The Sugarland Express with Esther Zuckerman

Young whippersnapper Steven Spielberg continues his run of dusty, road-centric films with 1974’s THE SUGARLAND EXPRESS, and we’re along for the (surprisingly chill) ride. Writer Esther Zuckerman joins us to discuss the cinematic persona of Goldie Hawn, William Atherton’s strange period of leading-man roles, the harmonica stylings of Belgian jazz legend Toots Thielemans, and Spielberg’s brief but fruitful collaboration with cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond. Note - we recorded this episode a few months in advance. We no longer endorse the whole Hawk Tuah thing. Buy Esther's Book https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/esther-zuckerman/falling-in-love-at-the-movies/9780762484461/?lens=running-press The Box Office Game is Sponsored by Regal Cinemas: Sign up for Regal Unlimited today http://blankcheckpod.com/regal and get 10% off your 3 month subscription when using code BLANKCHECK 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.

• 0:18Speaker 02

  Hey, everyone, or should I say, oh?

• 0:20David Sims?

  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.

• 0:46Speaker 02

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

• 0:48Griffin Newman?

  You were thrilled. You were like a pick and share.

• 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.

• 1:05Speaker 02

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

• 1:07Griffin Newman?

  If that gets you off.

• 1:09Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 1:10Speaker 03

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

• 1:39Griffin Newman?

  The true story of a podcast who took on all of Texas and almost won.

• 1:44David Sims?

  Oh.

• 1:44Griffin Newman?

  Okay, so I found three different posters for this movie. All of them have very weird taglines.

• 1:49David Sims?

  Because this was a movie no one knew how to sell. You can tell by when you look at the three posters where you're like, ah, this is three attempts at getting it across.

• 1:57Griffin Newman?

  I want to take the, let me recite the three at bats. The one unifying element is all of them were like Goldie Hawn picture.

• 2:03David Sims?

  Big face, big, big Goldie, please.

• 2:05Griffin Newman?

  We have one undeniable movie star, a, a, a Academy Award winning movie.

• 2:10David Sims?

  But the one you're quoting from this one, like, it looks like she's just having a ball.

• 2:14Griffin Newman?

  She's on the poster twice.

• 2:15David Sims?

  Yes, she's, she's just smiling.

• 2:18Griffin Newman?

  Her giant smiling, painted face, directly below it, her holding a shotgun. The true story of a girl who took on all of Texas and almost won, okay? Then there's this one, which is my favorite graphic poster for the movie.

• 2:30David Sims?

  That's the poster I think of.

• 2:31Griffin Newman?

  I think it's the best.

• 2:32David Sims?

  Right, with the teddy bear.

• 2:34Griffin Newman?

  Right, and her smile in that is a little more demented in a way that comes closer representing the film where it's like, this is a woman on edge. The tagline is, "A girl with a great following. Every cop in the state was after her. Everybody else was behind her." And then the third poster I found, the tagline is, "This true but incredible event happened in Texas in 1969."

• 2:57David Sims?

  Which-

• 2:58Griffin Newman?

  And it's just big Goldie Hawn shotgun, Goldie Hawn in the Sugar Land Express.

• 3:01David Sims?

  That, that's definitely not, like, obviously everyone's always made fun of, like, based on a true story being a selling point. But, like, based on a true story is supposed to come after your tagline.

• 3:13Griffin Newman?

  Correct.

• 3:13David Sims?

  It can't just be like, "This happened." And I'm like, "Okay, what happened? Well, Goldie Hawn?

• 3:19Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 3:20David Sims?

  And there were cars?

• 3:21Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 3:21David Sims?

  You won't believe it! She had a gun?

• 3:23Griffin Newman?

  It's just probably the first two taglines almost tell this like something about Mary.

• 3:28David Sims?

  Right, it's like, "Everyone's after Goldie! A whole line of police cops!"

• 3:35Griffin Newman?

  I, I, this is a hard movie to sell, but I can understand how it was weirdly received at the time. Especially if you're, like, expecting just a Goldie Hawn vehicle.

• 3:46David Sims?

  I understand, of course, why they were like, "Let's sell this as a Goldie Hawn vehicle, not as a ensemble piece," which is what it is. As you're saying, Goldie Hawn was an Oscar-winning star.

• 3:54Speaker 02

  A William Atherton vehicle.

• 3:57David Sims?

  We got Atherton!

• 3:58Griffin Newman?

  We're gonna talk about Atherton.

• 3:59David Sims?

  We will, but, uh, but, right.

• 4:01Griffin Newman?

  Five years past her Oscar win, like, she's like fully, like, solidly in post-Oscar win era.

• 4:07Speaker 03

  What does she win for?

• 4:08David Sims?

  Cactus.

• 4:08Speaker 02

  Cactus flower.

• 4:10Griffin Newman?

  Cactus Flower.

• 4:12Speaker 04

  Have you ever seen?

• 4:12Griffin Newman?

  Should we say it? Walter Matthau, Ingrid Bergman, Cactus Flower, introducing Goldie Hawn as Tony.

• 4:18David Sims?

  Cactus Flower, have you guys seen it?

• 4:20Speaker 04

  I've seen it. I write about it in.

• 4:21David Sims?

  Yes, in your book, which we'll talk about. Uh, Cactus Flower is incredibly charming.

• 4:25Speaker 04

  It's really cute.

• 4:26David Sims?

  Uh, and she's good in it, but she's.

• 4:28Speaker 04

  A girl who's in love with Walter Matthau.

• 4:30David Sims?

  Walter Matthau is this, uh, is a funny, dotty dentist. Ingrid Bergman, who fucking rocks in it.

• 4:36Griffin Newman?

  Really?

• 4:37David Sims?

  It's like his.

• 4:37Speaker 04

  It's so funny.

• 4:38David Sims?

  Shrinking Violet, uh, you know, who really.

• 4:42Griffin Newman?

  She had done Laugh-In and that was her first real movie.

• 4:45David Sims?

  I'm saying Ingrid Bergman? No, I'm sorry.

• 4:48Griffin Newman?

  Of course, was a main cast from Run Laugh-In.

• 4:49David Sims?

  And of course, uh, her first film was Cactus Flower.

• 4:52Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 4:53David Sims?

  Everything else she was uncredited. Casablanca uncredited.

• 4:55Speaker 04

  And Goldie is like this hippie.

• 4:57David Sims?

  She's a hippie. She won an Oscar for playing the first hippie in a movie. It's really how it felt.

• 5:01Speaker 04

  Who like says she's gonna kill herself. So Walter Matthau decides to tell her that he'll marry her, but he has to get divorced from his wife first. But he doesn't have a wife. So then he asks Ingrid Bergman to like pretend to be his wife. And then obviously like he and Ingrid Bergman fall in love. And then there's this other young hottie who Goldie falls in love with.

• 5:29Griffin Newman?

  It is, it is an Americanized, modernized adaptation of a French farce stage play.

• 5:35David Sims?

  And if, and, and when it's one of those movies, you watch it and then someone's like, based on a French farce. You're like, oh, okay, okay.

• 5:42Griffin Newman?

  Decades later, it was remade by Adam Sandler and Dennis Dugan as Just Go With It.

• 5:47David Sims?

  Yes. Same, same basic.

• 5:49Griffin Newman?

  And with Brooklyn Decker plays the Goldie Hawn role.

• 5:52David Sims?

  Right. I mean, again.

• 5:53Griffin Newman?

  And Aniston plays the Isabella Rossellini or Ingrid Bergman.

• 5:56David Sims?

  Ingrid Bergman.

• 5:57Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 5:57David Sims?

  Ingrid, who is Isabella Rossellini senior.

• 5:59Griffin Newman?

  Should have gotten Rossellini to play.

• 6:01David Sims?

  They should have. That would have been good.

• 6:03Griffin Newman?

  We were talking about Rossellini.

• 6:04David Sims?

  Is Sandler the Matthau of his time?

• 6:08Griffin Newman?

  In, in his.

• 6:09David Sims?

  Kind of. Yeah.

• 6:10Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 6:11David Sims?

  Different styles in a way, but like, yeah.

• 6:15Griffin Newman?

  If Sandler announced tomorrow, he was doing a Pillam 123 style.

• 6:20Speaker 04

  Oh, that's. That's so good.

• 6:23David Sims?

  Well, because we like Sandler in New York mode.

• 6:26Griffin Newman?

  We all experienced at the thought of that.

• 6:28David Sims?

  Well, we just like him to be rumpled and New Yorky.

• 6:30Griffin Newman?

  Sandler in a shitty suit, as Pat Alvo put it, eating a stale hot dog, looking hungover.

• 6:37David Sims?

  Just going.

• 6:38Griffin Newman?

  My favorite description.

• 6:40David Sims?

  Well, like Mathau and Cactus Flower isn't rumpled. He's playing like, it's like when you watch Mad Men and you're like, these kind of chubby guys with glasses would like pull babes. And it's like, yeah, man, New York in the sixties. And that's Mathau.

• 6:53Griffin Newman?

  The patline I love is that like, the seventies were such a weird time for movies that your action films would be like, only one guy can stop this. And the camera pans over to Walter Mathau in a crumpled suit, eating a stale hot dog.

• 7:07David Sims?

  Uh, it's so true, but that's what she won her Oscar for. And if I'm not wrong, she's only had one, um, apart from that.

• 7:15Griffin Newman?

  Private Benjamin.

• 7:16David Sims?

  She got nominated for Private Benjamin, right? But is that it?

• 7:18Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 7:19David Sims?

  Yes, let's find out.

• 7:21Griffin Newman?

  But she, Laugh-In starts the year before Cactus Flower comes out. This is a time when actors and they look this law or what we're talking about on early Spielberg. Transitioning from TV to film was difficult and she's transitioning from a sketch show to film. And then her first movie, she wins an Oscar. And then her follow-up movies are, there's a girl in my soup.

• 7:46Speaker 04

  I have not seen that one.

• 7:47David Sims?

  Great, great title.

• 7:47Griffin Newman?

  Dollar Sign.

• 7:48David Sims?

  Yeah, Dollar Sign.

• 7:49Griffin Newman?

  1971, she makes a movie called Dollar Sign.

• 7:52David Sims?

  Known as Dollars.

• 7:53Griffin Newman?

  Warren Beatty and Goldie Hawn in Dollars.

• 7:56David Sims?

  Uh, it's a, that's a, that's a bank robbery movie where she plays a lady of the night.

• 8:01Griffin Newman?

  Butterflies are free.

• 8:03David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 8:03Griffin Newman?

  And then this.

• 8:05David Sims?

  Um, Butterflies are Free was a, a big drama that, uh, won an Oscar itself, uh, but not for Goldie Hawn.

• 8:11Griffin Newman?

  But like she was undeniably a movie star and yeah, it does feel like in that first couple of years, she hasn't quite figured out

• 8:19Griffin Newman?

  how she works as a leading lady yet.

• 8:21David Sims?

  Uh, definitely hasn't, and I think it takes her another five years.

• 8:27Speaker 04

  Private Benjamin.

• 8:28David Sims?

  I think basically until Private Benjamin, like foul play was foul play was a hit, right? Yeah, that was so that, you know, with with Chevy.

• 8:35Griffin Newman?

  I think that starts the transition.

• 8:37David Sims?

  Obviously, shampoo she's amazing in it, but that's about movies about this guy. And he's like hot or something. She made a movie called Lovers and Liars. That's an Italian movie. So, yeah, and then I feel like Private Benjamin, and then she has her whole eighties is like a pretty reliable sort of comedy star.

• 8:54Griffin Newman?

  Her movie star thing.

• 8:55David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 8:56Griffin Newman?

  Right. Whereas in the seventies, she's still like, I mean, it's what's fascinating about this is this is kind of an odd choice for her. Like, it's not an obvious movie star.

• 9:04David Sims?

  Well cast.

• 9:05Griffin Newman?

  She's great in it.

• 9:06David Sims?

  Yeah, she's would we all agree that Goldie Hawn good in the Sugarland Express? Yeah.

• 9:11Speaker 04

  I might. It's so funny, actually, just sort of like looking at her, you know, filmography. It's so she hasn't made like all that many movies.

• 9:19David Sims?

  She's a weird movie star because she is an icon.

• 9:21Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 9:22David Sims?

  I would say a four decade icon, sixty seventies, eighties, nineties. She is at the top of the heap of the type of like star she is, right? Like.

• 9:32Griffin Newman?

  It's sort of the point I'm trying to make is like she immediately becomes an icon the second she appears on screen and laughing.

• 9:38David Sims?

  Huge icon.

• 9:39Griffin Newman?

  Here's this woman with blonde hair and huge eyes and she's got the flowers.

• 9:42Speaker 04

  Huge mouth.

• 9:43Griffin Newman?

  Right. The flowers painted on her body.

• 9:45Speaker 04

  Crazy mouth.

• 9:46Griffin Newman?

  And she says, talk it to me or whatever. And people immediately are like, this means something.

• 9:50David Sims?

  The mailbox was Haldeman.

• 9:51Speaker 04

  The mailbox was Haldeman.

• 9:53Griffin Newman?

  No, but like people looked at her like she was the fucking.

• 9:55Speaker 04

  The mailbox was Haldeman all the time.

• 9:57Griffin Newman?

  Pile of mashed potatoes in Close Encounters and like this means something. This is culturally important, right? And then she, within a year, like goes to movies, wins an Oscar, and they're like, you're legitimate. You're no longer just like pipe pop iconography. We are taking you seriously. And so like throughout the seventies, she's just undeniably culturally humongous before figuring out what her thing is. And then she has a run that's like big in the eighties. She slows down in the nineties. She's made three movies in the last 25 years.

• 10:29David Sims?

  Uh, she has so like, but even in the nineties, Goldie Hawn, we're just starting off with Goldie Hawn before we introduce the podcast, which is fine.

• 10:35Griffin Newman?

  It's fine. It's good.

• 10:36David Sims?

  Have we ever covered Goldie Hawn?

• 10:38Griffin Newman?

  This is a great question. Uh, one time for the movie.

• 10:42David Sims?

  Swing Shift.

• 10:42Griffin Newman?

  Swing Shift.

• 10:43David Sims?

  Right. I was the one time we covered.

• 10:44Griffin Newman?

  Which is a very complicated film in her career.

• 10:47David Sims?

  Yes, it is. Um, but, uh, like in the nineties, I would say the only.

• 10:54David Sims?

  Hits she made were excuse me, in order. House Sitter.

• 10:59Griffin Newman?

  Uh huh.

• 11:00David Sims?

  Which is both a huge hit and like, kind of a well remembered like cable movie. Death Becomes Her, which is like a big hit and well received.

• 11:08Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 11:08David Sims?

  And then, right, her 90s apex is First Wives Club, which people forget made tons of money. But I feel like it's also like, when you think of 90s Han, she looks like that.

• 11:18Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 11:18David Sims?

  Right? Like, same with 90s Midler. And honestly, 90s Keaton.

• 11:22Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 11:23David Sims?

  Like, their looks are that.

• 11:24Griffin Newman?

  But those are three big, oh, when I said she's only made three movies in the last 25 years, I forgot that she did fucking two Christmas Chronicles.

• 11:31David Sims?

  She is Mrs. Claus in the Christmas Chronicles, one and two.

• 11:35Griffin Newman?

  Right. Cause I was thinking Town and Country, Long Delayed in 01, Banger Sisters 02, and then she doesn't do a movie until snap.

• 11:41David Sims?

  And when we cover Chris Columbus on this podcast, we will do the Christmas Chronicles, two, but not one, because he didn't direct the first one.

• 11:50Griffin Newman?

  But you're saying she, those were her only three really big hits.

• 11:53David Sims?

  In the 90s, in the 90s, she, in Bird on a Wire, like, is kind of a flop. Deceived is like Forgotten, Criss Cross is basically

• 12:03Griffin Newman?

  Forgotten.

• 12:04David Sims?

  Completely forgotten.

• 12:05Griffin Newman?

  Right. Everybody, everyone says

• 12:06David Sims?

  It's an ensemble thing and Out of Towners, it's Out of Towners, Town and Country, Banger Sisters, it's kind of like, you know what?

• 12:13Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 12:14David Sims?

  I don't, I mean, I think she decides she's done.

• 12:16Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 12:17David Sims?

  But like, it's like, you know what? The Goldie Hawn business is not

• 12:20Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 12:21David Sims?

  A Hollywood business anymore, really.

• 12:22Griffin Newman?

  But here's another thing, like, the three big hits you said in the 90s, those are big Hollywood movies.

• 12:28David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 12:28Griffin Newman?

  Where the other thing was like, she was someone where you could just sell it on. It's Goldie Hawn plus, like, the pairing of Goldie and someone would excite someone. You know, Bird on a Wire is like, Melon Goldie is like, the whole selling game.

• 12:41David Sims?

  Definitely.

• 12:41Griffin Newman?

  She did two movies with Steve Martin, you know, she'd like, did like, four movies with Warren Beatty. Like, it was a lot of like,

• 12:47David Sims?

  Goldie!

• 12:47Griffin Newman?

  Goldie plus someone equals excitement.

• 12:50David Sims?

  God bless her having the name Goldie. She really lucked out. It's her birth name. It's a cool name. Goldie!

• 12:56Griffin Newman?

  Is Hawn her real last name?

• 12:58David Sims?

  Yeah, Goldie Jean Hawn.

• 12:59Griffin Newman?

  I mean, she nailed it.

• 13:00David Sims?

  She did nail it. Her parents, of course, Laura and Edward nailed it, I would say.

• 13:04Griffin Newman?

  Mm hmm.

• 13:05Speaker 04

  Half Jewish.

• 13:07David Sims?

  Is that right?

• 13:07Speaker 04

  Goldie Hawn's half Jewish, some, somebody is half two.

• 13:11Griffin Newman?

  Esther.

• 13:11Speaker 04

  Mal Newman's half two, put them together, that's one fine look at Jew.

• 13:15David Sims?

  Yeah, her mother was Jewish. Mother was Jewish.

• 13:17Speaker 04

  Thank you, Griffin.

• 13:18Griffin Newman?

  Of course. Uh, Esther.

• 13:19David Sims?

  The mailbox is Haldeman. I got you with the mailbox is Haldeman, though.

• 13:22Griffin Newman?

  It's not your fault.

• 13:23Speaker 04

  Well, okay, I had to, I will say that, uh, I do love the 30 Rock laugh in parody and otherwise, like the fake Goldie's like, like, you're pardoned.

• 13:34David Sims?

  Right.

• 13:35Griffin Newman?

  Uh, Esther, it's not your fault and I'm not accusing you of mumbling or not pronouncing properly, but when you said half Jewish, this is just the culture, uh, poison culture we live in, I heard it as hawk two-ish. And I was like, are you accusing Goldie Hawn of being hawk two-ish?

• 13:53Speaker 04

  I think you should cut that out.

• 13:55David Sims?

  Should Goldie Hawn go on Hawk Two?

• 13:56Griffin Newman?

  I just need to, I need to be honest about.

• 13:59Speaker 04

  Also, sorry, it's toi.

• 14:01David Sims?

  What? I'm sorry, what?

• 14:02Griffin Newman?

  What?

• 14:03David Sims?

  It's not talk to a, it's talk toi?

• 14:05Speaker 04

  Yeah, cuz she's.

• 14:06David Sims?

  Please, please finish the sentence.

• 14:09Speaker 04

  Cuz it's like toi. She's spitting on the deck.

• 14:13David Sims?

  I understand what she was saying on the streets.

• 14:16Griffin Newman?

  Empire built on the fact that she said it a weird way, that she didn't say it the way that makes sense.

• 14:21Speaker 04

  I think it's toi.

• 14:22David Sims?

  As someone who saw that TikTok, like naturally and had the same reaction that apparently millions of Americans did, where I was like, that girl's a firecracker, I love her. And so now we've crowned her queen of media.

• 14:35David Sims?

  She definitely said toa.

• 14:36Speaker 04

  I think, okay, then I, then I'm wrong. I thought it was toi.

• 14:39Griffin Newman?

  No, Hawk Two. Toi would be if you were playing it real, if you were doing a realistic performance.

• 14:44David Sims?

  The whole reason Hawk Two was funny is not cuz she says Hawk Two has been on that thing, that is funny. It's that she then lets out this kind of genuine laugh cuz she knows she said something silly.

• 14:54Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 14:54David Sims?

  And you're like, ah, she's not so bad. She should like throw out the first pitch at a Mets game. Maybe she should have a podcast. And then by 2025, I'm like, she's Secretary of the Interior? Are we sure?

• 15:04Griffin Newman?

  If we're lucky, she only messed it up to Secretary of Interior. No, but I, look, for our younger listeners.

• 15:11Speaker 04

  I'm sorry.

• 15:12Griffin Newman?

  And I say this as if the three of us fucking lived through Goldie Hawn's emergence.

• 15:17Speaker 04

  We did.

• 15:17Griffin Newman?

  But I do feel like Goldie Hawn appearing on Laugh-In was similar to the Hawk to a girl.

• 15:22David Sims?

  I don't think that's true.

• 15:23Griffin Newman?

  Immediately shot out of a cannon.

• 15:26Speaker 04

  Griffin, fuck you.

• 15:27Griffin Newman?

  I'm not comparing the work. I'm comparing the cultural impact.

• 15:31Speaker 04

  I think.

• 15:33David Sims?

  I'm just pro Hawk.

• 15:34Griffin Newman?

  People said, what a firecracker.

• 15:36David Sims?

  I mean, she's great. Unless she's done something bad by the time this episode comes out, which is eminently possible. She has endorsed like Victor Orban at this point. Again, I have no idea what she does on that show. I just, I'm like, you never know with Hawk to a.

• 15:49Speaker 03

  Has anyone listened to the podcast?

• 15:51David Sims?

  I've seen clips from it on TikTok, but they tend to be 30 seconds long.

• 15:55Speaker 03

  Sure. I've heard that she brings on occasionally like hometown friends.

• 16:01Griffin Newman?

  I think.

• 16:01Speaker 04

  That's fine.

• 16:01Griffin Newman?

  More than occasionally.

• 16:02David Sims?

  That sounds great.

• 16:03Griffin Newman?

  Grandma's the co-host.

• 16:05Speaker 03

  Wait, I know that.

• 16:06David Sims?

  That sounds good. Like her talking to other influencers, that sounds boring. Her just kind of being like, this is my vibe.

• 16:11Griffin Newman?

  I think that's what it is.

• 16:12David Sims?

  Right. Yeah, great.

• 16:13Griffin Newman?

  None of us know what the third most popular podcast in the world is.

• 16:19Speaker 03

  Yeah, but what I heard is that her friends were people who clearly had never, ever spoken into a microphone ever before in their entire lives.

• 16:31David Sims?

  Right.

• 16:31Speaker 03

  And weren't the best at being able to have an engaging conversation.

• 16:36Speaker 04

  Yeah, that makes.

• 16:37David Sims?

  Can't all be fucking hot to a.

• 16:39Griffin Newman?

  Producer hands them on mic, they spit on that thing. They don't know what to do with it. They've never been on mic before. They spit on that thing. This is Blank Check with Griffin and David. I'm Griffin.

• 16:50Speaker 03

  I'm David.

• 16:50Griffin Newman?

  It's a podcast about filmographies and not about the Hawk to a girl.

• 16:54David Sims?

  Look, this episode's in two months. It's not so dated, except she's kind of, she's been a thing for a long time. So.

• 17:00Griffin Newman?

  I was gonna say, this is what I like about talking about the Hawk to a girl in episodes we record far in advance. We can't imagine how much bigger she'll be by the time this comes out. It's not like she'll become hashtagged.

• 17:11David Sims?

  Right. She's the star of Anyone But You Too by this point.

• 17:15Griffin Newman?

  Anyone but too.

• 17:16David Sims?

  Anyone.

• 17:19David Sims?

  Some Sony executives arm hair just stood straight hearing that.

• 17:25Griffin Newman?

  Tom Rothman just ejaculated.

• 17:27David Sims?

  One but two, it's like, yeah, that's give that a green light at $82 million.

• 17:32Griffin Newman?

  Look, this is a podcast about filmographies. Directors who have massive success early on in their careers and are given a series of blank checks to make whatever crazy passion products they want. Sometimes those checks clear and sometimes they bounce baby. We're talking about the most successful filmmaker in history, period. Right? I do think it's still basically uncontested.

• 17:51David Sims?

  Yeah, of course. Is there any dispute of that? No, of course not. He's certainly earned the most money.

• 17:56Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 17:57David Sims?

  Well, does James Cameron have him beat money wise? My guess is no, though, because Spielberg just has so many, you know, more movies.

• 18:06Griffin Newman?

  Spielberg's more, uh, more of a mogul, too.

• 18:11David Sims?

  Well, then, and there's that, too.

• 18:12Griffin Newman?

  Cameron, I feel like, makes most of his money from his good deals, making the most successful movies in history. Spielberg also has his finger in, his finger's in many other pots. He's getting that fucking Universal Studios ticket cut.

• 18:26David Sims?

  Sure.

• 18:26Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 18:28David Sims?

  Looking it up.

• 18:29Speaker 04

  Isn't James Cameron getting Disney?

• 18:32Griffin Newman?

  James, I will probably repeat this 8,000 times across this series. When Universal decided to, uh, start a theme park, expand past just the backlot tour. The big coup was we get Spielberg to sign on as our, like, chief creative.

• 18:46Speaker 04

  Oh, so he gets like.

• 18:48Griffin Newman?

  I believe he gets 20%.

• 18:51David Sims?

  As a director.

• 18:52Griffin Newman?

  Of ticket sales across all parks in perpetuity.

• 18:55David Sims?

  As a director, just director.

• 18:57Griffin Newman?

  Yep.

• 18:58David Sims?

  Spielberg has Cameron beat by $2 billion.

• 19:00Speaker 04

  Oh, that's a lot of money.

• 19:01David Sims?

  Again, and again, look, he's got.

• 19:02Griffin Newman?

  He's made.

• 19:03David Sims?

  Many more movies.

• 19:04Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 19:04David Sims?

  But, yeah, he's got him beat.

• 19:06Griffin Newman?

  Yeah. Uh, we're talking about the first half of Steven Spielberg's career in a series we're calling Podrastic Cast. And today we are talking about his first.

• 19:14Speaker 04

  What? Sorry.

• 19:15Griffin Newman?

  Podrastic Cast.

• 19:18David Sims?

  It's gonna sound better the more you say it. Yeah, exactly.

• 19:20Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 19:22Griffin Newman?

  We should get Haley Walsh to say it. She'd probably know how to make it sound good.

• 19:24Speaker 04

  I'm laughing already.

• 19:28David Sims?

  I love it.

• 19:29Griffin Newman?

  Today, we're talking about Steven Spielberg's first intentional feature film, theatrical film.

• 19:34David Sims?

  Yes.

• 19:35Griffin Newman?

  Yes. He still calls it his first movie.

• 19:37David Sims?

  He calls this his first movie, and that makes sense because it's the first thing he made that was released in theaters.

• 19:43Griffin Newman?

  Right. Where someone said, we are giving you money to make a movie. Here you go. It's called The Sugarland Express. And our guest today, joining us, Plank Check's own little firecracker.

• 19:56Griffin Newman?

  Esther Zuckerman.

• 19:57Speaker 04

  I, I wear that badge proudly. Plank Check's little firecracker.

• 20:01Griffin Newman?

  Uh, Esther, you write about Goldie Hawn in your book?

• 20:03Speaker 04

  Yeah, um, you know, it's.

• 20:05Griffin Newman?

  You have a new book coming out.

• 20:07Speaker 04

  I have a new book coming out. It will be out by the time this episode is, it like, is airs. Airs is the right word?

• 20:14Griffin Newman?

  Drops.

• 20:15Speaker 04

  Drops. Yes, it is about rom-coms. I write, yes, I write about Cactus Flower a little bit. Um, you know, it's funny, I write also about Goldie in the context of her daughter, Kate Hudson.

• 20:28Griffin Newman?

  Who?

• 20:29Speaker 04

  You never heard of her. Actually, you know, it's something really, it's not really funny, whatever. Um, I was at brunch the other day at like a local restaurant and there was a girl trying to explain to her boyfriend, like, Goldie Hawn, she's Kate Hudson's mother. And he was like, I don't know who those people are and I don't care.

• 20:48Griffin Newman?

  Either one.

• 20:49Speaker 04

  I, I, I'm not sure. He just seemed so like, stop talking to me.

• 20:53Griffin Newman?

  Wild.

• 20:54Speaker 04

  And I'm not sure what brought it up, though I think it might've been the fact that all of the, the Hawn Hudson family is doing a Skims holiday ad campaign, though not Kurt and not Wyatt.

• 21:04David Sims?

  Oh, you're kidding. They didn't want to jump in on that one.

• 21:06Speaker 04

  But, uh.

• 21:07Griffin Newman?

  Doesn't Oliver have?

• 21:09Speaker 04

  Oliver is in it.

• 21:10Griffin Newman?

  The most popular podcast in the world. Who?

• 21:12Speaker 04

  Anyway.

• 21:12Griffin Newman?

  Oliver Hudson, of course.

• 21:14David Sims?

  Fuck is that?

• 21:15Speaker 04

  Kate's brother.

• 21:16David Sims?

  Never heard of this motherfucker.

• 21:18Griffin Newman?

  He has a podcast called like, I'm a brother or something.

• 21:21David Sims?

  Shut the fuck up!

• 21:22Griffin Newman?

  To deal with the US government for five trillion dollars.

• 21:29Griffin Newman?

  I swear to you.

• 21:30David Sims?

  The Agency of Global Commerce has signed it to broadcast this in people's brains.

• 21:35Speaker 04

  Promo.

• 21:36David Sims?

  Yes, you have self.

• 21:37Griffin Newman?

  What's the title of the book?

• 21:38Speaker 04

  Falling in Love at the Movies, Falling in Love at the Movies. Um, and, uh, uh, rom coms from the screwball era to today. And it's with TCM and I talk about, you know, I talk about the female rom com star and sort of talk about, you know, Kate's run of, you know, being a major rom com star and how like, and the Descendants, um, and Goldie as sort of the, the sort of forebearer of that in, especially with Cactus Flower and winning the Oscar.

• 22:13Griffin Newman?

  There is an argument for, and I, I wonder if this is the argument you're making, that Kate was sort of the last person who got to pursue a conventional rom com movie star career at a high level.

• 22:25Speaker 04

  Yeah. I mean, that's not, I don't really go.

• 22:27David Sims?

  She's in that last generation with Heikal and.

• 22:28Speaker 04

  Yeah. I don't really go chronologically.

• 22:31David Sims?

  Heiko's truly the last.

• 22:31Griffin Newman?

  Heiko's the end of it, but yes.

• 22:33Speaker 04

  I don't really go chronologically. So like, I sort of talk about, you know, when I talk about the, the female stars of the rom com, I sort of divide it into two major types, which is the Spitfire and the relatable queen in the sense that like.

• 22:49David Sims?

  What is Kate Hudson?

• 22:50Speaker 04

  She's Spitfire.

• 22:53Griffin Newman?

  She's definitely not a relatable.

• 22:54David Sims?

  That's what I was about to say. Maybe we're, we're maybe noticing what Kate Hudson's issue was is she's a pretty poor Spitfire.

• 23:01Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 23:02David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 23:02Speaker 04

  Yeah. I talk about Goldie. I mean, it's interesting because, you know, it's funny looking at her, she doesn't have that many straight rom coms, which is sort of interesting in the context of, you know, obviously Overboard as a classic one, a Cactus Flower is one.

• 23:18David Sims?

  But she did a lot of like Capers and stuff like that.

• 23:21Speaker 04

  Like Private Benjamin really isn't like, stuff like that isn't a rom com.

• 23:26Griffin Newman?

  No, but also she, so many of her movies were sold on it's Goldie plus X, right? Like it was like two big movie stars she does. Two movies with Chevy Chase. She does Best Friends with Burt Reynolds, right? She does like two movies with Kurt. Bird on a Wire is Mel and Goldie, First Names Only. She has two Steve Martin movies. Like, that was kind of the formula, but most of those movies, even when there is a central romance, I would not classify as rom-com.

• 23:55Speaker 04

  No, they're capers, sort of.

• 23:56Griffin Newman?

  Right. House Sitter is not a rom-com. Yeah.

• 24:00Speaker 04

  So, yeah, so I do, you know, as a nice way to sort of, like, fudge our way into promoing my book for this, for this podcast. Um, thank you, guys. I appreciate it. I do talk about Goldie. And I do talk about Cactus Flower in a chapter about the man in crisis rom-com.

• 24:23Griffin Newman?

  Well, yeah.

• 24:23Speaker 04

  It's sort of all about, a chapter about all the rom-coms that are basically about, you know, it's such a female-coded genre, but so many of these rom-coms are about men having deep problems.

• 24:36Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, but also admittedly not having seen it. Cactus Flower feels like one of those, like, Pictures of a Revolution, Turning Point movies.

• 24:44Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 24:45Griffin Newman?

  Where you're like, Mathow is like an old-guard movie star, and here's a movie about him trying to reckon with a flower child, right?

• 24:53Speaker 04

  It is that.

• 24:53Griffin Newman?

  That is launching its own star. I know it has other things going on, but like, isn't that part of the alchemy that?

• 24:58Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 24:59Griffin Newman?

  Goldie was kind of the first off the conveyor belt of like, this is a new movie star who represents a new type of woman that has not really existed in the media up until this moment.

• 25:10Speaker 04

  Which also sort of makes, you know, Sugarland Express so interesting in her career.

• 25:15Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 25:15Speaker 04

  Because, I don't know, it feels so, it doesn't, it feels so sort of outside of what she's known for doing.

• 25:23Griffin Newman?

  Well, because I feel like the, even when she's in kind of like, I'm falling apart, flibbertigibbet mode, right? There's a sense of like, Goldie having some sense of self, right? There are things like Shampoo where like, you know, she's a character in crisis because she can't fully hold the guy down.

• 25:46Griffin Newman?

  But there's still this sense of like, she's, she's, she's a spark plug. She's a firecracker, right? There's like a spirit within her. You can't dampen. And that's certainly part of the equation of Sherlock Land Express. But the other part of it is like, what the fuck is going on in this woman's head? Right? Like so much of this movie is everyone just being, and I guess this is what those poster taglines are trying and failing to capture. It's like this whole movie hinges on what is she thinking? Even just from the initial setup of like, why the fuck are you going to try to break out of prison? When you're four months away from being released? And after it's like, I, I just don't, I, how do you deal with her?

• 26:25David Sims?

  And because it's Goldie, it makes sense. And it wouldn't make sense with everybody, but that is Goldie's magic, I would say. She makes movie kind of logic makes sense because she's such a big personality. And to the extent that later in her career, or even in this movie, a movie like House Sitters, basically like, what if you met a Goldie Hawn type? Like can be basically kind of the premise of your movie of like, oh, she's crazy, like in fun, but insane, but like a lot, but like, you know, bewitching, you know, it's like, it's just like, yeah, you've Goldie Hawn's in your life.

• 26:59Griffin Newman?

  Is this the only movie that like makes her dangerous?

• 27:04David Sims?

  I don't know, Private Benjamin, she was in the army, the US army.

• 27:06Griffin Newman?

  Well, but she's very responsible.

• 27:08David Sims?

  She is? Oh, nothing goes wrong?

• 27:11Griffin Newman?

  She gets there.

• 27:12Speaker 04

  She gets there. She's a Jewish American princess in that movie.

• 27:14David Sims?

  I know. That's a good movie.

• 27:15Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 27:16David Sims?

  Uh, Wildcats, is she dangerous in that one, running a football team?

• 27:20Griffin Newman?

  I've got some dangerous plays.

• 27:21David Sims?

  Banger Sisters, did they make like explosives?

• 27:24Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 27:25David Sims?

  That way they're called that? Never seen, I gotta say, never seen the Banger Sisters. That's a classic movie that came out when I was a teenager where I was like, none of this, no part of this is for me, I think.

• 27:35Griffin Newman?

  I remember getting the completely expected perfunctory best actress in a musical or comedy nomination for Goldie at the Golden Globes. And when they cut her in the audience, you could see on her face, she was like, maybe I'm retiring. Maybe this is my last movie.

• 27:47David Sims?

  Unless Amy Schumer makes a movie, I'm out.

• 27:49Griffin Newman?

  For fifteen years.

• 27:50David Sims?

  Is she good in Snatched?

• 27:51Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, I liked Snatched quite a bit.

• 27:52Speaker 04

  I actually liked, I liked that movie.

• 27:54David Sims?

  Remember Snatched?

• 27:55Speaker 04

  And I totally forgot about that movie.

• 27:56Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 27:56David Sims?

  I mean, it wasn't well received, but like quickly got, there was a bit of a whispering of like, I know we're all over Amy Schumer, but Snatched ain't bad.

• 28:03Griffin Newman?

  That was my take.

• 28:04David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 28:04Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, Snatched, Snatched lowkey good. And, and felt like one of those things of like, oh, here's one of the few, like, major kind of eternal movie stars, where her coming out of retirement is gonna be a big deal, and it wasn't.

• 28:17Speaker 04

  No.

• 28:17David Sims?

  Yeah, where it's like, we got Goldie and audiences are like, who?

• 28:21Griffin Newman?

  Cause even compared to like ten years before that, when Jane Fonda does Monster in Law, it did feel like the press was like,

• 28:28Speaker 04

  Oh, that was huge.

• 28:29Griffin Newman?

  This is important.

• 28:30David Sims?

  Yeah, she's been retired for fifteen years, shackled to Ted Turner's bed. Uh, and now she's free to be in this, like, you know, five out of ten movie.

• 28:40Griffin Newman?

  Right, but made a ton of money.

• 28:41David Sims?

  Did, yeah, people saw it, people showed up.

• 28:44Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 28:44David Sims?

  I mean, Snatched made some money.

• 28:46Griffin Newman?

  Snatched did not do very well.

• 28:47David Sims?

  How did Snatched do?

• 28:48Griffin Newman?

  You know what I think a big problem with it was?

• 28:50David Sims?

  Oh, it made forty-five million.

• 28:52Speaker 04

  It has a terrible title.

• 28:53David Sims?

  Worldwide, domestic.

• 28:54Griffin Newman?

  No? Okay, that's not terrible. I thought it was even, I thought it was closer to thirty. I feel like it had a better title throughout development, and then they changed it to Snatched at the last minute, and it was like, this, this was a mistake.

• 29:07David Sims?

  Yeah, that's, if you change the title, okay, but, so what was the original title?

• 29:12Speaker 04

  It had the working, no, it had a bad title.

• 29:14Griffin Newman?

  Mother, daughter?

• 29:15Speaker 04

  Mother, daughter.

• 29:15Griffin Newman?

  It's better than Snatched.

• 29:18Speaker 04

  Yeah, it's still bad, though.

• 29:20Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 29:21David Sims?

  It got its ass kicked by King Arthur Legend of the Sword. Oh, no, it didn't actually, actually beat King Arthur Legend of the Sword.

• 29:27Griffin Newman?

  That's embarrassing for King Arthur.

• 29:33David Sims?

  David?

• 29:33Griffin Newman?

  Yes?

• 29:37David Sims?

  Is that the Cine's cow?

• 29:38Griffin Newman?

  The Cine's cow is back.

• 29:39David Sims?

  Haven't heard from her in a while.

• 29:40Griffin Newman?

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

• 29:46David Sims?

  Okay.

• 29:46Griffin Newman?

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

• 29:51David Sims?

  Wow.

• 29:51Griffin Newman?

  The cow likes chicken.

• 29:54David Sims?

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

• 30:00Griffin 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.

• 30:12David Sims?

  Yes.

• 30:12Griffin Newman?

  One of my favorite movies of the year.

• 30:13David Sims?

  Absolutely.

• 30:14Griffin Newman?

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

• 30:20David Sims?

  That is a line in the movie.

• 30:22Griffin Newman?

  In the new movie from Jane Schomburn, Past and Future Guest.

• 30:24David Sims?

  Past and Future Guest, a great filmmaker, a great podcast guest.

• 30:28Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 30:28David Sims?

  A great friend.

• 30:29Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 30:30David Sims?

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

• 30:35Griffin Newman?

  Uh huh.

• 30:36David Sims?

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

• 30:38Griffin Newman?

  Performances, friend of the show.

• 30:39David Sims?

  Friend of the show Zach Cherry.

• 30:41Griffin Newman?

  Zach Cherry.

• 30:41David Sims?

  Also in it.

• 30:42Griffin Newman?

  This is true.

• 30:44David Sims?

  Such a cool movie. Won the Queer Palmitcan. 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 MUBI.

• 30:54Griffin 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 make some sort of legacy sequel, who's played by Gillian Anderson, who lives at the summer camp.

• 31:08David Sims?

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

• 31:12Griffin 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.

• 31:24David Sims?

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

• 31:37Griffin Newman?

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

• 31:41David Sims?

  Damn right.

• 31:47Griffin Newman?

  David?

• 31:47David Sims?

  Yes?

• 31:48Griffin Newman?

  He lurks in shadow. He slips into dreams. He casts no reflection. Audible presents Bram Stoker's Dracula, a new full cast audio thriller starring Ella Purnell as Mina Harker, Jonathan Bailey as Dracula, and an A-list cast, including Maggie Gyllenhaal as Van Helsing, Amy Lou Wood as Lucy, David Johnson as Dr. Seward, and many more. That is an all-star cast.

• 32:09David Sims?

  Yeah, this new full cast thriller locks Mina Harker in a battle of minds with the Count. When Mina's fiance, Jonathan Harker, Louis Partridge, vanishes in Transylvania, Mina pieces together letters, diary entries, and chilling testimony to hunt the predator stalking those she loves, only to discover Dracula's already hunting her.

• 32:28Griffin Newman?

  Joined by the enigmatic Van Helsing, Mina and a small fearless band race against time to stop this ancient terror. Using her intellect, her resolve, and a gift for drawing the unseen lines between clues, Mina may just hold the key to bring down the Count, if he hasn't already found his way inside her mind.

• 32:44David Sims?

  Featuring a haunting original score by Elon Eschery and a spatial dolby-atmos sound design, Audible's Dracula invites you to welcome literature's most shadowy figure into your home. Feel the terror of being hunted and the thrill of the hunt. Don't miss this year's best new audio thriller, Bram Stoker's Dracula, Audible's new full cast original adaptation. Written by Robin Ahern, now on Audible. Listen to the darkness. Go to audible.com/listen2dracula.

• 33:19Griffin Newman?

  David?

• 33:20David Sims?

  Yes?

• 33:20Griffin Newman?

  Ugh.

• 33:21David Sims?

  Uh-oh.

• 33:22Griffin Newman?

  It's November.

• 33:23David Sims?

  Ah!

• 33:24Griffin Newman?

  And you know what that means. The old stereotype about November.

• 33:27David Sims?

  Turkeys?

• 33:28Griffin Newman?

  One long sprint to the finish line.

• 33:30David Sims?

  Oh, of course.

• 33:31Griffin Newman?

  Packed schedule, questionable food choices, and somehow a social calendar that got way fuller than you planned. And I ain't talking about Sam Fuller. We're not covering him yet in the podcast.

• 33:40David Sims?

  No, though, maybe we should.

• 33:41Griffin Newman?

  We might get there eventually.

• 33:42David Sims?

  I can't remember. Big Red One. We can call it the Big Red Podcast.

• 33:45Griffin Newman?

  Listen, when things get complicated, not when life is easy and when you got time for a whole routine, right now, when everything is full and something has to give one scoop, cold water. Every morning before anything else, as I like to say, scoop, there it is.

• 33:59David Sims?

  You do like to say that every morning you text me scoop, there it is. And that means I now know that you had your AG1.

• 34:05Griffin Newman?

  And I'm awake.

• 34:06David Sims?

  Uh, but yeah, you're, I know you're, you're a daily AG1 user and it's basically the, uh, the glue that holds your internal organs together at this point.

• 34:15Griffin Newman?

  It's not just marketing. AG1 Next Gen is backed by four separate gold standard clinical trials. Not weekend a study.

• 34:22David Sims?

  Thank you for that.

• 34:23Griffin Newman?

  Four independent studies with key nutrient levels improved within three months of consistent use. This is the thing I like about AG1. They're not resting on their laurels. They constantly work to better themselves.

• 34:35David Sims?

  Yes. AG1, they've got now AG1 Pro.

• 34:39Griffin Newman?

  For the professionals.

• 34:39David Sims?

  Same daily drink now with a performance and recovery layer built in. So you've got five grams of Cre vitalis, a premium German made creatine monohydrate, and one of the most studied compounds in sports science, plus CAHMB for muscle production and zinc carnasine for gut support.

• 34:58Griffin Newman?

  Thank God.

• 34:58David Sims?

  Next gen is the foundation. Pro adds what your body needs to recover.

• 35:02Griffin Newman?

  You might be having some big meals this November. AG1 is what you need to keep your gut in check. Keep things, as I like to put it, regular.

• 35:10David Sims?

  Yes. So for a limited time, visit drinkag1.com/check and get a free immune support bundle, including omega three fish oil and vitamin D three plus K two with your first subscription of AG1 Next Gen or AG1 Pro. That's drinkag1.com/check. And after checkout, be sure to let them know that Belank Check sent you.

• 35:40Griffin Newman?

  Look, I want to, I want to be on top of it here. Let me just say this.

• 35:43David Sims?

  The Sugarland Express.

• 35:44Griffin Newman?

  It is wild for, you know, this is a movie where Goldie is minted as a star, but has not quite figured out her thing yet. Spielberg is getting his first real shot at making a movie. Then both of them go on to have wild success over the next couple of decades. They never work together again in any capacity.

• 36:03David Sims?

  I wondered about this. Yeah. Why did they never work?

• 36:05Griffin Newman?

  I I've sensed no ill will. He speaks very highly of her. You have to imagine they're constantly like

• 36:12Speaker 04

  At the same party.

• 36:13Griffin Newman?

  Right. And it's just funny that they never did anything together ever again. And it's almost as funny as when you remind people that Steven Spielberg's first movie was a William Atherton co-ender. A two-hander. Like, it just doesn't feel like, wait, Dickless from Ghostbusters? At one point was Steven Spielberg's leading man?

• 36:35David Sims?

  Atherton also never, never worked with Spielberg again.

• 36:38Speaker 04

  You would think he'd pop up and like

• 36:40David Sims?

  You'd think Spielberg could use him.

• 36:41Speaker 04

  Yeah, I guess. I'm like

• 36:42Griffin Newman?

  I will say respectfully, I feel like Atherton has a reputation for being very difficult.

• 36:47David Sims?

  Yeah, interesting.

• 36:48Griffin Newman?

  And I feel like, who knows if JJ gets into this in the dossier?

• 36:51David Sims?

  Yeah, we'll see.

• 36:51Griffin Newman?

  But I think there was a bit of a narrative that he kind of blew his leading man shot after this movie. And then when he comes back in the eighties as like

• 37:01David Sims?

  It's like a

• 37:02Griffin Newman?

  Dickless stiff ass. That was sort of unnecessary.

• 37:04David Sims?

  That's your lane.

• 37:05Griffin Newman?

  Rebrand? He came back a little humbled?

• 37:07Speaker 04

  Not to jump ahead, but did you guys look up the guy who plays Slide? And what his deal is?

• 37:14Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 37:15David Sims?

  Wait, what's the?

• 37:16Griffin Newman?

  Should we just?

• 37:16David Sims?

  You mean Michael Sacks?

• 37:18Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 37:18David Sims?

  The guy, because he's in Slaughterhouse-Five.

• 37:20Griffin Newman?

  Yep.

• 37:20Speaker 04

  Yes, but do you know what he does now? Like, what he like?

• 37:23David Sims?

  Is it, is it good?

• 37:24Griffin Newman?

  Michael Sacks.

• 37:25Speaker 04

  Well, I don't know. He worked at, he worked at, he worked at Morgan Stanley for 10 years.

• 37:30David Sims?

  Okay.

• 37:31Speaker 04

  He's just like

• 37:32David Sims?

  Oh, he just became a rich guy.

• 37:34Speaker 04

  Became a rich guy.

• 37:35David Sims?

  Oh, interesting.

• 37:36Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 37:36Griffin Newman?

  Michael Sacks did nine movies in total.

• 37:39David Sims?

  Right.

• 37:40Griffin Newman?

  Two of them TV movies. Slaughterhouse-Five, Sugarland Express, The Private Files of J. Edgar Hoover, Hanover Street, Amityville Horror, Split Image. His final film in 1984 is The House of God.

• 37:50David Sims?

  It's kind of crazy that he was the star of Slaughterhouse-Five, which is not, people don't remember that movie now, but it was a big movie, George Roy Hall movie, and he was the out of nowhere Billy Pilgrim. And then, right, he does this. He's pretty good in this. He's got the right look. And yeah, like by the eighties, he's done. And I guess he retired in ninety four.

• 38:10Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, he's like doing movies with like Harrison Ford. He's doing Omni-vel horror like he's in big shit. And then I'll just read this paragraph. After spending time working in technology positions on Wall Street in two thousand and four, Sacks joined the online bond trading company Market Access, A-X-E-S-S, as head of global applications development. He was employed by Morgan Stanley from nineteen ninety four to two thousand and four as executive director, global head of bond technology for the fixed income division.

• 38:39David Sims?

  Griffin, this is not interesting.

• 38:41Griffin Newman?

  This is fascinating.

• 38:42David Sims?

  I mean, reading it aloud. I mean, I mean, it's interesting that he just pivoted to being a rich guy, but uh.

• 38:48Griffin Newman?

  It's just how like all of these fucking positions for.

• 38:51David Sims?

  Yeah, he's fancy.

• 38:52Griffin Newman?

  Forty years now.

• 38:54David Sims?

  And he's still alive.

• 38:55Speaker 04

  Yeah, you can look him. I just.

• 38:57David Sims?

  Ben Johnson though?

• 38:57Speaker 04

  I just looked him up on.

• 38:58David Sims?

  What a loser. What's he thinking?

• 39:01Griffin Newman?

  Ben Johnson lived a lot longer than I thought.

• 39:03Speaker 04

  Should I connect with Michael Sacks on LinkedIn?

• 39:05David Sims?

  The, yes, you should. The thing with Ben Johnson is you're like, oh, he lived like another twenty years after Sugarland Express. So he must have died at the age of a hundred. No, he died at seventy seven. He's only in his fifties in this movie. He, he reads like so much older. And of course he won the Oscar a few years prior to this. And it was this Oscar that was kind of like, ah, the old lion of the, you know, Western, like this old vet. And it's like, he was like, probably forty eight. And they were like, ah, you're ascending out to pasture, Ben, you know, like.

• 39:35Speaker 04

  Very Rick Dalton.

• 39:36Griffin Newman?

  The reason it felt that way is a lot of these guys died at fifty two.

• 39:39David Sims?

  Yeah. I mean, to be clear, I think he was, he probably was in his fifties. Yes. But still like.

• 39:43Griffin Newman?

  You know what I'm saying? Like even like, you know, Robert Shaw, who we'll cover next week, was dead within three years of Jaws. A lot of these guys died very young and died very young, basically of old age, where people just lived so fucking hard.

• 39:55David Sims?

  They just accelerated down the old.

• 39:57Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 39:58David Sims?

  Age road.

• 40:00Griffin Newman?

  Right. Ben Johnson lives until the two thousands, is making movies until the end. I was like, right, he's in Angels in the Outfield.

• 40:07David Sims?

  He lived until ninety six, ninety six.

• 40:09Griffin Newman?

  I'm sorry.

• 40:10David Sims?

  Yes, no, ninety six. Yes. He died of a heart attack, visiting his still living mother.

• 40:17Speaker 04

  Jesus.

• 40:17David Sims?

  At a suburban Phoenix retirement community where they both lived. So I guess he was like, going to the building across the street or whatever. And she lived another four years and died at the age of a hundred and one.

• 40:29Griffin Newman?

  That's insane.

• 40:29Speaker 04

  Mazel tov.

• 40:30David Sims?

  This is kind of insane. And there's a sculpture of Ben Johnson in Pawhuska, Oklahoma, that you can go see.

• 40:38Speaker 04

  Pawhuska, that's where they filmed Killers of Laramie.

• 40:43David Sims?

  That's, well, then we should go see the statue and then the location of that film.

• 40:49Griffin Newman?

  Pawhuska Live Show?

• 40:51David Sims?

  They have a venue, do you think, like, what's a comedy lounge? What's like, what's a chain?

• 40:57Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, exactly. Bananas with a Z. David, crack open the dossier. Cause there is more of a gap between Duel and this than I remembered.

• 41:08David Sims?

  Duel, have you seen Duel, Esther Zuckerman?

• 41:10Speaker 04

  I have never seen Duel all the way through. I've seen clips of Duel.

• 41:15Griffin Newman?

  It rules.

• 41:16David Sims?

  Duel does rule. Check it out. Duel rules. Talk to a Duel rules. We have to stop. Steven Spielberg makes Duel. It's, it's kinda hot stuff and everyone's like, okay.

• 41:28Griffin Newman?

  Industry, not.

• 41:29David Sims?

  That's what I'm saying, like, but there's buzz. Everyone's like, okay, what's Steven gonna do? And Steven says, Steven Spielberg says, he was offered a bunch of movies right out of Duel, but they were kinda bad, right? Like, suddenly, it's like, yeah, yeah, yeah, get that guy. But I think he's probably being sent whatever warmed over projects are kinda sitting around. Right? So instead, he does two more TV movies, which I think we're planning on discussing on our Patreon.

• 41:56Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 41:57David Sims?

  Something Evil and Savage.

• 41:59Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 42:00David Sims?

  And, you know, he basically, so Something Evil was for CBS. Universal let him out of his contract to do it, cause they had nothing for him to do. And then Savage, which has Martin Landau, was a true, like, he says, the only real time that Universal was like, you have to do this, literally.

• 42:19Griffin Newman?

  You owe us.

• 42:19David Sims?

  Exactly.

• 42:20Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 42:21David Sims?

  Have not seen Savage. Have you seen Savage?

• 42:24Griffin Newman?

  No, we will.

• 42:24David Sims?

  Watch it and excited to see.

• 42:26Griffin Newman?

  We'll talk on Patreon.

• 42:27David Sims?

  Landau mugging it up in that one. And then he's thinking of making a movie called McCluskey.

• 42:32Griffin Newman?

  Mm hmm.

• 42:32David Sims?

  Based on, sort of based on something that Greedo once said to Han.

• 42:37Speaker 04

  Oh, fuck you.

• 42:39Griffin Newman?

  It's based on that in the same way that Sugarland Express is based on True Story. It takes some liberties. It changes some of the words.

• 42:46Speaker 04

  Was that a clunky?

• 42:47Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, that's what I'm saying. Yeah, I know.

• 42:48David Sims?

  It's sort of based on.

• 42:50Griffin Newman?

  Inspired.

• 42:51Speaker 04

  Okay, okay.

• 42:53Griffin Newman?

  Cause that is the real thing that Greedo said a long time ago.

• 42:56David Sims?

  It's still.

• 42:57Griffin Newman?

  It's the funniest shit in the world.

• 42:59David Sims?

  Weird that he just says, we're clunky.

• 43:02Griffin Newman?

  Connor Ralliff, when we do George Lucas talk show, anytime he refers to the McClunky cut, or he tries to like, sort of pathologize the thought behind the McClunky change at the last minute, it feels like the kind of thing Connor would make up. And it's so weird that it's just really the last thing that George Lucas did before selling the company.

• 43:22David Sims?

  Right, like one little, like, perfect.

• 43:26Griffin Newman?

  And then I'm ready to let go of Star Wars forever. His final statement was McClunky. Anyway, Spielberg wanted to make.

• 43:33David Sims?

  McCluskey, a Burt Reynolds vehicle, which is later made by Joseph Sargent and is given the slightly better title of White Lightning, which is, you know, a good title. Spielberg truly works, like, comes aboard that project, but decides not to do it because he's working on it for like, two months, scouts some locations, is starting to casting, and he's basically like, this is like a journeyman movie that like, is a Burt Reynolds vehicle, why am I doing this?

• 44:00Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 44:00David Sims?

  And so he backs out and decides like, I need to do something a little more personal, which is why I'm sort of like, how'd you get to Sugarland Express? But we'll get to that.

• 44:11Griffin Newman?

  Yes, major pin in that, because I got some, some thoughts.

• 44:14David Sims?

  He also briefly was flirting with California Split.

• 44:18Griffin Newman?

  Interesting.

• 44:19David Sims?

  And Cruisin'. And I'm assuming that's not the Freakin' Movin', not the Freakin' Movin'. Cruisin' with a apostrophe?

• 44:27Speaker 04

  Imagine Steven Spielberg directing Cruisin'.

• 44:31David Sims?

  Steven Spielberg's Cruisin', like, they go into the gay bar and the camera just doesn't go in, and it's just like, let's, let's leave.

• 44:37Griffin Newman?

  I was gonna say, it's the most explicit handshaking movie you've ever seen. Hello, nice to meet you. Just leather daddies tipping their calves. Good afternoon.

• 44:46David Sims?

  She was like, this is sick. Unbelievable. The violent underbelly.

• 44:51Griffin Newman?

  Uh, is Cruisin' with an apostrophe the movie that ends up being the, the Curtis Hansen, Tom Cruise, Jacky Earl Haley movie? Or a third entirely different movie?

• 44:59David Sims?

  No, that's losing.

• 45:00Griffin Newman?

  Oh, I'm sorry.

• 45:01David Sims?

  I, I don't know what Cruisin' is, but JJ has highlighted it. Now Spielberg had been thinking about the Sugarland Express since in 1969, he had read a news story about this true story. He'd pitched it to Universal back then, you know, about this Texas couple that, you know, took a high women hostage. Universal is like, eh, this seems like a bummer. No. But now he's got a little juice. Okay. So he's trying to revive it. Uh, he takes it over to Jennings Lang.

• 45:30Griffin Newman?

  Okay.

• 45:30David Sims?

  Who pairs him with these screenwriters, Hal Barwood and Matthew Robbins, who have a credit on the movie, right? Along with Spielberg.

• 45:36Griffin Newman?

  Yeah. And Robbins becomes a major collaborator. I mean, he's in the Spielberg, Amblin ecosystem. He's working with, uh, Lucas a lot over the next couple of decades. He's a major recurring figure.

• 45:48David Sims?

  He wrote, uh, even recently, he wrote the screen story for Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio.

• 45:52Griffin Newman?

  Yeah. He wrote Batteries Not Included.

• 45:54David Sims?

  Right. Which, yeah. Anyway, so, uh, they, uh, have a title, carte blanche. Oh, interesting. French for blank check.

• 46:03Griffin Newman?

  He knew.

• 46:05David Sims?

  They wrote a script in like 13 days and a Universal thinks about it, but puts it in turnaround, but then they revive it. And for whatever reason, you know, Hollywood, crazy business, I guess. They respect Steven enough to be like, okay, let's fucking do it.

• 46:20Griffin Newman?

  Do you have any sources on that? Any sites?

• 46:23David Sims?

  Hollywood, Hollywood's just a crazy old town.

• 46:25Griffin Newman?

  Yeah. Hard for me to believe that.

• 46:27David Sims?

  Uh huh. Spielberg says he likes the kind of media circus part of it, right? It's not just that he's interested in this couple. He likes the sort of American condition of today, you know, sort of statement you can make about it, like. He relates it to Ace in the Hole, the great Billy Wilder movie, right? But it's not just about the event, it's about the thing that unfolds around the event.

• 46:48Griffin Newman?

  Which, you know, does start to become a major theme in American movies across this decade. Like Dog Day Afternoon is sort of the apex of this.

• 46:57David Sims?

  And a better film than The Sugar.

• 46:59Griffin Newman?

  I agree, but the modern relationship to crime and news and right.

• 47:04David Sims?

  The first wave of, I mean, Ace in the Hole is actually more the first, but yeah, but of like television and.

• 47:09Griffin Newman?

  Television, yeah, and all that stuff.

• 47:11David Sims?

  Yes. Um, Sugarland Express becomes the title. I don't know.

• 47:16Griffin Newman?

  It's a good title.

• 47:17David Sims?

  It is a good title, but it doesn't really tell you anything about what you're in for.

• 47:21Griffin Newman?

  No, but it's kind of like the.

• 47:23David Sims?

  It's a catchy title.

• 47:24Griffin Newman?

  It's the, the Peter Bogdanovich Paper Moon story where he's just like, that just sounds good.

• 47:29David Sims?

  It does sound.

• 47:29Griffin Newman?

  And he reaches out the worst of walls and he's like, what do you think of Paper Moon? And he's like, the title's so good, you don't even need to make the picture. Like Sugarland Express doesn't tell you anything about the movie, but it is just kind of a fun set of words.

• 47:40David Sims?

  Universal is basically like, we will do this, but you need a star. And so that's how Goldie Hawn comes aboard.

• 47:45Griffin Newman?

  He has two recent Academy Award winners in this movie.

• 47:49David Sims?

  Who's the other?

• 47:50Griffin Newman?

  Ben Johnson.

• 47:51David Sims?

  Ben Johnson, you're right, of course.

• 47:52Griffin Newman?

  Had Just, 1971, right?

• 47:55David Sims?

  Yeah. Spielberg has acknowledged later on that casting Goldie Hawn was risky because you do kind of expect a Goldie Hawn picture. And this isn't that, right?

• 48:06Griffin Newman?

  But also.

• 48:06David Sims?

  The ending of this movie is sad, like this is a downbeat, you know, experience. It's not a Goldie Hawn picture in that way.

• 48:11Griffin Newman?

  To our point, she has not quite figured out what a Goldie Hawn picture is yet. So like, you're playing with sort of like weird elements.

• 48:20Speaker 04

  But I do think that the Goldie Hawn like idea is still the girl from Laugh-In.

• 48:25Griffin Newman?

  Absolutely.

• 48:26Speaker 04

  She's just gonna be wearing a little mini skirt and doing a little dance.

• 48:29Griffin Newman?

  This is what's interesting about it. And, you know, you can listen to our swing shift episode.

• 48:33David Sims?

  Come on, Liz, it's the 90s. That, that is maybe the greatest live delivery in that episode.

• 48:38Griffin Newman?

  That episode is incredible.

• 48:39David Sims?

  It is incredible.

• 48:40Speaker 04

  It's the perfect episode.

• 48:41David Sims?

  It is my favorite episode of 30 Rock, probably.

• 48:44Speaker 04

  Never fall a hippie to second location.

• 48:45David Sims?

  Never fall a hippie to second location is just unbelievable. It, to me, that's the epitome of what I think 30 Rock is about, especially in the early seasons, which is about Liz, the allure of Jack Donaghy to Liz, right? Of like, no, I don't want to be like you, but also this era of politics and thought kind of is like, eh, I have to stop worrying about being radical and just make money. Like, and Jack Donaghy is the devil on her shoulder being like, yes, big office, be mean.

• 49:11Griffin Newman?

  It's the heart of the show, which is.

• 49:12David Sims?

  It's the heart of the show.

• 49:13Griffin Newman?

  Tina Fey's relationship to Lorne Michaels.

• 49:15David Sims?

  A hundred percent.

• 49:16Griffin Newman?

  Her like alternating confusion, revulsion, admiration.

• 49:20David Sims?

  Attraction, like not romantic attraction, but like, you know, just like to that lifestyle. And like the most good 30 Rock episodes end with her going to his office and him being like, well, Lemon, and she's like, yeah, I don't, and he's like, mm hmm. And you're like, this rocks, it's the best.

• 49:34Griffin Newman?

  My favorite running thing on 30 Rock is when they get angry by people suggesting there's maybe sexual chemistry, but.

• 49:40David Sims?

  Right, that's like, never.

• 49:41Griffin Newman?

  Right, the show is like, fuck you.

• 49:44David Sims?

  That's also the episode where, uh, Jack Donaghy says, uh, shifrobe.

• 49:48Griffin Newman?

  Oh, okay.

• 49:48David Sims?

  When he does the entire group therapy with Tracy Morgan playing like 16 characters, like, yes.

• 49:54Griffin Newman?

  But that's not the, uh, uh, Lemon is 5:00 PM, what am I a farmer?

• 49:58David Sims?

  No, that's in season one, that's early.

• 50:00Speaker 04

  That's, that's, that epis, that is in, um.

• 50:03David Sims?

  Is that Black Tie?

• 50:04Speaker 04

  No, that's in, uh, Tracy Does Conan.

• 50:06David Sims?

  That, right, that's really early.

• 50:08Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 50:08David Sims?

  That episode's good.

• 50:09Griffin Newman?

  That's just, I rewatched it like two years ago and now I want to just watch it all again.

• 50:13David Sims?

  It's solid gold.

• 50:14Griffin Newman?

  Here's what I was gonna say. 10 years later, she does Swing Shift. We covered Swing Shift many years ago on the podcast, right? Swing Shift is a movie where this calamitous production, birth, post-production, battle, that's basically because Goldie won't let go of what a Goldie Hawn movie is in her head, that she could not accept a movie being a piece of a Jonathan Demme movie and was like, my persona is this, Kurt and I have this chemistry, this and that, right? It's interesting that Goldie Hawn represented a very clear thing at this point, but hadn't figured out how to successfully build a movie around it. So she seems more open to just being an instrument for Spielberg.

• 50:56David Sims?

  And she's a very good one, but an expensive one, Griffin. She had a deal with Universal, so they could get her, but she costs 300 grand. The movie's budget is about $2 million. So like she's, she's a big, she's a big ticket.

• 51:10Griffin Newman?

  Close to a fourth of the budget.

• 51:11David Sims?

  Um, and, uh, but she says, recently she said this.

• 51:15Griffin Newman?

  I guess it was one fifth of that.

• 51:16David Sims?

  Whatever. But she says it was the most beautiful time. I love Spielberg. I was amazed that this young man I worked with so many years ago went on to make all these movies. I love you, Steven. That's her take. William Atherton, Spielberg says, and I do like this take from him. He says, very soft spoken, but with wild eyes, you could easily misunderstand him like looking through a pair of binoculars.

• 51:36Griffin Newman?

  Interesting.

• 51:37David Sims?

  You know what I mean? It's like, I wanted to cast someone who maybe looked crazy, but not in like an obvious way.

• 51:42Griffin Newman?

  Atherton.

• 51:42David Sims?

  Yeah. Atherton. And then he says he cast Michael Sacks because he looked like Atherton and he wanted them to resemble each other. Like he wanted them to be two sides of the coin, right? Like kind of straight laced and crazy.

• 51:53Griffin Newman?

  It is funny.

• 51:53David Sims?

  But it can be distracting sometimes. Yeah, they do look really alike. Yes.

• 51:57Griffin Newman?

  It's just funny that Atherton's thing at this time is, is this guy insane? And then it just, within a decade becomes.

• 52:04David Sims?

  Like this fucking suit is here to ruin your party.

• 52:07Griffin Newman?

  It's just, the second he walks on screen, you're like, get him out of here. Buzzkill.

• 52:13David Sims?

  Spielberg says, Hawn is wonderful on take one and two. Gets her second win on take seven and is marvelous again on take 12 or 13. On the other hand, Atherton is this New York actor who's very serious and demanding, and he gets better with takes. So Goldie would be weighing, wearing thin as Bill was getting better. I love to hear directors talk like that. Like, like, I, cause then you, you really are like, yeah, they know, like they think about this stuff and they won't talk about it too much because it's a little impolite.

• 52:38Griffin Newman?

  Also, look, this is Spielberg.

• 52:40David Sims?

  But now it's like 50 years from now Spielberg can talk about this.

• 52:42Griffin Newman?

  This is his first proper movie. He's directed less than 10 professional things at this point, right? In total, and for him to already have a sense of like. You know, when people talk about, you know, an actor's director, director who's good with actors, what that really means is someone who is intuitive and empathetic and observant and understands how to deal with different people differently. Right. Because there is no one size fits all thing. And like you do have actors who have different processes, different like arcs of when they're gonna have the most juice and shit like that. And for Spielberg to already at this age be able to clock that and be able to manage that and figure out how to like create a flow around that. It's like the Spielberg blocking shit, right?

• 53:26Griffin Newman?

  Not to get ahead of conversation here, but it's like, you know, you look at this movie and it already has the crazy Spielberg oners that are totally unshowy. You don't notice until like two minutes in, like, wait, there hasn't been a cut. And it's always, it feels like for the sake of, um, uh, how would I put it? It's a story economy, right? Like he's trying to simplify things and I'm sure also simplifying his shoot day by figuring out how to get thing in one extended shot. And the blocking is so precise, but you compare it to someone like Hitchcock who would do similar things, but was so contemptuous of his actors and talked about them like paper dolls and puppets, right? And he would like hire a movie star and just be like, do your fucking movie star thing and then hire a woman and yell at her.

• 54:10Griffin Newman?

  You know, and like Spielberg is someone who is like collaborative with actors. You really feel like he's trying to meet them where they are and like synthesize different sort of acting styles, performance styles, tones and whatever. But in an era where a lot of other filmmakers are going like, I let the actors do whatever they want. They're free, there's no blocking, the camera's loose, we're shooting it almost Verity style. Like that's the style that's on the rise because this kind of traditional blocking framing, sort of like intentionality of shot structure is starting to seem a little rigid and classical and passe. And he's like this one guy who's able to marry the two things. Like the modern style of performance and like treating actors as collaborators, but also have these sort of very intentional,

• 54:55Griffin Newman?

  man, the actors keep on landing at just the right spot at just the right time.

• 55:00David Sims?

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 55:01Griffin Newman?

  It's just wild to me.

• 55:02David Sims?

  They shot it for 60 days on location in Texas, shot in continuity to keep costs down. Makes sense because of all the cars you need at the end of the movie. Spielberg is basically never working, has never worked the crew this big, right? So Saul, sorry, Zanuck, the producer is like, well, let's ease him in, give him a sense of control. And then gets to set on the first day and says, he was about to get ready for his first shot. And it's the most elaborate fucking thing I've ever seen in my life. All in one shots, camera going and stopping, people going in and out. And he had such confidence in the way he was handling it. And I was kind of like, oh, I don't think I need to like, you know, warm this kid up. Like he'll be fine.

• 55:46Griffin Newman?

  Also, this movie, he's already working with Vilma Sigman, John Williams and Verna Fields.

• 55:50David Sims?

  Yes. And Vilma Sigman had just done McCabe and fucking Long Goodbye, right? Like he, he, it's not like he's some amateur they picked up off the heat. He's already like really hot stuff.

• 56:03Griffin Newman?

  Right. This, this Spielberg Altman overlap, I keep finding fascinating.

• 56:08David Sims?

  Right, because Williams had done.

• 56:10Griffin Newman?

  Close they were at this point in time for very different filmmakers.

• 56:13David Sims?

  Yeah. And Spielberg had loved McCabe, uh, which is, he says, this is his favorite film that Ziegman ever shot. And images, and he loved Deliverance and he loved Long Goodbye. And he said, I'd heard about this crazy Hungarian who lights with six foot candles and would try anything. So I sent him the script and he loved it. And I said, I wanted to shoot this whole picture in the rain with windshield wipers going. And he was like, let's do it, bro. They only shoot, they only work again on Close Encounters, also a good looking movie, though.

• 56:39Griffin Newman?

  I think a pretty terrific looking film. I think two of the three best looking things he ever shot.

• 56:44David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 56:45Griffin Newman?

  Along with the pilot for the Mindy Project.

• 56:49Griffin Newman?

  That's his final credit.

• 56:50David Sims?

  He's so, she's so funny. I can't do, I don't know what he sounds like.

• 56:53Griffin Newman?

  How can she balance her work with her daily life?

• 56:57David Sims?

  I think three of the guys here need to sort of be cycled out for other guy. Remember how Mindy Project would be like, that guy's fired, uh, this guy's in like over and over again.

• 57:05Griffin Newman?

  Two new guys.

• 57:05Speaker 04

  Maybe too much, maybe too much Ike Baranhold.

• 57:09David Sims?

  Lots of, oh, you want less? Okay, okay, we can have less, we can have less. Yeah.

• 57:12Griffin Newman?

  I just believe that was straight up his last thing he ever shot.

• 57:15David Sims?

  Wow.

• 57:16Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 57:17David Sims?

  Spielberg says he's an interesting man. Your employee is great camera eye, but for gratis, you get his thoughts as well. He's opinionated and sometimes he'll conflict with your own ideas, but he's enough of a professional to do immediately any way you wish.

• 57:30Griffin Newman?

  But Spielberg likes that. Like, for how much this guy has, like, a vision? He's not someone coming in being like, "It's all in my head and all of you need to do what I'm telling you to do."

• 57:39David Sims?

  They get along really well. It's almost weird that they didn't make more movies together because it does, they do talk about each other both so positively and Ziggun's like, "He's the most talented filmmaker I ever worked with."

• 57:49Griffin Newman?

  And this movie looks incredible and has like a kind of surprising look. Like, there is a kind of muted quality to it.

• 57:56David Sims?

  Yeah, it always feels like it's like sunset or like, you know, early morning, like, you know, the way the light is.

• 58:02Griffin Newman?

  The brightest daylight scenes are still, something's a little, like, shadowy and sort of sad about them.

• 58:07David Sims?

  It's using this new Panaflex camera.

• 58:10Griffin Newman?

  I think this was the first feature film to use it.

• 58:13David Sims?

  Yes, and so it can do these big pans, I think, like 360-degree pans. They can, like, move around the car really easily. And, uh, yeah, I mean, another person he collaborates with for the first time is John Williams.

• 58:28Speaker 04

  Who worked with someone else on the score, right? The Toots?

• 58:33Griffin Newman?

  Yes, Toots was the main harmonica player. What's his name?

• 58:36David Sims?

  Who is Toots?

• 58:39Speaker 04

  I just, I clocked Toots.

• 58:40David Sims?

  Huck Tootsa?

• 58:41Griffin Newman?

  No, you're... Okay, well, 10 comedy points.

• 58:45David Sims?

  Ben like that, or is mad at me? One or the other.

• 58:48Speaker 04

  I'm mad at you.

• 58:50David Sims?

  Uh, I looked up Toot Sugarland and I got Toots Feelmans, a Belgian jazz musician who is known for playing the chromatic harmonica, also known for his whistling skills.

• 59:01Speaker 04

  I don't think, um, I don't think, I don't know if you'll listen, but...

• 59:06David Sims?

  Oh, he does the harmonica on Sesame Street.

• 59:08Speaker 04

  Oh, wow, what a fucking legend.

• 59:10Griffin Newman?

  Holy shit.

• 59:11Speaker 04

  I do think, I do think Jordan Hoffmann probably is deeply aware of who Toots is.

• 59:15David Sims?

  Well, I'm not gonna get Jordan Hoffmann fucking started on that. I get 18 text messages about Toots before breakfast.

• 59:20Griffin Newman?

  Jordan Hoffmann has a whole shelf of Toots 75s.

• 59:23David Sims?

  Exactly. Uh, Toots died in 2016 at the age of 94. He tooted his last toot.

• 59:31David Sims?

  So Spielberg had really liked, I think we mentioned this on last week's episode, the Mark Riedel film, The Revivers, which had a John Williams score. And he was always like, I want the guy who did the score to do my movie.

• 59:46Griffin Newman?

  Seventy five and says seventy eight, it's gone. I know Ben was just really shooting some dirty glances at me.

• 59:51David Sims?

  Yeah, I was also, but it's fine. William Goldenberg, who scored Duel, thinks he might have been able to sneak in there and beat John Williams to the punch. If he'd read the script faster, he, he, this, this may just be William Goldenberg sitting there full of regret, being like, why didn't I turn out to be fucking Steven Spielberg's go to composer or whatever. But he's like, it's all to do with my procrastination. I was the first person he gave the script and I didn't reply and he probably thought I didn't like it. I don't know, man.

• 1:00:22Griffin Newman?

  The, um, I'm going to be citing the John Williams Disney Plus doc a lot in these early episodes because we're pretty close together and I just watched it. But Spielberg says that he saw The Revers, which is the.

• 1:00:33David Sims?

  That's what I said. Oh, you, I said Revivers, it's The Revers. There you go, the Mark Riedel movie.

• 1:00:37Griffin Newman?

  Right. And he said to himself, if I ever get to make a movie, I'm handing it to this guy. Right. It was like locked in on his mind. And then his career got bigger. By the time he goes to him, obviously he'd won the Fiddler Oscar. He wasn't John Williams legend status, but he was like, this guy might turn me down. Right. But it seemed very locked in on the idea that this was the guy he wanted to work with. And I think had a notion, the thing he said was that at that point in time, the sort of big classical orchestral score was going out of fashion.

• 1:01:07David Sims?

  And Spielberg wanted it. He wanted an Aaron Copland 80 piece orchestra score.

• 1:01:12Griffin Newman?

  That when he hears the Revers score and some of those other sixties Williams scores, that he's like, this is the last guy keeping up this old school tradition and I want to support him and this is what I want my movies to sound like.

• 1:01:22David Sims?

  And John Williams is like, no, no. Like, we're not doing that for this. We're going to do a small string ensemble and I'm getting toots.

• 1:01:28Griffin Newman?

  Yeah. This score-

• 1:01:29David Sims?

  I'm not joking. He's like, and harmonica.

• 1:01:31Griffin Newman?

  This score is incredible.

• 1:01:32David Sims?

  It's great score.

• 1:01:32Griffin Newman?

  It basically was not really in circulation. It just got put out on CD in the year 2024 for the 50th anniversary. But outside of like times he's performed the main theme as part of like concerts, it's never been like-

• 1:01:46David Sims?

  And that's when people like, go get a hot dog, right? If you're at the fucking Boston Pops or whatever.

• 1:01:51Griffin Newman?

  I think it's like quietly-

• 1:01:52David Sims?

  No, I think it's a lovely score. I'm just saying if you're there to see John Williams do all his shit.

• 1:01:56Griffin Newman?

  It's the one you don't recognize.

• 1:01:57David Sims?

  He's like, and now the Sugarland Express. And you're like, I'm gonna make an express stop at the bathroom.

• 1:02:02Griffin Newman?

  It's a Brown Town Express. Oh boy.

• 1:02:06Speaker 04

  Ew.

• 1:02:07Griffin Newman?

  I'm sorry. You set me up.

• 1:02:09David Sims?

  Music's making me need to poop.

• 1:02:11Griffin Newman?

  He's playing the brown note. Toots knows the brown note.

• 1:02:13Speaker 04

  I mean, going to the bathroom is a major plot point in this movie.

• 1:02:16Griffin Newman?

  That's true.

• 1:02:16David Sims?

  Well, if it's something you always think about with car movies where you're like, when's anyone peeing or?

• 1:02:21Speaker 04

  And they make it very explicit that it's like, she's gonna need to go, but then she doesn't go.

• 1:02:25Griffin Newman?

  This is one of the only movies with like basically a porta potty heist.

• 1:02:29David Sims?

  Yeah, we gotta go.

• 1:02:30Griffin Newman?

  Um, I just think this score sounds like nothing else in the rest of John Williams' entire career, right? It's a total one of one. It is fascinating that this is what starts their relationship. And that what starts their relationship is Spielberg being like, I want you to do the John Williams thing. And he immediately pushes back and is like, hear me out, right? And Spielberg talks a lot about that. He would go to John Williams with ideas in the early years. And then John Williams would be like, what if I veer here? You think Josh is gonna sound like this? I'm gonna play two notes, right? You want sweeping orchestra? I'm gonna bring in Toots, whatever it is. And Spielberg is like, at this point, he has this line that's very touching in the doc where he's like,

• 1:03:10Griffin Newman?

  anytime I'm making a movie, the thing that keeps me going is like, oh man, at some point at the other end of this.

• 1:03:16David Sims?

  John's gonna be like, showing me the first thing.

• 1:03:19Griffin Newman?

  I get to hear John's first ideas.

• 1:03:20David Sims?

  Right.

• 1:03:21Griffin Newman?

  And I have no idea what they're gonna be and I've never been disappointed by them. And there's some amount of conversation, but I love seeing his first instinct without me giving him any guidance. And me not giving him temper or anything like that. And then in that same documentary, they cut to Lucas. And he goes, you know, a lot of people you work with them and they go, well, I have this idea. And you go, no, that's not what I want. And they push back and you get into a fight. And John's never fought me on anything. He's a real prince. And you're like, God, what an interesting comparison point for these two guys where Lucas is like, and first of all, I'm like, what other fucking composers were you working? You've worked with so few other composers in your life, but he's like, these uppity guys who are giving you ideas.

• 1:04:03Griffin Newman?

  Right? And Spielberg's like, I like the John Williams like zags and that our relationship was formed on him zagging right off the bat.

• 1:04:11David Sims?

  I also just truly wonder how much, again, like George Lucas is informing the music of Star Wars, which is so clearly like John Williams is like ongoing opus, right? That like every time there's a sequel, he's like, I actually have something new, like, you know, every time. Yeah.

• 1:04:27Griffin Newman?

  There's a part where he's like, you know, some of the stuff John gave me, it wasn't right. And I had to explain to him how the mood was wrong and they play the Luke to sunset.

• 1:04:36David Sims?

  Sure.

• 1:04:37Griffin Newman?

  Moments with his original track.

• 1:04:39David Sims?

  And Toots is going crazy.

• 1:04:44Griffin Newman?

  Um, but they play it and you're like, this doesn't work. And then they play the final version and it's like a transcendent moment that like immediately solidifies that movie and like cultural history. And I'm like, I cannot imagine what the note George Lucas gave in between it. Like, obviously they got to the right place, but knowing George Lucas.

• 1:05:04David Sims?

  He just like mumbled something.

• 1:05:05Griffin Newman?

  Was he just like, oh, no, it's wrong.

• 1:05:07David Sims?

  Louder.

• 1:05:11David Sims?

  French horn.

• 1:05:13Griffin Newman?

  Don't you dare disagree with me.

• 1:05:15David Sims?

  Subulba. Is Subulba in this scene? He's over there. You can't see him.

• 1:05:22David Sims?

  What if George Lucas buys Star Wars back and then just puts Subulba in like one scene of the original Star Wars and then sells it again?

• 1:05:28Griffin Newman?

  It's the biggest mistake Kathy Kennedy's made.

• 1:05:30David Sims?

  Not like doing a Subulba.

• 1:05:32Griffin Newman?

  Not going all in on Subulba.

• 1:05:35David Sims?

  I think it is a mistake how they did a bunch of Star Wars shows, but they never like had the guts to do like a pod racing show.

• 1:05:44Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:44David Sims?

  Where it's just like, that's so built for a show, like the world of pod racing.

• 1:05:49Griffin Newman?

  Also just synergy, Walt Disney Company, right? Their whole portfolio, just start animating full pod races and airing them on ESPN. Don't make a show that's like a narrative. Just let me watch.

• 1:06:00David Sims?

  Invent pod racing as a real sport.

• 1:06:03Griffin Newman?

  Right. Script it, rig it, animate it.

• 1:06:05David Sims?

  Right. Like, you know, you're gonna have to rollerball it. It's gonna have to be in some, right? Right. Some country where, you know, you can do that. Like, you know, some regulations.

• 1:06:14Griffin Newman?

  Get groups to record some new color commentary.

• 1:06:17David Sims?

  That's gotta hurt. I don't care what country, universe you're from.

• 1:06:20Griffin Newman?

  My dad's losing it. Okay. Back to the Sugar Land Express.

• 1:06:23David Sims?

  Let's begin the plot.

• 1:06:27Griffin Newman?

  David?

• 1:06:28David Sims?

  Yes?

• 1:06:28Griffin Newman?

  Uh, uh, who are you wearing?

• 1:06:30David Sims?

  Uh, who am I wearing?

• 1:06:31Griffin Newman?

  I'm doing like an impression of a red carpet correspondent, asking who you're wearing right now.

• 1:06:35David Sims?

  Well, I am wearing Quince.

• 1:06:38Griffin Newman?

  Well, well, wow. What a Quince, Quince, Quincy dense.

• 1:06:43David Sims?

  It's a Mongolian cashmere zip sweater.

• 1:06:47Griffin Newman?

  Okay.

• 1:06:47David Sims?

  Uh, it's a sort of a brown. Would you agree?

• 1:06:49Griffin Newman?

  Yeah. It's like, maybe like a, uh, what would you, a chocolate?

• 1:06:53David Sims?

  Sure. I have been seated next to people wearing this item of clothing and they have brushed against me, not to brag, and gone like, so soft.

• 1:07:00Griffin Newman?

  Oh, a soft boy. But listen, the best pieces in your closet are the ones that you can count on, whether you're heading to work, going out, or keeping things casual. And this time of year, Quince makes finding something great for everyone else just as easy. This holiday season, it's where I'm shopping for myself and everyone on my list.

• 1:07:17David Sims?

  Quince does rock. It's got high-quality staples made with these, uh, premium materials like 100% Mongolian cashmere. 14 karat gold?

• 1:07:27David Sims?

  Italian leather?

• 1:07:28Griffin Newman?

  Mama mia.

• 1:07:29David Sims?

  All timeless, versatile pieces that feel special to unwrap and become everyday favorites long after the holidays. These cashmere sweaters, like the one I'm wearing, start at just $60. Lineup doesn't stop there. You've got premium down jackets, wool outerwear, uh, cashmere accessories, everything your loved ones need to stay warm and look put together all season long.

• 1:07:48Griffin Newman?

  And everything at Quince is priced 50 to 80% less than similar brands. They work directly with ethical factories and cut out the middlemen. So you can give luxury quality pieces without the luxury price tag.

• 1:08:01David Sims?

  Um, so yeah, obviously I'm wearing Quince sweater right now. I've got Quince bedding at home. Ooh, they've got Christmas stockings.

• 1:08:08Griffin Newman?

  Oh, well, well, well. They got tree skirts.

• 1:08:10David Sims?

  Garlands, if you want to go Christmas mode.

• 1:08:13Griffin Newman?

  Your tree deserves to be dressed in Quince as well. And when it comes to gifting, Quince has a lot more than clothing. Think fine jewelry, leather bags, the aforementioned hotel quality bedding, chef-grade cookware and five-star luggage. Basically, plenty of ways to find something special for everyone on your list. If you want to give the gift of quality this holiday season, download the Quince app for app-exclusive offers or go to quince.com. Get free shipping on your order and 365-day returns. That's a year, now available in Canada and the UK, too. Ding dong. 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.

• 1:08:59David Sims?

  Strickland Express is, it's not a short film, but I do feel like it's a, it's a pretty

• 1:09:04Griffin Newman?

  It's one hour fifty.

• 1:09:04David Sims?

  Simple, you know, economical, kind of straightforward moving movie about a couple. Lou Jean, played by Goldie Hawn, and Clovis, played by William Atherton. Kind of crazy names. And Clovis is in jail and they have a son. And he's, the son has been given to foster parents. And even though Clovis is about to be released from prison, just a few months, four months.

• 1:09:30Griffin Newman?

  He's on pre-release?

• 1:09:32David Sims?

  Right.

• 1:09:32Griffin Newman?

  They're in the sort of like lower security.

• 1:09:34David Sims?

  Right, the sort of halfway.

• 1:09:36Griffin Newman?

  Facing back.

• 1:09:37David Sims?

  Uh, she gets him out, breaks him out of jail, and they are gonna go retrieve their kid, I guess, which is stupid.

• 1:09:43Griffin Newman?

  But this whole movie hinges on the plan being inexplicable.

• 1:09:48David Sims?

  Right.

• 1:09:48Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:09:49David Sims?

  They never really have a plan.

• 1:09:50Speaker 04

  They don't have a plan.

• 1:09:51David Sims?

  Beyond, we're just gonna go get him. And it's like, okay, and then what? It's like, nobody seems to have an answer.

• 1:09:57Speaker 04

  By the end, she's like, oh, like, we're gonna go to Mexico. We're gonna do, and like, at the very end, she's like, we're gonna do this right. We're gonna do parenting right. And it's like, wasn't this true? Like, isn't this your whole idea?

• 1:10:11Griffin Newman?

  No, the major difference from the real story is that in the real story, he was not breaking out.

• 1:10:16David Sims?

  No, they had already been released.

• 1:10:18Griffin Newman?

  He had been released, she had been released, and then they proceed to hold this cop car hostage.

• 1:10:25David Sims?

  Right.

• 1:10:25Griffin Newman?

  And have them escort him across.

• 1:10:27David Sims?

  They did want to try and get their son, and it had the same basic ending of he died. I think he was shot and killed instantly, and yeah, she went to jail.

• 1:10:40Griffin Newman?

  Yeah. It is very fascinating to think about this and Badlands coming out in successive years. Badlands is 1973.

• 1:10:48David Sims?

  Is it? Yes, it is. Yes.

• 1:10:49Griffin Newman?

  They feel like-

• 1:10:50David Sims?

  Amazing movie.

• 1:10:51Griffin Newman?

  An incredible film, a similarly striking debut film from-

• 1:10:56David Sims?

  A better film, I'll say. I love Badlands.

• 1:10:59Griffin Newman?

  I do as well. But they do feel like twinned movies in a weird way. Badlands is obviously like a period piece, but they both have this sort of like, what is up with the youth vibe? This sense of rebellion where Badlands also hinges on like, why are they killing people?

• 1:11:15David Sims?

  Right, and it's like, I don't know.

• 1:11:16Griffin Newman?

  It's never really clear. They never like, become malicious. You know, there is one death that sort of makes sense in terms of them trying to secure their freedom. And then you're like, why are they making this situation worse for themselves? But it is this sort of just like, young and love, feeling some sort of like, conflict with the culture around you and the old institutions and being like, we want to just do shit our way?

• 1:11:41David Sims?

  Badlands actually is 74. It's actually released pretty much at the exact same time. It's a 73 movie on like, because it was at the New York Film Festival, but it was actually pretty much released like, the same week as this movie. So you could basically see him around the same time.

• 1:11:54Speaker 04

  But I will say one thing about, you know, the parenthood aspect of Sugar Land Express is really interesting. And also like, interesting in the context of like, the whole Spielberg deal-

• 1:12:06Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:12:06Speaker 04

  With parents and the sons that like, obviously, they are not primed to be good parents, but the sense of like- Blood, people wanting to, wanting to care for this child feels, you know, feels like sort of justifies their wrongheadedness in a way. Like, they have this love for this kid, which obviously we never see in practice. But there's a sense that like, yeah, she'd do anything for her kid, even though we'd, like, she obviously messed up in the past.

• 1:12:45Griffin Newman?

  I mean, the, my read on why they make the change, that he is being, that he is escaping, right? That he is on the run before he's finished serving his time. Uh, not just, obviously, it adds some greater movie stakes. But also, it's like, from that decision, you're immediately like, well, I understand why they lost custody of the child. Right? You know what I'm saying? Like, beyond just the fact that obviously both of them went to jail, there is just the feeling of like, watching this thought process or lack of thought play out of like, right? One bathroom conversation turning into like, you're gonna put on sunglasses, we're gonna get someone to drive us, we're gonna go pick up our kid. You're like, this is not

• 1:13:26Griffin Newman?

  gonna work. This is so poorly thought through. You can't even really explain this. Why the sudden immediacy? And like, yes, if you wait four months and then you calmly go to the foster home, or you go to whatever government office, and you plead your case, you're gonna have a better chance of getting that kid back than like, holding someone hostage, getting them to drive you to the door, and then like, negotiating with Ben Johnson and being like, and we want our kid back.

• 1:13:52Speaker 04

  But it also adds to this, you know, even though there are no stakes to, I mean, there are, sorry, no stakes is the wrong word. Even though like, there's no reason that they have to be acting so quickly.

• 1:14:06Griffin Newman?

  And erratic.

• 1:14:06Speaker 04

  Like, her, and erratically, her desperation to get her child, also, I think, like, endears you to her a little bit, cuz it's like, you know, this sense of, well, I fucked up, but all I wanna do is be with my kid, even though she's going about it in like, the worst possible way.

• 1:14:24Griffin Newman?

  Well, and Badlands has the same thing, where in both cases, the couples feel like they're kind of just overgrown children.

• 1:14:30Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:14:30Griffin Newman?

  Like, they just don't know how to be grownups.

• 1:14:33David Sims?

  In Badlands, Sheen is just sort of this agent of chaos, right? Like, he's just like doing, and Sissy SpaceX kind of along for the ride.

• 1:14:40Griffin Newman?

  But he's an agent of chaos in like a

• 1:14:41David Sims?

  In a very disaffected, yeah, yeah.

• 1:14:43Griffin Newman?

  A boy lighting shit on fire, right?

• 1:14:45David Sims?

  And then in this, Hawn is the driver of everything. And Avetin is kind of like, yeah, I don't know. You know, like, I'm, I'm, he's, he's the one along for the ride.

• 1:14:53Griffin Newman?

  Well, and she's, the one thing she is fully in power of is knowing how to use her charms to get people to do what she wants, but it's not in some obvious, like, seductress feminine Wiles way. It's more just like, well, she's Goldie Hawn, she has movie star energy.

• 1:15:09Speaker 04

  She's cute.

• 1:15:10Griffin Newman?

  She's cute, she's compelling. People just are kind of taken by whatever she's saying. Yeah.

• 1:15:16David Sims?

  So they initially just hitch a ride, they just hitchhike. Um, but then they get stopped, right? But then they get stopped by Maxwell Side, the patrolman. They buy Michael Sacks of JP Morgan fame.

• 1:15:31Griffin Newman?

  A man who I'm sure has done great things behind the scenes.

• 1:15:34David Sims?

  Uh, and so they hold him hostage, but it is, and have him drive them. But it is the most chill hostage situation.

• 1:15:43Speaker 04

  Yeah, it's nice. They're, they're sort of become friends.

• 1:15:45David Sims?

  Right. This is not a thing where they're basically just like training a gun at him on all times. At a certain point, they're basically just all hanging out together.

• 1:15:51Griffin Newman?

  Well, he doesn't, I don't think he really views them as dangerous. But he also is just immediately kind of like, what are you doing?

• 1:15:58Speaker 04

  Well, there's also the really good sort of establishing like moment with him with the sort of drunk guy in his car.

• 1:16:05Griffin Newman?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:16:05Speaker 04

  Um, before he pulls them over where you're sort of like, this guy is sort of like whatever with the people in his car. Like, he's sort of, he's sort of tolerant of them and their weirdness in a nice way, which I think sort of sets up the fact that he's going to be like, yeah, okay, guys, like, let's just deal with this and move along.

• 1:16:24Griffin Newman?

  So Sims and I were, uh, kind of, uh, teeing this up at the end of our dual episode, that this movie, much like the score is in John Williams' filmography, a total like one of one outlier. There's no other Spielberg movie like this. And we were like, What tone is even close to this in one of his movies? And I do think like tonally Catch Me If You Can has a similar vibe.

• 1:16:50David Sims?

  Melancholy to like the same kind of like light drama vibe.

• 1:16:55Griffin Newman?

  And almost a similar kind of look, like color palette and shit, but.

• 1:17:00David Sims?

  Catch Me If You Can is more self-conscious, obviously, because it's doing a period.

• 1:17:03Griffin Newman?

  And it's him kind of doing a bit of an epic, like a weird kind of epic on its own odd way.

• 1:17:08David Sims?

  But it's the same kind of vibe of like, you're like, I'm having fun, but I have a feeling this won't end well. Now Catch Me If You Can sort of has a happy-ish ending.

• 1:17:17Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:17:18David Sims?

  But it's not like, uh, you know, he gets away with it ending. It's kind of a.

• 1:17:22Griffin Newman?

  But the thing he truly never comes close to doing again in his filmography is this being a hangout movie. That like, as we said, once like 30 minutes in, they're in like Saks's car.

• 1:17:33David Sims?

  It's a slow, uh, chase movie. It's not like a real propulsive chase movie. It's everyone's kind of ambling along.

• 1:17:41Speaker 04

  Ambling.

• 1:17:42Griffin Newman?

  This is.

• 1:17:42David Sims?

  Entertainment.

• 1:17:44Griffin Newman?

  This is what I'm kind of locking into, right? Amblin in this do not feel insincere to me.

• 1:17:50David Sims?

  Rick is of course referring to, uh, the short film that he made in the sixties. This film he made in the sixties about a couple hippies.

• 1:17:56Griffin Newman?

  Hitchhiker. A M B L I N apostrophe, which then he later removes the apostrophe and makes it a production company as if like, oh yeah, I guess it's the real world. That means something. It's like, no, it's just ambling without the G, right? I don't think either one's insincere, but these are the kind of like personal films that directors of his generation were making at this point in time. Speaking to their, the youth, right? And the vibes and these sort of like character pieces and actor driven pieces and hangout pieces and all this sort of shit. Kind of innately not who Spielberg is.

• 1:18:30David Sims?

  Not what he becomes for sure.

• 1:18:33Speaker 04

  And he seems so, you know, what we know about his youth, like so disconnected from all of that in any way, shape or form.

• 1:18:41Griffin Newman?

  He was like a very serious moody kid who was like very focused on his work.

• 1:18:44David Sims?

  But he lived out in the desert in Arizona. I feel like he does have some sense of that.

• 1:18:49Griffin Newman?

  He moved a lot too. And he lived in wildly different states. So he has this kind of sense of America.

• 1:18:54David Sims?

  And like, I do say the shadow of Seth Rogen cucking his dad looms over this sugar.

• 1:18:58Griffin Newman?

  Absolutely.

• 1:18:59David Sims?

  Right. Like that.

• 1:19:00Griffin Newman?

  You hear the laugh.

• 1:19:01David Sims?

  No, I mean like.

• 1:19:01Griffin Newman?

  Echoing.

• 1:19:03David Sims?

  Oh, oh, oh.

• 1:19:06David Sims?

  Close Encounters is the movie, his third film, where you're like, oh, okay, this has been torn out of his soul for us. Right? Like, that is, this is everything that's going on in this boy's brain. This and Jaws is a little more, both of them, they're both good movies. I'll take Sugarland and Jaws, but they're both, and Duel. But they are both like, this is a supreme stylist who has grown up on a fire hose of like television and movies, like who just has such a sense of how to deliver entertainment.

• 1:19:36Griffin Newman?

  So Duel is just like, tie is a drum filmmaking exercise, right? And then this is like, character piece, hangout, like charm. The magic of Jaws-

• 1:19:46David Sims?

  But still like quietly flashing, yes.

• 1:19:49Speaker 04

  I don't know, but I do think it gets at something that like has preoccupied him for like his whole career, which is like the sense of how flawed people sort of sacrifice for their children.

• 1:20:01Griffin Newman?

  Yes. I mean, let's get back to that because there's a lot more to unpack in that, right? But I think like Jaws is fascinating because it's basically combining everything he figured out on Duel and Sugarland into one movie.

• 1:20:13Speaker 04

  Sure.

• 1:20:13Griffin Newman?

  Which then becomes the alchemy of, oh, can he make like thrill ride entertainment that also has this level of characterization, specificity, performance, charm, wit, empathy, what have you, right? But Jaws does feel in a way more personal than this movie does. In a certain way, it feels more reflective of his psyche, whereas this movie feels like, what you said, a story he remembers hearing on the news and being kind of compelled by. Which is also how Malik talks about the Badlands.

• 1:20:43David Sims?

  Which is like, the Badlands.

• 1:20:46Griffin Newman?

  Badlands coming about was him being like, that's so weird that these two kids just killed a bunch of people. What were they thinking, right? That he's sort of trying to like psychoanalyze them.

• 1:20:55David Sims?

  But it's also a movie that's kind of about like, I don't know.

• 1:20:57Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 1:20:57David Sims?

  Yeah, like is the answer.

• 1:20:58Griffin Newman?

  But in the soup of his generation, the movie brats, there's the story that gets repeated a lot where, you know, Cassavetes was a big mentor to Scorsese and Scorsese invites him to a screening of Boxcar Bertha. And he's like, what do you think? And Cassavetes is like, what the fuck are you doing? And Cassavetes is basically like, you're wasting your life. And he's like, you thought it's that bad? He's like, it's not bad. It's just whatever. Like, this isn't what you you became a filmmaker to make. This is you trying to like, make strategic career moves, pay your dues, whatever it is. Like, make the movie you'd be willing to die for. And that conversation motivates him to make Mean Streets. So basically, sit down and be like, what's the movie only I can make?

• 1:21:39David Sims?

  And then Cassavetes saw that and he was like, F, I hate this.

• 1:21:42Griffin Newman?

  Total F, right? But there was this feeling, a lot of these guys, it's like, you're paying your dues in the Quorum in fields, right? De Palma is like, basically coming out of experimental theater, Green's High Mom rule, but are like, fairly inaccessible movies. And then he figures out, like, thrillers, right? Lucas is making a THX and people are like, make something about people, right?

• 1:22:03Speaker 04

  And he's like, I'll try.

• 1:22:04Griffin Newman?

  Right, but like.

• 1:22:07Speaker 04

  I know American Graffiti, but he's like.

• 1:22:08Griffin Newman?

  My point, like, American Graffiti is the movie that comes out of, like, Coppola shaking Lucas the way that Cassavetes shake Scorsese, right? Shook Scorsese, like, make the thing that only you can make. Like, what's your story? And Spielberg, like, doesn't know how to tell his story directly. He starts making these entertainments that are unbelievably personal and emotional, because he knows how to tell it through refraction. But this feels like a distant movie that has all of his themes in it, made very warmly.

• 1:22:41Speaker 04

  Yeah. I mean, the refraction thing, like, I'm sure it's like, impossible not to talk about, like, the Fableman's now, like, talking about him. But like, yeah, the only way he can look at his life is through is to wa- the only way he can watch his parents divorces is to take out a camera. And I do think that, yeah, that he he finds, even though this film has the sort of yes impetus of like, oh, I heard this on the radio and I think it's interesting. I think he finds this really sort of perfect, which, this really personal story, which is ultimately what makes it so tragic. You know, by the end, is that you do start to.

• 1:23:22Speaker 04

  Feel for feel for how much they care despite and especially how much Lou Jean cares just despite her wrong headedness.

• 1:23:31Griffin Newman?

  Well, he also like not not to psychanalyze him too much, right? But like this feeling of kind of what you were saying of like his relationship to his parents for so long and what he talks about, I think, in at this point in his life, he was sort of like, I could not imagine being a parent, right? And that's reflected in shit like Close Encounters. He watches that today and he's just like, I would never do that today as a filmmaker because if you have a child, you could never imagine doing that in a certain way, right? And I think a lot of that is like the kind of thing a lot of people go through in their twenties where they start to take the toll of the way in which their parents fucked them up. And there's like an anger that then goes to like, the worst part of this is they actually

• 1:24:15Griffin Newman?

  were trying their best. I can't really villainize them.

• 1:24:18Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:24:19Griffin Newman?

  Which is sort of the stance this movie has of like, it is so commendable, they are willing to put everything on the line for the sake of their child and yet everything they're doing is wrong and is actually just gonna fuck up their ability to have a relationship with their child.

• 1:24:32David Sims?

  Yeah, it really fucks up an African's ability.

• 1:24:35Griffin Newman?

  I'd say.

• 1:24:35David Sims?

  Majorly.

• 1:24:36Speaker 04

  Cause he dies.

• 1:24:37David Sims?

  He gets shot with a gun.

• 1:24:37Griffin Newman?

  He's in a pretty bad position as a father by the end of this movie.

• 1:24:41Speaker 04

  And also just, there is this sort of trick too of, you know, that first shot of the child, you know, in the foreground and he's with the dog and he's just like crying and also with Xanax son, um, is the kid, uh, but like is like, you know, there's this misery to the kid and obviously he's, the kid is probably fine with these stuffy Duffy parents, but you know, you there, the fun and the life that this couple, Lou Jean and Clovis has is so inherently attractive.

• 1:25:17Griffin Newman?

  The first moment you see the kid, I believe, is like minute forty seven, right? And you basically have these two mirrored shots. It comes right after the porta potty standoff. And then you have this shot of, um, basically from inside the porta potty of Goldie opening the door, right?

• 1:25:38Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:25:39Griffin Newman?

  And then it cuts to, right, Goldie opens the door from inside the porta potty, she closes the door and then it cuts in the blackness to the kid opening the door. And outside.

• 1:25:50David Sims?

  Verna Fields worked on this movie, obviously.

• 1:25:52Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 1:25:52David Sims?

  A legend in the.

• 1:25:54Griffin Newman?

  Outside the press coming to interview the kid and the foster parents about this growing story. Right. The shot of the kid in silhouette from behind the door opening is so similar.

• 1:26:05David Sims?

  Close Encounters.

• 1:26:05Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:26:06Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 1:26:06David Sims?

  The most, probably like the most famous shot of his.

• 1:26:09Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:26:09Griffin Newman?

  Right. Except this is the first time we're seeing the kid and it's a moment of just like, this kid doesn't know what's about to hit him. Like this kid is oblivious.

• 1:26:17Speaker 04

  But also the kid is oblivious the whole time. Like that is also the sort of the tragedy of it too. This kid has no idea what's going on. Like he's so little, like that there's just this sort of aura of trauma around him, but like, we don't, but he probably has no actual conception of what's going on in his life.

• 1:26:32Griffin Newman?

  But like Spielberg is so close to making this pivot to realizing a lot of his magic is the ability to tell stories from the vantage point of a child, right? And children who are cognizant at the center of this kind of chaos. And they're processing it, they're digesting it, it's changing them. Even Close Encounters where the kid isn't the main part.

• 1:26:52Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:26:52Griffin Newman?

  Or Jaws where the kid is part of the cast, but the kid is very specific.

• 1:26:56Speaker 04

  And in some ways, I think the fact that this kid is just not really cognizant and like sort of overwhelmed and you see him crying and you know, is just being sort of shuffled from place to place also like sort of fits with the theme of the movie too. And that like, no one has any fucking idea what they're, what's going on here, you know? So, and then, you know, and then you get back to the thing which you guys said, which is basically like, Lujine and Clovis are children and there's like the incredible, you know, so Spielberg-y moment when they get in the, um, the, the van, what are those cars called? Like the,

• 1:27:34Speaker 04

  and they're watching the Looney Tunes through the, through the window and you see it reflected in their faces and Clovis is doing the sounds and you're just like, oh yeah. You know, these are children themselves and they, they are Looney Tunes characters in a way.

• 1:27:49Griffin Newman?

  I apologize, I correct myself. You have the earlier glimpse of the sun on the front lawn.

• 1:27:53Speaker 04

  That's what, that's what I was talking about, which is the like, that first, you know, there's the shot of the dog.

• 1:27:58Griffin Newman?

  Right. That's that's foreground, the kid just kind of playing innocently as the cop is pulling up in the back.

• 1:28:03Speaker 04

  And then the cop is pulling up and the kid starts like sobbing.

• 1:28:06Griffin Newman?

  Yes. So minute 27 is the entrance of Ben Johnson, right? And in this movie, that's already taken this pivot of like, oh, how quickly they get comfortable basically being in a throuple with this cop, a non-sexual throuple, right? Like now they're just like three folks hanging out on a road trip. You know, there's that immediate sense of like, are they like bulletproof because they have this guy on their side? They have this kind of like magic armor and now they're just gonna drive to their destination. And they think they will be able to make this work and everyone else thinks like this is gonna end up badly somehow. Ben Johnson's introduced at minute 27 and he gets a kind of very classical movie star introduction.

• 1:28:47David Sims?

  And he looks great.

• 1:28:47Griffin Newman?

  He looks incredible. And there's this air of like, here's a legend in your movie. Like here's like a heavy hitter coming in. And the moment you'd expect in most movies, like, okay, now the plot's really gonna kick in because now this guy is on the hunt. He's gonna be like a fucking sniper rifle trying to take them down.

• 1:29:04David Sims?

  Yeah, we're gonna be bouncing between these and this is right, gonna be the dominant supporting performance of the movie. And he's gonna get an Oscar nomination and Tommy Lee Jones or whatever, you know, in The Fugitive.

• 1:29:13Griffin Newman?

  Totally. And yet he also has this much sort of like more melancholy, wistful energy.

• 1:29:19David Sims?

  Hugely understated performance, totally good performance.

• 1:29:23Griffin Newman?

  I think.

• 1:29:23David Sims?

  But not like a big dominant character at all, basically kind of just does it all through nothing. You kind of get everything you need to know about this guy through very little dialogue, like.

• 1:29:34Griffin Newman?

  And also the feeling that he, it's not spoken, but that he is like, this is a tragic story.

• 1:29:38David Sims?

  Right, that he knows right away.

• 1:29:40Griffin Newman?

  Come of this.

• 1:29:40David Sims?

  Exactly, that nothing good is coming of this.

• 1:29:42Griffin Newman?

  It's already a bad situation. And like, I mean.

• 1:29:45Speaker 04

  And they either have to shoot them or figure out a way to stop them.

• 1:29:49Griffin Newman?

  Right. Like Last Picture Show is one of the shorter runtime two Oscar win performances ever.

• 1:29:56Griffin Newman?

  He's very little of the movie.

• 1:29:59David Sims?

  He just has the amazing monologue.

• 1:30:00Griffin Newman?

  He has one amazing monologue in the first 30 minutes.

• 1:30:02David Sims?

  As does Chloris Leachman, basically. And each of them win an Oscar for it.

• 1:30:05Griffin Newman?

  Chloris Leachman is really amazing in the movie and she's all over it.

• 1:30:08David Sims?

  But I think they both are winning for these big speeches they have that they crush, right?

• 1:30:13Griffin Newman?

  But hers comes at the very end and Ben Johnson, without spoiling Last Picture Show if you haven't seen it, is basically out of the movie at the 30 minute mark.

• 1:30:20David Sims?

  Yeah, he is good, though.

• 1:30:21Griffin Newman?

  He's fantastic.

• 1:30:22David Sims?

  The lion, right?

• 1:30:23Griffin Newman?

  But you compare like that movie, like

• 1:30:25David Sims?

  Sam the lion.

• 1:30:27Griffin Newman?

  Foregrounding him so much at the beginning, giving him one big emotional speech and then he's gone, right? Versus this where he's just kind of steady and stable throughout.

• 1:30:36Speaker 04

  Yeah, I mean, he's just, he's almost not, he, he's just this steady hand and you sort of, yeah, you come in expecting him to be a villain, quote unquote, maybe, and instead, he's sort of as resigned as everyone else to, ah, these kids are like, I don't, you know, I have to handle this in the best way possible, but I feel for these kids.

• 1:30:56Griffin Newman?

  Well, there are two takes. There's one in which he's the villain and you want to see our heroes out with him, right?

• 1:31:01Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:31:02Griffin Newman?

  And then the other

• 1:31:02Speaker 04

  But you know they're never gonna out with them, him, because they're silly.

• 1:31:05Griffin Newman?

  Right, but the way this movie is characterized with them being silly, there's also a version of this at the 30 minute mark, he enters and you're like, finally a grown up, someone who's gonna take responsibility in this movie.

• 1:31:15David Sims?

  He's gonna sort this out.

• 1:31:16Griffin Newman?

  And we're rooting for him to find some amicable solution.

• 1:31:20David Sims?

  Everyone else is running off half-cocked, but he wants to cool it down and maybe get them out of this alive, you know? That is your hope, sort of, yeah. But then it doesn't happen.

• 1:31:32Griffin Newman?

  No.

• 1:31:33David Sims?

  Gets shot.

• 1:31:33Griffin Newman?

  He's just kind of patiently, yeah, I mean, I love the scene where he takes down the, the two local dudes who have sort of been like self-deputizing and unloads their guns. And it's just like, this isn't like a game, you know?

• 1:31:47David Sims?

  Right, right, right. And I think that's Spielberg's take, right? Is that it's like you have this tragic little story and wrapped around it is this little circus, this media circus that like helps nobody and

• 1:32:03David Sims?

  The movie isn't like Dog Day. Dog Day Afternoon is loud and very forceful.

• 1:32:09Griffin Newman?

  And political.

• 1:32:10David Sims?

  Political and so like compelling to watch. And Sugarland Express never gets to that kind of fervent polemical point. It's more just quietly saying like, you know, isn't it a little sad? How, you know, the story becomes people almost waiting to watch these guys get shot versus trying to figure out, you know, how to help them.

• 1:32:33Speaker 04

  No, I mean, well, but also, you know, the Dog Day Afternoon thing you're saying, it's like, yes, there's this sort of, don't you want like, yes, everyone's sort of itching to watch them get shot. And it's interesting here, there's a kindness to the way people are perceiving them. Like, yes, there are the, you know, self deputy guys who are like, you know, let's, let's shoot them very, you know, which feel, I don't know, feels very modern in a way, in a gross way. But then there's also this like, you know, but then there's also when they arrive at the town and they're just like, they're welcomed.

• 1:33:09David Sims?

  They're open dolls.

• 1:33:10Speaker 04

  They've become folk heroes and they become, which it's like, you know, yeah, I mean, there's this weird kindness to the whole movie about them too.

• 1:33:20David Sims?

  They kind of know they're screwed.

• 1:33:22Griffin Newman?

  Well, and also the spirit of it is like Spielberg, reading this story in the newspaper, right? And you have to imagine he's probably reading this as a resolved story. Hey, weird thing happened.

• 1:33:36David Sims?

  Sure, right. He's dead, she's in jail. Maybe he later learns that she got out and did manage to get custody. I don't know.

• 1:33:43Griffin Newman?

  It's basically been packaged into bite sized entertainment as a story with a beginning and middle and an end of an odd thing that happened. And that becomes the kind of thing that you can sort of gawk over.

• 1:33:53Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:33:54Griffin Newman?

  And he's making a movie that's focusing on all of the things that the newspaper would not cover, which is what is the, what are the fucking conversations they had? So wait, these three people were in a car together for how many hours? How many days? How did they eat? So they had to go to drive throughs only? So what, they're just hanging out and eating chicken? Like, the movie is all the hangout shit that is, well, you could just hit the big bullet points of.

• 1:34:20Griffin Newman?

  They hold this guy at gunpoint. They get the car. There's a final standoff, whatever it is, you know, some big emotional reckoning with the foster parents or whatever. And he's like, no, the movie's about like, all this stuff in between that happens.

• 1:34:33Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:34:34Griffin Newman?

  And that weird reality where it's like, they're basically holding existence hostage. They're in this like transitory state that is not sustainable.

• 1:34:44Speaker 04

  Yeah, I mean, it is their moment of liberation, you know?

• 1:34:49Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:34:50Speaker 04

  He was in jail. She was in, we know she was in jail beforehand. You know, this is the one moment where they have this idea that they can do anything and they're doing it with this ostensibly like, good natured thing, you know, in their, in, in the back of their minds, which is like, let's get our kid, but it's also, it is a joyride. It is, it is fun.

• 1:35:13Griffin Newman?

  I mean, I'm basing this predominantly off of movies and TV shows, right? But all the scenes we see where someone's holding a bunch of people hostage inside at gunpoint and they're demanding a helicopter and a million dollars in a private island and whatever the fuck it is. I'm just like, how many stories historically are there of, as Ben would say it, it all working out? You know, like, I just figured out the situation and they never caught up to me. I negotiated so successfully that I released all the hostages. I got everything I wanted. I had political immunity and they never caught up with me.

• 1:35:44Speaker 03

  Private island is beautiful.

• 1:35:46Griffin Newman?

  Right. And I'm like, you know, I've seen eight trillion fictionalized, completely false versions of it and versions of it based on true stories that are fictionalized and whatever, but all of them end with, eventually they just, you can't outrun it, right? These weird like standoff situations where you're in conversation with authorities and they're just trying to get you to let go. Let go of the vehicle, of the weapon, of the hostage, of whatever it is, and they'll promise you everything and you think you can game this out to your own advantage. And it just like fucking never works out. Like maybe our listeners will write in and be like, here, here are the 20 most famous examples of someone just nailing it. But I feel like if those stories existed, we would know them.

• 1:36:28Griffin Newman?

  So from the moment you get into this situation where you're like, the longer this goes on, you're just kind of prolonging the inevitability. How does this end? Do I fight it violently? Do I just like hand myself over and go back to prison? Like, there's no version in which they go like, you know what? If you let go of the car, we'll let you move into this house and raise this child. No questions asked.

• 1:36:47David Sims?

  Because they don't kill anyone, there is a version of them being like, look, we're sorry, we shouldn't have done this. And the answer is like, well, you're going back to prison, probably with a little extra. You kidnapped a cop, but you're not gonna die and you're, you know, who knows what will-

• 1:37:06Speaker 04

  Maybe one day you'll see your kid.

• 1:37:07David Sims?

  Maybe one day you'll see.

• 1:37:07Speaker 04

  Right, you know.

• 1:37:08Griffin Newman?

  The logical fallacy of people in this situation is they're like, fuck, I just can't go back to prison again. Is there any other option?

• 1:37:14David Sims?

  But also it's like-

• 1:37:15Griffin Newman?

  There's a third option.

• 1:37:16David Sims?

  These are people in desperate circumstances, a movie about people where it's just kind of like, they just know like, no, man, like, it kind of has to be all or nothing. That's the vibe of this couple of like, look, either we're gonna somehow pull this off in some fantasy cartoon way. We'll make it across the border and live this paradise life. Or what's gonna happen is what we kind of don't want to think about, but is always sort of gonna be our end, which is like, yeah, either we're in the slammer or we're dead or whatever. And like, at least we gave it a shot.

• 1:37:49Griffin Newman?

  But it also speaks to like-

• 1:37:49David Sims?

  Like, they're just not gonna be like, oh, you know, I'm gonna put my nose to the grindstone and I'm gonna convince these people.

• 1:37:54Griffin Newman?

  But the larger cultural themes that the movies are really tackling at this point is the movies are trying to speak to a younger generation.

• 1:37:59David Sims?

  Right, who just feel without options.

• 1:38:01Griffin Newman?

  Who feel without options and are just like, all of this feels wrong. I want to fight against this without any sense of what I'm looking for instead, other than that I need to push past everything that's being told to me as a given.

• 1:38:13David Sims?

  Ben, I feel like you wanted to say something.

• 1:38:14Speaker 03

  Often when people commit crimes-

• 1:38:16David Sims?

  Yes.

• 1:38:17Speaker 03

  They're-

• 1:38:17David Sims?

  I was kind of trying to cue Ben up.

• 1:38:19Speaker 03

  Not really thinking it through.

• 1:38:21David Sims?

  Exactly, right.

• 1:38:22Speaker 03

  And so people, for whatever reason, just go through with it and don't think beyond just the goal of, I'm gonna rob this liquor store and then I'll have money.

• 1:38:36David Sims?

  Right, and then I'll figure it out.

• 1:38:38Speaker 03

  And then, yeah.

• 1:38:38David Sims?

  That's today's problem is I need money.

• 1:38:41Speaker 03

  Right.

• 1:38:42David Sims?

  Parenting, I'm a parent.

• 1:38:45Griffin Newman?

  You are times three.

• 1:38:46David Sims?

  Now, you know, there's sort of, there's the sort of gentle parenting world or whatever. And sometimes people say like, you shouldn't say, be careful to your kid all the time. When your kid is fetching knives from the stove or well, you know, whatever your, you know, insane thing your kid wants to do, climb the Empire State Building.

• 1:39:03Griffin Newman?

  You shouldn't say you shouldn't say be careful. But you can't.

• 1:39:06Speaker 04

  Wait, what are you saying instead of be careful?

• 1:39:08David Sims?

  I'm gonna get to that, but like the idea being you say, be careful, you're kind of instilling fear in them. Like this is what awful parenting blogs do. They're just like, watch your language in every single way. And if you don't behave this way, you're terrible. But nonetheless, instead you're supposed to say, what's your plan? Right? You're supposed to say, as your kid, I guess, is climbing up the couch, you're supposed to be like, what's your plan? Right? Like you're like, so that's sort of the thing where the kid is like, well, I want to get to the top of the couch. And you're like, you're the one who has to instill in them like, well, what's gonna happen when you get to the top of the couch?

• 1:39:39Speaker 04

  Are you doing this now?

• 1:39:40David Sims?

  I've done it, but I say be careful all the time because I'm a bit of a nervous Nelly.

• 1:39:43Speaker 04

  Yeah, no shit. But like, I don't know. But I'm not a parent, but I think that's.

• 1:39:47David Sims?

  Someone should say to these guys, what's your, what's your plan? But if you ask them, they would be like, our plan is to make it to Mexico and we'll figure it out.

• 1:39:55Griffin Newman?

  Top of couch, good.

• 1:39:56David Sims?

  I mean, hell yeah.

• 1:39:58Speaker 04

  Wait, what?

• 1:39:59Griffin Newman?

  Top of couch, good. Who are you, J D Vance?

• 1:40:02David Sims?

  Like Raising Arizona.

• 1:40:04Griffin Newman?

  Wait.

• 1:40:04David Sims?

  No, Raising Arizona, I'm barreling past that.

• 1:40:06Griffin Newman?

  No.

• 1:40:10David Sims?

  Uh, Raising Arizona Griffin.

• 1:40:12Griffin Newman?

  He likes the inside of the couch more. Yeah. Raising Arizona.

• 1:40:14David Sims?

  Movie comes out in.

• 1:40:15Griffin Newman?

  I'm sorry.

• 1:40:16David Sims?

  Enough. Movie comes out in the late eighties.

• 1:40:18Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:40:18David Sims?

  Kind of has a plot like this.

• 1:40:20Griffin Newman?

  Yes, it does.

• 1:40:20David Sims?

  Obviously a much more absurd movie. Right. But it's the same, and they're not kidnapping their baby. They're just kidnapping a baby that they kind of feel like is a sort of a free baby that they can have.

• 1:40:32Griffin Newman?

  And that is a movie that walks you through them being like, society basically is set up in a way where this is our only way to solve.

• 1:40:39David Sims?

  We deserve a baby. We're good people. We're sweethearts. We, we, we're just gonna go get a baby and we're gonna figure it out. And what I love about Raising Arizona is they kind of are, you know, doing it for a while. And then of, yes, it comes apart and they return the baby and it actually works out for them.

• 1:40:54Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:40:54David Sims?

  And the ending of Raising Arizona is so moving.

• 1:40:56Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:40:57David Sims?

  But that to me is the sort of fun version of the Sugarland Express.

• 1:41:01Griffin Newman?

  I agree, but here's like the, the.

• 1:41:03David Sims?

  Even more Looney Tunes.

• 1:41:04Griffin Newman?

  Yeah. The lack of a plan in this movie is what makes it most fascinating to me. Right? And yet. I bought a bag of Beetlejuice gummies, discounted Halloween candy, and they are

• 1:41:15David Sims?

  So addicted to them.

• 1:41:16Griffin Newman?

  Unbelievable.

• 1:41:17David Sims?

  Weirdly good.

• 1:41:18Griffin Newman?

  So I went back to Target to be like, they must still have some more, probably even more discounted, and they're not there. And now I'm like, fuck, do I go online and figure out where to buy more of them in bulk? Because these are, these are somehow the best sour gummies I've ever had.

• 1:41:31David Sims?

  I don't know why.

• 1:41:32Griffin Newman?

  And on top of that, they look like spiders and skulls and eyeballs. And they come in bags with sandworms on them.

• 1:41:38Speaker 04

  There's only one gummy in each bag.

• 1:41:40David Sims?

  Huge waste of plastic.

• 1:41:41Griffin Newman?

  I mean, I think they're meant to be fucking trick or treat.

• 1:41:44Speaker 04

  Even if I was trick or treating, I'd be fucking pissed.

• 1:41:47Griffin Newman?

  I agree, but.

• 1:41:47Speaker 04

  These are his gummy.

• 1:41:48Griffin Newman?

  But I like that they're big. I like that they're hearty gummies.

• 1:41:55Speaker 05

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• 1:42:28Griffin Newman?

  Listen, what I was gonna say, there's this weird, uh, uh, kind of juxtaposition, I would say, of like, you know, William Atherton goes to the bathroom. She's waiting in the stall. This is the beginning of the movie, right?

• 1:42:42Speaker 04

  She leads him into the bathroom.

• 1:42:44Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 1:42:44Speaker 04

  She leads him into the men's room, and he's like, you gotta get out of here.

• 1:42:47Griffin Newman?

  Right. And, uh, he's like, what are you doing here? And she's like, I can't wait. And he's like, right here, right now? And she's, he's like, I'll be out in four months. And she's like, I can't wait that long, right? So you're like, oh, basically like unplanned conjugal visit, right? Spur of the moment, heat of passion, they're making out, he pulls down her pants, great Spielberg shot of her with second pair of jeans underneath. He goes, there's another pair of pants underneath, and she goes, yeah, we're leaving. And you're like, oh, she did have a level of plan of wearing two outfits at once, so that she could go into the bathroom and like, quick change, and pass clothes off to him, and they could walk out of there. So there's a level of intentionality of, she left home that morning.

• 1:43:35Griffin Newman?

  With that much figured out.

• 1:43:37Speaker 04

  Well, but that's, I think that is very purposeful. It's like she only has that figured.

• 1:43:41Griffin Newman?

  Correct.

• 1:43:42Speaker 04

  She has, she has a plan. She does have a plan.

• 1:43:45Griffin Newman?

  But the plan ends there.

• 1:43:46Speaker 04

  Ends there. And it's like, we're gonna walk out and we're gonna get in somebody's car and then we're just gonna drive.

• 1:43:52Griffin Newman?

  It's the least plan I've ever seen. And yet it's not just that in the spur of the moment, she's like, fuck it, let's make a run for it.

• 1:43:59David Sims?

  She's planned.

• 1:44:00Griffin Newman?

  She planned enough to wear two pairs of jeans and that's the end of it.

• 1:44:04Speaker 03

  It's the cake and the cartoons.

• 1:44:06David Sims?

  Yes.

• 1:44:07Speaker 03

  With the nail file inside of it.

• 1:44:09Griffin Newman?

  Right. And you're like, even if the cake makes it through.

• 1:44:12Speaker 03

  Right.

• 1:44:13Griffin Newman?

  And the guy's able to slowly but meticulously grind through the bars.

• 1:44:16Speaker 03

  Then what?

• 1:44:17Griffin Newman?

  Then what? That's just the start of it.

• 1:44:20David Sims?

  Has anyone ever actually done that? You know, like, has anyone ever actually seen?

• 1:44:25Speaker 03

  Yeah, my uncle, my uncle Ken.

• 1:44:26David Sims?

  He nail filed his way out of a prison?

• 1:44:28Griffin Newman?

  Yep. Is that true?

• 1:44:29Speaker 03

  No.

• 1:44:30Griffin Newman?

  Well, I don't know. I believe it.

• 1:44:31Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 1:44:32Speaker 04

  I just think of the cake and the cake escape in, in.

• 1:44:36Griffin Newman?

  Grand Budapest?

• 1:44:37Speaker 04

  Yeah. Yeah.

• 1:44:38Griffin Newman?

  Well, that's, it's a great question. Is that a thing that became shorthand in cartoons and such? Because there was some example.

• 1:44:46David Sims?

  Like, did it happen one time?

• 1:44:47Griffin Newman?

  That actually you're like, no, the origin of that is Bugs Bunny.

• 1:44:50David Sims?

  Right. Bugs Bunny came up with that.

• 1:44:51Griffin Newman?

  No criminal ever even attempted to do that.

• 1:44:53David Sims?

  I still watch Little Mermaid Kids sometimes and I watched this Daffy Duck one that's set on the Hollywood lot in the 40s. He's just, it's just filled with jokes about, you know, 30s and 40s Hollywood.

• 1:45:04Griffin Newman?

  Sure.

• 1:45:04David Sims?

  And I was like, this is the most inscrutable thing I've ever, all of this is flying over her head.

• 1:45:09Griffin Newman?

  Do you understand how important that was in printing upon me where I like see that cartoon? I'm like, I need to figure out who all these people are.

• 1:45:16David Sims?

  Me too. It's called Hollywood Daffy.

• 1:45:18Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:45:19David Sims?

  Uh, and it's got like, you know, Betty Davis, Johnny Weis, Smoller, Charlie Chaplin, Jimmy Durante, Bing Crosby, like, uh.

• 1:45:26Griffin Newman?

  And all the caricatures and you're like, are there people who really look like this?

• 1:45:30David Sims?

  Yes.

• 1:45:31Griffin Newman?

  Jimmy Durante's nose is the size of his leg and like.

• 1:45:33David Sims?

  The joke is that.

• 1:45:34Griffin Newman?

  Clark Gable has Dumbo ears.

• 1:45:35David Sims?

  Jimmy, Jimmy Durante has like a, a, a house that he's in and there's like a, an extension for his nose.

• 1:45:41Griffin Newman?

  That's, that's fucking 100 comedy points. Yeah.

• 1:45:44David Sims?

  He did, he had a big schnoz.

• 1:45:45Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, the big schnoz.

• 1:45:46David Sims?

  Um, so.

• 1:45:49David Sims?

  But Sugar Land Express.

• 1:45:51Griffin Newman?

  Sorry.

• 1:45:51David Sims?

  No, I'm just trying to like, um, are there plot points we need to hit? It's a somewhat of a tough movie to go beat by beat through because it's shaggy. But I'm trying to think of like, what are other plot things we need to mention?

• 1:46:03Speaker 04

  I do love the bathroom, like when she needs to piss. And there's, you know, he has that frame which where he keeps Atherton in the foreground and she's in the background and she keeps running back and forth. And she's doing her little pee pee dance.

• 1:46:17Griffin Newman?

  But this is what I mean about the Spielberg, like it's all storytelling economy where he's like, how do you get as much in one shot?

• 1:46:24Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:46:24Griffin Newman?

  In one scene possible.

• 1:46:25Speaker 04

  Feels so him in terms of the framing of faces and, you know, it's all there. Yeah, I don't know. They, they go, they go get chicken. They go to the car lot. They sleep in the RV, which is a term I remember today.

• 1:46:42David Sims?

  The term is runaway vacation, but you know, RV for short. Six inch summer, is that it?

• 1:46:48Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, he had a six inch summer. Robin Williams gives Josh Hutcherson a motivational talk about the fact that he's picked on by the bigger kids at school. And he's like, I was like you and I was you, it's very short. One year I had a six inch summer. I came back, it spread like a beanstalk and six inch summer lives in my head forever. Especially because Josh Hutcherson never got any taller.

• 1:47:08David Sims?

  Anything got shorter. Uh, Robin Williams. I was watching clips of Robin Williams on Craig Ferguson recently. Fun to watch.

• 1:47:16Griffin Newman?

  Yeah. That's, that's a real, we didn't know what we had. We took him for granted.

• 1:47:21David Sims?

  And we took the late, late show with Craig Ferguson for granted.

• 1:47:24Griffin Newman?

  Well, that's what I meant. Totally agree. I feel like Robin got his flowers in his lifetime, not consistently, but across on balance. Craig Ferguson, it was just like, we let this go and now like the fucking late night talk shows are graveyard.

• 1:47:39David Sims?

  The shift from Ferguson to Corden.

• 1:47:43Griffin Newman?

  Beginning of the end.

• 1:47:44David Sims?

  Is beginning of the end, but it's also, is that the most drastic shift in vibes like in quality? Cause it's like from Leno to Fallon. It's kind of like, well, you know.

• 1:47:54Griffin Newman?

  From Carson to Leno. Right.

• 1:47:55David Sims?

  Carson to Leno isn't great, but I guess old Carson was pretty phoned in.

• 1:48:00Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 1:48:00David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 1:48:01Griffin Newman?

  But Corden is just like doubling down on everything that was already headed in a bad direction.

• 1:48:06David Sims?

  Kilborn to Stewart is like one of the biggest leaps in history. People try to act like Kilborn was good. Kilborn was terrible. Kilborn was so bad.

• 1:48:13Griffin Newman?

  I talk about a guy who had a six inch summer.

• 1:48:16David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 1:48:17Griffin Newman?

  I'll drink a water. He had to at some point.

• 1:48:19David Sims?

  Right.

• 1:48:20Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:48:20David Sims?

  He had several.

• 1:48:21Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:48:22David Sims?

  Maybe.

• 1:48:22Griffin Newman?

  I, I just like that when.

• 1:48:24David Sims?

  What else happens?

• 1:48:24Griffin Newman?

  When Atherton's being questioned by his friend who's trying to stop him from like, you're gonna fucking ruin your life. Don't walk out of here. His response is just, I got it. If I don't, she's gonna run off.

• 1:48:35David Sims?

  Right. Yeah. That's what I'm saying. He's along for the ride. She's, she's the, she's the driver. He's the passenger.

• 1:48:40Griffin Newman?

  But everything is just sort of like caught up in the intensity of a moment.

• 1:48:43David Sims?

  I don't, I, I don't dislike William Atherton at all. I think he's a very good screen presence and he's fine in the movie. I kinda wish someone else was in that role who sort of popped more.

• 1:48:56Speaker 04

  There's something.

• 1:48:57David Sims?

  There's nothing wrong with this movie. It is a good movie. So it's not like I'm like, ah, if only fucking, you know, Robert Redford had played that role. I'm not saying that.

• 1:49:04Speaker 04

  Nice about him being such a.

• 1:49:06David Sims?

  Yeah, there is.

• 1:49:07Griffin Newman?

  Zero.

• 1:49:07Speaker 04

  You know, like she's so vibrant and he's sort of in the, as you said, like he's on along for the ride.

• 1:49:14David Sims?

  I just want one more.

• 1:49:16Speaker 04

  Like sort of a nerdy little, you know?

• 1:49:18David Sims?

  Can I have like one more fun character in this movie?

• 1:49:21Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:49:22David Sims?

  Right? Cause it's basically like Hawn is a firecracker.

• 1:49:25Speaker 04

  Slide is pretty boring.

• 1:49:26David Sims?

  Johnson is very compelling, but you know, it's a quiet performance.

• 1:49:30Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:49:30David Sims?

  But yes, Slide's a little boring. Atherton, he's doing his thing, but it's not, you know, like, what if there was just like, I don't know, like a funky grandma or something like, just like someone else, right?

• 1:49:40Griffin Newman?

  But Atherton is what Ben's describing. He's just like a low level criminal who's not really thinking. It's just kind of like driven by like energy.

• 1:49:48David Sims?

  I don't think, we have already recorded our Jaws episodes. So it's not like we start the Jaws episode by being like Steven Spielberg after making the Sugarland Express was like, I need a fucking movie where a shark bites someone in half, god damn it. But it does feel that way where in Sugarland, he's like, I'm treating this like pretty realistically. And this is a human movie about like people in odd circumstances. And in Jaws, he's like, Quint will go, and like, it's going to be big and like explosive.

• 1:50:14Griffin Newman?

  Can I circle back to? This was a thesis forming in my head, right? All this stuff about the the cultural moments, looking at him and relative to the other movie brats and as they're developing, right? All the other guys I said, who basically had to be forced to make a personal film away from commercial instincts, and then they found their voice, right? Whereas Spielberg starts with something that feels more like a smaller, more personal film on its face. And the other guy who's kind of similar to him in this way is Coppola, who kept doing these sort of like exercises. And it was like, no one wants these. These are not connecting. And then it's sort of like, if you don't make a hit next, you're done. You're like, Wunderkind status.

• 1:50:57David Sims?

  Yeah, enough with your Phineas and the Rambles and your rain people.

• 1:51:00Griffin Newman?

  And it's like, take this fucking beat read and make this something that works. And what's weird is in the case of both Jaws and Godfather, these guys find really personal ways into this material. It's not just like the sort of, I gotta take a job for hire and just make it the best that I can in the sort of, let's say, Zemeckis romancing the stone thing. I just need a hit. Give me a solid script. I'll direct the shit out of it. But that feels like a job for hire for him. Whereas Godfather and Jaws, those two guys found things that no one else could have found in them.

• 1:51:32David Sims?

  They're working off bestselling material. So they, you're right, that they have that in their hands of like, well, that's a bit of a guarantee, isn't it? Like, this is something that people have even heard of.

• 1:51:40Griffin Newman?

  Right. This movie's gonna sell itself in a certain way, but also-

• 1:51:44David Sims?

  But those are not movies where they were like, yeah, I'll just direct the shit out of it. You're right. It's much, much more expansive than that, what they did there.

• 1:51:49Griffin Newman?

  They like tunneled into it. And they both were guys who maybe needed to, as I was saying, kind of refract themselves through someone else's story.

• 1:51:57David Sims?

  But I just feel like with Sugarland, like, there's just a lot of restraint with Spielberg. Not that this is, it has flashy moments, and obviously people like Pauline Kael watched it and were like, wow, this guy is a stylish filmmaker, but it-

• 1:52:11Speaker 04

  I mean, it's so stylish, but yeah.

• 1:52:13David Sims?

  But it is not, I mean, what are, like, let me look at the movies of 1974, like-

• 1:52:18Speaker 04

  I mean, and I think what that gets down to ultimately, and I don't want to repeat it, but it's like this weird sweetness to it, too, that it's like-

• 1:52:25David Sims?

  You know, Spielberg-

• 1:52:26Speaker 04

  Which, yeah, which is so Spielberg-y, but like, because I think the thing is, is when you're dealing with people like this, there's a, you know, making it flashier might mean sort of-

• 1:52:38Speaker 04

  Like, obviously, there's a Looney Tunes element to them, so I don't want to say like, cartoon-y to bat, but might turn them into, you know, more over-the-top characters, but instead, sort of, the lack of flash is just him burrowing into character.

• 1:52:54David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 1:52:55Speaker 04

  Is that, yeah?

• 1:52:55Griffin Newman?

  It's fascinating, because, you know, famously, Pauline Kael put her, like, chips down and was like, "This is one of the most exciting debuts in movie history."

• 1:53:03David Sims?

  Right, and then she saw Raiders of the Lost Ark, and was like, "Pfft, hack."

• 1:53:05Griffin Newman?

  Dogshit.

• 1:53:06David Sims?

  Hark to her.

• 1:53:06Griffin Newman?

  But she, like, went all in on him on this one. And you read the tenor of that review, and you look at the other reviews that this movie got, and most people are kind of like, eh, whatever, it's like some flashy thing. It's got moments, it doesn't really hang together.

• 1:53:19David Sims?

  Right, right.

• 1:53:19Griffin Newman?

  We'll talk about it, but...

• 1:53:21David Sims?

  Yeah, we'll talk about it.

• 1:53:21Griffin Newman?

  There was a feeling coming out of this that it was like, most people were not bowled over by this, it didn't even have the sort of dual, like, "Oh shit, people in the industry are sitting up straight." He was in a position where he needed to, coming off of this, make something that worked. This thing totally flatlined commercially, you know? And people were just kind of comparing it unfavorably to Bonnie and Clyde and other shit like this, lovers-on-the-run movies.

• 1:53:47David Sims?

  I can tell you a little bit about that, but is there anything more we want to talk about in the movie? Before we do that, talk about the reaction to the movie.

• 1:53:56Griffin Newman?

  Should we talk about the ending proper? I mean...

• 1:53:58David Sims?

  Sad.

• 1:53:58Griffin Newman?

  It...

• 1:53:59David Sims?

  The bear.

• 1:54:00Griffin Newman?

  I think it is funny...

• 1:54:01David Sims?

  The bear gets me.

• 1:54:03Griffin Newman?

  If you try to put yourself in the headspace of 1974...

• 1:54:08David Sims?

  I'll find a part two.

• 1:54:09Griffin Newman?

  Sure.

• 1:54:10David Sims?

  Ex's chainsaw mask.

• 1:54:11Griffin Newman?

  But you're also like this Spielberg kid, Scheinberg's folly, right? This young kid, he signs to like a multi-year deal. What's he doing? He just makes car pictures in the desert?

• 1:54:21David Sims?

  It's true.

• 1:54:22Griffin Newman?

  And you look at the negative reviews for this movie, and people are like, "He just seems really interested in the cars."

• 1:54:26David Sims?

  He's this gearhead.

• 1:54:27Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, they truly were just sort of like...

• 1:54:29Speaker 04

  Which is so weird.

• 1:54:30Griffin Newman?

  Because it is such a character-based, humanistic...

• 1:54:33David Sims?

  But it's got really good vehicle action in it.

• 1:54:35Speaker 04

  It does have cool cars, yeah.

• 1:54:36David Sims?

  When it has that stuff, it's well done. But it's, yeah, this is not, movie is not like an Evel Knievel style like car phantasm, you know, like, you know.

• 1:54:45Speaker 04

  The credits rolling over just like slide, just, you know, sitting there by the water.

• 1:54:51David Sims?

  Similarly to the ending of.

• 1:54:52Griffin Newman?

  I was gonna say, it has almost the exact same shot.

• 1:54:55David Sims?

  Yeah, and draws has.

• 1:54:56Griffin Newman?

  Of just the sundown, the silhouettes and just someone left to kind of process what they've just been through.

• 1:55:02David Sims?

  Um, it's, it is interesting to think that Texas Chainsaw Massacre came out the same year, which it did, because it's, you know, obviously.

• 1:55:09Speaker 04

  Different portrait of Texas.

• 1:55:10David Sims?

  True. Spielberg, like big time's Toby Hooper 10 years later, right? Or, yeah, about 10 years later with Poltergeist.

• 1:55:17Griffin Newman?

  But it's another film that feels weirdly twin to this in certain ways.

• 1:55:21David Sims?

  It is, yeah. But they, but they're like, they are contemporaries, really, even though by that point Spielberg was, you know, more powerful. This film, yeah, the ending, yeah, uh, Atherton dying. Yeah. I don't know. Is there anything else to say about it? It's sort of like you, this is what's gonna happen. Like, it's not even some big moment. It's just like, yeah, someone was finally gonna just get off a shot, cause like, they've been waiting to.

• 1:55:41Speaker 04

  I also think there's just like, the credit to Goldie's performance though, too, which I do think is really, you know, like.

• 1:55:49David Sims?

  She can't believe it.

• 1:55:50Speaker 04

  In that moment, like.

• 1:55:51Griffin Newman?

  Her whole world class.

• 1:55:53David Sims?

  Like, even though it's like, everyone might have seen this coming.

• 1:55:55Speaker 04

  Everything, yeah, yeah. And, but everything has drained out of her face. And she, all that light is gone. And I do think like, you know, I do think this movie, you know, I, like, it does really sort of surprise you in what she can do. And I think she sort of in some ways rarely, like, used that full toolbox in the rest of her career.

• 1:56:20Griffin Newman?

  Well, and when we did our swing shift episode, the fascinating thing is, you know, she demands these recuts and reshoots because she feels like she was being minimized in the movie. Christine Lottie was gaining attention. She wanted more of the focus on the chemistry between her and Kurt. And then you watch the original cut that we did, and she's so much better in the demi cut.

• 1:56:39David Sims?

  She was wrong.

• 1:56:39Griffin Newman?

  But it's like a performance that's tonally much closer to her in the final moments of this movie. And then like Goldie's like, sort of rock solid movie star persona. From the late seventies on becomes like, she seems just kinda like a ditzy funny girl.

• 1:56:56Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:56:56Griffin Newman?

  But she's smarter than she seems and she's got a deeper well of emotion than she seems. Right? And this is not that where like this, you're watching it the whole time and you're like, is she crazy? Is she an idiot? Is she like playing everybody? Like you can't quite figure out what's driving her. And then what is so effective about that final moment is she plays it a way where you immediately see, oh, she genuinely just never thought this could happen.

• 1:57:23Speaker 04

  Like it's pure impulse. Like every, you realize that like everything she was acting on is pure impulse. And I think that's sort of what makes the plight of like her trying to get the kids sort of so moving too, is that like, yeah, she doesn't realize this is a bad idea because she does sort of truly love her kid and she does just wants her, she does just wanna take the, there's nothing else going on in her head other than just like that pure goal. And so it becomes so sad.

• 1:57:51Griffin Newman?

  Versus like from not here on out, but shortly hereafter, Goldie's whole thing being like, you think she's just dumb, but actually she has the bones to be the best soldier in the army. This is a movie where the reveal at the end, not that it's like a twist or anything is like, there's actually kinda nothing else going on.

• 1:58:08Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:58:09Griffin Newman?

  She's not, there's no.

• 1:58:10Speaker 04

  She's like a shell of, she's, she becomes a shell of a person and you're just like, holy shit.

• 1:58:15David Sims?

  I don't know. This is not one of my favorite Spielberg movies. I mean, is anyone's?

• 1:58:20Speaker 04

  No.

• 1:58:20David Sims?

  Um, but uh, every time I've watched it, which is basically like three times in my life, right? Like every 10 years or so, I've always been quietly impressed, like, you know, and I know what to expect and nonetheless.

• 1:58:33Griffin Newman?

  You saying, is it anyone's favorite? I've relayed to you a number of conversations I've had with people when people off the record ask me, hey, who's coming up on the podcast? And I go, we're doing the first half of Spielberg. I've had a couple of people, particularly filmmakers, say, you know what fucking rules? Sugarland Express.

• 1:58:50David Sims?

  It does rule and I think it's for those guys also probably they're just so used to the imagery of his big movies and you watch something like Sugarland and you're like, wow, there's stuff to discover here.

• 1:58:59Griffin Newman?

  It also. Feels like, and part of it's like, maybe, you know, 50 anniversary stuff. But like, it is recirculating a bit more. For a long time, it was like, only available in Spielberg box sets.

• 1:59:10Speaker 04

  I hadn't seen it and I went to see it at Film Forum. Griffin and I tried to organize it together, but it didn't work. But I, I also think it did like a big Tribeca thing.

• 1:59:22Griffin Newman?

  Yes, and Spielberg spoke and was like, this might be the first time it's screened commercially in decades, which I kinda feel like can't be true. But also it does feel like for a long time, it was treated as like weird early curio.

• 1:59:36David Sims?

  The film was tested in the fall of 73. Universal loves it. They're like really impressed with the movie, but preview audiences were shown it. And this is interesting, on a double bill with Paper Moon, which makes sense. Uh, vibe wise, right, but maybe they're also just kinda like, I'm loving that movie I just watched and like, okay, here's Sugarland Express. And it's like, that's not jiving with them or whatever. Uh, but it basically got kinda bad test results.

• 2:00:05Griffin Newman?

  Paper Moon's also just like a fucking crowd pleaser. Like you read the way people were talking about it at the time.

• 2:00:10Speaker 04

  Tatum, like, and all cute.

• 2:00:12Griffin Newman?

  Despite it getting Oscar nominations, people were like, this is just sort of like popcorn fluff for the masses. Like this thing's fun, quaint, black and white.

• 2:00:21David Sims?

  Right, about a Bible salesman, fake Bible. Spielberg says, you know, oh, sorry, Universal executive Bill Gilmore says, like, the first half audiences were with when it was more of a caper. That's fun. And then as it starts to kinda curdle into, you know, melancholy and darkness, they would lose the audience and the ending, they would just kinda be sitting there in silence.

• 2:00:44Griffin Newman?

  Doesn't ever become like a proper chase movie.

• 2:00:46David Sims?

  And it doesn't ever, or it becomes less and less of a Goldie Hawn picture as it goes on. Spielberg, uh, the original cut was about 121 minutes. Spielberg cut it down a little bit. Trying to kinda hone it a little more commercially. Uh, wasn't forced to, but he just sort of did it. They intended to put this movie out Thanksgiving 73, but because it's not testing very well, they kind of dumped it into March 74. And it made $7 million and was pulled from theaters quickly and like. Meh, and it came out around the same time as Badlands and Thieves Like Us.

• 2:01:21Griffin Newman?

  Oh, wild.

• 2:01:21David Sims?

  And there was kind of this like, yeah, there's a little too much of the same thing right now.

• 2:01:26Griffin Newman?

  The long tail of Bonnie and Clyde of people trying to recapture that type of movie. None of those are carbon copies, but I also think Badlands was not a big hit, but it was like kind of a film festival sensation. And there were like 50 people who responded the way that Pauline Kael responded. We're coming off of that, it was just like Malik's anointed, people want his next project, and Paramount's going like, what's the most ambitious idea you got? Whereas coming off of this, Universal is not like, great, do another one of those. Universal's like, you gotta figure out what your thing is. And it's, I think the reason we've been saying that a lot of filmmakers now seem to be rediscovering

• 2:02:09Griffin Newman?

  and finding a new love for this movie is it is this kind of like fascinating sliding doors glimpse into like, what if Steven Spielberg wasn't forced into becoming Steven Spielberg? And in a way, what he became feels like the most honest reflection of who he was meant to be.

• 2:02:22David Sims?

  Right.

• 2:02:23Griffin Newman?

  But you could imagine a path in which this movie, you could imagine this movie making 14 million dollars and the studio being like, cool, you make youth pictures. And he just stays there for a while.

• 2:02:35David Sims?

  He could sort of turn around there. I mean, Spielberg recollects, you know, that period when it was supposed to come out. You've got Exorcist, The Sting, Papillon, American Graffiti, Serpico, these like big movies, you know, with big stars making a lot of money. And by the time Sugarland came out, he just kind of felt like an afterthought. The fact that it was like, oh, based on a true story, it's like, that's not that juicy a pitch.

• 2:03:02Griffin Newman?

  Right. There's another movie saying that, and it's about a guy named Leatherface. The story's a little bit wild.

• 2:03:09David Sims?

  Now, now, now, the title of the movie is very subtle and will not grab your eye.

• 2:03:12Griffin Newman?

  Wait, you're telling me this shit's true?

• 2:03:16Griffin Newman?

  Texas Trainstop is the funniest based on true story where it's like, what's the true story? And they're like, like, some people have killed people in the past.

• 2:03:22David Sims?

  Murder exists.

• 2:03:23Griffin Newman?

  It's kind of about Ed Gein.

• 2:03:24David Sims?

  It's not like remotely about a Gein, but Egging also used human skin. That's like, anyway, Spielberg, this is a good quote, says, after Sugarland, I learned how important marketing is. I think it's as important as making the picture. And that is part of the Spielberg thing, without a doubt. He says, if he did it again, he might make it differently. He might have the first half really be focused on Ben Johnson's character, Captain Tanner, and have everything sort of from inside the police part of it and don't see the fugitives until you get to them later. Interesting Spielberg-y kind of swerve.

• 2:03:57Speaker 04

  It feels like a late Spielberg thing in the sense that it's like, it's like, okay, like a bridge of spies type of thing. Or like, you know, it feels like, you know, procedure and authority feels like something, yeah, like he would definitely do later in his career.

• 2:04:14Griffin Newman?

  It also feels like Spielberg's still being haunted by the energy dip from test screening audiences.

• 2:04:20David Sims?

  Little.

• 2:04:20Griffin Newman?

  He's still 50 years later trying to game out, like, is there a way I could have kept them locked in the whole time? Because starting with Jaws, he becomes the guy that, like, straps you into the roller coaster and you're with him.

• 2:04:32David Sims?

  Pauline Kael, after a few jabs about how, you know, she's not sure if Spielberg is actually smart and the movie is commercial and shallow, but she's like, composition seems to come naturally to him as it does to some of the young Italians. I assume she means Marty and Francis.

• 2:04:49Speaker 04

  Italian, American.

• 2:04:51David Sims?

  Spielberg uses his gift in a very free and easy American way for humor and for physical response to action. He could be that rarity among directors, a born entertainer, perhaps a new generation's Howard Hawks. The thing with Pauline Kael, where you're reading her reviews, and it happens all the time when you read them, where she's like, eh, this piece of shit. And then four sentences later, she's like, I don't know, maybe he's the next Howard Hawks. And you're like, uh, that guy was pretty good.

• 2:05:12Griffin Newman?

  Look, I-

• 2:05:13Speaker 04

  Also, like, a pretty good comparison for Spielberg.

• 2:05:15David Sims?

  It is, he is. I mean, she's right.

• 2:05:17Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, goosebumps from that sentence as a joke. To just be like, God, the degree to which he fucking nails.

• 2:05:24David Sims?

  He just was fucking right. The only thing she's wrong about is by the time he makes, like Raiders of the Lost Ark, she's like-

• 2:05:29Speaker 04

  Pooh.

• 2:05:30David Sims?

  Ah, he's just treading on his own jokes and this is airless. And you're just like, Pauline, what's the matter with you? Who like stepped on your feet today?

• 2:05:39Griffin Newman?

  I wish I could go in a time machine and show Pauline Kael red notice.

• 2:05:44David Sims?

  Yeah, exactly. Like, don't you understand?

• 2:05:46Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:05:46Speaker 04

  So you mean Red One? No, Red.

• 2:05:47David Sims?

  Bought Red One.

• 2:05:48Griffin Newman?

  All.

• 2:05:49Speaker 04

  Wait, what's Red Notice?

• 2:05:50David Sims?

  I'd love to show it to Fableman.

• 2:05:52Speaker 04

  I forgot all of Red Notice is.

• 2:05:53Griffin Newman?

  That's so weird, because you're a professional entertainment journalist, that you forget Red Notice, the most watched movie in the history of movies.

• 2:05:59Speaker 04

  That's the Netflix one?

• 2:06:00David Sims?

  It's Dwayne Johnson, Ryan Reynolds and Gal Gadot.

• 2:06:04Griffin Newman?

  Eight trillion minutes watched every hour.

• 2:06:06David Sims?

  Where they're like all art thieves and cops. I can't remember. I watched it.

• 2:06:12Speaker 04

  I did not watch it.

• 2:06:13David Sims?

  Um.

• 2:06:13Speaker 04

  I'm bad at my job.

• 2:06:14Griffin Newman?

  That's mathematically impossible that you didn't watch it. Everyone watched it every day.

• 2:06:19Speaker 04

  Okay, okay.

• 2:06:20David Sims?

  The film won Best Screenplay at the Cannes Film Festival, which people forget. Came out in March 1974, end of March 1974, Griffin, and it was not charting. Number one at the box office is the Best Picture winner of 1973.

• 2:06:34Griffin Newman?

  The Godfather Part Two?

• 2:06:35David Sims?

  No.

• 2:06:35Griffin Newman?

  Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, huh. Uh, it's not French Connection.

• 2:06:41David Sims?

  No.

• 2:06:43Griffin Newman?

  It is.

• 2:06:44David Sims?

  That, I believe, is 71.

• 2:06:45Griffin Newman?

  1973.

• 2:06:47Speaker 04

  Not Cowboy, is it?

• 2:06:48David Sims?

  Nope.

• 2:06:48Griffin Newman?

  It's not Midnight Cowboy. I'm trying to think of the early 70s winners.

• 2:06:52David Sims?

  Uh, that's 69, I think.

• 2:06:53Griffin Newman?

  Oh, you're right. But it wins in 70. Okay, so it's not.

• 2:06:57David Sims?

  What's the movie that wins in between The Godfathers?

• 2:07:00Griffin Newman?

  That's what I'm trying to, David, in fact, that's what I'm trying to remember. The movie that wins in between The Godfathers.

• 2:07:04David Sims?

  It was a gigantic hit starring two major stars.

• 2:07:09Griffin Newman?

  I'm fiddling in the room. Uh, it stars two major stars. It's The Sting?

• 2:07:14David Sims?

  The Sting.

• 2:07:15Griffin Newman?

  One of the highest grossing movies in history.

• 2:07:17Speaker 04

  I was just rewatching.

• 2:07:18Griffin Newman?

  Adjusted for inflation, The Sting made like.

• 2:07:20David Sims?

  It's right up there. Made like $20 billion. I mean, Thanos was in it.

• 2:07:25Griffin Newman?

  He was.

• 2:07:26David Sims?

  Huge hit. It's been out for four months or whatever, and it's still completely crushing it. Number two at the box office is a big flop.

• 2:07:34Griffin Newman?

  Hmm.

• 2:07:34David Sims?

  Um, it is a musical film starring someone who didn't make a lot of movies.

• 2:07:40Griffin Newman?

  Interesting. It's based on.

• 2:07:43David Sims?

  Based on a musical.

• 2:07:45Griffin Newman?

  Is it mahogany or lace?

• 2:07:46David Sims?

  No, no.

• 2:07:48Griffin Newman?

  But is, when you say someone who doesn't make a lot of movies, is it someone like that who's primarily a musician or a singer?

• 2:07:53David Sims?

  No.

• 2:07:54Griffin Newman?

  Interesting.

• 2:07:55David Sims?

  The other medium of performance.

• 2:07:57Speaker 04

  Comedy?

• 2:07:58Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, they're primarily a.

• 2:08:00David Sims?

  Television.

• 2:08:01Griffin Newman?

  Television star.

• 2:08:02David Sims?

  Or a TV star. Not that she didn't make movies, but she's.

• 2:08:04Griffin Newman?

  It's Mary Tyler Moore?

• 2:08:05David Sims?

  Nope.

• 2:08:06Griffin Newman?

  Fuck.

• 2:08:07David Sims?

  Nope.

• 2:08:08Griffin Newman?

  And it's not Lucille Ball in Mame?

• 2:08:10David Sims?

  It is Lucille Ball in Mame. That's exactly what it is.

• 2:08:14Griffin Newman?

  What we got there?

• 2:08:14David Sims?

  You did. Um, her last role, Lucille Ball's last film role.

• 2:08:18Griffin Newman?

  Right, cuz we.

• 2:08:20David Sims?

  She didn't make a lot of movies.

• 2:08:21Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:08:22David Sims?

  Now, she did tell J. Edgar Hoover to go take a hike, though.

• 2:08:25Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:08:25David Sims?

  Or whatever. Someone did that.

• 2:08:27Griffin Newman?

  No, it was the opposite. J. Edgar Hoover said, I like you, and everyone went.

• 2:08:30David Sims?

  It was like, yay!

• 2:08:33Griffin Newman?

  You haven't seen Dura Number Two yet?

• 2:08:35David Sims?

  No, maybe tomorrow.

• 2:08:36Speaker 04

  That you haven't.

• 2:08:37Griffin Newman?

  It'll be old business by the time this episode comes out, but I'm sitting there watching it and made me so retroactively angry that J.K. Simmons got an Oscar nomination for being the Ricardos. I'm like, J.K. Simmons should get four acting nominations just for Dura Number Two.

• 2:08:51Speaker 04

  He's so good.

• 2:08:52Griffin Newman?

  That's exactly what you want him doing.

• 2:08:54Speaker 04

  Yeah, he does a Chicago accent.

• 2:08:56Griffin Newman?

  Oh, my God, David.

• 2:08:57David Sims?

  That sounds good.

• 2:08:57Griffin Newman?

  You're gonna nut.

• 2:08:58David Sims?

  I'm gonna nut. I'm already nutting. Number two is Mame. Number three is the film that The Sting beat to Best Picture. That is another of the adjusted for inflation, like, highest grossing movies of all time.

• 2:09:11Griffin Newman?

  That's not, it's not The Exorcist, right?

• 2:09:13David Sims?

  It sure is. William Friedkin's The Exorcist.

• 2:09:16Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:09:17David Sims?

  Um, which is good.

• 2:09:19Griffin Newman?

  Was Exorcist the expected winner? Was Sting just a juggernaut?

• 2:09:23David Sims?

  I think The Sting was a juggernaut, but I think that was a pretty hot Oscars because The Exorcist was such a, like, hot-button sensation.

• 2:09:31Griffin Newman?

  And you had two of the highest grossing movies of all time.

• 2:09:34David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 2:09:35Griffin Newman?

  Humongous cultural phenomenons.

• 2:09:37David Sims?

  And then you've got three, the other three biggest movies of all time, Cries and Whispers, A Touch of Class, and American Graffiti, which was a big movie.

• 2:09:44Griffin Newman?

  That is.

• 2:09:45David Sims?

  No, it's a really good five.

• 2:09:46Griffin Newman?

  To have, like, three full-on blockbusters.

• 2:09:49David Sims?

  Sting, Graffiti, Exorcist. Cries and Whispers, which is a wonderful nomination, and then Touch of Class, where you're like, yeah, they had to have, like, a British thing.

• 2:09:56Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 2:09:57David Sims?

  But it's not the worst movie.

• 2:09:58Griffin Newman?

  Two austere, European, emotionally devastating films, and then, like, three, like, rollicking hits.

• 2:10:05Speaker 04

  Sort of like goofy.

• 2:10:06David Sims?

  Yeah, it's a, okay.

• 2:10:08Speaker 04

  Yeah, I have such a glasses.

• 2:10:09Griffin Newman?

  I've never seen Touch of Class.

• 2:10:10Speaker 04

  I watched it for my book.

• 2:10:12David Sims?

  Exorcist is a far better film than The Sting, in my opinion, but I get it with The Sting just in terms of, like, the vibes were, were great, right? I mean, like, right? I mean, everyone had a good time. Tinkly piano, cons, hats?

• 2:10:30Griffin Newman?

  Things slowly transitioning from Deguera type into real.

• 2:10:33David Sims?

  That's good. That still gets me.

• 2:10:35Griffin Newman?

  People were losing their shit.

• 2:10:37David Sims?

  Number four, the box office.

• 2:10:39Griffin Newman?

  So Brad Pitt would have been Captain America and Paul Newman would be Tony Stark.

• 2:10:45David Sims?

  Yes, he would.

• 2:10:45Griffin Newman?

  If, if Robert Shaw is Thanos.

• 2:10:48David Sims?

  Right.

• 2:10:48Griffin Newman?

  Right?

• 2:10:49David Sims?

  Sure. And Marvin Hamish is our, is Alan Silvestri. Number four, it's a adventure, action adventure movie, one of the drunkest films ever made.

• 2:11:01Griffin Newman?

  One of the drunkest films ever made. It's an action adventure movie.

• 2:11:06David Sims?

  I'm just assuming. People were drunk when they were making it.

• 2:11:09Griffin Newman?

  It's not like Kelly's Heroes or something like that.

• 2:11:12David Sims?

  No, that was probably a drunk one too.

• 2:11:14Griffin Newman?

  Is it a war film though?

• 2:11:15David Sims?

  No, no, it's not.

• 2:11:16Griffin Newman?

  It's not. One of the drunkest films ever made. Does it have a lot of old British theater?

• 2:11:20David Sims?

  Correct. A lot of Brits.

• 2:11:22Griffin Newman?

  It's got a lot of Brits.

• 2:11:23David Sims?

  Including one who was just like a walking barrel of wine.

• 2:11:26Griffin Newman?

  Oliver Reed?

• 2:11:27David Sims?

  Correct.

• 2:11:28Griffin Newman?

  Okay.

• 2:11:32David Sims?

  But one of those guys with like, he was really famously drunk. You're like, that guy? Are you sure? Nothing about him reads that way.

• 2:11:38Griffin Newman?

  I mean, I just love, like, maybe twice a year I read the Wikipedia entry on Oliver Reed's death during the filming of Gladiator. And they were like, he's uninsurable. If he has one more drink, he'll die. And they hired a body man to watch him at all times to make sure he didn't drink. And then he was found dead at a pub, sitting next to his body man. And they were like, you had one job. And he was like, I was never gonna die.

• 2:12:02David Sims?

  Fucking kidding me. He died doing a drinking competition.

• 2:12:05Griffin Newman?

  And they were basically.

• 2:12:06David Sims?

  Really?

• 2:12:07Griffin Newman?

  Yeah. The guy was basically like, what did you expect? And everyone was like, yeah, we press no charge.

• 2:12:13Griffin Newman?

  He had like an accountability buddy.

• 2:12:16David Sims?

  It was, I believe it was truly David Hemmings, who is in Gladiator, another great British actor who had been drafted into that. And he was like, yeah, I'm sorry. I don't know, man.

• 2:12:25Griffin Newman?

  Right. And you're like, what? He died of old age? No, he was 27.

• 2:12:27David Sims?

  I mean, Oliver Reed is one of those things where you see him in Gladiator and you're like, oh, he's like 75 in this, right? And they're like, no, he's like, just turned 60.

• 2:12:35Griffin Newman?

  Denzel now is 15 years.

• 2:12:37David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 2:12:38Griffin Newman?

  And Denzel looks.

• 2:12:39David Sims?

  Gladiator. Right. Like he could like have sex all day. In that movie and does.

• 2:12:44Griffin Newman?

  In the movie?

• 2:12:46David Sims?

  He really is very good in that. In a film I think is totally fine and entertaining, but like he is just sort of.

• 2:12:54Griffin Newman?

  You see, we got the bucket after.

• 2:12:55Speaker 04

  He's a little bi. Yeah, it's a good.

• 2:12:57Griffin Newman?

  The bucket's good. I haven't seen the movie, but I'm a big fan of the bucket.

• 2:13:00Speaker 04

  It's a good bucket.

• 2:13:01David Sims?

  Anyway, what's this movie? It stars Oliver Reed.

• 2:13:04Griffin Newman?

  Okay, Oliver Reed drunk adventure film.

• 2:13:07David Sims?

  Action adventure.

• 2:13:08Griffin Newman?

  Can you give me like, is there another subgenre? Is there a setting? Is there?

• 2:13:11David Sims?

  Swashbuckler.

• 2:13:13Griffin Newman?

  Oh, is it Three Musketeers?

• 2:13:14David Sims?

  It's the Three Musketeers, a film I've seen. I don't remember very well, but I've seen both it and The Four Musketeers. But you know, it's just, it's not just that it's like Oliver Reed and stuff. It's like Oliver Reed and Richard Taylor and they're, you know, they've got their hats and like, ah, fuck you. Waving swords around like these are not like. Yeah, these aren't really like nuanced performances. Yeah.

• 2:13:37Griffin Newman?

  I've never seen those. People love them, right?

• 2:13:40David Sims?

  I think now they would probably play a little like stiffer than we think.

• 2:13:44Griffin Newman?

  I feel like there's been a bit of a reclamation project recently on them.

• 2:13:48David Sims?

  Well, cause Soderbergh is so fond of the Richard Lester sort of vibe.

• 2:13:52Griffin Newman?

  I think Tarantino loves those movies. They shot on a really unique film format, too.

• 2:13:57David Sims?

  Drunko vision?

• 2:13:58Griffin Newman?

  I was gonna say they just poured brandy into the camera.

• 2:14:00David Sims?

  Beer vision? They used a beer bottle as the lens?

• 2:14:06David Sims?

  Oh, boy. Alcoholism is a serious business, except when it's British actors from the 60s.

• 2:14:11Griffin Newman?

  Say that while I'm already laughing.

• 2:14:14David Sims?

  Then it's funny because now they're all old and or dead. So it's like, okay, you know.

• 2:14:20Griffin Newman?

  Remind me who the four were.

• 2:14:22David Sims?

  Oh, in the, in the Three Musketeers, Michael Yorke's D'Artagnan, Oliver Reed's Athos, Frank Finlay, the great Frank Finlay, who recently died, as Porthos and Richard Chamberlain as Aramis.

• 2:14:36David Sims?

  Who is America? Richard Chamberlain. But, you know, kind of in that world.

• 2:14:39Griffin Newman?

  Love to pull the cork. You know, I've been misattributing that.

• 2:14:42David Sims?

  You have. You've been a, or I have. One of us has been misattributing the speaker of that line.

• 2:14:47Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 2:14:48David Sims?

  Because Dakin Matthews is in the scene, but he doesn't actually say it.

• 2:14:50Griffin Newman?

  Dakin Matthews is the one who she negotiates with.

• 2:14:53David Sims?

  And he's amazing in that scene.

• 2:14:55Griffin Newman?

  And I already forget the name of the actor that said pull the cork, but it's my favorite actor of all time. My favorite performance in movie history.

• 2:15:01David Sims?

  Number five of the box office. I already mentioned it. It's a big drama with some big stars, big, long movie.

• 2:15:08Griffin Newman?

  It's a big, long movie. It's a touch of class. No.

• 2:15:11David Sims?

  No. It was a big hit. It was like a big expensive film. I think of it as kind of a boring movie, honestly.

• 2:15:19Griffin Newman?

  Interesting.

• 2:15:20David Sims?

  But it's.

• 2:15:20Griffin Newman?

  Major director?

• 2:15:21David Sims?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:15:22Griffin Newman?

  Kind of, yeah.

• 2:15:23David Sims?

  I mean, yeah, major-ish. He made some big movies, including this one.

• 2:15:28Griffin Newman?

  You think.

• 2:15:29David Sims?

  Two huge stars.

• 2:15:30Griffin Newman?

  Kind of boring.

• 2:15:31David Sims?

  Who I've always thought.

• 2:15:32Griffin Newman?

  Stars.

• 2:15:33David Sims?

  Dalton Trumbo wrote the script, so it was a wet one.

• 2:15:37David Sims?

  He was in the bathtub. Thank you.

• 2:15:38Griffin Newman?

  Splash, splash.

• 2:15:41Griffin Newman?

  Click, click, clack. Uh, Dalton Trumbo wrote it. You think it's a bore? Male and female star?

• 2:15:47David Sims?

  No, two boys.

• 2:15:48Griffin Newman?

  Two boys.

• 2:15:48David Sims?

  It's a boy movie. Big boy movie.

• 2:15:50Griffin Newman?

  It's a big boy.

• 2:15:51David Sims?

  The movie is a teenager that boys would tell me rocked and I'd be like, it's okay.

• 2:15:55Griffin Newman?

  Really?

• 2:15:55David Sims?

  Yeah, it was remade recently, like, completely irrelevantly.

• 2:15:59Griffin Newman?

  Teenage boys loved it.

• 2:16:01David Sims?

  No, but that's a kind of a bad clue.

• 2:16:03Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:16:03David Sims?

  Cause I feel like, I'm just.

• 2:16:05Griffin Newman?

  It was remade irrelevantly. It's.

• 2:16:07David Sims?

  In the last 10 years.

• 2:16:09Griffin Newman?

  In the last 10 years.

• 2:16:10David Sims?

  Uh, I'm gonna give you a hint. It's a prison movie?

• 2:16:13Griffin Newman?

  Oh, papillon.

• 2:16:14David Sims?

  What? I mean, I'm not wrong, right?

• 2:16:16Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:16:17David Sims?

  Kind of boring.

• 2:16:18Griffin Newman?

  It's interesting.

• 2:16:19David Sims?

  Well, we disagree. Wow, we completely disagree. It just goes on a bit. Yeah, it's got cool stuff and like, they're good.

• 2:16:26Griffin Newman?

  Yeah. I've told that story on the podcast about Steve McQueen smuggling the coke in the tires of his luxury sports car that he made them fly to the island.

• 2:16:35David Sims?

  That rings a faint bell, but I'm.

• 2:16:36Griffin Newman?

  Well, I've ruined the story.

• 2:16:37David Sims?

  You sure have.

• 2:16:38Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:16:39David Sims?

  You just told it.

• 2:16:40Griffin Newman?

  It was Dustin Hoffman recognizing that's the level of star power this guy has. That he demands they fly his.

• 2:16:47David Sims?

  Sports car.

• 2:16:48Griffin Newman?

  So he can drive it around the island in between.

• 2:16:51David Sims?

  Right. And he's like, oh, ho, ho.

• 2:16:53Griffin Newman?

  And he was like, that's a power move. And it's like, no, the car is the packaging system for the cocaine.

• 2:16:59David Sims?

  Can snort this car.

• 2:17:00Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:17:01David Sims?

  Number six at the box office, I just want to say, is a, I think, Hong Kong action movie called Bloodfingers. This looks fun.

• 2:17:09Griffin Newman?

  Cool.

• 2:17:09David Sims?

  I don't know how that's in the top 10, but it is.

• 2:17:11Griffin Newman?

  Bloodfinger.

• 2:17:11David Sims?

  You've also got Serpico. You've heard of that one?

• 2:17:14Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, a good movie, although lower on my 70s.

• 2:17:21David Sims?

  Lumet and Pacino.

• 2:17:21Griffin Newman?

  And 70s Pacino.

• 2:17:22David Sims?

  But it kind of rocks.

• 2:17:24Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, no, it does.

• 2:17:24David Sims?

  It just kind of rocks. It's about a guy who's like, I don't want to be a cop. I want to be like, kind of a dirty hippie guy.

• 2:17:30Griffin Newman?

  Peter Serpino, which would always shit talk Serpico. I've had this conversation with him like 15 times where he's like, you know a movie I don't like? Serpico. And I'm like, really? Why? And he goes, I'm an annoying god.

• 2:17:42David Sims?

  He is kind of. The whole movie is kind of about him being annoying.

• 2:17:45Griffin Newman?

  Dude is annoying.

• 2:17:46David Sims?

  He is annoying.

• 2:17:47Griffin Newman?

  I've always, I like, I love the movie.

• 2:17:48David Sims?

  He's right.

• 2:17:49Griffin Newman?

  He is right.

• 2:17:50David Sims?

  I mean, like, Serpico's in the right.

• 2:17:52Griffin Newman?

  Infamously annoying. He's, yeah, it's annoying that he's so right.

• 2:17:56David Sims?

  Number eight is a movie I've never heard of, starring Elliot Gould and Robert Blake, the mystery man himself.

• 2:18:02Griffin Newman?

  It's not Boston.

• 2:18:02David Sims?

  Busting.

• 2:18:03Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, that's a Heim's movie.

• 2:18:04David Sims?

  I don't know that movie.

• 2:18:05Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, it's a Heim's movie.

• 2:18:06David Sims?

  It's a cop movie?

• 2:18:07Griffin Newman?

  We talked about it in our 2010 episode a little bit.

• 2:18:11David Sims?

  I don't remember. Good name.

• 2:18:12Griffin Newman?

  It's a, it's a gold blind spot for me.

• 2:18:14David Sims?

  Do you think it makes them feel good?

• 2:18:16Griffin Newman?

  In the 70s, Busting didn't really make anyone feel good.

• 2:18:19David Sims?

  Number nine at the box office is The Great Blazing Saddles.

• 2:18:23Griffin Newman?

  Gunny had my favorite comedy of all time.

• 2:18:25David Sims?

  Good call. And number 10 at the box office is a major flop of the year, The Great Gatsby.

• 2:18:31Griffin Newman?

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:18:32David Sims?

  Jack Clayton's terminally dull, nice looking.

• 2:18:35Griffin Newman?

  Just one of those like inexplicably inert movies.

• 2:18:39David Sims?

  Yeah. And that's why when people shit on the Lerman movie, I'm like, I don't know, man, that movie is fun and moves. And you can see the really boring. The Lerman movie. I've seen it 1,000 times.

• 2:18:50Griffin Newman?

  I, you know, I think if they tried doing four more Broadway musicals, they're gonna crack.

• 2:18:54David Sims?

  But at the same time.

• 2:18:56Speaker 04

  Okay, apparently the one that was in Boston was good.

• 2:18:57David Sims?

  Right. The other one that we haven't gotten yet.

• 2:19:00Speaker 04

  On Broadway is Garp, but apparently the other one.

• 2:19:03Griffin Newman?

  But is the other one gonna transfer or?

• 2:19:06Speaker 04

  I think, yeah, definitely. Probably.

• 2:19:08David Sims?

  Definitely, probably. It does seem like the, the bad one made so little impact that they can probably just have another one.

• 2:19:14Speaker 04

  Also, the, the one from Art is like, has music by Florence and the Machine, so it's probably a little bit, it is like more grabby.

• 2:19:25Griffin Newman?

  Sounds like the dog days are over.

• 2:19:30Griffin Newman?

  Here's the thing that's interesting about this current era of David Sims we're living through.

• 2:19:35Speaker 04

  This current era of David Sims?

• 2:19:37David Sims?

  What's the great thing of what?

• 2:19:38Griffin Newman?

  David, you're admittedly pretty stressed and sleep deprived at all times.

• 2:19:42David Sims?

  Sure.

• 2:19:43Griffin Newman?

  Sometimes you have 90% less tolerance for my jokes than you usually do, and other times you are so susceptible to them.

• 2:19:50David Sims?

  Very amused by that.

• 2:19:51Griffin Newman?

  I'll throw out just real weak tea and it'll break you.

• 2:19:56Speaker 04

  You do seem, David does seem just to place this episode real tired all the time.

• 2:20:01David Sims?

  I'm, I think that's not going to change for a little bit.

• 2:20:04Griffin Newman?

  And you know, previously you've always been considered a bright eyed and bushy tailed.

• 2:20:09David Sims?

  We be alone. We're done.

• 2:20:12Speaker 04

  We're done.

• 2:20:14David Sims?

  I think David said to me recently, uh, when I asked him, how's it going? He said, hanging by a thread.

• 2:20:23Griffin Newman?

  We're living through good times. Uh, Esther.

• 2:20:27Speaker 04

  Oh yeah, buy my book.

• 2:20:30Griffin Newman?

  Buy her dang book, folks.

• 2:20:31Speaker 04

  Buy my dang book if you want to.

• 2:20:33David Sims?

  The link's in the episode description.

• 2:20:36Speaker 04

  Description. By this time, I will have had a wonderful launch, hopefully with David Sims moderating. Um.

• 2:20:45Griffin Newman?

  Where's that happening?

• 2:20:46Speaker 04

  The strand I emailed you about it. You gotta check your email. Ben also got it and Ben responded. Ben acknowledged it. Um, it's on December 3rd and it'll be fun. We're gonna go drinking afterwards. Um.

• 2:20:59Griffin Newman?

  Oh yeah, Ben did respond. Okay, I'll TP right now.

• 2:21:05Speaker 04

  But yeah, I, I, I am proud of that and it's, I think it's fun. I think it's a fun, fun little read.

• 2:21:11Griffin Newman?

  Is it the dumb question you've been asked eight trillion times? I maybe asked you in the past, what, what your, do you have a like sort of perfect rom-com in your mind? Not even favorite. I saw you're doing a Philadelphia story.

• 2:21:24Speaker 04

  Yeah, that's my favorite.

• 2:21:25Griffin Newman?

  That's, yeah.

• 2:21:26Speaker 04

  That's my favorite. I don't know. Perfect is so hard. Um.

• 2:21:30Griffin Newman?

  Is there one that you just think is like, I mean, it might be Philadelphia story, but it's like.

• 2:21:33Speaker 04

  I do think that movie is brilliant.

• 2:21:35Griffin Newman?

  The sort of like ultimate example of what you like or want out of the genre.

• 2:21:40Speaker 04

  Roman Holiday always ends up real high on my list.

• 2:21:42David Sims?

  It's a really good movie.

• 2:21:44Speaker 04

  Um, Sabrina always ends up really high on my list.

• 2:21:49Speaker 04

  Um, yeah.

• 2:21:50David Sims?

  We're both, we're both horny for Bogie.

• 2:21:52Speaker 04

  Actually, and Bill Holden, yeah.

• 2:21:54David Sims?

  He's hot.

• 2:21:55Speaker 04

  We, yeah.

• 2:21:56David Sims?

  But Bogie.

• 2:21:57Speaker 04

  Ah.

• 2:21:58David Sims?

  Bogie in that Sabrina mode, you don't see it enough.

• 2:22:00Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:22:01Griffin Newman?

  I just never can process how short he was.

• 2:22:04David Sims?

  He's a little guy.

• 2:22:05Griffin Newman?

  But he's one of those guys where just on screen, it doesn't make sense. And then you hear that he was like my size.

• 2:22:11Speaker 04

  So those are, I, those are obviously, obviously, I think.

• 2:22:14Griffin Newman?

  Oh, a great pick.

• 2:22:15Speaker 04

  You know, the Nora is like, when Harry is pretty boring to pick, but I do think it's pretty perfect.

• 2:22:22David Sims?

  It's pretty. Haley Leopold.

• 2:22:23Griffin Newman?

  Haley Leopold.

• 2:22:24David Sims?

  Someone like you.

• 2:22:25Griffin Newman?

  Raising Helen.

• 2:22:26Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:22:27David Sims?

  I'm trying to think, is there a third Hugh Jackman rom com?

• 2:22:29Griffin Newman?

  Oh, you just like the Hughes.

• 2:22:31Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:22:32David Sims?

  Is there a third?

• 2:22:32Griffin Newman?

  X-Men Origins Wolverine.

• 2:22:34David Sims?

  Beautiful, him and Dominic Monahan.

• 2:22:37Griffin Newman?

  Well, there isn't, right?

• 2:22:38David Sims?

  Yeah, I mean, it's just so annoying where it was like, let's get this guy in some rom coms. They make Caitlin Leopold, which low key rocks Someone Like You, which is fairly anonymous. And then they're kind of like, yeah, forget it. Like that era is over.

• 2:22:49Griffin Newman?

  It's a thing we talk about a lot, that he was like in the last generation where they were trying to do the conventional movie star track of like, we got to get you in one of each. We got to build your audience piece by piece. And then they were like, what if you're just Wolverine? And then every 10 years you get the catch.

• 2:23:03Speaker 04

  And.

• 2:23:04Griffin Newman?

  That's what I'm saying. Like, it was basically like, if you do six Wolverines, for every six Wolverines, we let you do your own thing one time. And then Greatest Showman worked.

• 2:23:13David Sims?

  I just love the premise of Someone Like You, where Ashley Judd's like, someone dumped me. Greg Kinnear, fucking dumped me. And Hugh Jackman plays a guy who's like, well, men are pigs. Yeah, he's like, men are pigs. And she's like, oh, you, I can't listen to you, handsomest person who ever lived. And he's like, all right, I'll just sit over here. And after a while, she's like, you want to fuck, baby? And you're like, yay. And then it's like, roll credit.

• 2:23:36Griffin Newman?

  That's a Tony Goldwyn picture. Yeah.

• 2:23:39David Sims?

  Pretty funny that it's a Tony Goldwyn movie. I don't really know why. He made, that movie is fine. And then The Last Kiss, that movie with Braff.

• 2:23:46Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:23:46David Sims?

  Is so fucking execrable. That you were like, banish this man from filmmaking.

• 2:23:52Griffin Newman?

  And then he just had like an incredible second wind as like a hunk once again.

• 2:23:58David Sims?

  As sort of a hunk for mom.

• 2:24:00Speaker 04

  I went to go see The Last Kiss in a movie theater because I was so excited about the new Zach Braff picture. That really makes me feel like a piece of shit.

• 2:24:11Griffin Newman?

  No, but it was like his first big move post Garden State.

• 2:24:14David Sims?

  Oh, hundred percent. It was.

• 2:24:15Griffin Newman?

  I was like. Zach has something to say.

• 2:24:17David Sims?

  It has his fingerprints all over it. Like that Braff clearly was like, I'm, here's my iPod. I'm doing the soundtrack for this movie and all that and.

• 2:24:25Speaker 04

  It's so bad. Anyway, yeah, not a good movie, but there are a lot of good movies in my book, which has also some nice pictures.

• 2:24:37Griffin Newman?

  Can we restate? I just.

• 2:24:38David Sims?

  Fuck out of here.

• 2:24:38Griffin Newman?

  Always like this game, especially as now we're firmly in our 10th year of the podcast. The Esther Zuckerman Blank Check Canon is.

• 2:24:48Speaker 04

  Uh huh.

• 2:24:49Griffin Newman?

  I'm, I'm not going in order here. The Little Mermaid.

• 2:24:52Speaker 04

  Uh huh.

• 2:24:52Griffin Newman?

  The Pianer.

• 2:24:53Speaker 04

  Uh huh.

• 2:24:54Griffin Newman?

  I'll Do Anything, Regular Musical Cut.

• 2:24:56Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:24:57Griffin Newman?

  Uh, Gone Girl.

• 2:24:59Speaker 04

  Uh huh.

• 2:25:00Griffin Newman?

  Sugarland Express.

• 2:25:01Speaker 04

  Uh huh.

• 2:25:02Griffin Newman?

  I feel like for a while you were like, you guys saddled me with the bad movies.

• 2:25:05Speaker 04

  You were getting the big one. My first one.

• 2:25:07Griffin Newman?

  Uh, well, Aloha, which of course is about the sky. Am I forgetting another one?

• 2:25:14Speaker 04

  We can't see the, we can't see the sky in here. It's so dark.

• 2:25:16Griffin Newman?

  I do think you've successfully, you've won back the narrative.

• 2:25:21Speaker 04

  I have, I have. It's really nice.

• 2:25:23Griffin Newman?

  You've now covered more good films than bad.

• 2:25:24Speaker 04

  I know. You can, next time you can give me a piece of shit.

• 2:25:26Griffin Newman?

  Okay, you're gonna get a fucking stinker.

• 2:25:28Speaker 04

  Yeah, next time.

• 2:25:29David Sims?

  What's Tom Shadyak's worst movie?

• 2:25:33Speaker 04

  I'll refuse. Just kidding. I'll always come on.

• 2:25:35Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, 2025 Esther Zuckerman on Heaven Almighty.

• 2:25:39Speaker 04

  No, you're welcome to give me a piece of shit next time. Um, they are fun. I've had some real nice luck though. Doing some good ones.

• 2:25:47Griffin Newman?

  You're one of the best.

• 2:25:48David Sims?

  Yeah, best Esther.

• 2:25:49Griffin Newman?

  Good luck.

• 2:25:49David Sims?

  I don't mean that to sound sarcastic. You are.

• 2:25:51Speaker 04

  Yeah, you sounded like, wow.

• 2:25:54David Sims?

  Sugarland Express, great movie.

• 2:25:56Speaker 04

  Woo.

• 2:25:57David Sims?

  Next week, Jaws.

• 2:25:59Speaker 04

  Never heard of it.

• 2:26:01David Sims?

  What's up with that one?

• 2:26:02Griffin Newman?

  Yeah. And just a pre-warning, that one's kind of more of a mini, so we just didn't have much to say about it.

• 2:26:08Speaker 04

  Who's on your Jaws?

• 2:26:09David Sims?

  Timothy Simons.

• 2:26:10Speaker 04

  Aw, fun.

• 2:26:11Griffin Newman?

  The great Timothy Simons is back to talk about Jaws in what is.

• 2:26:14David Sims?

  Definitely at least 20 minutes to talk about her text styles.

• 2:26:18Griffin Newman?

  There's a lot of text talk, but, but a lot of very on topic conversation about the movie Jaws. And what is, jokes aside, a very long episode.

• 2:26:25David Sims?

  Yeah, it's long. I don't know. Fuck you.

• 2:26:28Griffin Newman?

  Hey.

• 2:26:28David Sims?

  Not you, the listener.

• 2:26:31David Sims?

  You don't like it? Listen to Talk to her. Let's see how long those are. Yeah, how long those episodes are.

• 2:26:37Griffin Newman?

  How much do you think she talks about Jaws per episode? If you're complaining that we're talking too much about other shit.

• 2:26:42Speaker 04

  I don't think she has.

• 2:26:43David Sims?

  She does about an hour.

• 2:26:44Speaker 04

  Yeah. I would guess she's maybe never seen a movie.

• 2:26:48David Sims?

  Well, she's seen like parts of movies.

• 2:26:50Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:26:50David Sims?

  She's probably seen like The Lion King.

• 2:26:52Griffin Newman?

  We're still waiting to hear back if she wants to do Empire of the Sun.

• 2:26:54Speaker 03

  Come on, she's seen a movie.

• 2:26:56Speaker 04

  My dad on Empire of the Sun. My dad fucking loves Empire of the Sun. Yeah. My dad loves Empire of the Sun.

• 2:27:02Griffin Newman?

  Well, it's.

• 2:27:03Speaker 04

  It's one of my dad's faves.

• 2:27:04Griffin Newman?

  It's between him and Haley Wells, so.

• 2:27:06Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:27:07Griffin Newman?

  Tell him to work on his.

• 2:27:08David Sims?

  Okay, I just typed in.

• 2:27:11Griffin Newman?

  Haley Wells movie?

• 2:27:12David Sims?

  I typed in Talk to her's favorite movie.

• 2:27:14Griffin Newman?

  Yeah. I like just calling her Talk to her.

• 2:27:16David Sims?

  I should have called her something else. And Google's AI, which to be clear, I don't think should exist. Answered that her favorite movie is The Jazz.

• 2:27:28David Sims?

  And I'm just trying to think of like the sort of.

• 2:27:29Speaker 04

  Which one? Which one?

• 2:27:30David Sims?

  Which one? 1927 one. This sort of computer like brain fart that would lead to it being like, I don't know. It's kind of just the first movie with talking in it would be the answer to that.

• 2:27:44Griffin Newman?

  Does Talk to her sound like jazz scatting? Like, what is the map they're doing? Well, that's, uh, I think.

• 2:27:51Speaker 04

  Oh, Talky.

• 2:27:53David Sims?

  Yes, I believe that's what it's doing.

• 2:27:54Speaker 04

  It wasn't like choosing between Neil Diamond and Al Jaleel.

• 2:27:58Griffin Newman?

  Think of no more appropriate way to end this episode.

• 2:28:00David Sims?

  Correct.

• 2:28:01Griffin Newman?

  Thank you all for listening. Please remember to write a review and subscribe. Tune in next week for Jaws, a very successful film.

• 2:28:08David Sims?

  Yep. Big one.

• 2:28:09Griffin Newman?

  Uh, over on the Patreon, we're doing our Spielberg bonuses, covering a lot of his early short films and TV work. And of course, most importantly, we are finally tackling the Jelly trilogy as commentary. And as always, from the bottom of my heart, I implore all of our listeners to spit on that thing.