WALL-E with David Ehrlich

9:08David Sims:Sometimes those checks clear, this movie, and sometimes they bounce next week, maybe. This is also true. It's a miniseries on the films of Andrew Stan. It's called Patsy. Patsy. And today we're talking about WALL-E, his true blank check. And also it feels like the culmination of, like, a blank check moment for Pixar at large.

9:31Griffin Newman:I would say both correct on both for sure. Yep. Obviously, John Carter is a huge blank check as well. But at least with that one, you can argue like it is a known property of sorts and blah, blah, blah. You know, whereas this is it's truly like him being like, I think I want to push my capital on this and Pixar agreeing like, I think we should.

9:51David Sims:Right. And we will get into this, but it's the thing I'm fascinated by endlessly, which is because of the nature of the deal that Pixar had with Disney, a deal that everyone thought was going to end acrimoniously after Cars, the final movie that Pixar owed Disney from a 90s deal. Pixar just started, with Steve Jobs' help, self-financing and self-producing movies with no outside interference. There are three movies they just make completely independently, knowing that when the Disney deal is over, everyone is going to want to be in the Pixar business and they just go to the highest bidder. Iger takes over.

10:30David Sims:Eisner leaves. Iger immediately resets the table and figures out how to make good with Pixar and inherits Ratatouille, WALL-E, and Up, which are the last three movies they make and the only three movies they make with just like zero commercial consideration, zero outside interference, zero studio pressure. And you could feel it even in how these three movies were marketed. Griffin, you sound like someone who has a vested interest. and passion for Pixar, which feels far out of your wheelhouse. This is a surprise to me. I am introducing this thread of my interest to our listeners today for the first time.

11:05David Sims:People were like, why the fuck would Blank Check cover Andrew Stan? Is that a David push? What?

11:10Griffin Newman:Me? This is the joke. It's the bit. Okay, okay.

11:13David Sims:What were you going to say? Me? Yes. I like Wally. Wally's a really good guy. He's awesome. I've only grown to like him more. Producer Ben, have you seen this movie before? Yes. Okay, because this is the era we found out last week not a cartoon era that you hadn't seen Finding Nemo and this is an era where you were opting out of a lot of the mainstream culture

11:32Griffin Newman:that and just just kids movies I wasn't interested in I feel like Trash Planet is up your alley Trash Planet being the original title but did you see that I locked it on no

11:43David Sims:yeah you caught up with it later when do you think you saw it for the first time

11:46Griffin Newman:um god I I could not tell you

11:49David Sims:I'm just curious if it was like shortly after or like if you saw it in the last decade for the first time

11:54Griffin Newman:In the last decade.

11:56David Sims:Yeah. Yeah. This movie has a lot of Ben shit in it. I really relate to Wally. He's a really good guy. I feel... Were you ever best friends with a cockroach? No. Gotta try it.

12:06Griffin Newman:No. Not yet. I really relate to just being a rusty garbage boy. Yeah.

12:13David Sims:Yeah.

12:13Griffin Newman:Yeah. Yeah. Our guest today is someone who's made a legitimate bid for most times watching Wally. I think... I was thinking about this. I think it's entirely possible, if not probable, that I have watched this movie more than any guest on this show or host on this show, for that matter, has ever watched any of the movies you've covered, with a possible exception being Sims and Ponyo. But I think my son's WALL-E fixation was so specific and unrelenting that I may have taken that particular crown. Not that I'm proud.

12:47David Sims:When we finally committed to doing this series, when Toy Story 5 got dated, we just typed you in immediately. You're right on the list. It took months before we even went like, we should ask, or like, we should just like double check. But there was an extended period where, as you described it to me, my son thinks WALL-E is movies. That's right. And he's not wrong. He doesn't understand that there's any other movie that's ever been made. Correct. We were on a plane, and the only way to pacify him was to put something on. What was that?

13:22Griffin Newman:I said Nirvana over here because they have a song called On a Plane. Although, of course, it's a different. They mean a plane like. We were on Disney's planes. Yeah, Disney's planes. Fire and Rescue. Fire and Rescue. A movie I am very glad he is yet to discover. And we needed to pacify him. WALL-E was on the seat back screen, courtesy of Delta. And I think he watched it six or seven times. Six, seven. Jesus Christ. Before we were doing the hands. We're doing the hands. We're doing the hands. And that was it for the next calendar year. WALL-E once a day, twice on rainy days.

13:54David Sims:It was one full year, basically, right? The WALL-E year. Yes. Yes. You probably watched it 500 times. Or it was in your home 500 times. It was. But you're not always watching. I think at a certain point, your eyes glaze over and you actually begin to retain less of the movie than you did originally. It just sort of blurs together out of self-preservation. And you'll find that I think I have less of a handle on the details of this film than someone who's only seen it two or three times. Because it's been abstracted.

14:20Griffin Newman:It's like a magic eye painting. I had a little bit of that re-watching it last night. The same realization.

14:25David Sims:I did as well. I actually had to make an active effort to kind of re-engage with it. We talk about this sometimes on the podcast. Can I try to watch this movie fresh again? can I try to like really engage with it rather than take it for granted when it's things I've seen so many times. And I, this movie at the time was the most I had ever seen a film in a theater. It might still be. And I watched it so obsessively for years. It might've hit 10. Like it might've. It was certainly eight or nine. All right. The only way to watch a movie like this fresh, in my experience anyway, is through the eyes of a child.

15:06especially a child seeing it for the first time which is what I did with my daughter last night. Okay, this is what I was hoping tried to Wally Pillar. We can talk, we can get into that. I don't know if now is the time Our guest today, and this

15:18David Sims:is unique, this is a kind of competitive advantage he has on this podcast. Our guest today is a film critic named David who has children who he watches movies with I'm a real poser in the David category, although I did have children first I will say. If someone's copying someone here, it ain't me. I will never forget

15:33Griffin Newman:But, David, I'm sure I've brought this up before, being at the theater to watch Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood. Good movie. A movie I always say I saw in 40X because I saw it at the Alamo and I ordered a cup of tea and some cookies. That's good. I re-watched that movie recently. It's a great movie. It's really fucking... It's a really good movie. I've always been a fierce defender of that movie. Same. So that's Thanksgiving 2019.

15:56David Sims:Mm-hmm.

15:57Griffin Newman:I had helped you bring a snoo up your stairs that day? That morning, I think? Yes. it was about seven minutes before we left for the hospital you had texted me being like hey we really need to get this snooze up the stairs it's a smart bassinet you may find yourself with a snooze one day Ben we can talk snooze whenever snooze should advertise on the show it's a great project I did use snooze myself and hey can you bring up the stairs and then you texted me while I was in the movie oh lord he coming oh lord he coming and oh lord he came little baby Wally

16:30David Sims:you did name him Wally which kind of maybe forced the issue on it being his favorite movie. It's a little bit of nominative determinism. Anyway, say my name, bitch. David Ehrlich, bitch. Finally, after this parade of no-name hacks and losers that you guys have had for guests to start 2026, someone of real cultural importance, someone who had the foresight, the gall to tell the world Lee Cronin's the mummy, not great. That is what you're going to be remembered for. I thought you hadn't seen it. I sure have. Oh, okay. Have and reviewed. And you liked? Did not. Did not care for it.

17:08Griffin Newman:Let me see what you said. Not a fan. That's not Lee Cronin-y enough for you? Right. That's what I... Under delivers on Lee Cronin. That Lee Cronin feeling. Anyone, any identifiable... C -. Yeah.

17:22David Sims:Look, the obvious position they were in there was Universal kind of push Blumhouse off of the classic monsters, right? Clearly Blumhouse was like, these are all public domain. Can we keep doing our like takes on them? So they set up a mummy movie at New Line. They don't have the Universal branding. And then they find out that Universal is going to reboot the Brendan Fraser mummy when there's already been three different Universal movies just called The Mummy. And their pivot is... Was Brendan Fraser in this one? I can't remember No Was to call it Lee Cronin's The Mummy Why didn't they just Call it Mummy?

18:01Griffin Newman:Yeah Mummy Reborn Mummy Resurrected Yeah

18:05David Sims:If they called it Mummy Reborn I think it would have Like We have real Mummy At Home vibes Yeah

18:11Griffin Newman:I think also like If they drop Because of the Brendan Fraser Convention of Why don't they call it Here this This will distinguish it From Brendan Fraser The Mummy Tomb of the Dragon Emperor There's certainly Never been a movie By that title before And put Brendan Fraser's face on the poster, but then be clear in small text, he's not in the film. All I could think about watching is... We just admire his work. Lee Cronin's The Mummy is how hilarious it would be if Brendan Fraser, cinema's biggest goofball, walked into this dire-as-hell story about child death and possession. It would be like Brendan Fraser walking into a Serbian film or something.

18:44Well, he's got the girth.

18:46David Sims:One of the all-time great quotes. From whom? From Marty Scorchese. Do you not remember this? when people were asking him about the Fraser casting in Killers of the Flower Moon. And he said he had the look, he had the energy, he had the girl. It's all taking into place. Yeah. Today we're talking about Wally. Wally! This is one of my favorite movies of all time. This is a movie, and this was the other thing about watching it. So you think Nemo perfect. I do. But you do prefer this, right? I was swinging back and forth while watching this. I mean, this movie is, it's just very personal to me. And in a way, watching this, I was like, God, this thing was fucking laser targeted at 20-year-old Griffin.

19:28David Sims:It could not have been more of a direct hit. So it was interesting to rewatch it and feel nostalgic for what it meant to that guy at that time. Not that it feels unpersonal now. Sure.

19:45Griffin Newman:Yeah. Yeah, no, I totally understand. I mean, this was a movie that when it was announced, I was so hyped by the premise that it did at the time under deliver for me oh see it over delivered for me right I was my expectations for this were so high that I think I had the experience that a lot of people had at the time that we will talk about of the second act hitting a little less hard for me and me being like right it's a Pixar movie like it which I love Pixar movies but I was like right fundamental and I grew to love it much more once my daughter got into it I had a whole real love affair with Wally and now I prefer the second half.

20:21Griffin Newman:That's interesting. And I just love it.

20:24David Sims:You say half, but this is like... It's an even third movie.

20:28Griffin Newman:It's like the first third is Earth. I prefer the Axiom stuff. But I love it all, to be clear.

20:36David Sims:I love it all, too. We're going to get into it. Both of you saw it at that time. I saw it at the Village East, I remember. Similarly, I saw this almost every theater in New York City. But I remember even before it was officially announced, there were swirling rumors of Andrew Stanton's next movie is a rom-com about robots in the style of silent comedy. And I was like, that feels fake. There was a nervousness even at the rumor of the vibe of the thing. That was so my shit. Yes, right. All right. Is this movie Steve Jobs' greatest contribution to society? It's a great question. I was digging through all the Criterion extras.

21:25David Sims:And the only Disney movie in the Criterion collection, certainly the only proper Disney movie with a Disney fucking logo at the top. That's a great question. I have no idea. Yeah, you might be. Yeah. I'm like, maybe there's like another like touchstone. Miramax is no longer owned by Disney, but you could say that Disney commission at the time. This was a a la carte, one-off choice that did not be a part of a larger trade. Although, who knows? Fucking Disney just laid off, shut down its entire home media department in order to replace it with Wall-E's. But what was I saying here? Oh, there's a thing on the Criterion Disc where he said when he was running things by Steve Jobs, Steve Jobs' biggest question slash note was, what is the business model that makes sense for Axiom to be running the Starliner?

22:15Griffin Newman:Oh, I mean, I've had this question. Yes. Like, who is profiting? Right, like, how does this work 700 years in? And I always just kind of, like, settle on, like, well, they just want to be alive, so this self-perpetuating and they just kind of vie. Yeah, but Steve Jobs, who never designed anything that did not fail after five years, by design, would never develop a spaceship that lasted for seven centuries. Correct, correct.

22:40David Sims:And it's obviously still a highly consumerist culture. Right. But you're not seeing transactions. Consumerist how? And you're like, who's getting the money from this? Where does the money go? Right. That's what's fascinating about it. But I mean, I don't think there is money. No, I agree with you. You have to think of the Axiom as sort of the Apple store and all of the transactionality is happening sort of within. Yes. And the Apple stores do tend to hold up against wear and tear, I suppose.

23:04Griffin Newman:I feel like it's more just like the Axiom built these ships for profit long ago. Well, excuse me, B &L bought the ship. B &L built the Axiom ships for profit long ago. They made the money. The ships took off. Right. But then after that, right, of course, like human commerce just ceased to exist. Because they assumed they would actually get back to Earth. Sure.

23:23David Sims:And whatever transactions they made on the Axiom would then translate back to a world with whatever fucking digital fiat currencies.

23:30Griffin Newman:What do they eat, though? On the ship? Yeah, they have the food in a cup. They're not growing anything. No, it's all just fucking, yeah. Yeah, just like goop.

23:40David Sims:Energy clop, yeah.

23:41Griffin Newman:I don't know.

23:42David Sims:Yeah, pizza in a cup, whatever. It does raise the question when you see in the movie the sort of like advertisements for the new products or like everyone's switching from red to blue or whatever. You're like, is that one loop that's been repeating for 200 years? Is the thing just fully stuck in like... Every generation switches from red to blue.

24:01Griffin Newman:Yeah.

24:01David Sims:Or it happens like once a week or once a year.

24:04Griffin Newman:Someone did the math also that humans basically live like 160, 180 years on the Axiom because of the amount of captains there have been. Yeah. Like you see the sort of list of them.

24:14David Sims:Because is it 750 years?

24:16Griffin Newman:700 plus years. Yeah. Explained by microgravity where you would have no stress on your muscles or your organs. Your bones get little. Right. I have so much stress on my bones. Yeah, I mean, it does... That Steve Jobs note and his involvement in this movie to begin with does sort of speak to the commerciality that was at the heart of the Pixar ethos in a way that I... Like all of their movies, particularly early on, you know, thinking about Toy Story, Monsters, Inc. and now WALL-E, which is sort of, sort of an auto commentary on all this, are rooted in precepts of capitalism in a way that I always found as sort of, not a barrier to entry, but like a low ceiling on how much I could love them.

24:57It was just, they were so distinctly American in that way. Sure. And as opposed to something like the obvious comparison of like Studio Ghibli, which just were more of an invitation to wonder for me. And I think WALL-E, which is so rooted in Wonder, if anything, is an act of trying to reclaim that and merge it with the capitalistic impulse.

25:16David Sims:Well, you're also forgetting that fucking A Bug's Life is about communism and collective action. I mean, A Bug's Life, you know, a remake of Seven Samurai. But even that is maybe further afield from... No, but you're right. It was a lot of the Pixar thing was putting adult structures onto fantastical characters in children's films. Like I went on our friends, Emily St. James and Philip Isco's podcast, podcast like it's and did a Monsters, Inc. episode with them. I think came out earlier this year. I was like this movie is a kind of like ground zero for a thing that becomes a cancer in children's films, which is what if magical thing was a business?

26:02David Sims:And Monsters Inc. still is the one that's done it the best. But also Toy Story says what if business was a magical thing? And so it is sort of rooted in Pixar. Right. What if the dynamics of your toys talked like bored sort of like office workers? And yeah, yeah. Yeah. And then this movie is the one that's sort of, I mean, I remember the amount of reviews at the time that were like, this message is nice, but also every store is littered with Wally merch. This movie is being released by Disney. This is true. You know, it has a Happy Meal. This is the worldly legend, of course, yes.

26:34Griffin Newman:But if you want to make a$180 million movie, right, you're probably going to have to sell some toys. The call is coming from inside the house. Twas ever thus with capitalism. Ask Boots Riley.

26:42David Sims:Yes, but you're right that the framework is different in that this is a movie of like someone trying to break down that system and that structure. yeah or at least look for the cracks in it to you know have opportunities for wonder to sort of bridge i mean this movie is in many ways which talk about sort of bridging two worlds uh and i think in this particular regard it's bridging the world of of art and commerce in that sense which is obviously implicit to everything that pixar does but this is doing it a little bit more literally but yeah they uh you gotta eat you know these movies are made for profit you gotta eat Unless you're Wally and you can just drink up those sweet, sweet sun rays.

27:22I'm opening the dossier. They fly too close to the sun, which famously, not something you should do.

27:27David Sims:Yeah, but it helps them recharge really quickly.

27:29Griffin Newman:Really quickly. Boom. It starts, of course, with lunch. Wow, JJ's getting like kind of narrative with his research docs these days. Lunch at the Hidden City Cafe in Port Richmond, Point Richmond, near the headquarters of Pixar. Famously, the teaser trailer for this movie. I remember this teaser trailer and I was excited for this movie, I was like jerking a big dick watching. I was just like, get the fuck out of here. Do you know about this, Ben?

27:55David Sims:No. So speaking of Disney, like making the deal, inheriting these three Pixar movies that they had no say in. And it's like, good luck. Your next three movies to market are a movie about a French rat who believes in high cuisine, right? At a time where like Americans did not fucking care about food. A silent robot comedy and an old grumpy old man whose wife died in a flying house. And they were like, the fuck are we going to do with these? And the Ratatouille teaser trailer famously has the thing where it spells out the title phonetically. And it's all like a made up scene of the character direct addressing the camera, explaining to you what the premise is because they were like, fuck are we going to do with this?

28:34David Sims:And then the WALL-E teaser trailer is Andrew Stanton talking about this experience at the Hidden City Cafe. Like the trailer only has like 20 seconds of animation footage in it. it is basically all trying to explain to you, trust us, we're Pixar. Is that the trailer where they have the Brazil music? I think so, yeah.

28:56Griffin Newman:Anyway, it talks about, it was Lasseter, Doctor, Joe Ranft, him, and they hammer up Bugs Life, Monsters Inc., Finding Nemo, and then the last one they talked about was WALL-E. Yes, so basically,

29:08David Sims:they're in production on Toy Story. They're like, should we be coming up with other ideas in case this thing's a hit, and they ask us what our next movie is? We shouldn't be unprepared. So they sit at this one lunch and all of those movies come out of that one lunch. Obviously not fully formed, but that's what they're fucking framing in the teaser.

29:26Griffin Newman:In fact, let me tell you, right, Stanton's actual report on that slightly massaged kind of advertising version.

29:33David Sims:But the massage of the teaser is this is the most magical lunch of all time. I'll have what she's having, am I right? What do they eat? Every movie that came out of this has been beloved. Trust us, this is the final movie from that.

29:43Griffin Newman:They drink story juice. Oh. Yes, and they ate movie sandwiches. So Stanton has said, look, we had ideas that inspired those movies. Obviously, we did not come up with a bunch of finished things.

29:57David Sims:It would be fun to have bugs. What if you make a movie about monsters in children's bedrooms?

30:03Griffin Newman:Yeah. He said the bulk of the lunch was a bug's life. We truly came up with a large chunk of the movie in that lunch. And then probably the second most concrete idea, even though it was half-baked, was the last robot on Earth, a machine left running, not sure what to do with itself idea. There was no name, no storyline. It was really just a character, but we liked the character. Like, we liked that idea. We're in the middle of Toy Story, and we have been really struggling to make Woody appealing. So I think they were really into this kind of, like, Robinson Crusoe robot, because they're like, that's appealing.

30:34Griffin Newman:That's, like, a good guy. You're already rooting for that guy. Exactly. Although, also, a little sad. Kind of a sad, because I remember saying to a friend of mine when I was like really hyped for this movie before it came out where I was like, it's about like a garbage robot that like Earth is just a pile of garbage and everyone's gone and he just keeps, and he was like, that sounds so depressing. And I was like, right, but like, that's crazy, right? Isn't that cool? Like, so the film was initially called Trash Planet. Trash Planet, Ben. I mean, I like, Wally's a good title, but Trash Planet really draws you in.

31:07Griffin Newman:The pitch was Pete Docter's. Andrew inherits it. There was basically a Yankee swap. Just like the very, very basic pitch.

31:15David Sims:But for a period of time, Stanton was trying to crack Monsters, Inc. And Doctor was trying to do WALL-E. And then they end up swapping and Stanton ends up also coming up with Finding Nemo, which then supersedes. Thank God they switched. If Doctor had done it, there would have been like a droid named Loneliness and he would have been like, you know, there would, yeah. But that's why Doctor gets the co-story credit because he basically was the one who incubated a very different version of this first.

31:39Griffin Newman:So Stanton's working on Nemo. He starts dreaming of Trash Planet again.

31:43David Sims:It basically becomes his, like, Barton Fink to his Miller's Cross. And while he's working on Nemo, where when he's hit a wall, he's like, let me noodle on this and type some shit out. He said basically that the first act, his quote, fell from the sky. He was like, that felt, like, so complete to me. Right. What do I do? And then I never knew what to do once he leaves the planet.

32:02Griffin Newman:But then he's like, well, the opposite of loneliness is love. So it should be a love story. Okay. He was seduced by this idea of like he falls in love with another machine. Okay. So where did the machine come from? Right? What does that machine have interest in? Now, this is, as you've noted, the man is religious. The greatest commandment Christ gives us is to love. But that's not always our priority. Us is doing a lot of heavy lifting there. So I came up with this premise that could demonstrate what I was talking about, that a rational love could defeat programming. Right? You got these two robots with the base directive, but then the love kind of overrides it.

32:37Griffin Newman:Yeah. This is what he's saying, not me.

32:39David Sims:No, yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm going to sit on my read on this movie for a moment.

32:44Griffin Newman:Okay. So, you know, obviously this is a risky thing. They are a little worried. They do have the blank check status of Pixar's huge success and especially Nemo's huge success that I think Stanton can sort of ask essentially what he did, which is like, can you leave me alone? Can I try to write it? Like, let's not do this sort of big edit room like together or whatever. and, you know, like, can I write like an original sci-fi movie? He loves sci-fi movies. Alien. Star Wars. Yes, these are big movies. I've seen them. Eventually, Jim Reardon, who's a Simpsons guy,

33:23David Sims:comes in to co-write. The best Simpsons episodes of all time. Such as what? He directed King Size Homer. The one with Kid Rock? King Size Homer. You know what?

33:32Griffin Newman:King Size Homer is pretty funny. I'm going to give you a list in a second because it's actually astonishing. No, it's often just amazing when you see those Simpsons vets where you're like, oh my god, everything you did is amazing. And you're like, of course, everything the Simpsons did was amazing.

33:45David Sims:He kind of had a reputation for a while. He was a CalArts guy as well of being the best animation comedy writer of his generation. He became more of a writer guy, but then he directs many Simpsons. He worked on the Mighty Mouse cartoon under Ralph Bakshi with Stanton, which is where they became friends. His big breakout was his student film was called Bring Me the Head of Charlie Brown. That was a peck and pop version of Peanuts that was semi-viral in a tape trading kind of era. I think we remember, right, yeah. Episodes he directed if I can just fucking like. Give me a couple. Yes. Itchy and Scratchy and Marge, Bart's Dog Gets an F, Brushed with Greatness, When Flanders Failed, Trio Support 2, Homer at the Bat, Dog of Death, Bart's Friend Falls in Love, Homer the Heretic, Mr.

34:31David Sims:Plow Duffless, Marge and Chains, Homer Goes to College. Oh, God. Like, insane lineup. Homer at the Bad is huge for me. Bard of Darkness. Bard of Darkness is so fucking good. Lemon of Troy.

34:41Griffin Newman:Lemon of Troy is so good.

34:43David Sims:He directed, like, a lot of the best ones from the best era. The Simpsons. It was a good show. Yes. It was people like it. It's a show. When did they? It ended, I guess, in 90...

34:53Griffin Newman:99, yeah. Yeah. So, yeah, they have the idea of Eve. He brings weird in. She's, like, got this idea of this sort of sleek, futuristic techno robot. but this sort of the opposite track. What if he falls in love with an iPod? First version wasn't set on Earth. Oh, interesting. It was just a trash planet. Like, we don't know what. Steve Jobs is the one like, I think you should set it on Earth. Like, I think you should have a little bit more of a commentary here.

35:20David Sims:I saw there was a thing he said in the Criterion Disc where he was like, when I made this movie, I did not want to comment on or engage with humanity at all. When I was like... Relatable. Developing it. I was like, the whole appeal to me is like isolated robot, outer space, remove ourselves, distance ourselves from this. And people kept kind of noting it in a way that brought it back to needing some human connection to make sense of the movie. Now, is he identifiably in New York City or has Wally just been inspired by the architecture of New York somewhere deep in his coding to build a New York City out of cube trash?

35:55I think it's the latter. Okay.

35:58Griffin Newman:So it takes him a long time to get the second half right. Blah, blah, blah, blah. The iPhone comes out in 2006. He was one of the first people to get one because he had jobs gave him one. And through playing around with the iPhone, the sort of addictive quality of like a smartphone, he comes up with the kind of like humans addicted to screens living in the axiom like thing.

36:20David Sims:He said also like when I first got one and started playing around with it, I was like, I have not felt this since cigarettes. it's crazy because I feel like so much of what was compelling about the iPhone back in 2007 was like the social cachet because there was very little to do on it.

36:33Griffin Newman:There was less to do, but we made do with whatever lame apps. I mean, I didn't get an iPhone until 2012. I had a BlackBerry.

36:41David Sims:You were a BlackBerry

36:42Griffin Newman:guy. I was a BlackBerry guy. For sure. Yeah, I mean, it was a work thing. It was a work thing? What do you mean? Yeah. Well, like my job gave me one. I was a little BlackBerry. Little keys.

36:54Griffin Newman:Stanton says, I'm not making a comment on obesity. I'm trying to just make everyone a big baby. Like, the idea of the humans on the Axiom is not that they ate too much. It's that they have turned into babies.

37:05David Sims:Well, okay. So let me get into another thing here. Because there's a thing we sort of skipped over. Originally, he doesn't want it to be Earth. And then there was an extended era. They only make this change like, I think, about two years before the movie comes out. It was supposed to be a ship of like green gelatinous blobs who didn't speak English. There were two different versions of it. I don't know which one came first, but at one point it was truly like, they are aliens. They have sent...

37:34Griffin Newman:They were gel people who spoke a language that was like Monty Python, sort of Ikea speak or whatever. Which was teeing up a Planet of the Apes and it turns out that... Near the end of the film, it would reveal that they were once humans. Right. Like a Planet of the Apes style.

37:49David Sims:He talks about like there was a version where it was like they were truly... Truly impartial aliens. The implication is that humans died off. And now these aliens have abducted these robots and trying to study, you know, extinct cultures. Right. And that they have a bunch of robots. And the movie was like a robot Spartacus, as they put it, where the robots are second class citizens under the aliens. And WALL-E becomes like a figure of the uprising. But would it be that they're evolved? Well, well, so then there was a different version. I don't know which one came first, where it was the blobs are the devolved versions of humans.

38:27David Sims:That is the twist that we've devolved that much and that they don't even remember or understand that they're connected to that lineage. And that's what Wally helps connect them with. And they got very far along in that. There are like animation models that were built and they had written the whole sort of version of that and done the story reels of it. And they were just like it. The lift became so hard and heavy to get audiences to connect with the blobs who aren't speaking. It is this thing for me where I'm like, I accept and I buy. They just tried and couldn't pull it off. But the second I heard that, I was like, Jesus Christ, if they had made that work, it would have been astonishing.

39:07Listen, I say this as someone who has never found a blob that I haven't been able to connect with. We love blobbies. Sure, too. Especially blobby, the OG. But Best of Blobby, one of the most important pieces of media that Griffin introduced me to. But I think it's just thematically, it doesn't really square because you implicitly, there's no reason to assume that being blob is worse than being human. Right.

39:30Griffin Newman:They need to be babies. Like I said, it's the axiom stuff is what I like more these days. They need to be helpless. They need to have learned helplessness.

39:37David Sims:But the iteration was like, right, audiences aren't connecting to this. Maybe we have them talk. It's hard for the audiences to connect to the blobs to make them feel like distinct different characters. There was an era where it was like aristocracy. There was like a king and a queen and a prince. There was a royal wedding. Modern structures. And then they're sort of like, let's put a nose on the blob. What if they're not green, but they're like flesh colored, you know? And then it slowly evolved into the baby thing. And in doing the kind of like classic Pixar research, he spoke to a scientist who said like, if multiple generations of humanity were to live in space, they wouldn't just have their muscles atrophy, their actual physical composition would change.

40:19Do you see the video of the astronaut? I mean, we're recording this in the middle of April, but people just came back from the moon or going around the moon and they had the video of the astronaut who hadn't walked on Earth in 10 days, just 10 days, and she could not pull herself along the parallel bars. She needed to be supported. Right, right.

40:35David Sims:So it's like, if you're the seventh generation born into space, you don't need muscles anymore. You don't need... Your bones have just sort of like shrunk within your body. They're big babies. Fortunately, technology has not had any sort of negative effect along those lines on us. And this movie has turned out to be not prophetic at all. It's the problem with this movie is it got it all wrong. We solved everything.

40:58Griffin Newman:They also couldn't figure out the ending. Or for a while, it was always going to be like, he has to give her his like heart battery. There was like a sacrifice. They never liked it. Finally, they had more the idea of like he loses his memory is the kind of crisis at the end. Need to interject with this

41:14David Sims:because it's another just kind of like fascinating Stanton story cracking moment, like the Finding Nemo Barracuda thing. And all of this is important set up to John Carter, where he breaks his own story roles in several ways I've never been able to understand. You know, they watched a lot of silent comedies and they watched a lot of Chaplin and Lloyd and Buster Keaton especially, because I would argue that Wally is most closely aligned with the Buster Keaton character types. Even if the movie, I think, leans more towards modern, Well, there is a lot of modern times in it, but also City Lights.

41:47David Sims:It's like a Chaplin movie with a Buster Keaton character. And he said the thing we kept trying to figure out what Wally's emotional arc was and trying to force one and what's his growth and how does he change. And then we started looking at those movies and it's like very often Buster Keaton is an unchanging figure in the center of things. And what he does is subtly affect everyone else around him. Sure. What is Stoneface, but of metal. Exactly. Exactly. And so he kept being like, well, Wally has to like become empowered by the end of the movie. He has to save Eve. He has to become the dominant one.

42:21David Sims:It is one of the latest major changes in a Pixar film because the last 20 minutes were basically completely animated. And they did a test screening where they hadn't done final lighting passes and whatever. And it wasn't even a note he got back, but he watched it with the audience. And I think it's on the disc. You know, there's one guy in the mall in Arizona who was like, yeah, what if Wally falls asleep? What if Eva was a girl boss? She had to save him. But there's a clip of him going to the Pixar team and being like, guys, I'm so sorry. I'm about to ask you to do an insane amount of work. We have to redo the entire last 20 minutes.

42:57David Sims:And usually it never gets that far. You identify those issues at a storyboard phase. But it was completed physical animation. There are scenes in the trailers from that version of the movie you can see that aren't in the final film. which like shit never gets cut that finished. But yeah, he was like, it has to be inverted. It has to be that his worldview has actually affected her enough that she needs to pick up his mission and carry it out. But you can see the like a lot of the extended deleted footage of Eva's like batteries been fried and Wally has to save her and he's flying around with her at the end.

43:36Griffin Newman:Stanton, very shy about any kind of like topical discussions. not interested in talking about global warming, like sort of dismisses a lot of the environmental stuff because he's like, I don't have a political ban. The last thing I want to do is preach. Like all this just sort of made sense for my story. Asked about consumerism. He's like, yes, there's lots of things disconnecting us from each other and that are consumerist. But the reason I made them look like big babies because it was like a nasty guy told me, you know, that's what they would look like. Bob, you know, like he's like, the last thing I'm trying to do is make a message movie.

44:08Griffin Newman:Like he's very, whether or not you want to take this away from him, He's sort of seemingly uninterested in addressing that. Wait, that's so weird, though.

44:18David Sims:I agree. I mean, can I... That's not my job. May I give my read on that for a second? Sure. Because this CriterionDisc came out in 2022, right? And that is this framework of now, here is an adult cineast physical media package with curated supplemental material to, like, frame this within an intellectual conversation. and the new material on the Criterion Disc is so much more pointed and transparent. There was a lot of, I have to imagine, Disney inheriting this movie and I think it's what's fascinating about watching this movie now where like the greatest concern was a kind of like an anti-intellectualism and an apathy.

45:03David Sims:That's what culture is falling into and that anything in this movie that could have been seen as elitist or critical of an American apathy would have become like a fucking talking point. Right, because apathy would become Disney's lifeblood over the last 10 years or so in the live action remake era. It does feel like there was a little bit of at the time, you cannot fucking politicize this movie, right?

45:28Griffin Newman:I think so. I mean, a lot of these interviews are also from like Christianity Today and like 20... That's the outlet I was working for when I spoke to him in 2022. I talked to him not for Christianity, for around the time the Blu-ray came out. And he was very receptive to talking about the sort of political valences in the film. The more recent interviews it seems like he will be like, I mean, of course, I do get a lot of boxes from Amazon and wonder about that.

45:50David Sims:He said that was one of the

45:51Griffin Newman:main activating things was like early 2000s. He said that in 2020. Right. He didn't say it at the time. No, no. He later softened up

45:58David Sims:a little bit. I do buy that he wasn't like trying to grind axes with this movie. And I think you hear him talk about organically how the story locks into place, but also it was coming out of personal observations. Wow, I got a smartphone. I'm addicted to this. I now there's a website that sells everything. My house is filled with boxes. Yeah, I mean, my sense talking to him was that all those things are true, but I do feel like the sociopolitical commentary sprang out of what you were talking about earlier, which is this like deep rooted love for the movies, the early movies in particular, the the movies that were formative for him, where he really sort of sprang to life, which was very convenient for my purposes, was talking about the movie as a expression of the joys of parenting, as the act of, you know, we were talking about a bridge earlier, sort of like the act of taking something from one generation, showing it to another, robots acting like humans to teach humans how to stop acting like robots, the transference of going from consuming everything as Wally's done for hundreds of years to displaying that, to showing that to someone else, which is a completely revelatory and transformational experience for him.

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48:35Wally

48:36Griffin Newman:so in the screenplay obviously I guess you guys probably only know this but I'll tell you anyway like the dialogue is written even if the characters don't speak so he would say like in brackets like here's what Wally's trying to say and then obviously later they put in you know all their little noises Ben Burt the great Ben Burt the legend Ben Burt

48:56David Sims:Ben Burt is Ben Hosley, the man who, like, invented the entire Star Wars soundscape, among many other things, but one of Lucas's closest collaborators. And, you know, just these things we take for granted of just, like, droid languages and lightsabers and the sounds of ships.

49:16Griffin Newman:And he created that probably with a Moog, like, analog synthesizer.

49:21David Sims:There's another great thing on one of the Blu-ray releases that's a breakdown of like how many people at Pixar have to touch one single shot of a movie, like how many different departments work on it. And they cut to Ben Burtt explaining what his contribution is. And he was like, I was trying to find the right sound for this movie, for this shot. And then I remembered that in around 1997, I'd gone and done some recordings of Niagara Falls. And it's very indicative of how Ben Burtt works, which is he just kind of fucking collects sounds. Right. Always collecting sounds. Right. So there are things that he would sort of just like construct.

50:00David Sims:But more often, he just was constantly building a sound library and then being like, oh, you know, it'd be interesting. What if the sound of this ship is this plus this? What if he was collecting sounds one night and collected the sound of a murder? I mean, this is the question. And David. Did he invent robot leaps and bloops being cute? Because we had leaps and bloops. We had forbidden plenty. Let me tell you. I would agree with you that no. But you made them cute. Bleep itself, I think, was not cute until R2-D2. Right.

50:31Griffin Newman:Right? I don't know. Yes, I think so. I would love to look at a list of, like, history's robots. Like, you know, who was there? Because, like, Robbie's not that cute. All right, look up best Bleep bloops. Okay. So, during, while they're preparing this, Andrew stands to keep saying, like, I need this to be like R2-D2. And finally, Jim Morris, who is the former president of ILM, who now works at Pixar, says, do you want to just get Ben Burt, like the guy who did R2-D2?

50:56David Sims:Which is basically the equivalent of like casting Tom Cruise in your movie. It's like this is your main actor basically. Not only does he literally end up being the model for the voice of WALL-E, but it's like this is the guy who's going to figure out whether or not your entire movie works. If he can make these compelling and distinct.

51:12Griffin Newman:Now, Ben Burt, as he puts it, had just finished what he considered a basically 30-year tour of duty making Star Wars movies and was not that enthused about robots. He was coming right off of Rangelis. Yeah, he'd just been working on the prequels for so long and was like, I just don't want to do any more robots. But that kind of Capra romance, Buster Keaton hero thing. That's an interesting challenge. And, you know, the idea also of like, they're going, it's just, they're mostly communicating with each other. So bridging the sort of robot communication gaps, right? Like, which is sort of like the R2-3PO thing.

51:49Griffin Newman:Yeah, yeah, yeah. He likes that. But you're removing the... The humans going like, what?

51:54David Sims:Well, and also... I mean, they come in. You know, C-3PO is human-cyborg relations. His job is to fucking translate things. And it's like, what if you're not translating it? And how do you still make it read to the audience? What a crazy guy that guy is. Ben Burt?

52:09Griffin Newman:C-3PO.

52:09David Sims:Yeah, sure, Ben Burt. C-3PO. There's a guy who could use a crush. Am I right? I don't think... I think that would just make him anxious. It's kind of wild. Nine movies C-3PO never even, like... carry on. Finish your thought. They're even like fucks. It's supposed to everyone else in Phantom Menace is fucking left and right. You know? R2 could get it. R2 could get it. And I think he is getting it. I think sometimes he's rolling off to the side and you're like, where did R2 go? And you're like,

52:40Griffin Newman:he's gone. He's hidden. So, you know, the usual Ben Burt thing of like, okay, now I've got this challenge of like, creating character voices all distinct, all have to sort of sound human, sound relatable. It's tough. He records in a little chamber, he says. Takes those recordings, runs them through his computer. He analyzes the sound and breaks them into component parts, like you would sort of break light through a prism to get colors, he says. And then you start refabricating, putting it all back together again. But you can control, you can be like, Maybe a little more of this, a little less of this.

53:21Griffin Newman:Hold vowels, stretch vocal cords in a way that you could never, you know, pitches. And, you know, if sound was silly putty, you could stretch it and make it longer, he says. I found a way of working on Wally where you could do that. It sounds like something I would not be good at, but it sounds very, very cool. He's a very cool guy. He also just, I mean, I've only seen him in countless making ofs, but he just seems like a friendly fella. I was going to say.

53:46David Sims:Seems like a sweetie pie. Sweetie pie, super charming. He's not like, this is intense. Like, brr, brr, brr, brr. I also think some of these Lucas-y guys in interviews, you're like, you are the spectrum. You seem like a nice person, but you almost like are a robot looking for another robot to talk to. Ben Burt, I think is, I got to meet him when we went with George Lucas to Skywalker Ranch. Cool. And he has since retired, but was there giving a tour to his friend from high school. That's cool. I mean, he's pretty old at this point. He's in his late 70s. I assume you must have talked at length on this podcast about the trip you just mentioned.

54:24But I have no memory of hearing about it.

54:26David Sims:I haven't talked about it much, but it was pretty incredible. It's a very casual George Lucas took me to his house. George Lucas did not take me to his house. George Lucas has not acknowledged us. Okay. Yeah. The way you presented it is something like that. Sorry. Sorry. Let me clarify. Yes.

54:42Griffin Newman:Go ahead. Yes.

54:42David Sims:other people within the organization like the George Lucas talk show. Darth Maul. And have always been like, I don't, I wonder if George would like it. There's always been this sort of one degree away. George does like comedy, but he's really sensitive and self-conscious.

55:00Griffin Newman:The extent to which he can find humor in himself and his work. Yes. It seems to me it's more than it was, but I'm not detecting a ton of it.

55:11David Sims:it's more than it was but also like every year at like comic-con they would do a panel that was like lucasfilm's favorite fan films and parodies like he's always embraced that shit and connor connor aleph always tells the story about like the first time star wars was on the cover of mad uh uh they they were sent like a cease and desist uh and george lucas they mad responded to george Lucas's lawyer saying like, really? Because this is a letter we got from George Lucas last week. And it was George saying like, I'm so floured to be on the cover of Mad. Can I please buy the original art? But we walked into like the Skywalker Ranch library and the librarian looked at Connor and went, I was wondering if you were ever going to show your face here.

55:53David Sims:It feels like all of them watched the show. Yeah. Fascinating. I have to say some of the only joy I've known in the last few weeks was watching Jared Harris on the George Lucas talk show where he was just the first half of it. He's like, what decisions have I made in my life that led me to this moment? That's the joy of doing the show is watching people go through that and then by the end of it be like, I'm all in on this. Right, right, right. But it was so cool to watch. Basically, we were being given a tour adjacent to Ben Burtt giving a tour. And it was on a day where there weren't a lot of people.

56:31It's like you could walk 15 feet behind him and just hear echoes of what was set up

56:35David Sims:And watch him talk about him, whatever. He's a lovely guy.

56:39Griffin Newman:So Sigourney Weaver obviously is involved with this movie.

56:42David Sims:As he put it to Sigourney Weaver, you get to play mother now. Right.

56:45Griffin Newman:What if your mother, she likes that idea. She does it. Sigourney Weaver, I feel like also likes to do stuff. It does feel like a great way of incepting your kids with eventually watching Alien when they're seven.

56:55David Sims:It also is on the timeline. It also speaks to the tough sell of this movie where I remember like Sigourney Weaver doing fucking like the Today Show and Good Morning in America and whatever. for this movie, even though it's almost like an extended in-joke cameo, because they were like, we have no stars in this film. Like Sigourney Weaver's The Computer. The other lead actors are Ben Burtt, a Pixar employee, and the Mac text-to-speech program. And two men who have been accused of being sex pests in different varieties. Yes, you're right. I was doing a count in my head. Who was the other? To a Pixar's favorite.

57:30Jeff Garland has gotten some blowback. Garland is aware. And Fred Willard jacked it in a theater. No, he's not. He didn't ask it. Listen, I didn't say I was...

57:37David Sims:He jacked it in the place you're supposed to jack it, right? He was appreciating the art. He was engaging with it in the manner in which it was... It was in a porn theater, right? It was the Tiki Theater. You take that back. I didn't say sex pest in a derogatory way. You did. Well, pest is a derogatory word.

57:52Griffin Newman:You can't just be like, I'm being a pest. And everyone's like, Ah, yeah, you're my favorite pest. Story of my life.

57:57David Sims:I would call him a sex fan. He's an appreciator of sex. Sex minister, yeah. But yeah, no, it's... Right. Willard, Garland, John Ratzenberger The big three of the 2000s box office

58:11Griffin Newman:So Wally You know there is the So well Wally blah blah blah Well right there is the I think at the time for Pixar Somewhat revolutionary thing of like We will have humans It's hard to remember It's still the only time they've done that Right like they've never done anything like that since No So you got Willard obviously is like It's a good joke I mean, it's sort of like we will turn into CG. Yeah. We were once humans and we turned into CG.

58:38David Sims:Yeah. This is also the movie where, and Stanton talks about that this was kind of his main project of like if we're putting humans in it, then we're presenting this not as a form of like photorealism, but we have to sell a sense of versimilitude. And so the technology has finally gotten to a point. And this is still an era of Pixar where almost every movie is built around a new technical challenge can we solve, right? Like there are actual basic building blocks of this medium working that still have not been cracked yet. And his big pet project on this one was, can we truly make the virtual camera feel real?

59:17David Sims:Unlike in 2D animation, where you are the animator, also basically the cinematographer to a degree. Right. And that you are composing your shot, but you're very limited in the kind of camera movements or even approximations of camera movements you can do, CGI inherently has like a virtual camera built within it. You know, this is a movie where it's like, we want to make the camera feel real. We want to own the imperfections and the struggles of what a camera... Yeah, they did a lot of analog 70 millimeter tests to try and capture that kind of, you know, the lighting, the texture. And they're like, where's the barrel distortion?

59:53David Sims:You know, where are the imperfections? They got both Roger Deakins and Dennis Mirren to be consultants on this movie. and he was basically like, I explained to them all these things that have driven like Russian lens makers crazy for decades that they've never been able to solve. The weird quirks of just like human limitations that then Pixar is trying to replicate rather than computer, which is always trying to perfect everything. And a thing that happens - Computer kind of bad guy. Computer kind of bad guy. In this movie. But like especially in the sort of Le 'Veon Rose montage, there's a lot of like you feel the camera operator.

1:00:36David Sims:And they talked about this of like especially the scene where Wally triggers all the shopping carts and they come like rolling after him against the wall. Like the camera is struggling to catch up with Wally and keep him in the frame. There's like an overcorrection of the camera. That's basically the stuff they started fucking with in the bloopers. like the Toy Story, Bugs Life, Monsters, and Bloopers have that kind of like, isn't it funny to acknowledge that someone needs to refocus? I don't care for those. The bloopers are funny. David, I understand. I don't care for those. You don't care for them at all?

1:01:11No, I liked them when I was a kid. It's funny that animation would have mistakes because you'd think they would just erase it along the way.

1:01:19David Sims:We also, we didn't call this out in Finding Nemo, but that was one of Stanton's moves also where he was like, these movies can't start to feel like they're fitting into a pattern in a formula? 100%. Very smart. We got to break the blooper thing because like we're about to start repeating ourselves.

1:01:33Griffin Newman:Yeah. Yeah. I don't like the blooper thing. And this movie does not suffer from Pixar boardroom story brain. No. This is what I'm saying. He retreated from that. Yeah. Like. I mean, very clearly. I mean, obviously, Brave, their best film, was still to come. Change your fate. Do you want to change your fate? Was it the wasps? Now, the film begins. Oh, how does Wally fit into the Pixar theory? The witch turns into Woody and then where's Wally in this? Wally's Is Wally pre-cars? Like will cars come after Wally? I think Wally is post-cars. Like if Wally charts the apocalypse and then but yeah is it post-cars?

1:02:11David Sims:Yeah I think it's that after the cars have died off Wally was not originally invented to clean up what's his name? Fucking McQueen Lightning McQueen

1:02:19Griffin Newman:Yeah Wally is post-cars of course guess what's post-Wally in the Pixar timeline theory? Onward, of course, set in the 4000s. Fuck you.

1:02:30David Sims:Honestly, honestly, fuck you.

1:02:32Griffin Newman:I mean, I don't know what you're talking about. Is it worth diving into? No, no, no, no. We'll move on.

1:02:38David Sims:It's worth saying what it is and why we're not giving it any validity. It's not a real thing. The Pixar movies all have these Easter eggs, right? Where it's like the Pizza Planet truck shows up in every movie. There are things like that. And most of the Pixar movies include a preview of the next film. So we called out in the Finding Nemo episode in the waiting room, the dentist, a kid's reading an Incredibles comic. They would seed kind of the next movie in a little way, right? At the end of Monsters, Inc., Boo has like a Nemo toy. There's always that kind of shit. And a very annoying corner of the internet started taking it literally and being like, oh, that means they exist in the same universe.

1:03:18David Sims:What is the timeline that justifies all these things happening? And with every added Pixar film, it becomes sweatier and sweatier. But you can watch like hour long YouTube essays where it's like, so. I mean, I believe there was like a PowerPoint presentation. When humans die, cars take over. Kick this off. Then when the cars kill themselves, Wally cleans up our garbage. Wally starts with a real shot across the bow in that you like immediately it's just out there, you know, and it is so immediately removed from Pixar tonality up until that point. I thought about our Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon episode where you said, has any movie more quickly announced itself as a masterpiece?

1:04:01David Sims:Well, with the opening strings. Crouching Tiger still has it. Yeah, I don't know if the quality is implicit to what all he's doing. Well, because Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon begins with, boom! And you're like, ah! But in context, this is telling you circa 2008 and you're sitting there in the theater. This is not your daddy's Pixar movie. No, you're also, there's no soft ease in. You know, most of the Pixar movies, like, have, like, a cold open before you go to an opening credit sequence. And then they start to really minimize the opening credit sequence. This is, like, Disney logo, Pixar logo.

1:04:34David Sims:The short before this was Presto, which is pretty good in theater. Pretty good.

1:04:38Griffin Newman:You love Presto? I think that's the best one they ever did. You think that's the best one they ever did? Apart from, of course, my beloved Red Stream. We're the bicycle. Yeah, what's your favorite? And Lava. Lava. Lava actually should have gotten Pixar shut down. You know what I mean? Everyone's like, we appreciate everything. And they released Lava and the government immediately is like, I'm sorry. You're done. I came home one day and found my daughter watching Lava and it was like, what? You threw the TV out the window and seeing your kid watching the ring tape. I was just like, no! What's your favorite of the shorts?

1:05:12Griffin Newman:I think Presto is so goddamn funny. I love Presto, but I'm like, the top is interesting.

1:05:17David Sims:What's the top? I gotta think on this

1:05:19Griffin Newman:It better not be fucking Lava? Well, yeah I mean It better not be fucking what? I was about to say a funny one Boundin But I do enjoy Boundin Boundin's lovely He's boundin Yeah I like Yeah Yeah, I like lava the most You look lava the most? I mean, sorry, sorry, presto, sorry Yeah, I hate lava's the bow I love Bao And I've seen Bao so many times because my daughter really loved Bao for a long time. They sent me the little plastic prop Bao when that came out. And it's been living in my freezer for like eight years now. What's in your freezer? Because it's a frozen Bao. I don't know. I put it up there.

1:05:57I hid it in the corner.

1:05:59David Sims:Yeah, well, tell us about it. I'm like, is Jerry's game my favorite? Jerry's game very good.

1:06:03Griffin Newman:Yeah. Jerry's game very good.

1:06:05David Sims:He's joining the MCU soon, right? Can you name which ones won the Oscar? Did Jerry's game win?

1:06:12Griffin Newman:Jerry's game won. Okay. So Luxo Jr. won. Incorrect. Luxo Jr. was nominated. Rude.

1:06:19David Sims:Tintoy won? Tintoy won. That's the first win. Did Knickknack win? Knickknack sadly lost two stack, two bodacious.

1:06:25Griffin Newman:Right. Jerry's game won? Yeah, that was the second. Okay. For the Birds won. I remember that. That's the third. That was in that era where it was kind of like, are they just going to win every single time they do one? Yes, because it was too consecutive for it. Bound and got its ass kicked. Bound and did get its ass kicked.

1:06:38David Sims:Then it doesn't win. They don't win again for a while. Did Day and Night win? No. La Luna?

1:06:46Griffin Newman:No. My daughter also loves La Luna. Both those nominated, yeah. La Luna is a Luca prequel. Yes. You know, it's got like Luca style. Yes. Lava didn't win, did it? No. Thank God. Lava, not even nominated. Did Piper win? Piper won. Piper's good. Piper looks amazing.

1:07:02David Sims:Yes. Piper just looks incredible. Yeah, but there's not a win between 2000 and 2016. And then Bao won. And then Bao won. Yeah. Bao's so good. She eat the Bao. She eat the Bao. Do you remember when they announced Bao and we were all like, this sucks. I don't want to watch a food baby. And then everyone comes out of Bao crying. Bao fucking rocks.

1:07:18Griffin Newman:And then, of course, Turning Red rocks. Yeah. Turning Red is the best. Yeah. God, Turning Red's so funny. Now I'm just thinking about it. With all their faces go funny, anime style. It's so funny.

1:07:29David Sims:I just think the immediate quick cuts, establishing shots of space, straight with fucking Hello Dolly lyrics. The weird juxtaposition of like, what is the fucking tone of this movie?

1:07:41Griffin Newman:The Hello, Dolly of it is very funny in that that movie is so flawed. I mean, this is that now that movie's greatest legacy. Exactly, right.

1:07:49David Sims:Stan's also said that. He's like, I find it funny that Wally has bad taste. Well, it's like I always imagine... He's a bit of a cheese ball. Yeah. Listen, Wally was not exactly, you know, had a blockbuster video at his disposal. Guys, he just wants to hold hands. He does. But I always do imagine, like, what if Wally had found, like, a VHS of Citizen Kane or something and he'd just go around. And he'd throw it out.

1:08:09Griffin Newman:Yeah, I think Citizen Kane's no fun. Rosebud. Right, what's the gag? Obviously not as funny, but, you know. Wait, what's the gag where he throws out the good things? The ring. He picks up a ring box and he throws out the ring. Yeah. Yeah.

1:08:19David Sims:I love that. Great bit. But I think that's part of also, like, it feels reflective of, like, you're lucky, or like, that your son hyperfixated on WALL-E and that was the movie that had to play 500 times in your home. Oh, there have been other much worse hyperfixations in its way. Exactly. You're like, he's like a child. Ice Age, The Meltdown. For some reason, he's fucking locked in on... Meltdown's tough. It's a tough movie. So step up from the first Ice Age. No, it is not. Step down from beating yourself in the face with a hammer. One time I went over to your place and your son was insistent that we all watch Ice Age, the Meltdown, and got really angry when anyone else was talking to her.

1:08:58Oh, yeah, yeah. He loves to do that. Yeah. This is part of why we had such a blow up at the Alamo Draft House recently. Well, yes.

1:09:04Griffin Newman:What was the blow up? What were you saying? Read about it online. You didn't read

1:09:08David Sims:Ehrlich's Drafthouse piece?

1:09:10Griffin Newman:Oh, I did? Oh, yes, right But that was not entirely his fault No, not at all But no, Asa is Very serious about Taking in his Ice Age It's not like people talking over it I really don't like going I've been to Drafthouse twice with my daughter And I don't like it as much as the Nighthawk Please do not even get me started But Ice Age boiling points

1:09:33David Sims:The Nighthawk has been better Our draft house is now, I agree with you, the worst place to see a movie. But so easy to fix.

1:09:41Griffin Newman:Like, it's just like, you have the infrastructure. We can fix this. Roll it back. Right.

1:09:46David Sims:We all told you not to do this.

1:09:48Griffin Newman:And now it's not going well. I can't tell. I'm holding out hope for Common Sense Prevail, but I also think that they are so deep in it and are so invested in transitioning their workhorse. Yes, because they made this stupid technology. Firing lots of people and reducing their hours and having no more seasonal workers. That was their whole thing, too,

1:10:04David Sims:was they were like, we're rolling this out as a test program to see if it works. To test, you know, how much it fucking sucks. The feedback was terrible. And they're like, great, we're going to go ahead and force it on everyone. And it was like, this was your plan all along. You didn't care how anyone felt about it. Yeah, of course, right. Some real B &L shit. It is some real B &L shit. But I was trying to think of the other movies that I've had to endure this many times. He's now really into Big City Greens, which is not a movie at all. Yeah. It's a show that I had not heard of until he happened.

1:10:35You mentioned this to me I've never heard of. It turns out that like roughly 60 % of the guests who have ever appeared on Blank Check have done voice cameos on Big Z.

1:10:44David Sims:Yet not one Griffin Newman. Not one host. No. Zero hosts. Hosley's been on it. Yeah. He's a regular. He's pretty good. But yeah, that's his latest thing. I'm still trying to figure out what it is. Hi, Ben. My name is David Ehrlich. You might remember me from such Blank Check episodes as Wally. So I figured that I would send you a quick voicemail because something has really been troubling me since we recorded our Wally episode a couple of months ago. You know, any number of things that I've said on Blank Check over the years have plagued me, but nothing has really kept me up at night quite like how callously I dismissed the children's television show, Big City Greens.

1:11:29I think at the time I was miffed that my six-year-old son Asa was forsaking the infinite riches of children's cinema in favor of a streaming television show during his limited after-school television time. But it turns out that Big City Greens is a fucking masterpiece. It's basically The Simpsons for eight-year-olds or younger. I think it ages a little bit aged up for my son, but he seems to rock with it anyway. I mean, it's actually a gateway drug to The Simpsons that I came home one day to find my son watching completely unprompted. Didn't even know he's aware that The Simpsons existed. Marge versus the monorail, which was a really profound moment for me.

1:12:09Anyway, in summation, Wally good, Big City Greens, very good, Chip Whistler evil. That's what I got. Thank you. Love you. Bye.

1:12:21David Sims:here's a question for you how long had it been do you think since asa had seen the movie last after watching it hundreds of times there's a bit of a gap when he discovered right until last before last night um when i had to sort of because he's so resistant to anything that is no longer his choice anything that he thinks is his sister's idea or preference uh is not going to fly so i actually thinking that he would be just sort of enraptured by flashing lights as he's prone to do. I had my my beautiful wife Mo turn on Wally as I was bringing the kids up the stairs. Yeah. So that when you walk in, it would just be there.

1:12:59And sure enough, you know, slack jaw, you know, like he's the thing from Batman Forever. Yeah. Just fucking watching Wally.

1:13:06David Sims:It did immediately suck him in. It did. And they ended up watching the whole thing. but it had been it had been probably three years and your daughter had never seen it before never seen it before immediately immediately fell in love with Wally a la Wally falling in love with Eve however it came from a place of profound concern I think my daughter unlike my I hesitate to call him sociopath on a podcast that will outlive me but the love of my life Asa but he's not quite the natural empath that my that my daughter is. But like every three seconds would just be like, Wally, no, is he okay? Wally, Wally.

1:13:44My daughter is...

1:13:45Griffin Newman:He's constantly in peril. My daughter would get so anxious about when the rocket lands because that is, I guess in the first act, pretty much the only moment of real peril. When he's chasing the red dot. Yeah, and then like the flames. And because she would just, you know, and she had to always be reassured. I'd be like, he's fine. Also, Eva does shoot Wally several times. She does, but like, that's played more for laughs, I guess. You never really feel that threat. And then the later existential threat if he loses his personality, I think didn't quite land with my three-year-old daughter. She didn't really get the peril there.

1:14:21Uncle Griffin did buy a, I think a Wally and an Eva. Or maybe I bought the Wally. I think you bought the Wally.

1:14:28David Sims:They're still making new Wallis and they haven't made a good Eva in a while. And I bought a vintage Eva. Pretty good. I mean, it doesn't fly. None of them do that. Please, trust me. I did the work to get the best one I could, but it was vintage. I don't think they've produced a compatible EVA. It does have a Canon. In like 15 years. Yeah. Which has blown several holes in my apartment walls.

1:14:53Griffin Newman:Is there an EVA Funko Pop? Yeah, of course.

1:14:56David Sims:Yes. Yes. Right. Her name is technically EVA.

1:14:59Griffin Newman:Her name is EVA. It's just that Wally calls EVA. EVA. And she says, Wally. And can we just say that she's hot Or should I just Should I not do that Like I walked out of the movie With two At the time being like Well I really liked that It wasn't quite as transcendent I was hoping at the time I remember However I am rock hard But then my second thought When is Eve gonna do Max on That bossy robot Well sure She is a bossy round face Her face could not be rounder Correct And she could not be bossier She's an upset down egg All she does is go Wally And he's like You know what moment

1:15:34David Sims:I really love. Please. After she kisses him and electrocutes his face in space and he's like frozen and floating away she goes, Wally. Wally. For the first time she's like kind of like come on you old silly goose. I know that my sexual power is totally fried in your operating system. She like waves her arm over.

1:16:04David?

1:16:05David Sims:Yeah. Ben and I are four-eyed cool guys. And here's the thing with glasses. I don't know if you know this experience, Ben. You're living a compromised lifestyle because it's so annoying to get rid of glasses and get a new pair. It's so expensive. It's so time consuming. The tiny screws hurt your fingers. You got to get a new prescription. It's a whole to do. It's a production. So most of us just live with it. But wait a second. Zenni Optical fixes all of that, Ben? What? Yep. Zenny is an online eyewear shop. Prescription glasses, sunglasses, blue light lenses starting at under$30. You stop asking, do I really need new glasses?

1:16:45David Sims:And you start asking, why wouldn't I just get them? You do it in that voice. You go, why wouldn't I just get them? You're not agonizing over one pair that has to do everything for the next two years. You get the ones for work. You get the fun ones for when you're partying. You get the pair that only matches one outfit. Yet they got over 150 ,000 five-star reviews. And if you've never bought glasses online before, Zenni has a virtual try-on so you can see exactly how a frame looks on your face before you commit.

1:17:12Griffin Newman:I'm sorry, Griffin. They actually have 150 ,001 because I just left a five-star review that says, great.

1:17:19David Sims:That is very, very kind of you. If your glasses are overdue for a refresh, now is the time. Go to zenni.com slash podcast and use code PODCAST15 for 15 % off your first order. The styles sell out, so don't sit on it. That's Z-E-N-N-I dot com slash podcast, P-O-D-C-A-S-T. Promo code PODCAST15. David, I'm sorry for excluding you from this act.

1:17:48Griffin Newman:That's okay.

1:17:56David!

1:17:57David Sims:Yeah? If I'm being honest. What? Don't lie. And I'm the most radically honest person in America. It's time for radical honesty. Okay, honesty is on the table. Sometimes it is 1 p.m. Sure. And all I've had is coffee. Uh-oh. No breakfast, no lunch, just caffeine. And whatever movie I'm three rewatches deep on. That's actually... That sounds like you. Yeah. I can't believe that's in the ad copy. A little tough on the tummy. Lately, I've been keeping Huel around to stop myself from doing exactly that. Huel is sponsoring the podcast. Tell me of Huel. Well, here's what Huel saves me. It saves me time on recording days when we're deep into director's filmography.

1:18:32David Sims:This is customized ad copy. It's, well, yeah, and that's why you're right on time to every single episode.

1:18:36Griffin Newman:Of course, a screening marathon where you forget to eat. No, totally. Like, I think this is an actually relatable condition of like, oh, oh no, I haven't like eaten enough today. Like, you know, I've had a slow morning. Right, I've got something, I've got a busy afternoon.

1:18:50David Sims:Huel has the Black Edition ready to drink. It is a bottle that is just a meal inside that bottle. I got chocolate peanut butter. It tastes good. It just tastes like a nice little milkshake.

1:19:02Griffin Newman:Whoa, it's got 35 grams of protein, seven grams of fiber, 27 essential vitamins and minerals. And minerals. You're actually impressed by that rundown. I thought of protein. That's like an Ocean's Eleven. That's a hefty amount of protein. Style line up. And then they got the powder, the Black Edition powder, which is the customizable. That's 40 grams of protein, same complete nutrition, mixed with water or milk. No artificial sweeteners, colors, or flavors. Yes. It's gluten-free. My wife is gluten-free.

1:19:30David Sims:Well, that's nice to know.

1:19:31Griffin Newman:Good for her.

1:19:31David Sims:No, in all honesty, I often try to watch the movie right before the episode because my brain cannot retain anything. And then I rush over here and I'm like, all I've had is four cups of coffee and zero food. And it's nice to just shake a hule, down it, and just feel vaguely like a normal person. It's under$5 a meal for the RTV.

1:19:53Griffin Newman:ready to drink.

1:19:54David Sims:Of course. There's also, you know, there's a powder for when you're home and you want to control the texture, whether you want to just shake that up with water or mix it into something else. Right. But the RTD, you can just grab one of those bad boys when you're sprinting out the door to a record on time.

1:20:08Griffin Newman:No, wait. How do you spell it? It's H-E-W-O? No, you fools. No. It's H-U-E-L. Okay? Here is a limited time offer. Stop running on nothing but coffee. Get Huel today with my exclusive offer of 15 % off online with my code check at Huel.com slash check. It's H-U-E-L.com slash check. New customers only. Thank you to Huel for partnering and supporting our show. Wow.

1:20:35David Sims:If you're the kind of person who forgets to eat until you're staring down a six movie day, this is the fix. And a six movie day, that is impressive. And our hats are off to you. Very good.

1:20:53Griffin Newman:All right, we start with, though, while he lives. As you said, Stanton's like...

1:20:57David Sims:You start with out there.

1:20:58Griffin Newman:Well, that's true. But I mean, re the first act and the silence and all that. And, you know, Stanton says we were breaking rules. This obviously was not a done thing.

1:21:08David Sims:But this is my point. You start with the fucking Blair of like... Yes. An obscure musical song. And you're like, this is not how this movie starts. And then it winds down to absolute silence. But then it's also... Like as we get closer to Earth. The pivot that they make to the first notes of Thomas Newman's score, which are very ominous. Score very important. And that is a huge jarring moment, I think, is similarly unexpected, where you're like, oh, we're going from the joy of that song to something is unnerving. The palette of the first three minutes is already like throwing you totally out of whack of like, don't expect this to conform to the comforts of the usual Pixar movie.

1:21:45David Sims:Why are they using like an old Hollywood song? Why is there now just kind of silence and isolation? And they film Wally from like such a distance. And you're sort of focusing on the spaces and then watching him cross in clear frame. And not even clocking necessarily that he built everything we can see. Totally right. And then the Thomas Newman score only kicks in once we sort of zoom out and understand, oh, he built these structures. And he's sad and alone. You watch the process of him sans music doing the cubing, stacking the one, the sort of pride he has in doing it precisely. there's a great Stanton clip on there's a like 20 minute feature on the Criterion Ben to your question you asked famously in the early days of podcasting how do you direct animation draw faster right?

1:22:32David Sims:There's a really good like 20 minute. I don't know but also better Yes sort of like mini documentary of showing what directing animation is and it's just kind of a compilation of reviews that Stanton's doing He said basically that like, as he puts it, directing animation is you have to make a choice every three and a half minutes. He's like, I arrive every morning, my assistant gives me what they call the dance card, and it's here's everything you need to review today. And the list is so long that basically on average, every three and a half minutes, you have to make a definitive choice about something, whether it's approving a design thing or a sound thing or an actual shot, giving a note, you know, deciding when a thing is finally finished or what needs to be adjusted or any of that.

1:23:16David Sims:And there's a really good clip of him in a meeting with a lot of the story team, the design team, trying to figure out, okay, how are the robots going to work? And much like Finding Nemo, where he said, I really didn't want to anthropomorphize the fish. I wanted to find a way to make the fish expressive while sticking to basically the physiology of how a fish could actually move. Secret, what if Jewish? Solved. The answer, right? Right. But for Wally, he was like, I don't want them to mirror our bodies that much. I want to play with limitations. Right. I think that's fun. Right. Right. It's more interesting to me if their bodies can do a thing that we could never do.

1:23:56David Sims:And so Angus McLean, who was a big part of this movie, later directs Lightyear, which rewatching this, I was like, oh, yeah, the whole fucking design language of Lightyear was ripped off from this movie. it is what if Buzz Lightyear had WALL-E designs even all the tech all the ships have the same kind of weird like rounded edges Is that the movie that's the origin story of the action figure? Oh my god Ehrlich it's not a movie about the action figure it's about the real man that the action figure is based on because in 1995 a young boy watched a movie

1:24:25Griffin Newman:I'm pretty sure he made a joke the same joke on the Nemo episode so I think we'll just

1:24:31David Sims:maybe have to do it

1:24:31Griffin Newman:every time there's a lot of life

1:24:32David Sims:during this series he has this great line where he's saying to Angus McLean And he's like, can I make the argument for giving him elbows? Right. Like, Hengist McLean's making this plea of like, it's going to make all of our lives easier if we can give him an elbow. And Stanton goes, I'd rather give you a wrist than an elbow. And everyone in the room goes like, huh. And you watch him explain for the first time, like it's coming to him. Like, what if his arms are like this? What if they're small and they're out like this and his wrist can extend in this sort of way? And that's now coming up with a language of movement that you couldn't do with a human being, which is I think so much of what Stanton finds interesting in animation is like finding these midpoints between the language of live action film and the language of animation, which is like, how do you kind of shoot and cut a movie in quotes with what we understand from live action, but depict on screen things that we couldn't ever film and find the sort of midpoint between human behavior.

1:25:32David Sims:and what kind of characters are projecting them off. And with WALL-E and so many of the robot characters in this movie, it is all in the eyes, which are obviously a cheat for animation, you know, whenever they're trying to anthropomorphize something. But I think it's so resonant here because WALL-E is really kept alive, not so much by solar power as he is by curiosity and wonder. I mean, this is what separates him from all the other WALL-E units that have been decommissioned. It's that he gets off on discovering things about the world and that has sustained him for centuries. So tiny pin in this.

1:26:03David Sims:He, the other sort of part of the lore of this movie is he was at like a baseball game and he had like cheap binoculars to watch the game from the cheap seats. And he got hyper fixated on the hinge of the binoculars and how he was like, oh, if you tilt them down, they look sad.

1:26:18Griffin Newman:Yeah, it's brilliant. Right? I mean, it's so clever.

1:26:20David Sims:Which is the starting point of the design of this character. Obviously the trash planet idea had existed, but that kind of reactivated the like, you could build an entire character where that's the only face you have. And there is this subtle thing, and it's like part of the language the movie teaches you that pays off so effectively at the end when WALL-E, like, comes back is, oh, all these robots are supposed to have a straight line for their eyes.

1:26:43Griffin Newman:And I mean, that's right. When he turns personality-less, he goes back to the straight line. It's the droop. No, no, the droop is when he gets good again.

1:26:50David Sims:Right, but that's the moment where you're like, oh my God, our guy is back. Yeah, he's our guy. He is our guy. They've taught you this thing where suddenly seeing the droop conveys so much to you in this classic like Pixar teaches you a technology that is meaningless. And by the end of the movie, it can communicate a complicated thing in one movement. I think that is sort of the defining thing that this movie is about is like it's not about artificial intelligence in a sort of designed. We want to create artificial intelligence way. It is this fascinating like what creates a personality? What creates a soul?

1:27:24David Sims:If a robot lives long enough, do like aberrations start to happen? Which is why it tracks so well into a different context of artificial intelligence, which is as a criticism of something it couldn't anticipate necessarily, which is AI. Right, right. And the movie being a very obvious, now in hindsight, broadside against what would happen if we just delegate all of our thinking and ability to automated systems. Which this movie is, basically all the robots you see in it aren't trying to comfort you by seeming human. they are there to serve a specific function, right? This is just like, what if a robot did your fucking makeup?

1:27:59David Sims:And that's the one that needs to impersonate a social interaction because that's part of the dynamic. But otherwise, it's just like, what is the one thing this fucking robot needs to do? And it doesn't need a face and it doesn't need a personality. It's just going to serve this one job that we can like clean up. In some cases, literally make the robot that cleans up. All of the main robot characters in this movie are defined by a moment where you realize, oh, something has weirdly evolved in them where they now have a personality, where they now take some specific pleasure in doing what they do.

1:28:31David Sims:It is no longer programming. There is some joy in this that is basically like a malfunction. But in that malfunction, like feelings are developed. So you start with like Wally, the sense of pride he takes in the garbage. Is that the reason that he has outlived all the other models?

1:28:51Griffin Newman:Sure. Yeah, probably, right? Because, like, that's, they're all the other models burnt out, we assume, dead. And you watch Wally. Uninterested, you know, whatever.

1:29:00David Sims:He's making architecture out of the garage. Right, he's doing art.

1:29:03Griffin Newman:Yeah.

1:29:03David Sims:And as I say, that little gesture with the wrists is just, like, you see the satisfaction of, like, another clean wall. But he loves to curate stuff. He's got his lunchbox. Yeah, he lives in my apartment. I get this guy. I really get this guy. He has, I mean, I don't know if he...

1:29:21Griffin Newman:quite made that connection, but...

1:29:22David Sims:Kind of hit me like a ton of bricks watching it last night.

1:29:25Griffin Newman:Yeah, because of course, like Wally Wright, outside, he's making towers out of bricks and all that, but... That's what I consider podcasting, making towers out of bricks. He lives in a garbage truck with the kind of like the rotating, you know, he's got the kind of the tie rack of garbage, right? Yes. The curation. Right.

1:29:40David Sims:And that was supposed to be the racks of all the other models of him. Right.

1:29:43Griffin Newman:And he hangs his favorite pieces.

1:29:45David Sims:You know, that was one of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of ships that were just supposed to be levels of Wall-E's all sleeping in little boxes. He's the last one. We see in just like such fucking like clean, quick visual storytelling of his treads start to wear out. He needs to find other dead models. You're like, this is how this one guy has survived. He's basically been Frankensteining himself from his dead brothers. Like this isn't even the original Wall-E. At one point, he just became a hodgepodge of other Wall-E's. But you're like, right. The other guy's all burned out. Why is Wall-E still here?

1:30:20David Sims:because Wally wants to be alive. Why does he want to be alive? Because he likes doing this. It's not just that he's programmed to do this. He enjoys it. And then in his enjoyment and also the isolation of everything else around him and the mission becoming impossible, you know, unending, he starts to get obsessed with the other objects. Well, it dovetails with what Stanton said, which is, you know, irrational. The theme of the movie for him that he would put on like a coffee cup so that everybody who was working with him could understand in every chain in the system what movie they were making is irrational love defeats life's programming.

1:30:53And so it's like, if you take that to a literal place, it's like his love of this activity literally overpowers, you know, the programming and the obsolescence that's coded into his programming and whatnot.

1:31:06David Sims:So I also think Stanton is a guy who's like constantly wrestling between instincts of cynicism and sentimentality that I relate to very hard. And I think his characters and his movies are usually about that. Wait until you see, if you haven't already, in the blink of an eye. It will be seen. Okay. We have to. Do we have to? Legally. The first episode you do where no one has seen the movie. Legally, we must. But yes, there's always this battle within him between the two. I also just love the idea that it's like he finds the pleasure in doing his job and stacking the garbage. And then over time, he's starting to pay attention to the garbage.

1:31:48David Sims:and curate the garbage and study the garbage. Not to overplay Stanton's religiosity, which I think we were talking about mostly before we started recording, but like his vested Catholicism and whatnot, that there is an issue or an element of like stewardship over the earth. And there you could easily abstract Wally looking to the heavens as, you know, waiting for a sign from God. Waiting for Eve, in fact, you know, to come down. Indeed.

1:32:16Griffin Newman:They indeed even, of course, thought about the on the nose, do we call him Adam or something? But he just was like, Wally is the sad sack name. Like I could, that's the best name. You know, like, and he's very, very smart of him. He also said

1:32:30David Sims:Steve Jobs' single biggest contribution was that the movie was originally called W-A-L-E. And he's like, I don't like that name. And then they were like, add an L.

1:32:40Griffin Newman:And then it worked. That's exactly what Steve Jobs said. Like the rapper. I think another contribution Steve Jobs made was his money. That's another one he made. He threw his wallet at Andrew Stanton.

1:32:50David Sims:Yes, and said, do whatever the fuck you want. I mean, this is just like a really, it's a rare moment that is very, very short of just them feeling so empowered and having so much money to play with that they can just do whatever the fuck they want. And they're confident that it will have to be supported by whoever ends up releasing it. But you get the sort of like Wally activating the video screen the sort of physical pop-up ads of the, by and large, deterioration. This one company, a Walmart, Costco-esque company, has taken over all of the world. Our consumerism polluted everything. We had to leave.

1:33:30David Sims:The robots were supposed to clean things up, except it was too late. They never fixed it, and humans never came back. It's interesting that Fred Willard's character, I mean, maybe there is a distinction made, and I'm just not remembering, but he's the president of, by and large, but he also seems to exert the president of the United States and possibly the world. Yes, but what I love is I feel like whenever you see his title in chyrons, it's like he hasn't actually become the president. It's that being the CEO of BNL has maybe become more important than being the president. It is.

1:34:00Griffin Newman:100%. Yes, it's just right. It's like a capitalist oligarchy, whatever. It's like what we became. Does the president not matter anymore? Or do they actually not exist anymore? It's not that Walmart, you know, still, Walmart's still important. But like, by and large, feels Walmart-coded. I know it's obviously also Amazon or whatever, but like, and that does feel of that moment.

1:34:21David Sims:I was, there's stuff in this movie that is fascinating to watch now where you're like, the culture has changed more than I thought. Yeah, yeah. Where you're like, the Walmart thing of like, right, in 2008, we all agreed was like, is Walmart the most evil company that is like going to kill us? And you're like, Walmart's so far down on the list now. There is something weird. Walmart almost feels cute. There is something quaint about this era of consumerist critique because the evils that have supplanted it and stood on its shoulders are so much more pronounced and existential. He also said the environmental angle of this movie, he was like, this wasn't motivated by me feeling like the movie was a call to arms to shake people into action.

1:35:03David Sims:No, right. Again, that just doesn't seem to be his vibe. He's not a polemical filmmaker. But also like 17, 18 years later, I'm like, I can't believe how much fucking worse this got. And if I knew how little we were going to do to fight this issue, I maybe would have made different choices. But yet at the same time, it's sort of central driving energy about humans needing to sort of regain control over their own fates and not surrender to automation and thoughtlessness and helplessness is as relevant as ever. Well, that's the weird thing in the movie that simultaneously feels like quaint and still prescient to me at the same time, which is the greatest concern being apathy, right?

1:35:44David Sims:Like people just don't want to fucking care. They don't want to think. There's just like a complacency, which I think right now in America are one of our biggest issues, if not our single biggest issue is that has basically been replaced with an overriding anger. there is like a rage that is fueling everything in all directions where the sense of being this passive is a little hard to imagine and yet we are on the scary precipice of are people going to start opting out of having to do shit in order to have everything automated for them that's fine it does but i think you know the movie sort of indulges in the uh sort of a i proponent fantasy of oh like when we have a full automation no one's gonna have to work we're all just gonna me on permanent vacation.

1:36:28But then you're like, what is life? We've already seen that that is not at all the reality.

1:36:32David Sims:No, and it is wild to watch it now. And it's like there's like networky elements of this where you're like, oh, this doesn't even read a satire anymore. But the idea that they're like by the pool and everyone's just looking at their screens and not going in. They don't even know the pool's there. Right. I'm just like that felt really like exaggerated in 2008 when smartphones have barely existed for two years. Right. And now you're just like, yeah, of course. The fucking traffic jams of no one looking where they're going because they're all just watching the screens. You're like, right. I get the heightening here is the hover chair.

1:37:06David Sims:But the relationship to the screen does not feel heightened. And at the time it felt silly. World's good. World is good. Wally is good. Wally has one friend. Cockroach. His name is Hal. Cockroach. What's his name? Hal because of Howl Roach.

1:37:22Griffin Newman:Funny. It's a fun show. I mean, you know, I'm not laughing out loud.

1:37:27David Sims:You went and you smiled.

1:37:30Griffin Newman:You got me. May the listener know that you smiled. As you already mentioned, Stanton says, they watched Akeaton and the Chaplain every single day. They were very interested in pantomime conveying everything, right? Like, can we make a movie where you turn the sound off and know what's going on? The kind of Chuck Jones axiom. Axiom, of course, also is the name of the ship.

1:37:52David Sims:there's a true challenge of like, let's actually test our fucking bones as animators to see if we can tell a story through movement. And when you remove the kind of recognizable autonomy of a human body, then how do you convey these things? What I'm talking about of him not wanting to do the cheats of giving them normal human movements and whatever. And then he's also like, by doing that, you also test every other department more. If you're not going to have words, even though we wrote those words into the script, then I'm asking the music to convey those things. I'm asking the camera to convey those things.

1:38:24David Sims:I'm asking color to convey those things. Ralph Eggleston, who was one of like the early, early Pixar guys and is the production designer of most of their movies and was part of that CalArts group. He passed away 2022, I believe, very tragically. Okay. Was a genius. Ralph Eggleston. Ralph Eggleston. And the Criterion release has a really nice feature that's basically like a eulogy for him, but also explaining how important he was. I brought this up a little bit in the Finding Nemo episode. But the thing of the color scripts where they do a kind of visual script of the movie based on the color palette of every sequence so that you can chart the tonality of like what you want to convey through mood and color.

1:39:06David Sims:You didn't need to do one of those for John Carter. The red. It's a lot of red. but Stanton said and I'd never heard it put this cleanly before he's like it seems a little indulgent to people on the outside but in animation it is not a standard thing Eggleston basically made it a new thing because he was such a student of production design that he found out that William Cameron Menzies did these on his sci-fi movies of like the 40s and the 50s

1:39:33Griffin Newman:the crazy 40s British you know like things to come which are super kind of like like expressionistic in their color. You're like, I can't believe he's got made. Yeah.

1:39:41David Sims:Right. And would think about, like, what are you conveying in color from setup to setup? And Eggleston was like, this was a cool thing and those movies look really cool. We should try to bring this back. And everyone thought it seemed a little indulgent. And when he did it, he was like, right, animation is so piecemeal that you don't actually see the final version of everything until the last moment. You're not getting, like, location scouting. You're not shooting things and being able to recognize, like, the color temperature in front of the lens at the time. it takes so long to add color and lighting and all of that to have that as like a guiding force at the beginning to know you're working towards really helps

1:40:18Griffin Newman:one thing I want to note in here that we haven't mentioned yet but it's not something I ever thought about because I don't like I've never seen this movie a lot of people noted that like possibly accidentally Wally does look like Johnny Five who is short circuit one of Ben's best friends he is one of my best friends again. And though I'm short circuit to having revisited it on... There's some issues? An episode of Flophouse.

1:40:44David Sims:It solves racism.

1:40:45Griffin Newman:Oh, no. It was something that I didn't pick up on as a young kid. I think that's one of those movie series where you're like, quite shocked. What's this here? Fisher Stevens lives in my neighborhood, and every time I see him at a coffee shop, I'm just like, immediately short circuit to it. The human bobblehead. I feel so bad for him. He's done so much work. You're right, though. I've never thought about that. They're very similar. It's the eyes.

1:41:06David Sims:It's the eyes. And sort of on the long neck. Right. I found that infuriating as a talking point at the time. It was a little mini version of the Avatar is literally just Fern Gully thing where I'm like, the fucking, come on. Like, there's a thousand other things going on in this movie.

1:41:22Griffin Newman:I agree. I agree. So, Wally. But Johnny Five innocent. Sure. He never did anything wrong. Oh, wait. I'm seeing that Johnny Five here was at a J6. No? You basically get... Wait, where was he on January 6th? He's trying to get up the stairs at the Capitol. He keeps falling over. I don't know. It's a funny mistake. Here's the sightseeing. He's next to Jay Johnston.

1:41:45David Sims:He's next to Jay Johnston. All right. You basically see one day of his, right?

1:41:51Griffin Newman:You see a normal day and then you see the weird day. It's a perfect way to do it, I feel like.

1:41:55David Sims:Yeah. Eve comes in at like minute 13. I mean, it's so efficient. While you feel like you've spent a lot of fucking time with him, I think a lot of that is the silence makes all those moments really you lean in and they matter more. But yes, him going back home, the organization of where do I put the spork and all this sort of stuff, the understanding of the level of feeling and thought he's putting into everything. And then his nightly ritual of like the iPod video playing the Hello Dolly sequence that he obsessively watches over and over again. I think it is such a beautiful, simplistic boiling down of like, if they're robots and they like don't have any biological drive to procreate.

1:42:37David Sims:Sure. And it doesn't make sense that they would like need romance. Yeah. That he's recognizing something of like what is being expressed in the statement of holding someone's hand as a show of intimacy or having companionship. It's such a nice like. Well, you know, God gave him hands for a reason.

1:42:57Griffin Newman:It's so good. I mean, are they hands? I guess they're kind of like loaders or whatever. They're part of his sort of, you know, his cubing power.

1:43:04David Sims:He also said that basically in the time that they were developing this movie, the iPod video got introduced. And he asked Jobs for permission. Can I put this in the movie when it was a brand new thing? Who among us did not watch the first episode of Battlestar Galactica on an iPad classic? An iPod classic on a flight screen that is like one inch? I was watching Lost on those.

1:43:26Griffin Newman:on the fucking poses. I remember Lost was kind of like the first show where they were like iTunes video. 99 cents an episode. Yeah, right.

1:43:34David Sims:I mean, I'd watch it on broadcast and then when an episode was good, I'd be like, purchase, re-watch at school.

1:43:40Griffin Newman:Wow.

1:43:41David Sims:But he asked Jobs permission because it was such a new device. And he was like, I bet by the time this movie comes out, it's already antiquated technology. And he was like, sure enough, like iPhone comes out a year before this movie comes out, replaces the iPod video, It already was Wally has an antique. Yeah. Here's the thing about Eve. And Griffin, I feel like you can relate to this along with me, which is that I don't know if there is a better evocation in film, animated or otherwise, of what it feels like to be a neurotic teenage boy and have an intense crush on somebody. This is where I'm saying, I'm not going to say for better or for worse.

1:44:21David Sims:This was the primary concern of my life when I was 20 years old. Like you're awed by the girls you're like terrified of them. I don't know how to talk to them. They are involved in things that are so far above your station. Until I have a crush on someone and then I just short - You show them green plants and they go catatonic. I mean, Sims, you had to like deal with even a little later in my life, the versions of this where we'd be at a bar and I'd be like, I don't even know what, how would I start a sentence?

1:44:45Griffin Newman:You once, instead of talking to a woman who I think may have been interested in you, can't remember these specific - I mean, of course the tragic irony was they often were. Yeah, of course. and I would fuck it up. That's a boy shit. Drew a picture. I wish I could find it. Let me see if I could find it. Of just a sad little guy. Oh, I remember that. Jesus Christ. You do remember that. This was at Videology? Oh, yeah. With a girl you met at Videology drew a picture? No, no. Griff was just instead of like, you know, being a person who talks to another person, he was just instead drew a weird little picture.

1:45:17Griffin Newman:You like cast a note? No, no, no. He just gave it to me. No, no, no.

1:45:20David Sims:Let's clarify this story. Just gave it to me. Yeah, well, people keep talking over me. This is Videology trivia and for like 10 consecutive weeks, I turn to Dave and I'd be like, I have such a crush on that girl I cannot speak to. And Dave would be like, go talk to her. I'd be like, I don't know how to do that. And it was one night where David was trying to like hype me up to be like, just like walk over and say something about trivia. And instead I drew a sad face. You're missing out because you know what's great?

1:45:46Griffin Newman:Then when they're mean to you, you're like, oh, God, I love it. That's what Wally learns. Sometimes they have fully loaded cannons for ours. And they blow up giant ships.

1:45:55David Sims:No, I do think this movie is one of the greatest depictions of that. And I love the Buster Keaton movies that lean romantic because they weaponize a similar dynamic. Except the difference is that Buster Keaton often seems kind of oblivious, right? That he's lovestruck and then it's just sort of like him chasing after and he doesn't realize how much the world is trying to stop him. Whereas Wally is like smitten and also terrified. And it's like, yeah, it's the combination of being smitten, being terrified, and being—there was the third thing, and then you sort of just took the words out of my mouth.

1:46:28But anyway, odd. Odd is the other thing that I think completes the picture for me.

1:46:32David Sims:It is maybe my single favorite moment in the movie, and it speaks to what I was saying earlier. He sees the red dot. He's chasing it. You realize the ship is landing, right? He's hiding behind the rock. He sees her come out. Everything is very kind of routine, right? the arm comes out, it unleashes her, she activates. Her design is still so fucking cool, where it's like seamless unibody thing, and then the head and arms can float off to the sides, and the arms can turn into fingers if need be, and all that sort of shit.

1:47:03Griffin Newman:Wow, I found a picture of Wilder. I'm so far back in my photos right now. That's Wilder. Alan Smith? Alan's son, yeah. What happened? Wild. I know. Ben's arch nemesis. This is 2015, so he's probably like, I think he was like one or two. He was like two, maybe two.

1:47:19David Sims:Yeah. He came to my friend's wedding. If you're trying to find the trivia drawing, that would be like 2012. I know, I know. I went too far. Yes. I went too far! I think my favorite moment in the entire film is like, Eve is there. She's like locked in on her mission. The ship starts to leave. And you see her kind of clocking once she's out of the view. And then it's like she takes a breath and has just the joy flight. Yeah. And it's that moment of, oh, shit, she's like him. For some reason, she's a little different. She finds joy in doing things. She is doing things for her own satisfaction. And if he wasn't already going to be smitten just by like, I've never seen a fucking robot like that.

1:47:58David Sims:There's a personality there. And as much as she then tries to immediately cover it and be like, I am all business. It is every robot we meet who is a primary character. It's the same thing with Moe. When we get to Moe and he makes the decision to jump off the line because he loves cleaning so much. He does love. He do. That's his art. That's how he, you know, whatever, finds joy. Every one of those activation moments is so satisfying to me. Is Moe driven by joy or is Moe driven by intense compulsion?

1:48:26Griffin Newman:I found it. This is the drawing Griffin made rather than flirt with a girl. Let me see. Huh. Okay. We'll make sure to post that. I don't know what to say. What is it saying? is number three. I have no idea what the fuck was going on. The joke might be like, you're not even number two, you're number three. I don't quite know. It could be a Kid Cudi reference. I don't think it was.

1:48:47David Sims:We can chill with that. Chance the Rappers. Chance the Rappers. Yeah. Oh, no, but it would have predated that. I think it predates. Yeah. We'll post it on the Instagram. But yes, Wally's just like chasing after her and then there's the moment where she hears him exhale and then just immediately fucking like turbo cannons him.

1:49:06Griffin Newman:love it when she turbo cannons him

1:49:08David Sims:hottest part it's their meet cute she thinks she's murdered him gosh just imagine

1:49:14Griffin Newman:dating an egg robot with an arm cannon pretty cool obviously she's got to build a cold shower into the back of blank chick too indirectly inspired by apple products but obviously she's also kind of like a nesting doll design like she's got this sort of matryoshka shape the egg this is from angus mclean who that is that the guy who the presto guy no that's which one is he uh am i wrong in thinking

1:49:41David Sims:no presto wasn't teddy newton is it is presto teddy newton let's find out presto film because

1:49:48Griffin Newman:i remember like that that director doug sweetland oh doug sweetland me always being like when's he making a movie and then he ended up making storks uh you know he left i never saw a store i thought storks was a nicholas stoller joint he wrote it he wrote it did he co-direct it with sweetland or Swin the only director? He might have...

1:50:06David Sims:That was that era where they kept... Snuck a co-director. They were like, we only let an animation guy co-direct a movie with a live-action guy or a comedy guy. Correct.

1:50:14Griffin Newman:It's to both of them. Angus McLean is the guy who co-directed Finding Dory and then directed Lightyear. What year was Storks? 2016. Because Storks was in my come to Jesus, after my come to Jesus moment of recognizing that forgetting Sarah Marshall is the greatest of all works of art and culture of the last 100 years and being like, I will see literally anything Nicholas Stoller makes next. And he's like, I'm directing a movie about storks coloring babies. And I was like, well, I guess there's a line somewhere.

1:50:42David Sims:That movie, I found to be a bit of a rough hand. Doug Sweetland is like an incredible character animator and especially incredible at like animated comedy, physical comedy, and is responsible for...

1:50:54Griffin Newman:That's why Presto's so funny, all the hijinks.

1:50:56David Sims:But like a lot of the best Pixar physical comedy moments, I feel like the one that's always pointed at is Woody acting out in Toy Story 2 when they're like playing Woody's roundup and he comes out of the box and is like being all hot shit. Angus McLean and Doug Sweetland felt like the two guys were, it was like, when are they going to let them make a movie? And they let Doug Sweetland get away. Right, and then Angus makes Lightyear, which is worse than making a movie. It's so bizarre.

1:51:24Griffin Newman:It's like making a negative movie.

1:51:26David Sims:But he did Bernie, which was the short that accompanied this. Oh, yeah. That's really good. Yeah, that's fun. And he did Toy Story of Terror, Jesse Finds a Way. I feel like you should watch some of those early Pixar movies. You might like them. Yeah, it's a total blind spot for me. I'm just reading off the dossier. Anyway, Jesse does find a way.

1:51:42Griffin Newman:To quote Angus McLean, she looks dangly, she looks dangly and wind chimey when she's in automaton mode. When she gets emotional, she does more arcs, like a porpoise flying around.

1:51:52David Sims:Yeah, well, that's when this moment of joy where she just kind of flies around like a fucking flower.

1:51:57Griffin Newman:They loved the cockroach idea. also just like, that's a fun challenge, like making a cockroach cute. Yeah, it doesn't have a face. Doesn't have a face. So, one other note on production design. Act one is all romantic and emotional lighting and then act two. They say act one and act two. You're right that the movie is really in thirds. But I guess they basically mean like planet, then spaceship.

1:52:22David Sims:Act two is like, get to know the axiom. Act three is like, the uprising. Yes.

1:52:28Griffin Newman:But then, you know, Act two is essentially the axiom is sterility, order, cleanliness. It's when it goes from being Buster Keaton to Jacques Tati. Right, right. But you're also, yes, sorry. They try to make the lighting more romantic as act two goes on. Like, you know, they try to, they sort of soften it as, you know, personality enters.

1:52:46David Sims:Well, the movie starts out really washed out. Then you start to get some warmth when Eve enters. I think the most beautiful sequence of the movie is when there's like the big dust storm and he brings Eve inside. and the way Eve reacts to the darkness of the room where she's like glowing and you see the weird ring of like fluorescence inside of her neck and also the reflections of the Christmas lights and everything off of her. And you get the singing fish, which is between this and The Sopranos was having a huge cultural moment. Billy Bass was one of our greatest. But yeah, she basically almost accidentally shoots him and then is just like, the fuck are you?

1:53:23David Sims:And then you get your sequence, the Livian Rose of him just kind of like following after trying to get her attention. Who among us hasn't had a crush? What the fuck are you?

1:53:31Griffin Newman:She's just like, I'm working. I do feel like it's important to point out, though, that Eve comes into contact with Hal, almost shoots Hal, the cockroach, but instead... She likes him. She likes him, and they both, Wally and Eve, get tickled by the cockroach, which is really sweet, but it's showing that she's kind.

1:53:51David Sims:Right, right, right. But that happens before she meets Wally. It's like Wally making such an advanced overture to her. She's like, no, get away. I'm working. She wishes almost he hadn't seen her be nice to Hal. Because she wants to put on the face of all business. Maybe the best shot in the movie is right after she's exploded all of the oil tankers. I agree with you. Shot from behind of Wally in silhouette just sort of saddling up slowly beside her. But also that he recognizes that's the moment where it's like, oh, she's shown like emotion. Yeah. in being so frustrated that she caused this much damage that she had her fucking Adam Driver punching the wall moment.

1:54:31David Sims:But also that he has so little game that he's like, now is my time to strike. But it's also so funny to see her and it's like they convey physical tension in her body, even though that shouldn't be possible. As she's watching the ships burn and she's just sort of like her eyes narrowing, like wanting the catharsis of watching something be destroyed. When her eye go grumpy mode. The eyes are so good. Yeah. But he senses the opening of like, okay, if we can just exchange names, we're cooking here. Right, right. And she's charmed by the fact that he can't say it. It's a little funny. He brings her into his home.

1:55:11David Sims:She loves his collection. It's possible. And the ultimate fantasy of showing her one object that is going to so blow her mind. Right, that she falls asleep. Well, that's maybe not part of the thing.

1:55:22Griffin Newman:You show her a boot with plant in it and she goes unconscious.

1:55:26David Sims:But all of those gags of handing her the light bulb and then getting so kind of like frustrated that he can't turn it on. I like... Her fixing the Rubik's Cube. Yes, but I like when she laughs, when she goes like, like or whatever. Yeah. The pop in the bubble wrap. Like she's finally just totally let her guard down and is as fascinated by every object he shows her, but also able to solve them so much faster.

1:55:48Griffin Newman:We also see him turn into a cube. oh you mean when he goes into like sleep mode yeah and we know that he's charged by the sun I think it's just awesome design that he not only makes cubes but is a cube

1:56:01David Sims:yeah which like this is a classic Pixar logic thing Stan is always the first to point out it makes no physical sense if you keep seeing the way his stomach opens up to be able to compress the trash there's no space that his body could actually suck into sure And it's like, but you buy it. We make phones now that can like fold on top of themselves, man. Anything's possible. They communicate it to you in movement so much that you're like, I just understand what you're asking me to accept. But yes, he's showing her all the objects. He's trying to show her Hello, Dolly. She doesn't give a shit. She can't even like pay attention to it.

1:56:36David Sims:And then he makes the mistake of showing her, of course, plant in boot. Do you think that if he had shown her a scene with Walter Matthau, she would have been a lot more locked in? She'd be like, and this guy was like a major movie star? I now understand. He did like all genres. He'd be like the romantic lead in things. Mathow.

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1:57:30Griffin Newman:I'm watching a clip. I'm watching the movie here. He makes a little Eve statue. Yes. And she is unimpressed. And then he kicks a bunch of metal pipes and it falls all on her. Come on, this is great stuff. And his little treads flip up. It's adorable. Yes. I mean, it's very childlike. Even as he's sort of transitioning into an almost parental mode. Although we see him in a parental mode with the cockroach. But I don't know. If you've ever seen your child like fall off a bed or something, it's like you're so concerned for them. But immediately it's a very funny visual. I don't know.

1:58:07David Sims:Yes. It also helps that where you're just like this guy, his center of gravity is so off. His build is so awkward that doing anything other than rolling on a flat surface, you're just like, I don't know if he's going to make it. But there's also I mean, I don't know how deep we need to go into the imagined lore of by and large. but some practical application towards designing him to be cute on the company's behalf. Yeah, because they don't want these things to be threatening. Right. Versus the robots on the Axiom are less cute because people aren't even really paying attention. Right. They're all in the bowels of the ship.

1:58:43Griffin Newman:Do we think there's a flaw in Eve's design? No offense to my perfect queen. Go on. One boot with one plant is enough to turn around like a ship with 600 ,000 people on it. be like, well, Earth seems ready because I'm looking at Earth. It ain't like ready ready. We might want to wait for like a tree or two. Yeah, but that's like centuries ago

1:59:05David Sims:her programming was set in.

1:59:06Griffin Newman:It's just funny that she's like, well, there's one plant, baby. It's great kid logic. She's doing her job perfectly. That's maybe a flaw in the axioms program.

1:59:17David Sims:You also have to imagine that their thought is we'll put everyone on a star liner for five to ten years maximum and if we see the first sign of vegetation, that means, oh, it's coming back. It's ready to go back there. They didn't know that the world was going to become that fucking awful and the idea of this one boot making it would be so against the odds. They knew. What if there was a guy on the Axiom? Resendous. They knew and they did nothing. Mark Ruffalo. Resendous Bob.

1:59:46Griffin Newman:So, yeah. What else happened in the opening? She goes sleep mode.

1:59:51David Sims:Comma mode. and Wally still tries to like you have the Thomas Newman kind of musack Wally doing date nights with Koma Eve

2:00:03Griffin Newman:oh we gotta call out he dances for her he does the little it's so sweet and he had picked up the trash lid and it pays off he's like doffing his hat he's a cool guy the top hat I also love that then she tries to dance and she fucking shakes the whole thing and smashes him into the wall. She's a clomper. Dude, it is so funny, though, right? When she, like, Hulk-Loki's him, right? Like, you're like...

2:00:30David Sims:I also love the moment of him... Forget how he injures the eye in the first place. I can't remember, but when he gets the new guy, she's anxious about it. and he's so embarrassed that she's, like, seeing him naked, having to plug the eye back in. But it also teaches you, like, what it's going to look like when he's recalibrating.

2:00:50Griffin Newman:Oh, it's when he falls. I'm watching it here. It's when he falls. It's after the dance. She slams him into the wall. He falls down and breaks one of his eyes. There's a lot of very clever, some more overt seed planting there. I'm thinking particularly like the fire extinguisher, things that are just in front. I mean, even when they introduced the boot, it's not even the focus of, it's like a half second throwaway. It's just part of his collection. Yeah, but they don't give it any special emphasis.

2:01:14David Sims:No, he puts it in the fucking igloo cooler, but it doesn't get any more attention than the bra. gets less attention than the bra. I mean, the bra kills. Yeah. That's why. Because Wally's rocking double D eyes.

2:01:25Griffin Newman:What about the lighter? Ben, the lighter. It's like two robots on this abandoned planet and they're looking at the original source of energy. Very pervious. Yeah, it's pervious.

2:01:40David Sims:But the other thing, Ben, is in the version of the movie where Wally has to save Eve and she is the one who gets crushed and he's carrying her for the last 20 minutes. There was some Chekhov's gun of the lighter being the way they reactivated her. It's why they put a lot of emphasis on it at the beginning. It's still a nice moment. Yeah. Which is why I'm sure they kept it in. But it was supposed to be in some way he replaces her battery with the lighter. It's also a machine using machine. It places him, like an even more antiquated machine, sort of places him in this continuum where you understand him as a relic, but also as a product of the future.

2:02:16David Sims:And it's a machine with a natural force inside of it. You know, it's like organic versus inorganic. I mean, it's exactly right. I mean, it's a machine that can create an element, which is so crucial, just as he, you know, metal box can feel love. It's, you know, an analog. Right, he's got a flame inside of him. A question that made me, a question that I had watching the first 30 minutes of this movie again was if Disney would ever dare make a live action adaptation of a Pixar movie, or if it is a tribute to the ineffable quality of Pixar's better films that they can't be conceived of in live action in the way that Moana can.

2:02:57David Sims:Yeah, I had that thought watching this of like, are they ever going to dare to do this? And it's like, what would it be? You know, like it's the line between this and doing a more modern, it basically becomes just like a fucking PS5 rebuild of a PS2 game.

2:03:13Griffin Newman:right like why bother i mean right which what is now the disturbing thought experiment of like what is the most live actionable up uh it's up upper incredibles yeah i i have gotten the sense

2:03:28David Sims:and i say this with no inside track but the the vibe i've always gotten is that pixar retains the right to say no to that shit and it feels like they have to exercise every morning at 9 a.m when they get the daily email. Yes. Exercising it fully.

2:03:42Griffin Newman:I mean, this is the other thing. Hey, is Moana one of yours? No, great.

2:03:46David Sims:It's no surprise that like Disney inherits this batch of films in acquiring Pixar and Iger's like, great, we're going to put our full muscle behind them. We will try to make all of these movies hits. Fucking Toy Story 3 is next, right? Like the sequel run starts right after this. Yeah. It was like, we'll treat these movies as precious gems, but you got to start fucking playing ball with us. Well, Up is right after this.

2:04:09Griffin Newman:then Toy Story.

2:04:10David Sims:But Up is the last of the three films acquired. I'm saying the first film that Disney commissions is like Toy Story 3 now.

2:04:16Griffin Newman:It is like the Ratatouille Wally Up. Toy Story 3 is Bridge, a movie I like, although not as much as some. And then Cars 2 Brave Monsters U. Like, it's a crazy downshift. Yes. Like, crazy. Yeah. It's You Gotta Play Ball Now. You guys weren't fans of Cars 2?

2:04:33David Sims:I've never seen. I have been working on this theory and I re-watched the film recently. Did you know? I did. I truly did. You know that Michael Caine's in it. It's based in truth. He plays Finn McMissile.

2:04:45Griffin Newman:Well, truth is in comedy.

2:04:47David Sims:He plays Finn McMissile, who's a MI6 car. His sidekick, of course, is Holly Schiffwell, which is pretty bawdy. That makes me uncomfortable. I was watching Cars 2, and I was like, you know, this really isn't as good as Cars 1. and Cars 3 which I've never loved has at least more integrity now how do they all stack up against Planes 1 I was thinking that Planes Fire and Rescue makes planes look like Cars 2 and Cars 2 it's getting too complicated

2:05:27Griffin Newman:might make Cars 3 look like Cars 1 the only Pixar movies I have not seen are Cars 2 and 3 you've seen Onward yeah I like Onward yeah Onward's good I've seen her multiple times. You're the only two people I've ever met. Yeah, I've seen multiple times on the Steelbook. That I can't say. I don't own the Steelbook.

2:05:43David Sims:Nice deal. Big fan of that movie. The denim jacket with all the patches on it.

2:05:47Griffin Newman:Yeah, because I've seen everything else. Yeah. The ones that I've seen a lot is disturbing because of my daughter. So like, well, it's not disturbing that I've seen Luca like 25 times because I like Luca. But good dinosaur is disturbing. When you told me she was going through a good dinosaur phase. That was a pretty brief phase. But it did exist. But like the Turning Red phase was so great. The Ratatouille phase, amazing. WALL-E, great. Luca, that's a good movie. Like it's not my favorite. It is a simple movie. It's really easy to have on. Yes. I love it though. I feel like Turning Red.

2:06:17David Sims:You come around on Luca very often. I've always been a fan of Luca, but yeah, certainly. I feel like your son had a phase where you were happy. I think because it pushes against what we were talking about earlier, about like the capitalistic, you know, fumes around Pixar stuff. It's fun. It's a little bit more. It feels like pointedly small. It sure does. Although I wanted to, you know, we were bad mouthing with good reason, the good dinosaur, but a shout out to Peter Sohn. I have definitely had a Stockholm Syndrome like experience with Elemental, which was the first movie I ever took Ace to the big theaters.

2:06:47Did not click at the time. Can I call this out? Yeah. I mean, put him on blast. I believe it was in our Wind Rises episode. Yeah. I mean, I wasn't here for that.

2:06:58David Sims:Weren't you the guests on Wind Rises? I mean, if only. No, I was here for Castle. Not the castle. Fucking Hell's Moving Castle.

2:07:06Griffin Newman:Oh, right. Good app. Right. That's the one where I announced Matrix Resurrections. Yes. I can't remember if it was that. It's so crazy that they let you make that announcement to the world of all people. But you did it well. I mean, I was a big fan.

2:07:20David Sims:There's some episode that people have invoked where you say, I will not let my son watch Western animation. this is a classic he said all kinds of shit where it's like the one the one thing I this child will not be loved I will not be provided for but they will they will not see any sort of CGI western animation

2:07:41Griffin Newman:you wouldn't show your kid Ghibli movies because you were afraid he wouldn't like it it turns out it turns out that you're mentally ill is it time for me to throw the wallet okay okay it turns out that the reality of raising a child is very different than no your reality is a weird reality my friend At two years old, I was like, son, this is an Apple TV remote. That is the bed where I am asleep in the morning. Use this to watch whatever the fuck you want as long as you're not waking back.

2:08:08David Sims:You were just so confident that you were going to hold the line of artistic purity. And then your son is like obsessed with Italian brain rot. And he's got good taste and watches many good things.

2:08:17Griffin Newman:I have watched your son watch YouTube videos of 10 wordles being solved. Yeah, so I also have this competing instinct in me, which is like, I cannot be that parent who foists the cool kid stuff. You don't want to be the Onion article about the fucking talking heads to add. It means more to me that you come to my favorite movies organically and like them on your own terms. And I'll show them to you, you know, selectively when the time is right. But I'm not going to shove them down your throat. I'm going to let you reach these places on your own. Elemental was what was playing. I wanted to take it to him.

2:08:48He came back around in Elemental in a huge fucking way. and he really... My daughter did have an elemental.

2:08:55David Sims:I just want to call out a very distant conversation I remember having with you, which was, I feel like I'm almost ready to take Asa to see a movie, but his first movie needs to matter. And I was like, elemental. What matters more than elemental? And you looked at me and said, my son's first movie is not going to be a Pete Soane. Wow. And then like six weeks later, you were like, took Asa to elemental. And I said, why? And you said it was raining or something. It sure was. He woke up. It was a Sunday afternoon. It was raining. And those are dark times for a parent. I love seeing a movie with my daughter.

2:09:27Listen, New York City's own Pete's own respect.

2:09:30David Sims:But I also took your son to... You took him to Totoro because I could not be there for that. You were like, I couldn't sit there and watch him potentially not like it.

2:09:38Griffin Newman:Mental illness. Wallet.

2:09:41David Sims:It was the same screening that you took to Totoro movie theater for the first time. I'm commuting with my kids. Stay away from me. And I took Arlick's son, and you were like, if he doesn't like it, just don't tell me.

2:09:53Griffin Newman:I mean, my daughter, but the difference between my daughter had seen Totoro like 20 times. It was one of her first movies. And my daughter, who is a lot more pliable and responsive to the studio, can you believe it all, is obsessed with and turned me on to, really converted me to the power of Ponyo, which she now wants to watch either that or Totoro. That was my daughter's first movie. But Totoro was like, so good. Yeah, dude. Elemental has some charm. Great music. I have really struggled to locate the charm of Elemental, and I've seen it a lot. It has some. Wade is a little bit of a nuisance, but it's...

2:10:27The main character? Yes. But I like when Ember speaks fire-ish. I find all of the epic stuff in Elemental. I like the music when she's driving on her little motorbike.

2:10:39Griffin Newman:Yes.

2:10:41David Sims:Griffin, do you own that film? Elemental? Yes. I do not. Ben, it's actually a really good question. I own it. I was... But because Disney sent me a free copy. Okay. I was maintaining... I do have a blue. I was maintaining not even a 4K.

2:10:56Griffin Newman:No, they sent me a blue and I was like,

2:10:57David Sims:I'll put it on the shelf. They were like, do you care about the Ks on this one? I was maintaining a own every Pixar film. And even in the pandemic, I like broke down and bought 3D Blu-rays of good dinosaur and maybe Cars 2. Another one I like didn't like. And Elemental was the one where I was like, I don't need to own this in any form. Thank God. I'm truly relieved. Now, who knows? Two months from now, I might hit a rough patch and start trolling eBay for the Elemental seal book. But as of this moment, I own Elemental in no form. I don't even own a digital comic. I was going to say right now, my daughter's first movie in theaters will by no means be Minions, Monsters, and Minions.

2:11:34Well, she's, wait, your kid's three now. Thus guaranteeing that's exactly what it's going to be. Minions and Monsters, I've seen the trailer for

2:11:41Griffin Newman:at every movie I've taken. And I'm always like,

2:11:44David Sims:I think it's time for me to catch up with the Minions. The Minions bounce off of me. I have never gotten it without any judgment. But I see that trailer and I'm like, do I got to do the fucking deep cut? It is a little galaxy brain to be like, the Minions obviously love Early's like sword and sandal cinema. Of course. I think that's fine. That's great. Is this their like WALL-E moment? You know, where Pierre Coffin's like, I've made you so much fucking money. Right. I want to make my passion project.

2:12:12Griffin Newman:Right. Yeah. Can I use the minions to express my interest in the birth of cinema? I feel like nobody liked the second minions, right? Rise of Gru? That was the one I feel like really passed it. You know, that's the only one I've ever seen. But you could slap the word minions on anything and it would mint a hit. You could have the minions, minions and Mosquito Coast, speaking of the episode of your show that most recently aired. And that thing would print money. Minions and Salo. Well, maybe monsters and minions will have a shout out to Salo. It doesn't really fit into the vibe, but why not? Yeah.

2:12:42Minions movie needs it. Sing 3 could be entirely solo dependent. I feel like that would fit very organically. That's another one. I don't get this fucking thing.

2:12:52Griffin Newman:Okay, so they get to the axiom. I think we need to get to the axiom now, right? Axiom time.

2:12:56David Sims:He's just trying to take care of her, right? As she is now infirm, basically, and shut down until her ship returns to retrieve her.

2:13:04Griffin Newman:But he's staying out in the elements. He's getting struck by lightning. He's getting rained on. That's true. Yeah. But he's then covering her up with a garbage can. Yeah.

2:13:13David Sims:He's really sweet. He's a sweet boy. But her ship comes and he has to make a split-second decision, which is like, I'm going to grab onto the back of a fucking spaceship because I don't want to lose her and I don't know where she's going. Him telling the cockroach to stay put where it is is as anthropomorphized as I think Wally ever gets. Yes. And now two hours into the episode, we've hit the 30-minute mark, which is when he blasts off into space. Yes. And you have the beautiful sort of five-minute sequence of him seeing the solar system, touching the rings of Saturn. Just beautiful shit. We argued in the Finding Nemo episode that that's Thomas Newman's best score.

2:13:54David Sims:And I think it's the best, like, use of the Thomas Noonan thing. Thomas Noonan. The great Tom Noonan, who recently died. I think Finding Nemo is the best version of what Thomas Newman does really well. I was surprised rewatching this, how different it is from most of his work. It has the strains of the motifs, but I think partially because the movie is putting so much more weight on the score to convey story, it has like five different tonalities that switches in between. And it feels like this sequence where it's, you know, the kind of like magical beauty of the stars is when Newman goes into Newman mode for the first time.

2:14:35And they're flying too close to all of these planets.

2:14:38David Sims:They are. But he lands at the Axiom, which is a luxury star liner where babies just do baby shit. And he meets the main character of the film, Moe. Moe. Moe is incredible. And I feel like Moe had largely kind of been hidden from the marketing. I think they hit a lot of the Axiom stuff. They really front loaded.

2:14:57Griffin Newman:Yeah, they did. Because I remember everyone being so focused on this movie and being like, and if you watch the trailer, it does look like it's not all on the plan. There's one shot of the captain in the trailer. Right. Yeah. But no one was really prepared for any of that, which I think might have been also part of why it did bounce off some people. Like, some people did bounce off it a little bit.

2:15:16David Sims:I also think, I mean, I compare it to, like, shit like Full Metal Jacket, right? Where it's like... Often, WALL-E is compared to Full Metal Jacket, yeah. It doesn't feel like you had a lot of people being like, WALL-E sucks after the first act. But you had a lot of people who were like,

2:15:30Griffin Newman:the first act is so transcendent. That was the normie take amongst my friends. Right. First act, incredible. Second act is fine. It goes from being like, right, perfect to being really good.

2:15:41David Sims:I have always liked all of it. But the purity of it is, it's just astonishing where you're like, I can't believe they're getting away with this and it's working. And I think it's all good. I love the first act and I think it's so special. But I think the movie needs everything that happens.

2:15:55Griffin Newman:I, the sci-fi kind of dork that I am, just love the Axiom. And I love all of the kind of like kids version of rebelling against, you know, the ship computer. Like, it's just like, it's classic sci-fi storytelling that I respond to. I think it's so well done. I also, I... And I like that it's goofy farce. Yes. Like, that it is like a madcap chase. That's where you feel the reared in, too, of like, him bringing in a Simpsons guy. And obviously, just the Pixar, you know,

2:16:22David Sims:like, Monsters, Inc. has a bit of that. And, of course. I also, I really like The Captain. There are so many bad versions of this where you're like, this is the cop-out that we finally introduce a character who can speak all the subtext and explain everything directly to camera. But I think the arc of the captain is really well rendered. And I completely agree. I think the captain could have used a wife who kept telling Wally to get the fuck out of her house. That really would have added. Bossy face. Well, Otto's kind of his work life. I suppose. Yeah.

2:16:50Griffin Newman:Otto, the true villain of the film. Right. There's Captain McRae, Jeff Garland's character, who does not, he's only called the captain, really, but who is not a villain, right. And then Otto, voiced by... Mackenspeed. Mackenspeed. Mackenspeed. It is voiced by,

2:17:05David Sims:and credited in the uncredited. Macintock. It's called Macintock, right. Which was that era's talk to. When is deliberate that the antagonist of the film is the only one not to have any sort of trace of human. Right, like Ben Burt didn't do that. They just typed words into a computer and that's the Mac voice. Portal is the year before. Right, the portal connection is strong.

2:17:25Griffin Newman:But I think it's parallel. It's parallel, right? Because it's not. But I remember at the time, Portal, obviously the greatest video game ever made equaled only by Portal 2 like not being able to shake that comparison yeah, I mean obviously, GLaDOS obviously Auto is a lot more Hal visually coded, I mean the red eye at the center is kind of dominant, but yeah, I mean I think it was like the Mac aesthetic combined with evil super intelligence gives you GLaDOS slash Auto but I just want to talk about Mo. I married Mo, as I alluded to earlier in this episode. Well, can you speak on that? Yeah, I mean, I'm trying to, in that sort of pause, figure out how best to do that in this very public forum.

2:18:14David Sims:Your wife, a lovely human being, one of my favorite people. I don't project what you're saying as derogatory, but I need you to unpack it so the audience understands.

2:18:24Griffin Newman:Anytime your wife texts me like, you know, are you going to this screening tonight? like, you know, David's out. And I'm like, no, divorce him. I'm just like, divorce. Anytime you're like, go to Cannes, I'm like, divorce. What's he doing, go to Cannes? If she could carry our children up to our fourth floor walk-up, maybe she would have a good reason to do it. Yeah, I'd be done. You're one task. But I am definitely the, every relationship needs a Wally and a Mo. And Eve is sort of off in her own lane. She's the other woman, as far as I'm concerned. But yeah, on one of our first dates, I drew, similar to how Griffin drew a sad version of himself at a bar.

2:18:59I drew a crude, maybe the best thing I've ever drawn as someone to know artistic talent whatsoever. A little caricature of Mo on her legs. Wow. And on both, across both legs. Yeah, that's bold. And the ballpoint pen. It turned out pretty well. A lot of just boxes. You identified this movie as a shared point? Yes. We've been dating, fuck, we've been dating people. Started dating 16 years ago. So a year or two after Wally. Yeah, I mean, we knew each other since college, but we didn't start dating until I got drunk one night, as happens. But the, yeah, she is very compulsive towards cleaning. And I am more of a Wally type in that I like arranging and collecting things that other people might think of as trash.

2:19:50David Sims:I did appreciate there's a thing on the Criterion Disc where Stanton calls out that he is an obsessive physical media collector. And it's like the balance between being like, I buy these things, they give me comfort, they make me happy. I want to be in a room surrounded by all the things I care about. It doesn't actually solve anything. I'm not critical of Wally's compulsion. Right, of course. But I wonder about Mo. You know, it's sort of the classic one must imagine Sisyphus happy sort of thing. Like, is he delighted or she delighted they? I mean, the robots are aggressively coded in this movie.

2:20:21Mo, not so much. but aggressively gendered, I would say. But is Mo happy to have the excuse to pop out of letting clean something or is Mo more irritated? This is a question I am often asking in couples therapy with my beautiful partner. But Mo is, when Mo sees the dirt trail, goes, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. That moment.

2:20:41David Sims:I mean, Mo lives on a... He shakes his arms out like I got my work cut out. He lives on a line.

2:20:47Griffin Newman:Yes. Again, from Portal 2.

2:20:49David Sims:Everyone on the Axiom, basically. The Axiom all runs on lines.

2:20:52Griffin Newman:Right. His big moment, obviously, is daring to jump the line and, one assumes, tempt death. Like, I feel like he's thinking, like, if I jump the line, will I just explode or shut down or something?

2:21:03David Sims:But, like, his job is to obsessively clean everything in what is a very sterile environment. And Wally enters the ecosystem covered in dirt and creates a new... But does this give Mo a purpose that Mo has never had before, justifying Mo's life? And therefore, should Mo not be pleased to have the opportunity to clean up after someone's messiness? I think that's a great question. I would argue. I think similar, when I was saying like what defines Mo and makes him similar to Wally and Eve is that he takes pleasure in what he does. And you said, is it pleasure? Is it like obsessive compulsive? There is an argument that Mo is like mentally ill rather than like driven by joy, but it still is an aberration that gives him a personality.

2:21:44I feel like we're broaching territory that it's no longer fair to discuss without my wife present. Sure. Well, I'm speaking fully of Mo. I speak not of your lovely one. Yes. Anyway, I will say that the dynamic between Wally and Mo is, I think, a very complicated and familiar one to me. Yes. And I love Mo very much.

2:22:04David Sims:Mo is so funny. Everything about him, his intensity. Yeah.

2:22:10Griffin Newman:Yes. Very intense. Single-mindedness. I mean, he's earlier on a journey that Wally is far along on, and even Eva is a little further along, right? Like, we're watching just the beginning spark of rebellion or consciousness or whatever.

2:22:25David Sims:Maybe that's the question, is like, Wally and Eva, when they start sort of deviating, is it at first out of an obsession that then they let turn into a joy?

2:22:38Griffin Newman:Very Marie Kondo.

2:22:39David Sims:Yes. But Wally has, for hundreds of years, we assume,

2:22:44Griffin Newman:been iterating and thus getting weirder and weirder. This is Moe's first moment of activation.

2:22:48David Sims:And then the other droids, we end up seeing the kind of like, I forget what they call it. Foreign contaminant. Yes, but the sort of like reject bots. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Are all like, they've had their first kind of... In the diagnostic bay. Right, right. Aberrant behavior that is maybe the activation of something else.

2:23:05Griffin Newman:I'm just watching a Moe video now. It's just so funny. He's so disgusted by Wally. Wally's so filthy. I think Moe's a little forgotten.

2:23:12David Sims:Like even just within the Pixar canon and the characters that are like often invoked.

2:23:18Griffin Newman:Moe was in line to replace Tim Cook at Apple. Yes. I think he was one of the three. I think he should have. There's a lot of politics. You know, Moe doesn't always, you know, he's tough to be a big personality.

2:23:33David Sims:I like that the way he says his name has all this wind up to it. Like Wally, it's effort. Like Wally. And like Eve can get out quickly. And Moe, it's Moe. He's efficient.

2:23:43Griffin Newman:just want to clean so bad that's all he want to do? he just want to clean okay so Wally is chasing after Eve we get to the roadway yes and we see another aberration which is that we're seeing the humans they're you know laying on these little beds right and yeah they're in these like chairs chair bed chair bed which I'm assuming there's a toilet built into it I think I think we'd have no assumption necessary that's going on yeah yeah Wally runs into the first human.

2:24:14David Sims:This is where we start to get, right, the Keaton-y thing of, can Wally just start to throw things a little bit off out of whack, right? He, the amount of dirt he introduces in the ecosystem makes Mo jump the line. Him chasing after Eve knocks John off of his axis. He's looking away from the screen for a second. He makes the introduction. And I think it's a beautiful moment of Wally introducing himself and John being like, John. Like he's out of habit of needing to. But he probably hasn't done it. He knows what his name is, but he's sort of like, what do I do here? When was the last time he met a new person or a new anything?

2:24:54Yeah. But I do need to give a shout out to the brain bug computer that I will never be able to look at without thinking of the brain bug from Starship Troopers. The secretary.

2:25:03David Sims:Yes. With the little finger. And I love that we don't really go back to that guy, but it's, I say guy. But the same thing of like WALL-E waving makes them sort of look at their own articulation point and be like, can I express an emotion? There's Gopher, the Gopher.

2:25:22Griffin Newman:Well, they are legion. But there's the first mate one that's the one that like tries to bin the plant. I mean, they suck. They're cops. Fuck them, honestly.

2:25:32David Sims:They're little fucking dweebs. Trying to think of other WALL-E robots. The painting one is named Van Gogh. All right. That's a little too cute. It's really good. But then you have the beautician bot. You have the boxing robot that's supposed to be the workout. Smash bot. Rules. I don't know what his job would be. No, the idea is that he's for like physical training. He probably has not been used in a while. He's supposed to be the exercise bot that like... He's like the vision pro of the ship in that sense. Right. He's your coach. And you have the defibrillator bot. You have the vacuum cleaner bot.

2:26:05David Sims:That's one this year. That also has allergies.

2:26:08Griffin Newman:Yeah. I'm just like there is an incredible amount of entries on the Pixar wiki there's a golf bot called Birdie oh sure you see yes you see the guys on the screen who got his own short film yes yes there's also Bird comma Brad who made a lot of movies of Pixar he did thank you yeah thank you for acknowledging that yes what is Bernie Bernie's like a welder Bernie's a welder

2:26:33David Sims:on the outside of the ship who gets locked outside and it's sort of a blackout gag of like what's this guy gonna do? And Angus McClain pitched, like, what if there was a subplot of him trying to get back into the building? And Stan was like, we don't have room for this in the movie, but, like, I think that's a good short idea. And this was the era where there were enough shorts being commissioned as developmental to play in front of movies, but they also always wanted a short on the home video release.

2:26:57Griffin Newman:Yes, you had your Jack-Jack attack. You had your Bernie. You had your Mike's new car.

2:27:01David Sims:But Bernie is really fucking good.

2:27:02Griffin Newman:They're often good. I always worried, I always thought with those, like, wondered with those, like, is it annoying at Pixar where it's like, hey, you got this sort of cute spinoff versus the original short. I feel like... More people might watch it, but it's, you know, in the shadow. Yes, it's a little bit of a double-edged sword. My daughter's obsession with Jack-Jack Attack was very intense.

2:27:21David Sims:They basically fall off a cliff right after this. Yeah. Because Jack-Jack Attack was directed by Bird.

2:27:27Griffin Newman:Yeah, Bird's involved with that more heavily. But a lot of these things are gifts to parents, especially in the streaming era, whose kids are obsessed with these movies. And instead of watching Frozen 2 for the 97th time, you can watch Frozen Fever, or Olaf's Snow Advent, whatever the fuck it's called.

2:27:40David Sims:Well, that one that they played before Coco that started a mutiny. It's like 40 minutes long. It was insane. But the one on... And it stars Olaf. The one on Up, they don't even fully animate. Yeah. It's like on the disc as like story reels where they were like, yeah, we ran out of time and money on this one. But I find shorts before now, like bringing kids to a movie, a short before a movie is very, very anxiety inducing for me because there's a narrow window where the kids' attention will be locked in enough to the movie and the candy won't fry their brain. I mean, Pixar's dropped it. Kids are very different.

2:28:13David Sims:I think Elemental was the last one.

2:28:15Griffin Newman:Or your anxiety is too high, I would say. Wait until Bebop and Rocksteady are a little bit older and exerting that boy energy all over you. It is very possible that I am in for hell.

2:28:24David Sims:What I placed on your desk, David, in the little tray? You know how you always struggle to remember which one's Bebop and which one's Rocksteady? I gave you a little study guide that has a photo on one side and the name on the back.

2:28:34Griffin Newman:My Bebop, as I think I've told you, the toys are still in separate cribs. Bebop has Bebop. Rocksteady has Rocksteady. But at the start of every morning, Bebop demands both. Right. Like he points. He's like, ah! You know, like I give him both. And then he plops in my lap and holds them. It feels great. And what does Rocksteady do during that? He's still drinking his bottle. Bebop drinks his bottle like, done! You know, which is his energy generally. Whereas Rocksteady's a little bit more like, I shall pause, you know. I don't want to drink six ounces of milk. Bebop is not going to be a big fan of short films before film features.

2:29:11Griffin Newman:Bebop is the one I have my eye on re-attention limits.

2:29:15David Sims:He's got some bruiser energy too. Yeah. Yeah. You posted a very funny picture of Rocksteady reading a book the other day. He looks like a little intellectual.

2:29:26Griffin Newman:I mean, that's just what it is. Rocksteady likes to find a corner. He likes to find like an egress. You know what I mean? like if there's a part of the room that he can kind of wedge himself into that's where he wants to be and then he had him drive as the wall no no no no I'm saying like then he picks up his book or plays with him that's rock steady whereas Bebop likes to just like walk around and throw shit and stack things and you know put things in other things you know classic baby stuff my crazy children

2:29:54David Sims:other robots there's the flashlight there's the umbrella I mean there's so many of them there's the makeup robot yes but what I like is that it feels like one of the things that's activating all these robots is that they're barely kind of engaged with anymore. There's something about, much like WALL-E, they're forced to do a routine behavior over and over again without even engagement. Like when you see the golfing robot, and they're watching the screen rather than watching the bot itself.

2:30:25Griffin Newman:Right. Yeah. Yeah, everyone's... It's not like they're depressed. They're just in a daze.

2:30:32David Sims:Yeah, and Captain McRae is the one who's sort of like half in.

2:30:37Griffin Newman:Yes, he is the one whose brain has to be the most awake, even though it's only a little awake.

2:30:41David Sims:He doesn't talk to other people, but he needs to perform. He needs to get on a fucking Zoom and do the announcement.

2:30:48Griffin Newman:Be like, you're getting a new cup this week or whatever, you know, whatever your new merch is.

2:30:52David Sims:Right, his brain's still a little bit active, and he thinks of himself as more engaged than the rest. He's the only person who has even an illusion of responsibility. Yes. Even though at this point, it's like, to what end? Otto doesn't even wake him up. No. No, I mean, he does the morning announcements. It's his only joy. Right. And the idea of switching from day to night, which no one even notices.

2:31:13Griffin Newman:Like, he oversleeps and then sets the time back to morning so that he can do the morning announcement. Because it's his only thing he gets to do. He loves to do it. He is Sleepy King. He's a good boy. Obviously, his big triumph is walking. and to me it's another just triumph of physical animation as good as the robot stuff. Yeah. He's like making his walking like compelling. You know, he's like, okay, I got to actually get on my feet and walk. It's so funny that the uniform they've made it's just like one size. Right. And so it's just become, yeah, exactly. Yeah. Do you think like children immediately understand the spoke Zarathustra as like, yes, this is of course the music you play when someone is evolving that it's like so hardwired into our DNA at this point?

2:32:03David Sims:I do think so. It's like, you know, it's like the fucking, oh, this is what you play when someone's graduating. This is what you play when someone's getting married. It's a dramatic music. Yes. They should play to graduation. Yeah.

2:32:16David Sims:Yeah. But I like that it is this sort of reactivation of curiosity that drives him. Well, it's the, yeah, the machines becoming more like humans. The humans have already become more machines, but then the humans then have to, They're reactivated into their humanity by their machines. Right. The two-pronged thing of Eva showing up with a specimen, and he's like, wait, specimen, right. That's what I'm supposed to be waiting for. But it's been so long that it's felt like it could even happen. I don't even know how to react to this. His moment when Otto hands him the guidebook, and he lifts up the one page, and it's like, wow, what do you look at there?

2:32:51David Sims:Right. I think he speaks to it at first. Yeah, that's pretty much. Right, right. He talks into it like a tablet. But I do think it's always a morbid line for me when Fred Willard says that like, oh, just a few laps around the jogging track and your bodies will be right as rain again. It's like I think in reality, when they go back down to Earth's gravity, they are going to be plops. They're not going to be able to. Again, it is hard.

2:33:16Griffin Newman:It's hard to imagine quite what their life will be.

2:33:19David Sims:You know, this is why they put in the end credit sequence, because when they did the test screening of the almost finished movie, the first note everyone got back is like, well, I don't think they survive. Right. Don't they just die? Right. And they were like, we have to put something on that tells them, like, they're going to do the work. We'll figure it out. We'll see how far it goes.

2:33:37Griffin Newman:They're going to put in the work. Yeah. And that's basically the credit stuff. Yeah, the cute, like, over the, is it Peter Gabriel? It's Peter Gabriel. I'm going down. I'm going down. Because this is the year, this is Slumdog. I'm going slum

2:33:50David Sims:Giant Hole beats this for best original song

2:33:53Griffin Newman:I have a logic question We see babies Now This is a crass question There's some harvesting going on I think this is an artificial situation Okay, because I was going to say, how do they fuck? How are they extracting these things? I don't know Are they pumping or are they just test tubing?

2:34:11David Sims:Who knows? Are they Jeffrey tubing? Because we see the relationship between They're on Zoom once in a while They're on Zoom all the time. They might actually have to tube him. What's the last time someone didn't tube him? Because we see the relationship with the two humans. Yeah.

2:34:27Griffin Newman:I don't remember the character's name. It's John and Mary, I think. But it's clearly like voiced by Kathy and Imijie. People haven't touched one another. Yes. The act of them just making skin contact. It would be like the elevator in Oldboy. They're just like instantly ejecting. It is funny. they're like, okay, let's nominate two songs from Slung Dog, one song from WALL-E. I think we're done. Those were the nominees. That's the era where they couldn't even care

2:34:55David Sims:to nominate five.

2:34:56Griffin Newman:Right. They're like, yeah, you know what? I think that covers the songs of 2018. Diane Warren didn't have something right there. Diane Warren should have written a Frostnickson song.

2:35:05David Sims:Was 06 the year where Dreamgirls has three out of the five song nominations? And then they're like, what are we doing here? And then I think they sort of went... I think they went to

2:35:14Griffin Newman:a sort of like, it can be up to five, but it can be smaller. It can be lower and no movie can get more than two. Dreamgirls did get three. I wrote an article at some point about Diane Warren, the scourge of Oscar season. And I saw, I don't use Facebook anymore, but I got an email that said, Diane Warren has sent you a message. And I was too afraid to look at it for an entire calendar year. And then finally, after she lost another Oscar, I was like, I'll just check what it was. And it was just a smiley face. it just is so funny we need to rip off that fucking bandaid and give her an award but she has to stop writing songs for movies that are like Diane Warren the Diane Warren story where she wrote a song for a documentary about how she always loses the fucking Oscar in this category sometimes you lose and people are just like we're not giving this to you I'm sorry like fucking famous people write songs sometimes you lose

2:36:12David Sims:David mimed holding a microphone while he was singing that, even though he is sitting in front of a microphone. The documentary about her. I mean, she does. She has written a lot of great songs.

2:36:24Griffin Newman:She identifies having ass burners. She is on the spectrum. I don't want to be overly harsh, but she is so embittered. Even when she lost to fucking Billie Eilish, Lady Gaga for A Star Is Born, which was like, she was never going to lose harder than that. You're not winning this year. But she also wrote A Star Is Born song. She also immediately picks up her shit and walks home.

2:36:40David Sims:Right. The problem is that there were so many years where it felt like this category was so irrelevant, where people were like, do you just fucking eliminate it from the telecast entirely? And we should have given it to her one of those years.

2:36:52Griffin Newman:Now I want to find it.

2:36:54David Sims:I want to find when do we give it to her. The last 10 years has been like songs that people actually know written by giant pop stars. She's not going to beat her. I'm just going to give you some of her losses.

2:37:03Griffin Newman:Her first nomination was for Nothing's Gonna Stop Us Now from Mannequin, an incredible song. What beats her? Time of My Life from Dirty Dancing. You're not beating that. No, but you're like in any other year. Maybe. But I think that's like, okay, here's when she should have won. It's her second, although I wouldn't give it to her. But her second nomination is for Because You Loved Me. Oh, beautifully sung by Celine Dion from the forgotten film of Close and Personal. It loses to You Must Love Me from Evita, which is ass. Yeah. Might as well be called ass song. That should have been her win and we could have avoided a lot of pain.

2:37:35Griffin Newman:The correct winner there is that thing you do. Yeah. Which is better. And was nominated. and was nominated. Yeah. But if they'd given it to Warren, that's still better than the stupid Avita song. Okay, so that's nomination two. Nomination three is How Do I Live from Con Air? A banger. A great song. Hilarious that it's from Con Air, but a banger. What beats it? My heart will go on. Yeah. You're not winning.

2:37:57David Sims:Break.

2:37:57Griffin Newman:You're not gonna win. Okay, so then the year after that is Don't Want to Miss a Thing? So the next year, she has I Don't Want to Miss a Thing from Armageddon, beautifully sung by Aerosmith. There she loses to When You Believe by The Prince of Egypt. I think we could have given it to her there I think that's also her best song I got pretty sick of it but I don't think there's a huge problem skipping fucking When You Believe there's definitely an element of continued injustice that has fueled her the next year she has what's it called? Music of My Heart from Music of the Heart that loses to You'll Be in My Heart from Tarzan which obviously Blame Canada

2:38:34David Sims:but that's an NSYNC Gloria Estefan song I remember NSYNC performing at the Oscars I definitely remember Gloria Estefan. Blame Canada is my winner, but you'll be in my heart. What are you guys talking about? That's the When She Loved Me from Toy Story 2 year. That's what should have won. McLaughlin and Newman!

2:38:52Griffin Newman:I'm gonna shoot you in the head. Don't do that. Now, her next nom is for There You'll Be from Pearl Harbor. A terrible movie with its regular Diane Warren.

2:39:04David Sims:It's Diet's... What's the fucking Con Air song I'm already forgetting. Fucking how do I live? It's very similar.

2:39:11Griffin Newman:Yeah. It is. It loses to another situation of the Oscars giving someone their much delayed award. Randy Newman for If I Never You. Right? So they had to give it to Newman. Then 13-year drought. That's Warren. Warren vanishes. Because I feel like the kind of work she did was no longer needed, right? But those are the years where she could have eked out a win if she had gotten you. She was the hero we wanted, Not the one we needed or deserved, but not the one we needed.

2:39:40David Sims:Is it the sexual assault on campus movie? Is that her return?

2:39:46Griffin Newman:In between that, The Hunting Ground, and Pearl Harbor, is her song from Beyond the Lights, Grateful. Oh, yeah. Which is pretty good. Yeah. And that loses to Glory from Selma. So she could have won there, too. No, Glory is strong. It's fine. Glory is strong. It did make Chris Pine cry.

2:40:02David Sims:Let's also remember that year was the whole thing where Selma only got two Oscar nominations. And it suddenly was the only Selma.

2:40:11Griffin Newman:And it was like, if we don't give Selma the Oscar win, we look like assholes. She definitely could have won for the documentary about sexual assault with Lady Gaga's song, Until It Happens to You. Yeah. Because writing on the wall from Spectre won. A song that sucks. Another. And is for losers. Yeah. Terrible song. That's the Sam Smith one. Yeah. Especially given the one that we eventually heard, the song that Radiohead wrote for that movie. Yeah. It's incredible.

2:40:36David Sims:I feel like going into that night, everyone thought she was finally going to win. And the fact that Joe Biden was on stage presenting the song with Lady Gaga,

2:40:44Griffin Newman:it was like, this feels like a moment. And then they were like, you know, whatever. Since then, it's been like, stop it. Because like the nomination has been for Marshall, RBG, Breakthrough, The Life Ahead, which was like an Italian movie. Breakthrough was a Chrissy Metz. Yes, she's like stuck under the ice. of Josh Lucas. A kid falls into the ice. Sometimes you're under the ice. I don't know.

2:41:09David Sims:They pray a kid back to warmth. That's truly what that movie, like based on her story. Listen to these movies you've never heard of. The Life Ahead,

2:41:16Griffin Newman:Four Good Days, which is the like Mila Kunis heroin addict movie.

2:41:21David Sims:David, why are you reading off my Spotify rap?

2:41:23Griffin Newman:Then in 2022, the Oscars are like, here's an honorary award. Stop it. She gets four more nominations after that. Tell her like a woman Flamin' Hot. Yeah. She got nominated for the Cheeto movie. What's the song? It's called The Fire Inside. Jesus. Is that the year that Billie Eilish beats her for the second time? I mean, I don't think she was ever going to win, but it does. Yes, Eilish wins for Barbie. That's the year that I'm Just Ken should win. Yes. And instead, they give it to the Eilish song. But the Dua Lipa song wasn't even nominated. She's too hot for the Oscars. Okay. Yeah, they famously never give Oscars to hot people.

2:42:00Griffin Newman:The 6888, and then yes, last year, she was nominated for the movie Diane Warren Relentless. And relentless she is. We cannot deny this. And I just like that it wasn't even considered

2:42:11David Sims:to give it to her. You felt like everyone who wrote her in on the nomination ballot put parathletal, but I'm not giving her the win.

2:42:18Griffin Newman:As a joke. In the golden year.

2:42:21David Sims:Yes. All right, Wally. Wally. Just to end this tangent, to close this loop, what do you think she would need to do to win? Write a listenable song?

2:42:31Griffin Newman:I think write a well-regarded song from a movie that isn't theater. Like, Diane, you're not going to rope a dope bus into giving you a competitive win. We're not going to be shamed by you. Like, we stopped being embarrassed at Nom 10, and you're at, like, Nom 24. You're embarrassed. Like, exactly. But the problem, as you were alluding to earlier, now it is also not just for the end credits, but baked into the meat of movies nowadays. Like, very strong original songs by major artists. And I think that has never been so difficult. It's come back around. Stuff like Golden. you're like right like you're not this is not a kiddie category I mean like these are right big pop songs make it the days when she was writing songs that could compete with Golden they existed but they are so funny that they were like con air okay it's like a really violent R rated movie about like cons on an airplane like do you think we need a fucking

2:43:18David Sims:just this ballad this is the era I miss which is what I refer to even though often this was not the proper title blank blank blank parenthetical love theme from any like action movie or disaster movie Blade Runner I think is famously the one I always show people because it feels like this was too late for this to be happening it feels like an aberration that snuck through and I'm constantly pointing out and saying like can we bring this back is Adam Lambert's Time From Miracles love theme from Roland Emmerich's 2012 which has a music video of him like all decked out in leather and spikes walking through the wreckage over like shots of John Cusack driving a limo over like the fucking Pacific Rim.

2:44:04David Sims:I watched this video once a month.

2:44:07Griffin Newman:My friend Carolyn never seen Independence Day. I watched it recently. I rewatched Independence Day. It's kind of crazy how in that movie the first lady dies, like, right? Like she dies. She's returned to Area 51 and she's like, goodbye, wife and, I'm sorry, husband and daughter. And they're like, five minutes later, never mentioned again. Everyone's like high-fiving and she's like, America! Like she says, happy Independence Day, daddy's like, happy Independence Day to you. Like they're just like, I mean, it's already a movie where like no one sits down and it's like, I think a billion people are dead.

2:44:39Griffin Newman:Sure. Like they are just booming cities one by one.

2:44:44David Sims:The question is like, should Diane Warren have hitched her wagon to Feige and gone like every Marvel movie needs a love song sung by like a Groban?

2:44:56Griffin Newman:Groban sounds like a robot in Walt Disney. Did we ever get an original piece of music? I Am the Groban. The MCU, other than just the theme song itself.

2:45:05David Sims:There are the Mencken songs in Captain America, the first Avenger that are fun, that I actually think should have been nominated, but get cut down a little bit in the film.

2:45:13Griffin Newman:Did they not nominate one of them? The Star Spangled Man? I think they didn't. Yeah, they should have.

2:45:17David Sims:But that's the one time where they wrote, and then I guess the Hawkeye TV show has the fake. Don't know what that is? Captain America. Okay, WALL-E. WALL-E. WALL-E. WALL-E. WALL-E.

2:45:25Griffin Newman:So the plant get taken.

2:45:27David Sims:The plant get taken. The plant get taken. Eve is deemed defective. Well, you have, she's brought up. He's like, oh my God, plant life. Chest opens up, nothing in there. What the fuck? We, the audience, also go, what the fuck? It's another good Stanton move where he originally had the audience see auto clock that Eve had the plant and organized hiding it. It's another deleted scene that you can see in storyboard form. And he was like, A, I think we need to stay with Wally's perspective until basically he starts to get crushed. And B, the audience is going to follow you and they're going to lean in on the intrigue of genuinely where did the plant go.

2:46:10David Sims:It helps us that we can't figure out what happened.

2:46:14Griffin Newman:It's classic Pixar, you know, Toy Story 2, them looking for the bag. Yeah. Monsters, Inc., obviously, like the door chase, right? It's a good way to end a Pixar movie. I know it became schematic for them,

2:46:24David Sims:but like it's good. It feels like a magic trick too, where it's like we've been watching Eve this, whole time. Her chest has been closed. Where the fuck did the fucking plant go? And that's, of course, what Captain McRae says verbatim. Where the fuck did the fucking plant go? Every magic trick has three parts and the second one is Wally. Correct. They throw the plant. It's a great shot of Wally poking his head out of the tube. Eve's defective. They put the red kind of like cable fucking lock thing on her. They put, yeah, it's like the boot. And send her down and Wally's chasing after her. We meet the other reject bots.

2:46:58David Sims:and you know

2:46:59Griffin Newman:what are they called rogue robots also fun you know Island of Misfit Toy Boys Cuckoo's Nest kind of mental hospital vibes yeah exactly right the weirdos blaster behind him in slow motion and they all run rampant through the hallways of the axioms and then eventually at some point they wind up oh he winds up in the escape pod

2:47:23David Sims:well they're wanted and all of those those aren't the gophers, but those sort of like big screen guard bots have taken the photo that now everyone's waking up a little bit by the danger of our robots turning on us, which is another example of WALL-E starting to create the ripples that affect everyone.

2:47:41Griffin Newman:Right, the whole system runs on everyone behaving. Like it does not run if the robots

2:47:45David Sims:have their own idea. And something's, that's just alarming enough to break everyone out of the trance. But I guess basically in running away and hiding out from the guards, they see the gopher trying to eject the plant. The gopher's got the plant in his tummy and he puts it in the escape pod and Wally wants to go after it. What were you going to say to him?

2:48:05Griffin Newman:I just, that's the idea that I love of like this. He's been infected with consciousness, right? And like he brings consciousness back to all these people who've lost it. Like it's not just the robots coming to life. It's everyone coming to life. That's why I love this movie. Yes, I agree with you.

2:48:20David Sims:It's good. And that's why, yes, everything on the Axiom's important.

2:48:24Griffin Newman:I think when I was 22 and I saw this movie in theaters and was so hyped for it and was then like probably mad that it was not like a Philip K. Dick style gonzo depressing fable of, you know, like I was like, oh, I don't like all the kind of Farsi kid shit at the end. Like, boring. And now I just watch that. I'm like, that's the point of the movie as much as anything else. And it's so funny. Like, and it's so fun to watch with a kid who loves all the antics, of course.

2:48:47David Sims:Sorry, I was just pulling up my iPad, but that's the other part of it is she's leading him to the escape pod because she wants Wally to leave. Right. That she's actually fully angry at him. Right. It's like, the fuck are you doing here? The plant's gone. It made Eve look bad. This is your fault. Yeah. I got this stupid fucking thing plugged into my head now. I'm on like all the wanted screens. And in trying to get him to go into the escape pod, they then see the gopher show up, hide in the shadows, put the plant in there. And Wally gets stuck in the escape pod trying to save the plant, which she then thinks explodes.

2:49:23David Sims:You see a moment. Great little bit of Wally being all manic in the porthole. Yeah. But he's like about to explode. He's like, oh, oh, oh, oh. And the fucking parachute coming out, like all the crazy gag shit. And then the no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no of Eve. Actually, she does care. She doesn't want him to die. And then like one of 10 Chekhov gun moves this movie has is like, oh, right. we saw him learn how to use the fire extinguisher on Earth. He knows how to use this. He can propel himself. They start dancing, define dancing. Right, because Captain McRae has also already now watched Eve's camera.

2:50:00David Sims:And he's like, the fuck is this place? Earth.

2:50:04Griffin Newman:It's not the cute paradise of my storybook. Trees, water. It's basically the same plot as Under the Skin. I guess. of like a creature becoming increasingly humanized. You know, in this case, not to their detriment.

2:50:18David Sims:And Captain McRae getting obsessively falling down a Wikipedia rabbit hole, basically. Right.

2:50:24Griffin Newman:I guess it's important to remember re-them restoring the planet. They do have the robots. And the robots will be helpful. Now, where are they going to put all the cube garbage and stuff? I don't know. It does feel like that's got to go somewhere. Well, my thing is send it into space. Put it on the axiom. That was probably the way they could have resolved the problem in the first place. Instead of building a ship to get humans to leave the planet, fill the fucking ship with garbage and send it out to space. Like the low orbit anyway is so cluttered with satellites, thanks to Elon Musk. Thanks to Elon.

2:50:55You know, that it's like they can't even, already their backyard is full of junk. But I wonder if the robots, like the character robots, are not going to want to do their functions because they have now discovered love and the joys of life and whatnot. And they're going to have to rely on the wall A's and et cetera.

2:51:11David Sims:Sure, but you see in the end credits the way that the robots are helping with the efforts, the way their programming can be reapplied to farming and such. Yeah. Yeah. They're going to make a pizza plan. I would feel bad asking Wally to go take out my trash for me or something. He's got stuff to do. He's got a life of his own. He's got dates. He's really got to put the work in on this relationship if it's ever going to survive. You have the divine dancing thing, which I just think is so beautiful. Beautiful. Them creating their own, like, color trails. That is Newman fucking unleashed. Yeah. That is a really...

2:51:48David Sims:This is what... It's the argument that, like, it's the other one I think you could say is his best score only because it forces him to do a lot of stuff outside of his usual wheelhouse.

2:51:58Griffin Newman:Yeah, he found it quite challenging, I think.

2:51:59David Sims:And then you have moments where it's like, and Tommy, I'm going to let you do your shit on this one. Actually, the whole score was written by AI. sorry the guy showed the movie but he just said write me a pretty score what was written on David written by David when he was sad about missing his mommy which David are we talking about the one from AI yeah his love is real

2:52:16Griffin Newman:but he is not there's just too many Davids in the room right now I'm sorry too many Davids it lost score obviously to Slumdog I guess which does have you know pretty iconic music yeah

2:52:25David Sims:Thomas Noonan another I keep saying Thomas Noonan's in this film Thomas Newman is another one who I think is at 20 nominations and zero wins he has so many noms yeah He might only be behind Diane Warren. Tom Noonan also had 29.

2:52:38Griffin Newman:It really fits Newman's, like, he's 15 numbs. His thing of, like, he's workmanlike. You know, like, he's pretty reliable. I think he's distinctive, but I do think he's also taken for granted. Of late, he's been, but he's not taken for granted in that they, like, will nominate him for passengers. That's the crazy show. Where you're, like, they clearly know him and recognize him.

2:53:00David Sims:You're noticing the passenger score, and you also refuse to give him a trophy. I mean, the connection between passengers and WALL-E is pronounced. I mean, I think they should... That is the live-action remake of WALL-E. His 1917 score, which was his last nom, I listened to all the time. The film that was playing that I was supposed to go see the night that you carried the snoo up the stairs to my apartment. When Lord, he was coming, I didn't get to see. I was spared having to see 1917 in theaters.

2:53:27Griffin Newman:And I ended up fucking, I had twins and I was like, well, I'm not going to get two snooze. And then like Spongebob meme one month later, like the second snooze is being brought into my house. He should have won that year because he lost to fucking Joker.

2:53:42David Sims:Yeah. Jesus. But that was, I mean, it's like the Slumdog win. Like even giving Jai Ho best song wasn't enough. Slumdog was such a fucking juggernaut. He should have won for this.

2:53:52Griffin Newman:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

2:53:54David Sims:He should have won for this.

2:53:56Griffin Newman:Over. but this slumdog moment. Yeah. Obviously, that is not my favorite film of 2008. No, it was... And it's like rewarding a Bollywood luminary and like his music. It does make sense. It does. It made sense in the moment. Part of the kind of energy of that movie

2:54:11David Sims:is the music and all that. Yeah. And then we had the Nemo conversation, which was like, he would have won if Howard Shore had been disqualified, which is kind of aberrant that they didn't do that when they're usually so difficult.

2:54:24Griffin Newman:But the score, that's why the score branch is so hated. No, but I mean, I made the case of, of course, the Return of the King score bangs hard, but also it is just, yeah, sometimes they're like, well, you can't have, we're not nominating Dune 2 because it's too similar to Dune 1. And I'm like, the Dune 2 score is completely different and you have allowed other sequel scores. Fucking Rise of Skywalker got a nom.

2:54:45David Sims:That same year, they shortlisted Beetlejuice Beetlejuice.

2:54:48Griffin Newman:And I'm like, guys, what's the line? Elfman, let me show you

2:54:52David Sims:what instrument he used for that one. a phone. Okay? He phoned it in. Excuse me. Okay, sorry. He used a keyboard and he copy-pasted Control-V, Control-V. Or it's Control-V. Control-C, Control-V. See, this is why you could never write an Oscar-nominated score. Because Control-V is print. That's the problem. That's why it had to be V.

2:55:12Griffin Newman:Wally and Eve come back from being out in outer space. I know. It's another three-hour app. What are we doing? Yeah, I know. I know. I know. It's Wally. I know. Eve has the plant now. There's a point at which

2:55:22David Sims:it can't. She gets the plant She's going to bring it back to the captain. She's, they're starting to - Tells Wally to stay behind. They've also seen Gopher, so they're just like, something weird's going on here. We should be suspicious and cagey beyond the fact that everyone's looking for us now. But she gets through, she brings the plant to Captain McRae and also sees the video footage he's been watching of her on Earth, which now has gone into her hibernation period as it's like continues autoplaying. So she gets to watch Wally taking care of her when she wasn't conscious. They don't really milk that moment as much as they could.

2:55:57And I'm not saying that's as a negative, but there is a real opportunity there to sort of squeeze you by the heart. They use some restraint.

2:56:04David Sims:Yeah, it is restraint. But within that footage is Wally showing her Hello Dolly, her like standby mode body directed at the screen when she wasn't paying attention before. So now she sees it for the first time and you see her have the same hand realization activate fingers does the interlocking. Activate fingers. Right. So now Eve kind of gets it, but she's already shunned him off. And Otto is going turbo, trying to block Captain McRae's efforts. Keep your Wreck-It-Ralph terminology out of this conversation. I'm sorry. Well, he's a good guy, though.

2:56:43Griffin Newman:Let's not be saying me.

2:56:44David Sims:And then Otto reveals the second video from Fred Willard. Right. Looking like they just busted him at the Tiki Theater. Very disheveled. Was he wearing a life jacket? Yeah. He didn't want to drown. Jesus. A lot of fluids in that place. This is our episode on a children's film. But the idea that it's like five years later and things have gotten so bad and he's just like, never mind, abandoned. Right.

2:57:14Griffin Newman:Just the secret protocol. You're actually just going to stay out here forever.

2:57:18David Sims:And there's an argument that Otto is showcasing the same thing we're talking about with our other like hero robots, which is like Otto has clearly made a decision to hide this information from the humans. Otto has been serving all of these captains. And at some point. Well, Otto's following protocol. I mean, that's Otto's design. But like, was protocol not giving the captain the complete information? I think it was by any means necessary, making sure that humans do not get back to. He was following his prime direction. Yeah, you just could argue that Otto is starting to make like creative decisions of how to execute that.

2:57:54Maybe in the way that like a learning language model, a large language model, whatever the fuck they are, would make what appear to be creative decisions to gas somebody up when they're asking ChatGPT for advice. I mean, I don't think it is actually thinking for itself in that its irrational feeling is defeating its programming in the way as all the other robots in the film. I think that's what distinguishes Otto from all of them, is that it is bound to its order and can't really think novelistically.

2:58:21David Sims:They both get knocked down the garbage chute, zapped by Otto. Wally gets crushed and smushed. But Eve sees that he has saved the plant and all is not lost.

2:58:35Griffin Newman:Yeah.

2:58:36David Sims:Yeah.

2:58:36Griffin Newman:It's also a fun moment with Mo.

2:58:39David Sims:Right. Wally makes the introduction to Moe, who just uses it as an opportunity to clean his hand off.

2:58:45Griffin Newman:But Moe blocks the doors when the garbage is being carried. Moe takes a big risk. Yes. Moe says life can be messy.

2:58:56David Sims:I love the moment of Wally's sort of like back hinge flipping out his hook that he'd previously been using for the igloo. And you're like, that's a pretty perfect place to put Moe. We got our fucking core three now. You know, like the three of them, like Eve can carry Wally. Mo can be on Wally's back. And we're just fucking all business now. What I'm taking from this is that maybe my marriage needs a third.

2:59:20Griffin Newman:Just to achieve harmony. We need an Eve. You need an Eve. Maybe the Eve is your couples therapist. I'll bring that up to her this afternoon. I think the last time I was here, I also had couples therapy in the afternoon, which is not a daily occurrence, but more of a coincidence. How do we cancel it once because a blank check episode went too long? You actually have to cancel because of Schindler's List. I'm so glad that didn't end your marriage. I remember being quite abashed about that.

2:59:45David Sims:It is a point of pride. Not about pouring a wallet at you. I will say, it is a point of pride that Blank Check has not yet knowingly ruined a marriage. I'm sure it's happened.

2:59:53Griffin Newman:We don't know. Not because you don't know about it. Right. Like, maybe someone just listened to us so much that the other person was like, you know what? I'm out of here. Like, enough already with these fucking guys. Anytime I meet a spouse, I apologize.

3:00:05David Sims:People come up to me like, hey, I'm sorry. I don't actually listen to the show, but like my partner's obsessed with it. So it's on all the time in the home. And I just go like, I'm so sorry if this is not a thing you're opting into. Could be worse. They could be really into Ice Age, the meltdown. This is true. Wally. Yeah, they're just in fucking mission mode now because Eve is just like, A, it's like her protective instinct is kicking in. Wally is close to death. His circuit board is fried. There's no time to waste. He has, you know, in a slightly Christ-like way, potentially sacrificed himself for the sins of humanity to try to save them.

3:00:43David Sims:But that always, I was watching the movie and I was like, he'll be okay. Like, that would be too cool. I had half a moment of, is Pixar going to do it? Nah. I think future generations of people, once they repopulate the Earth, should worship WALL-E. They should. Yeah, just for fun. Or at least the child of WALL-E. Just as a good movie. But they've locked Captain McRae up. Wally, Eve, and Moe are trying to find a way to get to the Lido deck because if they can put the plant in the whatever it is. The holodeck. The holodeck. The ship will autopilot itself. It will override autopilot himself even and just go straight to it.

3:01:19David Sims:And I just, yeah, McRae just needing to give a shit. He's still trying to stay in the hover chair and do everything he can, but then you finally get to the breaking point. As you said, this excellent piece of animation of, I got to fucking walk. none of this is going to happen if I don't make the effort to take the first step.

3:01:33Griffin Newman:And it's such beautiful walking. Little blobby boy. I mean, this is really when Wally sacrifices himself though. He gets not gets crushed in the trash compactor it's that Otto is trying to drop down the chamber where they're supposed to put the plant into.

3:01:50David Sims:Yes. Well, right. The first thing that happens is that Otto shocks him which fries the circuit board. And then now he's additionally physically crushed. I like that they fool Otto with a drawing of a plant. Yes. Because Otto's dumb. The projection. Yeah, the projection of a plant. And yeah, and it's just like the ripple effects of everyone that WALL-E has affected in some way are woken up. Now everyone is suddenly joined in the effort. Very Paddington-esque in his way. The sort of I know that guy thing where people are like, Oh yeah, WALL-E! He says that. He's like, hey, that's WALL-E! Go, WALL-E!

3:02:22He's got the window.

3:02:23David Sims:Right. In a civilization where people have no social interactions, WALL-E is like their favorite thing they've ever met because it's the last time they had a feeling about anything. It's a smart choice that it's just hyperspeed and it's like once you get the boot in there, we're just going to go straight.

3:02:40Griffin Newman:Yep, that's how it's all designed.

3:02:42David Sims:But then you have what I find so emotionally affecting is Eve in that panic mode of like, I don't have a second to waste. How do I keep him alive? How do I save him? And going, trying to like reconstitute with all the spare parts inside his little trash home, blowing the hole in the ceiling to, like, light him up. And then that moment where you're like, are they going fucking cuckoo's nest? Like, is he gone? And the long recalibration of the eyes readjusting and then the satisfaction of the Drew. So satisfying. Yeah. I just, you can't end a Pixar movie that way. Just picturing like Moe breaking out of the window and running away into space.

3:03:19David Sims:This movie felt so audacious that I was like, are all rules out the window? Can they get away with doing that? I didn't want it to happen. She's got to give him a big sloppy electric kiss. I felt a genuine tension from it. Yeah, there's tension for sure. Right. And then obviously Toy Story 3 is like actively towing the line of that tension even more of like, are we going to do it? Guys, that's what I don't like about that moment. I know that's what you don't like. But others do. I don't find it credible at all.

3:03:42Griffin Newman:It's not credible. I never believe it. I just, I'm like, right. I'm like, you know, just don't piss on my leg and tell me it's raining.

3:03:47David Sims:I think it's a credible moment. I think what's credible about it is it's more about the acceptance of death and the fact that the threat is actually real. Just what I want from my fucking Toy Story movies. That is exactly what I want from my Toy Story movies.

3:03:59Griffin Newman:They're immortal. They can't die. That's their curse, which is what I like about the Toy Story movies. The only good thing about Toy Story 3 is that Totoro is in it.

3:04:09David Sims:You're totally just Toy Story 3 in the trash. I like when Mr. Potato Head turns into the Totoro. The tortilla head is fucking awesome. You don't like Lotso? No, I do not. Why would he like Lotso? He creates a good workplace. All he wants to do is just hug his employees. Lotso looks like he smells bad. I'm not into it.

3:04:23Griffin Newman:He smells like strawberries. Anyway, we see a bunch of greenery, and it's nice to think that Wally played a big part and clearing all of the debris that enabled the plants to grow.

3:04:33David Sims:Right. You're like, even if they still have these giant trash towers to deal with, he did at least create open enough spaces that they can plant things. And that things grew. His work wasn't in vain. Yes. Yes. Yes. And society rebuilds itself as depicted in the evolution of artistic styles and movements.

3:04:51Griffin Newman:And it's a great movie. Wally's my boy, man.

3:04:54David Sims:When you get to like fucking point-a-list Wally and Eva under the tree, that's a great movie. I love this fucking movie. It is, it hits the ending quickly. It's a, it's, it's not abrupt, but it's like, it's very efficient. Yeah. And the greatest tension at this point is just, can she save him? And if it takes too long to get home, then you don't believe there's any way to save him. Yes, it is. My only reservation is that I, I think that the, the bit with the ship tipping over and all the babies sliding is thematically on point, but I always wished it were a little bit more viscerally satisfying.

3:05:30After the 30 minutes of this like great Tati like scramble through the ship, which feels so balletic and fun. This feels a little clumsy, but maybe it's supposed to, I don't know. Just, I always wanted something that like pulled me in a little bit more at the end.

3:05:44Griffin Newman:Yeah. This is one of the movies that broke the Academy Awards. It is. Let's just briefly touch on right on the research here. There was some concern like, you know, up I feel like is the bigger anxiety point. But they'd already had Ratatouille where they had some of the kind of like, fuck, is there like, there's no merch. Is this movie pretentious?

3:06:10David Sims:And Ratatouille did well, but it was down. Right. It was a hit, but it was leggier. It was less front loaded. And it still ended up way below. Wally doesn't even have legs. This is true. He's got treads. And WALL-E was an uptick, but they definitely were worried about it. And the marketing, I mean, we mentioned the fucking Hidden City Cafe teaser, but I remember the Super Bowl ad for this movie was Buzz Lightyear and Woody watching the game. And Woody turns to Buzz and go, you hear about this WALL-E guy? And they were so freaked out by this movie that they were like, can we just remind you of our legacy and our track record?

3:06:49David Sims:And use that to buffer, please trust us. Movie also very expensive. It is$180 million budget.

3:06:55Griffin Newman:Yes, very high. It opened to 63 domestic. It grossed$223 ,521 ,000. So it was below Ratatouille, which had been below The Incredible. It was below Ratatouille Worldwide.

3:07:09David Sims:Yeah, how did it play? Because Ratatouille was 200 domestic. It went above Ratatouille. WALL-E feels like a universal.

3:07:15Griffin Newman:Ratatouille made$623 worldwide. Yeah. Cars also obviously had been a disappointment to some extent on release, although it had a long tail, you know, merch-wise. It won Best Film at Lafka, which is a big deal. Big deal.

3:07:32David Sims:There was a real feeling of like, is it time to let this into the bigger conversation?

3:07:37Griffin Newman:And instead, it does get six Oscar nominations.

3:07:40David Sims:Screenplay, animated, you want to guess? Screenplay, animated, it gets both sound categories. Correct. And then score and song. Right. So it's like, six is a lot,

3:07:52Griffin Newman:but at the same time, it is, you know, Now they're kind of in their categories.

3:07:55David Sims:I mean, arguably the only two other nominations it could have realistically gotten were picture and director. And it felt like they were on the bubble and it was a real conversation and it felt like you were reading a lot of think pieces of like... Had there been 10 nominees, obviously it's a best picture nominee. And that's what breaks the Oscars.

3:08:11Griffin Newman:You know, becomes as Toy Story 3 becomes.

3:08:13David Sims:It's that this doesn't make it. Dark Knight doesn't make it. And I've always contended that Gran Torino not making it is the third one. Although, you know, Dark Knight and WALL-E are a much bigger deal, but it's like, if we're getting like more elevated, serious blockbusters, do we need a space to recognize these? If these animated movies are becoming this artistic, do we need a space to recognize these? Yeah, it drives them insane. Despite, as we said in our Slumdog Millionaire episode, Slumdog Millionaire was the highest grossing Best Picture nominee until Oppenheimer. They had a movie that was a genuine blockbuster crossover success and they were so freaked out by the fact that they didn't show enough respect to WALL-E and Dark Knight that they go to 10 the next year and up becomes only the second animated film to ever be nominated for Best Picture in a 10.

3:09:06David Sims:Toy Story 3 is the third. Has not been another one in 16 years.

3:09:10Griffin Newman:I have it. Where do I have it on my 2008 list? It's my number two. What's your number one? Synecdoche. Synecdoche. Mine too. Yeah. I have a 12. Maybe I should get it higher. Get the fuck. I'm going to throw my wallet at you. What do you have above it? A lot of good movies. I think I'll get a little higher, though. What's above it? Name one. Happy-Go-Lucky. Synecdoche New York. Happy-Go-Lucky. I think I'm going to get it up to seven here. You have the reader six times? What is it leapfrogging? Above it, I definitely have movies like Synecdoche, Happy-Go-Lucky, Speed Racer, Milk, Wendy and Lucy.

3:09:45Griffin Newman:Milk? These are big movies for me. Milk is the best. I love these movies. They are lower down to 10. And then, like, it's sort of in more like the Rachel Getting Married in Bruges, Hunger, Step Brothers. See, Rachel's... Really good.

3:09:57David Sims:Rachel's maybe my three or four. Not a bad year for American film. Good year. No, good year. Rachel Getting Married, incredible. But it's a terrible Oscar year. I'll take the life and times of Harvey Milk over Milk any day of the week. You're like, we had good fucking options and, like, three of the Best Picture nominees are kind of wet blankets. Yeah, of course. I mean,

3:10:16Griffin Newman:I think, like, Frost Nixon is obviously... that is, that, Frost Nixon contributes to the 10 best picture nominees as much as Dark Knight and Wallet. Reader's the one

3:10:27David Sims:that's egregious, but Frost Nixon is a little bit of like, are we just like auto-nominating anything that feels like an Oscar movie? Reader,

3:10:34Griffin Newman:you were like, I could find a few people who thought that was good. There was not one person on Earth who was like, one of the best five movies of the year is Ron Howard's Frost Nixon. It was also like, that play was really good. Yeah, it plays pretty good.

3:10:45David Sims:They didn't really translate it well. It translated poorly.

3:10:48Griffin Newman:Right. I saw the play. Let's give it eight Oscar nominations. And it was like, you know, it felt like that, you know, those moments where the, like Green Book, where the old Oscar voters like, I know we're changing. I can't help it. Like, you know, like one more time, please. You know, like Frost Nixon.

3:11:01David Sims:So wait, it's Slumdog, Frost Nixon, Reader, Milk.

3:11:07Griffin Newman:Milk's so, so much better than those. And what's the fifth one?

3:11:13David Sims:What's the fifth one I'm forgetting?

3:11:14Griffin Newman:Benjamin Button. And I like that movie a lot. But even that one is at the time, everyone's like, like, a little underwhelmed, it's a little treacly, you know, like, just...

3:11:24David Sims:And, like, we're nominating that over Dark Knight and WALL-E, which actually kind of really hit the zeitgeist. My son, who has never seen a minute of Benjamin Button, is fascinated by the premise. He's always like, what's that movie about the guy who's born to being 100 years old and ages backwards? You maybe should show Asa Benjamin Button supercuts like Best of Blobby. Like, I don't think he'd like the whole movie. Did someone make a Benjamin Button supercut that isn't just Thirsten? He would like, like... Ben Affleck. You would like Benjamin Button And the revival tent Yeah

3:11:56Griffin Newman:So box office game Right? Yeah Sorry I'm just coordinating A little photo shoot maybe Coordinating a little photo shoot I interviewed somebody and They're going to take pictures of you I should do that for any time Just like me going like And who interviewed him but David Sims, here seen. Can I paint you? I interviewed, what's his name, Cain Parsons? Yeah, how's that movie? We'll all know by the time this comes out. I'm quite fond of it, especially all the parts where they are in the back rooms. Oh, cool. That's kind of a good percentage of the movie. But there was a, yeah, sure. But there was a moment during our interview when he said, yeah, no, I started to get into this stuff, liminal horror and all that stuff.

3:12:40Griffin Newman:My first year of high school, which was the first year of COVID 2020. and I you can hear it on the audio of our interview right the loud shotgun I do to my head you ate a bowl of bullet soup where I was just like oh pardon me

3:13:01Griffin Newman:drink poison okay so it's number one of the box office Griffin what's it opening against opening to a very surprising 50 million dollars wanted I feel like wanted like massively over indexed because it was sort of the Angelina Jolie moment of like, this is serious. Like, she is a magnet. The only thing I wanted was to never see that movie again. Am I right? That movie is a little abrasive.

3:13:23David Sims:I will say. Terrible. She is really good in it, though. Because this is the Changeling year, which is a movie, you know, I don't like. And I always contended her for Best Supporting Actress would have been a more deserving nomination and wanted over Changeling for Lead Actress.

3:13:38Griffin Newman:I think that's a bad take. I don't like that movie and I think Jolie's really good I think she she definitely like gives Wanted some pep and she's doing her assignment but I I'm a changeling defender it's a strange

3:13:53David Sims:specific performance but maybe I need to rewatch changeling terrible movie never needs to be thought of again Wanted I mean that guy I mean he's a product of Harry Knowles it's just them gassing up what was that the night shift yeah whatever the fuck it was those movies in process Or Nightwatch. Nightwatch. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

3:14:12Griffin Newman:I wanted, I remember, I haven't seen it since 2008, but yeah, every time it made a choice, it made the loudest, most annoying choice.

3:14:20David Sims:Well, they have loomers who weave tapestries that tell them where to bend bullets.

3:14:26Griffin Newman:When McAvoy creams Chris Pratt in the face with a keyboard, and then the words fuck you, but the teeth are filling in like the O's or like, you know, like come at your screen. The most inspired visual choice in that film. Right. Chris Pratt was in that movie? Yeah. Chris Pratt plays his co-worker who cuffs him. It's Chris Pratt in like sweaty chubby mode. Right. Back when he was in playing office workers. Yeah.

3:14:50David Sims:But that movie, yes, you're right.

3:14:52Griffin Newman:Massively overperformed. It massively overperformed. Number three at the box office. These are all films I like saw alone in cinemas in my first year living in New York. Comedy TV adaptation. It's the first Sex and the City movie, is it not? You are correct. Incorrect.

3:15:07David Sims:That movie is at number nine, though. Oh, okay. It's a different... Older TV. It's an older... It's not the Honeymooners movie. It's an older... What's it opening to? Well, it opened last week to$38 million.

3:15:22Griffin Newman:It's going to end up at$130 domestic.

3:15:25David Sims:Oh, it's Get Smart.

3:15:26Griffin Newman:Get Smart.

3:15:26David Sims:It was a hit. Forgotten. Forgotten. They kept threatening to make a sequel, and they were like, didn't you guys like this? And people were like, what? Like what? There is not an inch of pop culture that is not somewhat connected to Anne Hathaway over the last 30 years. She rocks. She's going to have a very defining year this year, and we all recognize her.

3:15:46Griffin Newman:By defining, you mean every single movie features her.

3:15:50David Sims:Or Zendaya are having an arm wrestling match with a pop culture. It could work against her. Yeah, I mean, in some senses, maybe. Does Zendaya have four or three? Zendaya's got Dune, Drama, Spider-Man, Odyssey,

3:16:02Griffin Newman:Euphoria Season 3. Yeah, and then Euphoria. Luckily, it seems like Euphoria season three is going to pass without anyone talking about it. But I do think that this year will sort of cement in the public consciousness to an even greater degree than it had before that Anne Hathaway is an institution. Hathaway fucking rules. I mean, Hathaway's... We're very pro-Hathaway in this house. Yeah. In this house, we respect Anne Hathaway. I worry this year will be too much Hathaway.

3:16:24David Sims:So it's Mother Mary, Devil Wears Prada, Odyssey, Verity, House at the End of Oak Street. Is there a sixth one I'm forgetting? But with the exception of Verity and Devil Wears Prada, I think those movies have such different core audiences that I don't think it's going to feel like oversaturation. It is a widespread. Sure.

3:16:42Griffin Newman:Is it just five or is there six? I'm just seeing five, although I could have sworn there was. There's a movie called Alone at Dawn, the Ron Howard movie. Right, that's coming out next year, I think. That, right, doesn't have a date yet. Yeah. But that's the other one on her. I mean, my main concern is that Prada 2 might, like, suck really bad. I've heard that it is basically the same as the first one, but obviously diluted.

3:17:05David Sims:The first one's a masterpiece. That's fine. I'm fine with it. Right. If it's like a kind of like base hit, like that's okay. I was worried it was going to be like... Me too. ...Super Mario Galaxy of Devil Wears Prada where just shit happens. It just starts home. And then Meryl Streep has been strong. And then she goes like, She's out of color! Squirrels, and you're like, yay! I really have been worried of like jangling keys shit with that movie. I'm troubled by the implication of the trailer that she does not remember Anne Hathaway. And it's like, how advanced is her dimension? She worked for her for a long time.

3:17:36Griffin Newman:No, she didn't. She worked for her for six months. It was a memorable six months. Come on. For us, the joke for her is it was not remotely memorable. I'm just saying. I do think that trailer did make it seem like it was like a Men in Black 2 style. We need to restore her memory.

3:17:51David Sims:That might be too difficult a bit to sell in the trailer.

3:17:53Griffin Newman:Exactly. I get the idea that she's aloof and they're doing that joke, but to the point where you're like, Hey, Joe Biden, anyone know? Yes.

3:18:02David Sims:Is Kung Fu Panda still in the top five? Kung Fu Panda, you have guessed correctly, is number four at the box office. That's another one that overperformed and there was a real arms race of they ended up very close in terms of the final totals. Sure, sure.

3:18:16Griffin Newman:Kung Fu Panda's fun. It's got a Kung Fu Panda in it. Yes. There you go.

3:18:19David Sims:But I think there was a little bit of like... Master Oogway? Did Pixar go too esoteric? Sure. Versus Kung Fu Panda is... Right, right.

3:18:27Griffin Newman:Pixar's like, ah, yes, the existential crisis and Kung Fu Panda's like, the panda's large, yet does Kung Fu. The title explains the plot. An anecdote I've shared

3:18:35David Sims:so many times, but the urban legend I have heard that when Jeffrey Katzenberg was pitched Kung Fu Panda, his first response was, I like all three of those words. And that movie is the best executed version of Kung Fu Panda. I think when it came out, everyone's like, oh, it's actually like good. But, you know, Wally was trying something very ambitious and they ended up but the exact same number and Wally cost me. You don't hear a lot of podcasts about Kung Fu Panda these days.

3:19:01Griffin Newman:No, and there's four of them. There are four. But, right, Kung Fu Panda did endure, I guess, as, right, sequel fodder and all that as well. Number five of the box office is a film in a cinematic universe that's getting its start. This is... Here in 2008. Is this Hulk?

3:19:17David Sims:The Incredible Hulk.

3:19:19Griffin Newman:Yeah. Yeah, bad movie. Really bad. But did introduce me to my favorite MCU character, Liv Tyler's Betty Ross. I finally got to see her one more time recently I love can we quickly if you want to salute our president there he is bright and red I thought you were going to say Tim Roth's abomination which is most Americans favorite MCU character also an actor who's clearly the most delighted to be in those films having a great time charming to everyone around

3:19:50David Sims:you know what my favorite Betty Ross scene is tell me it's tough to pick because she's got so many good moments in the MCU I can't guess because there's too many. My personal favorite Betty Roth scene is when her human body walks into the raft to visit her incarcerated Red Hulk former president father. And her head is definitely the same as her human body. Both things were shot at the same time.

3:20:14Griffin Newman:All in union.

3:20:14David Sims:In front of a camera on a real set next to Harrison Ford.

3:20:19Griffin Newman:God, what if it turned out Joe Biden wasn't insane? I mean, yeah, it wasn't, sorry, you know, losing his mental faculties when said it was just suffering from Red Hulk's disease. And that would have been the big twist. It would answer some questions and raise others. Raise others, yes. Number six was, oh, a good film here, The Love Guru. Wow. We covered a lot of these. We covered a lot of these. Number seven, we've covered this one, too, with this very person, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Number eight, another film we've covered, M. Night Shyamalan's The Happening. Number nine, a film we've yet to cover, Sex and the City.

3:20:51Griffin Newman:Number 10, a film we've yet to cover I wonder if we will The opportunity has kind of passed us by You don't mess with the Zohan Yeah

3:21:02David Sims:That's maybe top of the list of Movies I used to argue are masterpieces That I am terrified to ever re-watch

3:21:09Griffin Newman:In my memory, it is a movie that You know, has a good heart Like it wants everyone to be friends Maybe it doesn't have the most textured view Of the geopolitical situation

3:21:21David Sims:In 2008, it felt like the politics were surprisingly good for the time for a movie that was that overly stupid. I was going to say, that movie is the moment when the Democratic leadership stopped aging. Yes. It's been frozen in time. Right. Are people still filming Zohan? Today, that movie might feel like a weapon of mass destruction. Zoran, maybe. Yeah. Well, truly don't mess with the Zoran. Mm-hmm. That's all. No, not me. That's happened like three times. Yeah, it happens. I'll never learn.

3:21:49Griffin Newman:We're done. we've been talking for so long. Wally is a very good movie and I think it's nice. And he's my good friend. He's really the best of us. Yes. Now, next week on the show, we're going to meet another good friend, John Carter. A slightly less successful movie. You have a Pulitzer Prize winning writer, Tony Kushner. Yeah, Kushner's back for that one.

3:22:11David Sims:But Michael Shabon is the co-writer of... Well, he was the co-writer of some shit. I mean, God bless. Yeah, but that was... This was a passion project. I mean, we'll get into all of it. It is a fascinating movie. It arguably has become the shorthand. I think we were saying this, we were talking about this in Madison, Ben, that we were like, John Carter kind of took over the like, you know, Waterworld replaced Ishtar, Ishtar replaced Heaven's Gate. John Carter just is the thing that people invoke. Yeah, Jonah Hex made a bid for it, but couldn't compete. No. And I think some of it just boils down to this movie costs this much and it's just called John Carter.

3:22:50David Sims:and I'm supposed to know what that is. We will talk about it next week. I'm very excited. It's a fascinating movie to look at now and pull apart 10 years later.

3:23:01Griffin Newman:I'm excited to rewatch. I've only seen the one time. Ehrlich, thank you for being here. Do you have anything you want to plug? Ben's like, done. We are done. Do I have anything I want to plug? I'm writing a book that's going to come out in like three years. So start getting hyped. I haven't asked for this recording not written a single word. Yeah. but working on it

3:23:21David Sims:I was going to joke you're finished but you just want to leave the manuscript out in the sun for three years yes or bury it you could bury it buried it buried it on my dead body for my wife to discover oh I want to say

3:23:32Griffin Newman:I got an idea from Wally there's a Twinkie that Wally feeds

3:23:36David Sims:cockroach hell hangs out inside

3:23:38Griffin Newman:I think I might start burying Twinkies with the jeans huh continue no I mean how can you say anything after that I mean it's a brilliant idea

3:23:47David Sims:I'm also going to force you to plug fighting in the war room because your co-hosts always get mad when you don't do that. Yeah, I mean, I guess if you want to listen to it, you can. I think its entire audience that listens to your show is already well aware. 100 best podcasts ever. Yeah, sure. Yeah, you can find me on the internet and my name and IndieWire reviewing movies. By the time this comes out, I'll already have been to Canon back and life will go on. Excited for Canon? Am I excited for Cannes? Yeah. I mean, if you're not excited for Cannes, what are you doing in this line of work, I suppose?

3:24:22Yeah. I'm excited to hear if the Scorsese episode I nominated myself for, if I was ghosted by abject silence from David Sims, was rejection or just omission. We'll find out.

3:24:32David Sims:I just want to remind you that the episode you threw your hat in the ring for is basically a calendar year away because Scorsese is so long. And that's what I figured. I didn't feel like it was going to be stepping underneath its toes. We're just not making decisions about those. Right. We're trying to keep things up. We're not giving you the silent treatment as much as it... Here, we'll say it on mic. Your interest is noted.

3:24:51Griffin Newman:I don't even remember. I'll say it off mic. Fine, great. Okay, let's be done. As always, our friend Wally is good. Thank you all for listening.

3:24:59David Sims:Please remember to rate, review, and subscribe. Tune in next week for John Carter. Over on our Patreon, we're finishing up RoboCop. Who you guys got for John Carter? The great Matt Singer.

3:25:10Griffin Newman:I'm looking now. Yeah, we're still in RoboCop mode. I think it's Robocop 3 is next. Mm-hmm. Yeah. So we got plenty of Robocops to go.

3:25:17David Sims:If you enjoyed the Rub-It talk and you want more Rub-It talk, then go over and listen to us talk about Rubba Ninjas fighting Rubba Cop. And as always, Eve's a babe.

3:25:34Say your name.

3:25:35Griffin Newman:Asa. Good name. Asa, who is your favorite character on Big City Greens? Cricket. What do you like about Cricket? Well, he's a rock-loss boy like me. And he's about the same year as old as me.

3:25:48David Sims:And I'm the big brother, but he's a little brother. It's kind of weird. He's kind of six. What would you say if somebody asked you what Big City Greens is about? Well, it's about... Excuse me. It's about 22 minutes long. Yeah, it's about 22 minutes long. What's the show about? What happens? The family moves from the country? Bailey moves from the country to Big City, and they get all crying when they don't want to go. But before, they think that they don't want to. They think that's going to be like a creepy mansion across the door. But then Bill said that we're leaving the country and moving to Big City.

3:26:34And they cry all along. And why is Chip Whistler so mean to them? Well, when they first went to Big City, Cricket, like, um, the chip told Cricket something. And then Cricket kicked him in the lens. Cricket. And then this all began. Uh-huh. Um, and last question. What do you think of the movie WALL-E?

3:27:01David Sims:What does that have to do? It's unrelated. What do you think about WALL-E? You used to love WALL-E. We watch it every day for like six months. Nope. Morning. Boo. Okay. Say goodbye. No.

3:27:15Griffin Newman:Blank Check with Griffin and David is hosted by Griffin Newman and David Sims. Our executive producer is me, Ben Hosley. Our creative producer is Marie Barty Salinas. And our associate producer is AJ McKeon. This show is mixed and edited by AJ McKeon and Alan Smithy. Research by J.J. Birch. Our theme song is by Lane Montgomery and the Great American Novel. With additional music by Alex Mitchell. Artwork by Joe Bowen, Ollie Moss, and Pat Reynolds. Our production assistant is Minnick. Special thanks to David Cho, Jordan Fish, and Nate Patterson for their production help. Head over to BlankCheckPod.com for links to all of the real nerdy shit.

3:27:53Griffin Newman:Join our Patreon, Blank Check Special Features, for exclusive franchise commentaries and bonus episodes. Follow us on social at BlankCheckPod. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter, Checkbook, on Substack. This podcast is created and produced by Blank Check Productions. And Wally is kind of a vehicle.

3:28:12David Sims:Yeah. What do you think about that? Wally's kind of got some main character syndrome with regards to this movie. He does. He does. He's also kind of a great friend.

3:28:21Griffin Newman:Yeah. Well, save this for the mic. That's the kind of observation that must be recorded at all times.

3:28:28David Sims:Okay, David, I'm going to send you a thing in a second. Did you guys record Finding Nemo already? We did. We did that one. Good movie. very good fish okay David yeah well I assume you don't mean me yeah sorry Ben we ready we are