Ratcatcher

We need to pod about Glasgow. We need to pod about the arresting inner lives of these complicated protagonists. We need to pod about every incredible project Lynne Ramsay has been attached to over the past 25 years that never actually happened. So yeah, WE NEED TO POD ABOUT CASTVIN! Join us as we discuss Ramsay’s debut film Ratcatcher, a striking study of a young boy on the precipice of adolescence in the slums of 1970s Glasgow. Ben discovers that he adores this movie. Griffin discovers that he can make “Lin Manuel Ramsey” a bit. And everyone discovers that Scottish accents are not that easy to imitate. Watch the Characters Welcome Sketch from Tristan Griffin https://youtu.be/YmjWjspjc-I?si=qqpEQaMojdBtV9J9 Watch Timmy on Fallon https://youtu.be/9Bi7boehnQE?si=bUufQknJmdnW1C-D Check out Meshes of the Afternoon https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0036154/?ref_=ext_shr_lnk Watch The Mother Project https://youtu.be/Shc5LihWW0k?si=bH41i8s0789RH9ag Check out Notes on the Cinematograph https://www.nyrb.com/products/notes-on-the-cinematograph Watch Barry Jenkins in the Criterion Closet https://youtu.be/R7HLpe65fHY?si=5ww8gD984MKk1EHC Listen to the Top 21 Sports movies of the 21st century episode of the Bill Simmons Podcast https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-bill-simmons-podcast/id1043699613?i=1000743477443 Sign up for Check Book https://blankcheckpod.substack.com/welcome, the Blank Check newsletter featuring even more “real nerdy shit” to feed your pop culture obsession. Dossier excerpts, film biz AND burger reports, and even more exclusive content you won’t want to miss out on. Join our Patreon for franchise commentaries and bonus episodes. http://www.patreon.com/blankcheck Follow us @blankcheckpod on Twitter https://x.com/blankcheckpod?lang=en, Instagram https://www.instagram.com/blankcheckpod/?hl=en, Threads https://www.threads.net/@blankcheckpod?xmt=AQGzctAh4mbWTwYzCV1pzNT6AMV9o99EOfymi8TLR5mTde0 and Facebook https://www.facebook.com/blankcheckpodcast/! Buy some real nerdy merch https://kinshipgoods.com/blankcheck Connect with other Blankies on our Reddit https://www.reddit.com/r/blankies/s/gpcOkQr8Sv or Discord https://discord.gg/Q6YGSR3JrA For anything else, check out BlankCheckPod.com https://www.blankcheckpod.com/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:02Griffin Newman?

  David?

• 0:03David Sims?

  Yep.

• 0:03Griffin Newman?

  We did a live show.

• 0:04David Sims?

  Yeah, remember?

• 0:05Griffin Newman?

  Ranking Scorsese at the Bell House in Brooklyn. We did the definitive power ranking of Martin Scorsese things.

• 0:12David Sims?

  Uh, it was so fun. Uh, it was very silly.

• 0:15Griffin Newman?

  Ben and Marie were with us and they're with us right now.

• 0:18David Sims?

  Yeah, hey.

• 0:18David Sims?

  Hey, everyone, or should I say, oh? Oh.

• 0:22Griffin Newman?

  And thanks to our friends at Dynasty Typewriter. It was livestreamed for the first time ever. But also, the replay is still up there, but only until October 30th.

• 0:31Speaker 03

  So just a few more days.

• 0:33David Sims?

  Yes.

• 0:33Speaker 03

  You can get it at dynasty.tv.

• 0:36David Sims?

  Dynasty.tv.

• 0:37Speaker 03

  It's $20. We had a blast and the Spreadmaster really got to work.

• 0:43David Sims?

  Oh, yeah. I was moving things around.

• 0:45Griffin Newman?

  Laptop was on.

• 0:46David Sims?

  I don't know if I'd have seen you that happy.

• 0:48Griffin Newman?

  You were thrilled. You were like a picking shit.

• 0:50David Sims?

  I was locked in.

• 0:51Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, very locked in and you were funny.

• 0:53David Sims?

  Thank you. You were funny. You were also funny.

• 0:56Griffin Newman?

  Oh, thank you.

• 0:57David Sims?

  And if you want to see like, you know, Griffin's shine box on camera, it's the only way to see it.

• 1:02Griffin Newman?

  You might see me shine Marie's shoes.

• 1:04David Sims?

  Exactly.

• 1:05David Sims?

  Yeah, if you're into that sort of content.

• 1:07Griffin Newman?

  If that gets you off.

• 1:09David Sims?

  Okay.

• 1:10Speaker 03

  So once again, that's at dynasty.tv.

• 1:41Griffin Newman?

  Ma, I asked you to put Blank Check on. You weren't listening? I told you to put up Blank Check on. Put Blank Check on. Blank Check, Blank Check.

• 1:49Speaker 03

  You lot wouldn't know a good tune if it came up and bit you.

• 1:52Griffin Newman?

  Put Blank Check on.

• 1:54Speaker 03

  Stop screaming in my ear.

• 1:55Griffin Newman?

  Blank Check.

• 1:56Speaker 03

  Blank Check is shite, Emery.

• 1:57Griffin Newman?

  You're shite. You're a big shite.

• 2:00David Sims?

  That scene, yeah, what is it? What's the, what is it that, uh?

• 2:03Griffin Newman?

  Tom Jones.

• 2:03David Sims?

  Tom Jones, right, yeah, yeah.

• 2:04Griffin Newman?

  Which, it's very rude. Tom Jones is a wonderful singer.

• 2:06David Sims?

  Sure. Um, that scene really resonated with me as the father of a child that now loudly requests music.

• 2:15Griffin Newman?

  And calls you shite.

• 2:17David Sims?

  Luckily has yet to learn the word shite.

• 2:19Griffin Newman?

  Boss Baby just paces around.

• 2:21David Sims?

  Not calling you a gop shite or anything like that.

• 2:23Griffin Newman?

  Calling you a shite.

• 2:25David Sims?

  Um, but, uh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That scene, I, I've been on the receiving end of the, the six shouted requests where I'm like, I, I heard the first.

• 2:34Griffin Newman?

  What are the big requests now? Can we go through?

• 2:35David Sims?

  K-pop Demon Hunter songs. Golden, Soda Pop, Take Down.

• 2:39Griffin Newman?

  Has Boss Baby watched the movie or just the soundtrack?

• 2:42David Sims?

  Just the, just knows the songs.

• 2:43Griffin Newman?

  It is incredible how, dare I say it, potent those songs have become. I'm not saying they're a potent mix, but I'm saying if you were to put those songs onto a mixtape, that would be a potent mix. No, but it's like the saturation of those songs.

• 3:01David Sims?

  Absolutely.

• 3:02Griffin Newman?

  It's, it's like Frozen and Taylor Swift combined.

• 3:06David Sims?

  Very powerful. And I, I will admit, uh, I watched that film and I was sort of like, oh, I get this, but, uh, you know, I think I'm sort of like bouncing off me a little bit, but I get that it's, I get why this is, I can see why this is so popular, Homer Simpson line. And then, uh, you know, listen to these songs a hundred times. I'm like, well, they do rock. There's, they're, they've worked their magic on me.

• 3:24Griffin Newman?

  And that's why it's so smart that the Academy shortlisted only one of them.

• 3:29David Sims?

  Did they just Golden?

• 3:30Griffin Newman?

  Amanda Dobbins had a great breakdown on Big Picture.

• 3:32David Sims?

  It's kind of the Encanto situation. Did they just go all in on one?

• 3:36Griffin Newman?

  We're trying to help you. How did you mess this up?

• 3:38David Sims?

  At least do two. At least have two.

• 3:41Griffin Newman?

  I think it's only Golden.

• 3:42David Sims?

  But I mean, like, that's the Encanto strategy. Sometimes I feel like the movie will be like, well, let's just get R1 over the line. But then Encanto famously picked the wrong song.

• 3:50Griffin Newman?

  They picked the wrong one.

• 3:50David Sims?

  They picked the emotional and lovely Dos Orguitas, and they should of course pick Bruno. They didn't see the Bruno wave coming.

• 3:57Griffin Newman?

  But we don't.

• 3:58David Sims?

  We don't.

• 3:59Griffin Newman?

  We don't talk about that.

• 3:59David Sims?

  Silence. Silencio, Bruno.

• 4:01Griffin Newman?

  Silencio, Bruno.

• 4:01David Sims?

  Oh, boy, oh, boy. It's the start of a new mini-series.

• 4:05Griffin Newman?

  David's, like you're, like you're dealing cards. You were making a hand gesture like you were dealing them out at the poker table. We're holding a hot hand here.

• 4:13David Sims?

  Yeah, sure.

• 4:15Griffin Newman?

  In my opinion.

• 4:16David Sims?

  A wet hand.

• 4:16Griffin Newman?

  Five masterpieces.

• 4:17David Sims?

  A grimy hand.

• 4:18Griffin Newman?

  Five great movies from one of my favorite living filmmakers. In my opinion, one of the best filmmakers on the planet, Lynn Ramsey, someone I have been wanting to discuss on this podcast for many a year.

• 4:30Speaker 03

  I was telling Sims earlier before you got here, Griff, that having now watched, I guess, we've done.

• 4:37Griffin Newman?

  Three?

• 4:38Speaker 03

  Yeah. And I only really had familiarity with You Were Never Really Here. I am vibing with Lynn Ramsey so hard in a way where I don't, I like, across our whole 10, I guess now our 11th year of doing the show. I think that I have, this is the director I've, I'm vibing with the hardest.

• 4:59David Sims?

  I mean, she's just so Ben-coded, despite being from another country, you know?

• 5:03Griffin Newman?

  I never had a doubt your reaction was gonna be that strong.

• 5:06David Sims?

  No doubt.

• 5:06Griffin Newman?

  Never a doubt.

• 5:07Speaker 03

  They're challenging films?

• 5:08David Sims?

  Yeah, and I would say the most challenging we've yet to tackle, and the least Ben, in a way. We don't talk about Kevin. We don't talk about Bruno. We need to talk about Kevin. That's where we go.

• 5:18Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, yeah, that's the difference. Kevin must be discussed, and we are promising we are going to discuss him.

• 5:24David Sims?

  We will.

• 5:24Griffin Newman?

  On our episode.

• 5:25David Sims?

  We must.

• 5:26Griffin Newman?

  Kevin. Um, yes. Look, this being the first episode of a mini-series and one that I very much pushed over the line, I feel like there has not been as much of a Griff move.

• 5:37David Sims?

  No resistance here, but you've always, you've always marked Lynn as when she makes another movie, we're, we're doing Lynn.

• 5:43Griffin Newman?

  And it's very much like the Buster Keaton series for me.

• 5:46David Sims?

  Now, Lin-Manuel, we didn't talk about Bruno, that's him. Lynn Ramsey.

• 5:51Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 5:52David Sims?

  Rat catcher.

• 5:53Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 5:54David Sims?

  Today's film, that's her.

• 5:55Griffin Newman?

  Right. Now.

• 5:56David Sims?

  That's just for the listeners.

• 5:56Griffin Newman?

  Lin-Manuel Ramsey would be like, and I'm not trying to rat to a balloon.

• 6:04David Sims?

  Interesting. We've been served with a legal document here.

• 6:08Griffin Newman?

  He just unfriended me on Facebook?

• 6:12Griffin Newman?

  I have my Facebook account that I use just to sync up to Disney Emoji Blitz and message Lynn.

• 6:17David Sims?

  Yeah, you're still messaging, sliding into those Messenger DMs.

• 6:22Griffin Newman?

  I'm not saying there was any opposition to it, but she's very much one of my people. And much like Buster Keaton, it felt like, look, this is a slightly more challenging mini-series than we've done before. The ask on Buster Keaton, although those films are very, very fun and watchable, and I was happy to see our listeners discover that in real time, were asking people to engage with century-old silent films, which is outside of some people's language. These movies are very emotionally intense. Another filmmaker I adore, who I think has similar kind of thematic obsessions and weight, is the great French director Robert Bresson, who I once wanted to put on a March Madness bracket, and David very wisely pointed out, imagine 20 weeks of that.

• 7:06David Sims?

  I love Robert Bresson so much.

• 7:09Griffin Newman?

  We love him. One of the greatest filmmakers ever. We would not be covering Lynn Ramsey if she had double-digit numbers of films, because I think it's just a lot to ask of our listeners. But I also think, and this is what you're experiencing, Ben, these movies are not, in my opinion, punishing. They are difficult and they are challenging.

• 7:28David Sims?

  They're a little challenging, but no, I don't, no, no, certainly not.

• 7:31Griffin Newman?

  These are not movies that, my love of Lynn Ramsey is not a fetishizing of a kind of feel-bad mood. It is that I feel like she very, very-

• 7:40David Sims?

  The material is tough to think about sometimes.

• 7:44Griffin Newman?

  The most simple way I would put it is, she makes films about the things that we don't know how to talk about or even think about, much like Kevin. We need to, but they're, they're all based in kind of like unspeakable realities of human life. Um. And they are. Yeah. She tells those stories in an understated way. I, I don't think they are punishing.

• 8:09Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, but she's got style, dude. That's a huge part of it. Very stylish filmmaker we're gonna be unpacking. Because these movies are about the emotional experiences of going through kind of unspeakable experiences. She's never gone over two hours? Congrats to us. I love that. Her longest movie's Dime I Love at 119 minutes. She kept it under. She kept it under. It's five films over the course of 26 years with a lot of failed what-if projects that we'll talk about that are really, really fascinating. But this is her first film, Rat Catcher, released in the UK in 1999, in the States in 2000. It got an early, I say early, a pretty immediate Criterion release. Mmm. A thing that is not as much part of their model anymore, other than when they

• 8:50Griffin Newman?

  are like the distributor for a film and were theatrically. Um, but George Washington is another one that comes out 2000 in the US where it's like Criterion has taken a debut film. A debut. That barely got a theatrical release. In the United States, sure. And are immediately kind of canonizing it. Yeah, you're right. You're right. If you're like a film nerd like us and you're looking to the Criterion announcements every month as a like guidebook of like, where should I start? What should I look at? You know? Mm-hmm. And not to age ourselves, but at that point in time.

• 9:21Griffin Newman?

  This is how you discovered it. Criterion only has like 200 titles. No, I hear you. This is, this is interesting. You find another one. You go, interesting. They put a movie in the collection that's only two years old? That immediately jumped out to me. And so this was the first one I watched and for that exact reason. That's interesting, but what's this podcast called? This podcast is called Blank Check with Griffin and David. I am Griffin. I'm David. Producer Ben here with us vibing out to Lynn Ramsey. Poking the brews. Uh, this is a mini-series on the films of Lynn Ramsey. It's called "We Need to Pod About Cast Finn", which we're going to do.

• 9:54David Sims?

  We will.

• 9:55Griffin Newman?

  In-

• 9:55David Sims?

  We sure will.

• 9:56Griffin Newman?

  Two weeks.

• 9:57David Sims?

  Uh, in, in, and, right, just Dos Semanas, that's right.

• 10:01Griffin Newman?

  Yeah. Today, we're talking about her debut film, Rat Catcher.

• 10:04David Sims?

  Lynn Ramsey's first film, Rat Catcher, which came out in Britain in 2000, but debuted at the, you know, it was at the Cannes Film Festival. It was this, this sort of announcement of a new talent. She won the BAFTA's Newcomer Award, the Foreman Award, which was a big deal back then.

• 10:16Griffin Newman?

  It's a little similar to, uh, Jane Campion's launch. This energy of attention must be paid.

• 10:22David Sims?

  Hmm.

• 10:23Griffin Newman?

  Right? By the festivals and by, yeah.

• 10:26David Sims?

  I discovered this film because my mom, must have interviewed her. I'm, you know, my mom, uh, you know, we moved to London. I lived in London.

• 10:39Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, we know.

• 10:40David Sims?

  1999, and-

• 10:40Griffin Newman?

  Why are you putting such an emphasis on this?

• 10:42David Sims?

  Not, and, uh-

• 10:43Griffin Newman?

  You kind of recoiled when you said that. You had like, there was like a tremor in your body.

• 10:46David Sims?

  It's pretty interesting for someone to have lived in another country.

• 10:49Griffin Newman?

  I don't know, I don't think it's interesting. I don't understand why we need to make such a meal out of this.

• 10:52David Sims?

  I'm making a big meal out of it. Um, and, you know, she became, she, I've talked about this. She had this period where she was, she was writing arts journalism for sort of the first time in her life.

• 11:02Griffin Newman?

  Mm-hmm.

• 11:03David Sims?

  Uh, for the Daily News, where she had been a political reporter, city reporter for many years, and Graham Fuller was her editor. In this sort of period, the great Graham Fuller, uh, was sort of a friend of mine, or, you know, someone I respect to this day.

• 11:15Griffin Newman?

  Okay, well, that's a humble brag. That is a humble brag.

• 11:17David Sims?

  And I feel like Graham had this artier taste, so he would assign her kind of artier stories.

• 11:21Griffin Newman?

  Interesting.

• 11:21David Sims?

  I just remember she came home with a VHS of this movie.

• 11:24Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 11:24David Sims?

  That I assume was like a sort of a screener or something, essentially. And she was like, "I gotta watch this. I gotta talk to this filmmaker."

• 11:31Griffin Newman?

  Mm-hmm.

• 11:31David Sims?

  And we threw it on, which is like, you don't really throw on Rat Catcher?

• 11:36Griffin Newman?

  No.

• 11:36David Sims?

  I mean, I, I assume we knew-

• 11:38Griffin Newman?

  You place it very gently in a player.

• 11:39David Sims?

  Yeah. I assume we knew that it was like a sort of gritty indie feature. It's not like we were like, "Oh, what's this about? Like, you know, a sort of sports agent who has a second act in life?" Like, you know?

• 11:49Griffin Newman?

  No, but there's, you could look at this movie and go like-

• 11:52David Sims?

  So that President's plane gets hijacked by Russian terrorists?

• 11:55Griffin Newman?

  You could go like-

• 11:56David Sims?

  Trying to think of movies of that here.

• 11:57Griffin Newman?

  Is this a slightly rougher Kes?

• 11:59David Sims?

  Yeah, yeah, well-

• 12:00Griffin Newman?

  Right? That's kind of an interesting-

• 12:01David Sims?

  Well, this movie really made me, certainly reminds me of Kes, and we can talk about that, yeah.

• 12:05Griffin Newman?

  Yes, yes.

• 12:06David Sims?

  But, uh, and then, and we watched it, and it's like, you know, it's a, it's an emotionally demanding movie, and it's, uh, it's got- You know, intense content, but I remember we were, I was, what, 13?

• 12:14Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 12:15David Sims?

  We were just both so struck by it. It was just one that we were just like, God, this is, this is unbelievable. And we loved British slice of life stuff, me and my mom, because we lived in this country that wasn't our own. We were the most outsider. Like, my dad had grown up in England, obviously. And my brother moved to England when he was five, so he was, you know, he was a little bit more of a British boy than me.

• 12:35Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 12:35David Sims?

  Like, I moved to England as like a little American kid.

• 12:38Griffin Newman?

  You hadn't identified.

• 12:38David Sims?

  I had, right, my little American identity.

• 12:41Griffin Newman?

  You had the bags under your eyes. You knew who you were.

• 12:43David Sims?

  And so this is why me and my mom, I probably did.

• 12:46Griffin Newman?

  You probably did.

• 12:46David Sims?

  I mean, I got them early.

• 12:47Griffin Newman?

  It is so funny.

• 12:49David Sims?

  My mom has them too. It's genetic.

• 12:50Griffin Newman?

  Exactly. It is so funny that for the first

• 12:52David Sims?

  My kids have them.

• 12:53Griffin Newman?

  Five years of this podcast, you maintained that you have permanent bags under your eyes because in high school, you spent too many nights staying up on Oscar watch for.

• 13:01David Sims?

  That is undeniable.

• 13:02Griffin Newman?

  That is undeniable.

• 13:03David Sims?

  I didn't do myself any favors by not sleeping as a teenager.

• 13:05Griffin Newman?

  Of course.

• 13:06David Sims?

  Yes.

• 13:06Griffin Newman?

  But then all three of your children were immediately born with the exact same eyes.

• 13:09David Sims?

  They got the eyes.

• 13:11Griffin Newman?

  They're on the forums.

• 13:12David Sims?

  They got those tired eyes.

• 13:13Griffin Newman?

  They're not on Oscar watch.

• 13:14David Sims?

  Well, you never know what they're gonna do today. So we loved, like, Mike Lee movies. We loved watching, like, the old British new wave movies from the 60s.

• 13:21Griffin Newman?

  Kes, for people who don't know, is a Ken Loach film about a boy.

• 13:25David Sims?

  We can talk about Kes in a second. I'm gonna actually put a pin in Kes.

• 13:28Griffin Newman?

  Okay.

• 13:29David Sims?

  Because I actually recently rewatched Kes.

• 13:30Griffin Newman?

  But in the UK, it's kind of a generational classic.

• 13:32David Sims?

  It is. It is. But, and I just, so I just, and so we always owned this movie. And I think I even rewatched it. Like, it was always on our, like, video shelf because she'd gotten this screener.

• 13:42Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 13:42David Sims?

  And so I was, yeah, I was also all in on Lynn right away.

• 13:46Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 13:47David Sims?

  And then Morven Callar came out, and like, which we'll talk about next week, and, you know, Samantha Morton was this hot new star, and it was like, oh, it's exciting.

• 13:54Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 13:54David Sims?

  And then, of course, her career develops in this depressing way.

• 13:58Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 13:58David Sims?

  Like, where, like, it becomes, with Lynn Ramsey, as we'll talk about, like, the story is the movie she doesn't get to make, and the story is, like, how long it takes her to make a movie, and how chaotic it can be. And then when something does come out, it's always really interesting.

• 14:12Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 14:12David Sims?

  Crazy.

• 14:13Griffin Newman?

  I, I think a lot, I feel like.

• 14:15David Sims?

  What a crazy world we live in.

• 14:15Griffin Newman?

  We live in a crazy, topsy-turvy, upside-down world. Can I say it?

• 14:20David Sims?

  It's especially been a rough week.

• 14:23Griffin Newman?

  It has. It has. You know, this has been an intense week to watch this movie. But speaking transparently, there is a good chance that any week you are listening to this episode, that will also apply to the week that you have just lived through. You're living through a very intense time right now, and it doesn't seem to be getting less confusing. And there's always this dread of like, am I gonna be in the headspace to wanna watch these movies at this time? And speaking candidly, I've been going through a kinda rough psychological patch. That is another bit I have stolen from The Doughboys and Tiger Weiger, my depression era.

• 15:04Griffin Newman?

  But it's partially, you know, there's some circumstantial stuff, a lot of just my bad brain wiring. I've been wanting to do this series for a very long time, and it's like, am I, am I gonna be in a good place to watch and talk about these movies?

• 15:16David Sims?

  Oh, sure. Like, if you're feeling a little upset, you know, Lynn Ramsay might not be the first thing you wanna watch, but you're about to say, actually, I fucking love.

• 15:23Griffin Newman?

  The way I feel about her work is her movies always make me feel more alive. They always make me feel more connected to the human condition. And if I'm in a good mood and I watch them, it's not like they bring me down. I feel something kind of cathartic of thinking through thoroughly such intense emotions. And if I'm in a bad mood and I watch it, I go, hey, man, I get it, you know?

• 15:47David Sims?

  Totally. I literally just wrote down the exact same thing.

• 15:50Griffin Newman?

  Yep.

• 15:51David Sims?

  You go out in the world after watching this film, and it's, you're reminded you're alive, you're a human. It puts you in touch with that. It's so easy to be distracted by just your phone and the everyday bullshit.

• 16:02Griffin Newman?

  It's, it's not like, hurts so good edgelord shit, which I don't say dismissively. There are versions of that and filmmakers who do that well that I enjoy to varying degrees. But that's more, am I in the right mood to watch this? I do think Lynn Ramsay movies are all deeply trying to engage with what it feels like to be a person. That is the number one thing they are all really digging into. And she explores that in very non-literal emotional terms that are always kind of very engrossing and captivating to watch.

• 16:35David Sims?

  But, yeah, this is a movie where it's like, is this a gritty slice of life movie about a working-class kid in Glasgow?

• 16:40Griffin Newman?

  Glasgow?

• 16:41David Sims?

  Mm-hmm. Yes, it is. Does it also have little touches of? Magical realism and sort of

• 16:46Griffin Newman?

  Beauty.

• 16:47David Sims?

  Fantasy.

• 16:48Griffin Newman?

  Right, right.

• 16:48David Sims?

  Like sort of Malikiyan, you know, landscapes. Yes, it does.

• 16:52Griffin Newman?

  This is not a fuck you pushing your face into the mud.

• 16:54David Sims?

  It's not a nil by mouth, which is a movie I really love. And Gary Oldman, who directed that film, has called this his favorite British film of all time.

• 17:01Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 17:02David Sims?

  Rat Catcher.

• 17:02Griffin Newman?

  Which makes a ton of sense.

• 17:03David Sims?

  Yes, yeah, yeah. And I like, I like those, you know, I like the, right, the British movies that just like, life's fucking hard. You live in the fucking council state, you know, and you're drunk.

• 17:12Griffin Newman?

  Specific mood movies.

• 17:14David Sims?

  Yeah, and this has, it has some of that, but it's a little.

• 17:16Griffin Newman?

  No, I want to offer this as a disclaimer.

• 17:18David Sims?

  Well.

• 17:18Griffin Newman?

  I will not judge or bemoan any listener who just needs to opt out for these five weeks.

• 17:24David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 17:24Griffin Newman?

  I get it, these movies all deal with complicated subject matter.

• 17:27David Sims?

  You're a coward. Okay. You can do whatever you want, I don't care.

• 17:31Griffin Newman?

  But I, but I, I would encourage people to at least give them a chance. And I've seen since we announced this series, many blankies going like, oh, what? So it's like five, five weeks of bleak week? Is that like what's going on here? And then watching one or two and going like, these are not what I thought at all. Which I think is what you're describing as well, has been your experience.

• 17:50David Sims?

  Absolutely.

• 17:51Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 17:52Speaker 03

  Although I do have a hack.

• 17:53Griffin Newman?

  Okay.

• 17:54Speaker 03

  Okay, for this series.

• 17:55Griffin Newman?

  Give it to us.

• 17:57Speaker 03

  Have on hand.

• 17:59Griffin Newman?

  Mm-hmm.

• 18:00Speaker 03

  Pints of ice cream.

• 18:03Griffin Newman?

  Mm.

• 18:04Speaker 03

  Because I will tell you.

• 18:05David Sims?

  A little fish food at the ready.

• 18:07Griffin Newman?

  Ben and Jerry and Lynn.

• 18:09Speaker 03

  After watching Rat Catcher.

• 18:11Griffin Newman?

  Mm-hmm.

• 18:12Speaker 03

  Grab yourself some ice cream.

• 18:13Griffin Newman?

  What kind of, what kind of creamy scoop, Ben?

• 18:15Speaker 03

  Yeah, what do you like?

• 18:16David Sims?

  Yeah, I mean, when it comes to Barry, Ben and Jerry's, I love a chunky monkey. Oh, yeah, is that the one with banana?

• 18:24Griffin Newman?

  Yep.

• 18:24David Sims?

  Yeah, yeah, right, right.

• 18:25Griffin Newman?

  I feel like I don't like chunky monkey because it has walnuts.

• 18:30Griffin Newman?

  Is that right?

• 18:31David Sims?

  You know what? They don't pay us, but let's find the fuck out.

• 18:35Griffin Newman?

  Also, do you know that Ben and Jerry is in the middle of like insane drama?

• 18:38David Sims?

  Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 18:39Griffin Newman?

  That like Jerry is trying to buy the company back or is it, yeah?

• 18:42David Sims?

  Yeah, it's sort of like, I think there was some sort of split in retirement and the company's been moved in a less political direction. And whoever retired is upset about that and is maybe trying.

• 18:51Griffin Newman?

  Whoever they move.

• 18:51David Sims?

  I can't remember which is the more activist.

• 18:53Griffin Newman?

  Has now merged with another larger company that is sort of like destroying the ethos in a way that was contractually promised they wouldn't.

• 18:59David Sims?

  I have a friend who used to work for Ben and Jerry and I've heard a little bit about it. Uh, Chunky Monkey, Ben?

• 19:03Griffin Newman?

  Was your friend Ben?

• 19:05David Sims?

  Stiller? Ben who?

• 19:07Griffin Newman?

  You had a friend who worked for Ben and Jerry.

• 19:08David Sims?

  Oh, okay, oh, yeah, right.

• 19:09Griffin Newman?

  My joke was guessing it was one of the two guys with the name and the company, but then I realized it was confusing. I shouldn't have said the guy that also shares a name with someone in this room right now. Because when I said that, Ben turned around.

• 19:20David Sims?

  Uh, no. Yeah, it's my name. I don't know Ben, uh, who, whatever his last name is.

• 19:25Griffin Newman?

  Can I try it again?

• 19:26David Sims?

  No, honestly, let's move on.

• 19:28Griffin Newman?

  Can you say, I have a friend who worked for Ben?

• 19:29David Sims?

  I have a friend who worked for Ben and Jerry.

• 19:30Griffin Newman?

  Jerry?

• 19:30David Sims?

  No, no.

• 19:32Griffin Newman?

  I thought you were gonna say Stiller.

• 19:33David Sims?

  Uh, that would've been funny too. Fuck, actually, yeah, good point. Uh, well, they do have walnuts. They do have walnuts in the, in the Chunky Monkey. And I, I did go to the factory, um, which is up in, um, Vermont, up in northern Vermont. When my, I had a girlfriend who went to Goddard College, which is a remote, it doesn't exist anywhere.

• 19:51Griffin Newman?

  That is one of the biggest humblebrags I've ever heard.

• 19:52David Sims?

  That I had a girlfriend who went to Goddard?

• 19:54Griffin Newman?

  That you had a girlfriend, then you took her to the Ben and Jerry factory?

• 19:57David Sims?

  Well, it was like, when you go up there, uh, it was, the things to do include go to Ben and Jerry's, go to Cabot also.

• 20:03Griffin Newman?

  Okay.

• 20:04David Sims?

  The Cabot Factory is really fun. You can watch the curds and whey. Oh, that sounds fun. And, you know, you can go buy like a fuck off block of cheese.

• 20:12Griffin Newman?

  Little Miss Moffett there?

• 20:14David Sims?

  Yeah, Little Miss Moffett is there. Yeah, yeah, she's, she's, she's there.

• 20:17Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 20:17David Sims?

  And she's, um, she's, she's doing great.

• 20:20Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 20:20David Sims?

  I don't fucking know. Okay, another flavor I love, chocolate chip cookie dough.

• 20:24Griffin Newman?

  That's the classic.

• 20:25David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 20:26Griffin Newman?

  I was gonna say, my, my favorite is the chubby hubby, often confused with chunky monkey, which has chocolate coated peanut butter pretzels in it.

• 20:35David Sims?

  You know, I just like a late night host to be on my Ben and Jerry's, you know? I just, I need, I need the, the comfort of Jimmy Fallon looking out.

• 20:44Griffin Newman?

  I need to say this respectfully. Objectively, I think the tonight dough is a good flavor of ice cream.

• 20:52David Sims?

  I think I've had it.

• 20:53Griffin Newman?

  But here's the problem.

• 20:54David Sims?

  I've had the Americone dream, for sure.

• 20:56Griffin Newman?

  It's a choking hazard, because I can't get down one spoonful of this thing without laughing so hard.

• 21:02David Sims?

  Okay, look, we're gonna talk about- This is the funniest ice cream. And I said, I said we are gonna be really concise on this episode, because we got two episodes to record today, and I wanna be really, I wanna be really, really, really concise and tangent free, but I do wanna say, did you see when Timmy Chalamet, uh, who's promoting his film Marty Supreme?

• 21:16Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, our buddy Timmy.

• 21:18David Sims?

  Yeah, my, my big butt tip. TC, went on Fallon, you know, he's promoting the movie. And he does some kind of joke about, I guess, the Bob Dylan tour. He did a lot, you know, like when he was promoting Complete Unknown. And Fallon does like a pitch perfect Dylan impression to do the bit. He does some sort of bit. I can't even remember what it was. Do you know what I'm talking about?

• 21:36Griffin Newman?

  I have not seen this.

• 21:37David Sims?

  Timmy shall, it's really funny. Like Fallon essentially ad-libbed something quite funny with his Dylan impression. Cause Fallon is a gifted impressionist. And Timmy looks at him with this momentary kind of like, fuck, that was funny. Like, Chalamet probably has never known Fallon to be funny since he was like a child. You know what I mean? And it's just this like flash from Timmy of like, oh, right. You used to be a funny person.

• 22:03Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 22:03David Sims?

  Like, instead of like the fucking, you know, anus that you are now. Sorry, Jimmy Fallon, if you listen. Just, just the gibbering fool that sits behind the desk of The Tonight Show, desecrating the name of Johnny Carson and fucking, well, no, it's all right. He can get desecrated.

• 22:23Griffin Newman?

  We should mention that Jimmy will be our guest on the Morford Caller episode.

• 22:28David Sims?

  I imagine. Guys, movies, it's crazy. Boyfriend dies, she chops him up.

• 22:34Griffin Newman?

  Spoilers.

• 22:35David Sims?

  She doesn't do that, though.

• 22:36Griffin Newman?

  It's opening, opening of the movie.

• 22:38David Sims?

  No, she does chop him up.

• 22:39Griffin Newman?

  Yeah. Tristan Griffin, a great New York actor, comedian, comedic actor, UCB person, did a sketch you can watch on YouTube for Character's Welcome. That is Jimmy Fallon being called in to testify as a witness in a murder trial.

• 22:55David Sims?

  That sounds great.

• 22:56Griffin Newman?

  And it is the best Jimmy Fallon impression I have ever seen. It's an excellent sketch.

• 22:59David Sims?

  Oh, my God.

• 23:00Griffin Newman?

  It's crazy.

• 23:01David Sims?

  This is crazy. He's dead.

• 23:03Griffin Newman?

  Yeah. It's great. He does somber Jimmy and having a party Jimmy perfectly. Ratcatcher. I think about a, a line I paraphrase often on this podcast that I heard Greta Gerwig say about being on film festival juries.

• 23:22David Sims?

  Okay, Greta Gerwig said something about it.

• 23:25Griffin Newman?

  When you suddenly have to watch like thirty movies.

• 23:27David Sims?

  Sure, sure, sure.

• 23:28Griffin Newman?

  And you have a say in the matter of a, an award that could change someone's entire career, right?

• 23:36David Sims?

  Yeah, right, like a new filmmaker like this who scraped together a tiny amount of like state money to make a little movie, right?

• 23:43Griffin Newman?

  And how do you process these things and how do you give all the movies equal weight?

• 23:46David Sims?

  Because especially if you're like, this is a film that I assume, well, look it up, it was funded by the UK Film Council or whatever. And if you go and win a prize at, you know, Cannes or whatever, you can come back to your country and be like, see?

• 23:56Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 23:57David Sims?

  Like, you know, because you're not going to come back and be like, hey, Rat Catcher made forty million.

• 24:01Griffin Newman?

  In almost every other country. That's how it works.

• 24:04David Sims?

  A hundred percent.

• 24:05Griffin Newman?

  Countries with art funds.

• 24:07David Sims?

  Yes. Do you want to see the film? It's really funny. It's twenty seconds.

• 24:11Griffin Newman?

  Great.

• 24:11David Sims?

  It is so funny that he's surrounded by people wearing ping pong hats.

• 24:14Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 24:18David Sims?

  So they're talking about the Grammys.

• 24:19Griffin Newman?

  Right, because he got nominated for the Dylan album.

• 24:22David Sims?

  So it's right, he says, I'm imagining Dylan in a mortal combat, because he's talking about the people he's up against. And Fallon goes, finish him, right? And shall we, you could just, he double takes, he's like, wait, that was funny.

• 24:35Griffin Newman?

  Like, get a load of this guy.

• 24:36David Sims?

  It's like he's looking at this husk and it's suddenly, it's fucking Theoden in Lord of the Rings, he's like on the throne covered in spider webs. And then his eyes lit up for a second, you know what I mean?

• 24:46Griffin Newman?

  Once again, you're speaking of next week's guest. If you are listening to, yes.

• 24:50David Sims?

  Our next week's guest is King Theoden in sort of web mode.

• 24:54Griffin Newman?

  Mummified King Theoden is doing We Need to Talk About Kevin. Jimmy is doing.

• 24:58David Sims?

  Right, Wormtongue will be doing, uh, Morvern, no, will be doing Die My Love.

• 25:02Griffin Newman?

  Wormtongue, yes.

• 25:03David Sims?

  Because Wormtongue's a great speaker.

• 25:05Griffin Newman?

  Absolutely.

• 25:06David Sims?

  Right in the name.

• 25:06Griffin Newman?

  Absolutely.

• 25:07David Sims?

  He's got a wormy tongue.

• 25:08Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, and Matt Koalik is doing You Were Never Really Here. I meant to do a joke about Matt Koalik doing this episode, because the Doughboys always make a joke about him being a rat.

• 25:17David Sims?

  He's a rat guy.

• 25:17Griffin Newman?

  Anyway, one of you must know how to make a GIF of Timmy's reaction. Because I think this is an evergreen expression of like, holy shit, wow, I thought you sucked. The way he conveys that facially, there's a lot of utility for this as a GIF.

• 25:37David Sims?

  Hundred percent.

• 25:38Griffin Newman?

  We need this as a public, like, this needs to exist in the public trust. Yeah. What I was gonna say, the Gerwig thing is-

• 25:46David Sims?

  Oh yeah, Greta Gerwig's talking about being on a right fest.

• 25:48Griffin Newman?

  She said, you, you put the movie on, and whether it's at a screener, you go into a screening, and within five seconds, you know when you're seeing a filmmaker.

• 25:58David Sims?

  Agree with her completely, as someone who's done juries and stuff, you, you know immediately.

• 26:02Griffin Newman?

  Right, and she said-

• 26:03David Sims?

  If a movie is gonna be like, sort of, next level kinda thing.

• 26:06Griffin Newman?

  Right, sometimes they don't live up to their potential-

• 26:08David Sims?

  Sure.

• 26:08Griffin Newman?

  Or their start, right? The, the person hasn't quite figured out how to communicate what they wanna do. Sometimes a movie that doesn't start flashy builds in other ways because of performance or whatever.

• 26:18David Sims?

  Right, I like a movie to start flashy with sort of like Tommy Lee Jones has the neuralizer-

• 26:23Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 26:23David Sims?

  He's pointing it right at me.

• 26:24Griffin Newman?

  The best kinda flash.

• 26:25David Sims?

  Right. Erase my memory, this could be my first movie.

• 26:27Griffin Newman?

  Or a movie starts with Jennifer Beals like working at a steel mill, cutoff shirt. That's another flashy way to start a movie.

• 26:34David Sims?

  That's, yeah, it's, it's pretty flashy.

• 26:36Griffin Newman?

  Yes, or, or, and this is once again a disclaimer because I don't wanna make it sound like our listeners need to do this. If you're not comfortable with this-

• 26:44David Sims?

  Yep.

• 26:44Griffin Newman?

  I understand.

• 26:45David Sims?

  Mm-hmm.

• 26:46Griffin Newman?

  But if you're ready for Ricky-

• 26:49David Sims?

  And?

• 26:50Griffin Newman?

  You could start a movie with Ricky and The Flash playing a small concert.

• 27:04Griffin Newman?

  David?

• 27:04David Sims?

  Yes.

• 27:05Griffin Newman?

  Mmm.

• 27:08David Sims?

  Is that the Cineas Cow?

• 27:09Griffin Newman?

  The Cineas Cow is back-

• 27:10David Sims?

  Haven't heard from her in a while.

• 27:12Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, she's reactivated because she's horny for chicken fingers.

• 27:17David Sims?

  Okay.

• 27:17Griffin Newman?

  And she's excited for the streaming debut of Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma.

• 27:22David Sims?

  Wow.

• 27:22Griffin Newman?

  The cow likes chicken.

• 27:25David Sims?

  Remember cow and chicken? Let's look it up. While, while you, while you tell the, the great listeners about the great stuff on movies.

• 27:31Griffin Newman?

  Well, MUBI is a global film company bringing great cinema to the world and to you. Curating and elevating visionary filmmaking, all handpicked, always. That's what MUBI does. Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma, one of my favorite movies of the year.

• 27:44David Sims?

  Absolutely.

• 27:45Griffin Newman?

  You can feel the rush now at home. There's a hole at the bottom of the lake where the movies come from.

• 27:51David Sims?

  That is a line in the movie.

• 27:53Griffin Newman?

  In the new movie. Jane Schomburg, past and future guest.

• 27:55David Sims?

  Past and future guest, a great filmmaker, a great podcast guest.

• 27:59Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 27:59David Sims?

  Great friend.

• 28:00Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 28:01David Sims?

  This movie rocks. It's got, of course, it stars Hannah Einbinder and Gillian Anderson.

• 28:06Griffin Newman?

  Uh huh.

• 28:07David Sims?

  Legends, and I tip my cap, but Zach Cherry.

• 28:09Griffin Newman?

  Performances, friend of the show.

• 28:10David Sims?

  Friend of the show, Zach Cherry.

• 28:12Griffin Newman?

  Zach Cherry.

• 28:13David Sims?

  Also in it.

• 28:13Griffin Newman?

  This is true.

• 28:15David Sims?

  Such a cool movie. It won the Queer Palmit Can. If you haven't heard about this movie, I don't know what's going on with you, but like, it obviously has, it was out in theaters this summer and now it's on movie.

• 28:25Griffin Newman?

  Hannah Einbinder plays the filmmaker attempting to reboot the Camp Miasma franchise, trying to track down the original final girl from the first movie to, to make some sort of legacy sequel, who's played by Gillian Anderson, who lives at the summer camp.

• 28:39David Sims?

  Miasma, yes. And you know, and then they hang out and it's regular.

• 28:43Griffin Newman?

  What happens? It's, it's one of those Hollywood's out of ideas. No, it's very much a movie about Hollywood being out of ideas while being an example of there still being new stories to tell.

• 28:55David Sims?

  It's now streaming exclusively on movie and you can try movie free for 30 days at movie.com slash blank check. That's M U B I dot com slash blank check for a whole month of great cinema for free.

• 29:08Griffin Newman?

  They got so many great movies on there to watch, but worth it for 30 days for Miasma.

• 29:13David Sims?

  Damn right.

• 29:19Griffin Newman?

  David.

• 29:19David Sims?

  Yes.

• 29:20Griffin Newman?

  Shop.com is giving away $1 million in shop cash.

• 29:24David Sims?

  Wow. Shop has all the stores you love and lets you track every order in one spot.

• 29:29Griffin Newman?

  I love that. It's very convenient.

• 29:31David Sims?

  And now 1,000 shoppers are each gonna win $1,000 in shop cash just in time for the holidays.

• 29:38Griffin Newman?

  You get gifts for everyone on your list or get yourself something a little merry and bright. Find exactly what you're looking for at shop.com.

• 29:47David Sims?

  Uh, got stocking stuffers, maybe the sickest luxury items, cookware, kicks, toys to high tech, even tinsel and tree toppers. Type in what you're looking for to instantly search every shop.

• 30:01David Sims?

  At once. Okay? That's shop.com. You can just go click around, find brands you love, search across all the stores, track every order in one spot.

• 30:10Griffin Newman?

  From cold favorites to the world's biggest brands, score suite deals and check out fast all at shop.com. Enter to win the $1 million Shop Cash giveaway from now until November 1st. Just go to shop.com. There are so many ways to win. That's shop.com. Shopping designed around you. No purchase necessary. Restrictions apply. Official rules available at shop.com.

• 30:41Griffin Newman?

  David.

• 30:42David Sims?

  Hmm.

• 30:42Griffin Newman?

  It's not cuffing season for me. It's cozy season for me. And this year, that meant finally upgrading my new mattress from Lisa.

• 30:50David Sims?

  Lisa.

• 30:51Griffin Newman?

  It's supportive, comfortable and just what my body needs after a long day. It makes crawling into bed on a chilly fall night feel like luxury.

• 30:58David Sims?

  Yeah, I have a Lisa too. They've got a lineup of beautifully crafted mattresses tailored to how you sleep.

• 31:04Griffin Newman?

  Mm hmm.

• 31:05David Sims?

  Each mattress is designed with specific sleep positions and feel preferences in mind. They've got eco-friendly materials.

• 31:11Griffin Newman?

  Maybe you hear eco-friendly and you go, oh, but I'm going to sacrifice comfort.

• 31:15David Sims?

  No.

• 31:15Griffin Newman?

  Nope.

• 31:16David Sims?

  They've been awarded best hybrid and best memory foam mattresses by New York Times' Wirecutter. They're featured by West Elm as their go-to mattress partner. And they work with local nonprofits across the US to donate thousands of mattresses each year to families in need. Over 43,000 mattresses donated to date. Go to lisa.com for up to 30% off mattresses. Plus, get an extra $50 off with promo code BLANKCHECK. Exclusive for our listeners. That's L-E-E-S-A.com promo code BLANKCHECK for up to 30% off mattresses plus an extra $50 off. Let them know we sent you. And the survey after checkout, lisa.com promo code BLANKCHECK.

• 32:06Griffin Newman?

  I, I think to your point, Lynn Ramsey, but especially this film for a first film, it is what Greta Gerwig is describing. It is within five seconds, I'm watching a filmmaker.

• 32:17David Sims?

  Yep.

• 32:18Griffin Newman?

  Who is this person? What is their deal? Trying to figure it out, which is why, like, it is bizarre, David, that both you and I were transfixed by this movie while being vaguely the age of the characters.

• 32:29David Sims?

  Yeah, and I, look, I'm not a poor Glaswegian kid.

• 32:33Griffin Newman?

  Neither am I.

• 32:33David Sims?

  Uh, and I, I never experienced the things that, uh, that we, uh, what's his name? What's his name in the film?

• 32:40Griffin Newman?

  Uh, Ratcatcher.

• 32:43David Sims?

  No, Ratcatcher will of course be joining the Avengers and Avengers.

• 32:46Griffin Newman?

  I was Googling for Ratcatcher quotes and unfortunately, all that was coming up was, uh, The Suicide Squad, Ratcatcher 2.

• 32:52David Sims?

  Who's, who's, who, who's a charming performer?

• 32:54Griffin Newman?

  I like her quite a bit.

• 32:55David Sims?

  Yes. Yeah, but, but yes, for some, for, you know, whatever, I, I responded to the kid immensely, absolutely. To like, to just that feeling of like, you know, being a bunch, amongst a bunch of kids that you just are not vibing with.

• 33:12Griffin Newman?

  I, I think-

• 33:12David Sims?

  And like, you just, you don't want to make them mad and you don't want to do the fucking weird shit they're doing.

• 33:17Griffin Newman?

  All three of us are different strains of sensy boy at our core. And I think a thing this movie captures incredibly well is that moment of, am I going to let the pressures of a kind of imposed cultural sense of masculinity change me permanently?

• 33:38David Sims?

  Right, right.

• 33:38Griffin Newman?

  Right? It's, it's like this peer pressure, boys will be boys, kind of insidious energy that he is trying to navigate his way around while also trying to figure out how to just fucking survive, you know?

• 33:52David Sims?

  Yep.

• 33:53Griffin Newman?

  And not just survive them, but like, everything in his life.

• 33:59David Sims?

  Um, Lynn Ramsey.

• 34:00Griffin Newman?

  Lynn Ramsey.

• 34:01David Sims?

  The dossier.

• 34:02Griffin Newman?

  Please do.

• 34:02David Sims?

  Born on December 5th, 1969. Wow, 1969.

• 34:09Griffin Newman?

  Pretty fucking rad.

• 34:10David Sims?

  Born in Glasgow, Scotland, to a Catholic father and a Protestant mother. And I don't know if you guys know this, but that kind of shit is a little more unusual, especially back then.

• 34:20Griffin Newman?

  I was.

• 34:20David Sims?

  A cross-faced marriage.

• 34:21Griffin Newman?

  Mm-hmm.

• 34:22David Sims?

  Glasgow, of course, is home to what they call the Old Firm.

• 34:25Griffin Newman?

  Mm.

• 34:25David Sims?

  The most famous sports rivalry in Britain between Celtic and Rangers, which are the two big Glasgow football teams. And Celtic is supported by Catholics, Rangers is supported by Protestants, classically.

• 34:37Griffin Newman?

  Also.

• 34:39David Sims?

  Yes.

• 34:39Griffin Newman?

  Home to the Glasgow kiss when you headbutt someone in the nose?

• 34:43David Sims?

  The, the, the jokey thing is that a Glasgow kiss is a headbutt, yes, yes, yes.

• 34:48Griffin Newman?

  Jokey?

• 34:49David Sims?

  Glasgow kiss, yeah.

• 34:50Griffin Newman?

  I don't find that funny. Jimmy Fallon would not be laughing at that.

• 34:55Griffin Newman?

  He'd go, "Hey buddy, please."

• 34:57David Sims?

  You know, in Britain, Glasgow blank basically just sort of means like a rough thing. I feel like British people are like, "That's the scariest place."

• 35:06Griffin Newman?

  A Glasgow handshake is stabbing someone in the liver.

• 35:09Speaker 03

  I want to share, I did visit Glasgow for the first time. It was a beautiful city, but I can see the edge.

• 35:16Griffin Newman?

  Mm-hmm.

• 35:16Speaker 03

  Right?

• 35:17David Sims?

  I mean, it's a very cool city and it's only gotten cooler.

• 35:20Speaker 03

  Totally.

• 35:20David Sims?

  Very cool city.

• 35:21Griffin Newman?

  And I, I have to.

• 35:21David Sims?

  It's rougher days have, you know, are behind.

• 35:23Griffin Newman?

  I do have to correct you, the edge is Irish.

• 35:27Speaker 03

  I did though witness kids very much of the age of the, the kind of older bully kids.

• 35:33David Sims?

  Right, kind of like 13, 14-year-old age.

• 35:35Speaker 03

  I did witness a street fight.

• 35:37Griffin Newman?

  Oh, sure. Well, you know what they call that? A Glasgow homework.

• 35:42David Sims?

  That's pretty good.

• 35:43Griffin Newman?

  Thank you.

• 35:43David Sims?

  So, um, she says her, her family's, you know, her parents' parents were so staunch that her own, her mother's own mother refused to attend the wedding.

• 35:53Griffin Newman?

  Mm-hmm.

• 35:53David Sims?

  Her dad worked in the shipyards in Glasgow. Glasgow was, that was the sort of the biggest industry, the, the fucking river, whatever the fuck it is.

• 36:00Griffin Newman?

  Fucking river.

• 36:00David Sims?

  The estuary.

• 36:01Griffin Newman?

  That is the name, the fucking river.

• 36:03David Sims?

  I'm getting my, I want to get my geography straight here. Uh, you know, but Glasgow's a big sort of shipping area, especially back then, I think. So dad worked in the shipyards, apparently at one point with, uh, the great, uh, Billy Connolly, the great, uh, Scottish comedian.

• 36:17Griffin Newman?

  The Big Yen?

• 36:18David Sims?

  Is that, is that what they call him?

• 36:19Griffin Newman?

  I think they call him The Big Yen.

• 36:20David Sims?

  I believe you.

• 36:21Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 36:21David Sims?

  Uh, then the shipyards close, you know, the city falls on harder times. Dad worked apparently as a bar manager of a gay pub at one point.

• 36:30Griffin Newman?

  Okay.

• 36:31David Sims?

  Uh, per Ramsey, that was a revolution for me. Dad brought him to the nineties, you know, he kind of, you know, kind of woke him up to new culture.

• 36:37Griffin Newman?

  That's kind of a cool story.

• 36:38David Sims?

  Yeah, they lived in Maryhill, which is like a typical sort of working class part of Glasgow, uh, which is where Rack Hatcher is set.

• 36:45Griffin Newman?

  Mm-hmm.

• 36:45David Sims?

  Uh, she's got two sisters and a brother. Uh, she's got a brother named James.

• 36:50Griffin Newman?

  Okay.

• 36:50David Sims?

  And of course, the main character of this film is named James.

• 36:52Griffin Newman?

  Mm-hmm.

• 36:53David Sims?

  Uh, Ramsey says, "Both of us had dark hair. My sisters are blondes, so we were the black sheep. Uh, and we were the ones essentially who kind of got in trouble. You know, we were like the, the, the, the, the bad kids."

• 37:03Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 37:04David Sims?

  She liked to paint and film, she says, "Was not like a primary interest as a kid, but she did love The Wizard of Oz, Douglas Sirk and Betty Davis." So she was watching something. She says that's the influence of her parents. She thought she might go to art school. Uh, she remembers, she says, "She watched Wizard of Oz like 50 times." It's such an origin story for so many filmmakers. I feel like especially of a prior generation back when like you just watched what was on TV or whatever.

• 37:31Griffin Newman?

  Mm-hmm. James Cameron recently cited it as his favorite movie of all time.

• 37:36David Sims?

  Cool.

• 37:37Griffin Newman?

  It came out that he had tried to develop Wicked, but I think he was implying that he tried to develop a movie out of the books before the musical, perhaps.

• 37:50David Sims?

  Oh, that's interesting.

• 37:50Griffin Newman?

  But that he was talking with Universal about doing Wicked for a while.

• 37:55David Sims?

  Interesting.

• 37:55Griffin Newman?

  Because he loves Wizard of Oz so much.

• 37:58David Sims?

  Interesting to consider Cameron doing a musical.

• 38:00Griffin Newman?

  Well, that's my question. Was, was he doing the musical version or was he?

• 38:03David Sims?

  Or like an adaptation, a straightforward adaptation of the McQuire books.

• 38:06Griffin Newman?

  Not totally clear.

• 38:09David Sims?

  Don't Look Now, the Nick Rogue movie.

• 38:11Griffin Newman?

  Uh huh.

• 38:11David Sims?

  One of my favorite movies.

• 38:13Griffin Newman?

  One of the best movies.

• 38:14David Sims?

  One of the best.

• 38:14Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 38:15David Sims?

  But a scary movie. She saw it, she said, at an inappropriate age. She was about eight. And it was like a sort of thunderbolt moment for her. She was so immersed in it. She said, "I had a very happy childhood," so like the films are more like showing her like dark other worlds and interesting things. Like they're more act- it's not like the films were like an escape from some grim childhood.

• 38:37Griffin Newman?

  No, and they don't feel like processing films, if that makes sense.

• 38:42David Sims?

  Yes. She was sent to bed. Her parents found out she was watching Don't Look Now. They didn't approve.

• 38:48Griffin Newman?

  That made the dossier? JJ decided to-

• 38:51David Sims?

  You're on the fire button already?

• 38:52Griffin Newman?

  Include- They sent her to bed?

• 38:56David Sims?

  That's what she said in an interview. She does say, so they turned her whole thing, she's like, "Ah, film wasn't my big thing," but also her parents were clearly big film fans. They showed her shit like Betty Davis, again, Mildred Pierce, Alfred Hitchcock movies.

• 39:06Griffin Newman?

  It's getting in there. But I do think a lot of my favorite filmmakers are people who find their way to filmmaking.

• 39:13David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 39:14Griffin Newman?

  It is not the first obvious North Star that they're heading toward. And the way she approaches film definitely tracks with someone who's working in other mediums of art first. And applying other sort of ways of thinking to filmmaking, rather than just a self-referential feedback loop of what other filmmakers have done.

• 39:36David Sims?

  She refers to her parents as, "Products of a certain intellectual working class movement towards self-improvement and self-empowerment that has all but disappeared with the decline of communities and union power and all that." Think that's a very cogent way of thinking from Lynn Ramsey. She hits a teen, she hits her teenage years, falls for an older boy.

• 39:53Griffin Newman?

  Okay.

• 39:53David Sims?

  And they start going to the Glasgow Film Theater, where she starts seeing more like European art films, like Fast Binder movies, she sees Blue Velvet. Basically, the sort of arty anarchist boyfriend. She saw Ali Furić, the soul of incredible movie. Blew her away. There was a dive cinema called The Salon in the West End of Glasgow that she liked. She also got very interested in photography.

• 40:17David Sims?

  Glasgow had a visual arts center, there was a big darkroom, and she was basically like a self-taught photographer.

• 40:22Griffin Newman?

  Cool.

• 40:22David Sims?

  Starts getting into that. She goes to Napier College in Edinburgh, which I think is an art school, studies fine art and photography. Um, she likes, you know, Nan Golden, Robert Frank, Diane, Diane Arbus, Richard Billingham. Uh, some of the names she shouts out. Uh, she sees meshes of the afternoon, that crazy fucking, you know, Maya Deren short film. It's always like on Satan's Ambliss. It's so cool, worth watching, guys. It's like 20 minutes long. Uh, it's like nothing you've ever seen. That blew her mind and she applied to film school the day she saw it, she said, you know, first day she could apply. She was rejected by the Royal College, messed up her interview. So instead she goes to the National Film and Television School, which is in Buckinghamshire, which is, you know, outside London. Just giving you, I'm giving you kind of.

• 41:07Griffin Newman?

  No, I'm liking it.

• 41:08David Sims?

  Yeah. Uh, and one professor takes an interest in her called Walter LaSalle.

• 41:13Griffin Newman?

  Mm hmm.

• 41:13David Sims?

  Head of the camera department who had won an Oscar for best cinematography for Zorb of the Greek.

• 41:18Griffin Newman?

  Hey, have you ever seen that?

• 41:21David Sims?

  I've never seen Zorb of the Greek.

• 41:22Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 41:22David Sims?

  Haven't, I haven't met him yet.

• 41:24Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 41:24David Sims?

  I'd like to.

• 41:24Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 41:25David Sims?

  I haven't gone to Greece yet.

• 41:26Griffin Newman?

  It feels like that's gonna pop up in some weird self curated blind spot, watch through series that you launch into once a month.

• 41:35David Sims?

  Absolutely. Um, so, uh, he saw an eye. Apparently he plays a British writer in Before Midnight. You know how before midnight they're all like hanging out with folks?

• 41:44Griffin Newman?

  At the table with Ariane Labad and everything. Uh, you know what I think is interesting to consider with Lynn Ramsey too, is that at this time, when she's in film school and is seriously developing as an artist, the, the notion of Scottish film, especially to the rest of the world, is basically focused entirely around Bill Forsyth.

• 42:08David Sims?

  Oh, sure, sure.

• 42:08Griffin Newman?

  Who is a lovely filmmaker.

• 42:10David Sims?

  Sure.

• 42:10Griffin Newman?

  A filmmaker I, I respect tremendously, but is about as.

• 42:13David Sims?

  Local here in Gregory's Girl.

• 42:15Griffin Newman?

  On the opposite end of the spectrum from Lynn Ramsey as possible.

• 42:17David Sims?

  Yeah, these kind of sweet, uh, his, his housekeeping, uh, adaptation of housekeeping is really good. You know, like, but right.

• 42:24Griffin Newman?

  Gregory's Girl, yeah.

• 42:25David Sims?

  Gregory's Girl is, is, you know. That's cute.

• 42:27Griffin Newman?

  But this is-

• 42:27David Sims?

  Gregory's Girl is one of those films that gets foisted on you when you're a British teenager, where you're kind of like, "Yeah, it's alright."

• 42:32Griffin Newman?

  Bill Forsythe is like, the most gentle, thoughtful, kind of like, uh, winsome, um, these very kind of, uh, melancholy comedies. Um, and I just think when you're dealing with countries that have smaller film identities-

• 42:51David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 42:51Griffin Newman?

  And one director breaks out, and especially when they've become someone whose work is getting exported,

• 42:57David Sims?

  Mm-hmm.

• 42:58Griffin Newman?

  You know, Bill Forsythe is getting his movies released by American major studios with American stars in them. It's like, sometimes at film schools-

• 43:08David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 43:08Griffin Newman?

  Maybe not like art-driven film schools, they're like, "Well, obviously, this is what our main product is now."

• 43:15David Sims?

  Right.

• 43:15Griffin Newman?

  "We need to put out more things like Bill Forsythe movies."

• 43:18David Sims?

  Right, right.

• 43:18Griffin Newman?

  And Lin Ramsay is doing-

• 43:19David Sims?

  These things are working.

• 43:20Griffin Newman?

  Something absolutely one of one at that time.

• 43:23David Sims?

  Yeah, I mean, uh, he sees her eye, you know, the type of film director who comes up as a photographer, it is kind of like, "Okay, you got a way of looking at things." It's not a way of telling a story, maybe, but you know. Uh, big influences for her as she's going through film school, Bresson, as we just mentioned.

• 43:39Griffin Newman?

  Wow.

• 43:40David Sims?

  Uh, he has a-

• 43:40Griffin Newman?

  Nailed it.

• 43:41David Sims?

  A famous book called Notes on the Cinematographer that I own and have read, I recommend to anybody.

• 43:46Griffin Newman?

  It's, it's an incredibly easy read.

• 43:47David Sims?

  A hugely influential, uh, film school book, I feel.

• 43:50Griffin Newman?

  It's just kind of like a lot of statements.

• 43:53David Sims?

  Right, it's basically the sort of stripped-back, economical, non-intellectual approach to filmmaking, like it's Bresson at the time, trying to be much like all these new wave guys who are kind of like, "Let's, you know, do away with how things were done, and let's, you know, have a new approach, a new philosophy."

• 44:05Griffin Newman?

  It's kind of him in Bill Maher mode.

• 44:07David Sims?

  Yeah. And Maher's been trying to get him on, uh, Club Random.

• 44:12Griffin Newman?

  He's been listing out the new roles. Bresson is too random for Club Random.

• 44:14David Sims?

  Yeah, and too dead. The only issues, uh, she finds photography a way about documenting things, so as a film director, that's how she sort of thinks about things.

• 44:24Griffin Newman?

  Mm-hmm.

• 44:25David Sims?

  Like, in Rad Catcher, for example, she points to this moment where James's mother has the hole in the toe of her stocking that she's always darning. And then James tries to pull the whole out of sight when she's sleeping. So she's perfect again and it was an expression of his love for her boiled down to a little gesture. Like she likes those kinds of little, little, you know, visual moment, observation things.

• 44:48Griffin Newman?

  Her visual style is very different than Bresson, who's a lot more kind of classical.

• 44:56David Sims?

  Right.

• 44:56Griffin Newman?

  And formalist, but it was the, it was the storytelling and the writing. And I think the sort of intensity of the emotions without the films being melodramatic. That she really sparked to, she says.

• 45:12David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 45:14David Sims?

  So at the time, a lot of films are kind of making calling card films. You know, you're trying to get this, this state money that'll maybe get you a feature film, right? And she says, I wasn't really good at that. I'm making like weird experimental shit that's not, you know, getting the same kind of attention.

• 45:33Griffin Newman?

  The Criterion release has three of her short films. It's also on the Criterion app at the moment we're recording this.

• 45:39David Sims?

  Her graduation film is called Small Deaths. I think that's one of them, right? Isn't it?

• 45:43Griffin Newman?

  Small Deaths, Kill the Day and Gas Man are the three they have. Yeah.

• 45:48David Sims?

  Producers saw it, asked, let's take this to Cannes.

• 45:52David Sims?

  It won the Prix du jury. Then she falls off with Kill the Day.

• 45:57David Sims?

  Wins another Prix du jury for her third short film, which is called Gas Man, as you said.

• 46:02Griffin Newman?

  Very similar to Champion of like, you, you build a recurring reputation at Cannes with the short films. And the sort of notion of like, we're, we're invested in you. Whenever you make a feature, we're, we're waiting.

• 46:16David Sims?

  And she cast her brother James in all of them. So, you know, that connection is there. After the Cannes success, BBC's, you know, comes a calling and says, write me a little feature film treatment, please. So you got BBC Scotland, you got Pathé, the big European financiers. And she hands him a 60-page treatment for rat catcher. She said it was basically a very messy script. Had some potential, obviously, because they gave her some fucking money. And she says, what's it about? Well, it's inspired by her memories of growing up in Glasgow. The magical thing to her of being in a city that's right by the countryside. You can go into the hills really easily.

• 47:00David Sims?

  But obviously imaginative weird stuff is in there. And, you know, I mean, the rubbish strike of 1975. So, you know, Britain's winter discontent when like a lot of the garbage unions went on strike. A lot of unions went on strike in general. Garbage piled up in the street. That's, that's happening in this movie in the background.

• 47:18Griffin Newman?

  Which, which sparks the rats. The titular-

• 47:21David Sims?

  That's why there's so many dang rats.

• 47:23Griffin Newman?

  That need to be caught are because garbage is in the street. A sign of something having gone wrong, rather than New York where we just have garbage in the street all the time.

• 47:32David Sims?

  It's gotten better.

• 47:33Griffin Newman?

  It has.

• 47:34David Sims?

  Right. It has. Unfortunately, you gotta give it up to Adams for that. You know what? Fuck it, you know.

• 47:40Griffin Newman?

  Fuck him.

• 47:41David Sims?

  No, no, I know. It was a big thing for Eric. Zar has been doing a great job. Shout out to that lady.

• 47:46Griffin Newman?

  And Spawn's also been doing a good job in Rat City, right? He's been keeping things clean.

• 47:50David Sims?

  Absolutely. Right, right, right, right. So she's got this little movie. She's got to find a kid. She looks at about a thousand kids from like working class backgrounds, schools, youth clubs and stuff like that. Cast a little boy called William Edie. I don't know, did he, like-

• 48:09Griffin Newman?

  Almost everyone in this movie never acted.

• 48:10David Sims?

  Right. It's not like he went on to act. Tommy Flanagan-

• 48:13Griffin Newman?

  Tommy Flanagan has-

• 48:13David Sims?

  Who is very familiar, obviously, because he's, he, one of those, there are those Scottish or even, you know, there are those British working class actors who do plenty of stuff in their home country. And then America is like, you're gonna play bikers over here. You wanna come over here and play like kinda bikers, sort of southern guys? Like, you know, you've got the beard, you've got the face. Like, you could translate very, very nicely.

• 48:39Griffin Newman?

  Tommy Flanagan, Ben, is the one with the very distinctive facial scar.

• 48:42David Sims?

  Scar on his face.

• 48:43Griffin Newman?

  But he's in Braveheart like four years before this.

• 48:46David Sims?

  Oh, okay.

• 48:46Griffin Newman?

  Which, when someone has a very unique feature to their face like that.

• 48:51David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 48:51Griffin Newman?

  Very often, as, as David said, Hollywood goes like, got it, you're a character actor. We know where to place you. So he's, he was on Sons of Anarchy for many, many years. He's, uh, one of the Ravagers in Guardians of the Galaxy 2.

• 49:04David Sims?

  That's right.

• 49:04Griffin Newman?

  He's in Gladiator. He pops up in all sorts of stuff.

• 49:07David Sims?

  Um, so, uh, you know, obviously there is a script. It has the dialogue. She says it's pretty close, but she does, she tries to encourage improvisation with all these kids.

• 49:17Griffin Newman?

  Mm-hmm.

• 49:18David Sims?

  Uh, Tommy Flanagan, uh, Da.

• 49:20Griffin Newman?

  Mm-hmm.

• 49:20David Sims?

  You know, is pretty much the only, like, currently working, you know, like the professional actor.

• 49:25Griffin Newman?

  Uh, Mandy Matthews, who played Ma, has quite a few credits.

• 49:30David Sims?

  So there you go.

• 49:30Griffin Newman?

  But, but almost everyone else was, uh, yeah, not professional first time.

• 49:35David Sims?

  Everyone involved in this movie, uh, Alwyn Kuchler, who's still an incredible DP, um, is, you know, film school pal. Uh, but he, you know, he does, he's done, I mean, he shot like Steve Jobs. He's, he's a great.

• 49:48Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, yeah. I mean, and this movie looks astonishing.

• 49:51David Sims?

  Uh, Lucia Zuccati is the editor, uh, Jane Jane Morton, the production designer. These are all film school pals for her. It's a tiny little crew.

• 49:58Griffin Newman?

  Mm-hmm.

• 49:59David Sims?

  And, uh, right, Alwyn Kuchler shot Sunshine.

• 50:02Griffin Newman?

  He did, indeed.

• 50:02David Sims?

  He's done a lot of, uh, boils.

• 50:04Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 50:05David Sims?

  Um, and they, they get along well or whatever. Good for them. Moving along here, right, JJ?

• 50:10Griffin Newman?

  Uh, I want to hear more about when she went to bed and when she woke up. Are there any, like, sub-chapter headings that indicate where that might be?

• 50:19David Sims?

  Um, she, uh, shot mostly in the neighborhood of, uh, Govan.

• 50:24Griffin Newman?

  Okay.

• 50:24David Sims?

  I apologize if I'm saying that wrong. I do not know, uh, everything about Glasgow.

• 50:28Griffin Newman?

  Mm-hmm.

• 50:29David Sims?

  A lot of little urban villages, sort of, uh, little suburby. It's got the hills. Stunningly beautiful, kind of ugly beautiful is the way she puts it. So, um, she liked that. She says it is a bit of a dodgy area, you know, but like that, that was obviously kind of the vibe. That she was going for.

• 50:49David Sims?

  It is a period piece, sort of like a quiet period piece. Because you don't really think about it, because I feel like especially American audiences are like, I don't know, is Britain like this now? You could tell me, I freaking have no idea, unless someone's wearing like a powdered wig.

• 51:02Griffin Newman?

  Is this a sci fi movie? Maybe it's set in their future?

• 51:05David Sims?

  It's set in the seventies, which is obviously her childhood era. It was a frequent subject when it was released in Scottish tabloids, because I guess the Glasgow mayor, Pat Lally, is in the film. And obviously, the film has this somewhat shocking.

• 51:22Griffin Newman?

  The bathtub scene.

• 51:23David Sims?

  Yeah, it has a film with essentially underage nudity. Now, it's a sort of platonic and sort of sweet scenes, how she intends it. It's these kids playing together where there's kind of, it's like they're almost on the edge of like, you know, roaming, you know, like they're in that kind of like in-between state.

• 51:40Griffin Newman?

  I think it's sort of pointedly unsexual, that that's the point, that it's sort of like, they are at a stage before it would turn into that. And it is very much in the tradition of like, a lot of the photographers you were talking about, who were a huge influence on her. There's a documentary I love.

• 51:58David Sims?

  She admits it's risque, she meant it innocent, as an innocent scene, but she says she was lucky to get it. It was the toughest scene she ever shot.

• 52:04Griffin Newman?

  There's a documentary I really love, that I forgot about until I was sort of reading about this, called Tierney Guerin, The Mother Project. Who is a photographer that I really love. But had a photography show that caused a lot of

• 52:21Griffin Newman?

  hand wringing in the way that she photographed her children and her mother and things like that.

• 52:28Griffin Newman?

  I don't know, that's just a recommendation of a film, but yes.

• 52:31David Sims?

  Mike Lee apparently loved the film, as speaking of him earlier.

• 52:34Griffin Newman?

  Makes a lot of sense.

• 52:35David Sims?

  And we should talk about it, and then we will discuss how it went to Cannes and it did great. We can talk about the film first, I feel like. Rat Catcher. Now, it is, what, 90 minute movie?

• 52:46Griffin Newman?

  93, I think, soaking wet.

• 52:48David Sims?

  And it is, it's a wet film. Very damp. Obviously, it has canals, it has a drowning, but it also is just damp when even when they're not in the canals. It's a damp ass fucking country, Scotland. I love it there.

• 52:59Griffin Newman?

  You feel like everything's getting sprayed down a little bit before everything.

• 53:03David Sims?

  And it's, you know, it's a film that actually has what we would think is a hooky plot of like, it starts with. This boy is sort of responsible or kind of adjacent to the death of another boy.

• 53:18Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 53:19David Sims?

  And has guilt over it, but that's not really what, you know, that's not really the plot of the movie.

• 53:23Griffin Newman?

  It is, it is basically an accident.

• 53:28David Sims?

  Yes, but he feels guilty and he's not telling anyone about it, you know, like he's like nursing a secret or whatever.

• 53:34Griffin Newman?

  And I, I do think, look, these things still happen all the time and are tragic, but I also think in an earlier time, they happened even more frequently. Uh, I'm obsessed with the, just to cite another documentary that I watch a lot. Tell them anything you want, the Maurice Sendak documentary. That Spike Jones and Lance Bangs made in the last couple of years of his life. When they were working on Where the Wild Things Are, I think it's like an incredible 40 minute thing.

• 54:02David Sims?

  Sure.

• 54:04Griffin Newman?

  That's mostly about Maurice Sendak's thoughts on death and how death obsessed he has been his entire life.

• 54:09David Sims?

  The river is the river, Clyde. The Glasgow's river is called the river Clyde.

• 54:14Griffin Newman?

  Thank you. But he talks a lot about in that, how he had a similar incident when he was a child, where he was playing like catch out in the street and the ball rolled and, and this boy got hit by a truck.

• 54:26David Sims?

  Oh, God.

• 54:26Griffin Newman?

  You know, and like.

• 54:27David Sims?

  I like to think about it.

• 54:28Griffin Newman?

  It's terrible, but that the mother of this child, that he was like beside himself, that he wouldn't leave his room, that he felt so guilty, that he felt cursed.

• 54:36David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 54:36Griffin Newman?

  And that the mother of this child came over to specifically say like, it's not your fault and I forgive you, you know? That like these things sometimes just happen as, and that is in sort of what I was saying about Lynn Ramsey, the kind of thing we don't want to think about, that these things can happen in sort of such a meaningless way.

• 54:58David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 54:58Griffin Newman?

  In which there is not someone you can really blame sometimes.

• 55:02David Sims?

  Right.

• 55:02Griffin Newman?

  Especially when you're dealing with like children with underdeveloped brains.

• 55:06David Sims?

  Well, that's the thing.

• 55:07Griffin Newman?

  Who don't understand the consequences of what they're doing.

• 55:09David Sims?

  You really, you, it's so, how do you process something like that? You just don't have the life experience, you're too young to really be able to like fully grasp it.

• 55:20Griffin Newman?

  I mean, this is like a really scary thing about being a child, right? Your parents and your teachers and everyone around you try to teach you as much as they can. But in a lot of cases, you really only learn things when you come close to them being a problem. Right? When you recognize that something almost just went horribly awry and the stakes suddenly become real inside of you, whatever it is, like touching your hand over the stove, right? Like is the smallest example of that. And then like your brain now fully understands, my parents aren't just telling me to not touch the stove because they're mean. If I held it longer, I would be scarred, you know?

• 55:57David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 55:57Griffin Newman?

  And this is the kind of thing where you're like, the difference of a second, the difference of 15 degrees and movement is he jumps out of the water and it's like, that was scary. That almost turned really bad. And instead it turns bad.

• 56:12David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 56:13Griffin Newman?

  They're sort of just roughhousing and the boy dies.

• 56:17David Sims?

  And I think it's kind of because of the boots.

• 56:19Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 56:20David Sims?

  The gum boots, the wellies.

• 56:21Speaker 03

  His mother insists that he wear boots.

• 56:23Griffin Newman?

  Trying to get him to dress up for church.

• 56:25Speaker 03

  And they're really like tall.

• 56:27David Sims?

  Yes.

• 56:28Speaker 03

  Uh, rubber boots.

• 56:29Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 56:29Speaker 03

  And they fill up and I think pull him down.

• 56:31David Sims?

  Right. Uh, it's horrible. Uh, and it happens right away. And you know, it's like how the film begins.

• 56:36Griffin Newman?

  And it happens in a kind of elusive way. It is not, the movie is not.

• 56:40David Sims?

  And then you have James's mother hugging him saying, I thought it was you, you know, like, you know, expressing her, uh, her fear.

• 56:46Speaker 03

  And the other thing too, you're almost like kind of blaming him. It's done in a way where it's not showing him to be evil.

• 56:55Griffin Newman?

  Well, you've also barely gotten to know this character.

• 56:57Speaker 03

  Yeah. It actually starts with the other character.

• 57:00Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 57:00Speaker 03

  It almost switches on you.

• 57:02Griffin Newman?

  And she's filming all of this in this fairly poetic way where you, you're kind of struggling to get your head around what's happening.

• 57:08Speaker 03

  Yeah. But the thing I wanted to say is that if you become more aware that no one knows how to swim.

• 57:14David Sims?

  Yeah, sure.

• 57:15Griffin Newman?

  Sure.

• 57:16David Sims?

  So it's not like he could dive in.

• 57:18Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 57:18David Sims?

  And save his friend.

• 57:20Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 57:20David Sims?

  He doesn't know how to swim. He doesn't know. Yeah. He's not a lifeguard.

• 57:24Griffin Newman?

  Right. I mean, it's like a joke I made when we did our Bright Star episode years ago. But that's a movie where arguably the central conflict is guy doesn't have a coat.

• 57:34David Sims?

  Oh, God, he really.

• 57:35Griffin Newman?

  Winter is coming, you know?

• 57:36David Sims?

  So cold.

• 57:37Griffin Newman?

  Like, you do just, it is always kind of striking to see films about certain communities, especially in certain eras, where you're just like, there is just this huge vulnerability here.

• 57:48David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 57:49Griffin Newman?

  Anyone could kind of drown in the water at any time. And that speaks to the way that the community reacts to all of this, which like is, it is not the most shocking thing that has ever happened in a community, you know?

• 58:03David Sims?

  Yeah. Well, they're also so desensitized because they're just living in these awful conditions.

• 58:08Griffin Newman?

  Yes. And, and you just feel the pressure and the tension of everything that's happening. Yeah.

• 58:12David Sims?

  It's a tough, it's a tough opening. And the film is not as dark as, you know, like after that.

• 58:21Griffin Newman?

  No.

• 58:22David Sims?

  Like, it's obviously, it's a, it's a gritty film and it's, it's like, you know, about kids living sort of rough lives, but Cast, the film you mentioned, or you know, the Kemoj film, is, you know, this sort of like searing work of social realism that was like such a, such a big movie when it came out. It's Kemoj's first feature film and.

• 58:45Griffin Newman?

  A boy and his hawk.

• 58:46David Sims?

  Uh, it's about this like really working, you know, dysfunctional kind of working class kid in Yorkshire, who, who's struggling at school and struggling at home. And then he gets really into falconry.

• 58:56Griffin Newman?

  Mm-hmm.

• 58:57David Sims?

  And you're just.

• 58:58Griffin Newman?

  Hawk, what a fucking dumb idiot.

• 59:00David Sims?

  It's a kestrel, obviously. That's why it's Cast.

• 59:02Griffin Newman?

  Jimmy Fallon laughing my ass, my dumb Happy Meal ass.

• 59:05David Sims?

  You know, it's Britain's Old Yeller.

• 59:07Griffin Newman?

  Uh-huh.

• 59:07David Sims?

  Like, in that it's like this movie where it's like kids have to watch it.

• 59:10Griffin Newman?

  Degenerational, yeah.

• 59:12David Sims?

  But even as a kid, you're like, I mean, when, when you're watching Cast, you're like, the fucking, something fucking bad is gonna happen to the bird.

• 59:17Griffin Newman?

  You feel it the whole time.

• 59:18David Sims?

  Which like, I'm sorry to spoil, but like, you know, something bad happens to the bird and you know it. You know, like, this is not going to end in this like sweeping, happy way. And whereas Rat Catcher does not work that way.

• 59:29Griffin Newman?

  No.

• 59:30David Sims?

  That is not how Rat Catcher, it's not like it's building to a tragedy. It starts with a tragedy.

• 59:33Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 59:33David Sims?

  And then it's about, it actually kind of ends happily.

• 59:36Griffin Newman?

  It kind of does.

• 59:37David Sims?

  In a way, like it certainly, it kind of fakes you out that something bad has happened and then it's like, but nothing bad has happened and actually, he's probably grown a little bit. See, I had questions about that. Maybe we wait to, to get to it later because I was actually unclear about the ending and if it was real or a dream. I think it's real. I mean, you could interpret it as like, I guess, a weird kind of fantasy or dream, but I don't think so. I think it's more like, you know, he brushes up against a dark feeling and then, you know.

• 1:00:04Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:04David Sims?

  But I don't know, maybe I'm right.

• 1:00:05Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, I don't know. I, I.

• 1:00:07David Sims?

  Oh, no, actually, right, in the credits, you see him in the.

• 1:00:09Griffin Newman?

  I, I.

• 1:00:10David Sims?

  Yeah, you think it's, you think he dies?

• 1:00:11Griffin Newman?

  I think so, but I think you could read it either way.

• 1:00:14David Sims?

  I don't know. I know you're probably right.

• 1:00:15Griffin Newman?

  I also think the thing.

• 1:00:18David Sims?

  I don't know about that.

• 1:00:19Griffin Newman?

  This movie, this movie does not, uh, for, for starting with an accidental death, handle it in any plotty way whatsoever.

• 1:00:28David Sims?

  Right, it's not a, he's covering up a crime movie.

• 1:00:32Griffin Newman?

  Right, which you could just immediately, your brain is trained from watching so many other shittier things to assume that has to be how this progresses. And if it's not doing that, it's going to be a movie specifically of intense suffering and processing. If it's not interested in the plotty aspects of the fallout of the death, then certainly it has to be entirely about this boy working through what he's experienced.

• 1:00:57David Sims?

  But actually, you sort of forget about it for a while because other stuff's happening and then it sort of starts brewing back up.

• 1:01:03Griffin Newman?

  In a way that I do think is a more accurate reflection of real life, you know? I mean, I, I do, you read about horrible things that human beings go through.

• 1:01:13David Sims?

  What?

• 1:01:13Griffin Newman?

  And my first question is always like, what do they have for like breakfast the next morning?

• 1:01:19David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:19Griffin Newman?

  You know?

• 1:01:20David Sims?

  No, I, I get that.

• 1:01:21Griffin Newman?

  Like, we watch movies that, and read books that depict it as like, a person just lies in a bed weeping for six months until they're resolved. And you're like, but you do just have to go on living in some way, you know? You have to like, go for a walk and like, buy paper towels at the store, you know? And like, make small talk with people who don't know what you've gone through and all these sorts of things. And that you can go through these waves of sometimes feeling, I think, I say this as not someone who has experienced this level of tragedy before, but that I think there are sometimes almost like catatonic states of calm, you know? Especially in the immediate aftermath.

• 1:02:04Griffin Newman?

  It's not the kind of like Mystic River, fall to your knees explosion that we all are used to seeing these things depicted as.

• 1:02:11David Sims?

  Is that his daughter in there?

• 1:02:12Griffin Newman?

  I have heard some things that have led me to believe, based on the man with the weird neck tattoo yelling very loudly that it's his daughter in there.

• 1:02:21David Sims?

  That's one of those movies where Clint Eastwood's Mystic River. And Sean Levy talks about this in the book he wrote, you know, and first he says like-

• 1:02:30Griffin Newman?

  Sean Levy, director of Deadman's Island.

• 1:02:31David Sims?

  Right, Taka Yaw T D comes in and he is riffing on whatever that-

• 1:02:34Griffin Newman?

  Epic, epic.

• 1:02:36David Sims?

  No, no, Sean Levy, who wrote the journalist who wrote the Clint book, talks about, you know, obviously Clint shoots one to two takes.

• 1:02:41Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:42David Sims?

  And that is like, I think, the first take. And you are kind of like, fucking, credit to Penn that he got there right away. Like, he had to, and I guess Penn knew, I have to like, I can't just like, work on this sort of like, over a few days.

• 1:02:56Griffin Newman?

  Like, is that 50% of his Oscar win, not even the effectiveness of the scene, but then being like, oh, and he had to go from like, zero to 100 and then they wrapped for lunch?

• 1:03:04David Sims?

  He wins the Oscar because he'd lost for Dead Man Walking.

• 1:03:07Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:07David Sims?

  And people sort of forget that, that that at the time was considered this crazy loss.

• 1:03:12Griffin Newman?

  It was a little bit equivalent to Denzel Malcolm X, where you're like, this performance is so historic, how in the world could we ignore this?

• 1:03:21David Sims?

  Um, and- You know, uh, that's part of it, but also, yes, it was a big showy, you know, performance. It's just so annoying because then he, Penn did win his deserved Oscar.

• 1:03:31Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:03:32David Sims?

  For Milk.

• 1:03:32Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 1:03:33David Sims?

  And he could, we could have just waited.

• 1:03:34Griffin Newman?

  And with one battle, which he is obviously phenomenal in.

• 1:03:38David Sims?

  Great.

• 1:03:38Griffin Newman?

  You're just sort of like, yeah, but does Sean Penn need three Oscars?

• 1:03:41David Sims?

  Certainly doesn't.

• 1:03:42Griffin Newman?

  No, he certainly doesn't.

• 1:03:42David Sims?

  He doesn't, but he is very good in it.

• 1:03:44Griffin Newman?

  He is unbelievable in it. Yeah.

• 1:03:47David Sims?

  Who, who did Penn be? Oh, well, he beat Bill Murray.

• 1:03:49Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 1:03:50David Sims?

  Which would have been nice. That would have been nice.

• 1:03:52Griffin Newman?

  It would have been.

• 1:03:53David Sims?

  And he beat Johnny Depp for Pirates of the Caribbean, which was like, that was a moment.

• 1:03:57Griffin Newman?

  Right. And then.

• 1:03:57David Sims?

  If you've heard of that. He played this character.

• 1:03:59Speaker 03

  And those two guys, everything's been chill.

• 1:04:02David Sims?

  Regular.

• 1:04:02Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, I'm realizing this is like a really normal category of well-balanced men.

• 1:04:07David Sims?

  So Ben Kingsley and Jude Law are the other nominees.

• 1:04:10Griffin Newman?

  Okay. So, yeah.

• 1:04:11David Sims?

  I guess is Ben Kingsley the chillist?

• 1:04:15Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:16David Sims?

  Cause he's famously not that chill.

• 1:04:18Griffin Newman?

  I have only heard that he is the most intense human being that's ever lived. But not dramatic.

• 1:04:25David Sims?

  Right.

• 1:04:26Griffin Newman?

  He's just laser focused on being intense.

• 1:04:28David Sims?

  Never been canceled or anything like, but you know, I mean, he's, he's, he's gotten his, you know, he's gotten in some, some naughty trouble with the ladies, you know? He's had a couple of affairs, or whatever.

• 1:04:37Griffin Newman?

  I would have to say that he's gotten in some naughty trouble with the ladies.

• 1:04:42Griffin Newman?

  I think let's be clear.

• 1:04:43David Sims?

  Let's give it to fucking Jude for Cold Mountain. Let's throw, let's put an Oscar on Cold Mountain.

• 1:04:47Griffin Newman?

  When you say naughty trouble with the ladies, it sounds like you're talking around me too, rather than like, that guy maybe likes to fuck too much.

• 1:04:53David Sims?

  Yeah, I, I know. And right? Doesn't he have like, he has kids with a few ladies.

• 1:04:57Griffin Newman?

  Many, many, many, many kids.

• 1:04:59David Sims?

  She has seven.

• 1:05:00Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:01David Sims?

  That's, seven is a high number.

• 1:05:03Griffin Newman?

  Anytime he's.

• 1:05:03David Sims?

  I'm not judging.

• 1:05:04Griffin Newman?

  Anytime he's promoting like a hundred and fifty million dollar movie where he has a funny mustache and plays a villain. They're like, what drew you to this role? And he's like, seven children, five mothers.

• 1:05:14David Sims?

  Athlete numbers. You know, when you start hearing about those athletes who are like, yeah, I got like 14 kids. What do you want from me?

• 1:05:19Griffin Newman?

  He's the Nick Cannon of the UK.

• 1:05:21Speaker 03

  I was gonna say, I think they are on a text thread.

• 1:05:23Griffin Newman?

  Yeah. That is wild though, that you're like, right. That, that, that best actor category is.

• 1:05:30David Sims?

  It's some fellas.

• 1:05:31Griffin Newman?

  Most extreme men.

• 1:05:33David Sims?

  It's some fellas.

• 1:05:33Griffin Newman?

  On the planet and just Randy Jude Law.

• 1:05:47Griffin Newman?

  David?

• 1:05:47David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:47Griffin Newman?

  This episode is brought to you by XYZ Films and the acclaimed new documentary, Capturing Bigfoot.

• 1:05:53David Sims?

  Hmm.

• 1:05:53Griffin Newman?

  On October 20th, 1967, Roger Patterson captured 59 seconds of film showing a creature walking through the Northern California woods. I wonder if you can log that on Letterboxd?

• 1:06:04David Sims?

  It is an iconic video.

• 1:06:06Griffin Newman?

  Footage that became the most analyzed and debated in history. 59 years later, a reel of 16 millimeter film discovered in a safe changes everything. Capturing Bigfoot reveals the untold story behind the world's greatest mystery told for the first time by Patterson's own son and the people who were there. This is a story about family legacy, broken friendships, and how far people will go to protect a secret.

• 1:06:28David Sims?

  Of course, you got the classic, what they call Patterson Gimlin film everyone knows of Bigfoot out in the woods, like the famous Bigfoot picture. This has other stuff shot by him that no one's ever seen. That's what makes this movie different.

• 1:06:40Griffin Newman?

  But we're also talking brand new 4K scans of the original film taken from the Patterson family archives that some historians have called the best rendering of the footage ever seen.

• 1:06:49David Sims?

  I feel like we've all seen that footage as like grainy.

• 1:06:52Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:06:52David Sims?

  You know, that you see, you know, whatever, you see it in a documentary for two seconds, but this is restoring it and making it look much more clear.

• 1:06:59Griffin Newman?

  There's also a companion podcast, the Capturing Bigfoot Podcast, which goes deeper into the legend and lore of Bigfoot and the Patterson Gimlin film, featuring weekly episodes with experts in cryptozoology, urban legends, and filmmaking.

• 1:07:13David Sims?

  I'm something of an expert in cryptozoology.

• 1:07:15Griffin Newman?

  Well, of course. Yes, but that's more of a hobby.

• 1:07:18David Sims?

  Yeah, this podcast, Capturing Bigfoot Podcast, is hosted by the director of the film, Mark Evans, and it's available for free on YouTube and Spotify with exclusive episodes and content available on Patreon to members of the Capturing Bigfoot Society.

• 1:07:33Griffin Newman?

  Capturing Bigfoot is now available to rent or own on Amazon Prime Video. Learn more about Capturing Bigfoot at capturingbigfoot.com.

• 1:07:50Griffin Newman?

  David?

• 1:07:51David Sims?

  Yes?

• 1:07:51Griffin Newman?

  Nobody likes bank fees. Why would you like them?

• 1:07:55David Sims?

  When I was younger, I really would have benefited from a bank that did not charge me fees anytime I did anything, basically, which is, I feel like, what I was always dealing with.

• 1:08:05Griffin Newman?

  Chime, that's where Chime comes in. Chime.

• 1:08:09David Sims?

  They're changing the way people bank. They're not like traditional banks who charge fees and get keep perks and rewards. They offer the most rewarding fee-free banking, all with no overdraft fees, no monthly fees, and no minimum balance fees, okay?

• 1:08:22Griffin Newman?

  We love being fee-free. We love it.

• 1:08:24David Sims?

  You're gonna get 5% cash back on a Chime card in a category of your choice, like gas or groceries.

• 1:08:29Griffin Newman?

  My two favorite things.

• 1:08:30David Sims?

  All while building credit through regular everyday spending with no credit check. And you can grow your money faster with a savings rate that's nine times the national average. And if you're ever in a pinch, SpotMe lets you overdraft up to $200 fee-free.

• 1:08:44Griffin Newman?

  Fee-free?

• 1:08:45David Sims?

  So, join the millions who are already banking. Be free with America's number one choice for banking. Head to chime.com/blank-check. That is chime.com/blank-check. Sign up now. It only takes a few minutes.

• 1:09:00Speaker 04

  Chime is a fintech, not a bank. Banking services and Chime card provided by Chime's bank partners. Qualifying direct deposits required. Terms and limits apply. Go to chime.com/disclosures for details.

• 1:09:21Griffin Newman?

  David?

• 1:09:22David Sims?

  Yes?

• 1:09:23Griffin Newman?

  People cut the cord. Means the death of the repeat, the rerun. But where, where do repeats still exist? In your closet.

• 1:09:31David Sims?

  Ah, the sweater that goes with everything, Griffin. The tee you somehow always reach for first.

• 1:09:36Griffin Newman?

  It's, it's, we know the feeling.

• 1:09:38David Sims?

  Those are the pieces that make getting dressed easy. That's what Quince does best.

• 1:09:42Griffin Newman?

  Quince.

• 1:09:42David Sims?

  This is true for me. I will say, I go to Quince. I buy a thing, like a polo shirt, a sweater, whatever. And I'm like, oh, I like that. Guess I'll get a bunch more. Cause now that's what I'm gonna put on.

• 1:09:53Griffin Newman?

  Quince focuses on high-quality wardrobe staples made with Premium materials like 100% Mongolian cashmere, organic cotton and merino wool. The styles are timeless, versatile and designed to become the dependable pieces you reach for day after day.

• 1:10:07David Sims?

  Love it. They got those 100% Mongolian cashmere sweaters. Those start at just $60.

• 1:10:12Griffin Newman?

  Love those.

• 1:10:12David Sims?

  Giving you the softness and quality you'd expect from a luxury brand. Without that luxury price tag and look, it's starting to get chillier. You're gonna need layers, right? How about you just do Quince for every layer, huh?

• 1:10:25Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:26David Sims?

  Jacket, sweater, shirt.

• 1:10:27Griffin Newman?

  David, you know what I love?

• 1:10:28David Sims?

  What?

• 1:10:29Griffin Newman?

  The ultimate commuter pants.

• 1:10:30David Sims?

  Oh.

• 1:10:31Griffin Newman?

  Cause I'm commuting constantly.

• 1:10:33David Sims?

  Beep beep.

• 1:10:34Griffin Newman?

  Yep, that's me. David, I like these. They're just clean. They're comfortable. They got the right amount of pockets.

• 1:10:40David Sims?

  Wow. Find your next fall favorites at Quince. Download the Quince app for app exclusive offers. Or go to quince.com, get free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. Now available in Canada and the UK too. And when Quince asks where you heard about them, let them know. It was blank check. It's the best way to support the show.

• 1:11:10David Sims?

  Ratcatcher.

• 1:11:11Griffin Newman?

  Ratcatcher.

• 1:11:12David Sims?

  James, our little boy.

• 1:11:13Griffin Newman?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:11:14David Sims?

  Lives in Glasgow, but sometimes he takes this bus to like the end of the road. Right? And he like just goes and fucks around in this kind of like unbuilt or like, I think it's under construction housing estate. That's like.

• 1:11:27Griffin Newman?

  Utopian landscape.

• 1:11:29David Sims?

  This field of wheat. Exactly. Like it's like, and it's suddenly like, there's so much color. Like that, that shot of, you know, like through the window of like this blue sky and the, you know, like suddenly it's not fucking raining.

• 1:11:40Griffin Newman?

  It is the moment of like, in my opinion, it's the moment of extreme transcendence in this film. When he's sort of exploring around this, uh, I was gonna say abandoned, but it's unfinished. In progress home and looking through its window and seeing this like insane picturesque. Kind of Terrence Malick field of golden wheat. And then he jumps through the window into it and runs through it. And it feels like he's jumping into a painting. Like he's jumping into a Van Gogh or something. Yeah.

• 1:12:16David Sims?

  So. He's got that. That's nice. But it's like the aspiration to escape his entire life. And then, right. It's not just about the death that he's experienced, but it's like he's surrounded by like constant pain, effort, struggle.

• 1:12:31Speaker 03

  And he's also constantly surrounded by people.

• 1:12:34David Sims?

  Yes.

• 1:12:34Speaker 03

  I mean, it is such cramped living conditions. He shares quite a small apartment with his family.

• 1:12:40David Sims?

  No one seems happy. Everyone is going through it in this movie.

• 1:12:42David Sims?

  But it is not, again, mill by mouth of like, this is about an experience a boy's having of like extreme social neglect. Yes. It's more just like their lives are fairly shitty. Yes. And he's got some siblings. Mm-hmm. Uh, you know, his dad is, you know, always, you know, seems to be, you know, on the lash sometimes not to. On the lash? Yeah. Does that mean three sheets to the wind? Yeah, going out, getting, getting, getting fucking drunk. I never heard of on the lash. Yeah. You would say essentially, like, what are we doing tonight? We're gonna go on the fucking lash, mates, you know? Yeah. Yeah. Um, uh, so, you know, I like that it is basically not some fucking movie that's like

• 1:13:27David Sims?

  made for like a government official to watch and be like, we need to send more money. Like, you know what I mean? Like, there's some movies like that where it's like, this is a statement film about like, you know, an extreme condition. It's more just like, no, man, this is just what life is like for a lot of people. It's, it's weird to like.

• 1:13:42David Sims?

  You know, especially at this time, you know, in the seventies and urban situations. Yeah. Without feeling like it's trying to push a point. Exactly. It's just kind of over the top. Um, so, but there, you know, there's the prong of like, he has these kind of like magical little adventures. Mm-hmm. And then there's the, the, you know, his family life is kind of like, eh, a bit dodgy. Mm-hmm. And then there's the, the gang, the Neds, I think is what they call them in Scotland. Yes. In, in England, London, we call them Yobs. Who regularly target this young girl. This girl Margaret Ann. Margaret Ann. Uh, played by the actress, his name is Leanne Mullin. She's pretty phenomenal in this. She's great. Uh, she's great. And like, James and Margaret Ann, it feel like the vibe is just like, they're just both a little different, maybe a little more sensitive, a little less interested.

• 1:14:28David Sims?

  But Margaret Ann's obviously sort of being targeted in this like vaguely sexual way.

• 1:14:32Griffin Newman?

  It, it.

• 1:14:32David Sims?

  Like they're kind of like flirting with her, they're kind of, you know, like crushing on her and they're being horrible to her.

• 1:14:39Griffin Newman?

  I think she, Ramsey captures a really fascinating energy, which is sort of, these boys have targeted like the nerdy girl with the glasses, right? They throw her glasses in the river so she can't see. It is clearly being motivated by sexual energy, like them struggling to come to terms with developing urges.

• 1:15:03David Sims?

  And that's why they're all fucking insane to each other too. And this is all like awful boy shit at that age.

• 1:15:09Griffin Newman?

  But it's like easier.

• 1:15:10David Sims?

  My boys are gonna live in padded cells from like age 13 to 20. I'm just cutting that off.

• 1:15:14Griffin Newman?

  Just buy padding now.

• 1:15:16David Sims?

  You might as well. They need it.

• 1:15:18Griffin Newman?

  But it's this thing that like I just don't know if I've ever seen another movie capture. And especially because it does it without explaining itself of like, they're so horned up in a general sense that they target the person who they view to be kind of like least attractive or conventionally desirable. And then just kind of fuck with her. They're not like violently attacking her physically. And they're also not making moves on her, but everything just has this kind of like odd, unprocessed energy around it. And James sort of figures out how to like throw himself in front of her.

• 1:16:01David Sims?

  Yeah, kind of divert the attention.

• 1:16:03Griffin Newman?

  In a way that both like stops them from really inflicting harm upon her in any number of ways. But also makes him kind of seem like one of the lads in a way where then they aren't going to attack him. There's the moment where he lies on top of her.

• 1:16:21Griffin Newman?

  That I find so effective.

• 1:16:23David Sims?

  Well, where the boys are like, go on, go on, go on. You know, like, there's this kind of like.

• 1:16:27Griffin Newman?

  There, there's this energy of like, someone should get on top of her and dry hump her. Wouldn't that be funny?

• 1:16:31David Sims?

  Right.

• 1:16:31Griffin Newman?

  And what he does is gets on top of her and like planks.

• 1:16:34David Sims?

  Planks on her. He's, he's inventing planking.

• 1:16:36Griffin Newman?

  And basically gets to like, do the move of, I don't know what I'm doing.

• 1:16:40David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:41Griffin Newman?

  To stop them from doing anything bad.

• 1:16:43David Sims?

  Right.

• 1:16:43Griffin Newman?

  When he knows exactly what he's doing.

• 1:16:45David Sims?

  Little sacrifice.

• 1:16:46Griffin Newman?

  He's just blocking. Yeah.

• 1:16:48David Sims?

  I should point out, obviously, we haven't mentioned this, but this film, you know, they're, they're talking in their sort of Glasgow dialect. Did you guys throw on the subtitles or would you, you?

• 1:16:56Griffin Newman?

  For sure.

• 1:16:57David Sims?

  Free ball it on this one.

• 1:16:58Griffin Newman?

  This is one of the rare, uh, English language films that was just straight up distributed.

• 1:17:04David Sims?

  In America.

• 1:17:04Griffin Newman?

  In theaters in America with burned in subtitles.

• 1:17:07David Sims?

  Burn that onto the fucking negative right now, baby.

• 1:17:10Griffin Newman?

  Don't even worry about it. Don't even try.

• 1:17:14David Sims?

  It's, I am very like, you know, even to this day, I'm very, I'm fine listening to regional British accents and.

• 1:17:22Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:23David Sims?

  Can watch movies and I can discern what they're saying, but this is definitely one, especially also because of the verite thing.

• 1:17:28Griffin Newman?

  I was gonna say, it's got like alt men, everyone yelling over each other.

• 1:17:31David Sims?

  Overlapping, yes.

• 1:17:32Griffin Newman?

  Eight characters.

• 1:17:32David Sims?

  Where I'm like, I am, I like, let's, let's, let's throw on that one ing.

• 1:17:37Griffin Newman?

  And, and.

• 1:17:38David Sims?

  Let's hit that button right there.

• 1:17:39Griffin Newman?

  Hey, baby, it's fine. It's fine. Don't feel bad. We put them there for a reason.

• 1:17:43David Sims?

  Yeah. So you've got the sort of really grim stuff we're talking about. And then there'll be moments like one of the boys in the gang gets a little pet mouse and they're all fucking around with the mouse. You know, yeah, Jesus, this is, you know, animal violence stuff is so like uncomfortable and like.

• 1:17:57Griffin Newman?

  They're all trying to catch these rats, but then you're like, is this going to turn into a torture situation?

• 1:18:01David Sims?

  Right. And where they're gonna do their mouse. And then they tie the mouse to a balloon and they make it fly. And then there's this like little fantasy sequence of the balloon going to space.

• 1:18:09Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:09David Sims?

  But it's so kidlike. It has this kid logic to it. That's what it's gonna do. Yeah. Yeah, that is kind of wonderful and fanciful, although also distressing.

• 1:18:17Griffin Newman?

  But you also, it speaks to.

• 1:18:18David Sims?

  Kind of a Liam Ramsey vibe.

• 1:18:19Griffin Newman?

  Yeah. Yep. It's, it's a real like core text moment of her entire worldview as an artist, in my opinion. And it speaks to like the overriding theme of this movie, which is like, is there any way to get out of this? To get out of this energy, out of these social situations, out of poverty, out of what is happening in our local government, you know? The dream of just like, could I fucking jump through a window? And run through the weed. He can literally do that, but he can't stay.

• 1:18:51David Sims?

  It also feels like-

• 1:18:53Griffin Newman?

  These rats are here and we cannot cohabitate with them. But also, he doesn't want the rats to be murdered by these bullies. If you tie a rat to a balloon, can the rat just go to the moon and live there and be happy?

• 1:19:04David Sims?

  But this is actually a pet store mouse. And I think that distinction is important. Yep, yep. It's a little white mouse.

• 1:19:10Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:19:12David Sims?

  It's also one of those things, not to be cynical, because I don't think Glenn Ramsay made this movie with any cynicism, but like, of like, okay, you know, I'm making my indie movie. I have my little budget, like my sort of two million pounds or whatever it is. I get to do one kind of ambitious thing.

• 1:19:27Griffin Newman?

  10% of my budget's on this one.

• 1:19:28David Sims?

  Right. Let's set aside a little bit for like something that's a little outside of whatever I'm going for generally.

• 1:19:33Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 1:19:34David Sims?

  And, and it sticks in your head, you know, it's like if you're, and again, if you're a fucking can. And you're like, huh, what films have un certain regard this year? And you watch that, you're like, I can't forget the movie where the fucking mouse was on the balloon. Un certain regard.

• 1:19:49Griffin Newman?

  But in film festivals-

• 1:19:50David Sims?

  Who's a regard, mate?

• 1:19:51Griffin Newman?

  You're watching four movies a day.

• 1:19:53David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:54Griffin Newman?

  Maybe you're watching this movie at 9 a.m. Or maybe this is the last movie you watched in a day at like 11 a.m. This is one of those things where you're gonna lean forward and even if you don't like it, say, who the fuck is this?

• 1:20:04David Sims?

  Sure.

• 1:20:05Griffin Newman?

  Who made this?

• 1:20:05David Sims?

  Who's this now?

• 1:20:06Griffin Newman?

  Right? And, and just a correction of another plot detail I got wrong, something that I never do on this podcast. The, Ryan, the, the friend, the boy who dies at the beginning. The mother made him put on the boots specifically because he was going to visit his father in prison.

• 1:20:23David Sims?

  Oh, that's right. That's right.

• 1:20:24Griffin Newman?

  It speaks to even just-

• 1:20:26David Sims?

  Right. This grimness.

• 1:20:28Griffin Newman?

  The grimness, the loop of inevitability.

• 1:20:30David Sims?

  James, the boy, she gives him Ryan's sandals.

• 1:20:34Griffin Newman?

  Right, right. The sort of nicer shoes she gives.

• 1:20:36Speaker 03

  And she had gone out to get those sandals while he ran off to play and...

• 1:20:42David Sims?

  Let's wrap it up. These episodes, I can't think about this.

• 1:20:44Griffin Newman?

  But she also has that scene where she wants to look at him because he reminds her of him and is saying like, "Your eyes are the same." Not like, "Seeing you reminds me of his death." Like, "Is your face close enough that I can still experience some of it?" And that scene is his mother pushing him to give this woman the moment she needs, and he just doesn't even know how to react, you know? He doesn't push back against it in an extreme way. He doesn't start crying. It's just like, I don't understand the intensity of emotion happening right now.

• 1:21:15Speaker 03

  And it's very genuine of that age, too, the way that he plays this just like, frozen, "I don't know what to do." I feel like that character, he does it a few times where even adults talk to him and he's just like, unable to respond or communicate or even just react to them.

• 1:21:34Griffin Newman?

  And Margaret Ann clearly becomes like his one ally, the one person who he feels some kind of solace and understanding from. But also, they don't talk that much. And when they're talking, they're not talking about their feelings at length. It is basically just the two of them sensing, "There are simpatico energies here." "We both feel overwhelmed by the same things happening around us."

• 1:22:00David Sims?

  Right.

• 1:22:01Griffin Newman?

  "We're both trying to reckon with the things happening inside of us." Yeah.

• 1:22:04David Sims?

  Right. Me, I don't know. I'd probably just be like, "I'm gonna go to law school, maybe, you know, get a great job, and just fucking pull my bootstraps."

• 1:22:13Griffin Newman?

  Work for J.D. Vance.

• 1:22:14David Sims?

  Oh, that's so true. And you know, Hillbilly Elegy is like a really similar film in terms of quality and like...

• 1:22:19Griffin Newman?

  Well, better. It's a better film. It's a better film and it had a better effect on our world. I know you're saying that this movie is pointedly not kind of an issues, like, driving a point movie.

• 1:22:30David Sims?

  It's funny because you look at like the plot...

• 1:22:32Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:22:33David Sims?

  No, no, you look at Hillbilly, yeah, you wanna talk more about that one?

• 1:22:35Griffin Newman?

  It was a statement movie. The statement was, "Elect him."

• 1:22:38David Sims?

  It's, God bless Ron Howard, who has made films I like. It seems like a guy with a head on his shoulders and has said, like, I, he said publicly, like, I'm sort of a little baffled and saddened by J.D. Vance's career.

• 1:22:49Griffin Newman?

  I do not think that was anyone's intent in making that film, and in fact, many people have psychoanalyzed, including people close to him.

• 1:22:55David Sims?

  That he felt rejected by, like, you know, Hollywood and mainstream culture, right?

• 1:23:01Griffin Newman?

  That the cool celebrities didn't like his movie, radicalized.

• 1:23:05David Sims?

  Personally, I think J.D. Vance is no good.

• 1:23:07Griffin Newman?

  Personally, I think we live in hell.

• 1:23:10Speaker 03

  Personally, I like to say, because I agree with Jamel, that he is a pig man.

• 1:23:14Griffin Newman?

  He is a pig man.

• 1:23:15David Sims?

  Uh, but Ron Howard.

• 1:23:16Griffin Newman?

  Another great take from Jamel.

• 1:23:19David Sims?

  One, you don't want to have made that movie. I'm sure Ron Howard's like, ah, fuck, why'd I make that?

• 1:23:22Griffin Newman?

  I wake up every morning and go, oh, thank God, I still haven't made Hillbilly Elegy. For all of my other mistakes, I have yet to direct Hillbilly Elegy once. It's a nice thing to remind myself, so I have empathy for Ron Howard in that position.

• 1:23:35David Sims?

  Ron Howard post-Rush, which is one of my favorite movies he's made, a film I really love, a sports film, Rush.

• 1:23:41Griffin Newman?

  One of the weirdest runs.

• 1:23:42David Sims?

  Has been on one of the weirdest fucking runs. It's crazy.

• 1:23:46Griffin Newman?

  It's not good, it's not bad, it's just fucking bizarre. It's kind of bad.

• 1:23:51David Sims?

  I'm gonna read it to you. In the Heart of the Sea, wailing epic, kind of a great idea, the movie didn't go over a slog.

• 1:23:57Griffin Newman?

  Like alternate telling of Moby Dick, giant financial disaster.

• 1:24:00David Sims?

  True story of Moby Dick, but right, big disaster.

• 1:24:01Griffin Newman?

  Starring like three Marvel actors.

• 1:24:03David Sims?

  Inferno, the third and forgotten Robert Langdon adaptation.

• 1:24:07Griffin Newman?

  Look, let me do something safe. Inferno will work, and at the moment Inferno comes out, people were like, we decided we hate these.

• 1:24:13David Sims?

  We don't care anymore.

• 1:24:15Griffin Newman?

  And he's like, you hate them now?

• 1:24:16David Sims?

  I think it cleared enough internationally to not be a disaster, but certainly ignored in America. Solo, a Star Wars story, did the mop up job on that, bang up job there, Bronny.

• 1:24:27Griffin Newman?

  Normal.

• 1:24:28David Sims?

  Hillbilly Elegy, normal. Thirteen Lives, the one I haven't seen, and the one everyone always tells me, like, you know what? That movie is sneaky good. The, the Thai diver movie with Viggo and Farrell, right?

• 1:24:39Griffin Newman?

  I remember, yep. Uh, and I'm trying to remember who the third guy is.

• 1:24:43David Sims?

  Edgerton. I bet you he plays a slightly taciturn fellow.

• 1:24:47Griffin Newman?

  Friend of the podcast who's a screenwriter, I remember telling me that summer that there was a screener link circulating that him and all his writer friends on the group text had watched.

• 1:24:59David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:59Griffin Newman?

  And they were just like, this thing is winning best picture.

• 1:25:02David Sims?

  Yeah, no, we've talked about it. And then Amazon was like, should we fart that out in August?

• 1:25:08Griffin Newman?

  Amazon was like, what if we put it in theaters for 30 minutes? And the theaters were like, you know, that's less time than the movie runs for.

• 1:25:15David Sims?

  It's too late.

• 1:25:16Griffin Newman?

  And they were like, but it's gonna be prominently placed on the streaming service. And they're like, no, it's a dropdown option when you're trying to pick how many rolls of toilet paper you wanna buy at once.

• 1:25:26David Sims?

  And then last year, there was Eden, which was at festivals the year before.

• 1:25:30Griffin Newman?

  Which our man Bilga has been banging the drum for. You guys don't understand how fucking weird this thing is.

• 1:25:35David Sims?

  It is weird. I watched it. It's on Netflix now. You can just watch it. You're allowed. And I watched it. And again, I was kind of hoping for like, okay, and I was pretty disappointed by it.

• 1:25:45Griffin Newman?

  But it is fucking weird, right?

• 1:25:46David Sims?

  It's definitely weird. And it's definitely a movie where if I like sat you down and was like, just watch this film.

• 1:25:51Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:25:51David Sims?

  You know, survivalist sort of true story thing about people who live on a weird island in the Galapagos. Sydney Sweeney, Daniel Bruhl, weirdest cast you ever saw.

• 1:25:59Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:25:59David Sims?

  And then you watch it. And then I'm like, who do you think directed that? Ron Howard would be the 800th name you're set.

• 1:26:04Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 1:26:04David Sims?

  Like, you would go through, you'd be naming dead people. And I'd be like, no, it was Ron Howard. And you'd be like, no, it wasn't. Was it Ida Lupino? You know, like you would just, yeah.

• 1:26:13Griffin Newman?

  The most interesting thing about Eden is imagining him saying the directions out loud on set.

• 1:26:19David Sims?

  Um, right, right, right.

• 1:26:21Griffin Newman?

  Now, Sydney, what I'm gonna need for you in this take is to take one tit, just one tit out.

• 1:26:26David Sims?

  Yeah, how many movies has he made with nudity? I'm sure he's a couple, but no, sort of Spielberg-y in that way of like, it's not really his wheelhouse.

• 1:26:33Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:26:34David Sims?

  But hey, you know, sometimes you gotta just go move to the Galapagos Islands.

• 1:26:39Griffin Newman?

  Do we even know what he's doing next?

• 1:26:40David Sims?

  Yeah, he's making a war movie with Adam Driver, which kind of sounds cool.

• 1:26:43Griffin Newman?

  Oh, yes. That one does sound cool.

• 1:26:45David Sims?

  Who knows? Vietnam movie.

• 1:26:46Griffin Newman?

  He also, like, has made, like, seven documentaries in the last-

• 1:26:49David Sims?

  He's like, "Are you a boomer icon? I'm putting that shit on Hulu right now."

• 1:26:55Griffin Newman?

  Someone made a Reddit thread, r slash blankies, that was like, "Why doesn't Ron Howard get discussed more? He feels like an obvious, perfect candidate for the show." And people were arguing, "Is he more of a journeyman? Is he sort of like a studio guy? Does he have a strong enough identity?" And I just responded, "32 films plus eight documentaries."

• 1:27:15David Sims?

  It's crazy. It's crazy.

• 1:27:16Griffin Newman?

  Like, that's why we're not doing him.

• 1:27:18David Sims?

  That's one of the reasons.

• 1:27:20Griffin Newman?

  But it's like, there are other reasons, but that one settles it.

• 1:27:23David Sims?

  I'd have him on.

• 1:27:25Griffin Newman?

  I'd love to have him on.

• 1:27:26David Sims?

  Great voice.

• 1:27:26Griffin Newman?

  Great voice.

• 1:27:27David Sims?

  Remember, you guys might not know this, he was the voice of Arrested Development. You guys know that? Does it not?

• 1:27:32Griffin Newman?

  Do you know what, Ben, you might have to cut this out.

• 1:27:34David Sims?

  Ben's looking at me like I'm an asshole right now. Crazy.

• 1:27:36Griffin Newman?

  You might have to cut this out, Ben. Do you know that he was opie on the Andy Griffiths show?

• 1:27:41David Sims?

  They're right. All right.

• 1:27:45Griffin Newman?

  It's one of Hollywood's best-kept secrets.

• 1:27:46David Sims?

  So, um, we're kind of done with the plot of Ratchet almost. I'm trying to think, okay.

• 1:27:51Griffin Newman?

  It's not a plot, man.

• 1:27:52David Sims?

  So, yeah, exactly. So he friends this girl. He fucks around with the boys who are tough.

• 1:27:57Griffin Newman?

  He tries to find his balance in between staying on their good side and not becoming one of them.

• 1:28:03David Sims?

  Uh, which is interesting when you think about The Bone Temple, which is the other movie we'll be discussing today. We're doing back-to-back records.

• 1:28:09Griffin Newman?

  I watched these two movies.

• 1:28:11David Sims?

  Yeah, I was a bit of that, yeah.

• 1:28:12Griffin Newman?

  And then we're recording these two episodes back-to-back, and it is fascinating how much the movies echoed each other.

• 1:28:18David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 1:28:19Griffin Newman?

  In a lot of ways. It is that sort of, like, turning point in a boy's life that both movies are really, really obsessed with. Yeah.

• 1:28:28David Sims?

  This is an age where you are-

• 1:28:32Speaker 03

  Not mature enough yet to really have empathy.

• 1:28:36Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:28:36Speaker 03

  It makes me think of the Mulaney joke of where 13 year olds are the meanest.

• 1:28:41Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:28:42Speaker 03

  It's the meanest age.

• 1:28:43David Sims?

  The worst age.

• 1:28:44Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:28:44David Sims?

  They're smart enough to identify what you don't like about yourself, but not filled with shame enough yet to be quiet.

• 1:28:51Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 1:28:51David Sims?

  You know?

• 1:28:52Griffin Newman?

  Yes, I've quoted an anonymous friend of mine who works in a field with children, who always says,

• 1:29:00Griffin Newman?

  being a teenager should be a legally admissible defense for insanity in court.

• 1:29:06David Sims?

  Kind of is.

• 1:29:07Griffin Newman?

  Their brains are just exploding.

• 1:29:10Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:29:10Griffin Newman?

  And it's just, it's like a real fucking like, you know, you're, you're on a knife's edge figuring out how to be a good person. You know, and, and so little influence in the wrong direction can really set you off.

• 1:29:25Speaker 03

  And also, these are lost kids. I mean.

• 1:29:27David Sims?

  These are lost kids. These kids are not latchkey kids, but it is kind of a like, just go out and play kid.

• 1:29:33Speaker 03

  I don't see a single playground. I don't see a ball.

• 1:29:36Griffin Newman?

  No.

• 1:29:37Speaker 03

  They're, they have, they have garbage and a, and a fucking river.

• 1:29:40Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:29:40David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 1:29:41Griffin Newman?

  But you're like, they're circumstantial latchkey kids, right? Like, I feel like the term latchkey kid is applied to like, parents who do not engage, who do not lock in and pay enough attention with their children. And this is almost like a societal construct that is preventing children from being properly parented.

• 1:30:02Speaker 03

  I just want to say, as a former latchkey kid, it is also when your parents both have to work.

• 1:30:07Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:30:08Speaker 03

  To make ends meet.

• 1:30:08Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:30:09David Sims?

  But like, the notion of a latchkey kid is gone. Like, it's like, that's just not acceptable anymore socially. And it's like, fuck, what was I just watching? That was set in the early, oh no, I was just thinking about ET, right? Which is like, ET is the ultimate latchkey kid movie. And, but it's about the waning days of that era, cause then in, you know, the late eighties, Eats and Pats, like stuff like that, it starts being like, well, you can't let your kid be by themselves.

• 1:30:35Griffin Newman?

  It's 10 PM, do you know where your children are?

• 1:30:36David Sims?

  Right. And so now it's like, no, your kid needs to be in an after school program and your kid needs to be whatever, you know, like the latchkey kid goes away. And it's like, the seventies and eighties are the sort of height of the latchkey kid, I feel like.

• 1:30:46Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:30:47David Sims?

  Yeah, I don't know. But it's more suburban thing too. Like the little kid biking home from school. Like, I didn't do that shit. Took the, you know, public transit in London. That's what I did. Took the bus. I mean, age it, 11.

• 1:30:59Griffin Newman?

  I took the bus as well because my parents didn't trust the subway.

• 1:31:01David Sims?

  Right, well, they had the kind of like.

• 1:31:03Griffin Newman?

  There was a year or two.

• 1:31:04David Sims?

  Sort of that era.

• 1:31:06Griffin Newman?

  Specifically post 9/11, when there was so much concern that that would be a target, where my parents would make me take the bus home. And I went to school on 81st Street and lived on 8th Street.

• 1:31:18David Sims?

  Jesus.

• 1:31:19Griffin Newman?

  And it was just the worst bummer to, like, all my other friends lived close to the school, and they'd be hanging out, and I could hang out for exactly 35 minutes

• 1:31:31Griffin Newman?

  before I was in the danger zone of the bus being slow enough that I'm pa- back home past curfew, you know, or for family dinner or whatever.

• 1:31:41David Sims?

  Yep.

• 1:31:42Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, anyway. Eventually, the garbage gets resolved.

• 1:31:46David Sims?

  I mean, there's even like a shot with this garbage thing of like, uh, one of his sisters, she's sitting on the garbage, eating like something.

• 1:31:57Griffin Newman?

  It is basically becoming furniture.

• 1:31:58David Sims?

  I want to correct myself. So, you know, the winter of discontent, the famous winter of discontent, which is when Britain, which is, uh, still governed by a Labour government, James Callaghan's become the PM, Harold Wilson resigns, James Callaghan becomes PM. Like, tons of different units go on strike, the TUC, which is the overarching Union Council, starts like fighting with the government a lot, and so like, all kinds of things start fucking up sort of structurally in Britain. It's 1978, 1979. Um, and that's famously the downfall of Labour, and Thatcher comes in for, you know, and the Tories rule for 17 years.

• 1:32:32Griffin Newman?

  And everything was perfect for the rest of the time, yeah.

• 1:32:35David Sims?

  Yeah, um, but, uh, this is set in 75, and Glasgow had a 13-week dustman worker strike.

• 1:32:42Griffin Newman?

  Okay.

• 1:32:43David Sims?

  Uh, so it's set during a very specific, uh, you know, uh, Labour action in Glasgow in the 70s. It's very, I love this scene, because what happens is the army comes in to clean up the, the, the garbage, and I like that Lyn, you know, has some people being like, fuck you, you know, like, you know, this is a union town, like, you know, this is a union country, and like, they're, they're berating the army for, for scabbing. And you have the one lady who's like, ah, shut, you know, we know you do garbage, garbage. And then the, some guy is like, shut up, you old hack faced cow, or whatever, like, he's fucking, lays into her. I just love all that, that little sweet color stuff.

• 1:33:24Griffin Newman?

  I also love that Lin-Manuel.

• 1:33:29Griffin Newman?

  Is like, "And I am throwing away my trash."

• 1:33:34Griffin Newman?

  The way you said Lin, it just put an emphasis on, and I felt like I had to circle back to that. And it's, he has the song about throwing away, and the movie's really about trash in a lot of ways.

• 1:33:44David Sims?

  Another legal action has been, he now owns Blank Check.

• 1:33:48Griffin Newman?

  In my defense.

• 1:33:49David Sims?

  And has sold it.

• 1:33:50Griffin Newman?

  I am but a teenager.

• 1:33:51David Sims?

  Okay. To the recycled men.

• 1:33:53Speaker 03

  A little before the army stuff, we should talk about how Kenny, the weird animal kid.

• 1:33:58David Sims?

  Yes, Kenny's the kid who, who instigates all the drama and almost drowns.

• 1:34:03Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 1:34:03David Sims?

  Himself, and he's da, rescues him, right?

• 1:34:06Speaker 03

  Ryan's, or James, sorry, James' father rescues him.

• 1:34:09Griffin Newman?

  There's nearly a second incident.

• 1:34:11David Sims?

  James' father becomes like the subway hero. You know, like in 30 Rock, like he, he, he gets like a little burst of excitement from, yeah, from, from getting the kid out of the canal.

• 1:34:22Speaker 03

  And how does he celebrate, guys? Well, of course, he buys a bottle of scotch and gets fucking blotto.

• 1:34:27Griffin Newman?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:34:28Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:34:29David Sims?

  Shouldn't laugh.

• 1:34:30Speaker 03

  And we then have, um, you know, it's not overly dramatic, it's very grounded, like everything.

• 1:34:37Griffin Newman?

  Her movies are not self-serious.

• 1:34:39Speaker 03

  But he, he does, you know, he, he hits his wife. Um, it's, it's terrible in front of the children.

• 1:34:45Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:34:45Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:34:46Griffin Newman?

  It's just, you know, this film is about people who are just kind of stuck in dead ends.

• 1:34:51Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:34:52Griffin Newman?

  Right? This, this feeling of there is no other place to go, and, and this is what it is.

• 1:34:59Speaker 03

  And I guess this is also in the, there's the really lovely dance sequence that you referenced at the beginning of the episode. I think that's kind of in this, because then after they get into a fight, they, you see that they figure it out and dance together.

• 1:35:16David Sims?

  The, the wife and the husband. You know, there's, there's nice stuff, there's nasty stuff. Yeah. Do you ever see Sweet Sixteen, another Ken Loach film? No. Really good film, also set in Glasgow. Or around there, also about like a teenage boy. Kind of dealing with whatever, you know, uh, life. That, and that one I think is present day, but two thousand two, same time, good movie. It was just like living in Britain at the time. There's like the various strands of British movie. There's old ladies have tea in a village type movies, right? Like when those will travel. Yeah. Like those get ported over to America. That's twenty million dollars Samuel Goldwyn films. Immediately.

• 1:35:58David Sims?

  You know, Jane Austen, Charles, you know, period stuff where people are, oh, like, you know, that's happening. Or like, oh, the, uh, the. They always have that thing on their neck, that, you know. The rough? Yeah. I mean, that's a certain era, but yeah, they did do that for a while in Britain. You know, like, maybe you should bring in a rough. I've been thinking about it, you know, and we'll see, we'll see. Twenty twenty six. Become a rough rider? There's the kind of Full Monty influence, kind of like, these guys are doing something silly. A couple of mad lads. Right, right. That also is hoping to travel, that's hoping to get thrown over the pond. And then there's this thing where it's like, yeah, well, life fucking sucks here, man.

• 1:36:40David Sims?

  You live in a council estate and someone's drunk and no one can understand anything anyone's saying. Everyone has lice. The, the lice stuff in this. Did you guys ever have, had lice? I did. Yeah, I did. And I, I, it's so. Yeah. I think I was eleven or maybe ten, I was in primary school, it was in Britain. Yeah. And it's still so visceral for me, that, that feeling of like, being in the bathroom and your mom like combing your hair with a fucking metal comb. Yeah. And like being like, look, you know, and like you see all this shit. I like that he has the moment of they remove the lice and he's like, I won't say it.

• 1:37:15Speaker 03

  Yeah. I have another visceral thing, and this is something you guys probably didn't deal with, but also ticks. I have a very visceral memory of a-

• 1:37:22David Sims?

  That's a real, you know, if you're playing outdoors thing.

• 1:37:25Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:37:26Griffin Newman?

  Uh, my, my mom had Lyme disease that hit her really hard for a couple of years, where she was largely bedridden. So the, the specter of ticks loomed large. And that's why I pursued the role on the TV show so aggressively, so I could kind of, uh, take back the word and refocus the trauma into something real. Everything I just said is real. Go on, Ben.

• 1:37:48Speaker 03

  I just wanted to say, but the way that you get a tick off, at least this is how my dad did it, is-

• 1:37:53Griffin Newman?

  Match.

• 1:37:53Speaker 03

  Yep. Lit a match.

• 1:37:54Griffin Newman?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:37:55Speaker 03

  Blow it out, and then they press it on the tick, so it will release.

• 1:37:59David Sims?

  Kind of similar to like a leech. You wanna, you ever got a leech? Which only happens to those kids who stand by me.

• 1:38:05Speaker 03

  Well, you guys did that, right? That's you bloodlet to treat, you know, a cold, a common cold.

• 1:38:10David Sims?

  Like tutor medicine too, where they're like, "The problem is in your blood. We need all that blood out of your body right away."

• 1:38:17Griffin Newman?

  And that's also why David so aggressively pursued a co-starring role on the TV series The Leech. So he could work through-

• 1:38:25Speaker 03

  David, the legal-

• 1:38:27Griffin Newman?

  David's applauding and giving me two thumbs up.

• 1:38:29David Sims?

  The legal documents are piling up. We're being sued by leeches? Just, just those guys.

• 1:38:48Griffin Newman?

  Uh, Barry Jenkins.

• 1:38:50David Sims?

  Sure.

• 1:38:50Griffin Newman?

  His Criterion Closet video, which is, uh, pretty early on, and I feel like the, the closet being a thing.

• 1:38:57David Sims?

  Sure.

• 1:38:58Griffin Newman?

  He like pulls out the Rat Catcher DVD, had not yet done the Blu-ray release, and says like, "This is the first Criterion that Barry Jenkins ever owned."

• 1:39:09David Sims?

  Wow.

• 1:39:09Griffin Newman?

  Which I like that phrasing of.

• 1:39:11Speaker 03

  And it is-

• 1:39:11Griffin Newman?

  The third person, but he does point to it, and he kind of explains why it was like a seismic, life-changing experience, when, I don't know, he got that film from his university library, or a teacher handed it to him. Um, but you see a lot of- Influence from this on Moonlight, I think.

• 1:39:31David Sims?

  Hundred percent.

• 1:39:34David Sims?

  Just even just that start, the way Moonlight starts, where it's in those kind of abandoned houses in that neighborhood in Miami.

• 1:39:41Griffin Newman?

  In the cut.

• 1:39:41David Sims?

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 1:39:43Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, all, yes. It it just feels like this movie's influence is quietly larger.

• 1:39:50David Sims?

  It's a good ass movie.

• 1:39:51Griffin Newman?

  Moonlight is pretty fucking terrific.

• 1:39:54David Sims?

  PFG.

• 1:39:55Griffin Newman?

  I feel like, is it already starting to?

• 1:39:57David Sims?

  Underrated.

• 1:39:58Griffin Newman?

  Uh, get a little forgotten?

• 1:39:59David Sims?

  Yeah, not forgotten. I just think it's underrated. I mean, you know, and Barry fucking made a TV show that unfortunately no one saw.

• 1:40:07Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 1:40:07David Sims?

  Like because of both, it's a TV show, people struggle with that and.

• 1:40:11Griffin Newman?

  Followed by a Lion King sequel that unfortunately too many people saw.

• 1:40:15David Sims?

  What is the show? The Underground Railroad.

• 1:40:17Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:40:18David Sims?

  Which is very, very good. It's just like one of those things where it's like, it came out right in the pandemic was hap- early pandemic and you know.

• 1:40:24Griffin Newman?

  But it does make it feel like, I love Beale Street. I think it's incredible.

• 1:40:28David Sims?

  Incredible.

• 1:40:30Griffin Newman?

  But then it's like.

• 1:40:31David Sims?

  Been a long time since Barry's kind of been at like the top of the convo.

• 1:40:35Griffin Newman?

  It feels like we're waiting for the next film in that run and it's been two other things. Uh, no, Moonlight, I I think is one of the best American films ever. It's so fucking cool that it won Best Picture.

• 1:40:47David Sims?

  Crazy.

• 1:40:48Griffin Newman?

  We've talked about this before, but like the weirdness of that ceremony and how it all went down. I do think also tends to overshadow how crazy it is that it won Best Picture in a good way. You know, versus like Parasite having that same triumphant moment of like, oh my God, the good thing won.

• 1:41:05David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 1:41:05Griffin Newman?

  But that just being like unimpeded by any drama.

• 1:41:09David Sims?

  Yeah, there was a bit of drama with, with uh, my two favorite Oscar wins of all time, Moonlight and King Richard. I honestly, Bill Simmons was doing the most rewatchable sports movies of the 21st century with Sean on his, on the rewatchables. And he brought up King Richard and they were both like, this movie would be a sort of like

• 1:41:29Griffin Newman?

  A hundred percent.

• 1:41:29David Sims?

  nicely remembered, three and a half star fun sports movie if he fucking hadn't slapped

• 1:41:35Griffin Newman?

  Unbelievably watchable.

• 1:41:36David Sims?

  Like, just like, you know, not, not like people would be like, wow, one of the great movies, but like, people would just be like, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. King Richard's alright.

• 1:41:42Griffin Newman?

  Absolute TNT classic.

• 1:41:43David Sims?

  Yes.

• 1:41:44Griffin Newman?

  I remember saying to you, has any movie ever lost cultural value faster?

• 1:41:50David Sims?

  Like, within seconds, you mean?

• 1:41:51Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:41:52David Sims?

  Yes. I mean, probably, I don't know.

• 1:41:54Griffin Newman?

  It's so weird. Like, it's like, OJ Simpson murdering people did not tarnish the naked gun as much as the fact that it's like, him winning that Oscar and then being tied to that moment, which then tied to that movie, then we're like, we're all just gonna agree to pretend that movie didn't exist, much like Creed 3. I know this is a point you made, but like Creed 3, for, like, made like, $300 million worldwide and six weeks later, it was like, so we've all promised to never speak of this again?

• 1:42:20David Sims?

  I love that movie.

• 1:42:21Griffin Newman?

  It's a very good movie, but a movie that also, in another universe, I could imagine myself rewatching all the time. And instead, it feels like an intentional queue up.

• 1:42:30David Sims?

  Yeah, we should watch it. Um, should we watch Creed 2, too, which isn't that good, but is a fun sports movie?

• 1:42:36Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, I, I remember Creed 2 being

• 1:42:38David Sims?

  I like the ending a lot.

• 1:42:39Griffin Newman?

  Functional.

• 1:42:40David Sims?

  I like the ending a lot. I think Dolph just crushes that.

• 1:42:42Griffin Newman?

  I was gonna say the Stallone Dolph restaurant scene.

• 1:42:45David Sims?

  I like all that shit. I just love Dolph. I'm basically always here for Dolph.

• 1:42:49Griffin Newman?

  Yeah. Remember he was the king of Atlantis?

• 1:42:52David Sims?

  Yeah, of course. Uh, I believe he was the king of a specific clan.

• 1:42:56Griffin Newman?

  He rode a seahorse.

• 1:42:57David Sims?

  Yeah, he did. Oh, oh, oh.

• 1:42:59Griffin Newman?

  Beautiful flowing ground here.

• 1:43:00David Sims?

  I'm, I'm well aware that he did that.

• 1:43:02Griffin Newman?

  We used to be a proper country.

• 1:43:05David Sims?

  We used to be a proper sunken subcontinent. That's Atlantis, I'm referring.

• 1:43:09Griffin Newman?

  You see that thing where James Wan was like, I could direct the Avatar sequels, James, if you don't want to. Yeah.

• 1:43:14David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 1:43:15Griffin Newman?

  Like, I, I want James Cameron directing Avatar, like, sequels. That is the first person to throw their hat into the ring where I'm like, not a disaster.

• 1:43:25David Sims?

  Uh, so, um, the thing with Kenny is he does sort of almost drown himself, but then late in the film, he just starts taunting James about how he killed Ryan.

• 1:43:38Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:43:38David Sims?

  In this sort of out of nowhere way.

• 1:43:40Griffin Newman?

  Poking, truly poking.

• 1:43:42David Sims?

  And that provokes this sort of ambiguous thing at the end of like, he sort of throws himself into the water.

• 1:43:48Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:43:49David Sims?

  And you're, then you see him happy and then you see him in the water and you're sort of like, you know, sort of a succession situation, Jeremy Strong floating in the pool there.

• 1:43:56Griffin Newman?

  Absolutely, which I heard was normal to shoot. Um, he, well, yes, there, there is ambiguity of whether it is, uh, to some degree, a fantasy sequence, him placing himself in the memory to process it.

• 1:44:11David Sims?

  Right, right.

• 1:44:11Griffin Newman?

  In the other boy's, uh, ill-fitting shoes.

• 1:44:14David Sims?

  Him killing himself.

• 1:44:15Griffin Newman?

  But it's also like, the imagery continues over the credits, but he is alive. He is alert, he is moving, his eyes are open. It is what makes it a little more fantastical, feel a little less literal.

• 1:44:27David Sims?

  It cuts to black and it says, James will return in Avengers Doomsday. So I figured he was coming back.

• 1:44:32Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, he is Ratcatcher one. DC owns Ratcatcher two.

• 1:44:38Griffin Newman?

  I, I, my, uh, my interest, excitement level for Doomsday is pretty low, but I will say, I think.

• 1:44:47David Sims?

  What about that one trailer where Captain America tried to sell you Cialis?

• 1:44:51Griffin Newman?

  I think giving us.

• 1:44:52David Sims?

  That's what it looks like.

• 1:44:53Griffin Newman?

  Blank will return in Avengers Doomsday. I know that's a thing that's existed since James Bond, right?

• 1:44:58David Sims?

  It has, right, of course.

• 1:44:59Griffin Newman?

  But there's something about the self-importance of those trailers versus how unexciting they are and ending.

• 1:45:05David Sims?

  It's also just like where they're like, Thor will return. And I'm like, likely place for him to be.

• 1:45:10Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:45:10David Sims?

  An Avengers movie.

• 1:45:11Griffin Newman?

  You're fucking shitting me.

• 1:45:12David Sims?

  Yeah, you want me to what? Just like call, like, should I have a town meeting to tell them Thor's in an Avenger movie?

• 1:45:19Griffin Newman?

  Greta Garbo will return in Avengers Doomsday. You have my interest.

• 1:45:22David Sims?

  Right, the Polar Express will return?

• 1:45:24Griffin Newman?

  Long retired, even longer dead. That would get my, your nose is bleeding?

• 1:45:29David Sims?

  Happens sometimes.

• 1:45:30Griffin Newman?

  Do you need tissues?

• 1:45:31David Sims?

  We'll see. It's just a little.

• 1:45:33Griffin Newman?

  This is interesting.

• 1:45:34David Sims?

  Happens sometimes.

• 1:45:35Griffin Newman?

  I think Blankwell Return Avengers Doomsday is really valuable for the culture. I also think, much like Moonlight, in this analogy, Blankwell Return Avengers Doomsday is Parasite. And we're forgetting that just a little bit earlier, much like Moonlight, we were introduced to the chairs.

• 1:45:55David Sims?

  I know.

• 1:45:56Griffin Newman?

  And I think the chairs have to come back.

• 1:45:58David Sims?

  You want them to do more chairs?

• 1:45:59Griffin Newman?

  I think the chairs are one of those valuable bit formats we have in the movie sphere.

• 1:46:04David Sims?

  Do you think Blankwell Return has replaced the chairs?

• 1:46:07Griffin Newman?

  I think a little bit, and it might just be that we're in a moment of people being so excited by Blankwell Return.

• 1:46:13David Sims?

  That freaking X-Men thing.

• 1:46:14Griffin Newman?

  And we'll loop back around to the chairs.

• 1:46:15David Sims?

  It's not just that they're like, oh, Patrick Stewart will finally send off Professor X. I'm like, he's fucking died on screen as Professor.

• 1:46:21Griffin Newman?

  Three times.

• 1:46:21David Sims?

  Literally, like, already three times.

• 1:46:22Griffin Newman?

  They keep doing it.

• 1:46:23David Sims?

  Maybe four.

• 1:46:24Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:46:24David Sims?

  And, but it's just also that the trailer is like Magneto and Professor X being like, "Death comes for us all." And I'm like, "Yeah, you fucking should know it comes for you all. It comes to you every five minutes." "It came for you in a film directed by Brett Ratner. That's how long ago it came for you." Brett Ratner was the choice to direct it.

• 1:46:41Griffin Newman?

  But this time, they're going to communicate this to each other while playing chess. That's something you've never seen in an X-Men movie before.

• 1:46:50David Sims?

  Because it's like, he dies in X-Men: The Last Stand. He gets exploded.

• 1:46:54Griffin Newman?

  Uh, Professor X?

• 1:46:55David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 1:46:55Griffin Newman?

  And then spoilers for X-Men: The Last Stand, at the end, he returns in someone else's body. His consciousness is transferred over.

• 1:47:02David Sims?

  Don't worry about it.

• 1:47:03Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:47:03David Sims?

  Uh, and then he, um...

• 1:47:06Griffin Newman?

  Then we go to First Class, and then we're dealing with younger prequel, Charles.

• 1:47:09David Sims?

  Sure, sure, sure. But then he died, he doesn't die, I checked, in Days of Future Past. It's like a bullet or an energy ray is about to hit him when, like, time is stopped. But he's almost dead.

• 1:47:20Griffin Newman?

  But in Future Past, somehow he got his old body back.

• 1:47:23David Sims?

  They do not address it.

• 1:47:24Griffin Newman?

  He's still alive.

• 1:47:25David Sims?

  They do not address it at all.

• 1:47:28Griffin Newman?

  We know he beat death the first time by moving to a guy in a comatose state.

• 1:47:32David Sims?

  Then don't fucking address it. Don't worry about it. Logan, of course, he dies.

• 1:47:37Griffin Newman?

  Big time.

• 1:47:37David Sims?

  But that's a sort of alternate future.

• 1:47:39Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:47:39David Sims?

  And then same with Multiverse of Madness. Some version of him gets his neck fucking snapped by Wanda Maximoff.

• 1:47:46Griffin Newman?

  So you're like, it's truly three.

• 1:47:47David Sims?

  I've seen the guy die as Professor X. I've seen him die in other stuff, too. He's Patrick Stewart. He's in a lot of movies. I watched him die on stage once.

• 1:47:55Griffin Newman?

  It is...

• 1:47:55David Sims?

  He was playing fucking Mac.

• 1:47:57Griffin Newman?

  It is so funny that Logan, they were just like, "Look, the stakes are this time, we're actually ending it for good."

• 1:48:04David Sims?

  Farewell!

• 1:48:05Griffin Newman?

  They're gonna die and they're gonna stay dead because let's face it, these actors are getting old. They don't want to keep playing these characters. And you're like, "They brought back both of those guys."

• 1:48:15David Sims?

  Multiple times. Patrick Sorkin is- They've killed them again! Eighty-five! That is old! But, his buns are the best. McKellen is eighty-six and he's getting on stage and he's like, "I'll do Gandalf one more time." And I'm like, "Bitch! Chill out! Sit down! Take a rest!"

• 1:48:35Griffin Newman?

  Didn't he do a play in the West End where he like, uh, had like a serious leg injury?

• 1:48:40David Sims?

  He, yeah, he banged himself up in some way because he's fucking old!

• 1:48:43Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 1:48:44David Sims?

  I'm not saying he doesn't, I'm not saying like, "Retire bitch." Like, it's fine, do what you want, but it's just, you know, manage your health, sir.

• 1:48:51Griffin Newman?

  I just like that, Ben, you know, they're making a film called Lord of the Rings, colon, The Hunt for Gollum.

• 1:48:56David Sims?

  They find him in Lord of the Rings. You can watch those-

• 1:48:59Speaker 03

  No, I have not heard about this.

• 1:49:00Griffin Newman?

  This is a movie that takes place in like, a one-inch margin between stories we've already told.

• 1:49:07David Sims?

  I think it's nominally between The Hobbits and The Lords of the Rings, yes.

• 1:49:10Griffin Newman?

  But, but we understood exactly what Gollum was doing right before this and right after this.

• 1:49:14David Sims?

  They tell you! There's like a monologue that tells you.

• 1:49:18Griffin Newman?

  You'll never believe who's directing this movie. Why, Andy Serkis, of course, the actor who portrays the role of Gollum, which basically seems like it was the only way that they could get Peter Jackson to sign off and approve on another Middle Earth thing.

• 1:49:36David Sims?

  That's sort of like, with his, his aesthetic will be kind of borrowed or whatever.

• 1:49:41Griffin Newman?

  And that he'll give it like, the stamp of approval.

• 1:49:43David Sims?

  And like McKellen's in it, Elijah Wood's gonna show up.

• 1:49:45Griffin Newman?

  The Amazon series, he's been like, "Don't fucking associate that shit with me."

• 1:49:49David Sims?

  Why wouldn't he want to be associated with the Rings of Power?

• 1:49:52Griffin Newman?

  Stick!

• 1:49:52David Sims?

  One of the most electrifying fucking shows ever made.

• 1:49:56Griffin Newman?

  But his buddy Andy Serkis, he's like, "This is a nice opportunity for him." They start announcing, maybe some of the other actors return. You're like, huh. It has been over twenty-five years. Then recently, story comes back- Viggo Mortensen will not be returning?

• 1:50:10David Sims?

  Right, even though Aragorn, I believe, is the one hunting for Gollum largely.

• 1:50:13Griffin Newman?

  Aragorn will be recast because Viggo Mortensen is too old to reprise the role.

• 1:50:18David Sims?

  Which he is.

• 1:50:19Griffin Newman?

  Correct. And then one week later, they announced Ian McKellen is returning.

• 1:50:23David Sims?

  The whole thing with Gandalf is it's like, he is old.

• 1:50:26Griffin Newman?

  I get it.

• 1:50:26David Sims?

  And so they, I think they just keep thinking they can get away. And they got away with it in Hobbit. The thing he admitted recently-

• 1:50:32Griffin Newman?

  But even that was 15 years ago.

• 1:50:34David Sims?

  It was a while ago. It was 10. About 10 years ago. Wow. Uh, maybe a little more. Um, the, he admitted recently, he was giving some interview about Lord of the Rings. Cause I guess it's, well, no, it's not even an interview. It was the 25th anniversary-

• 1:50:46Griffin Newman?

  Just every year, the Christmas, everyone watches-

• 1:50:47David Sims?

  No, it's the 25th anniversary this year of Fellowship. Right.

• 1:50:49Griffin Newman?

  Oh, yes. It will be 25 in December. Yeah.

• 1:50:52David Sims?

  And he gave some interview where he was like, you know, the like, third scene I shot is saying goodbye to Frodo. Like, because of the way those movies worked. And I was saying to Peter Jackson, like, what are my emotions? I don't, like, I haven't done anything with this guy yet. Jackson was like, oh, you know, you feel sad. Like, you're saying goodbye to an old friend. He's like, okay. He's like, you watched that scene? You should, you're seeing a blank face, man. I had nothing.

• 1:51:15Griffin Newman?

  It's good acting, though.

• 1:51:16David Sims?

  It's good acting.

• 1:51:17Griffin Newman?

  The Hobbit and Unexpected Journey came out December 2012.

• 1:51:21David Sims?

  12.

• 1:51:21Griffin Newman?

  It's 12, 13, 14.

• 1:51:23David Sims?

  The reason they're making The Hunt for Gollum is you look up the fucking grosses of those movies that are universally ignored. No one talks about them. They're like, billion, billion, billion.

• 1:51:31Griffin Newman?

  There was a perfunctory billion dollars every, I described those movies as ultimate jury duty cinema.

• 1:51:36David Sims?

  We gotta, we gotta do that.

• 1:51:37Griffin Newman?

  We gotta do it. We gotta do it. Um, but yes, anyway, there's gonna be this ungodly Gollum movie in which some of the actors return, some of them don't, some of them are de-aged, some of them are recast. Like, you're gonna have, like, waxy, de-aged Orlando Bloom standing next to some new guy playing Aragorn.

• 1:51:59David Sims?

  Cause Orlando Bloom, he'll put the ears on for anything. They were like, this movie's called Legolas Takes a Shit. He's like, put, put the ears on.

• 1:52:05Griffin Newman?

  I think he's had them surgically welded on. I think other movies have to shave them down.

• 1:52:10David Sims?

  Exactly.

• 1:52:12David Sims?

  Yeah, he has to take him off to do another episode of Easy.

• 1:52:18David Sims?

  Interesting that we're talking about Peter Jackson, who of course, took a job from Lynn Ramsey to make The Lovely Bones. I mean, he didn't steal the job.

• 1:52:24Griffin Newman?

  Are you familiar with The Lovely Bones, Ben?

• 1:52:26David Sims?

  I'm not. So The Lovely Bones is a bestselling novel, Ben, written in the early 2000s by Alice Sebold, that was a big hit.

• 1:52:34Griffin Newman?

  It is about a young girl who is murdered by a child sexual predator.

• 1:52:39David Sims?

  Jesus.

• 1:52:39Griffin Newman?

  And she, in the afterlife.

• 1:52:40David Sims?

  It gets worse.

• 1:52:41Griffin Newman?

  Is trying to solve her own murder.

• 1:52:43David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 1:52:43Griffin Newman?

  And communicate with her parents from the beyond. It was this wildly successful, beloved, acclaimed book that people were like, but how the fuck do you adapt this? This is so intense. And it was like her magnum opus dream project.

• 1:52:55David Sims?

  It was Ramsey was like, I have a take and I can do it.

• 1:52:58Griffin Newman?

  And the writer approved. Deep into development.

• 1:53:02David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 1:53:02Griffin Newman?

  Was pretty close to like getting it up and running. And then basically Peter Jackson snipes it from her. At the moment where Peter Jackson has so much fucking power.

• 1:53:11David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 1:53:11Griffin Newman?

  That if he's interested, the novelist goes like, sorry, I'm breaking our contract.

• 1:53:15David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 1:53:16Griffin Newman?

  And Peter Jackson makes it and it's a disaster.

• 1:53:18David Sims?

  It's one of the worst. It's the worst film he ever made.

• 1:53:20Griffin Newman?

  It's but so there's an insult to injury of, you know, my movie was taken from me and then fucked up by doing the exact opposite of what I would have done.

• 1:53:28David Sims?

  That sucks.

• 1:53:28Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:53:29David Sims?

  And I love Peter Jackson's films. He's done a lot of them and I'm confident in saying that it is, that film is worse than the Three Hobbit movies.

• 1:53:36Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:53:37David Sims?

  I would watch those Three Hobbit movies any day of the week. I'm never fucking watching Lovely Bones again unless we do Peter Jackson on Blank Check.

• 1:53:43Griffin Newman?

  Which we gotta do.

• 1:53:44David Sims?

  Which we'll do someday. Uh, Rat Catcher, um, yeah, really good.

• 1:53:48Griffin Newman?

  It's a great movie. She's made five great films, in my opinion.

• 1:53:51David Sims?

  Film premiered at the Cannes Film Festival.

• 1:53:55David Sims?

  And it was a sort of a buzzy hit.

• 1:53:59David Sims?

  Was really praised. I think it was kind of that like, this is a Ken Loach, Mike Lee kind of thing. It's not some sort of prepackaged British shit. That's like, you know, whatever.

• 1:54:09Griffin Newman?

  This is a new voice.

• 1:54:10David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 1:54:11Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:54:12David Sims?

  She says. And she's addressing what I'm saying. A lot of film people misconstrue this film as social realism. It's not really that. Tried to avoid those cliches. Like, and I think she's right. It's more like you're in a boy's head kind of film.

• 1:54:24Griffin Newman?

  I say it many times across this mini series. I will keep saying it. I think no one is better at depicting the inner life than Lynn Ramsey.

• 1:54:32David Sims?

  Here's a great.

• 1:54:33Griffin Newman?

  I think that is like the great project of her work.

• 1:54:35David Sims?

  Here's a great quote from Lynn Ramsey. I'm just gonna read a verbatim quote. "I wish I'd never mentioned Bresson. I'm not trying to make an homage or a pastiche like all those Tarantino copycats, those film boys who are just making wank."

• 1:54:47Griffin Newman?

  Mouche, Ben, is, in my opinion, probably one of the 10 greatest films ever made. If I were handed a Sight and Sound ballot, you know, if Sight and Sound starts sucking ass and they handed me a ballot, it would be in my 10, no question. And it's a little parallel to this in that it's about like a young French girl in a small country town who is just faced with indignity after indignity.

• 1:55:13David Sims?

  It's a tough watch.

• 1:55:14Griffin Newman?

  And it's kind of her stoic suffering across this. But they are wildly different movies.

• 1:55:19David Sims?

  Oh, yeah, definitely.

• 1:55:20Griffin Newman?

  Wildly.

• 1:55:20David Sims?

  Got it. Uh, film came out, made about a million dollars. Came out in Britain in 99, came out in America about a year later into like October 2000. And we are going to do the box office game for October 13th, 2000, Griffin.

• 1:55:31Griffin Newman?

  Okay. So Rat Catcher's number one, it opens at 15?

• 1:55:33David Sims?

  Yeah, I know. This film opened on two screens and made $10,000. I'd love to know which screens, honestly. What, New York and D Theater had it or whatever?

• 1:55:42Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, yeah. It's like an Angelica.

• 1:55:44David Sims?

  Possibly. It was a long time ago. Number one at the box office, Griffin?

• 1:55:47Griffin Newman?

  Give, I'm sorry, give me the date again?

• 1:55:49David Sims?

  October 13th, 2000. Number one at the box office is a holder for, it was last week's number one as well. It's a comedy.

• 1:55:57Griffin Newman?

  It's a comedy.

• 1:55:58David Sims?

  A hit comedy.

• 1:55:58Griffin Newman?

  It's a hit comedy in October?

• 1:56:01David Sims?

  2000.

• 1:56:01Griffin Newman?

  2000.

• 1:56:04David Sims?

  So, you know, Bill Clinton's still president, nine eleven, hasn't happened.

• 1:56:08Griffin Newman?

  How long has it been held over?

• 1:56:10David Sims?

  It, this is its second week. It has made fifty-eight million dollars in two weeks. It's on its way to making one hundred and sixty-six domestic and three thirty worldwide. It's a huge hit.

• 1:56:19Griffin Newman?

  That's quite big.

• 1:56:20David Sims?

  It spawned sequels.

• 1:56:21Griffin Newman?

  Okay.

• 1:56:22David Sims?

  It's a movie star movie, and it's getting a sequel this year.

• 1:56:26Griffin Newman?

  Oh, oh, this is Meet the Parents.

• 1:56:29David Sims?

  Stiller and De Niro.

• 1:56:30Griffin Newman?

  That is really funny to consider these movies opening the same. Well, no, I guess this was its second weekend. Yeah. Fuck her in law, Ben.

• 1:56:40David Sims?

  Yep. Yeah, not a franchise I respond to extensively.

• 1:56:44Griffin Newman?

  Ben, calm down. Don't get too excited on Mike.

• 1:56:47David Sims?

  Number two at the box, so you like Meet the Parents at the time?

• 1:56:50Griffin Newman?

  At the time, at the time, I loved it, and I rewatched it a couple of years ago, and I think it is fine. And I think the sequels are bad. But at the time, I was like, that's one of the finest movies ever made.

• 1:57:01David Sims?

  There was such hype.

• 1:57:02Griffin Newman?

  It is solid. It is fully solid.

• 1:57:05David Sims?

  Number two, the box. You can milk anything. Yeah, could you milk me? He says that. He's talking about his nipples.

• 1:57:10Griffin Newman?

  That is pretty funny.

• 1:57:12David Sims?

  It's kind of funny.

• 1:57:13Griffin Newman?

  It is pretty funny.

• 1:57:14David Sims?

  It's just one of those movies where I'm like, you haven't successfully convinced me that Ben Stiller would want to fucking talk about nipples at the dinner table. It's just like all this sort of like wild stuff that happens in Meet the Parents.

• 1:57:24Griffin Newman?

  Interesting.

• 1:57:25David Sims?

  Every time, I'm just kind of like, he wouldn't do this. But whatever, doesn't matter.

• 1:57:28Griffin Newman?

  I guess it is kind of like a turning point in the mainstreaming of cringe comedy. But the mainstream of cringe comedy is always predicated on someone being a little bit more embarrassing than their talent. Intelligence would suggest they would be in a public setting.

• 1:57:41David Sims?

  It's a year after American Pie, it has this gross-out streak, and like two years after Mary, you know?

• 1:57:45Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:57:46David Sims?

  And it's like, it's a very mild gross-out streak compared to those movies. But like, you can see it, like where they're like, yeah, we need these comedy set pieces that pop, like in some way.

• 1:57:56Griffin Newman?

  But also, he's not an awkward teenager, he is an adult man.

• 1:57:59David Sims?

  He is. I think the funniest thing from what I remember in Meet the Parents is when he does the volleyball. He like jumps out of the pool and smashes the volleyball into a woman's face and like, her nose is like bleeding like crazy. Like, that is kind of like good, waspy, you know, like he went too far. He like that, that works for me as like big comedy.

• 1:58:19Griffin Newman?

  Owen Wilson is great in Meet the Parents, and it is fascinating that they just completely changed his characters for the sequel.

• 1:58:26David Sims?

  Right, they, they get it in the first one.

• 1:58:28Griffin Newman?

  Well, no, in the first one, he is like preppy, annoying, country-club, golden-boy boyfriend. And then he shows up at the end of the second one, and now he's a hippie.

• 1:58:36David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 1:58:36Griffin Newman?

  And the movie doesn't go like, "Man, this guy changed." The movie's like, "You remember him, right?" It's like a mass psychosis thing.

• 1:58:43David Sims?

  Right.

• 1:58:43Griffin Newman?

  And then the third one, he's like a co-lead, and it's all about how he's like, "Oh, natural."

• 1:58:48David Sims?

  Right, right.

• 1:58:49Griffin Newman?

  Anyway, fucker in law.

• 1:58:50David Sims?

  Number two at the box office is a sports, uh, film?

• 1:58:54Griffin Newman?

  Remember The Titans?

• 1:58:55David Sims?

  That's right.

• 1:58:56Griffin Newman?

  Quite a big hit.

• 1:58:57David Sims?

  Bois Yackens, Remember the Titans, a pretty watchable movie. Um...

• 1:59:02Griffin Newman?

  I wanna say-

• 1:59:02David Sims?

  Made 115 domestic, Denzel Washington as the star.

• 1:59:05Griffin Newman?

  I wanna say that was maybe Denzel's first $100 million movie? I remember that kind of being trumped. Well, no, cuz Pelican Brief.

• 1:59:13David Sims?

  Can't be true.

• 1:59:13Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:59:14David Sims?

  But let's see, let's just see, uh, what Denzel's sort of like domestic takes were in the 90s. Because he was a very consistent-

• 1:59:22Griffin Newman?

  He was.

• 1:59:23David Sims?

  -successful actor, but I feel like his movies tended to make-

• 1:59:25Griffin Newman?

  It was like a 70, 80, 50, 60.

• 1:59:27David Sims?

  Less than that, but, uh, The Pelican Brief made around 100.

• 1:59:31Griffin Newman?

  Okay, yeah.

• 1:59:32David Sims?

  And this was the second.

• 1:59:33Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:59:33David Sims?

  So it's just two.

• 1:59:34Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:59:35David Sims?

  And of course, Pelican Brief had the, um, you know, the Julia Roberts bump.

• 1:59:38Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 1:59:39David Sims?

  Number three at the box office, now this is why this was, this is a crazy box office weekend, is three new movies.

• 1:59:44Griffin Newman?

  Oh, wow. Okay.

• 1:59:45David Sims?

  So number three is a-

• 1:59:47Griffin Newman?

  All opening below the holdover.

• 1:59:48David Sims?

  Yeah, so, oh, and I should say Meet the Parents is 21 mil, Remember the Titans 13.

• 1:59:53Griffin Newman?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:59:53David Sims?

  So those are holdovers. Number three, opening to 7.9 million, it's a horror film, uh, Forgotten.

• 2:00:00Griffin Newman?

  Forgotten.

• 2:00:01David Sims?

  Only memorable for who the director is. It's a first film from a director who I don't think ever worked as a director again, but is a legendary cinematographer.

• 2:00:11Griffin Newman?

  Is a legendary cinematographer. Oh, it's, it's the Janusz movie.

• 2:00:15David Sims?

  And what's that movie called?

• 2:00:16Griffin Newman?

  And that movie is called, ah, fuck, it is Winona Ryder and Ben Chaplin?

• 2:00:21David Sims?

  You are correct. It is the third in three movies in three years, or two years even, of like satanic horror movies. It's the last and least after Stigmata and End of Days in 99, which were bigger hits.

• 2:00:33Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, fuck, what is this movie called?

• 2:00:35David Sims?

  You'll never remember if you don't remember.

• 2:00:36Griffin Newman?

  It doesn't have the word exit in it, does it?

• 2:00:38David Sims?

  It doesn't.

• 2:00:38Griffin Newman?

  And it doesn't have the word angels in it?

• 2:00:40David Sims?

  It doesn't.

• 2:00:41Griffin Newman?

  It doesn't?

• 2:00:41David Sims?

  It simply doesn't.

• 2:00:42Griffin Newman?

  Can you give me one of the words?

• 2:00:44David Sims?

  Lost.

• 2:00:46David Sims?

  The film is called ABC's Lost on Thursday at 9pm. No, the film is called Lost Souls.

• 2:00:51Griffin Newman?

  There we go.

• 2:00:52David Sims?

  Winona Ryder, Ben Chaplin, Philip Baker Hall. You think he plays like a really like funny sort of, sort of smart aleck?

• 2:00:59Griffin Newman?

  Book detective?

• 2:01:00David Sims?

  It's just like Philip Baker Hall. I'm like, oh, does he do a lot of bits? Or let me guess, he's a stern fucking guy who works, he's like a cop or a politician?

• 2:01:07Griffin Newman?

  Miss him.

• 2:01:08David Sims?

  Uh, Sarah Winter, Elias Codyas. Uh, John Hurt. Do you think John Hurt plays like a priest or something? He must play a fucking priest. Father Leroux.

• 2:01:15Griffin Newman?

  Whoa, whoa, whoa.

• 2:01:18David Sims?

  Oh, Philip Baker was also a priest, Philip Baker. Number three, so Lost Souls, yeah, just, uh, you know, a flopper.

• 2:01:24Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:01:25David Sims?

  Yeah. Number four, do you think Spielberg, well, he must have watched it. I think Spielberg is like, sorry, Anish.

• 2:01:30Griffin Newman?

  This was like, uh, Winona's flop era and, uh, Girl Interrupted, coming out this fall was supposed to be the comeback where everyone said like, but she's got a real big one. And then Girl Interrupted comes out and Angelina Jolie so completely overshadows her.

• 2:01:44David Sims?

  From it, yeah.

• 2:01:44Griffin Newman?

  That within two years, it's like shoplifting incident, Mr. Deeds, she's basically retired. And then she's in the wilderness until Stranger Things brought her back.

• 2:01:53David Sims?

  Yep. And there she was. Number four at the box office is a film that is a comedy film. And it is opening to 5.4 million dollars.

• 2:02:01Griffin Newman?

  Not great.

• 2:02:02David Sims?

  Which is poor.

• 2:02:02Griffin Newman?

  It's quite poor.

• 2:02:03David Sims?

  Uh, it is a film and, no, no, no, no. Everyone relax.

• 2:02:07Griffin Newman?

  Okay, okay.

• 2:02:08David Sims?

  Here's a little concept I'm gonna throw to you.

• 2:02:09Griffin Newman?

  Ben, calm.

• 2:02:10David Sims?

  You guys know Saturday Night Live, the television show?

• 2:02:13Griffin Newman?

  Uh huh.

• 2:02:13David Sims?

  What if a character from that, from a series of recurring sketches, got his own movie?

• 2:02:17Griffin Newman?

  The movie is Superstar?

• 2:02:18David Sims?

  That is wrong.

• 2:02:19Griffin Newman?

  It's The Ladies Man?

• 2:02:20David Sims?

  It's The Ladies Man!

• 2:02:22Griffin Newman?

  So Roxbury's 98, Superstar's 99, Ladies Man is 2000.

• 2:02:26David Sims?

  It's just so funny that SNL was like, every year, we guarantee, we will be releasing a movie you won't watch in theaters based on an SNL character.

• 2:02:34Griffin Newman?

  I just find it fascinating that there's like-

• 2:02:36David Sims?

  We're gonna keep trying and failing.

• 2:02:38Griffin Newman?

  Wayne's World is so huge at the beginning of the decade, right?

• 2:02:41David Sims?

  Yep.

• 2:02:41Griffin Newman?

  Wayne's World 2, they rush out, huge drop off. They're like, we kind of fucked this up.

• 2:02:45David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 2:02:45Griffin Newman?

  Then there's the rush of the other people want to get in.

• 2:02:49David Sims?

  Coneheads, it's Pat.

• 2:02:50Griffin Newman?

  And, and Stuart saves his family.

• 2:02:52David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 2:02:53Griffin Newman?

  All three colossal bombs.

• 2:02:54David Sims?

  Right.

• 2:02:55Griffin Newman?

  And then everyone's like, I guess the SNL sketch thing doesn't work. Lorne Michaels waits like five years and he's like-

• 2:03:00David Sims?

  Less, like three.

• 2:03:02Griffin Newman?

  One a year.

• 2:03:03David Sims?

  One a year, but the new guys.

• 2:03:05Griffin Newman?

  The new guys.

• 2:03:06David Sims?

  You know, that's, I feel like that's his pivot is like, okay, we're not gonna do fucking Coneheads.

• 2:03:10Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 2:03:10David Sims?

  But we, why not have, right, like.

• 2:03:12Griffin Newman?

  It's launching CAD for the new ones.

• 2:03:13David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 2:03:14Griffin Newman?

  The most fascinating thing about those movies to me, it's three films in three successive years.

• 2:03:18David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 2:03:18Griffin Newman?

  And all three of them is, are Will Ferrell as the second lead.

• 2:03:23David Sims?

  Right, right. Ferrell is the reliable glue guy.

• 2:03:26Griffin Newman?

  He did not identify that Ferrell is the leading man.

• 2:03:30David Sims?

  He didn't. And then like Zoolander.

• 2:03:32Griffin Newman?

  It's a Catan movie with Ferrell support. It's a Molly Shami movie with Ferrell support. It is a Tim Meadows movie where Ferrell's the villain.

• 2:03:39David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 2:03:39Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:03:40David Sims?

  Um, and then, uh, have you seen The Ladies Man? I've never, I don't think I've ever seen it in full.

• 2:03:46Griffin Newman?

  Reginald Hudlin.

• 2:03:47David Sims?

  Reggie Hudlin.

• 2:03:47Griffin Newman?

  I, I actually like that film.

• 2:03:49David Sims?

  Yeah, it always seemed to me.

• 2:03:50Griffin Newman?

  It's fine.

• 2:03:51David Sims?

  Like, a pretty inoffensive thing, but it was obviously a big flop.

• 2:03:54Griffin Newman?

  Uh, yeah, I, I think it's interesting and I think it's got some like character to it. It does totally work. Ferrell is, you might be surprised to hear, very funny.

• 2:04:03David Sims?

  And it pops in it?

• 2:04:03Griffin Newman?

  And Tim Meadows, one of our favorite people.

• 2:04:05David Sims?

  Loved him.

• 2:04:06Griffin Newman?

  Um, yeah, Superstar's the one I struggle with. It's Bruce McCullough directed it.

• 2:04:12David Sims?

  Have not seen since.

• 2:04:13Griffin Newman?

  It's like very strange and sad.

• 2:04:15David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 2:04:16Griffin Newman?

  It's like, it's vague Rat Catcher vibes.

• 2:04:19David Sims?

  Um, number five at the box office, opening to 5.3 million dollars. It's gonna go on to make 22.

• 2:04:24Griffin Newman?

  Okay.

• 2:04:25David Sims?

  Which basically is its budget.

• 2:04:26Griffin Newman?

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:04:27David Sims?

  And it's going to go on to get two Oscar nominations. So it's sort of like a soft success, but I think they were hoping for a bigger success.

• 2:04:34Griffin Newman?

  Is it an American film?

• 2:04:35David Sims?

  It's an American political drama. Sort of like a quasi thriller kind of drama.

• 2:04:40Griffin Newman?

  It's not The Contender, is it?

• 2:04:41David Sims?

  It sure is. Rod Lurie's The Contender, starring Joan Allen and Gary Oldman and Jeff Bridges.

• 2:04:45Griffin Newman?

  In my memory, because it connected with Oscar voters, I thought that film opened later in the year and made more money.

• 2:04:53David Sims?

  It was not. It was, it was kind of like a mild flop.

• 2:04:57Griffin Newman?

  Interesting.

• 2:04:57David Sims?

  And honestly.

• 2:04:58Griffin Newman?

  And an early dream work.

• 2:04:59David Sims?

  It got kind of like middling reviews and it was just one of, and Gary Oldman's obviously one of the big acting plays from it.

• 2:05:06Griffin Newman?

  That was the thing.

• 2:05:06David Sims?

  Didn't get the nom. He got like a SAG nom.

• 2:05:08Griffin Newman?

  But there was this whole press conference.

• 2:05:10David Sims?

  He didn't get it because he's right wing, like, you know, he's being canceled for his beliefs.

• 2:05:14Griffin Newman?

  No, you, do you?

• 2:05:15David Sims?

  No, no, remind me.

• 2:05:16Griffin Newman?

  It was more intense than that. He like wrote an op ed disowning the film that he produced and developed. And then brought Rod Lurie onto because he thought the film was gonna be more even handed.

• 2:05:27David Sims?

  Right. And he is like a thunderous anti-abortion villain.

• 2:05:31Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 2:05:31David Sims?

  He's like the fucking Speaker of the House or whatever he is in that.

• 2:05:34Griffin Newman?

  And he's like, this movie has an axe to grind and this is not what I wanted.

• 2:05:37David Sims?

  Like it's about him like dragging this woman over the coals for, uh, you know, um, a sex scandal and.

• 2:05:43Griffin Newman?

  But he basically was like, I want to divorce my work from this movie was getting precursor noms and it was a big surprise.

• 2:05:50David Sims?

  I take it back, he didn't.

• 2:05:51Griffin Newman?

  Did he get a globe nom?

• 2:05:52David Sims?

  He got, uh, uh, no, he did get a SAG nom. Sorry, yeah, the SAG nom.

• 2:05:56Griffin Newman?

  I distinctly remember that it was seen as a big surprise that.

• 2:06:00David Sims?

  He didn't get.

• 2:06:01Griffin Newman?

  That Bridges got in over him because Bridges.

• 2:06:03David Sims?

  Bridges got every precursor nom.

• 2:06:05Griffin Newman?

  He did? Okay. So they put both of them in at SAG?

• 2:06:08David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 2:06:08Griffin Newman?

  Wow.

• 2:06:09David Sims?

  And Bridges is, in my opinion, the reason to watch that movie. He's utterly incredible in it. Everything else about that movie is stupid rock brain shit. It is a dumb fucking movie.

• 2:06:18Griffin Newman?

  Has often cited.

• 2:06:19David Sims?

  Barack, Barack, the, uh, um.

• 2:06:22Griffin Newman?

  Dwayne Barack Obama.

• 2:06:23David Sims?

  Yeah, right. Barack. What was the jo- oh, the Rock Obama.

• 2:06:26Griffin Newman?

  It was Dwayne Barack Obama. Yeah.

• 2:06:28David Sims?

  Yeah, sure.

• 2:06:29Griffin Newman?

  Um.

• 2:06:30David Sims?

  Uh, he says like, that's what being president is like. Like you get to have a sandwich every time.

• 2:06:34Griffin Newman?

  Favorite depiction of a president movies. It's his favorite fictional president. And if you watch that movie, you're like, Obama kinda was doing a Jeff Bridges impression. You could see that movie hidden when Obama's in his mid twenties. And that's sort of becoming the archetype in his mind of here's how I'd love to communicate to the public.

• 2:06:53David Sims?

  Others in the top 10, uh, the re-release of The Exorcist.

• 2:06:56Griffin Newman?

  Like your opinion, man?

• 2:06:58David Sims?

  Sure.

• 2:06:59Griffin Newman?

  I felt like I had to do some joke like that.

• 2:07:00David Sims?

  I thought that was good.

• 2:07:01Griffin Newman?

  Rug really tied the, uh, room together?

• 2:07:04David Sims?

  Obama, remember him?

• 2:07:05Griffin Newman?

  Funny.

• 2:07:06David Sims?

  Um, number six of the box office is the, the version you've never seen version of The Exorcist with Spider Walk.

• 2:07:10Griffin Newman?

  Which was a big hit.

• 2:07:11David Sims?

  Uh, which big re-release. Number seven, doing great, uh, opening new this week is Robert Altman's Dr. T and the Women. Which is kind of like, is that the last before Gosford Park? Or is there one more?

• 2:07:24Griffin Newman?

  Uh, it has to be the last, right? Cookie's Fortune is before this?

• 2:07:28David Sims?

  I think Cookie's Fortune is the year before, yes. So Gosford Park is the year after, right?

• 2:07:31Griffin Newman?

  It felt like he had just officially run through the end of his goodwill from The Player and Shortcuts.

• 2:07:37David Sims?

  I remember, that's a movie that I've read defenses of, right? Like largely, it's a bit forgotten.

• 2:07:42Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:07:42David Sims?

  But I remember at the time as a budding cinephile, like I sort of knew who Altman was. I probably hadn't seen much Altman yet.

• 2:07:48Griffin Newman?

  And had insane cast.

• 2:07:49David Sims?

  It has this crazy cast.

• 2:07:50Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:07:50David Sims?

  And I just remember the reviews were universally like, fucking, what's the matter with you? I'm here for you. I want to support you.

• 2:08:00Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:08:00David Sims?

  Why are you doing this to me?

• 2:08:02Griffin Newman?

  Doing this again? Like, there was a feeling of like, Altman, can you truly not go five years without crashing out?

• 2:08:09David Sims?

  Like, it's like, Shortcuts, The Player, you were back.

• 2:08:12Griffin Newman?

  You were back.

• 2:08:13David Sims?

  What have you been up to?

• 2:08:14Griffin Newman?

  We'll grant you one predaporte.

• 2:08:16David Sims?

  Not six? Fucking what? And, you know, now everyone tries to, basically, there's someone to reclaim any Altman movie.

• 2:08:25Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:08:25David Sims?

  You know, like if you hunt around, there's someone who's like, you know, Kansas City is awesome.

• 2:08:29Griffin Newman?

  My favorite movie of all time is a movie that many people have said is indefensible. Right. But, but yes.

• 2:08:36David Sims?

  But that was, I just remember critics at the time, and then Gosford Park, you know, they were like, thank you.

• 2:08:39Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:08:40David Sims?

  I, I told you you could do that. We all like this one.

• 2:08:45Griffin Newman?

  He is my favorite filmmaker of all time. I think it is silly to act like all of his movies are good.

• 2:08:50David Sims?

  He's made bad movies.

• 2:08:50Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, and, and your opinion can vary on which ones are bad, but it is impossible to like all of his films.

• 2:08:55David Sims?

  He has made movies-

• 2:08:56Griffin Newman?

  I would say scientifically impossible.

• 2:08:58David Sims?

  It's like, there's a lot of movies of his, I feel like, where you're like, this just didn't work. You, you mixed a bunch of shit together. You put it in the oven and he didn't make brownies. Like, and I like the shit you mixed together and I get why you wanted to do it, and I just don't think it's quite-

• 2:09:10Griffin Newman?

  And this will make for a really interesting chapter in the book, but God is this unpleasant to watch.

• 2:09:14David Sims?

  It's, it is silly to be like, yeah, no, five stars every time from Altman.

• 2:09:17Griffin Newman?

  Of course.

• 2:09:18David Sims?

  That's a little silly.

• 2:09:19Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:09:19David Sims?

  Uh, number eight is the-

• 2:09:20Griffin Newman?

  Dr. T and the women in this economy? Sorry, I had to make that joke, go on, please.

• 2:09:23David Sims?

  Number eight is the Sylvester Stallone remake of Get Carter, which essentially is the end of his career as a screen actor for a while.

• 2:09:30Griffin Newman?

  Certainly on a studio level.

• 2:09:32David Sims?

  Yep. Number nine is Almost Famous, which was-

• 2:09:35Griffin Newman?

  A flop.

• 2:09:36David Sims?

  As we've talked about, I think, on that episode way back when, yeah, an underperformer. Like, after Jerry Maguire, even though it was critically beloved and got, you know, awards and shit, was, was kind of a weird bomb.

• 2:09:46Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:09:47David Sims?

  They released it in, what, like, late August, early September?

• 2:09:50Griffin Newman?

  It was a September release. They were being dumb.

• 2:09:52David Sims?

  And number 10 is Best in Show, which is Expanding.

• 2:09:56Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:09:56David Sims?

  And has only made 3 million, but is going to make close to 20, so it's sort of like a quiet little indie sleeper hit.

• 2:10:02Griffin Newman?

  A true sleeper hit, yeah, because Guffman, you know, didn't really break out, and Best in Show did, yeah.

• 2:10:09David Sims?

  So, we're gonna wrap it up with Rat Catcha, but Lynn Ramsey for the next five weeks, enjoy that, you crazy fuckers. We got Morven Callar next week with the mother of blankies.

• 2:10:21Griffin Newman?

  Emily Yoshida, the way you said it just might have been a little hard to parse.

• 2:10:24David Sims?

  The mother of blankies.

• 2:10:26Griffin Newman?

  Emily Yoshida, coming on to talk about Morven Callar, one of her favorite defining movies of her life. People have asked why it had been so long since Yoshida on main feed, and the answer is, we've been waiting for this. We've had this in the hopper.

• 2:10:39David Sims?

  Yeah, I mean, also, Emily lives in LA, it's a little harder to just throw her on anything, and yeah, we knew we were gonna do this. We were like, you're doing Morven.

• 2:10:44Griffin Newman?

  We knew we were gonna do this, we had two long-ass miniseries in 2025. But yes, we've recorded the episodes, it's a tremendous amount of fun, it was so good to get back in the ring with Mama. Thank you all for listening, please remember to rate, review, and subscribe. I'll remind you that in addition to our show coming out on Sundays, every Thursday, through the end of Oscar season, we have Critical Darlings on our feed.

• 2:11:09David Sims?

  Critical Darlings.

• 2:11:11Griffin Newman?

  A little sibling show hosted by the great Richard Lawson, Alison Bulmore, and produced by our buddy Ben Frisch.

• 2:11:17David Sims?

  Also, over on our Patreon, we have bonus content, three episodes a month, as well as an ad-free feed available.

• 2:11:25Griffin Newman?

  We're doing the D.O.S. commentaries.

• 2:11:28David Sims?

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:11:28Griffin Newman?

  Lynn Ramsey, one of her favorite films, I wonder if she would love our episode, in which we talk about what to get for lunch.

• 2:11:38David Sims?

  That's Patreon.com/BlankCheck.

• 2:11:41Griffin Newman?

  Uh, thank you all.

• 2:11:42David Sims?

  Hmm?

• 2:11:43Griffin Newman?

  And as always, Blank Check will return in episode on Morven Callar.

• 2:11:52Griffin Newman?

  You see what I did there?

• 2:11:54David Sims?

  Do you want to hear the PGA nominated?

• 2:11:56Griffin Newman?

  Please.

• 2:12:02Speaker 03

  Blank Check with Griffin and David is hosted by Griffin Newman and David Sims. Our executive producer is me, Ben Hostly. Our creative producer is Marie Bardy Salinas, and our associate producer is AJ McKeon. This show is mixed and edited by AJ McKeon and Alan Smithy. Research by JJ Birch. Our theme song is by Lain Montgomery and the Great American Novel, with additional music by Alex Mitchell. Artwork by Joe Bowen, Holly Moss, and Pat Reynolds. Our production assistant is Minnick. Special thanks to David Cho, Jordan Fish, and Nate Patterson for their production help. Head over to blankcheckpod.com for links to all of the real nerdy shit. Join our Patreon Blank Check Special Features

• 2:12:44Speaker 03

  for exclusive franchise commentaries and bonus episodes. Follow us on social @BlankCheckPod. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter, Checkbook, on Substack. This podcast is created and produced by Blank Check Productions.