You Were Never Really Here with Sean Clements

9:11David Sims:Who's our guest?

9:13Griffin Newman:Yeah. Okay.

9:14David Sims:Our guest today shares with me this is one of your favorite films in recent history as well, correct?

9:19Sean Clements:I love it. I mean, you were the first people I texted when I watched it. I think it's a totally slept on movie. It's a little bit. It's an Amazon thing. But yeah, everyone who would listen that I was doing this podcast just grabbing people on the street. I'm going to be on blank check. Have you heard the news? In person for the first time. And they said, and they said, what movie are you doing? And I'd say, you were never really here. And they go, huh? What is that and who made that? And why are they talking about that? Even people who I think would love the movie yeah i'm just like you gotta watch it but i also had kind of missed it yeah the poster which i agree is cool didn't sell me on it like i was like oh okay this looks like a moody thing maybe i'll try it sometime but i don't know why i threw it on on some streamer but maybe like a half hour David.

10:10Sean Clements:Yes. This movie fucking rocks. I was just like, holy shit. It's awesome. Joaquin's unbelievable in it. The directing's incredible. And it's like, I mean, it's tight as a fucking drum. Yes. Like, there's no fat on it. Which I really appreciate.

10:27Griffin Newman:It's so, it flies. Because you could sit in this misery, and that's a different decision. And I don't know if I would love that. And instead, it's like, no, no, no, no, no. Like, just kind of like little pokes. in your eye like like fast yeah exactly i mean if you just like counted up the scene like it's

10:44Sean Clements:like so so so efficient which i have so much respect for it's it's i think like 81 minutes

10:50Griffin Newman:before the credits yeah yeah basically i think it's listed as like 90 minutes but it's it's

10:55David Sims:really pretty much like an hour 20 yeah which is which is great it's it also feels smart in the sort of uh we discussed when we covered uh train spotting on this podcast that danny boyle's big rule going into that movie with all the key creatives is like, we gotta sign a blood pack. This movie has to be under 90 minutes. We are not gonna be able to sustain this. If we hit 95, it's gonna become oppressive. And I think she very smartly makes the same choice here. When it played at Cannes, it was an earlier cut that was longer that has never been released in any form since then. We were never really released.

11:29David Sims:Our guest today from Hollywood Handbook, screenwriter of The Dink, which will be coming out. I think it has a release date, right?

11:38Sean Clements:This summer on Apple. Okay. Summer 2026.

11:42Griffin Newman:Q2? Is it Q2 released? Or Q3? What? I don't get my Q's mixed up. You want to get your P's and Q's right? That's the problem. Probably more of a Q3

11:52Sean Clements:if it's... I've been told a date. I don't know if I'm allowed to say it. But it's summertime. But it's coming out this year. It's summertime. It's going to be 2026. Summer. Big fun summer comedy. Get ready to laugh. Can we have fun? Funny laughs. Am I allowed to have fun at all in this administration?

12:11David Sims:They told us that comedy was legal, and I'm not seeing a lot of evidence of that.

12:14Sean Clements:Yeah, well, it's legal again, and I'm actually going to be the first one to stand up and not get arrested for doing it. Sean Clements. The Clem Dog. The Clem Dog's here. Bow, wow, wow, woof, woof. The Friends McMullen are reunited.

12:29David Sims:We had a group text for a while called The Cinematrix Club, where we would post our daily Cinematrix scores. the two of you weirdly have decided to spend more time raising your children and less time playing Cinematrix.

12:40Sean Clements:It was pulling me away from my family in a very significant way. Especially because you guys are so good at it. And I was like, I can't be like totally humiliated every day. And I would like really like grind on this thing. And I was like, I'm not enjoying it.

12:52Griffin Newman:I was starting to not enjoy it. That was sort of my problem. And that's no offense to the good people who make the Cinematrix.

12:57David Sims:It was a daily ritual which was nice because it also gave us like an excuse to once a day check in and throw in some spare movie thoughts and things like you texting, hey, I'm watching you were never really here for the first time. Do you guys fuck with this movie?

13:10Sean Clements:I don't think it would have happened if we weren't Cinematrix friends who were, you know, in touch basically every day for a while.

13:15David Sims:If we weren't clubbing, which we were. Yeah. And then the text thread has become more sporadic. Mm-hmm. I saw the trailer for The Family McMullen, the finally Ed Burns 30 Years Later legacy sequel and i text it to you and say this feels like it's demanding a teaser freezer yeah and in honor of that we have renamed the group text the friends mcmullet a teaser freezer is something

13:38Sean Clements:we do on hollywood handbook legendary times where we will break down a movie trailer um and and and poke fun at the foibles um but we david had i believe i'm going to credit david with the um observation of he said is ed burns the irish american tyler perry yes an incredible one which was like a kill shot amazing quote yeah and it really stuck with me and so i'm laughing at my own joke but it is a good one so funny and i forgot about that because we were going through all his movie titles which are all like the mcgillicuddy brothers staggering amounts of movies.

14:19David Sims:The Fitzgerald family Christmas.

14:21Griffin Newman:I'll read, because like the first, you know, Brothers McMullen, she's the one. People were watching these movies.

14:26David Sims:Well, first of all, this great party trick of, how many movies do you think Ed Burns has directed? Directed!

14:31Griffin Newman:Not acted in, not anything else.

14:33David Sims:My girlfriend and I were watching The Chair Company on Max, and it auto-played a Family McMullen trailer, because I guess it's about to go to Max. I'm sure. And she was like, what? And I was like, Sean, Simms, and I have been buzzing. The thing's going to Max at like the speed of light.

14:47Griffin Newman:About this for weeks.

14:48David Sims:And then I paused it and I said, just quick test. How many films do you think Ed Burns has directed? And she went, I'm going to guess it's a lot. Like six?

14:57Griffin Newman:Oh, sweetie. He's got 15. He's got 15 under his belt, which is probably about six regular movies. If you kind of like average them out, you know, squeeze them together.

15:07David Sims:But I just love that you're like, well, three I've heard of. So I'm guessing there's three I haven't heard of. And you're like, no, there's 12 to 13. You've never met Nice Guy

15:17Griffin Newman:Johnny. I met him. or you've never attended the Fitzgerald family Christmas. Call that one out. Which weirdly has Connie Britton in it as well, but it's not McMullen. It's Fitzgerald.

15:28David Sims:But then there's another one with another Irish family name. Yeah. The Millers in Love.

15:32Griffin Newman:The Millers in Marriage. And that's another one where the poster is like 14 actors. You kind of know that clearly Ed has their phone number and is like, do you have six days I've rented a house

15:44Sean Clements:in Maranek or whatever.

15:47Griffin Newman:You know, like, we'll do it.

15:48Sean Clements:We ain't have no nonsense.

15:50Griffin Newman:Gretchen Maul, Julianna, Margulies, Minnie, Driver, Morena, Bakar, and Benjamin Bratt, Patrick Wilson, Campbell Scott, Brian Darcy James. These are busy people.

16:00David Sims:It does feel like there's some Tyler Perry thing going on where you're like, I want someone to crack open the books of what the financing scheme is for these. You know, how is getting access to these sets? Right. There's some complicated... Who's giving him keys?

16:14Griffin Newman:Right.

16:15Sean Clements:Yeah, I mean, it was like The Brothers McMullen was such a famous story of like, he was like working for a production company. He was a PA and he was like stealing the cameras at night and like using their, you know, using their copy machines or whatever the thing was. And it was like this real run and gun like, but now he's got a budget. They're union productions with name actors.

16:42Griffin Newman:This is true, but there's got to be something going on. with how these things... I mean, my ultimate assumption, obviously, is that they are made very quickly. Yeah. Because they're all just like talkie dramas, right? Yes. And maybe I should just watch them all. I mean, maybe I should put my money where my mouth is and check in with Ed. We also called out that he... He's also done like two TV shows.

17:04David Sims:Directed three complete seasons of television himself. Three seasons of two different shows where he directed every episode. The man keeps getting away with it. It looks pretty good. He looks pretty good. That's all right. He looks pretty good. We had really a lot of fun batting this around. Oh, God. What a nice text. And then I got to talk about it on my podcast. Here we are talking about it again.

17:25Sean Clements:But we're the Friends McMullen. He hasn't acted. We're the Friends McMullen.

17:28Griffin Newman:He has not acted in a movie that he, you know, didn't direct since Alex Cross. Okay. The Rob Cohen, you know, sort of reboot. Co-starring. Tyler Perry. The non-Irish Tyler Perry.

17:44David Sims:Did he take some notes? Did Tyler Perry go to me? I wonder. Come here.

17:48Griffin Newman:Where he is the third guy. This is crazy. He should be playing some kind of like detective sidekick. I don't know if Ed Burns can pull something like that off.

17:56David Sims:Seems like a murder or something going on here. I'm bringing all this up because the first ever teaser freezer, of course, and the first episode of Hollywood Handbook ever was Don John. Don John. A movie that you and Hayes Davenport came on to discuss on this podcast. Yes. I don't know if you saw the news. Oh, I did. New Joseph Gordon-Levitt movie in production. Might be time to run it back.

18:20Sean Clements:Speeding train. Might be time to run it back.

18:22David Sims:I think we got to call the shot right now. We got to complete that series.

18:26Griffin Newman:Oh, I mean, we're continuing the JGL mini. What is this movie? Do we know what it's about? It's from Anna Kendrick, and it's about AI. I feel like... Hit record, Joe. I feel like... Maybe I'm going to get in trouble for saying this. like, I'm feeling kind of warm to JGL of late. I feel like he's like... You think you're gonna get in trouble for Satan? I don't know. Lord knows he's done something bad.

18:50David Sims:Getting in trouble with who? Bane?

18:53Griffin Newman:Not bad, but something corny.

18:54Sean Clements:You think Bane's thinking about you?

18:56David Sims:Oh my god. Wow. That's actually pretty self-involved, David. Bane's got so much on his plate right now.

19:03Griffin Newman:Isn't he... He's like always out there saying like, AI sucks, I don't like it or whatever.

19:08David Sims:Isn't his wife as like a scientist? Yeah, he seems like he's... And it's like, she is like, hey, Joe, here are like 20 bad things that are about to happen in society. And he's like, cool, I'll use my like star power to communicate my platform going. And then I think his movie is about that. I want to say. So like, that's kind of fun. Yeah. I don't like that. Am I crazy? Joseph Gordon-Levitt, quote, not a punk rock thing to use artists work to train AI for free.

19:33Griffin Newman:I mean, he doesn't need to say the punk rock part, but sure.

19:36David Sims:Right. It's Rachel McAdams and Joseph Gordon-Levitt. I love Rachel McAdams. Julian Roberts for another generation is producing it under wraps for the AI movie it's an AI movie interesting wait a second shares story credit with Natasha Lyonne okay

19:56Griffin Newman:she's

19:57David Sims:pretty normal I just think not only is the JGL series an ongoing project that we are serious about I almost think you and Hayes need to be locked in for every time he makes a new movie.

20:09Sean Clements:If he's going to make a movie, man, we got to come and talk about it. We may have been too hard on Don John. I've been watching the movies that have come out since.

20:19Griffin Newman:Have you seen everything in the last 15 years or so?

20:23David Sims:Don John might have been

20:23Sean Clements:the last good movie. I think that we were so spoiled. We were. We felt that we had permission to go in on Don John. We were like... And we didn't know

20:32David Sims:how good it was going. I think you're right. This movie's approach to depicting masturbation habits is very strange. And now we live in a world where masturbation is rarely depicted on screen, which is a much worse way of handling it.

20:46Sean Clements:It's missing.

20:46Griffin Newman:It's missing. It's missing from my diet. Aren't we in a world where Gen Z is like the only way I know how to masturbate is like in like a VR cave or whatever. Isn't that like what gooning is or whatever? That's what's been going on.

20:58Sean Clements:Yeah.

20:58Griffin Newman:So now I'm like Don John is like that was a blue collar masturbator. He cracked open a Dell laptop. Fucking salt of the earth. He was masturbating to human women filmed on shitty cameras. He would type like boobs into Google or whatever. Oh, fuck. Whatever Don John did. Fuck. Boo boobs.

21:15David Sims:Fuck. Right.

21:17Griffin Newman:And then like ScarJo's kind of mean to him and he's like, oh, I like it. You know? Creams his jeans. Good shit. It's such prosaic horniness like compared to whatever the, you know, Zoomers are doing.

21:27David Sims:It was a simpler time. It was a simpler time. And we're part of the problem. We made times complicated. Well, we. Yes. We shamed him.

21:35Sean Clements:We shamed him. I hope he doesn't know that. And that has now driven all of youth into a VR cave. It's the only way they can get on.

21:42David Sims:They're all stuck in a post-Don John VR cave. Yeah.

21:46Sean Clements:Because we made it embarrassing to be Don John. And where are the... You know, it was playing off this Jersey Shore aesthetic that also has encapsulated this one moment in time for us that I feel like should be preserved.

21:59Griffin Newman:Right. That is just so quaint and old-fashioned, the Jim Tan laundry kind of thing.

22:04David Sims:But also, does Jersey Shore get revived in the time in between when we did the episode and now? I can't even. Revived. Revived. I mean, come on.

22:13Griffin Newman:That didn't last. I know. I mean, we got Snooki's best friend over here.

22:16David Sims:Ben used to produce Snooki's podcast. I don't know if you know this. That's true. Oh, Jesus, Ben. I'm sorry, man.

22:21Sean Clements:I appreciate that. I feel like such a fucking asshole. Dude. Congratulations, man. That rocks. Thank you. I mean, Snooki? Yeah. Not a lot of one-name superstars coming out of reality TV these days.

22:40David Sims:No, especially in the podcast world. Who are the one-named podcasters? Dax. We had Seth Rogen on the show, and I kept falling into this problem where I'd go like, yeah, and we have Rogen doing Big Lebowski on the pod, and people would go, Joe? And I was like, oh, you can't. Within the context of pod.

22:58Griffin Newman:Can't say Rogen. You can't say Rogen.

23:01David Sims:He's a one-name, but not the first name. I think if you say Joe Probably But not definitely You say Joe I'm thinking about Biden Same And when's he gonna start his podcast I love hearing that guy talk I really would love it

23:16Griffin Newman:He's got a knack for it No but he should do a fucking Serial style podcast about corn pop Where he's like I'm gonna prove to you that this guy I'm gonna interview everyone who knew him I'm gonna go deep like full investigation On whatever pool he used to hang out in Wilmington or whatever it was. Or it could be called a bad dude. I took to the mean streets of Delaware. He's like walking around.

23:40David Sims:We should plant a bunch of hidden mics in Joe Biden's home. Right, not a crime. And just record him puttering and murmuring and release those in one hour installments. I think his monologue out loud to himself on a daily basis would probably be the best podcast I listen to.

23:55Griffin Newman:Or what if he does the model where like Obama and Bruce paired up? who would Biden pair up with musician wise like who's the musician of Biden's age Brian Adams

24:13Griffin Newman:it's like Frankie Valli who is Joe Biden's favorite musician I was trying to tee up

24:22David Sims:some kind of really old old musician if we ask Joe who's the musician you want to do a podcast with he'd be like What's that? Call up Al Jolson. What's he done recently? Mammy.

24:38Griffin Newman:His favorite band. What's his favorite band? It seems to be just like some kind of like Irish folk band or something. I'm trying to figure out.

24:45Sean Clements:Good.

24:46Griffin Newman:I mean, it's just him and Michael Flatley. Yeah. Is Michael Flatley still? Kicking? Still hoofing? Yeah. Yeah. He's still doing stuff. You know the whole thing with him is that he broke off from Riverdance, right? You know, when I lived in England, Riverdance was like 40 % of the economy in that country. And like, so every five minutes when you watch TV, there would be ads for Riverdance or Michael Flatley's Lord of the Dance, which was his rival company.

25:11David Sims:Same deal in the United States in the 90s. I guess it was just a huge deal. I remember a period of time where those two things were just playing, alternating every commercial break. Did any of you ever see Riverdance? Absolutely not.

25:20Griffin Newman:No, but I feel like I did. It's kind of like Irish Rockettes. Again, I'm making a lot of Irish stereotype sort of jokes on this podcast, which is a little rich for me. I'm not Irish. Hey, I'll give you a pass. He's pushing over a pass.

25:39David Sims:He's handing you a clover. It is one of those things for like 10 years, you could have play and a character breaks into some sort of like step dance. That's punchline. that was a punchline that's all you need to do and it would hit every single time any character breaking into Riverdance for five seconds would hit

26:00Sean Clements:this is me to my dad Riverdance

26:03Griffin Newman:and now just say it and now if I like instant completed joke if I told anyone about Riverdance they would be like no what is that

26:12Sean Clements:that that and the chanting monks CD that our parents got into at one point felt like just this moment where it was like completely agreed maybe another culture but just for a minute and just one thing they do yeah well it's what is it enigma who did the

26:29Griffin Newman:chanting monk song or right you know the pure moods yeah the pure moods uh the mix that would come on right yeah just like those guys whoever was just like what if we did a monk song right and then they hits and then another guy's probably like could i do a monk song it's like nope like doors closed. Like there was one monk opportunity.

26:49David Sims:In 2018, Michael Flatley wrote, produced, directed, and starred in an espionage action thriller. Sounds good. Called Blackbird. Quote, Michael Flatley as you've never seen him before with Eric Roberts. It's a Casablanca riff. Wait,

27:06Griffin Newman:they got Eric Roberts?

27:07David Sims:They got Eric Roberts and it didn't actually see release for four years. that's what he's up to

27:15Sean Clements:the movie's made in the editing bay and nobody knows that better than Flatley

27:19David Sims:he claims to be in pre-production for Blackbird 2

27:22Griffin Newman:and let me get us I'll get us back on track with this if you look at this poster kind of a you were never really here vibe bloody beaten it does look like Flatley is maybe someone who could wield a hammer Michael Flatley is you've never seen him before not dancing feet planted you were never really here So I did see this film in theaters. I thought this is that golden early age of Amazon pumping out auteur content from guys who were sort of striking out at major studios. So like Spike Lee, Whit Stillman, this Lynn Ramsey. What are you on? Who else? Who was in that kind of early wave? Todd Salons.

28:07Griffin Newman:Todd Salons.

28:08David Sims:Hal Hartley. That was crazy. They did three with him, I feel like.

28:12Griffin Newman:I mean, because he just, he's Ed Bird style. He just needs eight bucks.

28:16David Sims:But he, like, he had a fucking, a little mini second wind and, like, love and friendship.

28:20Griffin Newman:Ken Lonergan, obviously. Lonergan, yeah. That was one of their biggest hits. Yeah, that was an acquisition. But nonetheless, it was like they were very...

28:28David Sims:The branding was consistent.

28:29Griffin Newman:Yeah, very savvy about this kind of, like, let's buy up this kind of American art house stuff that used to be common.

28:34David Sims:These are the kings of Sundance of like 1980 to 2002 who have gotten pushed out of the studio system. The death of the mini major specialty arm. We got to get these guys back. And this is one that they they buy because it was independently financed. It was run in variety that A24 was going to buy it. Which makes total sense. Total sense. And then during production, Amazon sweeps in and outbids them and gets the rights.

29:01Sean Clements:Swoops in.

29:02David Sims:Swoops in. It's fine. It's whatever. but thank you. I need these corrections. Is it close to the vest or close to the chest?

29:09Griffin Newman:Mike Lee's Peterloo is another one. Mike Lee's Peterloo. You know, like where they're kind of like, do you want a little bit more money or we'll acquire, or we'll like, you know, we'll sort of Bigfoot someone at a film festival in this case.

29:21David Sims:And we've talked about it, but it's the shit that like Netflix did when they started out, although not as successfully. And Annapurna was sort of based on of like, what's the thing that's gotten rejected everywhere else? Yeah. What's the thing that no one else will let you make and we can build our reputation as seeming so artist friendly by supporting you? And they did. They did. And they didn't make any money. They made no dollars. They made no dollars and no cents. Amazon was interesting because like they made Manchester work commercially. Yeah. That movie made like fucking 50, 60 million dollars.

29:57Griffin Newman:It's one of the last true arguments of like you really can put, you know, these things in theaters and get them Oscar noms. and they will grow and they'll like, you know, have a good run.

30:05David Sims:They got big sick to like 50, 60. They did, yeah. Love and friendship, they got to like 20 something. Like they had quite a few that were working and it was sort of like, this is the model. Why aren't the other streaming services doing this? Brittany ran that marathon. Brittany ran the marathon.

30:19Griffin Newman:And she ran that shit right into the ground. Look,

30:22David Sims:Jen Salke took over the company, made some decisions that affected me personally. I will. But then also went to Sundance that year and spent, I think, a combined$50 million on late night. Brittany runs a marathon. And The Report. The Scott Z. Burns movie. It's a good movie. And I tried to give all three wide releases and was astounded when public audiences didn't flock to those films in mass and the next year declared, my takeaway is that movie going is dead and people don't like movies. Have you seen Brayneurton's Marathon? Yep. It's not a true story. You know that? You believe that?

30:56Sean Clements:I'm starting to come around to that being possible. I can't just accept that at face value. like people say that you know Fargo says that Fargo says that that's true and you can't trust inspired by this kind of thing maybe that happened but I've been tricked before so I'm hanging I'm hanging on we'll never forget

31:14Griffin Newman:being at Sundance Britney runs a marathon the movie ends the credits roll then they give you the black and white photo of like and here's the real Britney running the and someone behind me being like who gives a shit like just truly the most frustrated junior exec being like get the fuck out of here yes so what? She didn't like even become a state senator or anything. She just literally ran a marathon.

31:38Sean Clements:It's a funny story to do a side-by-side photo with like the real, because usually that's like some historical.

31:45Griffin Newman:Yeah, it's like freaking Nelson Mandela or whatever. They're like, here's the real Britney. I'm like, great, a lady. And guess what? I go to the marathon every year. I watch them go by. There's lots of people who do this.

31:55David Sims:Do you think if Jen Salky goes to the marathon, she's like, this is a development dream.

32:00Griffin Newman:50 million stories.

32:02David Sims:They're all here. We'll have discussed this recently on this feed, but Bradley Cooper's Is This Thing On is another movie that ends with a big, based on a true story, as if the audience is going, God, I mean, that was unrealistic. Such a thing could never happen. I need the assurance. An adult man trying stand-up? Impossible.

32:23Sean Clements:Getting divorced?

32:26David Sims:You're telling me this comedian

32:27Sean Clements:was feeling a little bit adrift? Sorry

32:32David Sims:It doesn't track Sometimes comedy comes out of misery It's a way to process our pain Like pretty comfortable white collar pain

32:50David

32:51David Sims:What? This episode Don't act so surprised Because it's a familiar friend Oh okay This episode's brought to you by Mubi

32:58Griffin Newman:Yawn Just kidding. Comfortable. Secure. We love them. They are a global film company of champions grade cinema. Iconic directors. Emerging auteurs. Always something new to discover with MUBI. Each and every film hand-selected. So you can explore the best of cinema. Nothing more to say, I guess. Wrong! There's a new film coming to theaters. Movie theaters. February 13th. The first Nigerian film ever in official competition again. That's pretty wild. This is a film by Akinola Davis called My Father's Shadow. It was BAFTA-nominated, poetic, tender portrait of a father-son bond framed within the political landscape of 1993 Lagos in Nigeria.

33:39Griffin Newman:It is about a father and two young sons as they journey into and around the vibrantly rendered Nigerian metropolis, reckoning with their relationship, navigating the city that's in the middle of a democratic crisis, written by real life brothers, Akinola Davis Jr. and Wally Davis. Love it, brothers. Co-wrote this groundbreaking feature debut and you've got Sofei Dorisu. Oh, from Slow Horses. I love him. I hope I'm saying his name right. But he's a really good actor and he's the star. It's worth seeing. It's in theaters, Griffin. It's great to go to a theater.

34:16David Sims:It's in theaters. We love that Mubi puts Mubis in theaters before ultimately ending up on their wonderful platform. dang right. I'm just looking at some of the stuff they got right now. Die My Love, of course. Yeah. An important watch, a necessary watch for any blankie. La Grazia. La Grazia, the new Paolo Sorrentino movie, which I missed in theaters. Good moment to catch up with it. The Great Shall We Dance. Oh, the classic? The original. Oh my goodness. That's fun. Like a restoration. Yeah. They got a collection called Heartthrob Nicolas Cage. It's Young Dreamy Cage. Well, still dreaming to me?

34:55Hey, you're very open-hearted.

34:57Griffin Newman:Anyway, to stream the best of cinema, you can try Mubi free for 30 days at Mubi.com slash blank check. That's M-U-B-I dot com slash blank check for a whole month of great cinema for free. And then go see my father's shadow in theaters. Please, thank you for listening. Thank you. Thank you for your attention to this matter.

35:13David Sims:Thank you. Very kind.

35:26Griffin Newman:I am going to open the dossier because I do feel like this movie does have kind of a complicated... It does. Or Lynn Ramsey has a complicated journey from her last movie, We Need to Talk About Kevin, to here. I feel like We Need to Talk About Kevin is her biggest hit of late. Yeah, it was a little bit of a breakthrough.

35:44David Sims:And especially for Oscilloscope, which was a small distributor, I feel like that was very much their highest grossing film at the time.

35:50Sean Clements:Are you guys going to... address the Lynn Ramsey backlash happening in the blank check community. Are we even going to deal with that? You've been checking the Reddit? Yeah, great. I'm on there. What's the latest on the backlash? Just that it's basically the least blank check worthy director you've ever done. Like, what's her blank check? Like, there literally is not a blank check. So, like, there isn't one. So, like, I guess it's your podcast and do whatever you want.

36:17David Sims:Yes, yes, yes. We can address this. Look. And we also, just for the record, do their voice more like the Bugman and Men in Black.

36:25Griffin Newman:Oh, yeah, D 'Onofrio. I mean, she's never even gotten... She doesn't ever have a blood track as a pet cat. I think that thread, which always, always happens every single time we pick a female director. It does happen every time. No offense to whoever started that thread. Because that thread is obviously totally correct, or that discourse is totally correct in that, yes, Lynn Ramsey has never been handed anything remotely akin to a blank check to make a movie. But Lynn Ramsey has been able to make the movies she's made, which are strikingly independent and dark and different movies. Uncommercial.

37:03Griffin Newman:Uncommercial movies. With major stars. Increasingly bigger and bigger stars. Yes. Right, right. her latest effort, of course, being her most expensive, I guess, especially if you include the sort of acquisition of it, and most star-laden, without ever, seemingly ever really compromising what she wants to do. Now she's always like, oh, this happened, and I wish this could have happened, and there's always unrealized projects or whatever.

37:28David Sims:But that speaks to, in fact, her not compromising, right? I mean, like, we will have covered this in other episodes, and we'll keep covering this, but there's so many movies she walks off of, you know or let's fall apart because she's just like this is going in the wrong direction I'd rather not make a movie than make a movie I can't stand speaking about all that let me tell

37:46Griffin Newman:you that after she made we need to talk about Kevin she wanted to make Mobius Dick correct I mean it's got various titles over the years Mobius being the most common one but a sort of sci-fi Moby Dick epic then this is Lynn Ramsey's dream project her ultimate blank check it's like

38:03David Sims:a spaceship movie, but they're chasing some kind of space whale. It's a giant space whale. I mean, now probably if she could get Pyakon attached, she could probably get financing, right? That's so true. It helps that there's a bankable space whale in the kind of commercial ecosystem. That's lucky. If Pyakon will do it for scale, that's a good picture.

38:25Griffin Newman:She's never been out there being like, I need$90 million to make my space movie. She's always said, I can make it at a small budget. I assume it's going to be like Claire Denise's high life of like, yeah, this is mostly psychological. It's mostly set on a ship. It's like, but you need some effects.

38:39David Sims:It's still like 15, probably, I'm guessing. Who knows? She has generally worked with small budgets. And then the blank check is distributors keep overpaying for her movies and being surprised

38:53Griffin Newman:when they're a little hard to sell. What do you mean nobody wants to see this movie? Jennifer Lawrence is hitting her head into every wall and mirror and window she can see. Movies rubbing their hands and they're like, the memes we're going to make out of this. So while she's planning that, she gets attached to a film called Jane Got a Gun, which I assume, Sean, you have maybe heard of this project. This is the kind of infamous she walks off. Was it like a day before production started or the day after? Well, we can talk about it. So she says, like, Mobius, that's like her, Stanley Kubrick's Napoleon, right?

39:25Griffin Newman:Like where it's like, that's the thing I'm always going to want to do, but it might always be impossible. But Natalie Portman, who I think admires her, is like, I am developing this like girl Western. I'm going to star. It's called Jane Got a Gun. It's got based on a, is it based on a comic book or? No, no.

39:42David Sims:It's a spec written by Brian Duffield. Right, right. Who now has made.

39:48Griffin Newman:He made like, no one will save you and stuff like that.

39:50David Sims:Yes, and spontaneous and love and monsters. I think he wrote as well. I mean, he has a tremendous amount of credits as writer and director, but it was a blacklist script in 2011 that Natalie Portman gets as a producer. kind of coming right off of her, like, Black Swan heat. It is a thing that, like, Natalie Portman has been called out for a little bit that she never worked with female directors. Yeah, sure, sure, sure. And would sort of talk about, like, the need for women to stick together in Hollywood. And people would kind of side-eye her being like... Do it, then. Yeah. Why don't you... Then you do it.

40:21David Sims:Why don't you just fucking do it? And so, like, here she is. She's trying to develop this thing. She buys a script with her own money, attaches Lynn Ramsey and Michael Fassbender.

40:28Griffin Newman:It's going to be her and Michael Fassbender. Jude Law is going to be the villain who's going to shoot in New Mexico first day of shooting natalie portman shows up michael fassbender has exited because he has to play magneto again for like the third time or whatever right he's going to be replaced with joel edgerton jude law and lynn ramsey both quit lynn ramsey just does not arrive it becomes this kind of disaster variety story kind of thing of like you know producers being like there's 150 crew members who are getting left in the lurch here. Like, it's a whole legal battle and stuff. The crazier thing also...

41:09Griffin Newman:She's accused of not delivering a shooting script. She's apparently... They said that her behavior had gotten kind of bizarre. Like, whatever. I think she was clashing with producers. What do you... What do you...

41:20David Sims:No, Joel Edgerton was, like, attached and then replaced and then came back in a different role.

41:25Griffin Newman:There was, like, a lot of musical chairs with this movie. Ewan McGregor is the ultimate choice to whatever, fill the third role. They sue her for like three quarters of a million dollars, which is her fee. It's settled out of court like three years later. Lynne Ramsey finally says when she talks about it many years later, it's like at the 11th hour, it was just like the guys financing this movie just do not want the movie I'm going to make. And so she quit. I mean, I think that basically completely cements a relationship with someone who is very difficult to work with and just doesn't play like Hollywood games well.

42:05Griffin Newman:Right.

42:05David Sims:Yeah. Yes. Yes. And I think the other part of it is it was like catnip for deadline. In my memory, it was like there would be three stories a day because it's like this movie is up and running and the director is gone. and the lead actor is gone. Every day there were like three new stories about, I mean, I'm even just reading here where it's like, on April 5th, it was announced that Bradley Cooper would replace Law in the role of John Bishop. On May 1st, it was announced that Cooper was withdrawing from the film.

42:36Griffin Newman:Yeah, Cooper was briefly.

42:37David Sims:Every day it was like a new actors in talks, a new actors dropped out. They're meeting with six new directors.

42:43Sean Clements:I know we don't get like two inside baseball on the business here, but to make a feature film and I you know I've only really been directly involved with one but to make a feature film without maybe Q3 but to make a feature film without the director and star is like extremely challenging it's a very bad set environment yeah yeah yeah dysfunctional yes I mean I don't yeah I mean that's got a negative connotation but I think that's fair

43:16David Sims:Let me rephrase. Non-functional. I would say it's going to be pretty tough to make a movie function with neither director nor store. Now, movies have done a missing one or the other. Sure.

43:25Griffin Newman:The weird thing is, the movie was eventually made. Gavin O 'Connor directs the final version. It came out, it made like$2. Yes. Like it was dumped so intensely by the Weinstein Company. Yeah. In 2015. Right. I've never seen it.

43:44David Sims:Everyone was like kind of shopping around it. At one point it had like Weinstein, Relativity, CBS and Focus features all like hovering and then taking pieces and then dropping out and someone would replace it. Like it was this movie with all this energy that they wouldn't let shut down. And they kind of like kept the corpse alive and got it finished and no one gave a shit.

44:03Sean Clements:It's really surprising that all those people leaving doesn't just make it not get done. Right. But an object in motion.

44:10David Sims:But it cost$25 million. It cost a lot. I mean, right.

44:13Griffin Newman:It could have cost a hundred, I guess, but it costs a lot of money.

44:16David Sims:I'm sure a lot of that was kind of the overruns of keeping people on hold and whatever. But if she had done this, this would have been her biggest budget thing. Now, to this, the complaint of the Reddit, right, or the questioning, it's like you could say, well, how has how can you define her as a blank check director when she's never had a budget over yada, yada, yada? Right. Yeah. Which, by the way, I'm just telling you what Reddit said. No, no, I know. I know. And at the end of the day, this is a podcast, despite my opening spiel, about what we want to cover. That is, I would say, the number one thing this podcast is about.

44:48David Sims:And she's one of my favorite filmmakers. And specifically from the moment that I see You Were Never Really Here, I'm like, fuck. The next time she releases a movie, I want to do her on main feed. But I think she is interesting in how she has kind of refused the blank check that would come with a lot of strings attached.

45:06Sean Clements:and even some people

45:08David Sims:more strategically might be like look if I make Jane Got a Gun and it's got four big stars and it's a western and it's got more sellable elements and I lose half the battles to the financiers but it gets released and becomes automatically my highest grossing film doesn't that help me get Mobius Dick done? Isn't that worth it as like means to an end? And she seems for better or worse incapable of doing that.

45:31Griffin Newman:Certainly. So she does what we'd all do which is moves to Santorini which is, of course, a Greek island in the Aegean Sea, falls in love with a Belarusian chef because she has divorced her husband, Rory Stewart-Knear, has a kid with him. And then Jacques Odiard's company, Why Not?, sends her over a copy of You Were Never Really Here in 2013. Now, I've never read the book. It's written by the Bored to Death guy. Jonathan Ames. So I usually think of him, of course, writing about, like, I don't know, I'm in Brooklyn, I need a coffee.

46:05Sean Clements:He was, yeah, just to give a little bit of background. He was sort of like a pervy, straight David Sedaris. That is actually a really good description of John the Name. Dead on. Like, he would write about, and it was like, yeah, it was, you know, famous essay about, like, his late puberty, where he talked about, like, not having pubic hair for a long time. and then like, you know, whatever, having his first sexual experience with a prostitute. But it was all like navel-gazy, sort of dry, precious. Comical oversharing. Yes, like confessional work. And then I haven't read many of his novels prior to this, but there's this, which I think is his first time dipping his toe into, because even Bored to Death is sort of like, What if a neurotic writer was solving crimes?

47:02Sean Clements:And the character is named after him.

47:04Griffin Newman:It's super pastiche. I mean, I enjoyed Bored to Death back in the day. It was a fun time.

47:08David Sims:He was like a brilliant self-promoter in that he made himself a figure, which helped him kind of cut through a bleak moment in the literary world.

47:15Griffin Newman:It's the Fran Leibovitz thing. It's like, if you were just funny and you live in New York and you can just do panels and do chatty shit.

47:23David Sims:He would do readings where he would hire an opera singer to read his book out and he was boxing on the side. Like you quirky, self-deprecating, you kind of feel good about yourself.

47:33Sean Clements:You're like, this guy's got real problems. It's like you're like I can. But meanwhile, he's like a famous, you know, successful person. But it's not threatening to anyone.

47:42David Sims:This book does feel like a radical departure from everything he had done up until this point in time. It's so grim and brutal.

47:48Sean Clements:There's nothing self-referential to his life at all. It's just the imaginings of like this, like, you know, this this man who has this job rescuing like women who are like in like child sex trafficking. situations but then he he breaks off into doing this series of like noir detective books these doll books that are like incredible that feel very much sprung from this like like yes right the happy doll series he's got three of them yeah a man named doll uh karma doll and the wheel of doll the three books and they're they're fucking awesome i have not read those those are good i love them but it's like it's just very surprising that this guy who i was aware of and had this very specific voice just has this whole new chapter look yeah has reinvented he said when

48:35Griffin Newman:he wrote this you never really hear he's like this is sort of an homage to first the richard stark the donald um weslick wake uh donald weslick parker series but also like lee child Jack Reacher books and all that. So he knows he's sort of doing not a pastiche, but an homage to a genre he loves.

48:57David Sims:The book is fairly earnest. It is not tongue-in-cheek in any way, but there is something pastiche-y about it in that it is very much, the book reads as more of a noir riff than the movie does. And I think what the book is interested in is, what is the kind of really disturbing subtext under these stories that we skirt around, right? Not just like the intensity of the crimes, but also like what is the inner life of a guy who does this kind of shit? Yeah. And like what toll does this take on you and what drives someone to that point versus being this kind of like cool above it all vacant. Well, yeah, Jack Reacher character

49:35Sean Clements:who's like so untouchable. Right. And it's like he's, you know, they're complete loner drifters and you just go like, because they're too cool and there's no strings attached. They can leave whatever. And he's like, no, but internally, this guy is like constant suicidal ideation. Like just like the only thing keeping him going is that he has this like one purpose he's identified that he can do that he thinks helps people. And that just like keeps pulling him back from the brink.

50:00David Sims:Yeah. I mean, you will never really hear the title comes from the repetition of the suicidal ideation. In the book, that's the thing he says to himself when he imagines killing himself to kind of alleviate the pressure of the idea of life.

50:13Griffin Newman:That's why he doesn't need to do it because he was never really here anyway.

50:15David Sims:Right. Which is what this guy's struggling with. He is also physically described in the book as being so much more of a traditional Jack Reacher type. Yeah. Like, here's this kind of, like, handsome. He's older than he looks. He's six foot two. He's 190 pounds of pure muscle, you know? And he looks like an avenging hero. And then the contrast is inside this guy just wants to fucking die. There's a paragraph I just want to read quickly. to your point, which is the big thing the movie doesn't over explain. He had come to believe that he was the recurring element, the deciding element in all the tragedies experienced by the people he encountered.

50:54David Sims:So if he could minimize his impact and his responsibility, then there was the chance, the slight chance that there would be no more suffering for others. It was a negative, grandiose delusion. Narcissism inverted into self-hatred, a kind of autoimmune disorder of his psyche that there was an undeniable element of truth to Joe's paranoiac state where he went, pain and punishment followed. And it's like, that's the animating idea of like, a guy doing this would not really be able to live with himself, even if what he's doing from the outside seems heroic. And what would drive someone to do the right thing in such extreme circumstances has to be a little bit warped because no sane person with any self-protective instincts can kind of live in this and survive it.

51:40Sean Clements:Yeah, he goes into the worst places where the worst people are doing bad things and then he does bad things there. And then one good thing comes out of it, maybe.

51:48David Sims:Right. And we love these kind of fictions of like the one guy who's willing to stand up to the bad in the world. Yeah. And ask these questions when these things happen in real life of like, how did no one stop it? And you're like, because it's super fucking difficult to stop it, not just in terms of like breaking down these systems and challenging these people, but also you literally just have to go into the depths of hell to even confront these things. And most of the time people don't come back out of that.

52:12Sean Clements:And he's a guy who is living with so much from his background in the military and whatever else he's done. Pain and flashback and PTSD already that sort of like might as well get like there's no escaping it for him. So it just seems like he's just like, okay, well, I'm the person who can go and do this because it doesn't matter what I see, I've seen it all.

52:34David Sims:The book is really tough, but it makes sense as something that someone could read and go like, there's a halfway commercial movie in this? You know, there is a kind of inverted art house taken in this, and it kind of makes him such a specific striking character. But it is like, the book is more noir-y in terms of being in his head. It's not written first person, but it's describing what he's thinking and what he's doing. And it's very like methodical and process based in how he goes about these missions. But also it's like explaining him putting the pieces together and solving the mystery, which is a thing the movie does not do.

53:13David Sims:It doesn't have him like on the case. Not at all. You see him kind of fit the pieces together. And they simplify the case. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Yes. But this has. Makes sense in terms of. There's. Versus. There's more of a kind of like pulpy, wicked web of intrigue and corruption.

53:27Griffin Newman:The way that Phoenix is playing this character also, obviously, it's not, this is not Batman, the world's greatest detective. This is not a deductive guy in that way.

53:37David Sims:No, no, no. You see him, like, put it together almost as just because he understands suffering.

53:43Sean Clements:No, he's less, yeah, he's less savvy in the movie because, like, in the book, he's, like, being careful about, you know, certain things. He's tracking. In the movie, it's like he calls the guy who's his contact right away. You know, like, to be like, hey.

53:55Griffin Newman:Yeah. so Lynn's like I kind of want to do this and people keep being like what? this isn't the kind of thing you would do and she's like that only made me want to do it more like I like you know that energized me

54:05David Sims:but so it is sorry it's Odiard who reaches out to her

54:09Griffin Newman:Odiard's production company sent her the book okay yeah and they didn't even have the rights but she's like I'm fucking sitting in Greece with no internet and like there's nothing to do and I just start writing the script yeah and then I just like get connected with Jonathan because we know you know people mutual people and we start chatting about it and i start basically saying this is what i want to keep you know these this is the bones of the character that i like and he's all for it and you know uh she's got a baby so i think like it's like almost a sort of like i remember not to name drop but like m.

54:45Griffin Newman:night shaman saying the same thing of like when you have a baby if you're trying to write something it actually focuses you because you have like two hours to write because the responsibility is there versus the kind of like, eh, I've got all day. Let me sit at the desk and see what fires up.

54:59David Sims:Well, same with podcasting. Now you have the focus of knowing you only have four hours to discuss a movie. It does. I think it does. David's smiling and he's giving me thumbs up and he's blowing kisses to me. He's really happy. I love you. He's so happy. David's definitely not having

55:12Griffin Newman:crazy acid flashbacks about the Reddit. Well, that's all being said. Yes, yes, yes. He likes this. He likes this a lot.

55:17Sean Clements:I agree that you, you do end up using your time more efficiently. You have to. You're just like, okay, I only have this window. And I had a boss once who said, your creativity will expand to fit the container you give it. It's like the natural brass theory or whatever.

55:36David Sims:That's interesting and surprising because I have zero kids and I use my time horribly. I actually couldn't manage it worse. I almost have nothing but time. And yet, nothing gets done.

55:46Griffin Newman:So what's the opposite of a container? What are you in? You're in like Mindcrash. Yeah, exactly.

55:54David Sims:I almost have negative children.

55:56Griffin Newman:You certainly can't say to a one-year-old, like, daddy's got to write a screenplay. Yeah, for sure. That diaper's just going to have to go unchanged. Yeah. So, Kevin, obviously, which is her last adaptation, that's a big book. It's epistolary. It's all these letters and stuff. Like, you know, that's a complicated thing. This, she's like, the book you could read in 90 minutes. It's like the movie should be just as pulpy and like fast in a way. Sure. But it's her version of that, I would say.

56:23David Sims:But she makes the sparsest version of what is already a sparse text.

56:29Griffin Newman:She's like, look, I'm trying to make it pulpy. It does turn into what I always do, which is a character study. Right. I feel like this guy's head is full of broken glass. He's suicidal. He's sticking around just because of his mom, sort of. He's like a ghost in his own life, basically. you know she thinks about movies like Le Samurai or whatever about similarly kind of like people who just don't have like a personal life right like these sort of like but Le Samurai is obviously about the coolest most handsome motherfucker you've ever seen who's so well dressed and the

57:05Sean Clements:American too which is which is an awesome movie same movie and a movie you love incredible yeah

57:10David Sims:But I feel like this is closer to we've covered a few movies like this, and I always it is something that sticks with me. It is a type of narrative that I find very effective, which is a guy who who passes his breaking point. You know, in a movie where even if the character is able to resolve the ostensible narrative, they're never coming back from this.

57:33Sean Clements:Well, and yeah, and they do. I mean, it's explained in the book, too, but he's a guy who's he's a bad dude. yep and he but he kind of like does the job and then he goes home and he has this little life with his mom right yes and that is not related to what he does and it's not pleasant it's not like like it's not like amazing but it's like he has a purpose at home as well when he's not working yes to take care of his mother who they both like suffered abuse you know at the hands of his dad And so he's got this like, I am I am like a value in the world, even when I'm not doing this thing. And then that gets taken away.

58:13Sean Clements:And you're just like, OK, so what? Who am I now? What is he? And he's just then going to be like a fucking berserker. Right.

58:20David Sims:Yeah. Because just to spell it out and you start basically with the kind of his internal chaos. This guy whose head is full of glass is constantly like ideating on drowning and things like that. But also these constant flashbacks, which start with him being a child, his father physically abusing him, but also the feeling of being in the closet, hearing his mother being attacked and not being able to protect her, which makes a ton of sense as like a motivating force that defines the next step of his life, which is he goes into trying to ostensibly help protect through the professional like arms of the American government.

58:57David Sims:Right. And he ends up becoming a specialist. list all this stuff is not like spelled out it is like pieced together really well in these like horrible traumatic flashbacks of just like glimpses of images and association the the things he can't get out of his brain they keep playing him just that one line of him going what the fuck are we

59:14Sean Clements:doing yeah like what are we and it's like i've assume a really great summation of like if you work in a unit that recovers people from human trafficking or if you're in the military in some special unit that it's like wait a minute what are we doing here like it's just like things are

59:32David Sims:getting so fucked up this guy's like two main recurring images are being in a closet trying to suffocate himself with a dry cleaning bag basically just to stop the pain and to stop himself from screaming which he now does like as a ritual almost every morning and and then the other recurring image is like the feeling of kicking down a door being minutes too late to

59:53Sean Clements:recover like a pile of bodies.

59:57David Sims:Seeing like glassy eyed, sort of like numbed young women. Right. And you get the sense that it's been like the times that he became a sort of task force specialist and trying to retrieve victims of sex trafficking, knocking down the door when it's too late. But also the feeling that when he was in the military, he probably was the one knocking down the door on innocent women, you know, invading homes and whatever towards some greater end, which then makes him go, what are we doing here? I need to be fighting for the right people. But then he's stuck in the darkness of that. Well, yeah. And who are the bad guys and who

1:00:31Sean Clements:are the good guys? He's has the military flashbacks where they're, you know, like whatever. It just feels like, yeah, he's very much lost in terms of like, how do I do good in a world that's so dark?

1:00:43David Sims:And it's broken me. And the book is sort of getting at this feeling of the only way I can actually do good is if I cut out all the middlemen. If there aren't rules around me.

1:00:52Griffin Newman:Yeah. She's very anti-flashback, but then she sort of has that approach to like if it's like post-traumatic stress, it's like trauma that he's reliving. It's a little different from like a full flashback.

1:01:02David Sims:Which I think this movie depicts like incredibly well.

1:01:06Sean Clements:Yeah. So I'll share a quick story, which is I was in a car in, I think it was like 2003. This is a long time ago, right? This is 2003. I was driving in my mom's Nissan Quest minivan to massage therapy school, as one does. Wow. You were going to become a masseuse? I was a licensed massage therapist for a few years while I was first trying to be an actor. That rocks.

1:01:36David Sims:What would it take to get that license back up and running? How easy is it to get reactivated? You know, I haven't done my continuing education units.

1:01:43Sean Clements:I haven't done my CEUs, so I'd probably have to do a little bit. I love a massage. Yeah, it was a school. I mean, just whatever, to take another detour. It's like, I think my mom had heard an interview with John Corbett saying that he was a hairstylist when he was a struggling actor because once you got a client base, you like didn't have to work 40 hours. You can kind of schedule them around your life. You could audition and stuff.

1:02:06David Sims:You're like, what's more interesting than being a caterer or a bartender or whatever?

1:02:09Sean Clements:Yeah, it was like, maybe there's a job like that. And there was like a very good school. This Connecticut Center for Massage Therapy was like a good accredited school for it that was really close to me. So I went and checked it out. I was like, okay. So I learned a lot about, you know, whatever, the body. I learned Reiki. I've done it all. And I worked in spas and I worked on the Cirque du Soleil acrobats at one point. Like as I was like traveling, just doing like backstage work for different shows. So it was interesting. But anyway, I was driving to school. And I, it had snowed recently. I'm in this old minivan that like the dials on it don't really work.

1:02:43Sean Clements:And suddenly the speed drops. Like I go from going 65 to going like 35. I don't know what's going on. I hit the brakes to kind of like pull over. The brakes don't work. So I'm just rolling down the highway. and then the car starts to fill through the vents with like the darkest, thickest, most foul smelling smoke I've ever smelled in my life. And I roll down the windows and people are pulled up alongside of me and they're waving at me and this woman's going, your car is on fire. Your car is on fire. And I turn and go, I know, I can't stop. Now, luckily it had sort of recently snowed. So without really being able to see, I kind of am able to drive off to the side up along a snowbank and skid along the snow.

1:03:33Sean Clements:It wasn't just the guardrail. There was like a pile of snow. I skid along that until it slowed down enough that I got out, jumped out, ran out of the car. Also not thinking for some reason, leaned in, leaned back in and turned the keys and turned the car off and took the keys out, which like just felt very stupid later.

1:03:52Griffin Newman:You remember this now.

1:03:53Sean Clements:I remember it now, but I just like, i and that but i like had gotten out and went back into it and then i kind of jogged up the shoulder and the fire was going and the windshield exploded i don't know the physics of it you know if it was cold or whatever but the the tires exploded right right but anyway and then i went back to like get my shit out of the car later and i see the driver's seat that i was sitting in and that i'd also like leaned back into for no reason. And it's covered in scorched, like, triangles, which I assume are just shards of molten glass that, like, shot into the seat that I was in.

1:04:33Sean Clements:Yeah. And, you know, and blank check tie and there's a Waking Life DVD on the ground that was... You don't want to lose that. That was, like, all, like, melted and burned. And so I'm just like, oh, I almost died in, like, the most gruesome, like, horrific way. Like a final destination death. Totally. Yes. And for months afterwards, I think this movie just depicts really well, like I'd be in moments of total like peace and rest, like about to drift off to sleep. It would just be the smell and the heat and I'm back in the car and like really classic, like flashback PTSD. And then the other thing that would happen that they also do well is when I was just hanging out, whatever, with with friends, it suddenly would be like, I can't be standing where I'm standing right now.

1:05:23Sean Clements:And things that we all know is like a panic attack now. But I at that time was just like, there's something wrong that I'm going to solve through some external. I'm going to move over here. I'm going to do this and nothing's going to solve it. because this guy, even when he's staking out and like waiting, watching the brothel door, there's a restlessness inside of him. Yes. At rest, poking at his skin when he fucking punches the like guy who was late to give him his keys back, the parking attendant. Yeah. And you're just like, there's just something exploding out of him that he can't control and he doesn't understand.

1:05:57David Sims:He almost sounds like he's about to cry when he punches the guy.

1:06:01Sean Clements:Which is,

1:06:01Griffin Newman:that's a sort of Phoenix special. I feel like he's really good at that.

1:06:04Sean Clements:Yeah, don't make me wait. Right. But it's like, he's like a little kid in that moment. Yes, yes. And he can fight back now. And it's just, but I, whatever, I went through that like very classic kind of PTSD thing. And I do think like this movie really puts you inside the head of like that kind of experience in a way that's like very visceral. I think a big part of it is...

1:06:27Griffin Newman:Do we know why the car exploded?

1:06:28Sean Clements:So yeah, there was apparently an oil leak inside the car that had created a pool of oil on top of the catalytic converter which you don't want and the catalytic converter also was like running very very hot and i guess enough oil built up on there and the converter was hot enough that it sparked a little fire inside the thing and it's basically it's a grease fire it's like an oil fire inside and it just burned out like all the guts of like the hood of the car so that's why then the brakes didn't work etc etc um but it was just you know kind of a fluke thing and one more detail that i'll never forget is then i'm sitting in a cop car like waiting to like you know for like my parents to come and get me or something and i kind of try to make a light joke and i point at the car that's like you know exploded and i go tough morning and the cop points at the line of traffic and goes well thanks to you it's a tough morning for a lot of people.

1:07:30David Sims:Jesus. It is weird that people just say shit like this to you all the time. I feel like this is a running theme in your life. Maybe it's just

1:07:39Griffin Newman:you have a sort of face that invites people to be sarcastic at you.

1:07:45David Sims:I don't know, man. We, uh, Ben and I were in Austin, Texas for South by Southwest. And Ben is like, I'm gonna go out. There's like a 7-Ele. three blocks away and get some like beer and some water and whatever. Right. And I'm sitting on the couch with Ben's wife and Ben comes back like 10 minutes later on the phone talking like really effusively to someone. Right. About like and I just don't understand what motivates people. And I was just like, oh, someone very close to Ben in his life has called and is in a bad situation where something really bad happened to them interpersonally. And Ben is being a good friend and talking them through it.

1:08:24David Sims:And instead, what I find out that is the inverse, that Ben called a friend to check in while he was on this 7-Eleven run, and then a guy made like a mean joke to you, a bouncer outside a bar? Yeah, he talked shit.

1:08:36Sean Clements:And he was like also such a fucking lame motherfucker. Mm-hmm. He was wearing like - Well, those are the ones that'll do that. He was wearing, like, I'm trying to think of the dumb band T-shirt that he was wearing. It wasn't Creed, but it was -

1:08:49Griffin Newman:No, it's like some SoCal shit-ass punk band. like fucking Pennywise or something. It was Pennywise.

1:08:55David Sims:It was Pennywise.

1:08:55Griffin Newman:And he was just like, I don't even remember exactly the comment, just like something, because I guess I was, you know, dressed weird, even though, again, I'm wearing the most normal clothes.

1:09:05David Sims:He said like a nice hat bro or something like that.

1:09:07Griffin Newman:Something like that, and I was just like, what man? He was just like, you're just a cool looking dude. Something like that. And just wanted to obviously start some shit and had some friends standing nearby.

1:09:18Sean Clements:He wanted to ruin your night and you gave him just what he wanted.

1:09:20Griffin Newman:Exactly. And then, unfortunately that is I get a lot of people to just fuck with me so I think you and I share that I do have that I do for some reason look at Mr. Guy with his shoes on like you're just walking around but people want to say this to you I also feel like your thing is that you make the self

1:09:39David Sims:deprecating joke and then someone very po-faced responds to you being like it's actually worse than you think you are so thoroughly the problem but I've invited it always and I need you to feel guilty I've opened the door

1:09:51Sean Clements:for like, is, they're like, anybody want to shit on me? And people are like, absolutely, we've been dying shit. I agree with you, plus a hundred, minus humor. Like, it would have been me walking by that guy going like, ugh, some hat I got on, huh? He'd be like, it's not just the hat man, it's your whole fucking thing. Hats the least of your problem. I hate your gait. It's not even just what you're wearing, it's your personality and your fucking face.

1:10:16David Sims:There's something really toxic just emanating from you.

1:10:19Sean Clements:Yeah, I definitely invite, a lot of people to interact with me in a very aggressive way.

1:10:24David Sims:Yeah, yeah, that's funny. I don't know. The two of you have that in common. I see it happen with Ben, and, like, I'm always like, Ben, why are you, like, so hair-triggered with this? And that night, you were just like, this has been happening my entire life. Right. Just guys just say shit to me. This does not happen to me at all.

1:10:39Griffin Newman:At all. And I truly think it's because I'm tall. Not that you guys are short. Like, or I'm, like, tall and broad or whatever. Yeah. People are just like, well, I don't know what that other guy will do. Like, that guy might do something weird.

1:10:49David Sims:See, when people do this to me and it does piss me off, it's condescending.

1:10:53Griffin Newman:Right, like, hey, Buster.

1:10:54David Sims:Right, it's that. Sport, how's it going? My fucking, like, dentist receptionist asking if they should send the bill to my mom. And then I'm like...

1:11:05Griffin Newman:So, I just want to tell you that this film was picked up by Amazon for$3.5 million. I'm, like, now mad again. They outbid A24 who had bid$2 million. This is a point in time where A24... But A24 is very fledgling, obviously. is on the rise. I mean, this... It's 2016, so it's the year they're going to have moonlight at the Oscars and all that. They're a thing, but they're smaller.

1:11:29David Sims:Because, like, a year later, I feel like, regardless of what the financial offer is, they sell this movie to A24 because everyone knows A24 is the place that's going to be able to sell this the best.

1:11:40Griffin Newman:Oh, yeah. They're the Joaquin movie factory. I think A24 would have been a better place for this movie, but obviously, you just sort of take the highest bidder. This is the year that Amazon has five movies it can. The Handmaiden. So speaking of some other, like, so Park Jarmusch's Handmaiden. Patterson. Jim Jarmusch, another in that kind of, like, established auteur that they're giving a check to. Gimme Danger. I don't really remember what that was. I don't either. The Neon Demon. Yeah. With the Winding Refn movie. Yeah. And Cafes. Cafes is not happening. Oh, Gimme Danger was the Jim Jarmusch documentary about the Stooges.

1:12:17Griffin Newman:Which is, like, very fun. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. And so Lynn Ramsey, she just FYI, she wrote this with Phoenix in mind. She'd never met him, but she was just like, no brainer is just exactly who I imagined for this. Phoenix is probably unsurprisingly very into it. I mean, I feel like he's usually drawn to these kinds of directors. And this just does feel like the kind of role that would vibe with him.

1:12:41David Sims:They have been talking about reteaming for a while. There were sort of false reports that they had already shot something, but it seems like it's kind of perpetually her next movie. Die My Love got knocked up because of Lawrence being attached and being really interested in Lawrence.

1:12:55Sean Clements:Lawrence got knocked up and that's sort of the story, huh?

1:12:56David Sims:Twice. That's a good point. You can read all about it. You can read all about it. But yes, she has said that she had such a good experience working with him when he is notoriously a very difficult man who tries to quit productions and is very at odds with directors. But as someone who quit a production, maybe the two of them just are like, eh! Exactly. He is a guy who thrives on tension and is fighting himself and is fighting the production and is questioning himself and is always trying to kind of like wiggle out. It feels, I think it's what he's relating to in this movie, not in the intensity of the work, but this guy who is like, I kind of hate what I do.

1:13:32Griffin Newman:I mean, she sent him, this is so funny, an audio file, not visual file, like not a video, of fireworks. And she was like, this is what's in his head all the time. And Joaquin Phoenix was like, yeah I get that like rather than Joaquin Phoenix being like what like Joaquin Phoenix is like that really clicked for me

1:13:52David Sims:I feel really simpatico she just talked so glowingly of how little tension there was and how collaborative everything was and then he like promoted this movie hard it was a thing she called out where she was like I know he hates this shit and he's loathe to do it and usually he's doing interviews with a gun to his head and he was like going to like Angelica screenings opening weekend and doing Q &A's and shit because he was like I'm proud of this and I want people to see it.

1:14:19Sean Clements:He's incredible in it. To talk about, you mentioned that in the book, his physicality is described a little more like traditional, like action hero-y.

1:14:28David Sims:This is a thing that you and I talk about a lot.

1:14:30Sean Clements:The way he uses his body in this movie, the like, first of all, he's got like a paunch and like a very broad scarred back. And I genuinely think if he had been like shredded, he wouldn't be nearly as scary or powerful looking as he is in this movie. The one thing I love in the book is when he's describing his exercise routine and he says that one thing he works on a lot is his grip strength. Handball. Because his favorite thing once he's in a fight is to break someone's fingers because he's like even the toughest guy in the world when they look down and see their finger facing the wrong direction, it really gives them pause.

1:15:13David Sims:Yeah, and he's like Like fighting is like a dance and you need to hold hands with your partner. It always ends up happening. You always end up holding hands with your partner. But he's like the only exercise he does is like squeezing like handballs.

1:15:25Sean Clements:But I believe that from like the Joaquin version, it looks like that kind of powerful. This is what's interesting.

1:15:31David Sims:It has that detail. And then it says like, but in spite of that being the only exercise he does, he's 190 pounds. He's got zero body fat, you know, whatever. her. And like you and I always go like, this is one of the smartest physical transformations an actor has ever done because it is counterintuitive. And so often it feels gimmicky. It feels like actors needing a place to put their energy, but then also kind of wanting the laudits from like, look at how much I took on. Yeah. And what I need credit for like the preparation.

1:16:02Sean Clements:It has to be visible to you how much I did to get ready.

1:16:05David Sims:And there's a vanity to it, even when the vanity is look at how much less attractive I made myself or whatever it is. And this is just like really fucking logical story stuff. In a movie where this guy's not going to talk much and where you need to just build up a sense of like who he is from every movement in a history, you're like, yeah, this is actually the scariest version of this guy. His strength isn't rippling muscles. No, he just, yeah, he's just this solid mass of person.

1:16:35Griffin Newman:The way Ramsey puts it is like he shows up because they talk about it for the prep or whatever and Joaquin is like, I do want him to feel big but not like in this Hollywood body way in this like midlife way. And Ramsey's like, he looks like a maintenance worker. I was like so happy. I loved it. He wanted to keep the belly and like wanted her to show it. You know what I mean? Like he was like, can you show the belly as much as you can? Yeah. Lynn calls it like body armor. She says he's kind of like Hunchback of Notre Dame. He's kind of like Harvey Keitel in the piano. this kind of like girthy guy, like who's just kind of like solid, as you guys are saying.

1:17:12David Sims:And he like looks like a guy sleeping in a train station. You know, he looks like he's like wearing.

1:17:18Griffin Newman:He is a, he's not quite a full I'm crossing the street in New York guy because there's a lot of guys in New York and you can kind of, but like he's a, I might keep like one eye on him if he was like a shirmy. Or not look at him. Or not look at him, yes. You glance and go,

1:17:32Sean Clements:okay, let me just not draw the attention of this person at all. We'll just, I'm not. to cross the street, but we're just going to hopefully not exist to one another.

1:17:40David Sims:And one of those guys where you're like, is the threat to me or to him? You know, is like, is this guy hair trigger in a way where he could like within five seconds turn and attack me? Or am I about to watch someone have a mental breakdown? Yeah.

1:17:52Griffin Newman:There's something about how he walks that communicates danger. And I don't, it's so subtle. I don't know how, but it is just a thing where we pick up on. This ain't right. This guy ain't walking happy.

1:18:04Sean Clements:He's, no, he's, because he's walking with he has a single purpose yeah yes and he and it's just communicated through every like inch of the way he moves and also after he becomes injured in the movie yeah and his face is fucked up and the way that he talks and also the way he holds the pain in his gate and in the way he moves through the other interactions of like i am moving i am wounded but I am still driven is like so fucking again like it's perfect

1:18:38David Sims:like I feel it. I feel what he's feeling. He's an actor who can do a lot. I feel like that's where you sometimes bounce off him David when you feel like he's overly mannered and manic and just kind of being weird for the sake of weird if he hasn't identified a realistic center. Is that what is your hesitation with him?

1:18:56Griffin Newman:Let me talk if I'm gonna yeah you know because I'm trying to think when was I getting really sick of him when I was sort of throwing out my hand. It was sort of immigrant inherent vice sort of postmaster. Skeptical of the master performance as well. I mean I really love that movie obviously. And I think his performance is good but it is so busy with stuff. I think about that one in juxtaposition to this one

1:19:24Sean Clements:where it's like there he looks pretty frail. He's sort of like crazy and also like violent, but he also feels like he's, could be a victim at any moment too. Like, he's sort of in this weird in-between space. And then this, he's a completely different physical human.

1:19:42Griffin Newman:He sure is. I mean, I don't like her. I don't think he's bad in that movie. I also have not seen that movie since 2013. So I don't have like a fresh take on it. I don't love that film either, but I think he's good in it.

1:19:54David Sims:But this is all the post I'm still here.

1:19:56Griffin Newman:Well, yeah. Pre I'm Still Here, I think my take on Joaquin was like, he's like, you know, he's like a sort of interesting star who puts a little English on it. And I like the Signs performance. Yeah. I like the Village performance. Okay. I mean, that's the movie where the boys are kind of pretty heavily cooked. What's the one?

1:20:19Sean Clements:I really love We on the Night. That's the one where he also feels like that. He's like a sort of tough, big enforcer guy in that. He feels like so substantial. And he kind of pulls Wahlberg off the screen in that movie.

1:20:31Griffin Newman:Like Wahlberg's not like bad, but Wahlberg's pretty like kind of doing a standard thing in it. And Joaquin's pretty interesting. James Gray, obviously one of the other guys,

1:20:37David Sims:he is just like completely in sync with. They get each other. Yeah. He's always.

1:20:42Griffin Newman:When's the last time they worked together? I guess it's been a while. Yeah. I mean, look, I mean, now he's become. Yeah. He really does. I know he's always been a handful, but he really does seem like he's become quite a handful. I really like him in Bo and Napoleon. I liked him a lot in Eddington. I can't really stand the Joker performances. They totally pissed me off.

1:21:04David Sims:No, I think the Joker performance is the bad version of what we're talking about. It's like just trying to get him to do the tricks.

1:21:11Griffin Newman:I didn't really like, come on, come on. But that wasn't, I mean, he's fine. That felt like kind of Dime Store Phoenix to me, where he's just like, and I was just like, this is fine. but like I'm not

1:21:23Sean Clements:I think it's all it's all just Joker lash back that you're feeling well I don't that the Joker is so embraced and so beloved by some of the worst people and that what he is doing in that as you said is just like just a bag of tricks without substance underneath and it is some of some of his master physicality and some of his you know like you were never really here damage and it's just this like you know collection of parts that don't really work together.

1:21:51David Sims:Right, but it's a lot of acting. And I also think, like, it is very... Todd Phillips is kind of exploiting him in that movie. Like, it feels like he is pushing him to do things in scenes that do not dramatically make sense to show off the range of what he can do in a way that's just like, well, that's like an engaging three minutes of footage that makes this character make less sense than he did a scene ago.

1:22:17Sean Clements:Would you feel differently if I told you that he didn't think the Joker was very good?

1:22:21David Sims:I have heard similar things. I have heard quite a few stories about him seeing the first cut of the movie or rather, you know, the near final cut of the film before it had been seen by people at large and being like, well, we fucked this one up. I guess that's like dead in the water. And then it proceeds to win the Gold Lion and he wins Best Actor at the Academy Awards. well and it

1:22:49Griffin Newman:he was right the first time

1:22:51Sean Clements:there was a bunch of media controversy around it yes and I think he was like oh that narrative is what's going to drive people to see it more than what it is yeah yeah yeah it's fascinating

1:23:03David Sims:it's fascinating but this I don't know but sure I'm speculating we're just speculating I do like I'm inclined to say this is his single best performance and it is just interesting she's I think really smart about knowing that he could do all of these things, but that the power comes from holding all of that back.

1:23:25Sean Clements:Yeah.

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1:24:35Sean Clements:should we talk about his choice to use a hammer and is this one of the greatest hammer violence performances of all time. Obviously, we have to think about, you know. Old Boy is in there. Old Boy is in there. Yes. Home Alone. Hmm? Home Alone. The Raid 2. Yeah. The Hammer Girl on the Train.

1:24:57Griffin Newman:Very impactful. Now I'm trying to think, okay, like, what else? Because, like, you can't even Google this, really. Hammer movies? Because, of course, Hammer Horror sort of dominates here. Okay, there's a what culture list? Movies where characters use a hammer. All right, it's saying Anne Wilkes in Misery, but that's a sledgehammer, which feels very different to me. Because to me, the fun is that it's a claw hammer or a ball hammer or whatever, that it's just a regular-ass hammer.

1:25:25Sean Clements:This is not a claw hammer in the movie. I can't remember if it is in the book or not, but he does say he likes to use a hammer because it's sort of like a very normal, like daily household object to have. But when you see it in someone's hand in the context of a fight, all of a sudden it really, people take a moment of pause that it's like different than like holding out a knife or something. Right. They're like, why the fuck do you have a hammer? And he's like, in that one second of hesitation, I can hit them with the hammer.

1:25:56Griffin Newman:Right. There's this, there's this notion. It's totally different.

1:26:00David Sims:I feel like it's expressed in the book.

1:26:02Griffin Newman:Drive has a big hammer sequence. Yeah, Drive. Good one. I knew there was another big one.

1:26:06David Sims:And another kind of close quarters Hammer thing.

1:26:08Sean Clements:And of course, Thor. Of course. I mean, Mjolnir itself. Does Harley Quinn count?

1:26:15David Sims:Sledgehammer, I feel like once again has a soap category.

1:26:17Griffin Newman:Or same with Ramona in Scott Pilgrim when she pulls out the big Hammer. We're not talking about a buster. It shouldn't be comic book. Does Lachieck's hero of Hammer? I forgot about Hammer. MC Hammer.

1:26:28David Sims:MC Hammer is one of his top kind of talkies. We're talking feature length films.

1:26:33Griffin Newman:I mean, hammers are one of those objects that, yes, I have in my home where I'm like, should I be allowed to have? This is crazy. It's crazy.

1:26:40David Sims:I feel like I'm like holding one while we're doing this episode and I feel a little dangerous, a little on it.

1:26:45Griffin Newman:Like anytime like the IKEA destruction is like, all right, now hammer some nails in. I'm like, I shouldn't be doing that. Right. Because some sort of PhD should do this.

1:26:53David Sims:Leo and Django, although he uses that more like a demonstration, a threat of violence than attacking someone with it.

1:27:00Griffin Newman:Yeah.

1:27:01David Sims:But yeah, no, he explains in the book, everything is just like logic with this guy, right? How do you get it done in the cleanest, simplest, most unshowy way? I love he keeps going to hardware stores and buying the same three items.

1:27:13Sean Clements:Right.

1:27:13David Sims:Yeah. And they call out basically that it's like a hammer hanging at a hardware store is going to have that paper sleeve around it that's used as the hanger tag that he can grab. So the fingerprints are only on that. Then he gets in a car, puts gloves on, takes that off, and it's a clean weapon. And he's like, in terms of like...

1:27:33Sean Clements:And he gets a roll of duct tape, which he can use for multiple things, including like patching himself up when he gets hurt.

1:27:38David Sims:But like in terms of the work I do, an axe is maybe the most efficient in terms of getting shit done. But you can't hide an axe in a jacket, you know? Yep. And that there is that transformative aspect of the hammer of like, you're not immediately looking askance if a guy has a hammer until he's holding it in that way that close to you.

1:27:58Sean Clements:And he's styled himself as a sort of contractory construction worker looking guy where he always has on like, you know, sort of like Carhartt jacket, hood, low baseball cap.

1:28:07David Sims:It's one of my favorite moments in the movie is just that extended shot of him unloading from a plastic bag just all his supplies. You know, like the wet wipes, the hammer, the two cans of soda, which is such a bizarre kind of like lift driver. Do you want a water? Yeah. Kind of move.

1:28:28Sean Clements:Yeah, he gets an orange soda and a grape soda because he's about to rescue a young girl. He's just like, I want to be able to offer her a soda.

1:28:36David Sims:Which you have to imagine is his routine. Like he's like, I need to earn their trust in some way in this moment after they've been victimized by so many men to feel, let them feel a little bit safe. A soda would probably calm a kid down, but also the choice would help that they feel like they have the agency of the flavor. Yeah. It's like such a nice little detail. And the banality of all of this, you know? Yeah. Of just like, he's just got a shitty shopping bag and it's just a bunch of like$3 products.

1:29:07Griffin Newman:Yeah. I mean, it's all you need if you feel comfortable running at someone and hitting him in the head with a hammer, I guess. Totally. Almost anyone can be an assassin. Yes. If you think about it. I mean, what's some fucking state senator in an Epstein villa going to do to you? He's just a naked asshole. It doesn't, you know, right? He's just a naked asshole. Yeah. I remember when this film came out. So the film is about a guy called Joe who, yes, rescues trafficked girls by usually by hitting someone with a hammer and then getting them.

1:29:38David Sims:Right. That a middleman hires sort of as a go between security form. It is very hard to imagine.

1:29:46Griffin Newman:It is completely implausible. You just kind of have to roll with it. It doesn't matter. Right. Well, it's like hiring a hitman or something.

1:29:53Sean Clements:But it's like this is like a rescue guy.

1:29:56Griffin Newman:Right. But I mean, like anyone like that who's like, yeah, I pick up trafficked girls. It's like you would immediately be killed by a mafia trafficked girls. Like you're talking about people under the auspices of the scariest organized crime rings. Like, yeah. So it'd be like, oh, yeah, there's a guy with a hammer who gets the girls. They'd be like, how about you shoot him with a shotgun until there's a hole inside his body? Like he'd be dead. Doesn't matter. Don't worry about it.

1:30:18David Sims:I think the movie is smart about being like, these are like small webs, not like a huge, large, interconnected web of everything. They're people in power, but they're creating smaller circles.

1:30:28Griffin Newman:So that's what I was going to say. So I saw this film, I loved it, but at the time I was the junior critic at The Atlantic, and I was under Chris Orr, who was sort of an established veteran there, who was in D.C., and wrote a lot about politics too. And I saw this movie and I loved it, and I was like, God, this fucking rocks. You know, I've been in Canada. And he saw it and he was like, this movie is so, you know, it's like feeding into all the like pizza gate shit about Hillary and all this kind of conspiratorial thinking and all that. And I was like, huh, weird that I, I was kind of like, I didn't clock that at all.

1:30:58Griffin Newman:I mean, like, I guess I get what you mean, but like, I don't think that's what it's going for. No, but I guess I could see that, especially if you had like a real politics brain, like a kind of a DC brain. Yeah. You could look at this and be like, this is the last thing we should be depicting is this kind of, you know, nonsense about oh there's child kidnapping rings out there that all the politicians right yeah now it's 2025 or it's 2026 when this episode's coming out and it's basically like yeah well that shit's all true right not pizza gate to be clear but fascinating epstein list there are webs of terrible conspiratorial things that people could very easily discuss now and yeah i mean what The Epstein arrest is 2008.

1:31:41Griffin Newman:Oh, the original?

1:31:42David Sims:Sure. I'm not. I am not someone who's up on that. I'm not talking this well. I'm just, I want to create a tempest. But 2019 is, of course, when... When these things become public conversations, right? Yeah. Because, like, Pizzagate basically rises with any force in 2016, which is the time they are shooting this movie. Right. The Epstein thing, of course, the whole thing that was so insidious about it was it was, like, out there and not discussed.

1:32:04Sean Clements:Yeah.

1:32:05David Sims:Not just that, oh, these people were letting it happen kind of way, but truly like people would report on it, but just not with a lot of force. And a lot of that, of course, is like institutions killing this story, you know, like networks of connections and power and whatever. Gawker was one of the only publications, one of the only outlets that was like really reporting on like this guy is being reintegrated into polite society in New York City. This guy just served a sentence and is now back to like cocktail parties. and this constant kind of drumming of like, why is no one talking about this?

1:32:35David Sims:And then there was the one New York Magazine piece that has the famous Trump quote, you know, Jeffrey enjoys his social life or whatever. All this stuff is out there, but it wasn't really like metastasized into the same kind of Dan Brown conspiracy theory game. And is what I find so bizarre and like depressing and overwhelming about this cultural moment. It's not that it's been turned into like a political football But it's been turned into this odd narrativized force to try to create some new almost like religious system of pure evil and pure good existing in the world. This notion of is there a definitive like Santa Claus naughty list of everyone who is doing the worst of the worst things.

1:33:17David Sims:And then we want to believe that there is a secret cabal of people who are just pure good trying to take this down.

1:33:23Sean Clements:Well, and you, I mean, you can see that obviously immediately after you learned that Malcolm Gladwell is on the flight logs for the Epstein plane, that there's got to be shades of gray here.

1:33:33David Sims:Of course. He was just trying to get his hours in. He has to know. Doesn't mean he's going to do it. He's got to know.

1:33:40Griffin Newman:You're making some little editing points here, Benny. No, I'm giving it a thumbs up. Yeah. To Malcolm Gladwell, your favorite writer. Yeah. Yeah, I love that guy. Do you remember, I mean. He's my favorite podcaster. Right. Sean, an important correction. Sean, have you and I ever discussed in person a thing I'm sure you've thought about, which is when Malcolm Gladwell went on the Simmons podcast, Bill Simmons' podcast, and talked about how, like, Nigerian players specifically were, like, the most important basketball players. He was making the, like, all African-born player team.

1:34:16Sean Clements:And I think he included Steve Nash.

1:34:18Griffin Newman:He said he correct He said So I'm putting together a team that's team Nigeria And Bill Simms is like Okay and he's like you know So Hakeem and Bill's like yeah Hakeem Right absolutely and he's like caveat Tim Duncan Bill's like Wasn't he from the Caribbean he's like yeah but like I've done some like racial math and he Sort of descends from Nigeria

1:34:41Sean Clements:So all those island countries are actually Direct descendants and then he's like Steve Nash

1:34:45Griffin Newman:And Bill's like isn't he Canadian he's like yeah Yeah, but he was like born in South Africa and that kind of counts too. And it is one of the rarest, like where Bill Simmons clearly is just at a loss for words. Bill does not know what to say.

1:34:57Sean Clements:It kind of just lets him quote unquote cook for a while. The king of going on like pretty stupid theoretical tangents related to basketball. It's just like truly I can't get there with you. Just go off and then we'll do the show when you're done.

1:35:12David Sims:In Malcolm Gladwell's defense, he was just trying to log his 10 ,000 hours towards being a fucking moron. He needed to keep saying dumb shit into microphones.

1:35:21Griffin Newman:Not important to this episode, obviously. And I'm not saying that all conspiracies are true. It's certainly that maniac who went into a pizza place with a gun was not on the level and had been misled. But I am just sort of like, this movie only feels, you know, whatever. It continues to feel resonant.

1:35:39David Sims:Yes, and I think the way, unfortunately, Unfortunately, the culture has progressed since this movie has only made this movie better in this way to me. I was tempted. I couldn't fucking get myself to do it. I was tempted to watch Sound of Freedom and prep for this episode as a comparison point. And then I had the oh, Jesus moment as I was like queuing it up. I was like, am I really going to fucking sit? Especially because it's like we don't really need to talk about that for more than a minute anyway.

1:36:04Griffin Newman:Like, you don't need to devote all that time.

1:36:06David Sims:No, but I just like I wasn't surprised that this movie didn't become a film that like church groups were sending to the theaters. Right. Right. But it was so weird to me when Sound of Freedom became this like weird, vaguely money laundering box office phenomenon based on like finally someone is saying it. Right. Yeah. And even the guy that that movie is based on who's been discredited in a bunch of fucking ways and the director and everyone involved is like like vague jumping off point. And then we created like a revenge thriller, you know, that tried to have like a human heart at the center of it.

1:36:42David Sims:Right. But this is like a movie about Jesus going in and just fixing all the problems. And the great Bill Camp is, you know, Mr. Burns and going like, I love kids suffering. Ha ha ha ha. Right. And this movie is just like, well, first of all, the guy who lives in this world is just going to be broken. And as in the excerpt I read from the book, like, even if he's coming from a pure place, there is something narcissistic about thinking that you need to do this, even if it is speaking to no one else is doing this or someone needs to do this. And why not me?

1:37:18Sean Clements:Yeah. Yeah, and I do, obviously it's all, you know, it's fictional and it's a pretty easy line to draw of like, well, the people doing this are people in positions of power. And like, so a senator and a governor and all these people being involved and that being tied into some kind of like weird organized crime thing makes sense. But I also do wonder as we talk about, you know, Jonathan Ames and his history and his fascination in his early essays and stuff with like. sex work and, um, off the grid, like weird, like fetish personal ads and stuff like this. Yes. If some of this is like, he has heard some element.

1:37:59Sean Clements:He's brushed up against it. This is how some of this world operates. And then I'm making it into this like crime movie thing. Right. Um, but that it's not, you know, it's not just plucked from thin air.

1:38:11David Sims:And once again, there is like a banality to it. I like, it's just a fucking like townhouse in East Midtown, you know? with five rooms, and it does feel like this is a very tight web, even if it's connected to some other tendrils. And the core kind of drama of this is, like, basically between two guys and what feels like some arm of some regional mafia in between them.

1:38:36Griffin Newman:As you said, it's a pretty simple story. Like, Joe has this handler played by John Doman, who's a great actor. I love him from The Wire and a million other things.

1:38:47David Sims:He's got like an even in-between bodega guy who that guy talks to him. Moises is right, is kind of the go-between. Whose son spots him and he freaks out and is just living in this constant state of paranoia. So he's now going straight to the guy who he's not really supposed to communicate to in person. It's just bad. It's very bad timing.

1:39:05Sean Clements:Yes. He's entering his home through the back alleyway, which is the only way he goes into his house. And he looks up and he sees this kid on a balcony who knows who he is. And he says, now this person who knows who I am knows where I live. Yeah. Which means someone could torture him and find out where I live.

1:39:20David Sims:Right. It's all vulnerability is how he runs through everything. In the book, the John Domingue character is not sleazier, but more kind of sad sack. He is, you know, in a cramped office next to like injury lawyers and is, you know, a perpetual bachelor and whatever. Right. And this is like there's the illusion. I mean, he's like referencing his dead daughter. Right. He's got the picture on his mantle. This is a guy who's experienced some tragedy in his own life. Maybe he's directing himself this way. That is motivating. I want to. But he's also in like a very nice office with a great view and a model of a yacht that he owns.

1:39:56David Sims:And he's saying to like Joe, like, hey, and on the other side of this, I'm going to take you on the yacht. We're going to see the fireworks and eat nice steaks. Where he's almost like, even if we're driven by a good, the work we do is so bad that the other benefit of it is they have to pay us so much to do it that shouldn't we enjoy that? Yeah, we have to have some kind of work.

1:40:14Sean Clements:reward. Totally. And that's in the book as well. There's this very clear thing of like, this guy wants to be friends with Joe. Right. Like he's like, we are both in this sort of off the grid world.

1:40:26David Sims:We never hang out outside of work.

1:40:27Sean Clements:And I just wish you know, like I just see you for this thing but like, can we just have a fucking beer together, man? Right. And Joe, in the movie, Joe's literally not

1:40:36Griffin Newman:listening. Squeezing jelly. I was gonna say, right, he doesn't strike me as a eat steak kind of guy. I don't know, what does Joey eat? Jelly beans. The green ones. Okay, but like, where's he getting his protein? The junk food. Yeah. Like chips and pretzels. Gas station food.

1:40:52David Sims:And as we said, he's got this house with his mom.

1:40:55Griffin Newman:200 squeezes. Right. And then the tummy hardens again or whatever.

1:40:59David Sims:He lives with his mom in his childhood home. Yes. She's in pretty advanced stages of dementia. She's kind of lashing out at him all the time and misremembering things. Judith Roberts. Who's so good. Who's really good.

1:41:11Griffin Newman:I think of her, she's in Eraserhead. She is in Eraserhead. She's the pretty woman down the hall.

1:41:14David Sims:Right. Yeah. She's in a bunch of other stuff, but she's really good. Yeah. And he has this almost like it almost feels like there's a like an Abin Costello comedy dynamic to them. They've got some like old.

1:41:28Sean Clements:Yeah. Like songs that they used to do. Right. They were kids, which, by the way, I mean, as you said, she has dementia. And so, like, I think part of that is probably intentional. Like, I know my grandfather who had Parkinson's and dementia came to live with us for a while. Yeah. And it was that thing that somebody told me, like, he won't know what he had for breakfast this morning. Right. But if you ask him about something from 30 or 40 years ago. Yeah. Their long-term memory is intact. That would still work. So it feels like they're doing, they're engaging in these sort of playful conversational activities they did as when he was a kid.

1:42:04Sean Clements:Their routines. And that that is still like fresh for her and she's able to like stay with it.

1:42:08David Sims:Yes. And even when she's like when he's dealing with the exasperation of her having lapses of things like running the bath and whatever. He's kind of like yelling at her in a comical way. You know, he's like kind of like angry. Yeah.

1:42:23Griffin Newman:There's the darkest little strain of comedy to it. Yeah. Even though you are the whole time you're like, oh, this is going to end in some fucked up way, which it does. But it is the driving.

1:42:33Sean Clements:There's water all over the floor. What were you doing in here? I'll forget it.

1:42:37David Sims:You know, this is a guy whose entire life was animated by not being able to protect his mother when he was young. And now is like she cannot take care of herself. The reason I need to stay alive is because she at least deserves this. Right. And he's constantly just like suicidal ideation, but also like the little bits of him like holding the knife over his open mouth. That's played for comedy when he keeps well and when he keeps dropping the knife.

1:43:04Sean Clements:on his foot, but just pulling his foot away just in time, which is like dual, like staying sharp because I'm always like in a situation where somebody might try to kill me and I also want to hurt myself.

1:43:14David Sims:Right. I would like the release from the pain. She's asking him about his ex-girlfriend from 20 years ago and how she would have been a good mother and you're like, that must have been the last relationship he ever had. I think Joe would be a good dad. I think he should, yeah. Well, the movie kind of gets there.

1:43:29Griffin Newman:Well, I don't think that's going to work that way, but yes, I mean, you're right, you're right, you're right. I don't think it's as cut and dry. I'll put it this way. I'm a parent, right? You are. Congrats. And in my parenting strategy, definitely, I have no time for garbage bag closet experience. You know, like. He might be kicking that habit by the end of the movie. I can't, you know, be like, hey, I need 20 minutes. I gotta put the plastic bag over my head. He might be kicking that habit.

1:43:53David Sims:I hope he is. The other thing is, at the end, we'll get to the ending. We'll get to the ending because I find the ending very emotionally powerful.

1:44:00Griffin Newman:It is. It's very powerful.

1:44:01David Sims:But yes, he gets drawn into this thing. There is a senator who is kind of being tapped as maybe a future power player. His wife committed suicide some years back. There's sort of this tragedy surrounding him, and his young teenage daughter has gone missing. The book gets much more into the web of the narrative of how it happened, how much of that was false and whatever. But it really is just, she's been gone for a weekend. I need you to find her.

1:44:29Sean Clements:mm-hmm um and in the in the movie it's like he has just gotten a text message from someone who says she is at this address right in the book it goes much more into like the text message is clearly from someone he knows who has just gone to a brothel and asked for an underage girl and right and you know presumably slept with his daughter feels guilty about it so that's like much more regret this is like just kind of thrown away as like he got a text message with an address and there's no other details and you got to go to this address.

1:44:58David Sims:Yeah, and the book has this very sobering, disturbing passage about the kind of pragmatic reality of this type of thing existing. Of just like, there are, you know, 700 ,000 millionaires in New York City. Sure. And then if you add other, like, you know, hubs in the Northeast, it goes up to this. And if even 1 % of the people with that level of money had a predilection towards this, there's a lucrative business to be built around it, even if the business isn't a billion-dollar empire.

1:45:28Griffin Newman:It does feel crazy that a politician's daughter would be kidnapped, though. Does the book explain this? Yes. Like, versus, like, again, some person trafficked from another country or whatever. Like, why would that be? So the book, basically,

1:45:41Sean Clements:the backstory is that this guy, his father was a powerful politician who was then disgraced for all these ties that he had to the mafia. Right. And, like, arraigned, but he was still, the name was still beloved. in the city and so then he's going to run on his dad's name he decides that he wants the power he goes to the same like mafia group that you know helped put his dad in power and says like i want this and they say to him you've got to give us something and basically like you can be the most powerful person in the state if we have your daughter it's all right it's like it's like sort of an old-fashioned pulpiness yes it's like a very like he's so craven and hungry for power and he's got this like, you know, this terrible relationship with his teenage daughter and just kind of goes like, he thinks, the book says he thinks in the moment that they're trying to make sure that he really wants to go all the way with them and that it's just a bluff on their part.

1:46:41Sean Clements:And he goes, fine, I'll do it. Like, I'm in. And then when they actually take his daughter, he's like, no, no, no, no, no. Like, I thought that was like gamesmanship. Right. And then he can't find her. Sure.

1:46:50Griffin Newman:So Joe's got to find her.

1:46:51Sean Clements:Extreme Faustian bargain stuff.

1:46:52Griffin Newman:Again, that's not, All of that is just deep background, I feel like, in this movie.

1:46:56David Sims:It's not even part of the story. I was going to say, my reading of the movie is different. I think she's changed. I mean, there's like when Joe is having his version of putting the pieces together, there's the flash of the father sitting in the bed with the daughter with her back turned. And it feels like there's some implication that perhaps there was some incest within the home, that this is connected to the wife committing suicide. Right.

1:47:18Griffin Newman:Because the main evil pedophile is Alessandra Nivola, who's like the governor. Yes. But you get the impression that the state senator, Guy Votto. Right. He's beholden to the governor. Was also in this world. And right.

1:47:32David Sims:What it feels to me like is at some point he willingly gave his daughter to this man. And then in exchange for feeling that that was how to. that like to climb the ladder or whatever a secret is a wonderful thing to keep thing but also that perhaps if there already was an unhealthy relationship in that and there was a sense that

1:47:51Sean Clements:she was damaged goods you know because he already had this like you know incestuous thing the book

1:47:57David Sims:goes into the the horrific value of the idea of a child that has successfully been stockholmed and how you kind of like neutralize them to be willing to all right not will all right you know But I think that's sort of what's going on here. He comes across this girl who you're, from things like Taken and such, expecting to see be like a crying mess. And you're like, you know, there is a numbness to the degree of trauma.

1:48:22Sean Clements:Yeah, she's got this like countdown thing that she does to just like sort of exist through these moments.

1:48:28David Sims:The most heartbreaking moment in the movie is him coming across her and she just like can't even clock that someone is there to save her because she's just in countdown mode,

1:48:37Griffin Newman:which is how she passes the time as these things are. But also every man is not to be trusted, essentially.

1:48:43Sean Clements:David, have you... Because you have to watch all these movies for your job. I find that as we're talking about this Lynn Ramsey series, and I always had intended to watch We Need to Talk About Kevin. And then once I became a parent, I said, I don't think I can watch it. I don't want to think about it. You actually don't want to talk about Kevin. Yeah, do you have a transformation? Yes, yes.

1:49:05Griffin Newman:And there's certain things where I'm like, I don't want to watch that but I know I have to for my job

1:49:09David Sims:we did Park Chan Wook when your daughter was like two and you were very open about that being a particularly tough one for you because that has a lot of that is like

1:49:17Griffin Newman:little kids screaming and being tortured and stuff that's the most extreme thing I have I'll confess not watched our friend Alex's segment in VHS Halloween because I'm told that is like literally just all kid torture which I know he's I appreciate what he's going for and all that but so I'm just kind of like not sure I want to do that right now. But, you know, I'll watch a movie like Hamnet because I love ham. I love nets. Of course. And I know like this is about like this is this movie is like the crux of this movie is a kid dying. Well, yeah. And not just like dying off screen in some like kind of poetic way but like a kid like suffers and dies on screen.

1:49:54Griffin Newman:And I'm like, I'm just going to have to kind of endure that. Like I know I won't love that.

1:49:58Sean Clements:It's glaring to me how much prestige TV drama, etc. is all hinges on like a kid's been killed. Yeah. and and i don't think i saw it before this is something me and my wife run into a lot and how many movies that i enjoyed and i do obviously i like this movie i think it's very good but how many movies even in this genre that i enjoyed and used to think were cool and park chanwick stuff like that i now am so uncomfortable with and can't watch and i you know people are whatever about this but i i have a theory that i developed while i was watching this and thinking about we need to talk about Kevin, which is, of course, there are movies where someone's wife gets killed or someone's, you know, like other loved ones disappear.

1:50:41Sean Clements:But with adult relationships, both the character in the movie and whoever like your partner is in your life have such a distinct identity that I don't think it transfers the same way as kids are always used as just like a symbol where they don't really have a personality. Yeah. And your own kid is always like unformed in this way where it's like even if it's totally different circumstances and like a totally different like um world than you're in you cannot help but think

1:51:12Griffin Newman:about what if this was my kid yeah and you cannot do it there's some side of you that's absolutely it's really yeah i do try to just like click on critic brain and critic brain loves this movie and this is not a movie that's as triggering for me i guess because it's so stylized and somewhat healthy and plausible.

1:51:31Sean Clements:Even just the thing of like, the story is like, this guy was voluntarily involved in this thing. You know what I mean? It's not like a normal person who something horrible happened to them.

1:51:40David Sims:This is a horrible situation of his own making of the most extreme Fauci embargo. Yeah, it's an evil person

1:51:45Sean Clements:who was making really bad choices.

1:51:48David Sims:I also think it's like the power of this movie, which is its restraint in showing things and even saying things is I think largely driven by a there's no way to depict these things realistically emotionally visually what have you without insane risk of being insensitive glib melodramatic salacious all of the above at once you know and even a movie like taxi driver which this is like a little bit analogous to is all about like is this guy insane is this in his head you know the question of like uh how much you connect to whoever is the protagonist of a film and all these sorts of things. And yet it's a movie that was misread horribly by the wrong people.

1:52:37David Sims:I'm not talking about cultural responsibility. A little bit of an unfair tag to throw on it. And I think this movie in how it pulls back from both the violence and the sex as the physical acts and even really talking around them and putting a name on it.

1:52:54Sean Clements:There's nothing really super graphic in it for how violent and like, and tawdry the story is.

1:53:00Griffin Newman:There's nothing graphic, super graphic sexually. It's all left to you, which is super upsetting. He pulls his own tooth out. Yeah. I mean, like to me, the iconic image of this, there's many iconic images of this movie, but you know, so, and in the plot of the movie, he rescues Nina from a hotel or whatever. and the piggyback ride. Right. But then like, is then like him opening the door to the guy who then gets shot onto him. They've led someone to him. And just the globs that land on Phoenix's face. That's right. Just the big old bloody globs. The guy behind the family. I take it back. I low-key love.

1:53:32Griffin Newman:I love that kind of gore, unfortunately. Sure. I don't know what's the matter with me on that, but I mean, I'm a movie fan, and I enjoy, you know, movie violence in a way.

1:53:41David Sims:But I feel like every other moment of violence in the movie is either fairly obscure, you know, like the security camera rotation, which I just love that it's like a fucking Five Nights at Freddy's thing where it's like, it's just going to switch every three seconds and you might be on the action or you might not. Or you're very often seeing the aftermath. Like the goriest things are like him walking into the James Doman's office and like seeing his destroyed hands, you know? And you're holding on... Those hands are tough. Gnarly prosthetic for a while. You know, Alessandro Nivola's like slit throat, discovering his mother's body.

1:54:17David Sims:The mom's eye. But you don't see the violence being committed.

1:54:20Griffin Newman:No, but the corpses are nasty.

1:54:21David Sims:But it is a reframing of like, no, you have to like lie with the aftermath of these things versus these movies that often have this kind of like somewhat exciting expression of violence. And then you cut away the second the bloody thing happens. What if instead it's like you start on the reveal of the bloody thing and then he's just lying on the floor next to this?

1:54:39Sean Clements:He's piecing it back together. Can I tell another very quick story? Did you guys hear the story about the big giant dog that we found, the Malamute that was running around the neighborhood? so we found this malamute running around the neighborhood and my wife and i bring it home that's like an alaskan husky yeah it's like a 9 500 pound dog like big giant husky and we're trying to find the owner and we track down the owner finally like and it's this guy in the neighborhood much older like sort of frail older guy and he comes to pick up the dog it's this huge dog and we're like how what's going on like how do you have this dog why was the dog loose and he's like my son just rescued my dog died two years ago my son just dropped this dog off at my dorm was like you have a dog now dad and then left and my wife is like concerned about the man and the dog and you know can you take care of him and she's like so can you like control this dog like are you able to walk it on a leash because i was getting dragged on the street by it and i'm famously strong and uh he as he's answering he's like well not really and a cat runs by and the dog lunges and the guy falls and he like smashes against the ground and he like breaks his glasses and he has a cut on his head and he goes to push himself up to stand up and both he and i see at the same time that two of his fingers are pointed just 45 degree angles in opposite directions and it's one of the most chilling like gruesome things i've ever seen But I think about it with both that guy tortured and how he says, like, breaking someone's fingers at a fight.

1:56:15Sean Clements:I was like, something about this. It's not like there's no bones sticking out. There's no blood. There's no anything. It was just like the joints are facing the wrong way. This is wrong. And it's like, and he looks at it and I look at it and we're just like, I was like, that's very bad. You know? And then we really tried to get him to, like, go to the hospital.

1:56:36David Sims:And then he said, brother, it's so much worse than you think.

1:56:38Sean Clements:He was, dude, and you're the problem. I know. No, he was just like, we called in the ambulance for him and he kept telling us not to. And then he insisted on driving himself and the ambulance people were like, we can't force him. He said he's going to a hospital. He told us the address of the hospital. I guess he's going to go.

1:57:00David Sims:That's another part of this is these movies often have these kind of rigged prosthetics, right? Right. Yeah. That you see for an explosive one second shot.

1:57:11Griffin Newman:As a movie fan, like watching how those things work.

1:57:13David Sims:But you even think about like, you see half a second of fucking Emilio Estevez's head getting crushed in the elevator shaft in the first Mission Impossible. And I feel like that is a thing people our age are like, that's one of the fucking nerds that haunted me as a kid, right? And it's crazy. And if you watch it frame by frame, it is crazy, but it's not that graphic or visceral. And you don't have to sit with the aftermath of it. And by cutting to these things, either him discovering the bodies in these states or seeing the people after Joe has attacked them without seeing them attack, you're left with the lingering image of what's going to stay in his head.

1:57:48David Sims:That's sort of what I think she's communicating so much. Like you're saying, you see a guy's fingers look like that, you're going to have that image in your head for the rest of your fucking life. It's true. And that's not something you did to this guy, and that's not something that was done to one of your ultimate loved ones. And this guy has to experience both of those things happening all the fucking time.

1:58:07Sean Clements:Yeah, and it's something you saw, and you're like, okay, that could happen. That could happen to me. I've seen it happen to someone. And you're just, yeah, you're just walking around with it for a while. Yeah, he has a million of them. The thing with his mom, like, and they have the scene where he goes to dispose of the body himself, too, but in the book that they don't explicitly say here, but that they put a pillow over her head before they shoot her.

1:58:32David Sims:You see a pillow with a bullet hole. it yeah and that he in the book is like basically is obviously very upset that they killed his mom

1:58:42Sean Clements:but is also like they're cowards like they couldn't look at what they were doing right right that's almost more offensive to him yeah yeah and then right you have this like

1:58:53David Sims:a moment i think only lynn ramsey would put in a film where he like discovers the body sees the pillow, takes it off, you know, blurry, deep background. You see him removing everything, her glasses that they clearly shot through, putting it on the mantle. You see her like bloody head in the background, but not too explicitly. And then he hears the creaking of footsteps and he like has the gun. He goes downstairs. It's did you do this or did the other guy do it? You know, he's immediately like this would have taken two people. Yep. Who's the other guy? Are you working for him? Is he working for you?

1:59:26David Sims:He's sort of interrogating him but then the intimacy of him like giving him the water to keep him alive so we can get more answers out of him also is like this is a man who was trained to do this and then that guy and the guy taking his hand as he's dying and then they just lie on the floor together and sing the songs on the radio yeah and it's like this is i i live with the weight of taking people's lives in a way that you don't because you wouldn't even look at her fucking face and you left her upstairs and I'm going to lie here with you because no matter what, I'm stuck with the image of you dying forever for the rest of my fucking life.

2:00:03Sean Clements:Yeah.

2:00:03David Sims:You know? And then he has this kind of like elegaic funeral for his mother. Yeah. Like he puts on a suit. It's the only time he dresses nicely in the entire film and like brings her in the woods into the water. Johnny Greenwood score in this movie is fucking unbelievable. Yeah. I used to listen to it a lot.

2:00:21Griffin Newman:I listen to it a lot. I would sort of be like, hmm, this isn't the best, like, kind of just sitting at your desk music.

2:00:27David Sims:But there were the couple, there were the trees tracks. Yeah, yeah, yeah, those are really good. What is it, like, tree synthesizer and tree acoustic and whatever that are the more kind of, like, poetic sounding ones.

2:00:36Sean Clements:It opens with, like, yeah, this beautiful, like, ephemeral sound. Like, and then there's also, like, that sort of, like, percussive thing when he's, like, walking down the hallway, like, out of the hotel that's just, like, so fucking cool.

2:00:48David Sims:We should also call out, it's basically like an hour of the movie is like understanding this guy, watching him go through this case, retrieve her. He brings her to the hotel before the door gets knocked on and he sees the guy get shot. And this like SWAT cosplaying guy comes in and extracts her. They see on the news that her father committed suicide. And Joe's immediately like, this whole thing is kind of.

2:01:12Sean Clements:this is bad i'm in something i'm in something i don't understand i'm in over my head i did not just get hired by this guy to recover he's in the middle of something much bigger right i mean the fact that the cops are involved yeah they're not swat cosplay right they're they're cops they're crooked they're like cops in the yeah no you're right you're right you're right yeah you're right that was like he because in the in the book again like i uh he goes to this thing of like they didn't have time to hire professionals like professional hitmen to come and kill him but there's always some dirty cop in town that they can just like have come do the job yeah it's by

2:01:46David Sims:the way a smart choice that in the book i feel like the father is made a little more uh overtly nervous defensive on edge sleazy and here it's like a guy with a tremendous amount of contrition and concern that as it unfolds you're like oh a lot of this is guilt it's not just worry yes it's both, right? But he's sort of like trying to console her in this moment as he's realized like her entire life has just collapsed. I just hit the microphone with a hammer by accident. That was fucking scary, man. That really scared me. The microphone needs to know the power structure of this podcast. I just needed to know its place.

2:02:25Sean Clements:I don't know. Let's not do that again. That was very scary to me.

2:02:34David Sims:When you want your spring break to feel like... And your kids' pool day to feel like... And your hotel bed to feel like... Ooh, and room service to feel like... Because at Hilton, hospitality feels like... It matters where you stay. Book now at Hilton.com. Hilton. For this day.

2:03:09David Sims:He's like immediately clocking like there is no normal life for her to return to. And I don't know how to keep her safe. And then within like a minute, she is taken. And then he goes home and his mother is dead.

2:03:20Griffin Newman:Just a death wave is rolled across everyone he knows.

2:03:23David Sims:There's this complete collapse of like, I might basically by default be her primary caretaker. And also my entire life is collapsed. And they know everything about me. and they know where I am.

2:03:33Griffin Newman:No offense to his life, but his life was shitty. I mean, it didn't take a lot of work to blow up his life.

2:03:38David Sims:In any other circumstance, if he had come home and his mother... I have a Patreon. I can't be judging Joe the Assassin. His Patreon numbers are really bad. If you look him up on Grafton...

2:03:49Sean Clements:That was the saddest part to me, was seeing him go to check his Patreon. When he checks his... Double digits. Low double digits. And the tears are really vague

2:03:58Griffin Newman:where you're just like... Too many tears.

2:04:01David Sims:Too many tears and you're sort of like, if I come up with something fun, I might put this here. And they're redundant. Like some of it is like,

2:04:07Sean Clements:well, what is the reason for this tier existing when you get like basically 90 % of that in the next tier?

2:04:12David Sims:You always have that luxury tier that's like for$100, it's all the same things as the$50 tier, but you give me more money, Wink. You know, kind of. Yeah.

2:04:22Griffin Newman:I just love it when there's nine tiers and you get to the ninth tier and it's like everything in the last eight tiers. And I'm like, I have to go back can read every other tier. Yeah. Give me the bullet points. Give me the bullet points.

2:04:36Sean Clements:Come on, Joe.

2:04:37David Sims:You can tighten the language on each tier, but just remind me, speed run them. No, I think if he had come home and his mother had died in her sleep a day earlier, he would have just killed himself. Right. But it's the double whammy of

2:04:51Sean Clements:there's a person out there that I'm responsible for. I'm the only one who knows this person is in danger. I could go and help. and they make that clear. Like he has a flashback to her. He's like, okay, I guess I'm done. And then he's like, nah, fuck, I have a job still.

2:05:05David Sims:Here's a guy who's defined by the fact that no one was able to keep him safe, you know, in his childhood. And he doesn't want that cycle to continue as much as he's not like, maybe this is a chance to test being a dad. He does fall into this. I'm the only person who can solve this and I actually just feel enough of an attachment to her as a person that I can't just turn a blind eye to this. And then you have what in 99 out of 100 other movies feels like the ramp up to, oh shit, the next 40 minutes, we're going to get the most cathartic. He takes them all down.

2:05:40Sean Clements:Yeah.

2:05:40David Sims:And he goes there and it's over.

2:05:42Sean Clements:Well, yeah, it's like another kind of security cam thing, right? Like you just see him take out the like guard on the way in, but you just, you kind of are just seeing like the like lawn footage of like, okay, that guy's down and then goes in. and then the person who he came to have his big confrontation with that is going to be so satisfying is already dead.

2:06:00David Sims:Alessandro Nivola, who's like the only other recognizable major name actor in this movie, who you're like, oh shit, he's the big bad. We're going to get some awesome fucking monologue and then like Joaquin's going to take him down. Doesn't have a line in this film. He sure doesn't. Like doesn't speak. You need a guy who's that much of a that guy to have the sense of power he holds and to have him stick in your brain. but then he gets there and there's no fucking resolution for him right she has just killed him in self defense it's all

2:06:30Griffin Newman:incredible to sort of piece together as a viewer absolutely it's really

2:06:35Sean Clements:it's disorienting in a great way you're in his head where it's like this guy's dead like I don't get to do you know my revenge right and then he goes downstairs and then she's sitting at the table her hands are all bloody and she's just like finishing a dinner that was just on the table like eating it's so grim

2:06:53David Sims:and he's like taking his shirt off when he gets in there he's Burt Kreischer mode he's like you're ready for like him to go like fucking warrior mode on these people yeah and then instead it's just like he's got this fucking swollen cheek right he's kind of just like stumbling around and when he sees the body there's the first like why was this taken away from me immediately followed he weeps yeah he's like he's like

2:07:17Sean Clements:cries for himself that he's not gonna get like the release I think

2:07:21David Sims:I can't complete this arc for myself, give myself closure. And I think the additional thing is he very quickly does the math of she did this in self-defense.

2:07:30Sean Clements:And now she lives with having killed someone. And I hate that. And I should have been the one who killed someone so she wouldn't have to. I hate that I wouldn't stop her from doing this.

2:07:38David Sims:Yeah. And she's downstairs trying to just like be normal, eat dinner while covered in blood with a switchblade knife next to her. Or like a shaving razor. Straight razor. A straight razor. And she's shaking. It's like the first time in the movie where you see her having the physical effects of trauma rather than just kind of going blank. And it is this moment that ties the two of them together of like, oh, fuck. It's almost like, oh, you got bitten by a vampire too. Yeah, no, yeah, yeah. You got the same virus that I do. Exactly. We're living with the same thing.

2:08:14Griffin Newman:And then she says, it's okay, Joe, right?

2:08:16David Sims:In the diner.

2:08:17Griffin Newman:Oh, it's later in the diner. So they go to the diner because, I mean, who doesn't want to go to the diner after all this? He gets some pancakes or whatever. And he imagines... You have like sunny 40s, 50s pop music playing. He imagines shooting himself, which just like instant Twitter meme. Yeah. And, right, like, you know, that's become like this kind of like jokey like way of people like, you know, the fucking Mets lose. And someone just posts Joaquin suiciding in a diner.

2:08:44David Sims:But also it is like in this way that Lynn Ramsey can take very literal things from books and express them like into a mood that doesn't turn it into a plot point or like an overt statement about the movie. It is like this is the visualization of the line of thinking of you were never really here that isn't even said in the film. You know, there's no internal monologue. There's no him whispering that to himself. where his fantasy is, if I saved her, my mom is dead. Can I just fucking shoot myself? And if I shot myself in the middle of this diner, would everyone act like I never even existed?

2:09:21Sean Clements:Yeah, all the conversations continue at the same volume. No one has any reaction to the fact that he just shot himself. He doesn't matter.

2:09:28David Sims:The first time I saw this, I for a second thought it was real, right? And then you know it's a fantasy when the waitress is still serving and making small talk with blood spatter. Because of the conversation, yeah. On her face. That's what gives it a way. That no one fucking reacts. and then she comes back to the table and he's just resting his head on the table in the same position as if he had shot himself. And she says, it's okay, Joe, it's okay. And for the first time, you're like, she has grown up, right? There's obviously like her childhood has completely been taken from her. But rather than like existing in a self-punishing state, she is reaching out because she understands him for the first time.

2:10:04David Sims:And even if it is not like an obvious father-daughter relationship, there are two people who are maybe going to give each other a reason to like stay alive because they share a horrible language that can maybe help each other work through this. And I think the moment of outreach, which is like the first and only time in this movie that you see anyone try to do anything to help him emotionally coming from her is, is like so profound and emotionally overwhelming to me.

2:10:32Sean Clements:Yeah. Well, and he's this guy who has, you know, really wants to stop existing, but has this core, inherent, singular sense of duty that he can't put to the side and then her coming to him and being like, wake up, Joe, is like... It's a beautiful day. You've got, yeah. It's a beautiful day. You still have something.

2:10:53David Sims:The thing that he feels like he has to live for, or at least that he forces himself to live for, is a guilt and a burden and an obligation. And part of his mother being senile is that when he's trying to take care of her, she yells at him. Right. And that everything's a fight, you know, that he can't even get the satisfaction of the appreciation of helping his mother in her old age and having some emotional closure on that. So everything is just like a fucking weight on him. And this is like the first time someone is just saying to him kind of like, I see you. I know it's tough. It's another day.

2:11:27Sean Clements:You know, you just have to. It's a beautiful day. That was the title it was released under in some countries. It is called that in some countries. Just keep living. It's true.

2:11:34Griffin Newman:Yeah. Yeah, sure. Just keep living. I very much support that. I don't support some of the actions in this film, though. Which ones? Well, I think he's a little hard on these guys. Maybe like, you know, marketplace of ideas first and foremost. Just discuss. Hear them out. No, it's... It's... Well, it's a huge bummer of a movie.

2:11:52Sean Clements:It is? I recommend the best. But like, okay. It is a huge bummer. But there's something about it.

2:11:57Griffin Newman:It's about things that are incredibly sensitive and tough. So like if anyone ever said to me like, I just don't want to watch that. I would be like, I get that. Yeah, sure. I'll do it. At the same time I find, and it's also light on plot, basically has very little dialogue and is a little inscrutable for a while. Like it's not like a movie where you're like, I totally get what's happening. I still think it's basically just like kind of super watchable.

2:12:19David Sims:Yeah.

2:12:20Sean Clements:Well, it is. I know that's great. It is a very pulpy sort of like classic story. but then because it is inscrutable, because it's intentionally disorienting in spots and you're piecing it together, it does feel like an elevated version of that kind of thing. And I love that kind of thing.

2:12:36Griffin Newman:There's no way, like I'm not like, I mean, it made like nine or$10 million worldwide. I think I made a little bit of money. It's not a movie where I'm like, I can't believe that wasn't discovered on a big scale. It's like, no, that's a 10 %er. They got a bunch of indie spirit nominations.

2:12:52David Sims:It got British independent film nominations. It won screenplay and actor at Cannes, even though it was then dramatically recut after that. But that's her, she always does that.

2:13:02Griffin Newman:Like her movies debut at Cannes and then she's like, they ain't dumb, by the way. But it got a rapturous response. Cannes pretty friendly to her and he won best actor there, it's true. Like, and he's, yeah, I mean, and I do think it's a major movie in his oeuvre, even if it's not much discussed now. Like, yeah, for sure.

2:13:20David Sims:In a weird way, it's the totality of the 2018 and the range of it then like makes Joker which is such an obvious dumb showpiece have everyone go like yeah I guess it's time to just give him the fucking Oscar

2:13:32Griffin Newman:he has Cannes and Venice he doesn't have Berlin I'm always interested to know I need to like do a project on this sometime who has the triple crown of like people who have gotten best because you can do it with like who's won the top prize Venice gave him best actor for Joker no for The Master oh with Philip Seymour Hoffman much better they shared it okay yeah they gave Joker the Golden Lion which was interesting because it's a dog shit movie yeah it's quite good Um, but, uh, like, uh, yeah, it's just like, you know, those kinds of rare actors who do a lot of movies that would get to festivals and then get, you know, it's just a rare thing.

2:14:01David Sims:Here's my other thing I want to say about this movie is that like the thing I find gross about the politicizing and the neuronalizing of these types of things is that very often it is based in this, like, I want to see like vengeance executed. I want to see all these guys taken down. I want someone to fucking call them out. And there's so little fucking discussion of the people who like suffer inside of these systems. And we're seeing it happen like right now. We're recording this months before it comes out. But I guarantee you whenever this episode comes out, the same fucking shit will be going on.

2:14:35David Sims:And this is a movie that like makes you think of the people, right? In a real way. It's the characters inside it. The characters who are suffering. Is not fascistically obsessed with the powerful men doing the terrible thing. No, you barely get to know them at all. There is this like perverse kind of like morbid fascination with like, how can anyone be capable of something that evil? But spending more time thinking about them than the people who are on the receiving end of their actions is like part of a fucking giant cultural problem. And I also think you saying, David, like, I understand if I were to say to someone like you should watch this, they go like, I don't want to see movies about stuff like that.

2:15:13David Sims:I couldn't push back on them. But you're also like, anyone who would say that has probably seen 20 generic action movies that are about this in a glib way. You know? Yeah, I mean, yeah.

2:15:24Sean Clements:It's very similar to Taken. It's super similar to Taken.

2:15:27Griffin Newman:It is. It really is. Extremely. It's just a completely different mold of it. But it is like, yes, a shadowy ring kidnaps a, you know, a dog. You know, yeah.

2:15:37David Sims:But it's removing the distracting pleasures that give you an easy way to process these types of things. while also making you think about the harder things, not in a sort of torturous graphic way. And I think to that extent, it is kind of a movie about our relationships to these kinds of stories and which parts of them we want to think about and which parts we don't. And that makes it feel, remain very sticky to me, even though I do feel like it has disappeared a little bit. Ben, had you seen this movie? You'd seen this.

2:16:12Griffin Newman:Yeah, no, I went to see it in theaters because Griffin. This was my favorite movie that I recommended. And I feel like the two of us were just like, I think you'll like it. This guy's a little shabby. This hobo guy. But I hadn't revisited it since. No. It really affected me. It's a weird way to kind of kick a day off. It is. Sure. And we haven't been doing much podcasting in the last two or three days. So it's like. We've been in a real crunch.

2:16:33David Sims:Look, Lynn Ramsey, one of my favorite filmmakers, people saying, is she worthy of having this series? there are other people hooting and hollering on the reddit saying like ready for five weeks of

2:16:43Sean Clements:the bleakest shit in the world yeah yeah yeah i've only seen rat catcher as like one of our other movies also i think you're gonna dig pretty unpleasant yeah yeah i think you're gonna i think

2:16:53Griffin Newman:you would dig some of the other ones yeah for sure i think all of the movies are like this where

2:16:57David Sims:they're not punishing and they're not chores to watch i understand that like you might have triggers that make you just incapable of getting any enjoyment of watching a movie out of this and I would never argue that with people. But like I tend to exist at these extreme polls of my favorite movies either tend to be like incredibly functional poppy plotty storytelling entertainment. Yeah. Or like vaguely plotless mood pieces about the worst things in fucking humanity. and I think I'm really like my obsession with fucking baby movies is like comes out of what I find fascinating about the mechanics of being able to convey in the ones that are good to me a larger emotional idea that can speak to an inner life of a child in a way that is like so clearly communicated and clean and economic.

2:17:52David Sims:And on the other side of that, it's like can you tackle an idea that is so big that's almost abstract and unspeakable and get that across without those kind of storytelling tools, you know, and construct your story in a different way. Those are like my two favorite types of movies. And there are other filmmakers that we've talked about who I feel like do this kind of thing, like Robert Brisson, who's like one of my favorite directors ever. And years ago, I pushed on David the idea of doing it. And David just correctly responded with like, I want you to imagine doing 15 episodes on Robert Brisson.

2:18:25Griffin Newman:I love Brisson so much. he's the goat I would say the other problem with doing Brisson is it's like that is a man who is so completely devoted to his like you know way of telling stories and making movies there isn't much variance if you're going through beyond the stories he's telling but like and what did he do with this and was like oh he did the same shit he always does which is why he was good but like

2:18:46David Sims:to me this is the perfect moment to cover Lin Ramsey five is the exact right amount you know there's like enough of a body of work there across almost 30 years that is meaningful. And if it was six episodes in a row, it would maybe break us. I'm excited to be able to follow up with her when she makes other films. Yeah, check back in.

2:19:07Sean Clements:The same way we're going to do with JGL. Yeah.

2:19:10David Sims:And we are going to do that. They're equally important. And I hope Hayes knows that.

2:19:13Sean Clements:Yeah, I got to tell him. Hayes, you got to...

2:19:16David Sims:We got to book more flights. You got to issue the bad news. It's like we're like process servers informing him.

2:19:25Griffin Newman:It's just like post-dating something where it's like 2027, like, you know, you're going to be flying to New York.

2:19:31David Sims:It's the whispering in George W. Bush meme, ear meme. Right. But it's, sir, we have just received notice that a second Joseph Gordon-Levitt film has gone into production.

2:19:44Griffin Newman:So this film was at the Cannes Film Festival, as you mentioned, and it was the last film shown in competition, which pissed Ramsey off a lot. Although I think that's partly because the movie wasn't done and they were probably punishing her a little bit. But then it won two awards to her total surprise.

2:19:58David Sims:But often that's a little bit of a dumping spot because maybe the picks have already kind of calcified.

2:20:02Griffin Newman:The can is so political with this stuff. That's the weird can year. Pedro Alomovar is the head of the jury. Will Smith was famously on the jury. And the somewhat scurrilous rumor was always that a lot of people, including Pedro, wanted EPM, the French movie about gay politics in the 80s in France to win and Will Smith resisted that. That may be completely made up. I have no idea. And I should take Pedro Aldemotovar's name out of my mouth so Will doesn't slap me. True. They instead gave it to Ruben Osslin's The Square, which is not a bad movie, but it was kind of like, you know, felt compromising.

2:20:40Griffin Newman:And then feels more absurd when they gave it to him again for making a very similar movie. I prefer this to that movie, certainly. I do. I prefer this movie, I think to pretty much anything in competition that year, but there's some good movies like Good Time, the Safdie movie is there. You know, The Beguiled, it's an okay movie. She won Director? Killing of a Sacred Deer is there.

2:21:03David Sims:Is that right? That Sophia won Director for that? Let's find out. Official awards.

2:21:07Griffin Newman:Yes, she won Best Director. BPM won the Grand Prix, which is second prize. This one, screenplay tied with Sacred Deer and Phoenix won Actor. And then, yeah, it came out and made a couple million bucks, you know, in America. We're going to do the box office game. was on release in April. April 6th, 2018. And that's on limited screens, obviously, but it opened kind of big. You know, 44 ,000 per screen average. Very good. Joaquin's showing up for those Q &As. Joaquin has the juice. You know, the juice. Yeah. Number one at the box office, though, is a franchise starter. It's a new movie. Hmm. It's a huge hit.

2:21:47Griffin Newman:It's not perfect, is it? No. It's a franchise starter. So the start of the franchise. I know. It's perfect. It didn't start in 2018. What is it?

2:21:55David Sims:2012?

2:21:56Griffin Newman:I don't know.

2:21:57Sean Clements:Okay. I'm sorry. Yeah. It is closer to either 2013. That's perfect. It's kind of an Obama era movie. And this is more of a kind of. I was on Workaholics at the time. I remember Adam coming back from filming it, I think in between seasons three and four. He had that bumper bump. So that would be around. Got the bumper bump, baby. Yeah. That pepiness stuff. Bumper in Berlin.

2:22:18Griffin Newman:No, this is a film that I feel like that hit big was not surprising because it had like a really robust good advertising campaign had a really hooky premise but it did come out of nowhere a little bit it's not Kingsman

2:22:30David Sims:it's not the first equalizer

2:22:32Griffin Newman:it's a horror movie but like epic horror like big scale horror

2:22:36David Sims:epic horror big scale April

2:22:39Griffin Newman:is it based on anything? well I'll tell you this it's not I'll tell you this that the the word that it had opened to 50 million dollars in its first weekend was probably some good news for the director of this film Oh my gosh, it's a quiet place. There we go. That was an incredible clue. Thank you. Where is some good news, by the way? Is that... Active development. CBS paid, what,$80 billion in gold cooker hands for that thing?

2:23:06Sean Clements:Hollywood Handbook recently did an episode about how we purchased the rights to it. Okay, good. Okay, some good news.

2:23:11David Sims:The problem was they greenlit it and then good news stopped happening. There was no material for the show. The well ran dry. I'm just picturing John Krasinski sitting in front of a blackboard saying, news is all bad.

2:23:24Griffin Newman:How do we find good news? What do you guys think of A Quiet Place? It was one of those things where I saw the trailer and I was like, John Krasinski directed a no-talking horror movie? And then you watch the trailer and you're like, it looks pretty good.

2:23:36David Sims:I'm somewhat loathe to give it to the guy, but I do think you kind of got to give it to the guy on that movie. I thought it was pretty good.

2:23:42Sean Clements:I had a great time seeing it in theater. Everyone was quiet. Because it was quiet. I saw it with Ben Rogers and he'll always have a funny reason that he hates something when you walk out. And he was like, why is everybody? It's like it's basically post-apocalyptic. They all look like they stepped out of a fucking J.Crew catalog. The fucking clothes are so nice. Yeah. It's like, oh, I never for a second did it enter my mind.

2:24:10David Sims:But I was just like, yeah, you're right. There's a little bit of Man of the Woods in the styling of that movie. but I think it's it's an effective film I thought it was pretty good yeah

2:24:19Griffin Newman:number two of the box office has to be Rampage is not Rampage and I'm not sure that must have come out a little later there's a film we covered on the podcast though a new release from one of the more famous directors who ever lived solid hit big genre movie it's made about a hundred million dollars in two weeks it's Ready Player One it's Steven Spielberg's

2:24:39David Sims:Ready Player One I was gonna say next week Rampage comes out

2:24:43Griffin Newman:and kind of

2:24:44David Sims:Dwayne has a bit of a melt down about being beaten by the second week in a quiet place and was like, ha ha, got to give it to my friends. Love Krasdog and the Bluntmeister or whatever. And then like posted seven things about like, I made this movie because the conversation between an animal and a man is the most important thing that could happen. I remember my dad pointing to a gorilla in a cage.

2:25:08Griffin Newman:number three at the box office is a new film as well that is a comedy and I remember at the time thinking this number was underwhelming now I look at it and I'm like this is sensational it's opening to 20 million dollars that's awesome no no not tag I would have told you it was based on a true story if it was tag I would have told you it's based on a true game you would have given me

2:25:31David Sims:a Brittany marathon no that's a great movie

2:25:33Griffin Newman:right okay but yes this is this thing But I remember I think I saw this at a screening and I was like, oh, that was so much fun. Like, that's going to be a big hit. And then it was like, in my memory, kind of just an okay hit. The interesting thing about Tag, actually, is just to take a quick detour.

2:25:51Sean Clements:People genuinely believe that we stop playing because we grow old. When, in fact, and Tag proved this, we grow old because we stop playing.

2:26:00David Sims:Yes, and that's actually why the audience needed to know it was a true story. because if they thought it was just from the pen of some Hollywood fabulist, they'd go, these are the lies they sell us to comfort our soul, but come on, let's get real. And you need to know, no, no, no, these guys walk the talk and they tag the tag. It's my favorite comedy

2:26:25Sean Clements:where a major set piece is a pregnant woman faking a miscarriage so her husband

2:26:30Griffin Newman:will win a game of tag. I have seen Tag I went there I played the game did not remember that I remember something with cancer Ed Helms dies but yet the game doesn't end he's actually sick because that's why he's like guys we gotta play Tag one more time but that's like a twist that you find out at the end of his urgency it is the most telegraphed twist of all time I do not think I was bowled over by it I feel like it's like

2:26:54David Sims:two hours and 20 minutes long in the last 40 minutes or drama

2:26:57Griffin Newman:I think I felt that it was that long it's listed as an hour 40 I remember it being Satan Tango like in pacing. It definitely felt like it. Durational.

2:27:05David Sims:Yes. I remember... I felt like they were all real friends. Absolutely. Well, you can tell these are guys who are the same age. Oh, yeah. Have the same vibe.

2:27:13Sean Clements:Hannibal, Jon Hamm. When Jeremy Renner is in a film... My friend Jake Alita the Dink who's wonderful, great guy, good actor. Shared background. By the way, did a good job in Tag. Yeah. Good job by him in Tag. Yeah. Which is my favorite comedy I've ever seen where one of the biggest pivotal moments is going to get tagged and so she pretends to have lost the pregnancy. Who's the woman?

2:27:38David Sims:Can you tell me? I do not remember. All of their wives in that movie are overqualified. Like I want to say Rashida Jones is in it, Leslie Bibb, Annabelle Wallace is the journalist who's covering them as a story.

2:27:50Griffin Newman:Now you guys are what? Playing tag? Isla Fisher? Isla Fisher is one of them? Yeah, she's in there. She's on the coast.

2:27:57David Sims:who the pregnant one is though.

2:27:58Griffin Newman:Leslie Bibb's there. I don't know.

2:28:01David Sims:I've told this anecdote before but my my ex-girlfriend and I were on a plane and we were like let's like find a movie we can both watch together oh we should watch Tag we like comedy movies fun and we put on Tag and we're watching Tag and our like parallel back of seat screens and then like 35 minutes in we both took the headphones off and turned to each other and we're like I don't know if there's been a single joke in this movie so far it's acting like a comedy they have to stop the game but I kind of can't identify anything that would be classified as a joke. Love you, Jake Johnson. Come on the pod anytime.

2:28:33Sean Clements:I think it is Leslie Bibb that does it. It sounds right.

2:28:37Griffin Newman:Number three at the box office. You guys have not guessed the 2018 comedy I'm talking about. Tag is a 2018 comedy. Oh, oh, oh. It's not Neighbors 2. No.

2:28:48David Sims:But you thought it was pretty good.

2:28:49Griffin Newman:I thought it was fun.

2:28:50David Sims:And you were a little surprised it didn't perform better.

2:28:52Griffin Newman:But then I have the memory of not performing well,

2:28:55David Sims:but I'm like, I don't know,

2:28:56Griffin Newman:20 million opening, 60 million domestic.

2:28:58David Sims:It's not bad. Right, like by 2015, the narrative is the comedy movie has died. Because they're not doing like hangover numbers. We're opening to 20 and making 60. And now you were like, all the goodwill in the world got naked gun to like a 17 opening weekend. Okay, wait a second.

2:29:13Griffin Newman:It's a sex comedy. It's a sex comedy. It stars a bunch of guys. It stars a bunch of guys. Yeah, sure. Guys and gals.

2:29:19David Sims:It's not that awkward moment.

2:29:22Griffin Newman:No, it's good. I didn't come out of that awkward moment telling you it's pretty good.

2:29:27David Sims:It stars a bunch of gals and girls that we love. Who's the distributor?

2:29:32Griffin Newman:Universal. The fine folks at Universal. It premiered it at South By, so it's got that classic sort of South By March premiere into an April release. Yeah. Build up some hype. And people thought it was going to hit. Yeah, you fully see Gary Cole's penis. Does that help? Oh, fuck, yes.

2:29:47David Sims:What is this movie? I remember the penis. I figured that would get you. And now I'm trying to zoom out for the context. You fully see Gary Cole's penis. It's a universal picture. it's a sex comedy with a bunch of gals and girls that we like. If you name the director, we'll give it away for me. Kate Cannon. Oh yeah. It's blockers. There we go. Not a bad movie. Not a bad movie. Totally fun. But yeah, you're right. There were years. Yeah. He's trying to block them. Oh yeah. John Cena's got to do some blocking. There were years of R rated comedy plays at South by blows the roof off. Word of mouth translates into 40 million opening weekend, a hundred million dollars.

2:30:25David Sims:And that was the first one that was like, It did okay. Okay.

2:30:28Griffin Newman:And then like Good Boys, I think was the next year. That one did stupidly well. That one did pretty well. Because children had never cursed before. That's true. Number four at the box office is one of the most successful films, I mean, I guess ever made. Really? Kind of. It's not Avengers Infinity War. No, but it is a superhero film. I guess it's a, you know, it's maybe not quite at the top. Captain Marvel? No. Okay. That did make a billion dollars. It did. And this made 1.3 billion dollars, which is a lot of money. It's a superhero film. It is. It's very good You think it's very good? Arguably the best movie Marvel ever made Or Ragnarok?

2:31:02Griffin Newman:No It's arguably the best movie Marvel ever I might not argue that, but some would Some would But I really like this movie It's really good It's not Avengers

2:31:11David Sims:No It's not It's not a Thor It's not a Guardians No It's not a Spider-Man Black Panther There you go Oh, sure Oh, it's still in there Jesus There you go That's why I wasn't fucking thinking of it. Because that's a February release.

2:31:27Griffin Newman:It's been out for two months. It's made, you know,$670 million. Yeah, quite a big hit. Number five. Now, what is this? This must be a Tyler Perry or something like it. Is it faith-based? It's a Tyler Perry film, but not faith-based. Okay. One of his more, you know, dark dramas. Huh. It's not a... Kind of a sexy thriller, you know, like an erotic drama. I don't know.

2:31:52David Sims:No Good Deed isn't Tyler Perry, right? I just have that title.

2:31:55Griffin Newman:I'm not sure, but this is not that. That's not that movie.

2:31:57David Sims:Okay. Tyler Perry, the non-Irish Ed Burns. And No Good Deed is not. That's not Tyler Perry. But you know what?

2:32:02Griffin Newman:This movie shares a star with No Good Deed. So it's a Taraji? Taraji P. Henson.

2:32:08David Sims:It's a Taraji. And it's not I Can Do Bad All By Myself. It's him going a little more thrillery.

2:32:14Griffin Newman:Yep. I think it's the wife. She's a wife and she's stalking and killing her ex-husband. Oh, fuck. They get divorced and then he gets successful after. And she'd like supported him the whole time. So she's going to kill him.

2:32:28David Sims:Is it like a one word title with a colon and then a. It is just a one word title. It's. Because it's not temptation confessions of a marriage counselor. It is not.

2:32:38Griffin Newman:No marriage counsel confessions have.

2:32:41David Sims:Yeah. It's a one word title. It's not like betrayal. Is it? No, but you're closer. I'm close.

2:32:46Sean Clements:Is it like a divorce word? Like. Kind of. Yeah. It's kind of a legal word. Is it acrimony? There we go. I want to say alimony, but there's no way it's that.

2:32:56Griffin Newman:It's just one of those things where they're like, plop Taraji in a chair, she looks mad. It's called acrimony. People are like, yeah,$50 million to this one.

2:33:05David Sims:When we talk about just like the box office still hasn't gotten back to where it was before the pandemic, part of that is Tyler Perry doesn't fucking put shit in theaters. He used to have three movies a year that would basically automatically open a 15 or 20 and make 60. Yep. Would just do a quick blockers.

2:33:20Griffin Newman:um some number uh number six is a christian movie called i can only imagine uh-huh based on the song by the group mercy me of course uh dennis quaid's in that one yeah i'm sure that movie's mega normal number seven is the kind of underrated not bad uh political drama chapaquiddick about how ted kennedy is a no good nick it's not bad but it's not very good either it's okay

2:33:45David Sims:isn't that one also where like byron allen bought it for a ton of fucking money out of tiff and i

2:33:49Griffin Newman:I believe it was an Entertainment 1 release. Yes. And thought it was going to be a big Oscar player. I mean, because it sort of got that sheen to it.

2:33:59Sean Clements:He would have been. He should have spent that money on some leashes for some of these comics. These comics. You know what I mean? Because they're running out all over the place if they're on leashes. They're going crazy on that show.

2:34:09David Sims:It's crazy that David the Dog's never been on this show. Because, you know, we like to say sometimes that Sims is off the leash. Bow, wow, wow. I do have a leash. Yeah. Yeah, loan that to Byron because sometimes when I see this, I go, guys, we got to get this under control. Can I say, I do sometimes feel like Byron is asking for it. A hundred percent, Griffith. I'm like, Byron, you are walking into this. If you don't want to know, then don't ask, what do you think about airline food? Yeah. You know?

2:34:38Sean Clements:So you've been talking a lot about hockey and basketball? all? Byron, you have

2:34:44David Sims:taken the leash off with your words in that moment.

2:34:47Sean Clements:Yeah, you might as well be unhitching the little thingy. The little thingy? I might as well be unhitching

2:34:54Griffin Newman:the little thingy. I mean, with that question. Yeah, yeah, you're asking for it. Ree Chappaquiddick. Jason Clark plays Ted Kennedy. Correct. Ted Kennedy, a famous cucker of people. He was always having affairs and such. This is actually interesting. Is that why the film doesn't work?

2:35:06David Sims:Yeah, the public, they couldn't put their finger on it at the time, but it felt wrong. Clark plays a Kennedy? He needs to be getting cheated on. What are you trying to prove?

2:35:14Griffin Newman:And I'm not buying it. Number eight of the box office is Sherlock Gnomes. Of course, the sequel to Gnomio and Julia. Right, there you go. Number nine is Pacific Rim Uprising, which is a true straight-to-memory-hole sequel. Number 10 is Isle of Dogs, Wes Anderson's Isle of Dogs, which has expanded this week and is doing okay. Yeah, that's the box office. That's the box office. and this is a good movie and the Clem Dog was here with us today Clem Dog we talked about you were never really here and it was awesome we should put a leash on you I can't believe this worked out because you were going to come on no matter what but you're a busy guy, you're in LA, you have kids you don't travel to New York that much and when you do you're kind of like hey, in New York for an evening I assume that's not going to work

2:36:05Sean Clements:I am here for like 36 hours every time I come and that is the case again today

2:36:09David Sims:You get called in as a wet works comedy writer in like a crisis situation to rewrite a thing for like six hours. And we've had you on the schedule for a couple of things for the last 18 months. And we kept holding off being like, it'd be great to get it.

2:36:23Sean Clements:Yeah, it was. There was like twice that I had to come here. But then when I came, it was like this. What were you going to do? I'm here for a day and a half with which. Loser was one that. Oh, yeah. And there was another one.

2:36:35David Sims:I feel like a couple of times you've been like.

2:36:37Sean Clements:And the man who wasn't there, I think. That would have actually been beneficial for us,

2:36:42David Sims:but we can talk about that later. I did. Yes. But I also feel like we would show you the schedule and you'd be like, these five, I have an in on this. I have a funny story or experience with this. The second we committed to Ramsay, we were like, iron lock, no matter what you're doing. That was nice. I love that movie. Yeah.

2:37:00Sean Clements:It's a great movie. It's just really funny.

2:37:03Griffin Newman:Yeah, a fucking hammer pedo movie.

2:37:05Sean Clements:That's you, buddy. Written in ink. That's me, man. If it's, whether it's 127 Hours Don, John, or the Hammer pedophile vengeance movie, you know that the Clem Dog is ready to run. Yeah, let's get you a really, super ego.

2:37:21Griffin Newman:Let's get you a really regular actor next time. I mean, those are all different kinds of sort of like oddball actors. That is a good point. It'd be funny if next time we were just like, let me just do like a George Clooney movie. The Hanks? Well, The American, your favorite. Yeah, I love The American. For our Anton Corbin?

2:37:37David Sims:miniseries? I love Control. Yeah. You were talking a little greasy about it. I haven't seen it

2:37:42Griffin Newman:since 2007 or whatever.

2:37:44David Sims:Right? Whenever it came out. Yeah, Control's so good. Yeah, Control's awesome. You should watch Control. Clemdog, anything specific you want to plug other than obviously start getting excited for the dink now?

2:37:56Sean Clements:Yeah, get ready. Get ready for the dink. Please do watch that movie when it comes out. Listen to Hollywood Handbook. We've got Patreon 2, the flagrant ones too um uh season three of severance you know come out sometime in in this decade and probably probably probably it's gonna be here and so um i've been working on that i'm very excited cooking up some yeah uh cooking up some freaky stuff i don't want i can't give away too much but i watch the show and there is no severance it's it doesn't exist and that was a

2:38:32Griffin Newman:joke the whole time.

2:38:33Sean Clements:And we were making fun of you.

2:38:35Griffin Newman:And I see a lot of pieces. And the numbers are just math. You add them together to make other numbers.

2:38:41David Sims:They equal your birthday and it's a joke on you. I see a lot of think pieces that are like, we analyze the mysteries of Severance, right? And people are going down the rabbit holes trying to solve it. And I only got one question when I'm watching Severance, which is, what are these writers smoking and where can I get some? But Sean, what do you guys smoke in the writer's room? And could you give me the contact information of the person you get it from?

2:39:06Sean Clements:Yeah, so I will get in touch with you, but we smoke dried banana peels. There we go. That we read in high school on the internet could get you as high as weed. And so we put them in the oven and then we rolled them up and smoked them. And it just kind of made you feel like pretty gross.

2:39:25David Sims:Isn't it crazy to think that when you're 15, you can buy into something like that? I was like, oh. I have bananas. Right. You're like, it's so hard to get weed. If this gets you higher than weed, then everyone would be smoking banana peels all the time. They're legal. Yeah.

2:39:38Sean Clements:You had to dry them out in the oven first. Was like what I was, what the article told us. I remember my friends, uh, we found out about morning glory seeds that you could take them and they would like make you feel high on the moon, brother. Uh,

2:39:53Griffin Newman:the thing that, you know, no one said in whatever, whatever book or fucking early internet site they've read it on is that if you buy seeds, they come coated in like pesticides and fertilizers and stuff. They are flowers. We got all so sick.

2:40:10David Sims:Yeah. Just puking? Just puking.

2:40:13Griffin Newman:And at first we're like, maybe it's working.

2:40:15David Sims:Yeah.

2:40:15Griffin Newman:Oh, yeah. This is good. I feel high because I can't stop throwing up.

2:40:19Sean Clements:That's a weird thing about those experiments where you go like, well, I'm supposed to feel weird. so like maybe feeling horrible is actually good yeah this is the whole thing i like this actually

2:40:30Griffin Newman:yeah uh every so often on reddit cooking someone's like i poisoned my whole family because i didn't cook the beans for very long because like if you get dried beans you have to cook them you have to like soak them and then cook them for like some amount of time and was like yeah don't you know like if you don't soak them then like you'll just get like insane food poisoning and like you could die and it's like why is that on every can of fucking beans go ahead throw a sticker on there for me jesus anyway give me a bean just happens on every once a month someone's like hey i poisoned my family yeah yeah so that's what you did i guess version of that i'm done jesus we have to record ads oh right okay uh thank you for being here clem dog if i can just

2:41:10David Sims:throw in an additional plug uh your co-host hayes davenport did an episode of the uh since ended podcast high and mighty years ago about a newspaper comics that i think it's just really good and i revisit a lot.

2:41:21Sean Clements:Long tail on that one. A lot of people still checking that one out.

2:41:24David Sims:I, you know, won't quit. So, yeah, please do go listen to that.

2:41:29Griffin Newman:We'll link it in the description.

2:41:30David Sims:Yeah, absolutely. If we can just use our platform as much as possible to boost that episode.

2:41:34Griffin Newman:Actually, let's just throw to the episode at the end.

2:41:37David Sims:Can we do a feed drop? Can we maybe look into licensing that episode? I heard they ended

2:41:41Sean Clements:high and mighty because they just sort of looked back a couple years and went like, we're not topping this thing. Thank you for being here, Clem Talk. Thanks for having me.

2:41:48David Sims:yeah great to see you always great to see you next week tune in for Die My Love I believe so right I mean unless there's there's no new release in between let's double check next week is Die My Love okay Lynn Ramsey's newest release another very normal very fun probably on

2:42:05Griffin Newman:Mubi by this point I would assume I think almost definitely streaming on Mubi

2:42:09David Sims:yeah so why not pull that up give it a watch in time for next week's episode

2:42:14Griffin Newman:over on Patreon coming up in a few days we're doing our annual mailbag episode. That's the plan, I think.

2:42:21David Sims:Yes. I can't wait. I love the smell of an envelope, an open envelope, and we're going to have it many times over.

2:42:28Griffin Newman:Yeah, if you're interested in that, you can subscribe at patreon.com slash blank check. I rather hear the female bag episode. Hey, my brother.

2:42:35Sean Clements:Hey, come on. Hey, I'm married. I ain't dead.

2:42:38David Sims:You ain't wrong about that. And as always, it's hammer time.

2:42:51Sean Clements:Blank Check with Griffin and David is hosted by Griffin Newman and David Sims. Our executive producer is me, Ben Hosley. Our creative producer is Marie Barty Salinas. And our associate producer is AJ McKeon. This show is mixed and edited by AJ McKeon and Alan Smithy. Research by J.J. Birch. Our theme song is by Lane Montgomery in The Great American Novel, with additional music by Alex Mitchell. Artwork by Joe Bowen, Ollie Moss, and Pat Reynolds. Our production assistant is Minnick. Special thanks to David Cho, Jordan Fish, and Nate Patterson for their production help. Head over to blankcheckpod.com for links to all of the real nerdy shit.

2:43:30Griffin 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.