film. I mean, I simply would not do this. How long would you

1:51:50Griffin Newman:survive?

1:51:50David Sims:If I'm in the movie way back at minute five, I eat a bowl of bullets. I just swallow them. I did I'm in the gulag.

1:51:59Griffin Newman:I kept saying to Forky, like, I think by this point I'm dead. By this point, I'm definitely dead. Like, dead here, dead here. I think Griffin would do well in the gulag. I don't think you'd want to leave. That's actually not a bad thing. You'd be one of those guys being like, hey, I drew like a naked lady on a piece of paper. You know, three cigarettes, please. Three hots and a cot? I don't think they got a lot of hots or cots. It was pretty rough there.

1:52:20David Sims:One cold and a floor?

1:52:21Griffin Newman:Yeah, it's kind of more than that. One and a half colds and a floor.

1:52:25David Sims:I do like a mattress. So that's maybe where I'd be struggling. But I do think I'd make friends.

1:52:30Griffin Newman:I'm imagining you showing up to the Gulag and they're like, what's your name? And you're like, just FYI, I do like a mattress. I feel like Griffin's role in my file. His role in the way back is kind of Rob Schneider and Judge Dredd, where you're just walking across the wasteland and everyone's like, this guy is still talking. That's the meanest thing you've ever said to me. If you were in the way back, not in real life, but if it was life or death, I think that would be the vibe you bring.

1:52:54David Sims:I think I'd be at the midpoint between that and Mark Strong. Okay. Right? Where it's like, this guy doesn't really want to escape. Right. I like that conception of this character. But he finds a way to keep himself entertained. Right. Tell him the story. That's the Mark Strong. Right. He talks about escaping as a way to kind of get through the days. Or you'd be like Mr. Burns when it's the Fighting Hellfish or the Flying Hellfish flashback. And he wakes up on the cot. And they're like, hey, you're not dead.

1:53:16Griffin Newman:Yes. I would just to your movie. Like, Papillon's a movie I find a smidge. It's a bit of a slog. It's got cool stuff. Runaway Train I like because one it's on a train well that's true and two that movie is bananas cold it is cold but I mean like that's something where Jon Voight was like bigger and the director was like uh huh and Jon Voight was like what if I went even bigger the director was like uh huh and that just kept going and going and Eric Roberts he's insane in that movie have you seen Runaway Train? yeah these movies are more alike to me because this is a World War II movie but not really this is why very not barely at all but it fits into our at-home syllabus of World War II.

1:53:56But even re-watching it, it's interesting because the Russian experience of World War II is entirely inscrutable to Americans. You're never taught it. It's not part of the history. I mean, it is, but it's not part of the history you learn. And the average person couldn't describe even vaguely what Russia was doing during World War II because they're both like... Average American. The average, well, yes, not the average human on Earth. But like, it is very hard to understand. Yeah. And this movie is that. But it also, I mean, well, I mean, literally, partially, but you know, it's a World War II movie in spirit, but it has no combat.

1:54:31It's not about the Eastern Front.

1:54:33Griffin Newman:And these are all enemies of the Soviet Union. Yeah. Which is why they're in the Gulag. But you know who else was enemies of the Soviet Union? Adolf Hitler. Yeah. See, that's why people get confused about this. They sure do. It's like, wait, if they were fighting against the Nazis, why are they imprisoning people who seem okay? And it becomes very confusing. And as Anna wanted me to point out, Russia was just basically in the middle of purging their entire population anyway. And they were using this as a fine opportunity to continue their essentially reign of terror. And I like the setup.

1:55:06David Sims:I mean, it's just, I guess, historically accurate, but that the gulags at this point in time are like half criminals, half political criminals. So you got guys like Colin Farrell alongside guys like Ed Harris, who's just like an engineer who moved to Russia for work and is now right.

1:55:22Griffin Newman:That's subversive. And so he's, you know, and like Janusz, Jim Sturgis is Polish. And of course, the Soviets conquered Poland when they were allied with Hitler. His wife sells him out at the beginning of the movie.

1:55:36David Sims:I mean, she's coerced into.

1:55:39Griffin Newman:Right.

1:55:39David Sims:Right, and then she thinks he will break. Right. Yes, in interrogation. I mean, I agree with you guys that this movie is good, right?

1:55:49Griffin Newman:It's pretty good. I mean, I did not think it was a masterpiece. I was sort of a little, you know, whelmed, but I had fairly low expectations, so I was like, right, no, this is a well-made movie, and he's a good director, and what was I thinking? I just don't think he could fumble. Even with half the resources he wants, his eye, his instincts, like, I hate this phrase. I hate when people are like, this director always knows exactly where to put the camera. So does everybody in front of the actors. Like, this is an insane sentence. But his instincts of, like, visual storytelling are so muscular, even in a drama, even in Dead Poets Society.

1:56:22He can't ever frame things in a way that you're not like, this is cool looking. This place feels real. These actors are in the moment. And he's in complete control. And this movie is totally solid. Like, I'm not saying it's even, you know, it could only not be in the top five of his because his highs are untouchable. But, I mean, the response to it or the new market dumping of it, its non-existence is totally undeserved.

1:56:47David Sims:Well, it's a really strong representation of this exact moment in film history where things are just kind of like falling apart. And no one knows, you know, like, is there a way to make these movies anymore? Well, that's why I found it fascinating and called it months ago. Yes. Just because it is that to me. And he's really just, you know, I mean, he would have been the top of anyone. I'm sure there was a time where he was ahead of Ridley Scott on people's lists. Yeah. I also, I think like everything. But he never made, like, what's it?

1:57:14Griffin Newman:Like, you know, he didn't have a blade. Ridley had a really terrible 90s. I mean, like, in between Thelma and Louise and Gladiator, Ridley makes movies people don't like it. What would you rather watch, White Squall or Master and Commander? Master and Commander. Okay. It's a toss-up. You're saying that's a toss-up? Oh, yeah. Both of these guys took to the sea.

1:57:31David Sims:Sure, right. But I think the better... Largely similar results. I think the better comparison is if Gladiator had performed, or rather, if Master and Commander had performed the way that Gladiator did, both financially and at the Oscars, what do the next 15 to 20 years of Peter Weir look like? And I also feel like... Versus that was like the second win that gets to the next 25 years of Ridley Scott being unstoppable. Peter Weir could have made Gladiator. Ridley Scott could not have made Master and Commander.

1:58:02Griffin Newman:I think Ridley Scott could have made Master Commander. It just wouldn't have been as good. And I love Ridley Scott. Of course, he could have made it, but it would have not been. Gladiator in Peter Weir's hands is, I think, an equally great movie.

1:58:12David Sims:Yeah. This is my struggle with this film. And I think I put it at the bottom of my Weir rankings. The bottom? A lot of, look, I think the guy's never made a bad film. So I'm just rating.

1:58:23Griffin Newman:He's definitely putting it at the bottom of his hands.

1:58:25David Sims:Things three and above. You don't like war. I don't like war. You're a real 4F. Absolutely. I'm flat-footed as shit. I got bone spurs in my arms. I got both spurs in my brain. In your face. Yeah. Yeah, carry on, carry on. I think what I was struggling with, and it's frustrating because I'm like, it is because Peter Rear has so much integrity, has such like control of the dial, and is like not compromising the story to meet the sort of like commercial demands of the moment, that I felt like I was struggling to find a handle on it. I think this film is like impeccably made. I think basically everyone in the cast is like good to great.

1:59:11David Sims:Like Sturgis is probably the worst and he's solid. He just doesn't really register. And everyone above him is like shades of excellent. All the sort of stuff that could be seen as like bravado. We're going to go out here and struggle. I'm going to fight to get like a 10 second shot just to prove that I'm like this serious of an artist. Like all of that is on screen. None of that is like performative chest thumpy shit. but I kept being like, do I need this movie to have 10 % of some Hollywood bullshit in some area? Do I wish this had like 10 % more adventure? Because basically from the moment they escape, it's just, we have a really long way to walk, right?

1:59:52David Sims:They sure do. The conflict is, are we going to die before we finish this walk? But unlike the sort of prison escape movies you're talking about, there's not the kind of like, we're being chased shit. I don't want Tommy Lee Jones on their back. But from the moment they escape, and the escape is not that much of a movie. Right? Then you're just sort of in like, escape is exciting. Is this a funereal march, right? How many guys are going to die? How long is this going to go on for? The other thing is you keep thinking like,

2:00:19Griffin Newman:well, for example, will Colin Farrell turn on people? He's obviously the wild card, right? He can't be trusted. Will Saoirse Ronan, she's introduced where it's like, what's this girl's deal? She's lying about her background. And the answer is like, she lies because like, she wants to have a more sympathetic sounding background and my parents were political distance. Yeah. No more lies, as Anna quoted. Right, but like, it keeps not doing the more dramatic, swervy thing of like they fight with each other. Which I'm respecting. They betray each other, which I respect too.

2:00:45David Sims:I'm respecting that it's not doing the endurance of the human spirit. They don't fucking come across like a bear that like tries to eat them.

2:00:52Griffin Newman:That might have been fun though. The wolves are settled really quickly. Yeah. Anytime it gives you something. Everyone is very respectful to her. Yes. Right, there's not like a creepy sexual element with her character. And her dynamic

2:01:04David Sims:with Ed Harris is probably my favorite part of the movie. But as you said, these are all like really small, graceful character brush strokes. Even the snake. These beautiful moments. You're right. When they're eating on a snake attack, he's actually following the snake to water. Yeah, because the water. Ana said, why does that look good to me when they're eating the snake? Because when hungry people are eating in a movie, they make it look good. But it basically keeps... Also, those wolves looked great. I mean, that scene happened is like, even in 2010, you're like, shit, he got real wolves. and it's like, Peter Weir's not fucking around with CG wolves.

2:01:33It basically refuses... He's telling the actors, keep your hands where the wolves can see them. Totally. They're not trained.

2:01:40David Sims:It refuses to turn any of these things into Roland Emmerich set pieces, right? It refuses to create artificial, interpersonal drama between the people. There are moments and there are tensions and whatever. And I just kind of kept being like, I'm having a hard time staying with this because it just feels like, yeah, this sucks. I agree this sucks. and it continues to suck. And I don't mean this backhandedly, but I kept thinking while watching this movie and then watching this fucking special feature of all of them talking about how difficult it was. And I'm like, that's not in vain. All of that is on screen.

2:02:14David Sims:But I like flashback to being in an acting class in my 20s with the great Elizabeth Camp, RIP, who was the best acting teacher I ever worked with. And there was a guy who wanted to do Long Day's Journey Into Night. And in this class, rather than just like do the text of the scene, she'd be like, work on the character and then present to us like a moment if it's a private moment or an improvised thing. But I don't want you thinking about how to say the dialogue right. I want you to try to explore your take on the character. Right. And so the guy just leans into playing the sickness and he's just sort of like curled up in a ball, sort of like an alcohol withdrawal, like shaking and crying.

2:02:53David Sims:And we just watch this for like seven minutes. And I'm sitting there being like god this guy's a good fucking actor this is crazy i don't have this kind of like physical control and like emotional like you know recall and whatever and then she goes like um are you are you done do you feel like you've done everything you wanted to show us and he's like uh yeah i guess so and she goes good okay so now we know you can do that right yeah yeah what did you probably told this story before what did you bring into this session uh that's a good question You rolled into a ball

2:03:27Griffin Newman:seven, eight minutes.

2:03:29David Sims:I feel like I was doing Tom and Glass Menagerie. Hmm. But then I also remember You weren't allowed to like bring in, you know, like a monologue from the usual suspects or something. I think you could have. Okay. In fact, I probably did at some point bring in some movie character. But I also ended up getting thrown into other people's scenes a lot where it's like In that part of it, it's like, yeah. Well, this woman's working on proof. Can you be the Jake Gyllenhaal part? And I'd be like, great, I'm really good at improvising math. So what did you think? Who did you think was, okay, so now that we know you can do that in this movie, we're or?

2:04:05David Sims:I think the whole movie has a little bit of that vibe where it was like, it's not that this is showy. It's not that this is, you know, hollow. This is like incredibly skillful and is like rooted in something really honest and like powerful. But then she said, like, we know you can do that. But like, now let's work on how can you actually tell a story? And it's not that I feel like this movie isn't telling a story, but I kept feeling like, unlike The Revenant, which I feel like, as I said, is pushing your face in the dog shit and saying, like, can you believe how hard this is and trying to make you suffer along with the characters?

2:04:38David Sims:I think this movie is maintaining a distance and is showing you the suffering that is mirroring what everyone was going through while working on the film. And I'm sitting there a little bit and going, like, I agree. This is, like, very impressive that they did this. this is objectively insane to consider any human beings going through this I don't quite understand what I'm supposed to take away from this I'm not looking for like a G.I. Joe PSA at the end Do you like Castaway? I love Castaway Okay which is very schmaltzy but It's very schmaltzy and I'm not begging this movie to be a schmaltzy but I do feel like Castaway has the kind of like Hollywood building blocks He needed a Wilson Yeah Well they had the knife I mean the knife is kind of the Wilson of the movie Wilson Wilson And truly like maybe Did they send out promotional knives for this movie?

2:05:24I didn't send out promotional shit for this movie.

2:05:26David Sims:Yeah, New Market was famous for their swag. Momento had some promo stuff. But I was like, if this has an electric young leading man, does it carry me through the whole thing?

2:05:38Griffin Newman:Yeah, I mean, I know Sturgis is really taking some hits from us today, but I do feel like he's... He's not bad in it. No, he's not. He's fine, but I think if you stacked up every weird movie and you rank the lead performances, he's the bottom. No question. Only because that is literally Mount Rushmore. Right. He's a rare guy that really did not pop in the hands of Weir.

2:05:59David Sims:I mean, even he launched the career of Napoleon in fucking Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure. That's so true. You know what might have maybe helped? What?

2:06:06Griffin Newman:And this is a part of the book that was not included in the film. There are Yeti-like creatures in the Himalayas that they mentioned spotting. A pair of Yeti. It would be funny if like one hour and 55 minutes into the movie, they're like, oh, and by the way, we fucking saw the abominable snowman. Anyway, moving on back to India. And the snowman takes them inside his lair and they're tied up and they have to escape. That's what happens in Tintin in Tibet. Not to spoil it. Wow. But Griffin, in the hopeless survival narratives, like the moment where they come to the gates of where they've been going.

2:06:42Sure. And there's like Stalin on the gates and they're like, oh, this is coming to us too. We have to just turn around. Yeah. Does that not satisfy the urge of like a tragic, ironic story beat?

2:06:52Griffin Newman:That beat is very interesting, but it's played very quietly. I really like that beat because I like them being like, fuck, like it's everywhere. And we are enemies of this particular ideology. So we can't go like we can't settle here or whatever.

2:07:06David Sims:This is where I am just personally struggling with the film and not making a larger indictment. Right. And then I love Colin Farrell being like, I like Stalin too much to go here. Anyway, I love it as well. But I'm like, this is a fascinating scene in and of itself. I'm really engaged in this scene. The scenes aren't like building upon each other for me. And it's just the nature of what the narrative is, where the fact that it's like, oh, they get here and there's this like dramatic irony of, oh, now we have to like find another way. But also five minutes earlier, the movie lost Colin Farrell, the most interesting character, because he was like, I don't want to get to that ideological threshold.

2:07:43David Sims:hold. And now I'm like, okay, so now the movie's like hit a cul-de-sac. And also we lost Colin Farrell, whose character bowed out of the movie because he thought this checkpoint was going to go differently. But now Saoirse Ronan kind of is stepping up to be like the third lead when he's gone. Which I think she's great in it. The two kind of Griffin beats that are when he suggests the tattoo should be on his butt. Yeah, that's really good. That'd be your move there. Stalin on his asshole. You'd be, you know, threatened with a knife. And the guy who just can't see and freezes to death. Well, that's who I would play.

2:08:15Like, what happened to Griffin?

2:08:16David Sims:I don't know. He has bad eyesight. Oh, there he is. He's frozen. What happened to Griffin? He slept in. He missed the escape.

2:08:24Griffin Newman:He couldn't hit his, like, alarm, which is just, like, a bunch of sticks. Oh, he hit it, but he hit the fucking snooze stick 80 times. It is nice to see Gustav Skarsgård, an actor I always enjoy, who obviously is largely, you know, mostly does Swedish movies. But yeah, he's really good at this. He was good in Black Bag. Yeah. He was good in Oppenheimer. He's good in Westworld, actually, to speak of Ed Harris' favorite role. So, Griffin, you feel like the movie goes off a cliff when Farrell stays in Russia. I would say it goes off a cliff. It does slow down a little bit. It loses a lot of juice.

2:08:58Griffin Newman:Saoirse Dying is a really well-done scene. It's beautifully done, actually. It is. It's beautifully acted and done. Yeah. But I am like, yeah, I'm a little deadened to the movie.

2:09:10David Sims:I think Farrell's the spark plug. Like, I think Farrell is the equivalent of adding you into the News and Deals group chat. Like, you need him there to create the, like, innate tension of, like, where's this guy going to go? Yeah, yeah. And I'm expecting... Yes, that is... I'll take that. Right. And I'm expecting that, like, as much as I'm going to be sorry to see him leave the movie early, it will come to, like, a head in a very dramatic fashion. There's nothing like that. No. Because the elements are like that. The sandstorm is that. The mosquitoes are that.

2:09:37Griffin Newman:Yeah. When she takes off... Although I like the mosquitoes, the way they deal with it is they... ask one guy, like, how do we deal with this? And he's like, easy, put this shit around your neck. There's some guy wandering around Mongolia. Yeah. When Saoirse Ronan takes off her shoes and her feet are all fat, Ana just goes, I remember this part so well. Your favorite part. I was like, why? It is kind of striking because they're like, oh, yeah. And she's like, I mean, you know, I've been walking a lot. And everyone's like, mm-hmm. You're used to the blistering. Feet is supposed to look like this.

2:10:08Griffin Newman:You're going to be fine. You're used to the blistering sores of feet and stuff like this. You're not used to this weird kind of puffiness. And then someone else has it later. Yeah.

2:10:17David Sims:Very, very well-earned makeup, Nam. Like, the makeup in this is incredible, and it is so subtly done that you have to keep reminding yourself that it is makeup. From the mosquito bites to the dehydration. You just feel like you're watching a documentary.

2:10:30Griffin Newman:It lost, of course, to the Wolfman, because that has a Wolfman in it. Well, the Wolfman swept that year, I feel like. It was kind of the return of the king of those Oscars. Picture, director.

2:10:38David Sims:Rick Baker. Best supporting Wolfman. The goat. I have always disliked the look of that character in that movie.

2:10:44Griffin Newman:We've talked about this, right? Yeah. You're not a big fan of the Baker job, and that's sort of like one of his big later in life jobs.

2:10:50David Sims:It's his kind of swan song. Right. To a certain extent, I think it's his last Oscar win, and he basically talked about the process of making that movie drove him so insane that he had his own kind of Peter Weir, like, I guess I'm not aligned with this industry anymore moment. Yeah, right. Like, he still did Men in Black 3. Sure. He fulfilled a couple legacy jobs, but he basically starts pulling back after Wolfman. And he views it as like, that was the last time I got away with doing what I wanted to do. And I've just never...

2:11:17Griffin Newman:Maleficent is the other one he did. But he didn't win for that or he did? No, he didn't even get nominated. He just worked on the movie.

2:11:25David Sims:Yeah. Yeah, I don't get that design. So once the movie progresses, because it's such a simple, literal movie. Yes. There's very little like, oh, what about this part? It's basically like, what about the mosquitoes? What about when they find the water well and they all start drinking water? So removing the schmaltz from the equation, right? What about when the Mongols give them a sack of water? And they say they're too poor for horses. And they're just like, okay, well, we have no questions about why you people are wandering around out here. I like all of these moments. Cast away. I am a sap, a contrarian, and a goofball.

2:11:57Do you like Jerry?

2:11:59David Sims:Yes. Oh, the Vincent movie?

2:12:01Griffin Newman:Yeah. That's the best. That movie fucking rocks. I put this movie closer to Jerry than The Revenant. But Jerry is like Abstracting everything To the millionth degree Which is so cool I mean Jerry rocks So the Bring back Jerry Jerry too? Jerry's? Castaway comparison Is Van Sant still on the Still on the board? Well he's going up Against your favorite filmmaker Of all time Chris Columbus right now I'll vote I'll let me vote We're sitting here Castaway has

2:12:25David Sims:The structure of problem solving Which is what I think I like in this type of movie When I connect to this Totally Yeah yeah yeah Which is the fun of

2:12:33Griffin Newman:Send help even like any island movie well also I mean this is insane Chris Columbus is winning who the fuck wants this over a Psycho remake episode I would love very much love to discuss the Psycho remake a movie I love but the other like to us like in the movies we like watching at home there's like the two kinds of this kind of movie you're describing is something like The Martian which has a kind of identical problem solving structure and then there's the kind of like seafaring adventure shipwreck in the heart of the sea where it's just like another thing of like can these people survive But in the heart of the sea is one that nobody liked because that one's much grimmer.

2:13:08Griffin Newman:Yeah. I think a lot of people like that movie. I think a lot of people find that to be like a really worthy seafaring adventure. Yeah. Definitely. I think a very popular movie. It was like a whale is writing that right now.

2:13:20David Sims:I think a lot of people like that movie and want it to come back. Even like All is Lost, which is not my favorite movie and is similarly like very sparse. That's not your favorite movie? It's not, in fact, my number one favorite movie of all time. Sight and sound poll. number one all is lost number two the Muppet movie

2:13:36Griffin Newman:where you're like I know these are unranked but just to be clear all is lost is number one

2:13:40David Sims:all four slots on my letterbox four yeah it's not some is lost no it's all you have to respect the all I always thought that was your favorite movie this is why I'm trying to correct the scurrilous rumor

2:13:55Griffin Newman:even all is lost which is not your favorite movie please finish your thought

2:13:58David Sims:and it's so stripped down and obviously like mostly no talking right wordless and whatever has that kind of like, okay, here's this one problem. He's got to solve this where I feel it stacking up. And I think this movie, I rewatched Day After Tomorrow recently. So did I. A movie that fucking rules that David's wrong about. Not a movie I like. But that is a movie where I'm always fascinated by its Hollywood junkiness where it's like, we can keep escalating the type of natural disasters that happen. And then you feel two thirds into the movie, them go, fuck. There is no way to resolve this film.

2:14:29David Sims:They can't undo the weather. No. And there's nothing for them to conquer. There is no way for them to score a win. Randy Quaid can't fly a plane into those alien spaceships. And then they're like, I guess they have to fight wolves. I guess like Dennis Quaid has to come to him. I always forget how late in the movie Dennis Quaid even starts his journey. It's over an hour before he's like, fuck it, I'm walking. I'm going to do my own long walk. And then that's pretty expedited. And I feel this movie being like, Peter, we're pitching this to studios. The studio is being like, cool. So can every 15 minutes something insane happen?

2:15:03David Sims:The guys have to try to kill each other. There have to be like big kind of like conflicts that they can like score wins over. And he's like, no, that's not the kind of movie I'm making. And he has like... You're saying he's Costanzo-ing it. Yes. And then he's overcorrected. No, no, nothing happens. So far into the, well, if I'm not making it with the studio, then I'm making it exactly the way I want. And I'm not going for any Hollywood bullshit artifice. And I'm like, I could use like 5 to 10 % more kind of like not wins. I mean, what you're describing is the way Mosquito Coast is structured. Yes.

2:15:35Which is like a series of builds and activities and ice transports and little things that arise and sort of endless obstacles that he's facing.

2:15:45David Sims:It's so focused in its bleakness. It's not like selling out the message of the movie and the integrity of like, you know, the character study and all of that. but it does have that kind of build that I think I was just kind of struggling to hold on to here. Every scene would happen. I'd be like, this is a good scene. And then the next scene would start and I'd be like, okay, this scene has to win me over again from zero.

2:16:07Griffin Newman:Where do you guys, once we hit the monks is when I'm like, I'm parking my ass here. This is great. I want to hang out with you guys. Like, this is great.

2:16:15David Sims:I don't want to go to keep walking. They leave at Harris there and I'm like, why are you not staying there? Because George is like, I got to get home, run. Ana was very prepared. I got to get home to my fucking wife. honest comment at the end of our rewatch was like I did not know that the point of this movie was like this eternal love that he has to return to

2:16:33Griffin Newman:I feel like they debut that notion pretty late even though it is the first scene in the movie it's the first scene in the movie and then you have a couple times where he has sort of the vision of the door which I like yeah that stuff I mean Weir's just good at that stuff he's good at that stuff there's so much of that in Truman Show too again because this movie doesn't have like over labored kind of monologues of like guys being like yeah that's my wife I love her so much you know like the photos and the helmet right it does take a while for him to be like oh no by the way like we got across the Himalayas right fucking now even though like clearly the wisest man you've ever seen was like not a good idea it's the winter like wait until spring yetis yetis there be yetis

2:17:11David Sims:this was another thing I thought while watching it

2:17:13Griffin Newman:that was the mis that's the mis

2:17:15David Sims:opportunity for me the other thing I thought was would this movie benefit from starting one week earlier rather than starting in the interrogation room. Giving you like Sturgis in Poland, being rounded up? Well, let's also say maybe, maybe it's a guy with a little more juice than Sturgis, right? Who is that? I mean, I don't want to go down this rabbit hole at this point. It's a really good question. In 2010. At this moment, it's tough. We can keep pointing to people. But this is also when like male actors started basically being hunted for sport.

2:17:43Griffin Newman:Who is new then? Is that more interesting? Or do we shoot higher? Do we get like Matt Damon? You know, do we get like a very established actor?

2:17:52David Sims:It's tough because it's like, if it's 2000, the options are overflowing.

2:17:58Griffin Newman:Yeah, but then you could end up with like a Tobey Maguire where you're like, I don't know what that looks like, you know. I don't know why I'm going to him, but he did occur to me.

2:18:05David Sims:He's Sturges-esque in his gentleness. I just think I realized too late in this movie, much like it sounds Ana did. Oh, right. The thing that's driving him is wanting to see his wife again. Sure. Which this movie in its stoicness is not overplayed. James Franco, like who made a survival thriller this year. Now we're talking. Yeah. Although like that's the better survival thriller for him to be in. It is. I'm not, you know. But you mean like a guy who's just kind of innately charismatic?

2:18:35Griffin Newman:Can be. Although sometimes Franco, you're kind of like, did you forget to plug in today, buddy? But I think him at that time would put himself in the hands of a master like Weir and he would rise to the assignment at this time.

2:18:47David Sims:I do think he wants a certain emotionality in this role though, right? Like he wants a certain sweetness. But he also, but the script doesn't support that because there isn't any of those moments of like, what are you going to do? What's the first thing you're going to do when you get back? Right. Kiss my wife. What about you? Hug my mother. Like there's none of that. That's why I'm like, does it need to start a week earlier so that there's some status quo of their relationship rather than it starting with him and the interrogation and her like setting him up and him falling on the sword, you know?

2:19:13Griffin Newman:Well, it doesn't make sense too because, and I guess the characters at that time don't know this, right? that the war will eventually end, but even beyond the war, like the occupation... The Iron Curtain will fall and so he won't be able to go to, as we see right at the end. So it's like the chance of him being able to go back and see his wife, it doesn't seem like it could happen within his lifetime. The postscripts that follow the fall of communism are very... It's like, wow, this is really consolidating decades of history into a series of title cards.

2:19:45David Sims:With footsteps over them because it's like, oh, right, he hasn't gotten to the end of his problems. The walk continues. I think a lot of prison movies, too, like, you gotta see some amount of their life on the outside before they go in to understand what they've lost. I don't think without exception, but I felt like I didn't have enough of a grounding in this guy to have him be the one driving the movie. I guess because we watch, like, 30 World War II films a year kind of in a row. Yeah. I'm like, I know what he was doing last week. I know what happened to Poland. Sure, sure. I do know what happened.

2:20:18You've seen Schindler's List. You know what happened to Poland. I have.

2:20:21Griffin Newman:I have. Yeah.

2:20:32Griffin Newman:David? Yes?

2:20:36David Sims:You know what that is?

2:20:38Griffin Newman:It's someone walking towards me. Who is it?

2:20:40David Sims:The sound of a new franchise on Blank Check Special features our Patreon feed. And I'm a little biased. the franchise is one belonging to my good friend Robocop. He's your friend. I sometimes call him Robert Cop.

2:20:53Griffin Newman:We've decided to collaborate with him by watching the movies that he's in.

2:20:58David Sims:No, Paola. We're doing this of our own volition. Yeah, of course. But we do, of course, acknowledge that he is a good friend. We're covering his film, his two direct sequels, Robocop and Robocop 2 and Robocop 3, the original trilogy, the greatest movie ever made and two movies that make me want to eat glass. And we will also be covering the remake, which makes me want to eat glass laced in poison.

2:21:20Griffin Newman:Yeah. But look forward to that. Also, we're covering the Billie Eilish movie, probably, as long as that came out. I hope it came out. I really hope it came out. But that's our series. Yes, and Supergirl. And we'll be covering Supergirl. And Supergirl right at the end there. Yes. And we do talk about Robocop's dick.

2:21:36David Sims:I don't have much to say. I really kind of sit back in these episodes. Griffin's quiet. He's silent. He takes a bow of monk silence. I just have some work to do, some emails to catch up on, and they're not really my movies. So there's not much I could really contribute to the conversation.

2:21:50Griffin Newman:So we're kicking off that series here today, June 1st. And that's a preview for what's to come throughout June into July. Absolutely. So check it out over at patreon.com slash blank check.

2:22:15Do you like those movies? I love Schindler's List. Do you like the Spielberg treatment of a World War II?

2:22:21Griffin Newman:Well, he's only seen St.

2:22:22David Sims:Peter and Prevariah one time. Gave me a fucking panic attack. I had to stop that. But I do own the steelbook. I own the 4K. Thank God. A commitment to re-watching it someday. Do you fuck with Fury? I like Fury okay Fury's alright Anna said last night after this first of all so excited to rewatch it then she goes man what a great movie really comforting I could see watching this once a year and I said really once a year she goes yeah I mean it's not like like really intense something that's hard to watch like Fury and I said Anna you watch Fury all the time she goes okay well not Fury but like something that would be more intense than Fury like two months ago I texted you Arp I want to make a pitch what if we put you on and I named a bigger movie well you'll probably have announced that by now in the next May We'll announce at the end of this episode.

2:23:03David Sims:Oh, okay, great. You're going to announce it in the middle so that people have to listen. And then you were like, why would I not be doing The Way Back? And I was like, well, I assumed you only put your finger down on Way Back because of the most irrelevant movie in a filmmaker's career. And you were like, you're forgetting that I like... War season. You don't know about war season. Well, you do know about war season. I knew. Can you share with the listener war season? Basically, like 15 years ago, we were driving up to Vermont for the weekend and we bought some DVDs at a gas station, as one did at the time.

2:23:31one of those dvds was uh ed zwick's defiance a film we had not yet seen we go to a snowy cab and we watch defiance turns out it's a masterpiece just fucking incredible i mean that's a movie like this also just like the ed zwick movie yeah it's incredible defiance for me is a perfect example of

2:23:46David Sims:oscar nomination morning defiance gets zero noms i go what a relief i never have to watch that drag to recycle bin it is better than if that movie came out last year not one not last year but two years ago it would be like well this is the best movie of the year if it came out last Last year, would he put it above or below Nuremberg? Above. Okay. Defiance is an excellent film that is really well made with three incredible performances from Craig Schreiber and Jamie Bell. It is such a good... It is what you are saying you want from this movie. Maybe I should watch it. It is an endless slog of hopeless survival set against inhospitable elements, but with that Hollywood sheen and the melodrama layered over it with romance.

2:24:24So we watched that and we were like, this fucking rules. Defiance is great. We go home. Our neighbors ask us to cat sit. we're feeding their cat. We look on their DVD shelf. Two things there that we're interested in. Schindler's List and Showa. Take them upstairs and we watch them in the week that they're gone.

2:24:39David Sims:Sounds like a fun week. So now we're thinking this is Holocaust season. So then we spend like five years. To be clear, my head is in my hands. We spend like five years in the dead of winter. Ben, can we commission a shirt that says, and now we're thinking it's Holocaust season? Now, wait a minute. With a cartoon depiction of ours. Well, Holocaust season is sort of the prologue. Wearing a slayer. So for like five years, every February, March, when it's just the worst out, gray, cold, cold, cold. Yeah, sure.

2:25:04Griffin Newman:And you've been in winter for months. Every year we're like, okay, so let's do like, you know, five, 10 Holocaust films.

2:25:10David Sims:Yeah. The Holocaust of seasons. Winter. Eventually we run out of Holocaust films. Uh-huh. Or at least, you know, the ones that you need to see or revisit. So then we say, now it's war season. We've expanded this. This is now an entire season devoted to World War II in cinema.

2:25:25Griffin Newman:Mm-hmm. now there's, we could do this for the rest of our lives. We wouldn't run out of movies. There are a lot of World War II or World War II adjacent films. I take it very seriously. I put together a sort of dossier, not a check, JJ style dossier, but a one sheet that I make our list on every year.

2:25:42David Sims:Right. Is it always fresh films every year? No, no. There's stuff that's been on there forever. Like there's stuff that it's like, we just watched Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence. Okay. And I was like, this has been on the list since before I started printing them. Oh, like I have handwritten pieces of paper. I mean, are they all blind watches? No, no. Are you throwing in rewatches? Oh, no. We always rewatches are a very important part of it, such as The Way Back. On his birthday, it was a few weeks ago. So it's the night of your birthday. Anything you want, what do you want to do? And she goes, Schindler's List.

2:26:08I was like, it's fucking great. So we watched it. We watched half of it. The next night, we finish it. And I was like, you know, the finishing night was like an hour. We watched like two hours. And I was like, what do you want to do? It's only, it's still a little bit early. she goes feels like we should watch an episode of the Pacific I was like this is unbelievable her commitment to it exceeds mine by a thousand percent yeah but Anna loves nothing more than World War II I was about to say

2:26:31Griffin Newman:it's very much World War II that oh yeah yeah yeah like the thing I always say is this was on like an SNL where I think it was like a five timers club sketch where Tom Hanks was talking to Andy Samberg he goes you know what I love Andy and he just goes World War II that is pretty good that is that is Anna to a T and we curate war season like I start working on the list like in the summer where I'm like oh there's this new movie like I or whatever I'll be like at a film festival and I send her a picture of some poster for a Norwegian film with a swastika on it and I'm like adding it to the list like it's it's got to go on the list and we end up putting together like a really diverse collection of war films that tell the totality of the story from the eastern front south america after the war this and like Like, what did we just watch?

2:27:18Music Box, the Costa Gafras film. Oh, sure. Which I'd never heard of. And I think either came up when I was reading something about it was just an accident or it came up on like a Cinematrix with, what's her name, Jessica Lange. And I was like, what is this movie? It has a swastika on the poster.

2:27:32David Sims:I also feel like Wesley Morris brought this up in a recent Big Picture app. Maybe that is where I got it. This is the exact kind of movie we don't make anymore that used to be important to the ecosystem. It came into my brain somewhere. Now, obviously, it wasn't on my printed list because I printed that list in January. Yeah. But we were able to squeeze it in anyway. Is that her dad is a Nazi? Yeah. Or is being accused of having been a commandant.

2:27:51Griffin Newman:Yeah. Have you seen number 24? Wait, is that the... Is that the... It's the Norwegian. Norwegian, yeah. We watched that last year. That was like... What made you watch that? I don't know, actually. Other than I was looking for something to watch on a flight. Yeah. And settled on... It's about the formula for heavy water. Is that right? This is about a guy who was part of the resistance in Norway. Oh, the resistance fighter. Oh, yeah. And then it's like kind of a docudrama and there's like scenes of him talking to students in it. Yes. Yeah. Cutting between that and his like various experts. Yeah, yeah, that's right.

2:28:24Something I find very interesting and unheralded in like the endless morass of Netflix slop is that every year Netflix will drop like 10 international films about World War II that I've never heard of. And you watch them and they're all like solid. It was great. You look it up and it's like, oh, this was this country's submission for the Oscars. Didn't get released. Never heard of it. David Sims never saw it.

2:28:45David Sims:Basically, All Quiet on the Western Front was the only one of those that punched through. But they have like 10 of those a year. 10. Yeah. Now there's one, you know, Will. There's one called like Blood and Gold. There's one, the photographer of Mathausen that was like a Spanish concentration camp movie. Occasionally still get a good new Holocaust. Did you see, David, it was a TIFF movie, Irina's Vow?

2:29:06Griffin Newman:No, I've at least heard of that one. Highlight of this year's war season. Fair enough. Total, like, classy surprise of, like, really, really good movie. Have you seen, I wrote a piece about Stellan Skarsgård, and I've never seen this film, Good Evening, Mr. Wallenberg. No. This was a Stellan Skarsgård breakout movie. It was a big movie in Sweden where he plays a famous Swedish figure, a diplomat who was instrumental in saving the lives of thousands of Hungarian Jews during the Holocaust. Never seen it, but it looks like the kind of sort of handsome Oscar submission that was big in its country but not really big outside of it.

2:29:42Griffin Newman:So many of those, even still. Anyway, that's all. Yeah, but this is a very important part of our viewing. So I think we initially watched this movie as part of that. And as just Peter Weir fans. But man, we love War Season. It's almost over, but we're in it. We're still in it. Anything else? Any other watches this year? I mean, yeah, we've been doing it for months at this point. Are we almost pulling out of War Season? Yeah, yeah, it's getting a little too warm. But then when it gets warm, you can watch things that are, you know, like that take place in the jungle. You can kind of migrate to the Pacific.

2:30:15David Sims:Do you pin the end of war season on a calendar date? Yeah, Memorial Day. Okay. We can drag it out to Memorial Day, but not consistently. Yeah. We can, like, I think one year we saved Midway for Memorial Day. You were so excited when Midway was coming out. Yeah, I was so excited that I waited like two years to watch it at home on Memorial Day. But I feel like in those two years, you were constantly texting, That movie is, I guarantee you, an 8 out of 10 at the worst. And it was. It was a very, very solid movie.

2:30:44Griffin Newman:Is that the one with Glenn Powell or was that a different one?

2:30:47David Sims:That's Devotion.

2:30:48Griffin Newman:Oh, that's right. That's right. Which stars Glenn Powell and Weird, the second actor above the title has disappeared.

2:30:54David Sims:Oh, who was that? Jonathan Majors. Oh, dear. Midway was Patrick Wilson. Patrick Wilson. Dennis Quaid. Yeah. It is a role in Emmerich. Oh, yeah, yeah. Dennis Quaid is, is he MacArthur in it?

2:31:06Griffin Newman:I couldn't tell you He's high up He's brass Yeah So anyway we watch Hundreds of war films Yeah And I can throw this on And be like Well of course this guy Was rounded up in the Communist purge And he's being accused Of being an enemy of the state And we're off to the races And it's kind of fun To continue the conversation Of expanding the conflict Of the war And never needing to like Pause or take a break from it Because you can kind of Just jump into whatever And know Because the thing that you're Yeah The thing that you're missing In this movie that is like really what makes good war films great is that great war films can distill the essence of the entire war into a single moment.

2:31:44David Sims:Yes, that's a good call. Often, either the beginning or the end of the movie. Schindler's List does this, the opening of Saving Private Ryan. It distills the essence of World War II into a scene. Right, two soldiers meeting in the middle of the battlefield from opposite sides, both tending to a war horse. And this movie, well, sure. And this movie doesn't have that scene. It doesn't have the moment that stands in for like, And that is what it was about in Russia during World War II. Yeah, I also think everyone in this movie you meet is so thoroughly broken already that I, just me, with this not being my chosen genre, I think I usually need the emotional in of here's what they lost.

2:32:25David Sims:And what is hanging over the movie emotionally is them trying to get something back. Do you like old, because to us, like the history, I mean, obviously they started making World War II films like before the war almost. During World War II. Yeah, like, but the kind of first wave, the men on a mission movies, which are just pure action films. Yeah. Do you like those movies at all? I prefer that. I feel like this is something I can't picture you watching because you're not like a dad in the 70s. Yeah.

2:32:49Griffin Newman:I mean, I watched them. That is not my favorite kind of war movie because those do tend to have a little bit of a formula to them, but they're fun. Like, I mean, do you, yeah. This is the tough guy. This guy's kind of the smart guy. Do you like Dirty Dozen, Great Escape? Do you like... I like those two movies, yeah, but I'm like... Heroes of Telemark and Force 10 and Neverworld.

2:33:06David Sims:I'm like doing in my head, like, what's my favorite war movie? And I'm like, oh, my answer is, like, Best Years of Their Lives, which is a post-war movie. Oh, a war romance is a very important part of War Season 1. Best Years of Their Lives is an incredible war. An incredible film. But I think... But it is obviously... And Gallipoli, like, truly has shot way up on my all-time war list. Just watching it for the first time. As soon as you've seen Gallipoli. That's World War I. Saw it at Walter Reed with Peter Weir in attendance. Yeah. We just, another war season won this year was the Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society.

2:33:33Speaking of Glenn Powell. That is a movie that is weird.

2:33:37Griffin Newman:You know, it got brought up. You're like, oh, this will be really chilling. It's like, no, it's better falling in love than not seeing. Yeah, but it's actually quite fraught. But it's important to have for us, like, you don't want to watch this movie every night. You don't want to watch, like, an action-oriented movie. You have to mix it up. So to have the occasional wartime romance, which are often, you know, quite nice. and then like did you see Beasts of War the like Australian shark World War II POW movie no it just came out it's like a Shudder original that came out it was maybe at festivals last year it's a true story it's like basically a bunch of Australian fighter pilots were just on a plane and then it goes down roughly 15 minutes it doesn't even have a Wikipedia page no it doesn't I was surprised it didn't have a Wikipedia page it's like a legit movie wow sure and you know it's like this but on a boat but with a shark yeah I would say this looks a little less Tony than I.

2:34:28Griffin Newman:No, no. So that was like a Saturday night we're tired war movie. Sure. Sometimes you need something that's like horror or action.

2:34:36David Sims:Yeah, no, of course. See, this is why you're like, this is, when you come on the podcast, we want to make it count. And if the schedule lines up where we can have you a couple times in one year, that's it. But I'm like, I'm sitting here and I'm just like, thank God we got you on this one.

2:34:51Griffin Newman:Yeah, the fucking way back episode, which is just us otherwise being like, I mean, this is well-made and handsome. It didn't really resonate with us. It seems cold. You know what's a stink? Sometimes hot. Hot.

2:35:02David Sims:Can we get Bombas to sponsor this one? This feels like one to really target getting the socks. Bombas gave up on us.

2:35:08Griffin Newman:Really? Come back, Bombas. They, um...

2:35:11David Sims:Yeah, it's been a minute. What if for every one ad read we do for them, we do an ad read for a shittier business? They should have. They should have done a promo for this. You know it's a bad World War II movie that you guys might do someday. What? although seemed not likely with the way voting goes, is Miracle at St. Anna. Like, a Spike Lee movie no one has seen. I've seen that movie. I've never seen it. I've seen that movie. It is. Oh, I mean, Defy Bloods is, like, one of my ten for a war movie. Well, Vietnam's a whole other thing. Right.

2:35:37Griffin Newman:No, but that movie is a failure. I mean, I haven't seen it, and I like Spike Lee, but it's one of his most, like, misshapen movies. It has interesting stuff. Yeah. It's not, like, without merit, but it's odd. It is nearly without merit. Yeah, it's not very good. I can't really defend it. We were motivated to watch it years ago. Well, because you're like, how could this be that bad? Like, this must be interesting. It must be something. But stuff like that can still get made, at least at this time. And as a real...

2:36:03David Sims:Even that's 2006.

2:36:05Griffin Newman:That's him casting his Inside Man check. And that's the Inside Man check? It's like nine or ten. Like, the difference between... That's when he got in a fight with Clint Eastwood. Yeah.

2:36:12David Sims:He was like, I'll show you, Clint. Shut the hell up. Sure. But that's like the shift of like, he's one of the last guys who, A, like, Inside Man is enough of a blank check to get to make that and B, they let you make that under any conditions in the studio. Do you like the two Clint movies he's making that response to? I really, really disliked Flags of Our Fathers. It's a good movie. And Iwo Jima, I like respected. Iwo Jima is an incredible... Would it surprise you? I get this is good. I don't enjoy watching this. Would it surprise you for me to say that I really like Flags of Our Fathers and think Iwo Jima is a very bad movie?

2:36:46Griffin Newman:Wow. It would surprise me a little bit just the second part. Flags of Our Fathers is a good movie. Letters from Iwo Jima Yes Is I think The worst looking movie I have ever seen That is made with any budget Well it did not have Much of a budget No but I'm talking Like yes you could show me A$2 ,000 movie That looks worse Whatever digital technology Was being put in front of him At that time It is the worst looking movie That I think has been like Made by a major Hollywood studio With a major director He just comes in late You know you're like Is Alex out of hot takes And he's like One more But it's strange Because it was made concurrently With a movie that looks Entirely different See, I remember feeling...

2:37:21David Sims:I think you're being a little hard on him. I also, I remember feeling that way about Flags of Our Fathers. I remember seeing that in theaters and being like, I hate the way this fucking looks. This movie is, like, so blunt, over the head, restating every thematic point six times. I thought, like, across the board, most of the cast is bad. Like, I felt like it was basically wall-to-wall bad performances.

2:37:40Griffin Newman:It has a little bit of the Clint cast faces problem where it's like, yeah, not all the actors are that good.

2:37:46David Sims:And the script is so unsubtle that it would need massaging to bring the performances down to something specific. And instead you got Ryan Phillippe kind of walking through it. They kind of got railroaded, though, those guys. Yeah, a little bit. Those guys got railroaded a little bit. Very solid film. Yeah.

2:38:01Griffin Newman:But I have it mid to low on my Clint list.

2:38:05David Sims:Yeah. I mean, I'm just realizing in this conversation that every war film that I would say I love is a movie that basically, by narrative design, obfuscates the war to some degree. But you like Vietnam movies. Well, do I like all Vietnam movies? Yes, all of them. Yes, you're right. I like all Vietnam movies. We all know that my favorite movie of all time is All Is Lost, and I like all Vietnam films. It's too bad you'll never cover any of them on this show, thanks to people voting down all this stuff.

2:38:33Griffin Newman:I mean, obviously, if Fallen Reverse Stone won, we would be covering half of all Vietnam movies. I don't love Vietnam movies. That is one of my less favorite war genres, but there are some great Vietnam movies.

2:38:43David Sims:I think there's... It is likely we cover Spike eventually. I'm trying to think who else has a Vietnam movie we haven't covered. I mean, do we do...

2:38:51Griffin Newman:Forrest Gump's a great Vietnam. We could do Michael Cimino. Do Forrest Gump again? I'm not doing Forrest Gump again.

2:38:56David Sims:We could do Gump. No, but his movies as a director.

2:38:58Griffin Newman:Yeah. Oh, yeah, of course. The interesting thing about a lot of these World War II tropes is like, they stopped making World War II movies during Vietnam, largely, because the idea of making like celebratory Rob Rock, Met on a Mission movies went away. Coppola. I've heard of him. De Palma is in play. Yeah. Yeah. But De Palma, he's another one of these guys like weird that the ignominious end of his distribution and his opportunities is just such a bummer. Yeah. De Palma's tough. I mean, supposedly he's working on something now. Would it be good? I don't know. Like how can, how can he go from Mission Impossible to like not being able to get a movie made?

2:39:35David Sims:It's hard to end a series on the ward. You know, No, it is a thing you try to avoid. I think this is as good of a final film as my vague recollection of every final film you've covered. If you're saying definitively final ones. Yeah. Yeah, and like a guy sort of choosing to call it. No one's going to stand up for this movie and be like, actually, that's Peter Weir's secret masterpiece. But, you know, the basement on final movies in the miniseries is quite low. Operation Dumbo Drop. I'm looking through a list of Vietnam films. We do need to cover that. And who directed that? Was that Orson Welles?

2:40:09David Sims:It was Orson Welles. No, of course it was Simon Winsor. Oh, yeah. Ben, Operation Dumbo Drop. Yeah. Never seen it. This is the best thing about Ben. They got to drop an elephant. Ben's choice that Ben hasn't seen is like my, that's a miniseries, perhaps, like a Patriot answer.

2:40:22Griffin Newman:We have, Griff, I will remind you. This came up when it was revealed Ben had never seen Bushwhacked.

2:40:26David Sims:We've covered a Winsor. We've covered one Winsor. Yes. Crocodile Dundee in Los Angeles. He did go to Los Angeles. When there's a movie that is so. And we might cover The Phantom one day. So tailor-made for Ben, and he just for some reason missed it. It is bizarre that he didn't see Bushwick. How'd you miss Dumbo Drop? Dumbo Drop is good. I don't know. Do you want to know what? Dumbo Drop is the big three. I think we're going to play the box office. Danny Glover, Dennis Leary, and Ray Liotta, and their job is to get an elephant across. I've never seen it. Don't look at me. I have seen it. It's kind of the way back with an elephant.

2:40:58David Sims:They're like walking the elephant by foot, and then at a certain point, they're like, this is taking too long. We got to get the elephant in a plane and then drop the elephant with a parachute into its final landing spot. Yeah, it's, where is it? It's probably one of the five best movies I've ever made. The recent Vietnam movie that I didn't see was the Farrelly one. The Greatest Beer One. Oh, sure. I'm surprised you haven't seen that. Don't be. Really? Yeah, don't be surprised I haven't seen that. Why would I see that?

2:41:25Griffin Newman:You like war movies. You watch them endlessly. No, no, no. That movie was about World War. You just said that you watch war movies all the fucking time. World War II movies. I am not encyclopedic about Vietnam. You don't fuck with Vietnam. I do, but we certainly don't favor those movies. There's way less variety in the... I agree. There's so much less variety. They tend to be one to two kinds of movies. Yes. And the sort of... But, you know, similar to World War II, I think one of the better genres of the Vietnam movie is the soldier after Vietnam, which is what you like, Griffin. Maybe I just...

2:41:54David Sims:No, but what I'm realizing... Yes, yes. It's exactly what you're saying. I'm looking through the Vietnam list here, and it is like... I like PTSD movies, because that's an emotional story in the wake of war. Yeah. Even if it starts with active warfare.

2:42:06Griffin Newman:What's my favorite war movie? I don't know. I love war movies so much. I'm like Alex. And I like any movie that makes me Google ship. Now, do I need every movie to be like that? No. But the way back where I can be like, and how many people do live in Mongolia? Like, I love to do that.

2:42:22David Sims:That for me gets into what Ben would call a homework movie. But this is the interesting thing that we love splitting the difference on of curating War Season is like, there's movies that, like Nuremberg, That you're like, this is one-to-one. This is a Hollywoodized version of a, everyone in this movie is a real person. And then there's stuff like this, where it's like, this is sort of based on a thing. And what really went out of vogue, kind of post Saving Private Ryan for a long time, even though that movie is fictional, was making these big ticket war movies of like, no, we just made this up.

2:42:58It became much more popular in the 2000s to really be like, this is a true story. Based on true story. We're adapting a memoir. We're adapting something true. Whereas prior to that, Schindler's List was almost like an outlier. Yeah. Where a lot of these movies, even music boxers I just watched, are like, well, it's kind of inspired by this thing. But mostly we're just trying to tell a good story. Did Schindler fully turn it

2:43:18David Sims:because it was like the profundity? There just weren't World War II movies before that for a long time at this level. They were being made in other countries and there's a lot of good foreign war films in the 80s and France was making a lot and they sort of tried to grapple with their horrible history. America just, Vietnam was in vogue for over a decade, kind of until Schindler's List made World War II big business.

2:43:40Griffin Newman:It's also, the generation starts to shift and like, boomers want to watch World War II movies because their parents served in World War, you know, like, it's just, that's how one day maybe we'll get more.

2:43:51David Sims:We're probably like 10 years away. More films about the Clone Wars now that cyclically it's kind of coming back. Well, it's like anything. The distance between these things started getting really short. I have nothing for that? Yeah, I mean, it's not a joke. That's a great statement. Okay, thank you. Very astute. That's what I wanted. I wanted profundity points. But to us, we do love David's Googling of like, what is this movie based on? We do love David's Googling. Thank you. Because we enjoy kind of comparing like, oh, so I looked it up. It turns out like, like Charlotte Gray, the Cate Blanchett movie.

2:44:21Like, you know, where it's like, this is a true story. This is like some remarkable figure who needs a biopic versus the ones that tend to be like, this is a kind of interpretation of life during wartime in fill in the blank.

2:44:37Griffin Newman:Just to be clear, Charlotte Gray is not about a real person, but it is based on a novel. Wait, what's the other one? There's another one with a nearly identical title.

2:44:44David Sims:Veronica Guerin? Yes. That's the IRA movie. Yeah. Right, right. She's a journalist. I'm getting those confused. Okay. What am I talking about? My favorite war movie of all time is Small Soldiers.

2:44:52Griffin Newman:Yes, of course.

2:44:53David Sims:And that's based on a true story. The War of That Kid's House. Alan Abernathy.

2:44:58Griffin Newman:January 21st, 2011. These are going to be rough. This is a terrible test. That's why it's a fun box office game. The Way Back is opening. January 2011. Okay. Number one. Number 15 on 678 screens to$1.2 million. And it's going to leg that out. Leg that out to$2.7 million. It's not a great showing. That's a third of a black hat? It makes it's about a third of a black hat. What is a black hat? A black hat's 6.5? Yeah. It makes 24.1 worldwide. So it's a little better overseas. Unsurprisingly, I guess. Civilized countries. Yeah, I still appreciate it. Number one at the box office is kind of like...

2:45:31Was that its widest? Did it go beyond 600? That's a good question. Is it like immediately down 270?

2:45:35Griffin Newman:Because I feel like they're like, okay, we'll expand it. And then it's like, no, we won't be expanding it. That was its widest. 678 screens. Damn. Theaters. So number one is, I would say, a film that's like kind of tonally very similar to The Way Back and, you know, has the same kind of energy. I think he's joking. I'm joking. It's a comedy. Okay. It's opening number one to$19.6 million. Right at the start of January, America's like, we want to laugh. We're ready to laugh. And we want to see some romance. It's not a Freeburg seltzer. No. It's a romantic comedy. It's a much classier than that. It's a romantic comedy from a very well-known director.

2:46:11Is it a Gary Marshall?

2:46:13Griffin Newman:No. But, you know, sort of like an old hand. It's an old? Not quite as old as Gary Marshall. But he only had one more film left in him after this one.

2:46:21David Sims:He only had one more film left in him after this film. Tell me about the stars of this picture. Well, first, who's the distributor of this fine film? Of course, it's from the great people of Paramount Pictures. Okay. When was this director most active? The 80s. An 80s director. An 80s director who's only got one left in him. And tell me about the stars of the picture.

2:46:38Griffin Newman:Well, there's a lovely lady and a handsome young man. Now, the lovely lady is about to win an Academy Award. Okay, interesting. This threatened to be her Norbit. This is No Strings Attached. That's right. With Natalie Portman and Ashton Kutcher and Ivan Reitman, And of course, would then make draft day and be so exhausted by the ego of one of the stars on that movie that he retired. That was his way back. That was his way back. He was like, I can't deal with Griffin Newman asking me endless intern questions. Saying, we have to stop for five minutes so I connect to the office.

2:47:10David Sims:I had to take a long walk down that hallway and try not to spill coffee and I failed. Congratulations on being able to differentiate No Strings Attached and whatever the other one is. Friends of Benefits. That's a summer release.

2:47:22Griffin Newman:That's the other one, but the reason is everyone sort of remembers. Everyone just thinks they're both called No Strings Attached. No Strings Attached is the title people remember. It's a better title. It's also the better of those two films. It's a good movie. It's pretty fun. Yeah. Pretty fun. Oh, and I have presents to give Griffin before we wrap up. Oh, no. Don't worry about it. I think I've forgotten about that. Number two at the box office is a film that came out a week earlier, so truly at the top of January. Opened fairly well. It's an action superhero movie. Did okay. What is the origin of the superhero?

2:47:51Is it The Green Hornet?

2:47:52David Sims:It's the Green Hornet.

2:47:53Griffin Newman:Yeah. Wow. Yeah. That was a January release. Like a January, like, second release.

2:47:58David Sims:That was, right. That was a big thing was it had a summer release date. Then they announced they were pushing it back six months in order to put 3D, post-conversion 3D on it, and release it in January. And people were like, oh, fucking dumping ground. Is this thing like...

2:48:13Griffin Newman:Then it did pretty good.

2:48:14David Sims:And then it did well.

2:48:15Griffin Newman:Yeah.

2:48:16David Sims:Made$100 million. Would that be...

2:48:18Griffin Newman:Wait, you didn't do Pulp Heroes yet? No. No, would that count? but that's like TV you know yeah Pulp Heroes is like fucking radio and comic books it's Shadow Phantom Dick Tracy I put Green Hornet in that well also we all remember who directed Green Hornet Michelle Godry right we're not doing his ass anytime soon speaking of being broken do you want to do Macrobing Gasoline the wee and the eye come on David the pod in the cast Mood Indigo these are

2:48:43David Sims:these are heater episodes I just want more like of the energy of Ben getting to do like the 90s comics and I listened to the Mortal Kombat episode. Like, that's just such a...

2:48:54Griffin Newman:We're offering a lot of energy. I would not worry. Yeah. Number three at the box office is another comedy. Okay. Star-driven from a big director.

2:49:05David Sims:Is it a holdover from December? No. It's a January release.

2:49:08Griffin Newman:It came out, I guess, a week before.

2:49:12David Sims:Okay. It opened against Green Hornet.

2:49:14Griffin Newman:Yeah.

2:49:14David Sims:It's a big director.

2:49:15Griffin Newman:Yeah.

2:49:16David Sims:It's a January comedy. Yeah. Distributor?

2:49:20Griffin Newman:Universal.

2:49:21David Sims:it's Universal and this director

2:49:23Griffin Newman:usually works at Universal this director usually works with Universal I would say so especially at this time I would say so especially at this time I think his production company was sort of comedy director or Jack of all trades no well he made a lot of comedies but no but he's at this point a prestige director I know

2:49:39David Sims:say no more it's Ron Howard's The Dilemma that's right which was a bit of a flop

2:49:42Griffin Newman:it was a bit of a flop it's a bad movie

2:49:44David Sims:but Kevin James had hit so hard with Paul Blart in January that they were trying to make him the King of January. Yeah. And this was a hot project. The cast of that movie is so bizarrely stacked. James, you're wearing?

2:49:58Griffin Newman:You've got Jennifer Connelly, Winona Ryder, Channing Tatum, Queen Latifah. How could it be bad? I think it's definitely bad. As Sean Fennessey would say, it is, in fact, quite poor. Quite poor. And just one of those things where the poster is just like, Kevin James... Is there a guy on the poster? Does Vaughn have his hand over his head? Both of his hands. Both of his hands. He's like, I don't know what to do about this. I've got a dilemma brewing. That had an ad above my subway stop. Yeah. Like that they just left up. But it's like Kevin James is just smiling like an idiot. Yes. Like Kevin James looks like he was born two seconds ago.

2:50:33Griffin Newman:I mean, do you guys remember what the premise of the movie is? Vince Vaughn is like, do I have to tell? Yes, he sees his wife kissing Vince Vaughn's wife. Yes, Kevin James' wife kissing somebody. The entire movie. Yes. And like, do I tell him or not?

2:50:47David Sims:Kevin James is married to Winona Ryder. Right. Winona Ryder is having an affair with Channing Tatum. Vince Vaughn witnesses it. And the whole movie is him being like, do I tell my friend or not? Oh, my God. It's going to make him feel bad. And it's one of those things where you're just like, fucking tell him. This isn't an interesting conflict.

2:51:04Griffin Newman:Stop talking about it.

2:51:05David Sims:I want to.

2:51:06Griffin Newman:Either way, go away.

2:51:08David Sims:Which do you think is the better act as a friend? Decide that and stick to it. Quite a dilemma. No, it's a dilemma. You'd never do Howard. It's so long. It's a lot. Yeah. Let me pause just to keep the games. Let me pause the game so people have a reason to keep listening. Yeah. So I am leaving these. This is going to be like a reverse, a memento kind of story. I'm going to leave these Blu-rays for Tracy Letts.

2:51:30Griffin Newman:Oh, yeah, of course. Right, right, right. So we're recording with Tracy. So it will have happened. This will have paid off, hopefully. I'm leaving three sealed Blu-rays, two of which are reference quality of my own films, to contribute to, less because I think he'll watch these, but more like it's almost a badge of honor to have these in the archives.

2:51:46David Sims:So this is Vinegar Syndrome, Her Smell, and Pavements. Vinegar Syndrome, Pavements. And then the British Eureka Masters of Cinema, Listen Up, Philip, which is the only Blu-ray release of it ever. And that's a Blu-ray DVD combo pack? Oh, yeah. Dual format edition. Contains both Blu-ray and DVD editions. And because of rights issues, this can't be issued on Blu-ray in America. You've been trying to work this out, right? Can't be done. Do you know what Ben has purchased for Tracy Lutz? No, I'd like to know. I think Ben might go three for three. well he's I'm definitely going three for three I'm gonna write him a nice note too I'm gonna toss this goodie bag to Griffin great and this is you know what half of this is but it'll still be fun so I bought for Tracy

2:52:26Griffin Newman:Ace Ventura Pet Detective steelbook oh yeah 4k steelbook a recent release spawn nice arrow 4k sort of and that's been like sharing his culture with Tracy sure and then of course naturally Trash Humpers nice which maybe Tracy has that one it's the one I think It feels like he would have open contempt for the work of Harmony Karin. I might imagine it's not his cover. When you give him Spawn, make sure he's looking at future Spawn. I will. Right. I'll have it. They'll add it to the display. This will hopefully not have paid off in, like, shame and confusion. Yeah. This bit that I'm now contributing to.

2:52:59Because one of my favorite razzings of Sean is in the, like, YouTube clip of Big Picture when Tracy was like, what's the name of the director with three names and Sean, without pausing, just goes, Paul Thomas Anderson. and he goes no no the one who's on your show

2:53:16Griffin Newman:David do you think you're gonna have a chance to buy discs that's my plan okay why do you wanna just leave it to Ben I don't know I'm trying to sneak there I was trying to go yesterday but then I realized they're closed on Monday where would you go Night Owl oh right I see but yes even to contribute to the archive of his would be an honor I'm still getting it's like getting to lay a commemorative brick I mean I can also dig around in my collection because I have a fair amount of dupes but I'm like I think it has to be sealed I think it has to be sealed. If you send me a list on my way home today, I can stop by.

2:53:46Griffin Newman:But I was just, I was hoping to go and vibe. I think you gotta go and vibe. This is like one of my all-time worst bits, which is the bit that King Size Candy is an offering to the king from his subjects. Which I, you know, like that's kind of what we're doing here. This offering to the true emperor physical media. Yes. And you make an offering. You can't give him your used collection. Just to finish. Just to finish. And then Griffin can open this. I mean, to be fair, Tracy shows up with like his dupes and throws them at Chris Ryan. It's okay for him to do it. Of course. And I think most of his dupes are sealed.

2:54:17Yeah. Yeah. These are sealed. I imagine. These are offerings from other subjects that he has no need for. The king can throw his scraps. Speaking of the king.

2:54:25Griffin Newman:Number four at the box office wins best picture in a couple months. The king speech. That's right. And number five. What's it up to at this point? 57. And it's going to make it to 130? 135. Has Epstein gotten his DVD of it yet? By this point. When was that email sent? Number five at the box office. I think he has not gotten it yet.

2:54:42David Sims:It is crazy to consider that it's still... In January, he used to have a thing that was$80 million away from its eventual box office total because of a Best Picture bump.

2:54:52Griffin Newman:I thought you were going to talk about Jeffrey Epstein and I was about to pick up my stop sign. The New York financier? Yeah, number five at the box office is a film from Alex's favorite directors who he said such lovely things about on this episode. Their biggest hit ever. Also a 2010 Best Picture nominee. Their? True Grit. I gave it away. I think maybe my favorite Coen Brothers movie. Incredible movie. I love this movie. You've also got Black Swan, as mentioned. So Natalie's got two. I'm excited for people to respond to that take of mine. I love...

2:55:20David Sims:A True Grit is your favorite? No, no. Just the earlier thoughts. Yeah, they'll be really, really even-handed. Just that I think Fargo is good.

2:55:27Griffin Newman:What is Black Swan up to at this point? Black Swan's up to 83, so it's also got some run to go. The Little Fockers are on their way out of the years.

2:55:35David Sims:Oh, those troublemakers.

2:55:36Griffin Newman:So much comedy. Number nine. So much comedy. So much fucking comedy. Although, undeniably, not Hollywood's best comedies. Well, none of this is... When you're like, I wonder why Hollywood stopped making comedies. And you're like, The Dilemma, Little Fockers. Like, oh boy.

2:55:49David Sims:Little Fockers makes it to a soft 100 domestic. Yeah. No, no, no.

2:55:52Griffin Newman:Little Fockers made 148 domestic.

2:55:54David Sims:That's insane. Yeah.

2:55:56Griffin Newman:Friends with Benefits makes it to like 80 or 90 domestic. Are you talking about No Strings Attached? Fuck yes. I got it right the first time. That made it to 70 domestic. Okay. 150 worldwide. Okay. Yeah. So like, okay. Yeah. And The Dilemma, which obviously was a bomb, made 48 domestic.

2:56:12David Sims:Yeah.

2:56:12Griffin Newman:So that's flop territory, but only because of the big... Where would have killed for that on this film?

2:56:15David Sims:Yeah. Also, like, most studio comedies would kill for 48 domestic now, and that was seen as a disaster. I mean, it was, I'm sure... I can't believe how little money The Way Back made.

2:56:24Griffin Newman:It's crazy. Number eight is The Fighter. I can't. Nobody wanted to see that shit. And I liked it. Number eight's The Fighter. Number nine is Yogi Bear. What's Fighter at? Fighter is at 72. And it makes it to 110? Yogi Bear is at 88. Fighter makes it to... Does Fighter stay at 90 something? 93. 93. And number 10 is, of course, the comedy of 2010, number one, Tron Legacy. I love that movie. My digital jazz, man. That's right. When are you going to splice in the rankings? If you do them.

2:56:53David Sims:I'll tell you when we're going to splice them in. Right here. Here are our rankings for Peter Weir.

2:57:03David Sims:Okay, this is the pickup on our ranking now that I've rewatched Master and Commander. and we have recorded all the episodes. David? Yes. Do you want to go first?

2:57:11Griffin Newman:This is a very hard one. I don't know if you found that, Griffin. Incredibly difficult. Because it's a lot of great movies, a lot of movies I admire for different reasons.

2:57:19David Sims:And like centimeters in between these positions. Yeah, 100%. It's basically interchangeable. Did you include The Plumber or not? I included The Plumber. Okay.

2:57:29Griffin Newman:So, my list is, and really, it's tough. Yeah. Because, yeah, A lot of these are fun. Number one, Master and Commander. That was not tough. Sure. You're going from top down. One to top. One to down. Number two, The Truman Show. Number three, Witness. Number four, Picnic and Hanging Rock. Those three are all movies I just think are sublime, and they all felt a little interchangeable. Number five, Fearless. Number six, Green Card. Number seven, Mosquito Coast. Number eight, Last Wave. Number nine, Year of Living Dangerously. Number 10, Gallipoli. Those are all movies, I think, are pretty interesting and tremendous.

2:58:08Griffin Newman:Yeah. I'm sure your list is different from mine.

2:58:11David Sims:It is. Although, you know what's interesting? I mean, Master and Commander is unsurprisingly lower for me, but then our rankings are the same for the next couple. That's interesting. I have Truman at number one, Witness at number two, Picnic at Hangrock number three, agree with that block you just established. Then I have Fearless at number four, which is the same as you minus Master and Commander at the top of that list, right? Where do you have Master and Commander? I have Gallipoli at 5 Jesus this is so fucked up and insane Mosquito Coast at 6 Master and Commander at 7 Last Wave at 8 Green Card at 9 Year of Living Dangerously at 10 And then I have my last four are

2:58:47Griffin Newman:Way Back at 11 Plumber at 12 Cars That Ate Paris at 13 Dead Poets Society at 14

2:58:53David Sims:Wild so yeah I have a totally different order there I have Cars at 11 Cars 2 at 12 Cars 2? No I have Cars That Ate Paris at 11 Dead Poets at 12, Plummer at 13, Way Back at 14. I would say the top 10 are all degrees of excellent for me. And Cars They Did at Paris, Dead Poets, and Plummer are all very good. And the only movie of his I don't enjoy is The Way Back, but I also don't think it's a bad film. I don't think he ever made a bad movie. No. But that's it. Yeah, that's it. Now we cut you back to that episode.

2:59:34Griffin Newman:Wow! Oh my God, I can't believe it. The Way Back, number one for everybody. Holy shit, across the board. We really changed our minds. Debuting in theaters this week is also The Company Men, the John Wells film. A film I hate. What if the bosses had a tough time?

2:59:47David Sims:It's actually one of my least favorite movies. I don't remember what that is. It's about a bunch of, like, middle managers or whatever. C-suite executives. Yeah, no, maybe other executives. And how much they struggle in the recession. These guys used to have... Who are the executives?

3:00:02Griffin Newman:Costner, Affleck, Chris Cooper, Tommy Lee Jones. These are some guys. I know. Maria Bello. This sounds watchable. Yes.

3:00:10David Sims:This sounds very watchable. Kevin Costner is non-executive. This sounds very watchable. Costner is a Joe the Plumber who hates Ben Affleck, his brother-in-law, who's never worked a real day in his life. These guys used to play golf. It's got a point. Yeah. It's a terrible movie. It's written and directed by John Wells.

3:00:29Griffin Newman:That's right.

3:00:29David Sims:I believe his dog is associated counter later. Yes. Like, is that, you know, and then he gets burnt. Well, you know who can answer that question for you? Who? Tracy Lutz.

3:00:39Griffin Newman:Good. And now, of course, he's back on The Pit, right? Yeah. Thank God he's off our movie screens. Yeah, making good TV for us again.

3:00:49David Sims:He was like my least favorite middle brow director.

3:00:51Griffin Newman:I mean, it's interesting because I also actually associate him with ER's decline, and then I associate him with The West Wing's decline because he took over The West Wing. But he obviously was important to ER, but he becomes too powerful later in ER, and he starts to infect him with too many special episodes. It's fine. It's fine. But the pit's good. And he's great, I guess. He's my best friend. So next week on the podcast, of course, we're going to talk about Disclosure Day. Ah. Because that's going to be pretty new. Yeah, brand new, I think. That's coming out on the 12th. But then, Griffin, what are we going to do?

3:01:24David Sims:Then we're going under the sea. Yes, we will be looking for someone. Who could we be looking for? We'll be trying to find Nemo, an episode we offered to ARP. I was offered finding Nemo. You said something to the effect of, I don't really have any relationship to Finding Nemo. I've seen it twice. Finding Dory, I've obviously seen 25 times. Astrid's preference is Finding Dory. Your daughter. By a wide margin.

3:01:51Griffin Newman:Also my daughter's preference. Why is that? Because Dory's so cute at the beginning with her big little eyes. I guess so, but I mean, most of it's in an aquarium. My daughter also, well, but my daughter loves the aquarium because she loves the septopus. Yeah, well, I like the beluga whale with the vibrating crane. It's got good characters. Yeah, I mean, it's a fine film. God, good characters, damn it. I just don't know why she gravitates towards that. I think just because it's like, it's the classic kid thing of like, well, Dory's the best character anyway, so like a movie with more Dory is just like more for me.

3:02:19Griffin Newman:It's frozen with pants. You solved my only issue. I just didn't think I would have that much insight.

3:02:25David Sims:I said neurotic father. Alex, neurotic? He's not neurotic. No, but no. Even killed. This was the best episode we could have gotten you on, but yes, in two weeks we start our series. Talking the Walk, A secret side talking the walk. You did say this. This is kind of a talking the walk. We'll replay this. Oh, so you're doing Andrew Stanton. We're doing Andrew Stanton. I didn't want to cut off your actual promotion so people can be excited. His first three films are the cleanest distillation of a blank check arc we will ever cover.

3:02:54Griffin Newman:Finding Nemo, big hit. So he makes his sort of more ambitious animated film, WALL-E, and then uses that to make something crazy. The action film people have tried to make for 100 years in Hollywood. with the biggest scale imaginable. Does it have a cool title from the books? It sounds good so far. John Carter, end of title. A title only John Wells would come up with. Now, wait a minute. Where's the rest of the title? The title's over. You won't learn where he's from. Basically, the definitive... Is Mars called Mars in the movie? No, it's called Barthum, of course. Oh, okay.

3:03:26David Sims:Arguably, the definitive bounce of the last 15 years, the last 10 years. The most. Most definitive. It is the shorthand. It has replaced Waterworld. Waterworld. It is the one of our era. And it destroyed Disney, in a way. It kind of... Absolutely broke Disney. Changed everything. Then he rebounds with Finding Dory. He has this cushion that he can go back to his most successful film. And then in the year 2026, he returns with two films. In the blink of an eye, a Hulu original that came out months ago. Everyone knows this, yeah. We all know this. And then what is guaranteed to be another one of the highest grossing films of all time, Toy Story 5 coming out this summer.

3:04:06David Sims:I think I was loathe to cover on main feed, but David twisted my arm and I conceded maybe it is time to do Andrew Stanton.

3:04:12Griffin Newman:Oh, yeah.

3:04:13David Sims:Yeah, I really had to bully you into this one. I'm excited. I'm excited to talk about it. Thanks for having me on this one. Of course. Griffin has his gift bag.

3:04:21Griffin Newman:Okay, I'm going to open my gift bag. Let's see. It's a lot of stuff you know about. What's your number one Peter Weir movie? I mean, if it's not Master and Commander, it's Mosquito Coast. It was definitely Mosquito Coast for a long time. Sure. And then...

3:04:33David Sims:Very Alex movie. re-watched Master and Commander when we did like a C series during the pandemic and I was I always liked the movie I was like oh this I forgot this is like one of the 50 canonically greatest films ever made period like in a by hands by human hands I have a bumper sticker that says please stop honking I'm trying to watch the 2025 major motion picture pavements much appreciated getting a lot of merch here it'd be funnier though if it was like Trumbo or something oh like these I've been asking you to hold on to forever this is stuff you know These are movie promotional stickers of my face from Pavement.

3:05:06David Sims:Oh, nice. These are bags I got. Are they the full band or are these just me? There's the full band, but I brought the ones that had you in the front. Thank you.

3:05:12Griffin Newman:I really appreciate it. I just want to shout out with the bumper sticker that today I pulled in right after Arp into the parking garage. And I knew it was him because he had the Pavements bumper sticker. I put that sticker on my car, inherited the car from my grandmother, and I covered up the Biden-Harris bumper sticker that I couldn't take off with the Pavements bumper sticker.

3:05:30David Sims:Good call. Pavement's hat Pavement's ball cap The Tick vs. Arthur VHS collection Oh, it only has the one episode It's a classic 21-minute VHS Yeah, that's right But you found this And I immediately realized This is quite a pricey VHS On the second-hand market Wow This tends to be going for over$100 It goes for over$100? Yeah That was a dollar when I bought it It's crazy Yoked up Arthur carrying Carmelita His love interest that we never got to In the live-action show I've had that waiting for you for nine months All of my love interests were not human on the show. And then, of course, the buddy Christ, as seen in the hit film Dogma.

3:06:07You guys are benefiting from me getting all the stuff from my dad's storage locker.

3:06:10David Sims:I really appreciate this. All these sealed toys I forgot about. And you know what? We're going to take pictures and post it on social. Yeah, absolutely. It'll be part of the carousel. What was the other thing you said you wanted in the carousel? Ben's Spawn. Oh, Future Spawn. Yeah. Arp, thank you for being here. Yeah, thanks. Hey, you had two movies last year, both of which people should watch. So, four this year? Zero.

3:06:30Griffin Newman:Oh, interesting. For now. For the year. I'm calling my shot. You're calling your shot? Yeah, much like Peter Weir. This is no movie. I'd rather explore sunken World War II submarines than get out of bed at 6 a.m. to go be yelled at. Well, I believe you do probably get out of bed at 6 a.m. to be yelled at, given that you are a parent of a young child. Not by like an AD. Right. Yes. Yeah. Well, Video Heaven's on Criterion Channel. That's the only thing I care about, people watching, because I benefit directly from it. Well, but Pavements is on movie. Pavements is on movie, but I'm not going to see a dime there.

3:07:01But Video Heaven, like, that's my movie.

3:07:04David Sims:Yeah, right. You own, like, the movie outright. Can you give the quick pitch to people who don't know? Because if you listen to this podcast, it's true, real nerdy shit. If you've made it to Cusp of Hour 3 in a podcast, you would probably enjoy a three-hour essay film about the history of videotape as a medium and video stores told entirely through clips from movies and television depicting video stories as physical spaces. Yes. I made this movie. It has 180 film and TV show clips in it accompanied by an essay read by Maya Hawke. And if you're hearing this and going, well, this sounds a little...

3:07:40Yeah, I don't know if I can listen to three hours of Blank Check and watch a three-hour movie at the same time.

3:07:43David Sims:A little educational, a little dry. Lest you be concerned, the last 30 minutes features are just doing a drive-by on like 15 early 2000s independent films. It does feature... Amy Heckerling's Loser. It does. I spent 10 years on this movie. Griffin walked out of seeing it and said, what, no Freaky Tales? This is our running bit that I keep asking why Freaky Tales didn't make the cut, and I keep demanding that News and Deals respects the existence of Freaky Tales, just that it exists. Maybe give Tracy Letts a 4K of Freaky Tales. Fuck, I don't know if it can arrive in time. Because that's Lionsgate Limited.

3:08:18David Sims:I don't know what their quickest shipping option is. He's coming here in like three days. Okay. I was looking at overnighting some Amazon stuff and Freaky Tales stuff. and have a wide release. From upstate, there's the Lionsgate Studios on the Hudson. I'm sure you guys have seen this, David. It's like near Yankee Stadium. You ever seen the Lionsgate Studios? It might be past Yankee Stadium.

3:08:36Griffin Newman:Probably. We had to actually send one of our hats to that location because they're the production company that's involved with the Jon Hamm show. Did that ever come out? It's coming out soon. I literally got a text from a friend today watching a screener being like, are you guys aware Jon Hamm listens to your show on this show? I know, that's why I'm in the episode.

3:08:56David Sims:That's what we should plug. You're in an upcoming episode of Our Friends and Neighbors. Forget about this. Your Friends and Neighbors. Passion film that I spent 10 years on and love dearly. Watch this Apple show. I love Video Heaven. Yes, I love it too. And it's on the Criterion channel for the foreseeable future. Great. It's excellent. But people are really watching it on there. It's great. They kept sending out there like, what's popular these days? And it was always up there. It's highly recommended. And I just want to clarify that fat cocked gentleman thieves in New York City are always listening to the Halloween episode of Blank Check featuring Alex Ross Perry as depicted in the Apple Plus series.

3:09:33So Blank Check fans can say they were there first. Yes. And yeah, people are always like, wow, that movie, it's two hours and 50 minutes. That's insanely long. And I'm like, guys, if you listen to Blank Check, if an episode of that length drops - I remember when you told me,

3:09:43Griffin Newman:you're like, it's going to be about three hours. And I was like, oh, it's pretty long. And you're like, I figure anyone who's watching this is cool with watching it for three hours. If a Blank Check episode comes out that's 2.50, people are like, I guess David had to be somewhere that day. This is a crazy amount of time to not spend marinating in the love of cinema. I wanted to point out to you that we are about to hit three hours. So we are done. I also feel like we wrapped up half an hour ago. We wrapped up a fucking hour ago. I looked up, it was 2.30. I felt good. Ben agrees. I felt the exact same way.

3:10:11Griffin Newman:And now I feel less good. But I feel okay. I think we're doing great. And I think everyone's going to be really good. But David, look on the brighter side. There's more toys. There's more toys. Just what I love.

3:10:19David Sims:For sound insulation.

3:10:21Griffin Newman:This is his new thing, by the way. Justifying that. He suffocates us. It's absorbing sound. So tune in next week for Disclosure Day. Hope that rocks. And then we're doing Andrew Stanton. And then we're doing whoever won March Madness. I assume Chris Columbus. Yeah. Do you want to claim one of those episodes now? Centennial Man. If he wins, I will tell on mic the story I'm about to tell you guys about why I find it so aggravating whenever you're like, and he's the nicest guy in Hollywood. Can't wait. I'll tell this story privately right now and then I promise if he wins I will come on and make people feel bad about this victory there's no chance he's going to win no I don't think so maybe he wins

3:11:02David Sims:you've given me an idea here thank you all for listening please remember to rate review and subscribe tune in next week for disclosure day thank you all for riding the high seas of Peter Weir with us absolutely and Arp I'm gonna read you a deadline announcement that just happened Ben can we bleep out the announcement and I just wanna get Arp's reaction to it good good okay Okay? So bleep out what I'm about to say and then get ARP's reaction. B - brings B - to direct B - and B - to script B - spin-off. I mean, this is going to get the shit back on track. This is what the people want.

3:11:40Griffin Newman:It's a real bummer. This is definitely what the public wants. When I think B - I think these three faces. look at i mean i appreciate that all the progressive gains of the last decade have been erased by the current political climate but this is a bridge too far we can't let people like this run hollywood again

3:12:01Griffin Newman:and as always or that was that was the end as always yeah that's that's it

3:12:11at some point there'll be a lag and i can start unboxing this bag of presents. I can't wait.

3:12:18Griffin Newman:I'm excited. Nothing for David, but what do you get for the man who has everything? A little bit, yeah. I mean, people are having this. I'm going to turn 40 in a month and everyone's like, where do I buy this? Look what he's got. This is 40. What he's got recently. Is that the stop sign? Correct. And it's two-sided. Okay. This is to shut Griffin up, I think is the idea. Sometimes he feels like the podcaster is going by too quickly and he needs to slow it down. Slow is definitely not something we really need to use.

3:12:48Griffin 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.

3:12:59David Sims:And our associate producer is AJ McKeon.

3:13:01Griffin Newman:This show is mixed and edited by AJ McKeon and Alan Smithy. Research by J.J. Birch. Our theme song is by Lane Montgomery in The Great American Novel, with additional music by Alex Mitchell. Artwork by Joe Bowen, Ollie Moss, and Pat Reynolds. Our production assistant is Minnick. Special thanks to David Cho, Jordan Fish, and Nate Patterson for their production help. Head over to blankcheckpod.com for links to all of the real nerdy shit. 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.

3:13:40Griffin Newman:This podcast is created and produced by Blank Check Productions.