Duel

2025! Blank Check Year 10! Year of Miracles! In honor of our record 10th year of podcasting, we’re doing something we’ve never done before - going back to fill in the gaps on a filmography we’ve previously only partially covered. And what a filmography it is - folks, welcome to PODRASSIC CAST. We’re starting our exploration of the first half of Steven Spielberg’s career with his remarkable 1971 debut feature DUEL, a movie that was originally made for TV but later released with extra footage for a theatrical run. Driving is scary. Being this talented right off the bat is ALSO scary but in a different way. Beep beep, honk honk. 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 killer's weapon? A 40-ton truck. The victim's only defense? A startling podcast.

• 1:47David Sims?

  Uh, what, what?

• 1:48Griffin Newman?

  Trap? I don't know if that's really an act.

• 1:51David Sims?

  Spoiler alert.

• 1:52Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, also.

• 1:53David Sims?

  Kind of giving away his one move in like minute 82.

• 1:56Griffin Newman?

  I was gonna say, that's the last minute. It's not like, that makes it sound like the movie is him constructing an elaborate trap.

• 2:02David Sims?

  Right. What if a truck guy tried to kill the, the most ingenious trapper?

• 2:06Griffin Newman?

  Right, right, right.

• 2:08David Sims?

  It's like, Weaver's behind the wheel, he said, what he doesn't know is that I'm really good at setting traps for trucks.

• 2:13Griffin Newman?

  Well, that's almost the eventual sequel duel versus Kraven the Hunter. What if this truck we're going after, Kraven the Hunter, the greatest trap artist?

• 2:26David Sims?

  Trapper John M.D. could go after him.

• 2:28Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, he's probably the second best trapper I know.

• 2:31Speaker 03

  I think Young Thug is definitely one of our best trap artists.

• 2:34Griffin Newman?

  Isn't it crazy, David, to think?

• 2:36David Sims?

  David? He could just go after the film trap.

• 2:38Griffin Newman?

  I was waiting for Ben to jump in with that. Yes.

• 2:41David Sims?

  Like the, the, the, the, the M. Night Shyamalan film trap.

• 2:43Griffin Newman?

  Okay, so here's the film we're pitching. It's a legacy sequel to Duel.

• 2:47David Sims?

  Yes.

• 2:47Griffin Newman?

  In which the-

• 2:48David Sims?

  Going off of a poster that exists that's not that famous.

• 2:51Griffin Newman?

  Somehow, the forty-ton truck has returned. The flammable truck itself.

• 2:56David Sims?

  Right, even though it blew up, it's back. Spoiler alert.

• 2:57Griffin Newman?

  Somehow, somehow. And it has to fight a team of good guys, represented by The Butcher, Mr. Trap himself.

• 3:05David Sims?

  Yes.

• 3:06Griffin Newman?

  Craven the Hunter.

• 3:07David Sims?

  Yes.

• 3:07Griffin Newman?

  What was the joke you made of a trap artist?

• 3:09Speaker 03

  Young Thug.

• 3:10Griffin Newman?

  Young Thug.

• 3:11David Sims?

  Trapper John M.D.

• 3:12Griffin Newman?

  And Trapper John M.D. That's the four.

• 3:13David Sims?

  I think that's the four. That's the Mount Rushmore of trapping.

• 3:16Griffin Newman?

  Correct. This is above a Elsa movie about trapping.

• 3:19David Sims?

  It's just not at all. That's why this is a terrible tangent to start a mini-series on.

• 3:25Griffin Newman?

  The quotes were not good either.

• 3:26David Sims?

  No, the quotes in this movie are like, "What's the matter with this guy?"

• 3:29Griffin Newman?

  Exactly.

• 3:30David Sims?

  Beep.

• 3:33Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, ready? Let me try, let me try a quote. Podcast.

• 3:37David Sims?

  That's pretty good.

• 3:37Griffin Newman?

  That's me saying the word podcast in lieu of a horn.

• 3:43Speaker 03

  We could also, we could always do a, a, a pickup later where it's like your inner monologue.

• 3:49Griffin Newman?

  Oh, sure.

• 3:50Speaker 03

  Where you're thinking about-

• 3:51Griffin Newman?

  Okay, ready? Ready? Here's this.

• 3:54David Sims?

  Come on now. Start the podcast.

• 3:59Griffin Newman?

  There's a lot to talk about.

• 4:01David Sims?

  Go ahead.

• 4:01Griffin Newman?

  In the film Duel.

• 4:02David Sims?

  Duel!

• 4:03Griffin Newman?

  Duel.

• 4:04David Sims?

  Jewel.

• 4:06Griffin Newman?

  Duel.

• 4:06David Sims?

  As the sort of Brits might say.

• 4:08Griffin Newman?

  Richard Duel.

• 4:10David Sims?

  Richard Jewel.

• 4:11Griffin Newman?

  This is Blank Check with Griffin and David. I'm Griffin.

• 4:13David Sims?

  I'm David.

• 4:14Griffin Newman?

  It's 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 projects they want. Sometimes those checks clear, and sometimes they bounce, baby. It is-

• 4:30Griffin Newman?

  January 1st?

• 4:32David Sims?

  Uh, it's January 5th.

• 4:34Griffin Newman?

  It's January 5th.

• 4:34David Sims?

  But it's the dawn of a new year.

• 4:36Griffin Newman?

  And this year happens to be the 10th year of Blank Check. This is the start of our 10th year. What you're listening to is the beginning of our 10th year.

• 4:46David Sims?

  Wow.

• 4:47Griffin Newman?

  And thus, we felt, what better way to kick it off than with six-year-old unfinished business?

• 4:53David Sims?

  Now you guys can't complain anymore.

• 4:55Griffin Newman?

  Now you have no grounds to complain. There's nothing you can complain about anymore.

• 5:00David Sims?

  Certainly not in 2025.

• 5:02Griffin Newman?

  Nope.

• 5:02David Sims?

  Nothing to complain about out there.

• 5:04Griffin Newman?

  The year where everything works. I'm calling it right now.

• 5:08David Sims?

  You're calling it? I wish you wouldn't.

• 5:09Griffin Newman?

  I think everything's gonna work in 2025. All my ingenious traps I set. Um, we're talking about...

• 5:17David Sims?

  I think it's eight years ago, Griffin, that we covered...

• 5:22Griffin Newman?

  We did in 2017, is that right?

• 5:25David Sims?

  It was in, it was, uh, the first episode was indeed January 2017.

• 5:31Griffin Newman?

  So you know what's crazy?

• 5:32David Sims?

  We were kicking off a certain presidency both times, yes. Is that what you were gonna say?

• 5:38Griffin Newman?

  Yep.

• 5:38David Sims?

  Yep, it's crazy.

• 5:39Griffin Newman?

  That's wild. I didn't realize it lined up that.

• 5:41David Sims?

  It's been eight years.

• 5:43Griffin Newman?

  It's been eight long years.

• 5:44David Sims?

  Since we on this podcast covered the films of Steven Spielberg. But last time, we threw a curveball.

• 5:50Griffin Newman?

  We did.

• 5:50David Sims?

  And we started in the middle of his career.

• 5:53Griffin Newman?

  We called Spielberg the DreamWorks years.

• 5:54David Sims?

  We didn't know what we were doing back then.

• 5:56Griffin Newman?

  No idea what we were doing.

• 5:58David Sims?

  And we covered all of Steven Spielberg's films, starting with The Lost World: Jurassic Park, going all the way through to what seemed like the crowning apex final film he would ever make, The BFG.

• 6:10David Sims?

  Since then, he's made like 18 more movies. We've covered all of those.

• 6:13Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 6:13David Sims?

  But we've never covered everything leading up to Jurassic Park.

• 6:19Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 6:19David Sims?

  And Schindler's List.

• 6:20Griffin Newman?

  Look, what better way to start off our 10th year than to say, I had always thought that Lost World, the Jurassic Park sequel, was his first film ever.

• 6:30David Sims?

  And we found out.

• 6:31Griffin Newman?

  I recently found out that in fact, the first half of his career was basically a series of the greatest successes any director has had.

• 6:38David Sims?

  Uh, he's had a couple of hits in those 70s, 80s range for sure, and we're going to talk about them on...

• 6:45Griffin Newman?

  They're to the early 90s. Blank Check, I said this already. Oh, but the mini-series?

• 6:48David Sims?

  A mini-series titled...

• 6:50Griffin Newman?

  Podrassic Cast.

• 6:51David Sims?

  Is that right?

• 6:51Griffin Newman?

  Yep.

• 6:52David Sims?

  I didn't remember.

• 6:52Griffin Newman?

  Podrassic Cast.

• 6:54David Sims?

  Okay, good for us. One more time?

• 7:00David Sims?

  Wow, we're being run off the road for that title.

• 7:03Griffin Newman?

  Ben informed us that it took 40 minutes to properly load the truck sounds into Soundboard.

• 7:08David Sims?

  Well, I had to, I had to track down the right sounds, you know? It's very important. It's not just any kind of truck horn. It's gotta be the right one.

• 7:16Griffin Newman?

  Well, you're an artist, producer Ben.

• 7:18David Sims?

  Yes.

• 7:19Griffin Newman?

  AKA.

• 7:20David Sims?

  Oh, boy.

• 7:21Griffin Newman?

  No, here's what I'm gonna do. Just one of them.

• 7:23David Sims?

  Okay.

• 7:24Griffin Newman?

  Warhaas.

• 7:25David Sims?

  You know what? That's a good way to do it. If you just did one every time.

• 7:28Griffin Newman?

  I'm doing for year 10.

• 7:30David Sims?

  2025, year of Ben has one nickname per episode.

• 7:33Griffin Newman?

  Exactly. I think that's a nice way to look back and look forward. I love that.

• 7:37David Sims?

  What is Ben's David Lynch name?

• 7:39Griffin Newman?

  Great question.

• 7:40David Sims?

  Huh. Figure it out later.

• 7:42Griffin Newman?

  Yep.

• 7:42David Sims?

  We're here to talk about.

• 7:44Griffin Newman?

  That will be how we end 2024.

• 7:47David Sims?

  Fine.

• 7:47Griffin Newman?

  You will have heard it by this point.

• 7:49David Sims?

  The films of Steven Spielberg, starting with this week's film, Jewel.

• 7:55Griffin Newman?

  No, a bit of a controversial.

• 7:57David Sims?

  Not really.

• 7:58Griffin Newman?

  Start in terms of, there is some debate. You know, have you watched the John Williams Disney Plus documentary yet?

• 8:05David Sims?

  No.

• 8:06Griffin Newman?

  He goes out of his way, Spielberg, to say my first movie, Sugar Land Express.

• 8:10David Sims?

  Which I understand because I think at the time, that's what it was. That was his first cinematic release.

• 8:17Griffin Newman?

  Yep, and we can dig into this a bit.

• 8:19David Sims?

  And back then, they didn't have Peacock, you know, and Paramount Plus.

• 8:24Griffin Newman?

  God, I can't even imagine.

• 8:25David Sims?

  The, the lines were not blurry. It was like, if you're a TV movie, well, then that was on TV. You didn't get.

• 8:30Griffin Newman?

  Imagine what it must have been like to live through an era without Peacock. You don't even get to see supersized cuts of The Office.

• 8:38David Sims?

  I don't remember.

• 8:39Griffin Newman?

  I don't remember. I mean, thank God I was born in the year 2020 and I never had to witness it. I entered humanity just while it was getting good.

• 8:49David Sims?

  That my children.

• 8:50Griffin Newman?

  Will never know.

• 8:51David Sims?

  Right, well, they might. I mean, Peacock may not make it. Like, I'm not, I'm not trying to be rude to Peacock, but it could leave.

• 8:57Griffin Newman?

  I shudder to think.

• 8:57David Sims?

  But, but they certainly arrived in a world with Peacock.

• 9:01Griffin Newman?

  You have, you have three post Peacock children.

• 9:04David Sims?

  Insane.

• 9:04Griffin Newman?

  That's a way to think about a demarcation of time. It's been eight years since we covered Spielberg and five years since Peacock launched.

• 9:12Griffin Newman?

  It's banned.

• 9:13David Sims?

  Yep, April 2020.

• 9:15Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 9:15David Sims?

  Yeah, named after the NBC logo. I had no idea.

• 9:18Griffin Newman?

  Look, the world was grieving. A global pandemic had us in its grips. And NBC Universal said, we have the cure.

• 9:27Speaker 03

  Peacock?

• 9:28Griffin Newman?

  There's no vaccine yet, but there is the vaccine for the soul. And it's called Peacock. It's a great way to start what's probably one of our biggest series we've ever done.

• 9:38David Sims?

  Jewel!

• 9:40Griffin Newman?

  Duel.

• 9:40David Sims?

  Podrassic Cast, Ben.

• 9:44David Sims?

  Had you seen Jewel before?

• 9:46Speaker 03

  It sounds like you're saying Jewel.

• 9:48David Sims?

  Yeah, have you seen her before? Where's she at?

• 9:51Griffin Newman?

  Her hands are small.

• 9:52David Sims?

  Sometimes she's in a boat.

• 9:53Griffin Newman?

  But they're her own.

• 9:53Speaker 03

  Famously lived in her car.

• 9:55David Sims?

  Right, oh, right. That's the joke.

• 9:57Griffin Newman?

  If that were true, I would have heard about it.

• 9:59Speaker 03

  Uh, no, I've never seen this before. I caught a little bit of it on TV.

• 10:04Griffin Newman?

  Hmm.

• 10:05Speaker 03

  I have this distinct memory of, and, and just being like-

• 10:08Griffin Newman?

  What the fuck is this?

• 10:09Speaker 03

  What, yeah, what, like, this is so slow, moving, and very, um, everyday interaction, kind of, it just was out of context. It was really weird to just catch it on cable TV.

• 10:21Griffin Newman?

  But was it not until you watched it in earnest for this podcast that you realized, oh, that's that thing I saw years ago?

• 10:27Speaker 03

  Yes, yes.

• 10:28Griffin Newman?

  So at the time you were watching it, you did not know it was Steven Spielberg's first film?

• 10:32David Sims?

  Duel!

• 10:33Speaker 03

  No.

• 10:34David Sims?

  Um, we are certainly covering Duel, which, yes, was made for television.

• 10:37Griffin Newman?

  Mm-hmm.

• 10:38David Sims?

  But then did get, years later, uh, well, it got a theatrical release, uh, overseas back then.

• 10:46Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 10:46David Sims?

  And years later did get in a-

• 10:48Griffin Newman?

  A limited.

• 10:48David Sims?

  A, a small release in America, too.

• 10:50Griffin Newman?

  To kind of capitalize upon the Spielberg mania.

• 10:53David Sims?

  Who?

• 10:54Griffin Newman?

  Steven Spielberg.

• 10:55David Sims?

  Steven Spielberg! Steven Spielberg! Um, so we are certainly, we always planned if we ever return to Steven's career for earlier on to, to lead off with Duel. Very fun movie about a guy driving a car.

• 11:13Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 11:14David Sims?

  A guy driving a truck is mean to.

• 11:16Griffin Newman?

  Look, we've covered this- Ground a little bit before in the history of the podcast where most TV movies of any quality would get theatrical releases overseas.

• 11:28David Sims?

  Because they didn't have televisions over there. They said fireplaces.

• 11:31Griffin Newman?

  Is that crazy? Peacock didn't exist until 2020.

• 11:34David Sims?

  Europe didn't get TV till 98.

• 11:37Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 11:38David Sims?

  For them, they just had the radio.

• 11:39Griffin Newman?

  Those are just facts.

• 11:40David Sims?

  Yep. There would be the radio releases of movies.

• 11:43Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 11:43David Sims?

  Or TV shows, or someone would be like, this is happening now. Just describing it.

• 11:47Griffin Newman?

  Something like Jericho Mile, the Michael Mann TV film that we covered on this show and we covered as a bonus.

• 11:52David Sims?

  Right. If you made a really good TV movie like that.

• 11:55Griffin Newman?

  They'd put it in theaters.

• 11:56David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 11:56Griffin Newman?

  The Ewok movies got theatrical releases. The Battlestar Galactica pilot.

• 12:00David Sims?

  Like I said, really good.

• 12:02Griffin Newman?

  The best movies. But, you know, we have a lot of international listeners and sometimes they'll be like, why aren't you covering this as a legitimate film? It got a legitimate release here. It was presented to us as a movie.

• 12:14David Sims?

  Right.

• 12:14Griffin Newman?

  And I think for us, a lot of it is, how was the thing intended?

• 12:18David Sims?

  Right.

• 12:18Griffin Newman?

  Right? And its construction, its conception, what did they think this was? And Duel is this kind of odd example where, and we'll back up and we'll get into this more in depth, but he makes this TV movie that's basically his second TV film. Or I guess a third, in a way, we'll get into this. But Arizona TV is kind of a smash success. Almost immediately, there's a desire to release it in Europe. It is 75 minutes long. They're like, this is a little too short. So he shoots new footage.

• 12:52David Sims?

  Yeah, basically 15 extra minutes.

• 12:55Griffin Newman?

  So the cuts are not wildly different, but they are different.

• 12:58David Sims?

  They are different.

• 12:58Griffin Newman?

  And there's a whole second round of shooting to kind of amp it up to theatrical level. Him coming back to it even a little bit stronger as a filmmaker.

• 13:07David Sims?

  Sure.

• 13:07Griffin Newman?

  Then that goes to Europe and then eventually gets a theatrical release. And since then, there's been ongoing debate of do you count this as his first movie or not? And I'm with you, David. I think this counts as his first movie.

• 13:18David Sims?

  Uh, I do too. But I do prefer the TV cut. Is that controversial?

• 13:23Griffin Newman?

  Um, hmm.

• 13:25David Sims?

  I kind of just don't need the extra stuff. Just leave me in the, you know, leave me, you know, tight, tight. I like a tight.

• 13:33Griffin Newman?

  We can get into this.

• 13:34David Sims?

  I don't hate the extra stuff.

• 13:35Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 13:36David Sims?

  I just don't think you really need it.

• 13:37Griffin Newman?

  Do you get the, did you get the 4K steelbook?

• 13:39David Sims?

  No, I didn't get the 4K steelbook. I'm struggling.

• 13:42Griffin Newman?

  Kind of a rookie. You're struggling right now?

• 13:44David Sims?

  Yeah, I'm just watching movies on my phone while I burp a child. I'm doing my best over here.

• 13:50Griffin Newman?

  You know what'd help with those twins asleep?

• 13:52David Sims?

  What?

• 13:52Griffin Newman?

  A clean 4K transfer of Steven Spielberg's Duel.

• 13:55David Sims?

  You're saying the movie's boring?

• 13:57Griffin Newman?

  No, I'm saying your, your twin sons would sense the relaxation that comes from being in the hands of a master.

• 14:05David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 14:06Griffin Newman?

  Even at his earliest stages, they'd go, oh, this guy knows what he's doing. He knows how to make a picture.

• 14:10David Sims?

  Right.

• 14:11Griffin Newman?

  And immediately, honk shu, honk shu.

• 14:13David Sims?

  And what more soothing sound than the sound of a truck horn?

• 14:25Griffin Newman?

  I was watching it here in the office before we recorded, right? I got, I got my 4K in here. It looks incredible. It's a beautiful transfer. Ben, would you mind moving this chair a little bit so my remote signal can hit? Just move that chair a tiny bit. This is the thing I want to show you, because this caused a lot of controversy in the nerdiest corners of, uh, physical media online debate, okay? This beautiful, beautiful 4K transfer.

• 14:49David Sims?

  A buccal 4K.

• 14:50Griffin Newman?

  It's a buccal 4K transfer. A lot of people like you prefer the TV cut. And they were like, okay, perfect 4K restoration, really treated with respect of the theatrical cut of the movie. And then they listed special features.

• 15:05David Sims?

  There's the TV version.

• 15:07Griffin Newman?

  That's included. Great.

• 15:08David Sims?

  It says it's in HD.

• 15:09Griffin Newman?

  You have your options. Yeah, so it's not in 4K, it's in HD. Then you play this. It is the worst AI quote unquote restoration.

• 15:19David Sims?

  Oh, no.

• 15:20Griffin Newman?

  Basically unwatchable.

• 15:22David Sims?

  Whoa, yeah.

• 15:23Griffin Newman?

  I'm gonna fast forward to a point of movement so you can see this and we can get your reaction live, but there's like...

• 15:29David Sims?

  Car's moving. Oh, I got some credits going here. It's a nice car. I know it's like kind of a, you know...

• 15:36Griffin Newman?

  Nice car, evil truck.

• 15:37David Sims?

  Broken down old.

• 15:38Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 15:39David Sims?

  Plymouth or whatever it is.

• 15:40Griffin Newman?

  You can see a little of how waxy it looks.

• 15:43David Sims?

  Does look a little shiny.

• 15:45Griffin Newman?

  And it feels like they took a standard def file.

• 15:48David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 15:48Griffin Newman?

  And wanted it to say it was HD, so they like tried to upscale it. But the way they did that was just.

• 15:55David Sims?

  Ew.

• 15:56Griffin Newman?

  Right?

• 15:57David Sims?

  Oh, it looks very odd.

• 15:58Griffin Newman?

  And it gets worse as it goes along. It looks like it has some weird Photoshop filter on it.

• 16:03David Sims?

  It does. Like his face looks too smooth.

• 16:05Griffin Newman?

  Yes. But then the outline of like the silhouette of his profile is really strong. There's like a black line as if it looks like it's like posterized.

• 16:15David Sims?

  Yeah, bit odd.

• 16:16Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, it gets worse as it goes along unsurprisingly as it like extends into proper.

• 16:21David Sims?

  Right.

• 16:22Griffin Newman?

  Action. Like, right.

• 16:23David Sims?

  Wait, what's going on here?

• 16:24Griffin Newman?

  It's in, it's one of those.

• 16:25David Sims?

  I'm almost like, is our projector broken? Like, that's what's making me think.

• 16:28Griffin Newman?

  Look at the sign in the back.

• 16:29Speaker 03

  It looks like, uh, like we, like 3D glass.

• 16:34David Sims?

  Right, without the glasses. It looks like there's Vaseline on it. It's so weird.

• 16:38Griffin Newman?

  Problems every 30 seconds.

• 16:40David Sims?

  What the fuck is going on?

• 16:41Griffin Newman?

  But it sucks because basically it's like this should exist in a valid form as its own valid.

• 16:46David Sims?

  I mean, even if you just want to show it to me in, uh, you know, just standard like TV, like, fine.

• 16:52Griffin Newman?

  This is my point. It's genuinely better to just watch a shitty YouTube version of it than watch this.

• 16:56David Sims?

  Right, right.

• 16:57Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 16:59David Sims?

  Turn it off?

• 16:59Griffin Newman?

  Yeah. Let's keep it playing so we can give ourselves headaches. Uh, David, let's crack open the dossier. Uh, wait a second. It's only one line that says, go watch the fablements. JJ, you are fired.

• 17:14David Sims?

  Uh, no, I'm going to open the dossier so we can talk about an under discussed figure in American cinema. Steven Spielberg. Um, Steven Allen Spielberg Griffin.

• 17:25Griffin Newman?

  Well, you, you learn something new every day.

• 17:27David Sims?

  Like Frank, Michael Sarah in, uh, Barbie. He was Alan.

• 17:32Griffin Newman?

  He was Alan.

• 17:33David Sims?

  Uh, born December 18th, 1946. Did you know that?

• 17:37Griffin Newman?

  No.

• 17:38Speaker 03

  What's his sign?

• 17:39David Sims?

  Of course, that would make him a Sagittarius.

• 17:41Speaker 03

  Oh, totally. That makes so much sense.

• 17:44Griffin Newman?

  So 1941 was a prequel.

• 17:46David Sims?

  Yeah, he was.

• 17:47Griffin Newman?

  To his birth.

• 17:48David Sims?

  To his birth, sure. Uh, born in Cincinnati, Ohio.

• 17:51Griffin Newman?

  Mm-hmm.

• 17:52David Sims?

  Actually, apparently, there's been some controversy over his birthday because it's often recorded as happening in 1947.

• 18:01Griffin Newman?

  Okay.

• 18:02David Sims?

  Uh, which is something that Spielberg, I think, sort of maybe miss, like, helped massage the truth about to get out of a contract.

• 18:10Griffin Newman?

  Interesting.

• 18:10David Sims?

  This is not important, JJ.

• 18:12Griffin Newman?

  Was he maybe pretending to be older?

• 18:15David Sims?

  He was pretending to be.

• 18:16Griffin Newman?

  When he started his career?

• 18:17David Sims?

  Yes. Uh, but I think he used it, he, he basically pretended to be a year younger to get a contract dismissed.

• 18:24Griffin Newman?

  Okay.

• 18:25David Sims?

  Or like, he pretended to be, yeah, I don't know.

• 18:27Griffin Newman?

  Whatever.

• 18:27David Sims?

  Doesn't matter. Um, Steven Spielberg, born to parents Arnold and Leah, no, I'm sorry, no, to parents Paul Dano and Michelle Williams.

• 18:34Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, there we go. Um. JJ, big whiff on your part.

• 18:37David Sims?

  And Arnold, of course, I'm sorry, Paul Dano, went to high school with Leah's brother, Bernie.

• 18:42Griffin Newman?

  Uh huh.

• 18:42David Sims?

  Uh, so that's how they knew each other. They started dating after high school.

• 18:46Griffin Newman?

  Okay.

• 18:47David Sims?

  Uh, and Leah, of course, was a musician. She went to the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music. Arnold was in the Air Force. They got married after the war. And, uh, Michelle Williams, sorry, uh, Leah, was planning to be a concert pianist.

• 19:01Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 19:02David Sims?

  Um, but she stopped doing it and had three, uh, four kids. Steven and three girls, Anne, Sue, and Nancy.

• 19:09Griffin Newman?

  Mm hmm.

• 19:10David Sims?

  And of course, as we know, they moved to New Jersey and there was like a tornado there and it was all very metaphorical. And eventually they ended up in Arizona and, you know, it was to get away from the, the Seth Rogen.

• 19:23Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 19:23David Sims?

  Cause he was so sexy and hot.

• 19:25Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 19:26David Sims?

  Just doing the fable.

• 19:26Griffin Newman?

  In a non-threatening way.

• 19:28David Sims?

  Right, in a kind of a friendly way, but still, like, there's a real tension there.

• 19:31Griffin Newman?

  No, I mean, look, there, it's what, uh, JJ even reached out to us and was like, do you guys mind if I spend more time than usual trying to prepare this first dossier? Because he was like, it's, it's actually harder for me to pin down the pre-movie career Spielberg story than I thought it would be.

• 19:50David Sims?

  Right.

• 19:51Griffin Newman?

  And I think part of that is because he was kind of tight lipped about his personal life.

• 19:57David Sims?

  Until more recently, when he finally got into it, or no?

• 20:00Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 20:01David Sims?

  Oh, yeah.

• 20:01Griffin Newman?

  I mean, there, there was a lot of. Of him speaking in very general terms and then people inferring a lot from his films. Right? So there was like, well, clearly this guy never got over his parents divorce.

• 20:11David Sims?

  Right.

• 20:11Griffin Newman?

  And then I feel like there was a lot of psychoanalyzing from him. And then when they did the HBO documentary, whatever that was.

• 20:18David Sims?

  Yeah, like.

• 20:19Griffin Newman?

  Six or seven years ago.

• 20:20David Sims?

  Yeah, I remember.

• 20:20Griffin Newman?

  He started talking more openly about his relationship with his parents.

• 20:23David Sims?

  And his parents are in that documentary together.

• 20:26Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 20:27David Sims?

  Being very sweet with each other, but right, talking about obviously.

• 20:31Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 20:31David Sims?

  Seth Rogen and.

• 20:33Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 20:33David Sims?

  Like that one time she had the monkey and all that stuff.

• 20:35Griffin Newman?

  And Seth Rogen was like, why am I getting dragged into this? Oh, I never met the woman. Impression fell apart really fast.

• 20:44David Sims?

  Really fell apart. What the fuck?

• 20:45Griffin Newman?

  Two seconds, maybe.

• 20:48David Sims?

  An early memory, of course.

• 20:49Griffin Newman?

  But then Fabelman's, of course, like.

• 20:51David Sims?

  Is the film he made.

• 20:52Griffin Newman?

  Yes, unpacks more of it, but also we should acknowledge Fabelman's is a fictionalized movie.

• 20:57David Sims?

  It is. It's, it's, it's.

• 20:58Griffin Newman?

  It's consolidated, it's dramatized.

• 21:00David Sims?

  I think it's.

• 21:01Griffin Newman?

  A lot of it's close.

• 21:01David Sims?

  For example, he remembers the first film he attended is The Greatest Show on Earth.

• 21:06Griffin Newman?

  Sure.

• 21:08David Sims?

  Where he, you know, saw the circus on screen.

• 21:13Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 21:14David Sims?

  He was freaked out, right? The train wreck, Jimmy Stewart is the clown.

• 21:20Griffin Newman?

  It is.

• 21:20David Sims?

  As he puts it, I was disappointed by everything after that. I didn't trust anybody. I never felt life was good enough, so I had to embellish it. It begins his obsession with Hollywood storytelling.

• 21:30Griffin Newman?

  This is the thing that I think certainly we've talked about a lot, but Fabelman's provided such an effective codex for me and understanding him in a way I hadn't before.

• 21:41David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 21:42Griffin Newman?

  Is like, oh, the kind of like core truths of this guy are, one, he is like hypersensitive and feels things really deeply. Two, the only way he knows how to process those things is through filmmaking. And three, he is kind of scared by how effective he is at manipulating other people's emotions through filmmaking. That his like prodigious gift is something he doesn't quite understand and that he always feels a little guilty about.

• 22:10David Sims?

  Speaking of his parents, obviously as well, the two sides of Spielberg, his father, the technician. Precise, computer obsessed. You know, he was in that movie Ruby Sparks.

• 22:21Griffin Newman?

  Of course.

• 22:22David Sims?

  And then his mother, right?

• 22:24Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 22:24David Sims?

  Sort of the Dawson's Creek of the family in a way, right? Artistic.

• 22:28Griffin Newman?

  Used to date Eddie Brock.

• 22:31Griffin Newman?

  That's a big failing of The Last Dance, right?

• 22:34David Sims?

  That she's just not in it or talked about?

• 22:36Griffin Newman?

  Scott should be in it. There are a lot of problems with that movie, but I'd I'd put that chief among them.

• 22:42David Sims?

  Um, they don't even try to address her absence, right? Steven Spielberg's mother's absence from Venom 3.

• 22:49Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, they don't. They're not mentioned.

• 22:51David Sims?

  Um, I'm sorry about Venom.

• 22:54Griffin Newman?

  Hey, David, I'm sorry about that.

• 22:57David Sims?

  Um, Spielberg remembers at a young age, his dad coming home with a transistor and showing it to his children and being like, this is the future. And Spielberg says that he took it and put it in his mouth and swallowed it. And he remembers this as this kind of like confrontation. Like he was trying to be funny, but it was very tense. Spielberg says, it's just, it's as if I was saying that's your future, but it doesn't have to be mine. Which is funny to think about because I do feel like Spielberg is seen as a a cutting edge filmmaker when it comes to technology.

• 23:29Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 23:30David Sims?

  For pretty much his whole career.

• 23:31Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 23:32David Sims?

  Like, it's not like Spielberg is a guy who like takes a while to catch up to shit. He's usually breaking through some big barrier if he's making like a, you know, bigger scale movie.

• 23:40Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, he's also talked a lot as an adult, I think, especially since his father passed away. And he's felt more comfortable talking about his parents without fear of upsetting them.

• 23:49David Sims?

  Both his parents died at the age of like a billion, like they both have these like long lives, which is great.

• 23:55Griffin Newman?

  Hey, fantastic.

• 23:57David Sims?

  Like, his dad was 103 when he died.

• 24:00Griffin Newman?

  And his mom was like 100?

• 24:01David Sims?

  Yeah, and like, they were right, so.

• 24:02Griffin Newman?

  Um, but he said that, you know, I, I, I think his father did not totally know how to relate to people.

• 24:10David Sims?

  He was 97.

• 24:10Griffin Newman?

  He was like a genius.

• 24:12David Sims?

  Yes, very smart, but.

• 24:14Griffin Newman?

  Did not relate to people, but was like in a time where people didn't understand what he was so good at. And Spielberg's like, if he were born 10 years later, he would have been a wildly successful, publicly hailed genius.

• 24:27David Sims?

  Right, just maybe slightly early for the computer age or whatever.

• 24:29Griffin Newman?

  He was like too early without being a pioneer in terms of discovering the basic building blocks of the thing. Where he was one of the first people to understand it and know how to do it well. But was like a little too late to be the groundbreakers and a little bit too early to be the people who knew how to evolve it. And he just kind of became a journeyman computer guy.

• 24:50David Sims?

  Right.

• 24:51Griffin Newman?

  In the field that then ultimately would end up like ruling the world. He was born at the exact wrong time to just be a kind of like drone, you know? A well-paid, high-level drone.

• 25:03David Sims?

  Meanwhile, his mother, apart from appearing on Dawson's Creek, is just like very energetic, childlike. He describes her as this kind of like, you know, musical person in all these ways and like, you know, kind of never grew up in a way and, you know, it's all, just watch The Fableman's.

• 25:19Griffin Newman?

  I should also mention that on top of his dad being a computer genius-

• 25:22David Sims?

  Both parents also, by the way, just say like, Steven, intense kid. Like, it's like, as much as he has mythology of his parents so much, they're both like, he was really a lot. Like, he was a really intense kid and kind of talked to wrap your brain around.

• 25:33Griffin Newman?

  This is what I'm saying about like, um, the whole slam on Spielberg for a long time that we, I'm sure, will comment on as, as we like read the reviews and such at the time these wildly successful films got released, right? Is he's like Peter Pan syndrome, overgrown child, doesn't engage with adult world, is just making hollow entertainment. He's like a slick showman, but he's like dumbing down culture. And this guy is like avoiding adulthood in reality. And I think, uh, once again, the movie The Fableman's makes it very clear that part of this complex is that he was like brought into an adult world prematurely and burdened with like his parents' problems

• 26:16Griffin Newman?

  in a way that I think kind of bifurcated him, right? In one way, he's like too aware of the adult world from too young an age and then feels the need to escape and look back and all this other stuff. But it also feels like he was a kid who felt things way too intensely as a child, was very burdened by like, you know, a sort of like fear of reality. And it makes sense that like the ability to control the universe around him and make these stories that are these ecstatic expressions of emotions in sort of novel entertaining ways isn't avoidance as much as it's, as I was saying before, processing.

• 26:57Griffin Newman?

  David?

• 26:58David Sims?

  Yes.

• 27:02David Sims?

  Is that the Cineas cow?

• 27:03Griffin Newman?

  The Cineas cow is back.

• 27:04David Sims?

  Haven't heard from her in a while.

• 27:05Griffin Newman?

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

• 27:11David Sims?

  Okay.

• 27:11Griffin Newman?

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

• 27:16David Sims?

  Wow.

• 27:16Griffin Newman?

  The cow likes chicken.

• 27:18David Sims?

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

• 27:25Griffin 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.

• 27:37David Sims?

  Yes.

• 27:37Griffin Newman?

  One of my favorite movies of the year.

• 27:38David Sims?

  Absolutely.

• 27:39Griffin Newman?

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

• 27:45David Sims?

  That is a line in the movie.

• 27:46Griffin Newman?

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

• 27:49David Sims?

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

• 27:53Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 27:53David Sims?

  Great friend.

• 27:54Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 27:55David Sims?

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

• 28:00Griffin Newman?

  Uh huh.

• 28:01David Sims?

  Legends, and I tip my cap.

• 28:02Griffin Newman?

  But Zach Cherry. Performances, friend of the show.

• 28:04David Sims?

  Friend of the show Zach Cherry.

• 28:06Griffin Newman?

  Zach Cherry.

• 28:06David Sims?

  Also in it.

• 28:07Griffin Newman?

  This is true.

• 28:08David Sims?

  Such a cool movie, one that queer Paul McCann, 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.

• 28:19Griffin 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.

• 28:33David Sims?

  Yes, and you know, and then they hang out and it's regular.

• 28:37Griffin Newman?

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

• 28:49David 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.

• 29:01Griffin Newman?

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

• 29:12Griffin Newman?

  David?

• 29:12David Sims?

  Yes?

• 29:13Griffin 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.

• 29:33David 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.

• 29:53Griffin 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.

• 30:09David 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/listen to Dracula.

• 30:44Griffin Newman?

  David?

• 30:44David Sims?

  Yes?

• 30:45Griffin Newman?

  Ugh.

• 30:46David Sims?

  Uh-oh.

• 30:47Griffin Newman?

  It's November.

• 30:48David Sims?

  Ah!

• 30:49Griffin Newman?

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

• 30:52David Sims?

  Turkeys?

• 30:53Griffin Newman?

  One long sprint to the finish line.

• 30:54David Sims?

  Oh, of course.

• 30:56Griffin 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.

• 31:04David Sims?

  No, although maybe we should.

• 31:05Griffin Newman?

  We might get there eventually.

• 31:07David Sims?

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

• 31:10Griffin Newman?

  Listen, when things get complicated, not when life is easy and when you've 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.

• 31:24David 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.

• 31:30Griffin Newman?

  And I'm awake.

• 31:31David 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.

• 31:39Griffin Newman?

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

• 31:47David Sims?

  Thank you for that.

• 31:47Griffin 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.

• 32:00David Sims?

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

• 32:03Griffin Newman?

  For the professionals.

• 32:04David 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 CAH MB for muscle production and zinc carnasine for gut support.

• 32:23Griffin Newman?

  Thank God.

• 32:23David Sims?

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

• 32:27Griffin 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.

• 32:35David Sims?

  Yes. So for a limited time, visit drink AG1.com slash 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 drink AG1.com slash check. And after checkout, be sure to let them know that Blank Check sent you.

• 33:06David Sims?

  Yeah. He, you know, he was intense. There's a lot of stories about it. Anyway, in 1957, he watched the failments. They moved to Arizona. Spielberg says his most formative time, he's lived there from the age of nine to 16. Leah, his mom, sorry, Michelle, uh, doesn't want to move there.

• 33:24Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 33:25David Sims?

  Sees it a bit of a barren wasteland. So she's really struggling at that point.

• 33:29Griffin Newman?

  Sure. His dad's best friend was dating a porn star next door and it turned out that he has surprisingly large penis.

• 33:36David Sims?

  What movie is that?

• 33:37Griffin Newman?

  Girl next door.

• 33:39David Sims?

  But, but who?

• 33:39Griffin Newman?

  I thought if I said next door, the Paldano character.

• 33:42David Sims?

  I forgot he's in that.

• 33:43Griffin Newman?

  His character's name is Clitz.

• 33:44David Sims?

  I haven't seen that movie in 20 years.

• 33:47Griffin Newman?

  I regret to inform you. A ten out of ten master.

• 33:49David Sims?

  Oh, is that right? Is that so?

• 33:52Griffin Newman?

  You know, you know who endorses that take?

• 33:54David Sims?

  I don't.

• 33:55Griffin Newman?

  One Steven Spielberg.

• 33:56David Sims?

  Oh, he loves the girl next door?

• 33:57Griffin Newman?

  Actually loves the girl.

• 33:58David Sims?

  He likes Luke Greenfield's, the, the, the, whatever.

• 34:01Griffin Newman?

  He wrote Luke Greenfield a letter when he watched it.

• 34:04David Sims?

  Um, when he moves to Arizona, what does Spielberg get his hands on?

• 34:08Griffin Newman?

  A camera.

• 34:08David Sims?

  A camera.

• 34:09Griffin Newman?

  A movie camera.

• 34:10David Sims?

  Filming trains crashing together and his mom dancing around.

• 34:14Griffin Newman?

  Taking control of his own universe, documenting, reconstructing, reverse engineering, all of it. It's, it's the tool for him to make sense of everything.

• 34:23David Sims?

  His family was Jewish, but what he calls storefront kosher, I think probably similar.

• 34:27Griffin Newman?

  Can we double check that?

• 34:28David Sims?

  I think probably similar to the family my mom grew up in where it's like, you know, they were a Jewish family. They went to, you know, they did all the stuff.

• 34:36Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 34:36David Sims?

  But they were also this like very American post-war family that was trying to assimilate and, you know.

• 34:41Griffin Newman?

  My dad's family was incredibly similar, but, but this is also a.

• 34:45David Sims?

  You get your bar mitzvah, you go to synagogue, you keep kosher in the sort of like, you know, kind of like straightforward way, not in like the mega intense way. But, you know.

• 34:54Griffin Newman?

  The, the post-World War II thing of like Jews wanting to be American above all else. But they're never going to overcome being perceived as Jewish above all else by everyone else.

• 35:05David Sims?

  Comes up in The Fableman's a couple of times. Good movie. Check it out.

• 35:07Griffin Newman?

  Yeah. We're going to put footnotes on this episode in the episode notes that are just watch The Fableman's 27 times.

• 35:14David Sims?

  When you watch, when you read so much of the stuff is kind of like LOL, watch The Fableman's.

• 35:19Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 35:19David Sims?

  He had a bully who treated him like shit when he was like 13 years old and he cast him at that age. In a war movie he made called Escape to Nowhere, because he would make all these little movies with his friends. And like that won the kid over. So Spielberg is using the power of movies to, you know, be friends with people.

• 35:37Griffin Newman?

  In The Fableman's, the, the bullying is they, uh, call him Bagelman, right? And they put a bagel in his locker. And when we did that episode, we were discussing like, what do you think the, the actual thing was they were saying to Spielberg?

• 35:49David Sims?

  Right.

• 35:50Griffin Newman?

  And I think JJ dug up that it was Spielbug. They used to make fun of him for looking like a bug.

• 35:55David Sims?

  Damn. So then he brundleflied their ass. Went into a teleporter.

• 36:00Griffin Newman?

  He went to his dad and he's like, you know, you're good at that computer stuff?

• 36:03David Sims?

  As he's a teenager, he has some family in the LA area, sneaks onto the Warner Brothers lot, sees the making of the movie PT 109, which I think is the dramatization of a-

• 36:14Griffin Newman?

  Correct, the Cliff Robertson-

• 36:15David Sims?

  JFK- John Kennedy's war service.

• 36:18Griffin Newman?

  A pretty solid movie.

• 36:19David Sims?

  Sure.

• 36:19Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 36:20David Sims?

  Uh, in 1963, he gets brought on to the Universal lot by Chuck Silvers, who will be important later. In 1964, he makes a feature-length movie called Firelight. He premieres it at a theater in Phoenix. I think he, you know, makes 500 bucks or there's a whole story about it.

• 36:38Griffin Newman?

  It's listed two and a half hours long. No one, it has never been publicly consumable?

• 36:42David Sims?

  Not viewable, except for some little snippet that he's made public.

• 36:46Griffin Newman?

  I mean, there's the story-

• 36:47David Sims?

  But this is right when his parents divorce.

• 36:49Griffin Newman?

  Okay.

• 36:50David Sims?

  Michelle moves back east or, no, they, they moved to California and that's when the divorce happens. Right, that's what it is.

• 36:57Griffin Newman?

  I was gonna say, we had talked about wanting to do a Spielberg short episode on Patreon. It feels like Amblin is the only one of them that's properly watchable, which is basically his last short film before he becomes a professional director.

• 37:13Griffin Newman?

  I always thought they were more out there because you'd sometimes see clips of them played in like documentaries and retrospectives and stuff, but he doesn't let the full versions out there. There's also the weird, very Fableman-esque, uh, sort of origin story of he asked two film-obsessed kids in his neighborhood, once he was successful in the eighties and nineties, who are making their own films, "Hey, can you work on restoring my old Super 8 films?" Which Spielberg retained.

• 37:42David Sims?

  Right.

• 37:42Griffin Newman?

  And those two kids, I believe, were Matt Reeves and J.J. Abrams.

• 37:46David Sims?

  Right. That is true. They've like sifted through his, you know-

• 37:49Griffin Newman?

  So these things have been like restored and preserved, but Spielberg doesn't let people see them.

• 37:53David Sims?

  Yet.

• 37:54Griffin Newman?

  Yet.

• 37:56David Sims?

  So he moves to California. I think that's where he was the most bullied, but it's also where he gets the most into movie making and stuff. He wanted to go to USC or UCLA, which are the big film schools out there back then especially. Doesn't get in because he has bad grades. Instead, he goes to California State College at Long Beach, which does have like some film courses, but isn't really anything so, you know, robust enough. So he just starts sneaking onto the lot. He starts working as a production assistant on the John Cassavetes film Faces.

• 38:27Griffin Newman?

  A big, kind of turning point for him.

• 38:30David Sims?

  Absolutely. He's watching how Cassavetes treats the cast, you know? He's obviously seeing one of the great American filmmakers work. That's very interesting. So then he-

• 38:39Griffin Newman?

  But he's also seeing like, one of the great American filmmakers figure out his style and his style is trying to tear down-

• 38:48David Sims?

  How movies are, right, the sort of workman like Hollywood thing.

• 38:52Griffin Newman?

  He's seeing the actual guts of the process of everything. And there are varying stories about like, did Cassavetes fire him? Did Spielberg quit? Like Cassavetes, by all accounts, kind of took a liking to him-

• 39:04David Sims?

  Right.

• 39:04Griffin Newman?

  And said some impactful words to him. And the story gets like muddy in terms of what exactly happened, but it felt like Cassavetes clocked that Spielberg had a lot going on in his head and seemed to have a lot of gumption and drive.

• 39:20David Sims?

  He tries to make a little bicycling drama called Slipstream. Meets Alan Davio on that movie, who will shoot a lot of great Spielberg films, but they never finished it.

• 39:32David Sims?

  Then he makes Amblin, a 26 minute film that he shot on 35 millimeters.

• 39:38David Sims?

  That is sort of his turning point where he presents that. We will, we're actually going to cover it. Cause you can see that one. We'll cover that on the Patreon very soon.

• 39:47Griffin Newman?

  January 11th.

• 39:47David Sims?

  Yeah, in a few days.

• 39:49Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 39:49David Sims?

  But he presents that and gets a deal at Universal, essentially.

• 39:53Griffin Newman?

  That short is him basically intentionally trying to make something that can be a proof of concept sell real.

• 40:01Griffin Newman?

  Like it's him trying to level up from his childhood short films.

• 40:06David Sims?

  Right.

• 40:06Griffin Newman?

  To like, this is a calling card. Yeah.

• 40:09David Sims?

  Doesn't get an Oscar nomination for Best Short.

• 40:12Griffin Newman?

  Wow.

• 40:12David Sims?

  Something of a snub, but it's well regarded.

• 40:16Griffin Newman?

  He of course, names his company after it eventually.

• 40:19David Sims?

  Yes, he does.

• 40:20Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 40:20David Sims?

  Uh, he goes to Sidney Scheinberg, who is the VP of Television Production at Universal. Basically the most powerful person he has any connection to through this, uh, Silver's guy.

• 40:29Griffin Newman?

  The Silver's guy is the guy that Greg Grunberg plays in Fableman's, who was.

• 40:34David Sims?

  So I'm sorry, his name is Greg Grunberg. Sorry, I'm seeing.

• 40:37Griffin Newman?

  But am I wrong about that?

• 40:38David Sims?

  I think you're right.

• 40:38Griffin Newman?

  The guy who worked on Hogan's Heroes, who was like a distant relative of his.

• 40:42David Sims?

  Right.

• 40:42Griffin Newman?

  Right? Yeah.

• 40:43David Sims?

  Um, and he goes to meet with Sid. And he's like, Sid's like, well, what do you want to do? How would you like to go to work professionally? He's basically like, sign this contract, you'll do some television. If you do a few TV shows, maybe you can make a feature film.

• 40:58Griffin Newman?

  There were a lot of apocryphal stories for.

• 40:59David Sims?

  Seven year contract with Universal.

• 41:01Griffin Newman?

  A long time of Spielberg literally like sneaking onto the law and holding up an abandoned office.

• 41:07David Sims?

  He put his name on an abandoned office.

• 41:09Griffin Newman?

  Right. The Catch Me If You Can ass thing, which I think I repeated in Catch Me If You Can episode we recorded eight years ago.

• 41:15David Sims?

  Sure.

• 41:15Griffin Newman?

  But it sounds like a lot of that was overstated, that Spielberg was himself, uh, uh, trying to, I don't know, blow up the mythology.

• 41:25David Sims?

  Right.

• 41:25Griffin Newman?

  Of his early beginnings and make it sound.

• 41:27David Sims?

  Like he was a sort of Leonardo DiCaprio-esque rapscallion.

• 41:31Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 41:31David Sims?

  Who was banging broads and.

• 41:33Griffin Newman?

  Much like the real Frank Abagnale.

• 41:36David Sims?

  Kind of probably made some of that shit up.

• 41:38Griffin Newman?

  He was like sneaking his way into a prodigious start, but also then told a story that was even more extreme than the reality. Yes.

• 41:45David Sims?

  Uh, so what does he work on? He works on a little short called Eyes for NBC's Night Gallery, which is a Rod Serling sort of follow-up to Twilight Zone.

• 41:54Griffin Newman?

  It's what if spooky art gallery and every piece of art inspired will cover that on the Patreon. But the pilot of Night Gallery is like a 90 minute airing in a two hour block, three 30 minute segments. And one of them is Spielberg's first official studio directing job.

• 42:11David Sims?

  Which he, he made with Joan Crawford.

• 42:13Griffin Newman?

  Yep.

• 42:14David Sims?

  Legendary Hollywood figure. Uh, and he says, she treated me like I knew what I was doing and I didn't, so I loved her for that. So they had a nice time. But he thought Rod Serling's script was bad, as much as he loves Rod Serling. He was like, it was not his best work.

• 42:30Griffin Newman?

  I'd agree with that.

• 42:31David Sims?

  And he kind of looked at the script and went to Scheinberg and was like, Jesus, like, can I do something about young people, not like an old lady? And Scheinberg was like, take the job, like, just do work, you know?

• 42:40Griffin Newman?

  As much as it's not one of Serling's best scripts, and we'll talk about this on Patreon, it is kind of a perfect piece for Spielberg to just test out his visual language.

• 42:52David Sims?

  Famously, Joan Crawford called MCA, Lew Wasserman, the head of Universal, and said, like, this nice young man directed me just now. I am Joan Crawford, and I want to say I thought he had a lot of talent.

• 43:05Griffin Newman?

  Right. It's this fascinating, like, Crawford being in this is kind of a, like, last rung on the ladder before, like, death, sort of like How the Mighty Have Fallen kind of thing.

• 43:14David Sims?

  Yeah, sure.

• 43:15Griffin Newman?

  But what happened to so many of these-

• 43:16David Sims?

  Late 60s.

• 43:17Griffin Newman?

  Right. Like, I mean, so many of the classic movie stars would retire when they were, like, 50 or 60 and spend the last 15 or 20 years of their life not working. And if you did work, by and large, you'd end up being like TV guest star, kind of things like this. And it felt like, you know, they're making a big deal out of, like, we got this person, but it does feel like they're sort of a relic in museum to a certain extent. But like, she has enough legendary status that even though her career doesn't have a ton of weight, her calling these studio heads and similar people and saying, like, I just worked with this kid and he's got the goods, does make everyone take notice.

• 43:56David Sims?

  And yet, he kind of struggles to pick another project or get something else done after that. Supposedly, he wanted to make a movie about Thomas Crapper, the inventor of the flush toilet, based on a book called Flush with Pride: The Story of Thomas Crapper. His agent says-

• 44:14Griffin Newman?

  I'm sorry, Ben, can we pause the recording quickly, just so I can personally option the rights to that book?

• 44:20Griffin Newman?

  If we could just hold for five minutes.

• 44:21David Sims?

  Y'all know about Thomas Crapper?

• 44:23Griffin Newman?

  I fucking didn't.

• 44:24David Sims?

  You didn't?

• 44:25Griffin Newman?

  Guess what? I'm ready to formally announce that I will be directing Crapper, The Thomas Crapper Story.

• 44:30David Sims?

  Uh, famous, people think that Thomas Crapper is the reason, is like the etymology of the word crap.

• 44:36Griffin Newman?

  Uh huh.

• 44:37David Sims?

  But apparently that's like not true and like the word crap has existed as like old English to mean like kind of, you know, whatever, something like rubbishy.

• 44:46Griffin Newman?

  So was him?

• 44:47David Sims?

  For like millennia or whatever.

• 44:49Griffin Newman?

  Creating the flushable toilet, basically him trying to take back the word.

• 44:52David Sims?

  Yes, maybe that was it.

• 44:54Griffin Newman?

  People, kids have been mocking me my whole life. Guess what I'm gonna do? I'm gonna be the one who gets rid of crap faster than you've ever seen.

• 45:00David Sims?

  Um.

• 45:01Griffin Newman?

  That crap is gone.

• 45:02David Sims?

  Another thing he starts working on is The Sugarland Express, a film that he will eventually make, but he's not, we're talking late sixties at this point. He goes to Sid Sheinberg and says, can I go write? No one wants me anyway.

• 45:13Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 45:14David Sims?

  Write some movies.

• 45:15Griffin Newman?

  We should say he does another segment in that first season of Night Gallery.

• 45:18David Sims?

  I guess so.

• 45:19Griffin Newman?

  I'm telling you.

• 45:20David Sims?

  It's just not mentioned here.

• 45:21Griffin Newman?

  I'm just telling you for a fact he did.

• 45:23David Sims?

  Maybe that came later then? Cause I'm trying to understand what this kind of, uh, you know, pause that he went on is, cause he's really complaining about, yeah, that wasn't until 71.

• 45:35Griffin Newman?

  Oh, interesting.

• 45:35David Sims?

  So that's a, that's a little later, right?

• 45:37Griffin Newman?

  Okay.

• 45:38David Sims?

  He goes off and he writes some stuff. He wrote apparently a, a dogfight movie, like a World War II movie.

• 45:43Griffin Newman?

  Okay.

• 45:43David Sims?

  He wrote a comedy about life and the cat skills. Love to see that.

• 45:46Griffin Newman?

  It was also called Crapper.

• 45:48David Sims?

  Yes, he wrote something called Ace Eli, funny, and Roger of the Skies, which does exist and he has a story credit on, never seen it.

• 45:55Griffin Newman?

  Oh, oh, interesting.

• 45:57David Sims?

  Um.

• 45:57Griffin Newman?

  I feel like JJ texted me about this if I had ever seen it before, cause it's like one of the only.

• 46:02David Sims?

  It's like an adventure movie with Cliff Robertson again, about a pilot. I don't know.

• 46:07Griffin Newman?

  Uh, I feel like Spielberg has gone out of his way, distanced himself from it to the extent that I had never heard about it until JJ texted me about it.

• 46:13David Sims?

  He disowns whatever the movie was. He's like, it's barely, you know, I got a story by credit because that's how it goes, but they had changed it by the time they made it. Um, he comes back to Universal and then he does an episode, another segment of Night Gallery. Some TV shows, Marcus Welbilly MD, The Psychiatrist, an episode of this show called The Name of the Game, called LA 2017 that you've been trying to find.

• 46:35Griffin Newman?

  Now, this is a thing I love. It used to be on YouTube in full. It's now seemingly gone, taken down by Universal. But Name of the Game was a weird, uh, sort of, I think they called it a carousel show. That was this old format that used to exist to lure more substantial stars into doing television without the commitment of doing 22-episode seasons. They design a show where it's like, it has three different leads. And it cycles between a couple of different casts, so each of these stars only has to do seven or eight episodes a season, right? So it's already this show that's not an anthology, but is a little like piecemeal like that.

• 47:11David Sims?

  Right.

• 47:11Griffin Newman?

  And then there is just this one episode that Spielberg directed that's ostensibly a complete standalone. Basically outside of a framing device, has nothing to do with the rest of the series. And is just a weird dystopian future movie. It is the first feature-length thing he ever directed. It was 75 minutes long.

• 47:29David Sims?

  Sure.

• 47:29Griffin Newman?

  It's called LA 2017. It rules.

• 47:32David Sims?

  You've seen it?

• 47:32Griffin Newman?

  I've seen it. I saw when it, because it went up on YouTube a couple of years ago and people were like, this is kind of secretly Spielberg's first movie.

• 47:39David Sims?

  Cool.

• 47:40Griffin Newman?

  And it's a little lost to time. That show just is kind of completely forgotten. It's never been released on DVD or streaming or rentable digitally or any of that stuff. And there was this one YouTube video that now Universal has taken down.

• 47:52David Sims?

  Of course, he also directed the first regular season episode of Columbo, not the pilot, as people sometimes, you know, the pilot had already been made, but it's the first episode.

• 48:00Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 48:01David Sims?

  Once Columbo goes to a series and it's of course called Murder by the Book.

• 48:06Griffin Newman?

  Similarly, 75 minutes. It's like, that's the-

• 48:09David Sims?

  Feature-length fish, but it's a Columbo.

• 48:10Griffin Newman?

  It's TV, uh, movies that will air within a 90-minute block. And Duel was intended to be the same kind of thing.

• 48:19David Sims?

  Uh, when he's hired to shoot his episode of Columbo, Oscar-winning cinematographer Russell Meddy, uh, who had shot Spartacus, and I think was a bit of a hard ass because he followed Kubrick on that movie, who's Kubrick famously easy to get along with.

• 48:32Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 48:32David Sims?

  Said, "He's a kid. Does he get a milk and cookie break? Is the diaper truck gonna interfere with my generator?"

• 48:38Griffin Newman?

  I mean, funny.

• 48:40David Sims?

  Pretty funny.

• 48:40Griffin Newman?

  It's pretty funny.

• 48:41David Sims?

  But genuine, generally, he impresses people. When he works on these TV shows, uh, he kind of just blows people away. Uh, Peter Falk- Uh, said like, we had some good fortune making Columbo, like our first episode was directed by fucking Steven Spielberg. Like, obviously not famous then, but now you're kinda like, dang.

• 49:01Griffin Newman?

  David?

• 49:01David Sims?

  Yeah?

• 49:01Griffin Newman?

  You know for a fact, that's not how he said it.

• 49:04David Sims?

  Let's face it, we had some good fortune at the beginning. Go ahead.

• 49:07Griffin Newman?

  Just commit a little harder.

• 49:08David Sims?

  I can't do fuck.

• 49:09Speaker 04

  Eh, well, you had some good luck, eh?

• 49:15Griffin Newman?

  Fucking Steven Spielberg. I don't know why my fuck sounds like the oldest version of Bob Dylan.

• 49:22David Sims?

  The thing he remembers.

• 49:24Speaker 04

  Eh, one more thing.

• 49:25David Sims?

  The thing fuck remembers is that like, they're shooting one scene where he approaches someone on the street.

• 49:31Griffin Newman?

  Mm-hmm.

• 49:31David Sims?

  They shoot it and he's like, where's the camera? And Spielberg is like, he realizes like, across the street with a long lens. And he's like, you know, that's not something you did on television.

• 49:40Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, it's this fucking TV show, kid. I'm gonna make the donuts.

• 49:43David Sims?

  Yeah, Spielberg considers his best work to have been an episode of The Psychiatrist.

• 49:47Griffin Newman?

  Interesting. So maybe we need to watch the-

• 49:49David Sims?

  I don't fucking know. Anyway.

• 49:50Speaker 04

  I'm saying we need to devote episode time to it, but maybe we should watch it.

• 49:54David Sims?

  It's a job, though. Making these TV shows is a job. It's not an art form for him. He doesn't have the passion. Obviously, he's, you know, the stories are more schematic. He, he has to work in a tight, like, schedule and all that. He really wants to make movies. Onto duel. Richard Matheson, famous writer?

• 50:12Griffin Newman?

  Mm-hmm.

• 50:13David Sims?

  Would you, would you call him a famous writer?

• 50:15Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, what else would he call?

• 50:16David Sims?

  I don't know.

• 50:17Griffin Newman?

  Legendary writer?

• 50:18David Sims?

  Uh, I mean, he is pretty legendary in that he wrote I Am Legend.

• 50:21Griffin Newman?

  This is true.

• 50:22David Sims?

  Heard of it?

• 50:22Griffin Newman?

  Yeah. Remember was, this whole generation of guys, uh, who were like incredible short story writers, would write longer length things as well, but like incredible short story writers who then-

• 50:34David Sims?

  Did a lot of Twilight Zone.

• 50:35Griffin Newman?

  Went to Hollywood.

• 50:36David Sims?

  Um, apparently, the day that JFK was assassinated,

• 50:40Griffin Newman?

  Mm-hmm.

• 50:40David Sims?

  he was golfing, uh, and he drives home and he gets harassed by a big truck.

• 50:45Griffin Newman?

  Okay.

• 50:46David Sims?

  And this experience-

• 50:48Griffin Newman?

  The second most tragic thing that happened that day.

• 50:50David Sims?

  This experience has him write down on like the back of an envelope, like, story idea, truck chases man on highway.

• 50:55Griffin Newman?

  That's how all these guys worked, where they were just like, you just fucking sit at the typewriter every day and you write 8,000 pages.

• 51:01David Sims?

  Right.

• 51:01Griffin Newman?

  Like, any half idea, you sell it to Playboy, which, this original story ran in Playboy magazine.

• 51:08David Sims?

  Uh, he pitches it to, you know, TV people and they think it's a little too limited, not enough there. He gives up on it, writes it as a short story.

• 51:16Griffin Newman?

  In? Playboy magazine.

• 51:20David Sims?

  Well, I only read Playboy for the, um, naked pictures, so I never noticed the article.

• 51:25Griffin Newman?

  This is the problem. Apparently Playboy magazine has words in it.

• 51:29David Sims?

  As someone who, I will confess.

• 51:30Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 51:30David Sims?

  Has never really read an issue of Playboy. Like, I know the old joke was, I read it for the articles, right? And Playboy had genuinely great journalism and all that. Was it like, kinda just at the back of the magazine? Or was it kinda interspersed?

• 51:43Griffin Newman?

  Interspersed.

• 51:45David Sims?

  Ben doesn't know.

• 51:46Griffin Newman?

  When I was like, uh, when I was in high school.

• 51:48Speaker 03

  I was a penthouse guy.

• 51:50David Sims?

  I just was, I was born after one fucking red, spanky magazine.

• 51:55Griffin Newman?

  I also think by the time we were growing up, Playboy was, the articles had less juice to them.

• 52:02David Sims?

  No, I know.

• 52:03Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 52:03David Sims?

  I think Playboy, even in the nineties, would still have these glitzy writers and.

• 52:07Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, we have like Leonard Maltin doing like serious interviews of people and shit. Uh, when I was in high school, uh, Lola Kirk, past and future guest on this show. Was like, you're a horny boy, I'm giving you a vintage issue of Playboy for birth, your birthday, as a present.

• 52:24David Sims?

  For birthday?

• 52:24Griffin Newman?

  For birthday. I had one vintage issue of Playboy that I hid in my closet.

• 52:29David Sims?

  Thanks.

• 52:29Griffin Newman?

  That I remember having, uh, a multi-page Laney Kazan spread.

• 52:33David Sims?

  Hey.

• 52:33Griffin Newman?

  Where I was like, this is, this is kinda weird to look through when, uh, my Big Fat Greek Wedding's only like two years out of theaters.

• 52:41David Sims?

  Sure.

• 52:41Griffin Newman?

  Um, but that was like a, a sixties issue of Playboy. That I would leaf through and genuinely go like, oh, this did actually used to have good articles.

• 52:50David Sims?

  Sure. No, I'm sure it did.

• 52:51Griffin Newman?

  It felt more like.

• 52:52David Sims?

  Richard Matheson's Duel.

• 52:54Griffin Newman?

  Right. It felt like New Yorker with like nudie spreads and some hornier shit.

• 52:57David Sims?

  Yes.

• 52:58Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 52:59David Sims?

  Uh, so it goes into. Playboy.

• 53:02Griffin Newman?

  Uh huh.

• 53:02David Sims?

  And people notice it. Steven Bochko, Pak Pak Bochko, Steven Bochko, right? Famous TV writer.

• 53:09Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 53:09David Sims?

  Is like, this should be a movie. Brings it to the attention of a TV producer. ABC, Universal has a deal with ABC to make, you know, TV movies.

• 53:19Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, these slots existed of just like TV movie of the week and they're making tens of TV movies. Every year. So they're looking for old things that could be remade for TV, rip from the headline stories, short stories, original scripts from budding writers. There's just like, there are slots to fill. TV movies are gonna get made.

• 53:41David Sims?

  When are they programmed?

• 53:42Griffin Newman?

  Primetime.

• 53:43David Sims?

  Like primetime, yeah. Movie of the week, right?

• 53:45Griffin Newman?

  All these channels would have their own movie of the week slot. And they'd be competitive slots, you know? It'd be like, one network airs a movie every Monday night at eight or whatever. They'd be among the highest rated things, but it also was kind of like a way to establish a farm team. You know, to like test out new directors and writers and things like that, to test out new stars. Also like stars they had under contract on long running shows who were frustrated being pigeonholed into one role. It was like, oh, we'll let you do a TV movie. You stay under our umbrella and you get to flex some other side of yourself.

• 54:20David Sims?

  So, uh, it makes its way to Spielberg, his secretary at the time, Nona, Nona Tyson.

• 54:26Griffin Newman?

  Nona Tyson.

• 54:27David Sims?

  Throws a Playboy in front of him. Spielberg says he starts laughing. Uh, and she's like, don't look at the girls, read this short story, it's right up your alley.

• 54:37David Sims?

  We should note that also at one point, uh, Spielberg met with David Lynch and David Lynch told him the horizon needs to be this way or that way. And all that stuff happened as well. No, he-

• 54:47Griffin Newman?

  Two year old David.

• 54:48David Sims?

  Yes, uh, yeah.

• 54:49Griffin Newman?

  I guess he was fucking 25, whatever.

• 54:53David Sims?

  And he's, he's into it. He calls someone up, uh, and is like, I want to do this. I want, wanna talk to you about it. He calls up the producer, George Eckstein, and George Eckstein sees him, uh, as he was known Spielberg at the time as Scheinberg's folly, right? What was ABC thinking or Universal thinking, hiring this like child?

• 55:12Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 55:12David Sims?

  To this long contract and now he's not doing much, right? Um, he does, Exte needs a director. So he's like, all right, come in for a meeting. Spielberg shows him some of the Columbo episode. Epstein's like, you'll do essentially, we need somebody. Initially, he's like, can we have no dialogue? Like, can it truly be silent?

• 55:32Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 55:32David Sims?

  And I think, you know, at a certain point, ABC is like, there's not enough room for this kind of arty stuff, buddy. You know, like, no, we can't do that. The movie might be even cooler with no dialogue, certainly no internal dialogue.

• 55:46Griffin Newman?

  Can I make my case?

• 55:47David Sims?

  Yes.

• 55:48Griffin Newman?

  A lot of what's added for the theatrical cut are a lot of the like dialogue interludes of him interacting with other people.

• 55:57David Sims?

  Right. Him calling his wife.

• 55:59Griffin Newman?

  Yes. Some of like the gas station stops and shit like that. Obviously not the, the bar scene, right?

• 56:06David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 56:07Griffin Newman?

  I feel like, and I'm, I'm happy that Spielberg has not gone back and recut this movie. But I'm sort of like, it makes sense that they insisted on putting the certain amount of voiceover internal monologue stuff in here. Because they were just like, you cannot have this be completely wordless.

• 56:25David Sims?

  Right.

• 56:26Griffin Newman?

  In the version that has a couple dialogue scenes added, I'm like, if you then took out the voiceover, that's probably the perfect version of this movie.

• 56:35David Sims?

  I just think there's nothing in the voiceover and stuff that really tells you anything you don't already know.

• 56:42Griffin Newman?

  No, I agree with that. And it's also just because you, you could get why on a writing level, they were like, there needs to be some dialogue to keep people hooked.

• 56:49David Sims?

  Right.

• 56:50Griffin Newman?

  What they couldn't have counted for is you're dealing with perhaps the greatest visual storyteller of his generation.

• 56:56David Sims?

  Right.

• 56:57Griffin Newman?

  A guy who can figure out how to convey all of this just in images and editing. So like everything that's being said in the internal monologue, he as, he's 24 at this point, 23? How old is he?

• 57:10David Sims?

  When he makes Duel, the film came out early 20- Yeah, I'd be like 22, 22, yeah.

• 57:18Griffin Newman?

  Right. You could just be like, if you're fucking Scheinberger, whoever, you're like, kid, there has to be some dialogue in this.

• 57:24David Sims?

  Right.

• 57:24Griffin Newman?

  Right? And even just, it's airing on TV with commercial breaks and whatever. People are gonna turn off the TV. As you said, you're like flipping through the channels, you see it and you're like, what the fuck is this? Right?

• 57:33David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 57:34Griffin Newman?

  I, within that context, it makes sense. Once you've opened this thing up and let it breathe, and you're like, we're gonna play it in a theater, and we can air it out. Every single thing that's happening visually underneath the voiceover parts completely conveys what the voiceover is saying.

• 57:51David Sims?

  Right.

• 57:51Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 57:52Speaker 03

  Uh, I will say, I agree with you. I think that's the perfect version.

• 57:57Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 57:58Speaker 03

  But I would, I would say what really puts it over the edge for me is if there was a moment where it froze on the truck, and then it said, "Truckis meanus", and then it froze on the Pontiac, and it said like, "Pontiatic sis good".

• 58:15Griffin Newman?

  This has been one trillion comedy points.

• 58:17David Sims?

  Thank you.

• 58:18Griffin Newman?

  Uh, here's, here's another thing, Ben, in terms of just like what the ecosystem was for this sort of like TV movie of the week culture.

• 58:26David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 58:27Griffin Newman?

  Um, he was given 10 days to shoot this. He went over. It was 13 days.

• 58:34David Sims?

  Right.

• 58:35Griffin Newman?

  And as a result of him taking the extra three days, he only had 10 days to deliver a cut to them.

• 58:40David Sims?

  Oh, man.

• 58:41Griffin Newman?

  Like, the turnaround on these things, because there just was one airing every week, was as if it was a TV show episode.

• 58:47David Sims?

  Basically.

• 58:48Griffin Newman?

  Even though these were running as separate productions, and they had their own stop and start, and they weren't part of the factory line of an ongoing series, it was like, you delivered this to us in like, less than a month from the moment we hire you.

• 59:00David Sims?

  Spielberg wants Gregory Peck.

• 59:02Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 59:02David Sims?

  An icon for him.

• 59:03Griffin Newman?

  Uh huh.

• 59:04David Sims?

  Peck says no. Not surprising. I think Spielberg knows that if he'd gotten Peck, maybe this could have leapt to the big screen. Certainly, he would have gotten more than 10 days. They're not interested.

• 59:14Griffin Newman?

  It also makes sense with his Joan Crawford history that he's starting to extragize about like... I can gain some heat from proving myself to these legendary stars in their autumn years.

• 59:26David Sims?

  And then they'll, they'll call people for me and yeah.

• 59:29Griffin Newman?

  They'll see that I respect them and that I know what I'm doing and then they'll endorse me and whatever. Yeah.

• 59:34David Sims?

  Uh, but I feel like Weaver, Dennis Weaver, who they cast.

• 59:38Griffin Newman?

  Is perfect in that.

• 59:39David Sims?

  Yeah, because you need someone who's a little nebbishy and kind of ground down. Like if it's Gregory Peck being like, there's goddamn trucks in my way. I'm like, no one's gonna fuck with him. Like George C. Scott, you know, like, rah!

• 59:52Griffin Newman?

  Weaver's characterization is fascinating because this is a thing that like to its credit is not telling you too much about this guy.

• 1:00:00David Sims?

  Right.

• 1:00:00Griffin Newman?

  And yet Weaver's performance is really specific where it doesn't feel like he's just a stand-in. And yet there are certain things about him that are a little hard to pin down.

• 1:00:11David Sims?

  Uh, for sure.

• 1:00:12Griffin Newman?

  This guy's like a weird combination of like a little arrogant and glib, but also kind of like nebbishy, put upon.

• 1:00:19David Sims?

  Yeah. Does this guy have an anger thing or is he kind of right?

• 1:00:22Griffin Newman?

  A pushover?

• 1:00:23David Sims?

  A little bit of a pushover who's like.

• 1:00:24Griffin Newman?

  Both at the same time in oscillation, which means that he's really compelling to watch because you kind of don't know how he's gonna react in any given moment.

• 1:00:33David Sims?

  Now Dennis Weaver, it was on a little TV show called Gunsmoke, which is the, at the time, like the longest fucking running thing ever, right?

• 1:00:41Griffin Newman?

  Right. And Simpsons is now like gone 20 years past, right?

• 1:00:45David Sims?

  Uh, but more recently, he had sort of had a bit of revival on this show, McLeod. Uh, which I have never seen, but it's an NYPD cop show where it's like.

• 1:00:54Griffin Newman?

  Was that Darren McGavin? No.

• 1:00:57David Sims?

  Uh, I don't know. It's Dennis Weaver. He's McLeod.

• 1:01:00Griffin Newman?

  But okay, why do I think Darren McGavin was on the show as well?

• 1:01:02David Sims?

  Darren McGavin.

• 1:01:03Griffin Newman?

  Weaver was McLeod.

• 1:01:04David Sims?

  Weaver was McLeod. Darren McGavin, I think the thing you're thinking of is, I don't know.

• 1:01:10Griffin Newman?

  I don't know.

• 1:01:11David Sims?

  Mike Hammer.

• 1:01:12Griffin Newman?

  Maybe. I don't know. Who could fucking say, honestly?

• 1:01:15David Sims?

  McLeod is, um, it's like, he's like a, an old kind of cowboy type cop from New Mexico. And now he's in New York.

• 1:01:23Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:01:23David Sims?

  So he's probably always like, you know, did a cow do this? And they're like, no, it's, it's, it's New York City, baby. Beep beep. I assume that's what the vibe was.

• 1:01:32Griffin Newman?

  Actually, it sounds like prime for a fucking reboot.

• 1:01:36David Sims?

  Kind of does.

• 1:01:36Griffin Newman?

  Why are people not fading over the McLeod?

• 1:01:39David Sims?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:01:39Griffin Newman?

  It's just like modern day McLeod would kill.

• 1:01:42David Sims?

  Spielberg likes Dennis Weaver, who's got, who's got a little juice because of McLeod, because he's in Touch of Evil.

• 1:01:48Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 1:01:49David Sims?

  As the sort of sniveling night watchman.

• 1:01:52Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, the motel attendant.

• 1:01:53David Sims?

  Uh, right. So he's kind of like, maybe we can get a little of that energy in here.

• 1:01:58Griffin Newman?

  The twitchy, kind of nervous. Yeah.

• 1:02:00David Sims?

  Uh, Weaver says his agent called him and said, they're gonna send you a script, say yes before you even read it. And Weaver was like, what? But then he got the script and he was like, yep, I get it. But it was hard to shoot this movie for him because it's all him driving and very little dialogue.

• 1:02:15Griffin Newman?

  Also just bears repeating.

• 1:02:16David Sims?

  And there's a lot of him going like, ah, the fuck? Should I get over?

• 1:02:21Griffin Newman?

  David's doing an incredible performance right now.

• 1:02:25Griffin Newman?

  Um, it just bears repeating. I know everyone listening probably knows this, but the Rio Grande line between television and film was so fucking thick at this point.

• 1:02:34David Sims?

  Right.

• 1:02:35Griffin Newman?

  Right? Like, it was just in terms of like the class and esteem associated with the two. And especially for any actor, you really had to be strategic in these moves of like, which one are you?

• 1:02:47David Sims?

  Right.

• 1:02:47Griffin Newman?

  If people started in film and then went to TV, it would be hard for them to make their way back. You know, and if you're a guy who is like doing smaller parts in T, in film, but then became a leading man on TV. You know, it's like, is doing a TV movie doubling down? All this shit. I don't know.

• 1:03:03David Sims?

  It's a pre-peacock world.

• 1:03:05Griffin Newman?

  Thank you. That's an easier way of putting it.

• 1:03:07David Sims?

  Um, they look at a lot of cars. Casting the cars is kind of the biggest thing they have to do.

• 1:03:12Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:13David Sims?

  Seventy-one Plymouth Valiant and a nineteen fifty-one Peterbilt for the truck.

• 1:03:19David Sims?

  And they kind of customized the truck, I think, to make it look a little scarier. You know, they, it's all crud it up with.

• 1:03:24Speaker 03

  Yeah, I was gonna say, by customizing, do you mean they just threw dirt on it?

• 1:03:27David Sims?

  They put bugs all over the windshield. They put, uh, some tanks on the doors, I think, to make it kind of have more of a face. You know? Uh, and so they wanted it to look like a monster. And, uh.

• 1:03:42Griffin Newman?

  This truck looks perfect.

• 1:03:43David Sims?

  It looks incredible. I don't like that truck's vibe.

• 1:03:45Griffin Newman?

  I hate it.

• 1:03:46David Sims?

  It also says like flammable on it or whatever. And you're like, ah.

• 1:03:49Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:51Griffin Newman?

  This is conjecture on my part. I admit this. Dennis Weaver is the star of a great Twilight Zone episode.

• 1:03:58David Sims?

  Which one?

• 1:03:59Griffin Newman?

  It's called Shadow Play.

• 1:04:00David Sims?

  Oh, sure.

• 1:04:01Griffin Newman?

  It's a guy trying to avoid the electric chair.

• 1:04:03David Sims?

  Right.

• 1:04:05Griffin Newman?

  And just knowing how influential Twilight Zone was for Spielberg and Weaver's in kind of a similar position in that, a guy who's trying to like, figure out his way out of a seeming inevitability of death.

• 1:04:18David Sims?

  Right.

• 1:04:18Griffin Newman?

  You know, I could see that also being another thing that factored into the soup for him.

• 1:04:27Griffin Newman?

  David?

• 1:04:27David Sims?

  Yes?

• 1:04:28Griffin Newman?

  Uh, uh, who are you wearing?

• 1:04:30David Sims?

  Uh, who am I wearing?

• 1:04:31Griffin Newman?

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

• 1:04:35David Sims?

  Well, I am wearing Quince.

• 1:04:38Griffin Newman?

  Well, well, well, what a coincidence. Quincidens.

• 1:04:42David Sims?

  It's a Mongolian cashmere zip sweater.

• 1:04:46Griffin Newman?

  Okay.

• 1:04:47David Sims?

  It's a sort of a brown. Would you agree?

• 1:04:49Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, it's like, maybe like a, what would you, a chocolate?

• 1:04:52David 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.

• 1:05:00Griffin 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.

• 1:05:16David Sims?

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

• 1:05:28Griffin Newman?

  Mama mia.

• 1:05:28David 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, cashmere accessories, everything your loved ones need to stay warm and look put together all season long.

• 1:05:48Griffin 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.

• 1:06:01David Sims?

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

• 1:06:08Griffin Newman?

  Oh, well, well, well.

• 1:06:09David Sims?

  They got tree skirts. Garlands, if you want to go.

• 1:06:12Griffin Newman?

  Christmas mode. 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.

• 1:07:00David Sims?

  Hey, this is Penn and Kim Holderness from Laugh Lines.

• 1:07:02Speaker 05

  Some travelers want the charm of an independent hotel. Others want the confidence of a trusted global brand. With Series by Marriott, you get both.

• 1:07:11David Sims?

  Each property is uniquely connected to its destination, delivering local experiences and memorable stays while being backed by the quality, reliability, and Marriott Bonvoy benefits that travelers know and trust.

• 1:07:23Speaker 05

  Experience the destination without the compromise.

• 1:07:26David Sims?

  Series by Marriott is part of Marriott Bonvoy. Book direct at Marriott.com or on the Marriott Bonvoy app.

• 1:07:33Speaker 06

  Drew McIntyre here from WWE. Wielding the Claymore can be a life of chaos. When I'm not dominating in the ring, Chumba Casino is how this warrior takes a wee break. With hundreds of online social games and new weekly releases, there's always something fresh to try. And those daily boosts, next level. Even my free time feels like Valhalla. So when life feels like a battle, kick up your feet, have some fun, and let's chumba. No purchase necessary. VGW Group. Void where prohibited by law. CTs and Cs. 21+. Sponsored by Chumba Casino.

• 1:08:06David Sims?

  So they make duel.

• 1:08:11David Sims?

  Spielberg insists on shooting it outside. They wanted to do soundstage.

• 1:08:17David Sims?

  And it's a big fight. And like, he went over schedule, as you say, three days over schedule.

• 1:08:25Griffin Newman?

  Right, which is maybe the equivalent of going three weeks over schedule on a TV. And on a real film, a feature film.

• 1:08:31Speaker 03

  How could you do this on a soundstage?

• 1:08:33David Sims?

  It would look shitty.

• 1:08:34Speaker 03

  It would be, it would be.

• 1:08:35David Sims?

  It would look like a janky TV movie, yes.

• 1:08:38Griffin Newman?

  But there's like, look, I love Twilight Zone. And a lot of Twilight Zone episodes are very ambitious. In terms of what they're aiming to depict. Because that is a show that didn't have like a home base. Kind of rotation of sets it could reuse. There's like a great hitchhiker episode of Twilight Zone that all takes place on the road. And there's very little like real. Car footage.

• 1:09:00David Sims?

  Right.

• 1:09:00Griffin Newman?

  And most of it is just like a close up of an actor in front of a rear projection. Screen. Behind a picture car, you know?

• 1:09:08David Sims?

  Sure.

• 1:09:08Griffin Newman?

  They're like, you could see how they were just like, look, don't overthink this. This isn't a real movie. Like Spielberg fighting to make this. 50% more of a movie than they want it to be. Results in him over delivering on the product, which then commits them to be like. Fuck, film some more and make this even more of a movie.

• 1:09:27David Sims?

  Right.

• 1:09:28Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:28David Sims?

  He's doing lots of master shots. Less TV closeups, he says, you know, he's trying to be wider, make it feel more cinematic.

• 1:09:37Griffin Newman?

  There's like crazy camera placements in this.

• 1:09:39David Sims?

  There's, that's, he's the king of blocking.

• 1:09:41Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, but, but beyond that, king of blocking, obviously, right? It is like the weird. Kind of just like bone deep, natural skill this guy had.

• 1:09:49David Sims?

  They call him?

• 1:09:51Griffin Newman?

  The king of movies? They call him the king of blocking. No, I was gonna say, beyond him just being great at blocking, there's shit where you're like. Oh, the camera is like mounted to the grill.

• 1:10:02David Sims?

  Yes.

• 1:10:03Griffin Newman?

  In this sort of like side profile shot of the truck. With the car behind it and shit like that, where you're just like. On a TV movie schedule, budget, resources, crew. You choosing to do a setup like that? Is like, you're gonna have to sacrifice in exchange for putting your foot down and be like, I want this shot. I want a crane shot, you know? Like, in exchange for doing that, it, the payoff is you get fewer setups somewhere else, or fewer takes of each setup, or whatever it is. But the guy just like, he had the fucking vision.

• 1:10:35David Sims?

  But he shows the script, the film to ABC, and they're mad that the truck doesn't blow up. Because it says, "Planable," right? On the truck.

• 1:10:49David Sims?

  And they think about shooting a new ending that's more explosive. But no. Spielberg had said, like, I want more of like a slow death.

• 1:11:00Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:01David Sims?

  Where the truck kind of suffers and basically kind of like bleeds out.

• 1:11:04Griffin Newman?

  I mean, it is an incredible shot.

• 1:11:06David Sims?

  Exactly.

• 1:11:06Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:07David Sims?

  And then Duel comes out. Oh, it's also got a really cool score, obviously pre-John Williams for him, but Billy Goldenberg, sort of this like Bernard Herrmann, you know, knockoff-y kind of score.

• 1:11:21Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, but I mean, yeah, John Williams starts on Sugar Land and then is his guy, save for five movies.

• 1:11:28David Sims?

  Yeah, save for just a couple times.

• 1:11:30Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:30David Sims?

  Duel gets rave reviews, average ratings. Richard Matheson says he was flabbergasted by how good it was.

• 1:11:39Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:39David Sims?

  And George Lucas has this story of, he was at a party at Francis Ford Coppola's house. He'd met Steven Spielberg maybe, but they didn't know each other that well yet. And he's like, the movie's on, that movie he made, and they're watching it, and then like, at this party, everyone starts to like, look, lock in on the movie.

• 1:11:55Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:56David Sims?

  Like, instead of just checking in with it, like, everyone just sits down and watches it, because they were like, this is really fucking good.

• 1:12:01Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, I mean, look, I'm gonna, I'm gonna throw out a take here.

• 1:12:05David Sims?

  Go ahead.

• 1:12:06Griffin Newman?

  This isn't a perfect film, right?

• 1:12:09David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:10Griffin Newman?

  In its best sequences, it is just astonishing.

• 1:12:14David Sims?

  Agreed. I mean, which is basically all.

• 1:12:16Griffin Newman?

  And not just its hottest sequences, right?

• 1:12:18David Sims?

  But it's mostly when you're on the road.

• 1:12:20Griffin Newman?

  But some of the construction of some of the sequences, you're just like, how the fuck is this guy's first movie? Not only is it just the level of skill, but you're like, most people, it takes two decades to cross the arc of developing the skill. Then they get ostentatious with their craft and then they learn how to like pare it down and get Spartan and unshowy with it and just communicate.

• 1:12:41David Sims?

  Right.

• 1:12:42Griffin Newman?

  A lot of people, it takes over 10 years to do that. And the first movie, he already has this confidence of like an old master. My big take is, I think you watch this and in the construction of the big showcase moments, the big set pieces, the big sequences, whatever, I would contend like he arrived fully formed as an action filmmaker. He has better action sequences later in his career, but I'd argue those are largely a product of, he knows how to build a better movie around those sequences. He has better resources and collaborators. He has better tools to play with and more time and whatever. I don't actually think his

• 1:13:23Griffin Newman?

  basic craft and understanding of how to put images together to create tension and excitement.

• 1:13:30David Sims?

  Right.

• 1:13:30Griffin Newman?

  Evolves past this. Like, I think.

• 1:13:33David Sims?

  Right. You're basically like.

• 1:13:34Griffin Newman?

  He was fully formed.

• 1:13:34David Sims?

  He's as good then as he was now.

• 1:13:36Griffin Newman?

  It was basically everything else rose to his level.

• 1:13:39David Sims?

  And I think he says like, he watches Duel all the time and is kind of like, yeah, I fucking crushed it.

• 1:13:45Griffin Newman?

  He now like studies Duel trying to be like, how did I do this?

• 1:13:48David Sims?

  Right, exactly.

• 1:13:49Griffin Newman?

  Because I think it was also in such a state of panic where he has to put this together so quickly with such limited resources. But also he knows like this is his big chance to show himself.

• 1:14:00David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:00Griffin Newman?

  That this movie almost comes out of like, just like a flow state for him.

• 1:14:04David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:05Griffin Newman?

  As much as it was meticulously storyboarded and everything, he was just like, I just knew exactly how I had to make it. And he just kind of like put his foot down and got it done and and he proved his fucking point like it totally worked in the way he needed it to.

• 1:14:20David Sims?

  Yeah, it's a great movie. I saw Duel on TV, I think on the BBC, the B-B-A-C.

• 1:14:30David Sims?

  When I was 14 or 15 years old and I had my Empire Magazine Spielberg edition, Empire Magazine put out a special, Steven Spielberg edition once that had all of his movies like with two pages devoted to them, you know, whatever. And so that's probably when I first learned about Duel. Oh, did you know, like before E.T. or whatever, you know, he made this TV movie. And I remember watching it, like seeing the listings and being like, I want to watch it. I'm a young cinephile.

• 1:14:57Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:57David Sims?

  And then watching it being like, that rocked and feeling really proud of myself for like having done that.

• 1:15:02Griffin Newman?

  Uh, my parents did not like Steven Spielberg. They were.

• 1:15:06David Sims?

  Newman's fucking up again.

• 1:15:07Griffin Newman?

  I know. In the 90s, I think they were, that was a very popular time for people to kind of turn against Spielberg.

• 1:15:17David Sims?

  Yeah, a hundred percent, of course. No, once he wins the Oscar for Schindler especially, I think people are like, it's like when the Red Sox won the World Series where people are like, all right, can I stop hearing about you now?

• 1:15:25Griffin Newman?

  Enough of this, right. Right. And he used to be good, but now he's so maudlin and so manipulative. There was sort of a feeling of like, look, we can't deny Schindler, but everything else he's made in the last 10 years is a failure to recapture how good the first 10 years were.

• 1:15:42David Sims?

  Right.

• 1:15:42Griffin Newman?

  Uh, and they were sort of like, you know, by mid 90s, they were like Spielberg's washed. But I remember within that, despite being a child who was shown E.T. and Close Encounters very young by my mother as like, these are important and having like a massive effect on me both. Uh, I remember saying to me, you know which one is good, his first movie?

• 1:16:01David Sims?

  Sure.

• 1:16:02Griffin Newman?

  When she was in her sort of like Spielberg sucks phase. And because she grew up in Europe, humble brag, uh, she, I think she must have seen Duel in theaters presented as like a a movie properly.

• 1:16:15David Sims?

  Well, we've already mentioned TV didn't exist.

• 1:16:18Griffin Newman?

  TV didn't exist.

• 1:16:19David Sims?

  Right.

• 1:16:19Griffin Newman?

  Um, so yeah, I remember her telling me about it fairly young and just describing the premise in the way that kind of excited me is like, wait, and that's the whole movie? She was like, yeah, it's just a nervous guy and this truck starts following him. And I'm like, why? You don't know. Who's driving the truck? You don't know.

• 1:16:38David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:38Griffin Newman?

  It's just this guy going crazy and this truck coming after him and there's no explanation for it. And it's like thrilling. So I think, yeah, I, I probably rented on VHS when I was 10 and 12 or something.

• 1:16:49David Sims?

  Cool.

• 1:16:50Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, it rolls.

• 1:16:51David Sims?

  Ben, did you like it?

• 1:16:53Speaker 03

  It's so impressive.

• 1:16:54Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:55Speaker 03

  How much it's a movie.

• 1:16:59Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:00Speaker 03

  And how much you're on the edge of your seat.

• 1:17:02Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:17:03David Sims?

  But I think the first point especially, but it's like, it doesn't feel like a TV movie really.

• 1:17:07Griffin Newman?

  No.

• 1:17:08David Sims?

  Partly because the limited scale makes sense. So you're not seeing.

• 1:17:13Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:14David Sims?

  It push against a budget. It can't, you know what I mean? Like you're like, it makes sense for it to be fairly stripped down.

• 1:17:18Griffin Newman?

  There's a focus to the story, but then he's pushing to expand the scale cinematically.

• 1:17:24David Sims?

  And he does.

• 1:17:24Griffin Newman?

  And he does.

• 1:17:26David Sims?

  Um, all of my problems with it are just when it's him, you know, kind of futzing around in various locations.

• 1:17:35Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:36David Sims?

  Not that I think those parts are bad. It's just the only time you kind of feel the movie trying to fill out time a little bit.

• 1:17:42Griffin Newman?

  Yeah. Yes.

• 1:17:43David Sims?

  You know?

• 1:17:43Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:17:44David Sims?

  Like the confrontation in the diner. It's a diner, right?

• 1:17:47Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:48David Sims?

  With the guy he thinks is the trucker is just one of those scenes where you're like 10 seconds in, you're like, well, this isn't gonna be the guy.

• 1:17:54Griffin Newman?

  Sure.

• 1:17:54David Sims?

  We're halfway into the movie. He's not gonna like go face to face with the truck driver.

• 1:17:58Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:59David Sims?

  And it just kind of goes on for like a few minutes of him being like, hey buddy, can you cut it out? And the guy's like, what are you talking about? Hey.

• 1:18:05Griffin Newman?

  But.

• 1:18:06David Sims?

  Should I call the cops?

• 1:18:07Griffin Newman?

  The chunk of that sequence with him walking in and recognizing one of these guys must be the guy. And there's basically five stellar minutes of just this guy looking at people, sizing them up, visually weighing the pros and cons of it could be this guy. It couldn't be this guy.

• 1:18:25David Sims?

  Looking at their boots.

• 1:18:26Griffin Newman?

  Looking at their boots.

• 1:18:27David Sims?

  I think that's a really interesting.

• 1:18:29Speaker 03

  Way of like, yeah, how can I like read into a person through like, yeah, the, the way they have selected their boots, what color it is, how dirty it is.

• 1:18:39Griffin Newman?

  And then he's running through the mental exercise of approaching each of these guys and confronting them and imagining how they'd react. Like, all of that stuff is fucking incredible. And you have to think also in the theatrical cut, Ben, that's like the first sequence where he's talking at length.

• 1:18:56Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:18:57Griffin Newman?

  You know, like, because the opening, which I think is really good, the opening credit sequence in a theatrical cut of the POV of the car, that is all added. That was not part of the original TV broadcast. And I think is just like really immersive, sort of dropping you into the world. As much as that's the POV of his car, it's an interesting way to start in the perspective of a car on the road and get you into the headspace of a road movie and all of that. But then like the phone conversation with the wife is added for the theatrical, like a lot of that early stuff is added. So the length of that scene and how long it goes on makes a little more sense if you think

• 1:19:36Griffin Newman?

  you're watching a broadcast that's been going on for 30 minutes and this is the first time that the movie is kind of stopping long enough to like settle you in.

• 1:19:44Speaker 03

  The wife call I don't need. I definitely don't need that. I, I, everything, the less the better, right? Like, I don't want to know who's driving the truck.

• 1:19:52Griffin Newman?

  I just don't think that stuff, I think, to its credit, it's not too overstated.

• 1:19:56Speaker 03

  No, it's not.

• 1:19:57Griffin Newman?

  You can imagine the worst version of it.

• 1:19:58Speaker 03

  They had a fight or something.

• 1:19:59Griffin Newman?

  Well, and the fight is about like him not standing up enough. It's like this guy's kind of just a drip.

• 1:20:05Speaker 03

  It's a bit of a drip. It's also, there's stakes kinda in that he needs to be home in time because his parents are due at the house for dinner. So he's like expected to be home and he already has had a fight with his wife.

• 1:20:21Griffin Newman?

  I think his reaction to all this stuff characterizes him well. Like, it's not like, I don't think it's valuable like backstory shit.

• 1:20:28Speaker 03

  Right.

• 1:20:29Griffin Newman?

  Or like table setting in that way, but I do think you get a lot from seeing him react to some other shit before the truck really enters the picture of just like, this guy's just kind of. Kind of annoying. He's not a bad guy. I think it's key that it's like, this guy didn't like, this isn't the manifestation of some curse on him.

• 1:20:48David Sims?

  Right.

• 1:20:48Griffin Newman?

  This isn't his comeuppance.

• 1:20:49David Sims?

  He didn't run over a little toy truck.

• 1:20:51Griffin Newman?

  Right? Like Matheson wrote a lot of Twilight Zone, and that's what differentiates this from a Twilight Zone or something like that. That there isn't the supernatural aspect to it. This isn't like a cosmic balancing. It's more just giving you a sense of why this guy is particularly ill-equipped to deal with a situation like this.

• 1:21:10David Sims?

  Right.

• 1:21:10Griffin Newman?

  His personality defects are like a perfect stew to completely fall apart when face to face with this.

• 1:21:17David Sims?

  Right. It's scary because of the random act of violence.

• 1:21:23Griffin Newman?

  Sure.

• 1:21:25David Sims?

  Aspect to it.

• 1:21:26Griffin Newman?

  But also that it's like meaningless.

• 1:21:28David Sims?

  That.

• 1:21:28Griffin Newman?

  That's the scariest thing.

• 1:21:29David Sims?

  Beyond that, as a driver, and you're a driver too, Ben. Griffin's not a driver.

• 1:21:36Griffin Newman?

  Debatable.

• 1:21:37David Sims?

  Just the weird.

• 1:21:38Griffin Newman?

  I drive the conversation.

• 1:21:39David Sims?

  Highway life.

• 1:21:40Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, and I drive the conversation.

• 1:21:41David Sims?

  Yeah, that's right. And we're all kind of surfing the information superhighway.

• 1:21:46Griffin Newman?

  This is true.

• 1:21:48David Sims?

  Sometimes I wish they'd put a speed limit on that thing.

• 1:21:50Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:51David Sims?

  You know what I'm saying?

• 1:21:52Griffin Newman?

  Right, but that's not true. That's.

• 1:21:53David Sims?

  Maybe do some paving.

• 1:21:54Griffin Newman?

  I cite that as proof that I'm a surfer, not a driver.

• 1:21:58David Sims?

  But it is a highway.

• 1:21:59Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, but I'm surfing it.

• 1:22:01David Sims?

  You're right. It is weird that, right, they're like, we're gonna call it the web, the spider web.

• 1:22:06Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:06David Sims?

  And you surf it. Why do you surf? It doesn't matter.

• 1:22:09Griffin Newman?

  Do you think if you said surf the web to anyone under the age of 20, they'd be flummoxed? Is that like?

• 1:22:13David Sims?

  I think it would be like me being like, oh, hello, my baby. It's just like, they'd be like, I guess I know what that is, but you sound like

• 1:22:24Griffin Newman?

  See, I wonder if they.

• 1:22:25David Sims?

  A man on a penny bicycle.

• 1:22:29Griffin Newman?

  I wonder if they wouldn't even know what it was.

• 1:22:31David Sims?

  Maybe not.

• 1:22:32Griffin Newman?

  And I'm like, that was the entire way that the internet was talked about for 25 years.

• 1:22:36David Sims?

  The web. Like even that, if I was like, oh, did you find it on the web?

• 1:22:41Speaker 03

  People say web 3.0 though a lot.

• 1:22:44Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, you're right.

• 1:22:44Speaker 03

  That term's thrown around enough that I think people know.

• 1:22:47David Sims?

  Now, if I'm saying it to the good madam, she would know.

• 1:22:50Griffin Newman?

  Madame web.

• 1:22:51David Sims?

  Yeah, she would know.

• 1:22:52Griffin Newman?

  And we should, of course, acknowledge that her web connects us all.

• 1:22:55David Sims?

  And sometimes I do be surfing it, watching it, hopefully on Peacock.

• 1:22:59Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:23:00David Sims?

  I don't know what it's on.

• 1:23:01Griffin Newman?

  Holding an unopened Pepsi can.

• 1:23:03David Sims?

  With my red goggles. Um, is there Madame Web 2 this year?

• 1:23:09Griffin Newman?

  Madame Web 2.0?

• 1:23:10David Sims?

  Yeah, can they just?

• 1:23:13Griffin Newman?

  I mean, first of all, the title's right there for the taking. I'd say, look, we're recording this episode in November. It will come out in January.

• 1:23:20David Sims?

  Yep.

• 1:23:20Griffin Newman?

  I would say the green light on Madame Web 2.0 largely depends on whether or not it gets the Best Picture nomination. We're all in November predicting it will.

• 1:23:28David Sims?

  We're all assuming, right, it'll squeeze in there.

• 1:23:30Griffin Newman?

  But by the time it comes out in January, who knows how the fates have changed.

• 1:23:33David Sims?

  Right, maybe like more than 10 films actually were released in 2024. That would hurt it if it turns out that there are more than 10 movies eligible.

• 1:23:43Griffin Newman?

  Sony's crossing their fingers that the year is gonna close out at 9.

• 1:23:46David Sims?

  Maybe it'll be one of those years, no one releases any movies.

• 1:23:48Griffin Newman?

  No, I think, look, if I can be fair.

• 1:23:49David Sims?

  Guaranteed to not.

• 1:23:50Griffin Newman?

  And maybe I'll, maybe I'll sound foolish here. I'm making a bold prediction about the future. As far as I'm concerned, Sony has one of the 10 spots reserved. I think whether or not Madame Web makes it in is largely dependent on the response to Craven.

• 1:24:03David Sims?

  Right, if the trap is set.

• 1:24:04Griffin Newman?

  One of the five greatest trap artists in history. Of humanity.

• 1:24:10David Sims?

  So, as a driver, that was my point, right? There is a sort of, you know, like, there's the kind of like rules of the road, right? You know, and then when someone starts being aggro, or even just like crosses in front of you, or, you know, cuts you off in a weird way. Maybe they don't even mean to be aggro, but they're just doing whatever they're doing. It is kind of fundamentally creepier than, because you can't talk to them, right? You can beep your horn and you can go, hey asshole, and like shake your fist out the window or whatever. But like, you do start, if someone's being weird on the road, that immediate spiral of thoughts of like, what's going on with this car? Or truck, or whatever? And trucks are scary. Driving with a truck is scary.

• 1:24:55David Sims?

  If there's some big ass truck on the highway, I want to get away from it. I don't want to be near those things.

• 1:25:00Griffin Newman?

  Can I contribute some non-drivers thoughts to this conversation?

• 1:25:05David Sims?

  Yes.

• 1:25:05Griffin Newman?

  Everything you just said are high up on the list, all of them, high up reasons for why I am terrified at the idea of driving.

• 1:25:14David Sims?

  Yes.

• 1:25:15Griffin Newman?

  And I wonder how much seeing this movie at a young age also contributed to that? I don't think it was the formation of that.

• 1:25:21David Sims?

  There's lots of movies with cars.

• 1:25:23Griffin Newman?

  But like, this movie just depicts 10 things I think about a lot as like, why would I ever do that?

• 1:25:30David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 1:25:31Speaker 03

  I uh.

• 1:25:31David Sims?

  Want to get somewhere.

• 1:25:32Speaker 03

  I grew up in the, I think it's, yeah, the most densely populated state.

• 1:25:36David Sims?

  New Jersey's very densely populated.

• 1:25:38Griffin Newman?

  Garden State.

• 1:25:39Speaker 03

  It, it's really, uh, you know, major car culture, lots of traffic, lots of road rage. Growing up, my dad warned me.

• 1:25:50Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:25:50Speaker 03

  If someone is getting really crazy and, and out of sorts, do not fuck around.

• 1:25:55David Sims?

  Yeah, don't engage or just de-escalate or get out of there or whatever.

• 1:25:58Speaker 03

  And there's so many of those stories too of, uh, you know, a guy pulls a gun or a knife on someone. You know, when they, they both pull off the, the, the road and, and engage each other.

• 1:26:13David Sims?

  For me, it's like, I go through the hall and tunnel and smoking my cigar. And it's like the factories and then we're in Newark and there's like pizza land, right? And then it sort of starts to get more and more suburban.

• 1:26:26Griffin Newman?

  This happens after you woke up this morning.

• 1:26:27David Sims?

  Yeah, and then I, right, I go up my driveway.

• 1:26:30Griffin Newman?

  Got yourself a gun.

• 1:26:30David Sims?

  And it's kind of like this metaphor for like, you know, how the times they are a-changing even in like the modern crime world.

• 1:26:37Griffin Newman?

  Quick stop at the bottom bang.

• 1:26:38David Sims?

  Right, right, right.

• 1:26:39Griffin Newman?

  Um, the thing you're saying.

• 1:26:40David Sims?

  Ever been to Pizza Land?

• 1:26:42Speaker 03

  I haven't.

• 1:26:43David Sims?

  It exists. I think it's still there.

• 1:26:45Speaker 03

  I've been to the strip club.

• 1:26:47David Sims?

  You've been to the bottom bang, the bang. Did you disrespect the bang?

• 1:26:50Speaker 03

  I would never.

• 1:26:51David Sims?

  Good, okay, good.

• 1:26:52Speaker 03

  I would never, David.

• 1:26:53David Sims?

  He disrespected the bang!

• 1:26:55Griffin Newman?

  The thing you said, David, about having this sort of like emotional interaction, this visceral interaction with another vehicle, but the person being kind of anonymous, right? It's like so much of the road rage thing of like, if you pull up to someone to be equidistant to them, you want to fucking yell at them quickly. Or like Flash and the Bird. Part of that, I think, is the idea of being able to humanize them and being like, I'm angry at you a person. I need you to be a person. It is, what is so evocative in this movie, and I feel like Spielberg has said the thing he locked into when he read the story, after quickly leafing over some pictures of boobs, was that it's like fear of the unknown.

• 1:27:34David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 1:27:34Griffin Newman?

  And the thing, I think one of the smartest decisions this movie makes is like. There's a certain logic to the idea of maybe you don't show any part of the driver at all. Cause is what is the scariest thing having no glimpse of the person?

• 1:27:50David Sims?

  Right. It's just this machine.

• 1:27:52Griffin Newman?

  But he will give you these shots that the Dennis Weaver character wouldn't be able to see from inside, you know, the cab of the truck.

• 1:27:58David Sims?

  Right.

• 1:27:59Griffin Newman?

  Of his foot, of his arm, you know, of his hand on the wheel. It's always sort of fragmented, but it's like clear shots from almost the driver's POV. And I feel like you'd need to do that because the movie needs to underline like this is not supernatural.

• 1:28:14David Sims?

  Right.

• 1:28:14Griffin Newman?

  This is not like a monster. This is just some guy. And that's what makes it even scarier is his, his motivations are inscrutable. They are in, beyond inscrutable, unknowable. They are fundamentally unknowable. There is no rhyme or reason to this. Is he doing this for sport? Is he insane? Is there some backstory? You don't know what? It doesn't fucking matter. You're just placed in this guy's reality, which is why the fuck is this happening? And I don't even really have time to consider that because I'm just trying to survive.

• 1:28:44David Sims?

  But it's easy to figure out or to start spiraling over like, well, is it that, that I kind of passed him and hung my horn at him being a jerk? Is it that I'm this, you know, whatever city slicker in my red Plymouth? And he's like a salt of the earth rust. Uh, and he just has rust and flames. He's just moving.

• 1:29:04Griffin Newman?

  Sure.

• 1:29:04David Sims?

  Some rust and flammable flames.

• 1:29:06Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:29:06David Sims?

  I, I do have a picture of the driver. If you want to see him, they did, they did provide one picture of him. If you're interested in the picture I want to show you.

• 1:29:18David Sims?

  The picture I showed Griffin is, if you want to say Griffin.

• 1:29:21Griffin Newman?

  It's a Russell Crowe in the film Unhinged?

• 1:29:23David Sims?

  Right. Which is like the opposite of this movie.

• 1:29:26Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:29:26David Sims?

  Where it's like, what if that happened to you? But rather than it was this unknowable sort of question of like, what does this represent? Or who is doing this? It was like a large Russell Crowe going like, fuck you. I'm gonna kill you with my car the whole movie.

• 1:29:41Griffin Newman?

  Right. And he's ostensibly the hero.

• 1:29:43David Sims?

  You cut off the wrong guy, motherfucker.

• 1:29:45Griffin Newman?

  I do think that's one of, uh, uh, our friend, Richard Lawson's best jokes ever on the 10 years of this podcast. I believe it was in the witches episode where we were doing the box office game when theaters had not really reopened. Of what was in the top 10, the week that the witches went on HBO Max. And unhinged was number one because unhinged was basically.

• 1:30:04David Sims?

  Yes, Solstice Studios released it on like forty thousand screens.

• 1:30:08Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 1:30:08David Sims?

  There was nothing available.

• 1:30:10Griffin Newman?

  I think it beat Tenet by one week to be the first.

• 1:30:13David Sims?

  Yes, it was the first widely released film, yeah.

• 1:30:15Griffin Newman?

  And you said like unhinged, number one, two million dollars and Lawson said, which is a pretty good gross for a documentary.

• 1:30:22David Sims?

  Wahhh. Uh, no, he's not the hero. He's a villain.

• 1:30:27Griffin Newman?

  Is he? I've never seen that.

• 1:30:28David Sims?

  He's the, I've seen it. He's the protagonist, but he's a, he's a psychopath.

• 1:30:31Griffin Newman?

  Okay, it's a falling down type.

• 1:30:33David Sims?

  Yeah, it's like, what if you were, you, you know, were somewhat aggressive.

• 1:30:38Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:30:38David Sims?

  No, he's already crazy.

• 1:30:40Griffin Newman?

  Oh, okay.

• 1:30:40David Sims?

  Like with a guy behind the wheel of a car and then it turns out the guy you did that to was.

• 1:30:44Griffin Newman?

  Was Russell Crowe.

• 1:30:45David Sims?

  Right, roided up on rage, not on steroids.

• 1:30:48Griffin Newman?

  But who's that guy? Who's the guy he's chasing in the movie?

• 1:30:52David Sims?

  I wish I could remember without looking it up, but unfortunately I can't.

• 1:30:55Griffin Newman?

  Whoever this generation Gigande is.

• 1:30:59Griffin Newman?

  Here's the thing I wanna.

• 1:31:00David Sims?

  Karen Pistorius, that actress.

• 1:31:02Griffin Newman?

  Oh, interesting.

• 1:31:03David Sims?

  Slow West.

• 1:31:03Griffin Newman?

  Okay.

• 1:31:04David Sims?

  Yeah, I don't know.

• 1:31:05Griffin Newman?

  I wanna, I wanna state an intent here. Twenty twenty-five, I'm gonna really up the number of Gigande references I made.

• 1:31:11David Sims?

  Oh, get him up there.

• 1:31:13Griffin Newman?

  I think it's a perfect time to start reclaiming Cam Gigande.

• 1:31:17David Sims?

  Uh, do you wanna bring up the movie Bad Johnson?

• 1:31:20Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, that's a movie in which I think Nick Thune plays his penis.

• 1:31:24David Sims?

  Yes.

• 1:31:24Griffin Newman?

  It's a comedy in which Cam Gigande's penis comes to life and is played by comedian Nick Thune. These are fun names to say, Cam Gigande and Nick Thune in the penis comedy Bad Johnson.

• 1:31:35David Sims?

  Bad Johnson, known as Schlong Story in some markets.

• 1:31:38Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:31:39David Sims?

  You're telling me this film was in multiple markets? I don't know.

• 1:31:43Griffin Newman?

  There was a Deadline story recently announcing a Cam Gigande, Kellin Lutz movie and I texted David and said, this is like the Pacino De Niro heat team up of dog shit.

• 1:31:54David Sims?

  And what did I say? I can't remember.

• 1:31:57Griffin Newman?

  I think I said the dollar store version. You maybe said it was the penny store version.

• 1:32:04Griffin Newman?

  Anyway, 2025 is the year Zegun Day comes back.

• 1:32:06David Sims?

  He's back. Duel. He'd be good in a duel.

• 1:32:08Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, sure.

• 1:32:08David Sims?

  Let's do it.

• 1:32:09Speaker 03

  I wanted to ask, have you ever had a scary road rage incident?

• 1:32:15David Sims?

  Like, not, no, no, I would say no. I would, I've never had a thing where I'm like, oh, my God, this person is like, this is unsafe and this person is going to attack me.

• 1:32:24Griffin Newman?

  Have you been?

• 1:32:25David Sims?

  I've had like aggressive drivers fuck with me or yell at me or, you know, I've had shit like that.

• 1:32:28Speaker 03

  No, I have this one with the truck that has really, it still stands out to me as one of those things where I'm like, this was a close call for me.

• 1:32:37David Sims?

  Okay.

• 1:32:38Speaker 03

  I wasn't the driver, but I was in the car. We were coming back from Hartford, Connecticut. We went to a Dave Matthews Band concert.

• 1:32:46David Sims?

  So you were just riding high on being cool guys?

• 1:32:49Speaker 03

  We were probably, yeah, definitely one of the, it was one of the coolest moments for me in my life.

• 1:32:54Griffin Newman?

  Well, you're already on edge because if you're driving back from a Dave Matthews Band concert, there's always the risk that you're going to get hit with his shit truck.

• 1:33:05Griffin Newman?

  That's a real road risk. If you go and take an underpass, you might get DMB poo dumped all over.

• 1:33:15Speaker 03

  Has that become their legacy?

• 1:33:18David Sims?

  It's like.

• 1:33:19Griffin Newman?

  No, he's respectable artist, but that is one of the funniest things that's ever happened.

• 1:33:24David Sims?

  Anyway, go on.

• 1:33:26Speaker 03

  And we were on 95, we were kind of like heading basically towards the GWB, but at some point split off.

• 1:33:34David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 1:33:34Speaker 03

  Going towards New Jersey.

• 1:33:35David Sims?

  Right.

• 1:33:36Speaker 03

  And I don't know, maybe he pissed off this tractor trailer. The tractor trailer went into our lane and we almost swerved into that, like, you know, those like yellow plastic barrels that like.

• 1:33:50David Sims?

  Yes, the accident.

• 1:33:51Speaker 03

  Protect you from crashing.

• 1:33:53David Sims?

  Filled with water.

• 1:33:54Speaker 03

  Yes. We almost crashed into that truly. It was like the truck really almost led us to crash. And he was doing it on purpose, for sure. It was very scary.

• 1:34:05David Sims?

  This is a duel time kind of situation.

• 1:34:07Speaker 03

  Yeah. And we slammed on the brakes and it was very close to us getting into a terrible car accident because of this tractor trailer. And as it drove away, it honked.

• 1:34:17David Sims?

  Jeez.

• 1:34:18Speaker 03

  And I've gone by that intersection many times, coming back from New England. And I think about how I really could have gotten hurt.

• 1:34:25David Sims?

  Watch it, watch your, you know, backs out there, blinkies. The Mad Trucker reigns supreme.

• 1:34:32Griffin Newman?

  Here's a, here's another thing. I've, I pulled it up on my iPad because it is a tough, a, a slightly tough movie to talk through because it is so much just like.

• 1:34:41David Sims?

  Oh, wait, I'm sorry.

• 1:34:43Griffin Newman?

  Thank you.

• 1:34:50David Sims?

  I love how Ben futz for 40 minutes on his console.

• 1:34:54Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, but it was worth it.

• 1:34:55David Sims?

  That power.

• 1:34:55Griffin Newman?

  It paid off. Year 10, blank check. Year of miracles. Soundboard is back. Kim G. Gundy references out the butt. Early Spielberg. Jelly trilogy on Patreon. It's all happening. 2025, year of miracles.

• 1:35:15David Sims?

  I love it.

• 1:35:20Speaker 04

  Step into the world of power, loyalty, and luck. I'm gonna make him an offer he can't refuse. With family, cannolis, and spins mean everything. Now, you wanna get mixed up in the family business? Introducing The Godfather at chompacasino.com. Test your luck in the shadowy world of The Godfather Slots. Someday, I will call upon you to do a service for me. Play The Godfather now at chompacasino.com. Welcome to the family. No purchase necessary. VGW Group void where prohibited by law. 21+. Terms and conditions apply.

• 1:35:54Griffin Newman?

  I love the use of talk radio at the beginning of this film.

• 1:35:58David Sims?

  Sure. He's driving.

• 1:35:59Griffin Newman?

  They do drop it a little bit.

• 1:36:01David Sims?

  Yep.

• 1:36:02Griffin Newman?

  Uh, which I, I think is largely because Spielberg wants to be able to make the most out of silence, which he employs very well in this film. It's interesting, the, the, um, uh, John Williams documentary, he credits John Williams with teaching him the power of pulling back and living in silence. That he will often say to John Williams, like, I think this is a spot where we could use something. And Williams will be like, you might want no music under this. And Jaws was like an example of that where he was expecting Wild Wall score and Williams at certain points was like, you want nothing here? But he's already got such a good understanding of it in this one. You have such long stretches without him using the score and the score, and this is totally solid. I think like, pretty strong.

• 1:36:47David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 1:36:47Griffin Newman?

  Um, but the talk radio at the beginning is interesting because it feels like a smart way to keep dialogue going while not feeling the need to like over explain this guy. Which is to this movie's credit, that it's like not trying to pathologize him too much. I know what you're saying of like, the dialogue scenes added for the theatrical, push it a little more, where like, the less you know about this guy, the better. But I do think it's basically the right amount, save for the internal monologue shit.

• 1:37:16David Sims?

  I don't feel mad to learn a little bit. I just don't think you need it. But I also know that it's like, at that point, you're getting to be more like a 65 to 70 minute movie that's just car action.

• 1:37:28Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:37:29David Sims?

  And there's only so many ways to ramp up the tension of one car, one truck, you know? And so, yeah, no, it's a good movie. It's a really well constructed movie. It's like, it has the juice.

• 1:37:40Griffin Newman?

  I'm just like, sort of running through it here. So you have like, you know, the opening credits from the car, the his drive.

• 1:37:48David Sims?

  Yep.

• 1:37:49Griffin Newman?

  Uh, him listening to daytime radio, then he pulls into the gas station, the truck pulls out next, he only sees the boots.

• 1:37:55David Sims?

  For, if, he has the initial thing with the truck.

• 1:37:58Griffin Newman?

  Oh, sure.

• 1:37:58David Sims?

  Where he passes it and it roars past him and all that. And then, yes, then they're at the gas station, sees the boots, calls his wife.

• 1:38:04Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:38:05David Sims?

  Uh, they talk that out. The guy at the gas station, who's just a great, back in the day, man, you pull into a gas station.

• 1:38:11Griffin Newman?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:38:12David Sims?

  Say, fill her up with Ethel.

• 1:38:14Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:38:14David Sims?

  Ethel? Ethel Merman?

• 1:38:16Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:38:17David Sims?

  My first question. Two, can I, uh, the guy is just like, can I lift the fucking hood? Cause cars back in the day, I guess it's just like, I don't know, this thing could explode any second. Guy says, you need a new radiator hose? He's like, forget it. But that's Chekhov's radiator hose, right? That'll come up later.

• 1:38:33Griffin Newman?

  And you have like, a lot of the-

• 1:38:34David Sims?

  At the diner, he fucking orders an aspirin.

• 1:38:36Griffin Newman?

  Oh, sure.

• 1:38:37David Sims?

  He's just like, can I have an aspirin?

• 1:38:38Griffin Newman?

  This was in the Letterboxd log.

• 1:38:39David Sims?

  Yeah. It's just back in the day, you could just be like, my head hurts, cause it's the seventies and I'm drinking like.

• 1:38:44Griffin Newman?

  We used to be a proper country.

• 1:38:45David Sims?

  You know, Molten Lead or whatever.

• 1:38:46Griffin Newman?

  Aspirin was on the menu.

• 1:38:48David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 1:38:48Griffin Newman?

  It might have been gratis.

• 1:38:50David Sims?

  Yeah, it probably was.

• 1:38:50Griffin Newman?

  Asking for aspirin was like a cup of water. No, Spielberg, the phone conversation starts on him and then in like the foreground of the shot, a woman.

• 1:39:01David Sims?

  The laundromat, yeah.

• 1:39:02Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, you're like, oh, this, this space is also a laundromat. It does a good job in sort of that like taxi driver phone conversation way of just kind of like immediately sort of emasculating this guy. Or like decentralizing him, you're like, the movie isn't even that concerned with him. He's having a conversation to explain himself and the movie's like, yeah, but more important shit's going on. This, this, he's in this woman's way. She's trying to get her laundry out. But I just, I agree with Ben that I like that the conversation sets up like, okay, there's like a time crunch. His wife's already giving him the business about like, are you gonna make it home in time? He's acting like so beleaguered by everything, right? Like, my boss is asking me to drive out to meet, but also my wife's haranguing me about

• 1:39:48Griffin Newman?

  the idea of not coming home in time before I've even made the drive out.

• 1:39:51David Sims?

  Right.

• 1:39:52Griffin Newman?

  And also she's complaining about the fact that I didn't defend her enough at like a work party where it felt like she was being sexually harassed and he can't really defend himself. Like, you're just like, this guy is just kind of nothing. I, it is the thing I love about 70's shit where you watch this guy and you're like, I get that this movie is trying to code him as lame. If this guy walked into a bar today, you'd be like, that's the coolest looking guy I've ever seen in my life.

• 1:40:16David Sims?

  Now he looks cool. The glasses are cool, the stash.

• 1:40:19Griffin Newman?

  He looks like one of the sabotage cops.

• 1:40:20David Sims?

  Little bit, the glasses especially.

• 1:40:22Griffin Newman?

  Yeah. But you're like, this is a guy who's trying too hard to be hip. And then, right, then he's back on the road and then this is when shit really gets scaled up. Here's a thing I find interesting about Spielberg, and I get into this a little bit on our Jaws episode, which will come out in a couple of weeks.

• 1:40:43Griffin Newman?

  This, this is like an interesting time for film, right? This whole kind of like new Hollywood transition point.

• 1:40:49David Sims?

  Sure.

• 1:40:50Griffin Newman?

  Of studios being like, maybe we don't know what the fuck we're doing anymore.

• 1:40:53David Sims?

  Right, hey. Yeah, Coppola, you want to make the Rain people?

• 1:40:57Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 1:40:57David Sims?

  You know, yeah, exactly.

• 1:40:58Griffin Newman?

  It's the kind of shit that results in Scheinberg being like, I don't know, give Spielberg a five year contract. We don't fucking know anymore. The old models aren't working, right? And you look at this point in time and there's like a lot of the kind of like old master guys who are really struggling to keep up with the times. Figure out how to stay relevant, right?

• 1:41:17David Sims?

  Right.

• 1:41:17Griffin Newman?

  You have guys like Otto Preminger and like Billy Wilder, who are just like hitting a wall in the 60s. And are just like, I have not figured how to keep up.

• 1:41:27David Sims?

  Right.

• 1:41:28Griffin Newman?

  Someone like Lumet like transitions beautifully, right? Comes out of like 50s TV, understands how to become more relevant than ever in the 70s. But then this whole like era of, you know, the movie brats coming up. And even like, you know, Altman and Cassavetes, who were older and had already lived a lifetime to a certain extent. Both of those guys are obsessed with like kind of ripping down tradition in a lot of ways. They're like, this is all creaky, it's too staid. You need to make this feel like relevant and present. Then you have someone like Bogdanovich, who's like, we lost our way, we got to get back to the 40s. Bogdanovich's whole thing is like, we need to get more classical.

• 1:42:08David Sims?

  Right.

• 1:42:08Griffin Newman?

  In a certain way. Um, you know, like, and then Coppola is like still figuring out his shit at this point. Scorsese is figuring out his shit. They're both in this zone of like trying to make the movies they think they need to make to gain the cachet, to make the things they want to make. Versus Spielberg, who wanted to be an entertainer first and foremost. And is viewing any piece as like an opportunity to show his like skills.

• 1:42:34David Sims?

  Right. George Lucas wants to do a Cebalda movie.

• 1:42:37Griffin Newman?

  Of course.

• 1:42:38David Sims?

  He's working towards that.

• 1:42:39Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:42:39David Sims?

  Coppola wants to do Megalopolis. He's working towards that.

• 1:42:42Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 1:42:43David Sims?

  Now Platinum.

• 1:42:44Griffin Newman?

  Yes. Um, but Spielberg is this guy who like is able to pull from like the most exciting new things that are happening while also having this like encyclopedic knowledge of the entire history of cinema. Like, this is a movie of a guy using incredibly classical tools. He's not fighting against tradition. He's also not stuck in some pastiche.

• 1:43:07David Sims?

  Yeah, but he's right. He's definitely not tearing down, you know?

• 1:43:11Griffin Newman?

  But he's like a fascinating bridge point at an era where most people were kind of picking a side. I do think there was this sense, something's changing and which liner, you know?

• 1:43:23David Sims?

  And sort of stay the course. Yeah, sure.

• 1:43:26Griffin Newman?

  What I think was impactful about him being on set for Faces for a couple of days and being like, oh, there's maybe like a different performance style here.

• 1:43:33David Sims?

  But not being like, this is how I want to make movies, independent of the system.

• 1:43:39Griffin Newman?

  Right. But are there pieces of this I can take?

• 1:43:42David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 1:43:42Griffin Newman?

  And put in, you know? And like, a lot of his love of John Williams comes from him recognizing John Williams' work in early Altman movies. So you know he's paying attention to that stuff, you know? There's, I just, I think there's something.

• 1:43:57David Sims?

  You just watched the documentary. You know everything.

• 1:43:59Griffin Newman?

  But I also knew that, like, Williams was an Altman guy before he was a Spielberg guy. I mean, he made like several Mark Riedel movies, which I think is where Spielberg said he really clocked him. And then said, like, the second I have a budget to make a real movie, I'm hiring John Williams. But when he made Jaws, he used the images score as his temp track.

• 1:44:20David Sims?

  Is it a good score?

• 1:44:21Griffin Newman?

  The images score is like discordant, like, I mean, Images is like, you know, Altman's, like, repulsion.

• 1:44:28David Sims?

  It's a good movie.

• 1:44:29Griffin Newman?

  It's a great movie, but it's like.

• 1:44:30David Sims?

  I don't remember the score.

• 1:44:31Griffin Newman?

  A woman going crazy, mostly inside her own brain, inside her own house, and it's like clinging noise and like constant sounds.

• 1:44:39David Sims?

  Did the long goodbye score?

• 1:44:40Griffin Newman?

  Yeah. And I want to say, did he do Countdown? Did he do maybe like one of those other early, early ones before Altman really had his voice?

• 1:44:50David Sims?

  Not Countdown, not Cold Day in the Park.

• 1:44:54Griffin Newman?

  I feel like there are three Williams-Altman scores, but maybe I'm wrong about this.

• 1:44:58David Sims?

  I can only, I think there's only two.

• 1:45:00Griffin Newman?

  Okay, well, then I'm wrong about it.

• 1:45:02David Sims?

  Unless he did like California Split. Or something, but I don't think, no, anyway.

• 1:45:08David Sims?

  It just, I think it's those two.

• 1:45:09Griffin Newman?

  Okay. I mean, Williams was very close with Altman and Williams' first wife died filming California Split.

• 1:45:17David Sims?

  Huh.

• 1:45:17Griffin Newman?

  Which is like a weird fact I didn't know until I watched the documentary.

• 1:45:20David Sims?

  Died how?

• 1:45:21Griffin Newman?

  Of like a completely inexplicable brain hemorrhage. She was 41 years old. She plays like a barmaid in California Split. Yeah, it's a wild story. Anyway, my point is Spielberg is just this guy who's in this very interesting position at the right place in time to know how to synthesize all these different philosophies of what filmmaking could be, and he made them cohesive. And even in this movie, it's like, as you said, you can imagine the Gregory Peck version of this. That's the more obvious overstated version of what kind of performance exists in a movie that is mostly on a guy's face?

• 1:45:56Griffin Newman?

  A thriller of a guy being chased, right? And you could see the more obvious old school philosophy is you need a Charlton Heston-esque performance to overcome the size of the story.

• 1:46:07David Sims?

  Right.

• 1:46:07Griffin Newman?

  You need someone emoting out the ass.

• 1:46:09David Sims?

  Yeah, and right, and incredibly, not, not bad, but over the top.

• 1:46:13Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:46:13David Sims?

  Like, right, sort of screen dominating, like Gregory Peck.

• 1:46:17Griffin Newman?

  There's an effectiveness to that, right? But like, he's getting a more naturalistic performance out of Weaver. And the thing I love the most about this performance is when it starts Weaver is kind of doing this gritted teeth, nervy, tension, stress thing, right?

• 1:46:33David Sims?

  Yes, it feels like it's gonna be a movie about, like, they broke this guy.

• 1:46:36Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 1:46:37David Sims?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:46:37Griffin Newman?

  Which they do, but the way that is dramatized, I would argue, is the second half of the movie, his face largely goes slack. It's like at the halfway point, it's like this guy is so overtaxed now by the circumstance that he's not even emoting anxiety or tension outwardly. It's that thing where you're so exhausted that you just kind of go blank.

• 1:47:03David Sims?

  Yes, because also he's just like, I'm not gonna convince anyone that this is happening to me. It's not gonna stop.

• 1:47:08Griffin Newman?

  He's in pure survival.

• 1:47:10David Sims?

  Right. And I just have to, you know, I eventually, he's like, I just have to, to beat him.

• 1:47:15Griffin Newman?

  And he looks more panicked.

• 1:47:16David Sims?

  Kind of the most ingenious trap of all.

• 1:47:18Griffin Newman?

  And haunted because of that.

• 1:47:19David Sims?

  Right.

• 1:47:20Griffin Newman?

  But most people would think, oh, hey, Dennis, we just started two, and by the end of the movie, you're at, you're absolute biggest. And instead, he starts to numb down.

• 1:47:30David Sims?

  Yeah, which is fine, because the action is getting more intense. So you almost don't need him to be yelling and shaking his head.

• 1:47:38Griffin Newman?

  Reflective of reality.

• 1:47:39David Sims?

  Yes, that's an interesting point, Griffin.

• 1:47:41Griffin Newman?

  Thank you. Every once in a while, I have one.

• 1:47:43David Sims?

  I mostly think of this movie as just kind of like, well, actually, Ben.

• 1:47:49David Sims?

  A lot of that.

• 1:47:50Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:47:51David Sims?

  And I guess the first time I saw it, which may have been the only time I've seen it. I don't think I'd watched Duel since I was a teenager. I was even more like enraptured by cars, not in that I thought they were cool, but just there's like, I can't, you know, I, I can't imagine being in this scenario. I'm not driving yet.

• 1:48:09Griffin Newman?

  Oh, sure.

• 1:48:09David Sims?

  Like, there's something like fearsome about like, yeah, what do you do if some truck harasses you?

• 1:48:15Griffin Newman?

  Whereas I look at those shots where it's like the camera is mounted behind the rear wheels on the side. And I'm like, this is the most terrifying machine ever created. Why do we let people drive these?

• 1:48:24David Sims?

  Now, I'm just kind of like, yeah, I would just go to a diner and fucking chill out. I guess he tries to do that and it doesn't work, but he also picks a fight in the diner.

• 1:48:32Griffin Newman?

  But this is right. This is like the failing of this guy. I mean, there's, you understand why from how he is basically characterized in the first 30 minutes, that when he gets to the diner and he sees the truck pull up outside, or rather, the truck's already there, right?

• 1:48:48David Sims?

  Yes.

• 1:48:49Griffin Newman?

  So he pulls up.

• 1:48:50David Sims?

  Someone's here.

• 1:48:51Griffin Newman?

  Walks in and is like, one of these guys is the guy. He can't get fucking over it. It gets him so in his head to have to reason with the idea of this being a person, even if that person is still abstract.

• 1:49:04David Sims?

  Right.

• 1:49:05Griffin Newman?

  And then you just know he's never gonna get over like, so what do I do? I try to wait this guy out, but then maybe he's waiting for me. Or I get in my car and drive away and try to get a head start, but then he'll catch up to me. Like, at this point, the idea of the guy and how inexplicable he is has grown so much in his mind that it's like, he's never gonna get over this. Right? Like.

• 1:49:27David Sims?

  And this is the, the quote unquote, this is the supernatural element of it, too.

• 1:49:31Griffin Newman?

  He could drive for two hours and be like, is the guy eventually gonna?

• 1:49:33David Sims?

  We all accept that he cannot like practically shake this guy. Even if I'm like, yeah, check into a motel for the night. The truck needs to go where it's gonna go. We're all kinda like, no, the truck would just still be there.

• 1:49:45Griffin Newman?

  The truck would still be there. And he's trying to do the math of like, okay, my only move left is to make a direct plea to this guy, person to person. How do I talk to him in a way that stops him from following me? But you live in his anxiety of being like, do I try to tough guy him? Do I try to like, make an impassioned plea? Like, what do I do? And he can't fucking figure it out.

• 1:50:08David Sims?

  Right.

• 1:50:08Griffin Newman?

  He can't ID which guy it is, and he can't figure out the right way to talk to anyone. And the way he does it ultimately only shows how rattled he already is. Where it's like, there's no way this guy's shaking this off. He could get home safely tonight and he'd still be terrified that the truck would drive through his bedroom window. Like, at this point, he's fucked.

• 1:50:29David Sims?

  He stops at a gas station that has a bunch of snakes. Tries to call the cops there.

• 1:50:36Griffin Newman?

  Let's call it what it is. A gas station with a snake lady.

• 1:50:41David Sims?

  Yes, a snake lady. She's got a spider too, I think. Truck destroys the phone booth while he's trying to call the cops and spread snakes everywhere.

• 1:50:52Griffin Newman?

  Right. Best line of dialogue is the woman yelling, "My snakes, my snakes, my snakes."

• 1:50:57David Sims?

  Maybe.

• 1:50:58Griffin Newman?

  Queen of the creepies. Is that fair to say?

• 1:51:01David Sims?

  Because she's got snakes.

• 1:51:03Griffin Newman?

  Well, and a spider, as you said, I think that makes her queen of the creepies.

• 1:51:06Speaker 03

  Love that she's running that kind of roadside attraction.

• 1:51:11David Sims?

  Hey, aboard? Need gas? Wanna see some snakes? I've got them. Any money you wanna pay for this? Honestly, it was fine.

• 1:51:20Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:51:22David Sims?

  The most Wayne's World part of this movie, though.

• 1:51:24Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:51:25David Sims?

  Where it's like, no, it's not just that he runs through the phone booth while he's trying to call the cops. It's like, also, there's snakes.

• 1:51:32Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:51:35Speaker 03

  Oh, one thing I wanted to mention, because we just skipped over it, but I think it should be called that because it's so funny. Is when he gets to the diner, he like, kind of crashes into a fence.

• 1:51:44Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:51:45Speaker 03

  And causes enough of a commotion that the people in the diner notice. And at one point, the guy who works there asks him something like, what happened? And he's like, it was complicated. Or something to that effect. And the guy goes, it looked complicated. And he has that old timey movie patter. And it just like really plays for comedy. I loved that moment. It's very funny.

• 1:52:09Griffin Newman?

  Well, we also brushed over one of the best parts of the movie. I mean, he's like, uh, living in the shame of like accosting this guy at the gas station and being like held apart, right? Held back from him.

• 1:52:21Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:52:23Griffin Newman?

  And, uh, then he sees that the truck is pulling off. He tries to run after it and like, what are you even doing?

• 1:52:30Speaker 03

  Right. What will happen?

• 1:52:31Griffin Newman?

  Right. Then he goes back to his car and he comes across the stopped school bus. Which is just an ingenious plot piece. Of like, they're asking him to help push the school bus.

• 1:52:43Speaker 03

  And what are you gonna do? Not, you know, help a stuck school bus?

• 1:52:47Griffin Newman?

  And as far as he knows, the truck's gotten a major head start. It's ahead of him. But he's so fucking panicked of like, should I stop moving? Can I help them? What's going on here? And then the truck comes back into view. And it's sort of this feeling of like, is the truck gonna kill the school bus?

• 1:53:05Speaker 03

  Right.

• 1:53:05Griffin Newman?

  Is it gonna go after the school bus? Is it that evil? Or is it just about him? And, and there's like great Spielberg editing of him getting increasingly anxious by the noise of the children. Just like completely meaningless innocuous children, like laughing and playing and yelling shit. That to him is just driving him insane.

• 1:53:27Speaker 03

  That is added, right? That's part of the...

• 1:53:30Griffin Newman?

  The whole school bus sequence?

• 1:53:31Speaker 03

  Apparently the added stuff.

• 1:53:34David Sims?

  According to what I'm reading here.

• 1:53:35Griffin Newman?

  Opening credits, the phone call with the wife.

• 1:53:37David Sims?

  Um, is the call with the wife, the school bus, and then some of the railroad crossing stuff.

• 1:53:42Griffin Newman?

  Okay. Yeah. I mean, the school bus, I think is incredible.

• 1:53:45David Sims?

  It is good. So maybe, yeah, maybe I should swing back to pro theatrical cut.

• 1:53:49Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:53:50Speaker 03

  God, the train incident is so scary.

• 1:53:52David Sims?

  Yeah, that's right after the school bus.

• 1:53:54Griffin Newman?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:53:54David Sims?

  Another thing that, again, you're just sort of scared of as like a new driver, where you're like, I can just like drive across the railroad?

• 1:54:02Griffin Newman?

  There's just a lot.

• 1:54:02David Sims?

  That's allowed? And there's just, right, like a little wooden fence stopping me?

• 1:54:06Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:54:07David Sims?

  It is crazy.

• 1:54:08Griffin Newman?

  But my favorite thing is like, he sees the truck pulling back, right? And he's like, fuck, I gotta go. I can't help the bus anymore.

• 1:54:14David Sims?

  Right.

• 1:54:14Griffin Newman?

  And they're like, what? He's, I'm gonna die. He looks like a coward. He runs off. He's cowering in fear. And then the truck comes up behind the bus and helps the bus.

• 1:54:23David Sims?

  Right.

• 1:54:24Griffin Newman?

  Like, he is so fucking unnerved. That the bus big times him just to make him feel even worse about himself. And then sets on its way. And now it's like, now my sights are back set on you. And then it goes straight to the train sequence.

• 1:54:38David Sims?

  Yeah, the train sequence is right after.

• 1:54:40Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:54:40David Sims?

  Which is, um, you know, uh, the train, the truck tries to push him in front of a train, I guess is the best way to put it.

• 1:54:47Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:54:48David Sims?

  And then that's when he tries to slow down and everyone's pissed off at him. And it's like, it doesn't matter. The truck just reappears over and over and over again. And then it's the snake lady. Yes.

• 1:54:59Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:54:59David Sims?

  Yes. Uh, and then it's the old people who he tries to talk to. Very Spielberg-y. Apparently he used that couple again in Close Encounters.

• 1:55:08Griffin Newman?

  Okay.

• 1:55:08David Sims?

  Um.

• 1:55:09Griffin Newman?

  But it's just, right, it's a great way of showing like, this guy can't interact with human beings anymore.

• 1:55:14David Sims?

  Right.

• 1:55:15Griffin Newman?

  Him asking for help seems suspicious now because he's been like wound up so thoroughly up by this.

• 1:55:21David Sims?

  If anyone approached me like a rest stop and was like, hey, I know this is gonna sound weird, but this one truck keeps appearing and harassing me.

• 1:55:28Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:55:28David Sims?

  I would just be like, you sound crazy. And what am I supposed to do about that?

• 1:55:32Griffin Newman?

  Right. Except he's saying that with the energy of, you gotta go, police!

• 1:55:37David Sims?

  The truck's trying to kill me. If he called the cops and was like, hey, there's a brown truck.

• 1:55:41Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 1:55:41David Sims?

  They'd be like, okay, anything else? I'll give you money.

• 1:55:47Griffin Newman?

  But then it's like, they see the truck come and the truck is more antagonistic towards the old couple in a way where they're also freaked out by it, but also like, we're, we gotta look out for ourselves.

• 1:55:57David Sims?

  Yeah, we gotta, we don't want any trouble. Right.

• 1:56:01David Sims?

  And then he, uh, well, there's the part, then his radiator hose breaks as predicted.

• 1:56:08Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:56:08David Sims?

  He has to coast down the hill.

• 1:56:12David Sims?

  And, uh, almost gets crushed there. And then you have the sort of final showdown.

• 1:56:18Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:56:18David Sims?

  Where he, uh, laces traps.

• 1:56:20Griffin Newman?

  Sets the ultimate trap.

• 1:56:21Speaker 03

  And we should just say too, cause it's so ingenious, the way this story unfolds, that, that moment in the journey is the uphill moment where if his car didn't have issues in that moment, he would be able to get away. Because the tractor trailer is not going to be able to travel up the steep incline as quickly as the car. So that really would be his moment normally to actually get away. But of course it starts overheating and he's now pushing it to the limit of it. I mean, that's a moment where you're like, oh boy, this guy is ready to like, just fucking scrap this car, like to save his life.

• 1:57:04Griffin Newman?

  There's an incredible Spielberg film language thing where you have this wide shot, what feels like a wide shot of just the car cruising on the road. And it's after a section where he's been free of the truck for a while. Obviously not free of the anxiety.

• 1:57:20David Sims?

  No, but.

• 1:57:20Griffin Newman?

  But you haven't seen the truck for a bit.

• 1:57:22David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 1:57:22Griffin Newman?

  And then suddenly the car like skids in the middle of the row, road seemingly in response to nothing. And the camera pulls back really quickly. You realize you were zoomed in and the camera is actually placed under the carriage of the truck. And you're like seeing him skid and then the camera is revealing the thing that caused him to skid. And you're basically from the POV of like the wheels of the truck. And then the next shot is like this fast classical camera crane in from the sky into Dennis Weaver in the window as it's just like, I need to figure this out right now. Like it is the moment of like, I must set the ultimate trap of him deciding he needs to take things into his own hands.

• 1:58:05David Sims?

  Yeah, let's take out the, uh, let's, let's just assume the car is gone. Like, let's write off the fucking Plymouth at this point.

• 1:58:13Griffin Newman?

  But it's just like a perfect two shots of like a sort of perspective shift where you're like disoriented by, oh, fuck, what I'm seeing isn't what I thought I was seeing. The image is revealing to me what everyone's been reacting to or what he's been reacting to, followed by the shot that is wordlessly showing his gears running in his head and him like, basically throttling into a whole new.

• 1:58:38David Sims?

  And then he sets the ultimate trap.

• 1:58:39Griffin Newman?

  He sets the ultimate trap.

• 1:58:40David Sims?

  Essentially lets the, the trucker get the car. And goes, he goes down a canyon because we've just jumped out of the truck, out of the car.

• 1:58:50Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:58:51David Sims?

  As the truck's going down, he kind of makes this noise and.

• 1:58:56Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, exactly, exactly.

• 1:58:59David Sims?

  It's a little out of the mat and it's got this kind of roar to it. It's kind of cool.

• 1:59:03Griffin Newman?

  Ben will amp it up in post.

• 1:59:10Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:59:12David Sims?

  And, well, you know, there is of course the train horn.

• 1:59:18Griffin Newman?

  God, the discipline. The fact that he's been holding back on this, this entire time, that's what makes Ben Hansley a true artist.

• 1:59:28Griffin Newman?

  Much like Spielberg, he knows when he can just pull back. Let folks sit in the silence.

• 1:59:36David Sims?

  Oh, that one's distant. Where's that train? It's on its way to Chattanooga.

• 1:59:45Griffin Newman?

  No, he, he sacrifices his car.

• 1:59:48David Sims?

  Yes.

• 1:59:48Griffin Newman?

  And there's this beautiful slow motion where the truck doesn't explode, even though the whole movie been clocking this flammable.

• 1:59:53David Sims?

  It does say flammable. I think it's a solid note. Instead, it kind of just like bleeds out. You see blood.

• 1:59:59Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 2:00:00David Sims?

  So there's implication that the person died.

• 2:00:02Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 2:00:02David Sims?

  But it also just feels like the truck is dying.

• 2:00:04Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:00:05David Sims?

  And then kind of a Jaws-y ending.

• 2:00:08Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 2:00:09David Sims?

  I mean, so much of Jaws feels like an expansion of Duel, right? Just sort of like, simplify the monster, simplify the intent.

• 2:00:17Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:00:17David Sims?

  You know, it's just ordinary people in this crazy situation. And I think that's why when he's making Jaws, he's like, should I be making another monster movie, essentially, which is what this is?

• 2:00:25Griffin Newman?

  It's what's interesting about how his career went, where like Sugar Land is so good and ends up feeling kind of anomalous in his career.

• 2:00:33David Sims?

  It does. Like, what is like the Sugar Land Express? I guess we'll talk about that later.

• 2:00:38Griffin Newman?

  I kind of would contend nothing. I think there are movies where he's trying to recapture certain aspects of it.

• 2:00:44David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 2:00:45Griffin Newman?

  Like something like The Terminal is looking for some of the breeziness of it.

• 2:00:48David Sims?

  I wish it had found it.

• 2:00:50Griffin Newman?

  Right. But is him also doing it in this heightened, sort of like Capra, pastiche kind of way?

• 2:00:55David Sims?

  That movie was heightened? The Terminal?

• 2:00:57Griffin Newman?

  No, there's nothing quite like Sugar Land. And Sugar Land makes sense as this kind of dorky guy being like, shouldn't I make what all the other like 20-something filmmakers are making right now?

• 2:01:06David Sims?

  Well, I mean-

• 2:01:07Griffin Newman?

  These kind of personal, generational, youth movies.

• 2:01:10David Sims?

  But also car movies, right? Like Lucas with American Capini and De Palma did a car movie and, you know, like, right?

• 2:01:16Griffin Newman?

  Used cars. Like, all these guys started out making these sort of like youth through the prism of cars.

• 2:01:21David Sims?

  Yeah, exactly. Independence and-

• 2:01:23Griffin Newman?

  It's kind of similar to Badlands in certain ways. Like, it has all these things that make sense as like, what a lot of his contemporaries' first movies were.

• 2:01:32David Sims?

  Right.

• 2:01:33Griffin Newman?

  And then Jaws is like a gig.

• 2:01:35David Sims?

  I guess De Palma didn't make a car movie. To like wise guys. Uh, yeah, Jaws is a gig.

• 2:01:40Griffin Newman?

  Which makes sense that he gets it based on the success of this. Like, this is an incredible-

• 2:01:45David Sims?

  Based on his-

• 2:01:46Griffin Newman?

  Showreel to be like, I could direct Jaws. I could make the shark scary.

• 2:01:49David Sims?

  Right.

• 2:01:50Griffin Newman?

  But then that changes the course of his entire career.

• 2:01:52David Sims?

  Jaws? Um, sorry.

• 2:01:55Griffin Newman?

  No, like, once he's made Jaws, how is he not gonna make things at the absolute highest level after that? Like, he can't make like, I'm just gonna make another hangout movie.

• 2:02:03David Sims?

  Right, I'm not gonna make-

• 2:02:03Griffin Newman?

  But Sugar Land is kind of what was in fashion at that point in time.

• 2:02:07David Sims?

  Yes, this is somewhat shaggy, like, what's to be done with our youth and like, yeah, the open road and-

• 2:02:12Griffin Newman?

  It's just that his was not wildly successful.

• 2:02:15David Sims?

  Ending isn't gonna happen.

• 2:02:16Griffin Newman?

  So no one was begging him to make another movie like that, and his career veered.

• 2:02:20David Sims?

  It veered. But no, but Duel, just like him kinda just like, sitting at the top of the hill.

• 2:02:26Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:02:27David Sims?

  And just kinda like, taking a moment. It's kinda like in Jaws when they're just sort of paddling away.

• 2:02:31Griffin Newman?

  Laughing and crying, basically simultaneously.

• 2:02:33David Sims?

  Okay, alright.

• 2:02:35Griffin Newman?

  It's also, look, we discussed this a lot eight years ago, but it's why there were so many complaints about the second half of Spielberg's career, quote unquote, him not knowing how to end movies.

• 2:02:44David Sims?

  It's true.

• 2:02:44Griffin Newman?

  And I think it's because the first half, he would end movies, he would get out so quickly.

• 2:02:49David Sims?

  He would.

• 2:02:49Griffin Newman?

  He would reach the peak of the story and then just end. Like, he had a real skill set for just like, fucking, I don't need to wrap this up, you know? Uh, and yet it feels complete. Um, I mean, yeah, is the last shot of Duel, right, the credits basically roll over this shot of Dennis Weaver, sitting in the middle of the hill, throwing rocks as the sun sets behind him. And you're like, I have no idea how he gets home. Beyond that, what is this guy's mental state for the next day, week, month, year, rest of his life?

• 2:03:21David Sims?

  Back in a car again.

• 2:03:23Griffin Newman?

  Right. Like, I love movies that end with, and what the fuck does this guy do now? Where you've just watched one incident in a person's life, one period, one series of events, and the movie just ends and lets you sit with, and do they ever fucking get over this? And that's totally what this is. He just sits there throwing rocks in like a beautiful sunset shot, and then the movie fades to black. Duel, good shit.

• 2:03:49David Sims?

  The film was, uh, got a 20.9 Nielsen.

• 2:03:53Griffin Newman?

  Okay.

• 2:03:54David Sims?

  So, pretty good.

• 2:03:55Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:03:56David Sims?

  But was the 18th highest rated television movie of the year.

• 2:04:00Griffin Newman?

  Which means it only got like 80 million viewers.

• 2:04:02David Sims?

  That's what I'm saying. Even though one-third of America's television viewers watched Duel when it aired, that was basically seen as like, average.

• 2:04:09Griffin Newman?

  It was in the bottom fourth or fifth of that slot.

• 2:04:12David Sims?

  I actually think I have the TV listings. You wanna know the other stuff that was airing? I don't have much here.

• 2:04:18Griffin Newman?

  Let's, okay, give me what you got.

• 2:04:20David Sims?

  So on ABC.

• 2:04:21Griffin Newman?

  Uh huh. Oh, this is, we're not doing ratings game, we're doing like, what aired against it?

• 2:04:25David Sims?

  We can also do the ratings game for that year of television, but I'm just gonna tell you what.

• 2:04:28Griffin Newman?

  But give me this right now.

• 2:04:29David Sims?

  This aired between an episode of The Mod Squad.

• 2:04:32Griffin Newman?

  Okay.

• 2:04:32David Sims?

  Which was a very hot show about the youth in and of itself. And an episode of Marcus Welby M.D.

• 2:04:37Griffin Newman?

  Of course. A very hot show about the youth.

• 2:04:40David Sims?

  Hot, uh, medical drama. Um, and that's on ABC. Uh, CBS, it looks like, the only thing I'm seeing here is Hawaii 5-0, I'm not sure what else. And NBC had something called The Search for the Nile, which was a documentary.

• 2:04:56Griffin Newman?

  Okay, sure.

• 2:04:56David Sims?

  About, I guess, the people looking for the origins of the River Nile. Boring. Okay, so. Number one of the TV.

• 2:05:05Griffin Newman?

  In 1971. You're giving me the year.

• 2:05:08David Sims?

  Good. Is that, is that right? Is that what this is here? So it's 1971 TV ratings.

• 2:05:17Griffin Newman?

  Let's find out.

• 2:05:18David Sims?

  Let's find out. And it would be, it would be 70 to 71, right? Cause this era, yeah, okay. Yeah. Number one is, wow, a medical drama.

• 2:05:29Griffin Newman?

  Trapper John?

• 2:05:30David Sims?

  No, Marcus Welby, M.D.

• 2:05:32Griffin Newman?

  Oh, fuck, well.

• 2:05:33David Sims?

  With, uh.

• 2:05:34Griffin Newman?

  I guess this is too early for Trapper John. What the, of course it's too early for Trapper John.

• 2:05:38David Sims?

  Mash has barely come out.

• 2:05:40Griffin Newman?

  Mash has barely come out. The show hasn't started. Trapper John's gonna run off. The fuck am I thinking?

• 2:05:47Griffin Newman?

  If we ever do early Altman, we're gonna have to do all of Trapper John, M.D. on Patreon, right?

• 2:05:52David Sims?

  No.

• 2:05:52Griffin Newman?

  I know we're loathe to cover TV, but that just feels essential.

• 2:05:55David Sims?

  No. Marcus Welby I have never seen, but that is like, you're just classic boring ass TV show.

• 2:06:02Griffin Newman?

  I was gonna say.

• 2:06:03David Sims?

  Where it's like, it's about a family doctor who makes house calls.

• 2:06:06Griffin Newman?

  It's what I would use as shorthand to make fun of dumb TV from the 70s.

• 2:06:10David Sims?

  Where you're just like, this is all we've got. And they're like, yes.

• 2:06:14Griffin Newman?

  And the people love it.

• 2:06:17David Sims?

  Number two, however, is something I've fucking never heard of.

• 2:06:22Griffin Newman?

  Oh, wow.

• 2:06:23David Sims?

  It was a variety show.

• 2:06:24Griffin Newman?

  Okay. Shield of Ireland?

• 2:06:27David Sims?

  By a comedian, a black comedian. It was one of the first TV shows hosted by a.

• 2:06:35Griffin Newman?

  Well, it's not Flip Wilson.

• 2:06:36David Sims?

  It is the Flip Wilson show.

• 2:06:37Griffin Newman?

  You've never heard of the Flip Wilson show?

• 2:06:38David Sims?

  No.

• 2:06:39Griffin Newman?

  Flip Wilson was huge. Flip Wilson, like a massive pioneering figure. I was thrown off there because I knew Flip Wilson was one of the first, but I thought you would have heard of him.

• 2:06:50David Sims?

  I mean, I, I know him.

• 2:06:51Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:06:52David Sims?

  Like, I'm looking at Flip Wilson. I know this face.

• 2:06:55Griffin Newman?

  Sure. Yeah, no, Flip Wilson show is a big deal. Very funny comedic actor.

• 2:07:02David Sims?

  Number three at the box office is

• 2:07:06Griffin Newman?

  Not the box office.

• 2:07:07David Sims?

  At the TV ratings is a sitcom starring a sitcom legend, but it's her third sitcom.

• 2:07:14Griffin Newman?

  Is it Here's Lucy?

• 2:07:15David Sims?

  It's Here's Lucy.

• 2:07:17Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, Mike Carlton favorite.

• 2:07:18David Sims?

  After I Love Lucy and The Lucy Show, it was Lucille Ball's 70s sitcom, which ran for six seasons.

• 2:07:24Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, that's the thing. It was like, oh, Lucy's depressing final old age flop. And you were like, it ran six seasons. It was one of the five most popular shows on television. It's basically a show of, I think it's, is it her real children? Play her children on the show as her adult children?

• 2:07:40David Sims?

  Uh, yes, they do. Lucy Arnaz and Des Arnaz Jr. Yes.

• 2:07:43Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, and it's just her being like, ah, my kids won't leave me alone. She sounds like that.

• 2:07:49David Sims?

  Yeah, sure. Number four.

• 2:07:50Griffin Newman?

  I'm not exaggerating that much.

• 2:07:52David Sims?

  No, no, I mean, uh, number four is

• 2:07:56David Sims?

  a long-running TV, uh, crime show.

• 2:08:03Griffin Newman?

  It's not Matt.

• 2:08:03David Sims?

  Had kind of a gimmick.

• 2:08:04Griffin Newman?

  It's not Matlock?

• 2:08:05David Sims?

  No.

• 2:08:06Griffin Newman?

  It's not Dragon? Kind of a gimmick.

• 2:08:09David Sims?

  I mean, like, the guy, there's something up with the guy.

• 2:08:11Griffin Newman?

  Ironside?

• 2:08:11David Sims?

  Ironside.

• 2:08:12Griffin Newman?

  Okay, there we go.

• 2:08:13David Sims?

  Raymond Burr. What's up with them? He's in a wheelchair.

• 2:08:16Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:08:17David Sims?

  That was like, you know, it's like, it would always be like, okay, what's your show? And it's like, it's about a cop. And he's in a wheelchair, or, and he's from New Mexico, or, you know, like, there'd just be like, some little twist, right?

• 2:08:27Griffin Newman?

  It was the level of hook you needed. That's how low the bar was. Yeah.

• 2:08:30David Sims?

  Kojak, he fucking has a lollipop.

• 2:08:33Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, truly.

• 2:08:33David Sims?

  Who loves you, baby?

• 2:08:34Griffin Newman?

  This guy's bald. Yeah. What makes this cop different? He's got nice shoes.

• 2:08:40David Sims?

  Kojak, I've never seen an episode of Kojak.

• 2:08:42Griffin Newman?

  Detective shoes.

• 2:08:44David Sims?

  Kojak does seem fun.

• 2:08:45Griffin Newman?

  Kojak seems like a tremendous amount of fun. Uh, Vin Diesel has been threatening to make a Kojak movie for like 15 years.

• 2:08:52David Sims?

  He's bald.

• 2:08:52Griffin Newman?

  Correct.

• 2:08:53David Sims?

  Number five at the box office.

• 2:08:54Griffin Newman?

  If that ever happens, I will watch all of Kojak, obviously, so that I can suddenly be a Kojak expert in time to explain what Vin got right.

• 2:09:03Griffin Newman?

  But every time Vin's like talking about what's coming up, he's like, I'm gonna go back to Furia, 10 more Fast and Furious and then I'm finally making Kojak.

• 2:09:10David Sims?

  Glad he's making Furia.

• 2:09:13David Sims?

  Number five is the show that Dennis Weaver did 10 years on before like then doing Gunsmoke. Still in the top five. You've also got the ABC movie of the week, of which this was one.

• 2:09:23Griffin Newman?

  Sure.

• 2:09:23David Sims?

  You've got Hawaii Five O, as I mentioned. You have something called Medical Center.

• 2:09:28Griffin Newman?

  Perfect. What if there was a medical center?

• 2:09:30David Sims?

  Hospital show starring James Daly.

• 2:09:35David Sims?

  Who was of course Tine and Tim Daly's father.

• 2:09:37Griffin Newman?

  This is another installment of The Daily Show?

• 2:09:40David Sims?

  Correct. You have Bonanza, another Gunsmoke-esque, long-running Western show. Gunsmoke, Rawhide and Bonanza. I feel like it's just like, like when I was a kid, Rawhide would still be on TV sometimes because it has that great theme song. And then I would watch two minutes of it and I would be like, it feels illegal that this is on TV in the 90s. Like this is too boring for words.

• 2:09:59Griffin Newman?

  Was Bonanza the one that Altman did? Altman did a handful of episodes of one of them. And there's the great line that like you could tell which ones Altman directed because they didn't have a plot.

• 2:10:10David Sims?

  He did do Bonanzas.

• 2:10:12Griffin Newman?

  Bonanzas, right.

• 2:10:12David Sims?

  But Bonanza's just not, there was just like 500 episodes about.

• 2:10:15Griffin Newman?

  I've seen like one or two of Altman's Bonanzas and they are just like guys talking.

• 2:10:20David Sims?

  Sounds good.

• 2:10:20Griffin Newman?

  They're just like sort of a long campfire conversation.

• 2:10:23David Sims?

  Just have anything happen. It didn't matter. People just wanted to watch TV. It was still like kind of new.

• 2:10:28Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 2:10:28David Sims?

  Number 10 is the FBI, which I mostly think of from Once Upon a Time in Hollywood at this point. But that's one of those shows that's like, the FBI are great. This show is presented in partnership with the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

• 2:10:44David Sims?

  Boy, right?

• 2:10:45Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, correct.

• 2:10:46David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 2:10:47Griffin Newman?

  But, but knowing, you know what? Knowing that ABC TV movie of the week was the highest rated one is actually good context to know for this.

• 2:10:55David Sims?

  It was, it was hot stuff.

• 2:10:56Griffin Newman?

  Spielberg was getting a slot on the best TV movie rotation and yet his rated low for the season, but immediately caught the eye of the people who mattered.

• 2:11:07David Sims?

  This was its second season, I think.

• 2:11:11Griffin Newman?

  Okay.

• 2:11:11David Sims?

  Of whatever.

• 2:11:14David Sims?

  So, coming up, oh no, third season, sorry. Coming up on this show are other Steven Spielberg films.

• 2:11:24Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, several of the most successful, popular and acclaimed movies.

• 2:11:28David Sims?

  Some of them are well-known.

• 2:11:28Griffin Newman?

  In human history.

• 2:11:29David Sims?

  E.T., Jurassic Park, Close Encounters, Raiders of the Lost Ark. These are all movies he made.

• 2:11:35Griffin Newman?

  He made them.

• 2:11:36David Sims?

  And we'll be forced to talk about them.

• 2:11:38Griffin Newman?

  Forced, as David stifles a burp.

• 2:11:40David Sims?

  Yep, for your viewing entertainment, but next week is his, certainly probably still less, least seen film.

• 2:11:47Griffin Newman?

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:11:47David Sims?

  Right?

• 2:11:48Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, I think so.

• 2:11:49David Sims?

  I mean, it's not hard to watch The Sugarland Express, but, you know.

• 2:11:53Griffin Newman?

  But you know, as I've been telling people that we're doing this series, telling people in confidence, because it hasn't been officially announced, and friends go, "What's coming up?" And I go, "We're finally doing early Spielberg." They go, "Oh, man, Sugarland." I do feel like there's a growing Sugarland.

• 2:12:10David Sims?

  Because it's different.

• 2:12:11Griffin Newman?

  But I, because it's different.

• 2:12:13David Sims?

  You watch it and you're like, "This is interesting. He never quite did something like this again."

• 2:12:17Griffin Newman?

  And it's so good.

• 2:12:18David Sims?

  And it's good.

• 2:12:18Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:12:19David Sims?

  Yeah, spoiler alert, it's a really good movie.

• 2:12:20Griffin Newman?

  Sliding door. I don't bemoan the filmography we got out of him, but it's interesting to watch and just go like, "He could have just made 15 of these and just been a really good filmmaker, who someone like Pauline Kael hailed and never really had a commercial breakthrough."

• 2:12:34David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 2:12:35Griffin Newman?

  There is a, there is a big, you know, element of luck even involved for someone who perhaps innately is the most gifted filmmaker of all time. Like, I think just in terms of raw understanding of the relationship between images and story, he is, watching these early ones, it's just kind of mind-boggling. How fully formed he was out the gate.

• 2:12:57David Sims?

  And yet, I probably wouldn't put Duel in the top 20 Spielberg's.

• 2:13:01Griffin Newman?

  No, that only speaks to-

• 2:13:02David Sims?

  I might put it right outside, though.

• 2:13:03Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 2:13:04David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 2:13:04Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:13:04David Sims?

  Nah, it kind of fucks, though. Maybe it's number one.

• 2:13:08Griffin Newman?

  Interesting.

• 2:13:09David Sims?

  Nah, I'm joking. Or am I?

• 2:13:11Griffin Newman?

  Who knows?

• 2:13:12David Sims?

  Uh, anything else, Griffin? We're done. We did it. Duel.

• 2:13:16Griffin Newman?

  Blank check. Season 10. Year of miracles.

• 2:13:20David Sims?

  Wait, we're season 10 now?

• 2:13:21Griffin Newman?

  No, year 10.

• 2:13:22David Sims?

  Yeah, there you go.

• 2:13:23Griffin Newman?

  It's like, season, like, fucking 50?

• 2:13:25David Sims?

  Alright.

• 2:13:26Griffin Newman?

  We should do that. We should figure that out as well. What number season this is.

• 2:13:29David Sims?

  Someone figure that out. Not us.

• 2:13:31Griffin Newman?

  Through mini-series.

• 2:13:32David Sims?

  Yeah, let us know.

• 2:13:34Griffin Newman?

  Yeah. But yeah, Year of Miracles, I'm calling it, um, get ready for all bangers.

• 2:13:41David Sims?

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:13:41Griffin Newman?

  Uh, no complaints, all fun. Uh, yeah, I'm excited, excited to talk about these movies.

• 2:13:48David Sims?

  Yep.

• 2:13:49Griffin Newman?

  Look, there was a certain amount of strategy when I was like,

• 2:13:53Griffin Newman?

  is it kind of a bold move to just start off year 10 and finally settle the balance of Spielberg?

• 2:13:57David Sims?

  Yes.

• 2:13:57Griffin Newman?

  And your immediate response was, hm, those are the exact kind of movies I'm gonna be in the mood to re-watch with two recently born babies.

• 2:14:06David Sims?

  Yes.

• 2:14:06Griffin Newman?

  And I said, David? It was, it was part of the thinking.

• 2:14:10David Sims?

  Right.

• 2:14:10Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:14:13Griffin Newman?

  Well, I'm glad we're ending on a high note.

• 2:14:15David Sims?

  I don't know, I'm done. I'm done.

• 2:14:16Griffin Newman?

  Okay, I'm done too. Thank you all for listening.

• 2:14:19David Sims?

  I'm sitting on the top of the cliff throwing pebbles at the corpse of this episode.

• 2:14:21Griffin Newman?

  Thank you all for listening. The episode was a triumph.

• 2:14:24David Sims?

  Yeah, it was.

• 2:14:25Griffin Newman?

  Tune in next week for Sugarland Express. And as always...