Pod Insights Blank Check with Griffin & David The Color Purple with Kenice Mobley About this episode After inventing the Hollywood blockbuster with Jaws, creating the world’s most loveable alien with E. T., and resurrecting the classic adventure serial with the Indiana Jones franchise, of course the next logical step in Steven Spielberg’s career was to…adapt Alice Walker’s Pulitzer Prize winning novel about the survival and strength of queer black women in the American south? Duh! Obviously! Comedian Kenice Mobley joins us to talk about 1985’s truly baffling and seismically important The Color Purple in our latest episode. We want to thank Quincy Jones for discovering Oprah and producing this movie. We want to yell at Quincy Jones for his awful, treacly score.
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Transcript 37,822 words · 7 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:02 Griffin Newman? David.
0:03 David Sims? Yep.
0:03 Griffin Newman? We did a live show.
0:04 David Sims? Yeah, remember?
0:05 Griffin Newman? Ranking Scorsese at the Bell House in Brooklyn. We did the definitive power ranking of Martin Scorsese things.
0:12 David Sims? Uh, it was so fun. Uh, it was very silly.
0:15 Griffin Newman? Ben and Marie were with us and they're with us right now.
0:18 David Sims? Yeah, hey.
0:18 Speaker 02 Hey, everyone, or should I say, oh?
0:20 David Sims? Oh.
0:22 Griffin 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.
0:31 Speaker 03 So just a few more days.
0:33 David Sims? Yes.
0:33 Speaker 03 You can get it at dynasty.tv.
0:36 David Sims? Dynasty.tv.
0:37 Speaker 03 It's $20. We had a blast and the Spreadmaster really got to work.
0:43 David Sims? Oh, yeah. I was moving things around.
0:45 Griffin Newman? Laptop was on.
0:46 Speaker 02 I don't know if I'd have seen you that happy.
0:48 Griffin Newman? You were thrilled. You were like a pick and share.
0:50 David Sims? I was locked in.
0:51 Griffin Newman? Yeah, very locked in and you were funny.
0:53 David Sims? Thank you. You were funny. You were also funny.
0:56 Griffin Newman? Oh, thank you.
0:57 David Sims? And if you want to see like, you know, Griffin's shine box on camera, it's the only way to see it.
1:02 Griffin Newman? You might see me shine Marie's shoes.
1:04 David Sims? Exactly.
1:05 Speaker 02 Yeah, if you're into that sort of content.
1:07 Griffin Newman? If that gets you off.
1:09 Speaker 02 Okay.
1:10 Speaker 03 So once again, that's at dynasty.tv.
1:39 Griffin Newman? It's about life. It's about love. It's about podcasts. Now, this movie has a very thorough quotes page on IMDb and I looked through every one of them.
1:50 David Sims? You didn't think you could really nail any of those?
1:51 Griffin Newman? I failed to identify one that I could do without getting arrested.
1:55 Speaker 02 Cool.
1:56 Griffin Newman? I did a really thorough scan and I thought about it from a bunch of angles and I went, I don't think I should try one of these.
2:01 David Sims? I think the, the tagline for The Color Purple, which you just did from the, in my opinion, wonderful poster.
2:07 Griffin Newman? It's a very iconic poster.
2:09 David Sims? Yeah. It's about life, it's about love, it's about us. Is such a like fucking terrible, like, you know, stereotypical eighties movie tagline where you're just like, what does that mean? And then you're like, oh, so what's the movie about? And they're like, well, and you're, and then if someone described what The Color Purple was about to you, they'd be like, what do you mean it's about life? It's about love. It's about, I mean, sure, but that's not really setting me up for The Color Purple. That's all.
2:34 Griffin Newman? Look, I, I like this movie, but the other reason I thought it was, I, I'm gonna go with the tagline here is that being the tagline for this movie on this poster with all the other elements of what is being communicated in the poster is kind of the whole movie in a nutshell. Like this movie's weird cultural object status of just like, here's this seismic book, it wins all the awards, how are we gonna make this into the movie? Just get the best people in Hollywood and then try to sell this as like big tent entertainment. And decades of people being like, was that the right way to do this? Is like the goal to make it the biggest production you can?
3:10 David Sims? Well, it worked. This movie was a colossal hit.
3:12 Griffin Newman? That's, that's the thing. And I do think-
3:13 David Sims? It was a sort of, yeah, big seismic, everybody went to see it kind of movie, I feel like.
3:18 Griffin Newman? And it's, I had never seen it before. This was the first time watch for me. This was one of my only Spielberg blind spots. Uh, and I don't think I'd been avoiding it to any degree, but I feel like it has a very weird status in his career. And, uh, I just kept last night watching and going, it's so bizarre that Steven Spielberg made this.
3:39 David Sims? That is true.
3:39 Griffin Newman? And what's weird about it is in every single solitary second, it both so feels like a Steven Spielberg movie and doesn't at all.
3:48 David Sims? Wow, I just, I'm looking at the art. You wanna see it, Denise? Yes. For the, for the mini series.
3:53 Griffin Newman? This is the mini series. This is just, I'm just seeing this now for the first time.
3:57 David Sims? Yeah, it's good.
3:57 Griffin Newman? Yeah.
3:58 Speaker 03 I look fucking hot as Indiana Jones.
4:00 David Sims? Well, you know, a lot of people look hot with that hat on, but yeah.
4:03 Griffin Newman? You know what? And I want to commend Pat Reynolds for also not photoshopping any of us onto the cast of The Color Purple. Another great decision. And what, and what's going to be a very appropriate episode. This is Blank Check with Griffin and David. I'm Griffin.
4:18 David Sims? I'm David.
4:18 Griffin Newman? It's a podcast about filmographies, directors who have massive success early on in their careers, such as making Jaws, E.T., two Indiana Jones movies, and then are given a series of blank checks to make whatever crazy passion products they want. And sometimes they decide to adapt Alice Walker's.
4:35 David Sims? Best seller.
4:35 Griffin Newman? Totemic novel, The Color Purple.
4:37 David Sims? Who's our guest?
4:38 Griffin Newman? Me, yours on the films with Steve.
4:39 David Sims? Oh, sorry, sorry, sorry.
4:40 Griffin Newman? It's called Podrastic Cast.
4:43 David Sims? That's true. That's not new information.
4:45 Griffin Newman? And today we're talking about The Color Purple. Our guest is the great Canadian,
4:50 Griffin Newman? great comedian. I started combining your name and comedian.
4:54 Speaker 04 Please don't.
4:55 Griffin Newman? Kenes Mobley.
4:56 Speaker 04 Hi.
4:57 Griffin Newman? The Tonight Show.
4:58 Speaker 04 Yes.
4:58 Griffin Newman? The founder of Netflix.
5:00 Speaker 04 I am the founder of Netflix. Yes, we, I made it. I have money, so much money.
5:04 Griffin Newman? You did, your Tonight Show appearance was in the pandemic, right?
5:09 Speaker 04 It was.
5:09 Griffin Newman? It was the rooftop.
5:10 Speaker 04 It was the rooftop. It was 28 degrees outside.
5:13 Griffin Newman? Have you seen any of these, David or Ben? Kenes performs, Kenes is one of my favorite comedians.
5:18 Speaker 04 Wow. Oh, my God.
5:19 Griffin Newman? Uh, and we've known each other for a little while. We kind of overlap in circles. We'll run into each other. And it kept coming up. And every time I would cross paths with you, you're like, can I argue a point of something that you and David said on the podcast that drove me crazy? I start increasingly finding out that you are a listener.
5:38 Speaker 04 Yes.
5:38 Griffin Newman? Through your like objections to.
5:40 David Sims? How did we drive you crazy? Right. This is what I would.
5:42 Speaker 04 I can't remember. It's happened multiple times, but I.
5:45 Griffin Newman? You always found go like good episode.
5:46 Speaker 04 Yes.
5:47 Griffin Newman? But then sometimes you'll come in and be like, I have an axe to grind. What the fuck are you guys talking about?
5:51 Speaker 04 Uh, so I was not a listener of your podcast.
5:55 Griffin Newman? Uh huh.
5:55 Speaker 04 And then I dated three people in a row.
5:58 Griffin Newman? This is the thing you said when we met. You said. I need you to know I have a problem. I keep dating listeners of your podcast.
6:05 David Sims? Someone just told me that her friend confessed to her recently that she and her boyfriend put our podcast on the TV.
6:12 Speaker 04 What?
6:12 David Sims? Like, like, I guess through like YouTube or something like that, Spotify. And then like sit and listen to it. That's chilling.
6:20 Speaker 04 Chilling?
6:21 David Sims? And I was like, are they chilling? Do they like knit or cook or something? She's like, yeah, I assume they must do stuff. But I can't imagine just sort of sitting there.
6:29 Griffin Newman? That's horrible.
6:30 Speaker 04 It's so, it was so strange because I didn't, I wasn't aware of this podcast, but then so many people kept, it would come up on dates. And I'm like, what is this?
6:41 Griffin Newman? Sure.
6:41 Speaker 04 And so I started listening first for like a bit and then I became a fan. So I'm a fan of you guys.
6:48 Griffin Newman? Well, a fan of yours, during, during 2020, you got to do stand up on the Tonight Show, which is one of like the, the thing.
6:57 Speaker 04 It's the thing I had been working for, for my entire comedic career.
7:00 David Sims? Did Carson invite you over to the couch?
7:02 Speaker 04 Well, the dead Carson invited me. Yes, it was complicated.
7:08 Griffin Newman? Couple, couple of interesting wrinkles in Kenees's circumstances. One, Carson long dead. Secondly, no one was allowed to be indoors.
7:19 David Sims? What would Carson have made of all that? I don't know.
7:21 Griffin Newman? Kenees had this great-
7:22 David Sims? Do a show outside.
7:23 Griffin Newman? Weird stuff. Kenees had this great fucking Tonight Show set, the dream that happened on a rooftop in the winter.
7:32 Speaker 04 Yes. I was crying because like if it's cold, I start to, my eyes water.
7:36 David Sims? Your eyes water, yeah.
7:37 Speaker 04 And so I had to like constantly figure out ways to like wipe tears away from my face while still telling my jokes and like being filmed. It was a, it was an experience that I'll never forget.
7:48 Griffin Newman? But my memory is that it's like Fallon at home, right? Like in his cabin and he's like-
7:54 Speaker 04 Fallon's in studio. So like some people were allowed to be in studio.
7:57 Griffin Newman? Okay.
7:57 Speaker 04 The roof and Fallon are in studio.
7:59 Griffin Newman? Okay. So it was when he was back to in studio, but there was no audience.
8:03 Speaker 04 Yes.
8:03 Griffin Newman? Yes. And half the guests were Zoom.
8:05 Speaker 04 Yes.
8:06 Griffin Newman? And he's in studio and he goes like, and now Kenees Mobley, except instead of gesturing to his left, he gestures towards the roof and then it just cuts to the roof of 30 Rock.
8:17 David Sims? In, again, the winter.
8:19 Griffin Newman? The winter.
8:19 Speaker 04 The winter.
8:20 David Sims? Yon winter.
8:21 Speaker 04 Yes. It was fascinating.
8:23 David Sims? I will, with Carson, it would have been, Carson was in LA. So a rooftop.
8:26 Speaker 04 It would have been warm.
8:27 David Sims? Probably even in February or whatever.
8:30 Griffin Newman? Why'd that guy have to go and die and make your life more difficult?
8:33 David Sims? Well, first he retired and lived.
8:35 Speaker 04 It was about me.
8:36 Griffin Newman? Yes.
8:36 David Sims? Yeah, it was. Yes. I won't, I won't be there when she's performing. No, I'm retiring and dying.
8:42 Speaker 04 I mean, a few people did it outside, but somebody did it from like a drive-in in Texas. And that was like warm and he looked like he was happy. And then Mark Normand, I think, did it from the Staten Island Ferry and it was very strange.
8:55 David Sims? That, that seems like maybe too much business.
8:58 Griffin Newman? But also, under those circumstances, maybe you do wanna just like, be like, look, this is never gonna be normal.
9:03 Speaker 04 Yeah.
9:04 Griffin Newman? So why not try to do the weirdest version of it?
9:06 David Sims? Sure. That's why I got married in my backyard. I was like, I don't know when the things are gonna.
9:09 Speaker 04 You have a backyard?
9:10 David Sims? Thanks for the invite, by the way. Well, it was COVID. Are you kidding me? It was the whole, the efficient was on. No, it was, it was my parents-in-law's backyard, you know.
9:21 Speaker 04 What? You have access to grass and sky simultaneously?
9:24 David Sims? I didn't at the time. I lived in a fucking railroad. I had a roof. We had a roof, but it was one of those sort of building roofs.
9:31 Griffin Newman? On the rails, just to be clear. David, his wife, a bindle.
9:35 David Sims? Carson retired 92, died in 2005.
9:41 Speaker 04 Oh, wow. I thought he was dead way earlier.
9:43 David Sims? Just lazy. What is this?
9:44 Griffin Newman? This is what I mean.
9:45 David Sims? 13 years, just fucking cooling his heels?
9:47 Griffin Newman? This is my favorite thing to talk about.
9:48 David Sims? Carson?
9:49 Griffin Newman? Used to retire in this country.
9:50 Speaker 04 Oh, yeah.
9:51 David Sims? It's so true. Especially people in jobs that need turnover.
9:54 Griffin Newman? Yeah.
9:55 David Sims? That need a bit of freshening up.
9:57 Griffin Newman? So like, that's, that's a huge part of it, right? Just in general, that doesn't happen. This generation won't fucking let go of their positions.
10:02 Speaker 04 That's why Harrison Ford at 80 is Red Hulk or whatever.
10:05 Griffin Newman? This is the second part of it. You know who used to retire the hardest?
10:09 David Sims? It's so funny that he's Red Hulk.
10:12 Griffin Newman? Do you know who used to retire the hardest?
10:13 David Sims? Who used to retire the hardest?
10:14 Griffin Newman? The most famous people in the world.
10:16 David Sims? Sure. Right. Oh, yeah. They would be like, I'm done. Goodbye.
10:19 Griffin Newman? Right. You're like, oh, right. Audrey Hepburn, you know, I guess, well, no, well, no.
10:25 David Sims? Hepburn? Are you talking about Audrey Hepburn right now? Okay, so we're, we're about to do Always.
10:30 Griffin Newman? Right. That's your final movie.
10:32 David Sims? She died shortly after then. So she did not like, you know.
10:35 Griffin Newman? I guess she's not as good example.
10:37 Speaker 04 Did she do an Al Pacino phase where it was just like anything that paid her she was there?
10:41 Griffin Newman? This is the thing, none of those people fucking did that.
10:43 David Sims? No, I think that, you know, it was less of, there weren't movies like that as much, I guess, back then either, right? You couldn't just be like, hey, put me in any Bulgarian action movie that like is being made this year, right?
10:53 Griffin Newman? Okay, there are relevant threads within this, right? Like, this is a miniseries on the early films of Steven Spielberg, covering the first half of his career. His first big official professional directing job was the episode of The Night Gallery with Joan Crawford. And that was the example of like, that's like an old movie star who won't retire, right? And perhaps like didn't manage their finances enough to be able to retire slash needs the attention.
11:18 David Sims? Yeah, or they're just bored and they're.
11:20 Griffin Newman? But, but you'd end up there. You'd end up like, you're a very special guest star on television.
11:24 Speaker 04 That would be nice.
11:25 Griffin Newman? Right. Or you like have a sort of like poignant cameo in a thing, or you show up in a horror movie for five minutes to be like lend it some credibility, whatever, right? There wasn't the sort of like cash out of Red Hulk.
11:38 Speaker 04 Yes.
11:39 Griffin Newman? But there's also the thing.
11:40 Speaker 04 Isn't he doing like five movies right now?
11:42 David Sims? The Red Hulk thing is particularly galling.
11:46 Griffin Newman? We have maybe brought up Red Hulk in every episode of this miniseries.
11:49 David Sims? It's definitely come up before.
11:50 Griffin Newman? We can't get past it.
11:51 David Sims? Because it just keeps being so funny to me that they're like, there's a new Captain America movie. And I'm like, oh, what's it about? And they're like, there's a black Captain, Sam Wilson.
11:59 Speaker 04 Yeah.
11:59 David Sims? Is Captain America. I'm like, what's it about? What does he do? And they're like, I don't know. Harrison Ford will be Red Hulk.
12:04 Griffin Newman? Right.
12:05 David Sims? I'm like, what does Captain America do in the movie? And they're like, who?
12:08 Speaker 04 He's battling something. He's investigating or something.
12:12 David Sims? I don't know, he has wings. Anyway, the president is Harrison Ford.
12:15 Speaker 04 Soldier?
12:16 David Sims? I did watch every episode of it. Yes, that was early COVID too, where you were just like.
12:20 Speaker 04 We were watching everything.
12:21 David Sims? I'll throw it on. I'm writing, you know what I'm watching right now? Lord of the Rings, The Rings of Power, season two.
12:27 Speaker 04 Yikes.
12:28 David Sims? Because I have this kind of seven to 10 o'clock period where I'm not, I can't sleep. But that my, my twin babies.
12:37 David Sims? Are trying to sleep, but that's when they're gonna be the most rocky. They'll pop up, they'll, you know.
12:42 Griffin Newman? The most rock steady. Bebop and rock steady.
12:44 Speaker 05 Their names are Bebop and rock.
12:46 Speaker 04 Okay, thank you. I was like rock steady like Gwen Stefani or rock steady like the other. Okay, cool, cool. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm hip.
12:53 David Sims? So it's good to have a show that I don't, I don't mind too much if it's.
12:57 Speaker 04 Nice.
12:57 David Sims? Pause it or whatever. And Lord of the Rings, The Rings of Power is that show.
13:01 Speaker 04 It's very plausible.
13:02 David Sims? Have you seen?
13:03 Speaker 04 Yes, I watched all the first season.
13:04 David Sims? Mm hmm.
13:05 Speaker 04 And then I watched the first episode of the second season.
13:09 David Sims? And you were like, I'm finally, I'm, I'm, I'm beyond.
13:11 Speaker 04 When they, when we're following like black, like gunk, just rolling down a hill.
13:17 David Sims? That does happen.
13:18 Speaker 04 I think I was a little out on that.
13:20 David Sims? That does happen.
13:20 Speaker 05 Is that like young Sauron?
13:22 David Sims? You are, Ben, correct.
13:23 Speaker 04 Wow, how did you get that?
13:26 David Sims? You were doing a joke, but that's what that is.
13:28 Speaker 04 That's 100% it.
13:29 David Sims? They're like, Sauron died and then he was gunk for a while. Let's follow the gunk.
13:32 Speaker 04 Like millennia, millennia of gunk.
13:34 David Sims? The gunk?
13:35 Speaker 04 Yes, up a hill.
13:37 Griffin Newman? Did Ben write this show?
13:38 David Sims? Possibly. No, there's just, there's whole episodes where they're like, should we make more rings? And they're like, I don't know. And I'm like, I know you're going to.
13:45 Speaker 04 You're going to make rings.
13:46 David Sims? It's not.
13:47 Speaker 04 Answer other questions. No other questions answered. They sit and they think about making rings and that's the story.
13:53 David Sims? They have this like proto Gandalf where he's like, should I be Gandalf? And they're like, I don't know, man. It seems like a good idea. And he's like, I don't know how to do it. And they're like, well, he'll probably figure it out.
14:00 Speaker 04 Yeah.
14:01 David Sims? Seven or eight.
14:01 Griffin Newman? Is he literally Gandalf or is he a Gandalf type?
14:03 Speaker 04 He is literally Gandalf. He has visions of a staff or something.
14:08 Speaker 05 Oh, my God. Someday.
14:10 David Sims? It's truly.
14:10 Speaker 05 My hand feels so empty. What if I had something?
14:13 Speaker 04 Wow, did you write it?
14:14 David Sims? Off. It's just one of those things where people are like, oh, they're gonna do a prequel Lord of the Rings show. But like, you know, I know that there's a lot of Tolkien stuff that you can work with, but don't people kind of know, you know, the backstory enough to, how could that be interesting? Like, no, we'll make it interesting. And like, 18 hours in, I can tell you, they didn't pull it off.
14:32 Griffin Newman? They give him a really straight hat and there's a scene where he decides to bend it. So it troops.
14:37 Speaker 04 I think that would be like the season finale of season three.
14:40 David Sims? But nonetheless, I watch it.
14:41 Griffin Newman? Sure.
14:42 David Sims? I will give it that. Like, I do.
14:44 Speaker 04 They spent so much money on that.
14:45 David Sims? It's, it's an expensive, fairly, fairly handsome show.
14:49 Speaker 04 Yes.
14:49 David Sims? You know, and, uh, you know, anyway, uh, whatever. I can't even remember how we got on this topic.
14:55 Griffin Newman? People don't retire.
14:57 Speaker 04 Yes.
14:57 Griffin Newman? Harrison Ford is red.
14:58 Speaker 04 Yeah.
15:01 David Sims? Don't you think it's funny that they're like Captain America? What's it about?
15:04 Griffin Newman? I, I had a whole long argument with my grandmother, who's, who's a woman of, of an advanced age and gets very touchy when I get into conversations about like, people need to retire, right? And I'm talking about from a sociological aspect and she interprets it as you're saying that over a certain age, people don't have value anymore.
15:23 Speaker 04 Got it.
15:23 Griffin Newman? Which I constantly try to delineate, you know, but we had versions of this argument with Joe Biden, running for president, a thing that worked out really well for everybody.
15:30 Speaker 04 So well, we're excited about the future.
15:32 Griffin Newman? Totally. Um, but I was saying this about Harrison Ford and she's like, who are you to say he can't work anymore?
15:37 Speaker 04 He can work.
15:38 Griffin Newman? He still has value. And I'm like, I'm not saying that. I'm just saying, maybe he shouldn't make movies for nine year olds anymore.
15:43 Speaker 04 Yeah.
15:44 Griffin Newman? I'm like, I want him to do whatever makes him happy, but I'm like a little depressed that we can't let go of him playing Indiana Jones.
15:51 Speaker 04 Right?
15:51 Griffin Newman? I was having this conversation when the last one was coming out. Uh, and I'm like, that movie's trying to reckon with it, but it is just like, he seems very fulfilled by being on Shrinking. I'm not going to tell him he shouldn't play Red Hulk, but there is a larger aspect of like,
16:05 Speaker 04 But you're kind of telling him he shouldn't play Red Hulk.
16:07 Griffin Newman? Let's step back, like Red Hulk feels like this inflection point of like, we need to examine 10 different cultural phenomena that have led to this moment.
16:13 David Sims? That have led to Harrison, do you want to step, you know what I was about to say? Like it's beneath him to sort of step into a role, right? It's like, this was William Hurt and William Hurt type, but he stepped into Jack Ryan. He's like, you know what? He's just a guy who's just like, look, I was a carpenter and I just, I do the work. I show up, they tell me I'm Hulk, I go rah, and then I go home.
16:31 Speaker 04 I want to see him more in like, um, what lies beneath sized movies.
16:35 David Sims? That would be great. That would be great. What if you married Harrison Ford right now? I might be freaking, might be weird.
16:41 Griffin Newman? We've talked about it a bit in doing this series, but you're just like, wouldn't it be so cool to see him and Spielberg work together in any other context? You know?
16:50 David Sims? Like rather than just Indiana Jones, they never worked together in any other context. That's a true fact.
16:56 Griffin Newman? And they remained like close friends and they speak very lovingly of each other. And there was always like the rumor that he was, that he wanted him to play.
17:04 David Sims? I want you to direct six days, seven nights. Sorry. I don't know. Just doing a bit.
17:09 Griffin Newman? There were conflicting rumors about him and Lincoln.
17:12 David Sims? Him and Lincoln. I remember the rumors of him and Lincoln.
17:14 Griffin Newman? At some point, maybe being the Tommy Lee Jones part, but also maybe being Grant in a smaller role. And then there's been some like, kind of questioning of the story of David Lynch ending up in the Fableman's. That was suggested by Mark Harris, but Spielberg said he had a different actor in mind. And people have been like, would that have been Harrison Ford for one scene? Like, all of those are interesting possibilities. Obviously, we got two great performances from other people in that situation.
17:39 David Sims? And we're about to get a great performance from him in Captain America, something, something as Red Hulk, President Hulk. I just think it's funny that he's the president.
17:47 Griffin Newman? I think every part of it's funny.
17:49 David Sims? It's eight hats on hats.
17:50 Griffin Newman? Yeah.
17:51 David Sims? They're like, we've cast Harrison Ford. I'm like, that's okay. That's an upgrade, I guess. Or that's crazy. He'll be Red Hulk too. He's gonna be Red Hulk too. Okay. And he's the president as well.
17:59 Griffin Newman? Here's the funnier part.
18:00 David Sims? They elected him.
18:01 Griffin Newman? Yeah, we're gonna talk about the color purple. There's a lot to talk about. First, we have to talk about the color red. There, William Hurt, Academy Award winning actor, plays General Thunderbolt Ross like five times, six times over like 10, 12 years, right?
18:15 Speaker 04 A lot, a lot of times.
18:16 Griffin Newman? And is basically always at most the 10th most important character in the movie. And you're like, yeah, he's fine in these. He's like sturdy. They get a little dramatic use out of helping, having him set up larger government stakes or whatever, but he's not that important. And then William Hurt dies, and then they're like, here's the pitch for Captain America four. Maybe the biggest living historic movie star now plays him, shaves his mustache and turns into a monster. And the whole movie's about him.
18:43 Speaker 04 Yeah, they were like, we, okay, we was thinking, maybe we'll make a Marvel movie that's not Black Panther, but about a black Captain America. No. It is about the president. Be real. It's about the president. It's about Harrison Ford. Please come to this movie.
18:57 Griffin Newman? What if the president was a monster and he shaved his mustache?
18:59 David Sims? Just the sort of like, taking your whole dick out too, right? Of like, Harrison Ford's in it. I'm like, okay, he's Red Hulk. And I'm like, is there, are there any surprises left for me?
19:08 Speaker 04 None, none.
19:10 David Sims? You just saw my whole dick. The whole, that's my whole dick.
19:13 Griffin Newman? They tried to be cagey about it for so long, and now the trailer.
19:16 Speaker 04 They tried to die, just the tip, and they're like, ah, okay, we'll just hold it.
19:19 David Sims? He might get a little angry. And I'm like, oh, will he? They're like, he's Red Hulk. Look at him. Ah! He looks, his face looks like Harrison Ford. We made it look like Harrison Ford.
19:28 Griffin Newman? We made it look like Harrison Ford.
19:30 David Sims? Oh, boy. Anyway, why are we talking about this?
19:32 Griffin Newman? I don't know. The color purple.
19:33 Speaker 04 Retiring.
19:34 Griffin Newman? Retiring. Um, it is, uh, I don't, how do I frame this? There were times I was watching this movie. I felt this sense of sorrow of like, oh, this was a point in time where if a movie, if a book won the Pulitzer Prize.
19:54 David Sims? Sure, big bestselling book.
19:55 Griffin Newman? Studios would be like, well, obviously we have to turn this into a big, serious movie. There is a cultural obligation and the public is demanding it. There is interest in this.
20:05 David Sims? Right. This book came out three years before the movie. Like it was, it was, you know, book comes out in 82. By 83, it is an award-winning Pulitzer Prize-winning bestselling book. By 85, the film has been released, directed by one of the big filmmakers of the era. Like, you know, bang, bang, boom. What won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction last year? I don't know. I should know.
20:25 Speaker 04 I don't read as much as I should. I feel very guilty.
20:26 David Sims? Something called Night Watch, Historical Fiction During the American Civil War by Jane Anne Phillips? Someone turn this into a movie. Dwight Gardner called it sludgy.
20:36 Speaker 04 Sludgy?
20:37 Griffin Newman? I just, I just finally saw Nickel Boys, which will be, have been out for a while by the time this episode comes out, but just came out here pretty recently.
20:45 David Sims? Well, that which won the Pulitzer in 2020.
20:47 Griffin Newman? This is my point.
20:47 David Sims? In fact, that is the last Pulitzer winner for fiction that has been turned into a film.
20:51 Griffin Newman? Okay. So that film is phenomenal.
20:53 David Sims? Yeah, thank you.
20:54 Speaker 04 The book's great. I, I haven't watched the movie.
20:56 David Sims? Terrific film, book too.
20:58 Griffin Newman? Movie's terrific, but I was just like, having seen that in theaters in the same week that I watched Color Purple for the first time.
21:05 Speaker 04 Oh, man, you, you're real deep in Black pain.
21:07 Griffin Newman? Look, I'm not looking for a round of applause.
21:09 Speaker 04 Oh, I'm not giving it to you, but.
21:11 Griffin Newman? Thank you. We can agree on that. I don't deserve it. Don't give it.
21:17 Speaker 04 But yeah, you, you're real, um, black, black people be suffering.
21:20 Griffin Newman? A little bit, a little bit. And it's, it's just, you know, timing, chance, whatever. But it was like, interesting to see these two movies, like 40 years apart, right? In the same week and be like, here's this book that is like seismic and that like, Amazon and MGM are just like, you know what? We're going to give like a $25 million budget to someone who's never made a feature-length scripted film before, casting largely unknown actors with like a very daring, formal, like conceit.
21:49 Speaker 04 I've, I've heard about this conceit and I'm like, wow, I'm excited.
21:51 Griffin Newman? Incredible. But that speaks to, in that moment, them almost having the awareness of like, there is no big tent version of this. If we try to make the version of this that appeals to like multiplex mall audiences everywhere.
22:06 Griffin Newman? Like, it's not going to accomplish anything, right?
22:09 Speaker 04 It's like The Help, bro, like.
22:11 Griffin Newman? Totally.
22:11 Speaker 04 That's when it's like, hey, we need to make this a four quadrant thing.
22:16 Speaker 04 Okay, we gotta get the black people out the center of it. Okay, we get rid of that.
22:20 Griffin Newman? But even The Help is like, that's, that's more of a like, an emotional beat read, you know? It wasn't like, this is this like, humongous, immediately historic piece of literature that needs to be treated with respect. That also, in the history of Hollywood, was like, we have to serve two things at the same time. One, like, treat the material, but also, two, we have an obligation to like, win Best Picture, make a hundred million dollars. And Nickel Boys is just clearly like, why would we even attempt to do that?
22:49 David Sims? Just do an artistic film.
22:51 Griffin Newman? Right. And I think that everything that's interesting about Color Purple is it like, existing intention between those two things. You know, and like, being both better and worse than it should be and could be, at the same time?
23:07 David Sims? The really annoying thing is, when I'm looking at this Pulitzer list, All the Light We Cannot See, The Sympathizer, and The Underground Railroad, all turned into television shows.
23:15 Griffin Newman? Right. That's, that's now what more often happens.
23:17 David Sims? The Goldfinch was turned into a movie.
23:19 Speaker 04 Did anyone hear it?
23:20 David Sims? But a bad one. I saw it. I suffered through every second of that piece of shit. Yes?
23:25 Griffin Newman? But that's the other one I was thinking of in doing this sort of math in my head, where I pinned that in my mind, and I'm like, I feel like that was the last time that a book comes out, is a sensation, wins all the awards, and there's like, this feeding frenzy of like, which recent Best Picture director are we gonna get with 20 name actors?
23:41 David Sims? Before that, it's The Road.
23:43 Griffin Newman? Yeah.
23:43 David Sims? Which, and we're taking like, eight-year leaps.
23:46 Griffin Newman? The Road also was like, 10 years in development?
23:48 David Sims? Yeah, no, this is the thing. And there's a lot of these sort of bestsellers that became classics, Cavalier and Clay, Middlesex, that like-
23:56 Speaker 04 Middlesex was, was made into something?
23:58 Griffin Newman? No, no.
24:01 David Sims? What I'm saying is, people keep saying like, we're gonna turn that into like, an HBO series, or we, no, we're gonna make a movie of that, and then it just kind of gets lost in development.
24:09 Griffin Newman? All of those started this way, where it's like, it wins the award, and it's immediately like, X, Y, and Z have all signed on. To adapt this, here are the casting list, here are the this, and then it keeps getting redeveloped and it never happens.
24:20 Speaker 04 Hmm, okay. Cause they're like not, I feel like that's why they make Night Bitch, that's why they make Crazy Rich Asians. Like, hey, there are books that they're making and it's like, gonna make us more money, why would we do this?
24:30 Griffin Newman? Yes, yes, yes. There's like, there's less of this pressure to take a book that is important and try to figure out how to make it more functional as a broad movie. Whereas I think they're now like, if a book feels like a movie, make it into a movie. And if a book feels difficult to adapt, then maybe let's like, slow our horses and like rethink this.
24:55 Griffin Newman? David?
24:55 David Sims? Yes.
24:59 David Sims? Is that the Cine's cow?
25:01 Griffin Newman? The Cine's cow is back.
25:02 David Sims? Haven't heard from her in a while.
25:03 Griffin Newman? Yeah, she's reactivated because she's horny for chicken fingers.
25:08 David Sims? Okay.
25:09 Griffin Newman? And she's excited for the streaming debut of Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma.
25:13 David Sims? Wow.
25:14 Griffin Newman? The cow likes chicken.
25:16 David Sims? Remember cow and chicken? Let's look it up. While you tell the great listeners about the great stuff on movie.
25:22 Griffin Newman? Well, MUBI is a global film company bringing great cinema to the world and to you. Curating and elevating visionary filmmaking, all handpicked, always. That's what MUBI does. Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma, one of my favorite movies of the year.
25:36 David Sims? Absolutely.
25:37 Griffin Newman? You can feel the rush now at home. There's a hole at the bottom of the lake where the movies come from.
25:43 David Sims? That is a line in the movie.
25:44 Griffin Newman? In the new movie from Jane Schumpert on Past and Future Guest.
25:46 David Sims? Past and Future Guest, a great filmmaker, a great podcast guest, a great friend.
25:51 Griffin Newman? Yes.
25:53 David Sims? This movie rocks. It's got, of course, it stars Hannah Einbinder and Gillian Anderson.
25:57 Griffin Newman? Uh huh.
25:58 David Sims? Legends, and I tip my cap, but Zach Cherry.
26:00 Griffin Newman? Performances, friend of the show.
26:01 David Sims? Friend of the show Zach Cherry.
26:03 Griffin Newman? Zach Cherry.
26:04 David Sims? Also in it.
26:05 Griffin Newman? This is true.
26:06 David Sims? Such a cool movie. Won the Queer Pal 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.
26:16 Griffin Newman? Hannah Einbinder plays the filmmaker attempting to reboot the Camp Miasma franchise, trying to track down the original final girl from the first movie to, to make some sort of legacy sequel, who's played by Gillian Anderson, who lives at the summer camp.
26:30 David Sims? Yes. And you know, and then they hang out and it's regular.
26:35 Griffin Newman? What happened?
26:37 Griffin Newman? 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.
26:47 David 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.
26:59 Griffin Newman? They got so many great movies on there to watch, but worth it for 30 days for my asthma.
27:09 Griffin Newman? David?
27:09 David Sims? Yes?
27:10 Griffin 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.
27:31 David 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.
27:51 Griffin 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.
28:07 David 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 slash listen to Dracula.
28:41 Griffin Newman? David?
28:42 David Sims? Yes?
28:42 Griffin Newman? Ugh.
28:43 David Sims? Uh oh.
28:44 Griffin Newman? It's November.
28:45 David Sims? Ah!
28:47 Griffin Newman? And you know what that means, the old stereotype about November.
28:49 David Sims? Turkeys?
28:50 Griffin Newman? One long sprint to the finish line.
28:52 David Sims? Oh, of course.
28:53 Griffin 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.
29:02 David Sims? No, though maybe we should.
29:03 Griffin Newman? We might get there eventually.
29:04 David Sims? I can't remember. Big red one. We could call it the Big Red Podcast.
29:08 Griffin Newman? Listen, when things get complicated, not when life is easy, 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.
29:21 David 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.
29:28 Griffin Newman? And I'm awake.
29:29 David 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.
29:37 Griffin Newman? It's not just marketing. AG1 Next Gen is backed by four separate gold standard clinical trials, not weekend a study.
29:44 David Sims? Thank you for that.
29:45 Griffin 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.
29:57 David Sims? Um, yes, AG1, they've got now AG1 Pro.
30:01 Griffin Newman? For the professionals.
30:02 David Sims? Same daily drink now with a performance and recovery layer built in. So you've got five grams of Cre vitalis, a premium German-made creatine monohydrate, and one of the most studied compounds in sports science, plus CAHMB for muscle protection and zinc carnosine for gut support.
30:20 Griffin Newman? Thank God.
30:21 David Sims? Next Gen is the foundation. Pro adds what your body needs to recover.
30:25 Griffin 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.
30:33 David Sims? Yes. So for a limited time, visit drinkag1.com/check and get a free immune support bundle, including omega-3 fish oil and vitamin D3 plus K2 with your first subscription of AG1 Next Gen or AG1 Pro. That's drinkag1.com/check. And after checkout, be sure to let them know that Belank Check sent you.
31:03 David Sims? Anyway, The Color Purple is the movie we're here to discuss today. So Griffin had never seen it. Ben, had you ever seen it?
31:09 Griffin Newman? No.
31:10 David Sims? I'd seen it. Had you ever seen it?
31:12 Speaker 04 Okay.
31:12 David Sims? Oh, my goodness.
31:13 Speaker 04 Just, just, just, just let me finish. Okay, so I am a black woman from the South. It was, I was raised in the black church, went to a black school. I was certain that I had grown up with this film, that I had seen it so many times. There are cultural touchpoints. It's in like rap music, like it's, it's everywhere. So I was like, when you were like, hey, Color Purple, I was like, yeah, I got that. I watched the movie. I've never seen that movie in my life.
31:39 Griffin Newman? Wild.
31:40 Speaker 04 I, I had not seen it and I had to be like, oh, fuck.
31:44 David Sims? Had you seen like the, the musical or the, the musical movie or any of that, like any of the later Color Purple stuff? Had you read the book?
31:51 Speaker 04 I read the book yesterday.
31:52 David Sims? I'm the only, oh, so now I, I, I read the book. I read the book long ago.
31:56 Speaker 04 Oh, you're cooler than me?
31:56 David Sims? Uh, pretty cool of me to have read a famous bestseller, The Color Purple, which I'm pretty sure I got on Kindle Unlimited in
32:04 Griffin Newman? Wow.
32:04 David Sims? Covid when I was just like, I gotta read something. But yes, I have read The Color Purple. Okay. So you'd never seen it. You had never seen The Color Purple. Um, congratulations on watching it. What'd you think?
32:13 Speaker 04 I am so worried about my street cred right now. Um,
32:18 David Sims? Only the coolest people, you know?
32:20 Speaker 04 No, it's like my black street cred. Okay. Like I could get like cards could be revoked. You don't understand. It's like a whole thing. And so like, yes, this movie important. Yes, it has some of the people who have defined blackness on camera for the last 50 years. I think it is important. Quincy Jones did the movie, like the music for it and everything. Super important.
32:49 Griffin Newman? And like produced it and was by all accounts, the one who really got Spielberg to sign on.
32:54 David Sims? Yeah. I mean, we'll talk about it.
32:55 Griffin Newman? Yeah.
32:55 Speaker 04 I hate the music for this so much. It like
32:59 David Sims? The music is so bad.
32:59 Speaker 04 And I was like, what the fuck is this? Like, why are you shooting child rape like it's a day in the park?
33:07 David Sims? Well, this is what we're going to talk about. This is the weird tonal thing with this movie. Absolutely.
33:12 Speaker 04 Yeah.
33:12 David Sims? We'll talk about it.
33:13 Speaker 04 Thank you. I just. I feel like part of me has to say that I love this movie.
33:19 Griffin Newman? You don't have to say anything.
33:20 Speaker 04 Okay, thank you. You definitely don't have to say anything. But I, I definitely felt like the book had more interesting things to say about the black community, our relationship with God, parents and women specifically, and they took a lot of those edges off. Um, and then had this ending of coming to Jesus or something. And I was like, please don't do, no, no.
33:46 David Sims? I, as an adaptation of the book, it's, it's a, it's a huge misfire. I think, I think all adaptations of the book are actually, uh, I think the musical and the later musical movie also are bad adaptations of the book. Or those are kind, they're kind of just like adaptations of this movie in a weird way. Like it's like, uh, because the book is very hard to deal with.
34:06 Griffin Newman? Weird like cultural reputation of the movie as an idea, which is sort of so different than what the thing is.
34:12 Speaker 04 I watched it and I was like, oh yeah, cause like this is an important thing. The first time, like a lot of like, oh wow, it's about black women. We never get to do anything. And then, oh, so we just getting beat down and, and assaulted. Okay.
34:25 David Sims? Well, the, look, the whole thing with the color purple though, the movie is what you're saying of like, why, why was it made by Steven Spielberg? And like, why?
34:34 Speaker 04 Great question.
34:34 David Sims? Yeah. Why, you know?
34:36 Speaker 04 Well, who else would have they gotten to, to do it at the time?
34:38 David Sims? That's, that's what we have to talk about is right. It's like, right. Who was, who was the project sort of, what we, and we could, I think Quincy Jones sought out Steven Spielberg in this sort of like, that gives it the biggest seal of approval. And he's the biggest director there is.
34:51 Speaker 03 Isn't Oprah though, kind of also very involved?
34:54 David Sims? No, she's a nobody. She's a fucking nobody for this one. She's like a local TV host.
34:59 Griffin Newman? Like Oprah becomes like one of the main creative forces on both productions of the musical on Broadway and the musical movie.
35:06 Speaker 04 And Oprah, like she becomes Oprah.
35:07 Griffin Newman? Right.
35:08 Speaker 03 But she wasn't Oprah at this moment.
35:10 David Sims? I mean, she was a local TV host. Like she was the start of Oprah, but she was not a mogul.
35:15 Griffin Newman? With zero acting credits, right?
35:16 David Sims? I think, yeah. I mean, and that's the, the cast of this movie, you have like, is a lot of people that you're like, well, these are famous people who were not really well known at the time. Like Danny Glover was like a theater actor. You know, these are not-
35:28 Griffin Newman? It's just like this movie having lightning in a bottle. Danny Glover, Whoopi Goldberg, Oprah, basically not existing prior to this moment, gives it a power that is kind of like never going to disappear.
35:40 David Sims? So this is, you know, it's an important movie. It's important that a movie like this was a blockbuster, launched careers, you know, sort of displayed an experience that wasn't in movies much, but it feels kind of like first steps.
35:55 Speaker 04 Yes.
35:56 David Sims? On a lot of this stuff.
35:57 Speaker 04 Very first step.
35:58 David Sims? Sort of very, it's very tentative.
36:00 Speaker 04 Being present is a step.
36:01 David Sims? I think Spielberg himself would admit like he was somewhat cowardly in how he made the movie and like
36:07 Speaker 04 Yeah.
36:08 David Sims? Sanded out, sent off the edge.
36:09 Griffin Newman? Right into the deep end of this, because this is the thing I really like go back and forth on with this film that I think is interesting. Okay. Uh, I don't say interesting in a good way. I'm like, part of what makes it a fascinating, like a piece of work to dig into is it feels like just, you know, we'll dig into this more, but like, there is almost the chess move, it feels like, where when you read Alice Walker, be like, do I want to like sell these rights to anyone? Do I trust anyone to make a movie of the color?
36:39 David Sims? Right. Could Hollywood make a good movie of this?
36:41 Griffin Newman? Right. And then she's sort of like convinced by people in her, in her circle of like, there's a responsibility to like, put this on a bigger platform. There's like an opportunity here to make a movie of this size starring women of color, which doesn't really exist in the studio system. Like there are all the values of this and Quincy Jones comes in Quincy Jones is this figure for decades, who is like deeply invested in like black Hollywood and opportunities and like trying to create industries and this like that. And it feels like he made this sort of strategic chess move of like, A, if I get Spielberg to direct this, that gives it the biggest stamp of approval. But B, does that also kind of protect it? Like he is the one guy with enough cachet where if he says he wants to do it this way, they won't push back on him, which is interesting as a strategic move.
37:26 Griffin Newman? Right. Then the flip side of that is all the stuff that you're saying that Steven Spielberg doesn't represent well in this movie, feels like to David's point, kind of cowardice of him being like, I know I don't have a handle on that.
37:38 David Sims? I can't hold that off.
37:38 Griffin Newman? So there's this weird thing of being like, you want to give him the credit for knowing that he would have fucked that up. But yet, if you are the one adapting this material and you're not willing to touch that, then maybe you shouldn't be directing this movie.
37:53 Speaker 04 Has he ever directed anything with even a hint of gay in it?
37:57 Griffin Newman? Here, this is a, a theory that David and I have stood on for a long time. I threw out years and years ago, uh, and that I feel like comes up a lot on the podcast, but when Steven Spielberg was the head of the jury at the Cannes Film Festival, he gave the Palme d'Or to Blue is the Warmest Color.
38:14 David Sims? Him in the jury, but yeah.
38:15 Griffin Newman? But he was the head of the jury.
38:16 David Sims? He was the head of the jury.
38:16 Griffin Newman? Yeah, okay.
38:17 David Sims? They gave it to French lesbian drama, Blue is the Warmest Color.
38:20 Speaker 04 Directed by?
38:21 David Sims? A, a really chill guy.
38:23 Speaker 04 Okay, cool. Just wanted to clarify that. Okay.
38:25 Griffin Newman? A little bit of a similar situation.
38:27 Speaker 04 Yeah.
38:28 David Sims? At the time.
38:28 Griffin Newman? Adapting a very big, like queer French, like graphic novel by a man who maybe has a weird relationship to women.
38:34 Speaker 04 Yeah.
38:34 David Sims? But they don't know.
38:35 Griffin Newman? They don't know.
38:36 David Sims? But my guess is it's like, is what's, uh, Griffin is saying is Spielberg is watching this movie that is wall to wall sex scenes and lesbian sex scenes. It's just like, I could never do that.
38:46 Griffin Newman? This has always been my take.
38:47 David Sims? I'm so impressed by.
38:48 Griffin Newman? Is that when like filmmakers are the heads of juries of major festivals and you see what they give the awards to versus when it's actors or, you know, other people, I think, specifically when it's directors and some of those choices are really odd. I think usually you can pathologize it as this is the movie they can least imagine themselves being able to pull off, that they are in awe that there is something on screen that they're just like, I don't know how you get there. And Spielberg like gives it to this movie and is like, and by the way, the award is split between the director and the two actresses.
39:18 Speaker 04 Yeah.
39:19 Griffin Newman? Because this couldn't be possible without the level of whatever. There's years of litigation of like, did he abuse the actresses?
39:25 Speaker 04 Yeah.
39:25 Griffin Newman? Psychologically torturous set, whatever. But there's something there in Spielberg, like 30 years later, being like, I, I wouldn't even know where to begin.
39:35 Speaker 04 He, he chose one lady putting her hand on the other lady's shoulder and that's a stand-in for all lesbianism.
39:43 David Sims? You also have to remember, it's the eighties. This just, this just isn't in movies. Like you think of a movie called like Desert Hearts, right? Which is, I think the same year, 85. Have you ever seen Desert Hearts? Has anyone ever seen Desert Hearts? So a totemic, early indie lesbian drama. It's awesome. It's, uh, I think Criterion released it eventually or whatever. You know, you can go watch it, everybody. But like, that's like an indie indie indie-esque movie that like you probably could have only seen in two theaters like in America. That's, that's where like gay, you know, romance basically exists in the American cinema in the mid 80s, right?
40:17 Griffin Newman? Sure. Or, you know, it's, it's like Dog Day Afternoon, or it's like,
40:21 David Sims? Well, sure, right.
40:22 Griffin Newman? You know, I'm, but that's, but that's not what that movie is fundamentally. That's an element of the movie and that's a sort of sensationalist element of that movie that that movie handles very well. But like, yes, it is like, kind of, there's that degree of it. And Spielberg talks about in interviews being like, look, I felt the movie had to be PG 13. There's a responsibility to make the biggest version of this movie.
40:43 David Sims? Sure, people are able to see it.
40:44 Griffin Newman? I want it to be communicated. That was a strategic decision. But the other part of that is just like,
40:48 David Sims? This is just so crazy. Where you're like, how does the movie begin? It's like, well, you know, it's about this, this, this girl who's being abused by her father and he, you know,
40:57 Griffin Newman? Fathers to children.
40:58 David Sims? Sires two children on her and gives the children away. And you're like, that's the start of the movie.
41:02 Speaker 04 That's the start of the movie.
41:03 David Sims? They're like, yeah.
41:04 Speaker 04 Her on a bed in the snow, pushing a baby out.
41:07 Griffin Newman? And you're like, what's the plot of the movie? And you're like, a procession of suffering across like multiple characters until they get like a little bit of respite at the end. Which also, those types of narratives, which often are, make like huge, incredible, important books are really hard to adapt into like, not even three act structures, but sort of like fixed time audio visual narratives where it's just like watching characters go through the worst of it over and over again.
41:30 David Sims? This is why I want to open the dossier, but I do want to say, this is, I think the argument for why this movie is kind of good in a way. That's
41:38 Griffin Newman? Good in a way is exactly how I would put it.
41:40 David Sims? I mean, to be clear, all right, to be clear, I think that this is a very watchable, affecting movie. Like, if you just like, sit down and watch this movie, as many Americans did, it is hard not to be moved by it. It's incredibly, incredibly well acted.
41:53 Griffin Newman? He cannot make an uncompelling movie.
41:55 David Sims? And like Spielberg said very
41:56 Speaker 04 There's a few performances where I could have like adjusted some stuff.
41:58 David Sims? But like, what is incredible and like, you know, it's a, it's
42:01 Speaker 04 Yeah, well, wow.
42:03 David Sims? You know, it's a, it's, and Spielberg's a good filmmaker. And like, you know, you're, you're in the hands of a good filmmaker. And you watch this movie and you're like, yeah, wow. I mean, like, what a, what a tough time and what a, you know, somewhat, you know, note of grace at the end and blah, blah, blah. As an adaptation, you can quibble as like a white Jewish filmmaker who doesn't really know shit about like the South or women's experience, you know, like
42:28 Griffin Newman? But he's like, yeah, but I was also sad as a child.
42:31 Speaker 04 Yeah.
42:32 David Sims? I don't think he's coming in there being like, I understand the experience.
42:35 Griffin Newman? You give him credit for not having the arrogance of that, but it's the right, the weird, yeah.
42:39 David Sims? But the fact that Spielberg is too shy, or maybe just too sentimental to really depict things like with like utter brutality, kind of makes the movie, you know, it's like, there's a lot of movies that just lean into the misery and the brutality, like you're saying, and they're not really good. Like, that's often a mistake.
43:00 Griffin Newman? They can become kind of numbing.
43:01 David Sims? It's kind of relentless and numbing. And you're so, you know, it's really hard balance to strike how to depict like, oh, and then at a certain point, I think in our culture, people sort of started being like, can we just have less movies about this? Like, and have movies about other experiences?
43:13 Griffin Newman? Why are we even trying?
43:15 David Sims? But this was a bestseller. This is Alice Cooper's story. Yada. Anyway, so that's sort of the argument for like, what was helpful about the color purple? I mean, I'm like layering this in caveats. But that, right? Like, if you're gonna...
43:31 Griffin Newman? But then, you know, you read shit like, you know, Margaret Avery is like incredible in this movie, right? She gets an Academy Award.
43:37 Speaker 04 Who's Margaret Avery in this?
43:38 Griffin Newman? She plays Shug.
43:39 Speaker 04 Oh, yeah. Yeah. I like her.
43:41 Griffin Newman? And then her like career completely kind of stalls out and you read interviews with her.
43:45 Speaker 04 Isn't her name like Margaret Avery, Shug Avery? Yeah. Okay.
43:47 Griffin Newman? Yeah. They, the, her and the character both have the same last name.
43:50 Speaker 04 Cool, cool, cool.
43:52 Griffin Newman? She was just like, this movie comes out, again, Oscar nomination, and people are like, well, she's not big enough for movies and she's probably too big for TV. Was just sort of like all authors.
44:01 Speaker 04 Cool. So you get nothing.
44:02 Griffin Newman? Right. They were just kind of like, and I'm not even gonna have a window of opportunity unless there's like another black star who needs a wife in a movie, you know? And she was like, and meanwhile, I watched the next year Danny Glover does like Lethal Weapon. Like, it's an immediate launching pad, right? And obviously, Whoopi Goldberg launches into like an insane film career off of this.
44:20 Speaker 04 A very nice one.
44:21 Griffin Newman? A really nice one, but it's also sort of bizarre to be like weird, like theatrical comedian, never in a movie, gets her breakthrough in a like purely dramatic role in a Spielberg film, gets an Oscar nomination for her debut performance, and then immediately is like, great, and now I make comedy vehicles.
44:37 Speaker 04 Yeah.
44:37 Griffin Newman? Like, it's funny that she didn't get slotted into drama and that she was able to go back and forth.
44:42 David Sims? She was a comedian.
44:43 Griffin Newman? Totally.
44:43 David Sims? Yeah.
44:44 Griffin Newman? But it's like.
44:45 David Sims? But Whoopi's career is a one of one. Like, it's a very unusual and awesome career.
44:49 Griffin Newman? Yes. But like, that's, that's a weird example of like, and then, you know, Oprah like, doesn't really act again for like, over a decade. We've, we've now covered like, half of Oprah's movie career on this podcast.
45:01 David Sims? We've covered Beloved and.
45:02 Griffin Newman? And we covered Princess and the Frog.
45:05 David Sims? Oh, sure.
45:05 Speaker 04 Oh, wow.
45:06 Griffin Newman? If you remove times in which she played Oprah Winfrey in a movie, it's like eight roles, and I think we've covered four of them.
45:13 David Sims? Uh, yeah, we'll probably do Selma one day and Wrinkling Time. I mean, if we do Selma, we're doing a Wrinkling Time. Uh, same director.
45:21 Griffin Newman? But you're like, this thing where it's sort of like launches people and also like, some people get totally stuck.
45:26 Speaker 04 Yeah.
45:27 David Sims? Margaret Avery should have won the Oscar, and Whoopi should have won the Oscar, in my opinion. If you guys want to talk about it now, or we can talk about it later. Uh, if you want to talk about the 1985 Oscars, which are a kind of a travesty. Like, almost every winner is wrong.
45:39 Griffin Newman? Built up to that.
45:40 David Sims? Okay, fine. So The Color Purple, 1980s, Steven Spielberg, Peter Pan himself. He'll never grow up.
45:47 Griffin Newman? Yes.
45:47 David Sims? He makes movies about space aliens and Harrison Ford with his whip. Temples of Doom.
45:53 Speaker 04 Sharks and stuff.
45:53 David Sims? Sharks.
45:54 Griffin Newman? Right.
45:55 David Sims? He's quickly becoming. Oh, he wants to make a grown up movie and it turns out to be Poltergeist. It's just another silly movie for children.
46:02 Griffin Newman? And you're, you're getting the narratives of like, is this guy holding back culture?
46:06 David Sims? Oh, he wants to make another thing. What's, oh, he's doing a movie based on his favorite TV show Twilight Zone? Well, I'm sure nothing bad will happen there. Oh, he started a production company, Amblin. What's he gonna make with that? Gremlins and the Goonies. I'm serious. Like, this is the narrative. What you say, it's like, this person is infantilizing culture with his childish genre obsessions and like, now Amblin is spawning like, more Spielbergs, like, that will only, you know, do more.
46:34 Griffin Newman? Right, right. He basically, right, they poured water on Steven Spielberg and now many Spielbergs are coming out of his back and wrecking trap. But like, at this point, he has made four of the highest grossing films of all time, if not five?
46:46 David Sims? Oh, sure. I don't know. Indiana Jones draws an ET for sure.
46:49 Griffin Newman? Close Encounters was up there. Whatever. He's made like four of the highest grossing films of all time. Here's the other weird thing that we've been covering, Kenees. Sugarland Express, no Oscar nominations, right? Second movie, Jaws. Big Oscar film, nominated for Best Picture, not nominated for Best Director. Scene is snub. Yeah. For a film that was so culturally like seismic. Then, Close Encounters, nominated for Best Director, not nominated for Best Picture. 1941's a flop. Raiders of the Lost Ark, nominated for Picture and Director.
47:21 Speaker 04 Oh.
47:22 Griffin Newman? Indiana Jones is the first time that they're like, fuck, fine.
47:25 Speaker 04 Yeah.
47:26 Griffin Newman? We'll give you both, but it's felt like they've been a little like.
47:29 Speaker 04 I did not know that that was nominated for Best Picture.
47:31 Griffin Newman? Which is also crazy.
47:32 Speaker 04 Yeah.
47:33 David Sims? Do you like Steven Spielberg? We didn't even ask.
47:35 Speaker 04 Hmm, I think so. I think I like Steven Spielberg in the way that I like Coca-Cola or Beyonce or football in America. I don't, you know, just like that.
47:47 David Sims? Kraft mac and cheese.
47:49 Speaker 04 Yeah. Actually, I don't like Kraft. I'm from the South. That's like offensive to me. So sorry, sorry.
47:53 David Sims? I'm so sorry. Are you Velveeta then? What's your?
47:56 Speaker 04 What on earth are you talking about?
47:58 David Sims? She's saying that like she's, she's, it doesn't need to make mac and cheese out of.
48:02 Speaker 04 What? Yeah. Like what on earth is Velveeta?
48:05 David Sims? I thought it was just you had another brand allegiance.
48:08 Speaker 04 Brand? What? What are you talking about?
48:11 David Sims? Family?
48:13 Speaker 04 I'm, I, I.
48:15 David Sims? I'm so sorry. I'm now with you. Yes.
48:17 Speaker 04 I, I genuinely was confused. When you, when the word Velveeta came out of your mouth, I was like, what is happening here?
48:23 David Sims? You gave me not, you gave me a disdainful look and I understand it now. Once. It was weird.
48:29 Speaker 04 That, I didn't know that Velveeta made mac and cheese because Velveeta isn't even, is, can we, can we legally call Velveeta cheese?
48:35 David Sims? It's the goo, right?
48:37 Speaker 04 Yeah.
48:38 David Sims? It's vegan.
48:39 Griffin Newman? Macaroni and goo.
48:40 Speaker 04 It's vegan?
48:41 David Sims? I think it is. I don't know.
48:42 Speaker 04 Holy heck.
48:43 Griffin Newman? It's like the orange version of the Sauron goo. That's what Velveeta looks like.
48:48 David Sims? No, it's not vegan. I'm sorry. I take it back.
48:50 Speaker 04 Yeah. The vegans are gonna come after you. One of my exes who listens to this podcast and is a vegan, he's gonna come after.
48:55 David Sims? Shout out to Kenees' vegan ex.
48:57 Speaker 04 You know who are.
48:59 David Sims? Hope you're listening. Yeah.
49:00 Speaker 04 He should be.
49:01 David Sims? Fucking should be. Sit down and listen on the TV.
49:03 Speaker 04 Yeah, how about that?
49:04 David Sims? Turn it on.
49:04 Speaker 04 You're a perfectly nice person, just we weren't right together.
49:07 Griffin Newman? E.T. The Extraterrestrial becomes the highest grossing film of all time. Immediately one of the most beloved films in history. I think is basically presumed to be the Oscar frontrunner. And it's seen as like a bit of a shock that Gandhi beats it for picture and director. And it's this element of like, they would rather give it to the very sort of like handsome, middlebrow, classical biopic than the movie that like made the entire world cry. Because it does feel like there's a bit of a like, we can't fucking give Spielberg everything. We can't give him too much power, right? Off of E.T.
49:42 David Sims? He can be the box office king, but that doesn't mean he gets Oscars automatically. And it is foolish because indeed, he probably should have just won his Oscars for E.T. Because that's where it's kind of like, look, man, this is the whole package.
49:52 Griffin Newman? It's all of it. Yeah.
49:53 David Sims? You made a huge hit. It's a personal film. It sort of appeals to everyone. It's really fucking good. But no, Gandhi, I think Gandhi was the frontrunner. We'll talk about on that episode, but Gandhi was this, you know? The whole thing with Gandhi was like, they had 10,000 people in this seat. You know, where it was just like, how the fuck did they do this? You know? I don't know. And they got this guy who looks like Gandhi. Where'd they find this guy? It's like, I don't know. Anyway.
50:16 Griffin Newman? He rolls straight from that into basically a contractually obligated second Indiana Jones movie.
50:22 Speaker 04 Yeah.
50:22 Griffin Newman? Which people have a divisive reaction to. And it's in that moment, that inflection point, that it does feel like we have this run of years that Spielberg being like, you want me to grow up? Fine. That like a slightly kind of like vindictive, like I can do this.
50:36 David Sims? So, well, as Spielberg puts it, for a long time, I'd wanted to become something involved, involved with something I had more to do with character development. I wanted to do something that was not stereotypically a Spielberg movie. Try a different set of muscles, right? Sidney Lumet, Sidney Pollack, a couple of Sydneys out here, right? Who he admires, who are more, the guys who kind of do a lot of stuff, you know, like, right? Like, those are not filmmakers where you're like, yeah, they're gonna make the same sort of movie every time they, they make all kinds of dramas in a grown up movie.
51:07 Griffin Newman? And also the like, you know, Spielberg growing up, like, covin- People like Hawks and Ford, who made like six studio movies a year and they'd finish one and the studio head would be like, here's a book, adapt this, you know, and it's just like, this is the assignment you're handed. Like those kinds of assignment directors who are able to elevate the material, but would just kind of serve it and be like, here's another one off the factory line. And some of them hit. He's always had such a like, um, he, he covets those people and those types of careers and the flexibility and the range of what they were able to make.
51:39 David Sims? Color purple.
51:40 Griffin Newman? You could see him going like, this is my chance to do that kind of thing.
51:43 David Sims? It's an epistolary novel, as, as we know, as readers of the book. Uh, these two haven't read it. Guess they, guess they don't want to, you know, experience literature. Uh, Alice Walker was-
51:54 Speaker 03 Letters.
51:55 David Sims? It's a bunch of letters, which of course is in the, in the movie that your, you know, discovery of letters and stuff becomes important. Um, Alice Walker, she was an editor at Ms. Magazine, uh, and had written this big essay about, uh, Nora Zehurston that helped revive Nora Zehl, Zora Neale Hurston.
52:18 Speaker 04 Okay. I was like, who is that?
52:20 David Sims? JJ, you are legitimately fired for writing Nora Zehurston. Zora Neale Hurston.
52:27 Griffin Newman? Double fire.
52:28 David Sims? Um, and I guess, I don't like, the book becoming a bestseller is somewhat of a surprise. It's, it's a tough book to read. It's written in like a vernacular. The violence is very intense. It's a very dark. It has lesbian themes, which are, you know, maybe less controversial literature, but still, you know, it's like a little out there, I guess for 1983, but it is a gigantic bestseller. And Quincy Jones loves the book and gets Peter Guber.
52:58 Speaker 04 Right. This is the other part. It's a Quincy. His last name is Guber. We're just that accepting that.
53:03 David Sims? I assume that's how you say it.
53:04 Griffin Newman? But Quincy Jones gets, uh, Guber and Alan?
53:09 David Sims? Uh, Guber, uh, and Peters, John Peters, uh, to option the book because he wants to do, he want, Quincy Jones is like, I must do the music for this.
53:18 Speaker 04 No, Quincy, no.
53:21 David Sims? Quincy, no.
53:22 Griffin Newman? Um, like the guys, he hires the producing team who four years later are shepherding Batman and Warner Brothers are just kind of like-
53:31 David Sims? That's true.
53:32 Griffin Newman? The big, like swinging dick Hollywood producers at the time, you know?
53:37 Speaker 04 That I don't know if swinging dicks were right for this. Probably not.
53:40 Griffin Newman? No, but but it speaks to it's just like, let's just get all the heavyweights.
53:45 David Sims? And so people want to be a part of it. Kathleen Kennedy, legendary producer, also reads it and gives it to Spielberg. And Spielberg says he falls very much in love with Seeley and is sort of obsessed with the book and can't stop thinking about it. Kennedy wasn't like, you have to make this or anything, but she was like, you know, thinking of it as a potential thing for him. And he said, look, I'm scared to do it, but I kind of love that.
54:10 David Sims? And Quincy Jones agrees.
54:14 David Sims? They had worked, he and Spielberg had worked on some sort of unrealized musical together. I don't know what it is.
54:20 Griffin Newman? Not the Peter Pan thing? Okay.
54:23 David Sims? And Spielberg is saying to Quincy Jones, like, shouldn't a black person direct this? Shouldn't a woman direct this?
54:29 Speaker 04 This is a reasonable question.
54:30 David Sims? Quincy asks, and this is a good line by Quincy Jones, you didn't come from, you didn't have to come from Mars to do ET, did you? A pretty good line.
54:39 Speaker 04 It's a good line, but.
54:40 Griffin Newman? Line. So ET's not from Mars. It's from the green planet.
54:45 Speaker 04 Which is, which one's that?
54:46 Griffin Newman? That's what it's called.
54:47 Speaker 04 Okay.
54:48 Griffin Newman? I believe that's his proper name.
54:49 Speaker 04 That the green planet. Okay, cool, cool, cool.
54:50 David Sims? Yeah. Isn't Quincy Jones?
54:55 David Sims? The one, he did the interview with Volcher a couple of years ago where he says Marlon Brando would fuck anything. He'd fuck a mailbox.
55:03 Speaker 04 Yeah.
55:04 David Sims? And he fucked James Baldwin. He fucked Richard Pryor. And the guy's like, wait, how do you know that? He slept with those people. He says, come on, man. He didn't give a fuck. Do you like Brazilian music?
55:14 Speaker 04 Lovely.
55:14 Griffin Newman? It is the greatest.
55:15 David Sims? The greatest non-sequitur. We're just like, do you like Brazilian music?
55:21 David Sims? What? Uh, yeah, sure.
55:24 David Sims? Anyway.
55:26 David Sims? I just like to think about, you know, be like, ET, you're not from Mars and you made ET. Do you like Brazilian?
55:34 David Sims? But the most important person Spielberg has to sway Quincy Jones is on board is Alice Walker.
55:41 David Sims? And so he meets with her and her daughter and her publishing partner and literary critic named Barbara Christian and filmmaker Bellevue Rooks and the activist Daphne Muse. And this entire group apparently is like, we do not want Steven Spielberg to make this movie. Would be hilarious if the names I just read to you, we were all just like, Steven Spielberg seems like a perfect choice.
56:04 Griffin Newman? Would you sign our E T posters?
56:06 David Sims? And especially the Spielberg we're talking about. Like, it's like later, sure, the guy who made like the sort of more complex, like, you know, 2000s movies than he made. Like, you might kind of be like, oh, well, he's grown up and he's made a lot of different kinds of movies. We're talking about the guy who just made Raiders of the Lost Ark and Alien movies and shit like it's a huge leap.
56:27 Griffin Newman? It's it. Look, it is not a one to one, but in the 2000s, in this sort of similar quarter to what we're talking about, Spielberg for years came very close to wanting to direct Memoirs of a Geisha himself, right? And developed it and then ended up still producing it when Rob Marshall took over.
56:43 Speaker 04 Okay.
56:43 David Sims? I don't think that. Gave it to an Asian woman, Rob Marshall.
56:46 Speaker 04 Yeah, I was like, Rob Marshall. That's how we pronounce that.
56:52 Griffin Newman? I don't, I don't think that movie would have turned out well, but I'm also like, if he had, if there had been a Steven Spielberg Memoirs of a Geisha in 2006, it would not have been as strange as there being a Steven Spielberg Color Purple in 1985, where at that point he's like branched out and tried a bunch of different shit and some of it works and some of it doesn't. Whereas at this point, you're like, Steven Spielberg's thing is figured out and he's taking like the hardest pivot where, and this is the other thing about him being like, I want to be like Sidney Pollack and Sidney Lumet and all these guys. Those guys like do not have a dominant personality and worldview that seeps into every single corner of their film. They're both like, right, my job is to figure out how to tell the story the best you can, right?
57:35 Griffin Newman? And like Quincy Jones is the person who I think kind of like convinces Sidney Lumet to direct The Wiz in the 70s in a similar way of like, This needs to be made by a major filmmaker. I'll produce this.
57:46 David Sims? You didn't have to be a dog to make Dog Day Afternoon. Quincy, it's not about a dog. Do you like Brazilian music?
57:51 Griffin Newman? Yes, but like every Spielberg movie is just like, we understand this guy's brain, his stylistic quirks, what he likes out of his collaborators. Do you like Brazilian music? Like the Steven Spielberg thing is so like codified at this point for better and worse, that for him to then just be like, I'm just gonna try to put it on something totally different, as far away from myself as possible, is so strange.
58:15 David Sims? So Alice Walker's take, in concert with the sort of group of like intellectuals and, you know, collaborators, what our experience had been with Hollywood and with what white people do to black work. All you have to do is go to an average movie where you have one black person surrounded by a million white people, and you see how artificial the black character becomes, and I just didn't want that. So she's anti Spielberg, but she likes Quincy Jones, probably because he's a fun hang. And he's like, eh, just meet with him. And then she sits down with Steven Spielberg, and she really likes him. Now, Steven Spielberg's a likable guy, I think, right? And sits down, starts talking about the book in her opinion incredibly intelligently, clearly actually read the book and cares about it, I guess.
58:59 David Sims? And, you know, she's very taken with him and has confidence that he's the one. And she watches E.T. and she's like, this fucking rocks. Not joking, like she's like, of all characters being produced in Hollywood at the time, E.T. was the one I felt closest to. So.
59:17 Griffin Newman? Look, and I also get there is like a level of like emotional intimacy and sincerity to E.T. That for how much people are like Spielberg, the manipulative, the big sweeping emotions, like there is like a smallness in E.T. and him kind of preserving the like emotional integrity of this like very delicate relationship in this big movie, that to her, I'm sure she's just like, look, there is a feeling being conveyed here that this guy knows how to create, and perhaps you could transmute this onto a wildly different.
59:53 Speaker 04 I don't know if I want the feel good when I'm watching a child be assaulted.
59:59 Griffin Newman? But, but I think that balance of just like, oh, ET is able to go into places of darkness. Never as dark as the color purple, you know, but like it has this range. He's not just dealing in like mid tones. It's very different.
1:00:13 David Sims? She does.
1:00:13 Griffin Newman? Set of circumstances with this.
1:00:15 David Sims? She does say that at one point, Steven Spielberg later referred to Gone with the Wind as the greatest movie ever made. And said he loved the Butterfly McQueen character and she said she slept poorly for a week after that. And, uh.
1:00:28 Griffin Newman? Right. Cause that has to be.
1:00:29 David Sims? She thought she was gonna have to relay to him, uh, quote, uh, to make him understand what a nightmare Gone with the Wind was.
1:00:35 Speaker 04 Yeah.
1:00:37 David Sims? So, right. Not like, she's not like, he's perfect by any means. She is however, allowed to write the first script, like she is given the first shot at turning into screenplay. She turns in after three months, a draft that gets rid of the epistolary structure, has more shrug Avery in the narrative. Spielberg likes the script, but you know, it doesn't want to make it. I don't know. She submitted with an alternate title, Watch For Me in the Sunset. Spielberg's like, this is interesting, but then like brings in Melissa Matheson, who he's worked with before.
1:01:11 Griffin Newman? Rhodey T.
1:01:13 David Sims? Yes.
1:01:13 Griffin Newman? And was married to Red Hulk.
1:01:15 David Sims? Was married to Red Hulk himself. Uh, Walker rejects her. Spielberg brings in Menom and Mayhaz. How do you say his last name?
1:01:22 Griffin Newman? I, I think.
1:01:23 David Sims? Mayhaz?
1:01:23 Griffin Newman? Yes.
1:01:24 David Sims? A rookie screenwriter. He had like a spec script called Lionheart, which eventually gets turned into a Gabriel Byrne movie.
1:01:29 Griffin Newman? But was kind of like a cast in situation of like Spielberg finding this guy and throwing him on projects and having him do passes on stuff.
1:01:37 David Sims? Yeah. Walker likes him because he's Dutch and is from like a part of Holland with folk speech that is looked down on by the rest of the Dutch. And she said that he really understood like, sort of like folk speech and like, felt like that this was some common ground for them. And so he, they work on the movie together, but he has sole screenwriting credit. It is so weird again, that you're like, the color purple, directed by Steven Spielberg, written by a random Dutch guy who'd never written a movie before. Okay. And so they have this script and, uh, yeah, you know, I Spielberg's.
1:02:17 David Sims? It's a little exasperating because he's saying things like, I wanted to bring Seeley's story to a wider audience than the one reading the book. You know, the audience reading the book is more female. Like, you know, I want
1:02:28 Speaker 04 We gotta change that.
1:02:29 David Sims? I get what he's saying. Like, it's the only way he can defend it, in a way of like, yeah, I'm, I can, I have a launchpad to bring a lot of attention to this, right? Sure. Why, why does he get a lot of the same-sex intimacy in Walker's novel? "I wasn't comfortable going beyond that," he says.
1:02:48 Griffin Newman? Well, okay, so
1:02:49 David Sims? Marty Scorsese could do it, not me, he says.
1:02:51 Griffin Newman? Really?
1:02:52 Speaker 04 Okay.
1:02:53 Griffin Newman? That's an interesting take.
1:02:55 Speaker 04 Yeah.
1:02:56 Griffin Newman? You saying, is there any Spielberg movie that has even like a hint of queer stuff in it, right? There's that conversation and there's the bigger kind of tied conversation of like, sexuality in Spielberg is a very limited spectrum, period. There's a reason why the Munich sex scene comes up all the fucking time.
1:03:14 Speaker 04 That's weird, dude.
1:03:15 Griffin Newman? As like, the weirdest sex scene by someone who's never even like heard a description of sex before.
1:03:19 Speaker 04 Oh, no.
1:03:20 Griffin Newman? And you watch that and you're like
1:03:22 Speaker 04 Did he like look at a diagram and was like, okay, we're going, that's how we're gonna show this?
1:03:26 Griffin Newman? But also that he like, you're like, is that the first time you actually see two people fuck in any Spielberg movie? Like, maybe?
1:03:33 Speaker 04 In Munich?
1:03:34 Griffin Newman? And it's like 35 years into his career? And even like, you know, Marion and Indiana Jones have a more sexual relationship than exists in most Spielberg movies up until that point. And even then, it's very like, dot, dot, dot. And then she accidentally knocks him out and he wakes up with birds swinging around his head or whatever. Like, it's just not a thing that really gets touched on. You could argue some of this has to do with like the sort of original sin of Spielberg capturing footage of Seth Rogen holding his mom's hand and thus having a very weird relationship to intimacy just picked it on camera. I do think there's something there, not to psychoanalyze, but it is just a thing. He doesn't seem to ever have any facility communicating.
1:04:18 David Sims? Yeah.
1:04:19 Griffin Newman? And here is a movie where you're starting with a source material that's like, the greatest source of trauma in this is the repeated sexual violence. Perpetuated by the men and the greatest source of like comfort and joy and solace and belonging is the like sexual intimacy and like required love provided by the other women.
1:04:36 David Sims? Scene in the book where Suge holds up a mirror to Ceeley's vagina and shows it to her and helps her understand her own body and whatever. And like, that should be in the movie.
1:04:45 Griffin Newman? The moment where she goes, oh, my God, you're still a virgin.
1:04:47 David Sims? Right.
1:04:48 Griffin Newman? It's such a profound piece of writing.
1:04:49 David Sims? And, uh, that's the scene that Spielberg claims that only Marty's.
1:04:54 Speaker 04 Yeah, what?
1:04:56 David Sims? I assume he kind of means like Martin Scorsese makes like R rated movies and I don't, I guess that's.
1:05:02 Speaker 04 R rated for what?
1:05:03 Speaker 03 With mirror scenes.
1:05:05 David Sims? He loves mirrors.
1:05:06 Speaker 04 He's with mirrors. Yeah.
1:05:07 David Sims? He knows how to make the, you don't see the camera.
1:05:10 Speaker 04 And he's got a great relationship with vagina.
1:05:13 Griffin Newman? Yeah.
1:05:14 David Sims? Oh, God.
1:05:15 Griffin Newman? Marty, that guy.
1:05:16 Speaker 04 Yeah, super, super. Yeah.
1:05:19 Griffin Newman? Yeah. But this, the like sort of I have responsibility to make this movie translate to a bigger audience. There is this like, and as he morphs, as he stretches out, some of this gets knocked out of his system. At this point in his career, Spielberg is still like entertainer first and foremost, even when he is trying to make a more serious considered adult movie. There are like, what you're saying, like some of the most traumatic sequences in this movie, he kind of shoots and edits like they're set pieces.
1:05:47 Speaker 04 Yeah.
1:05:48 Griffin Newman? Because it's just how he thinks and he's so good at just being like, okay, what's the emotion you need to feel here? So then if the camera moves like this and I cut like this and whatever, then that gets that across.
1:05:56 Speaker 04 Did he have any say with the music? Cause truly the, the music was killing me during this movie.
1:06:02 Griffin Newman? It's also so strange because, I mean, there, am I wrong in thinking the only two scores that John Williams didn't do for him are this and Bridge of Spies?
1:06:13 David Sims? Correct.
1:06:14 Griffin Newman? Right. And Bridge of Spies was like, he's getting older, he's doing the Star Wars movies. He just didn't have the time. Right? And this was like, well, obviously Quincy wanted that he up.
1:06:24 David Sims? It's like in the contract.
1:06:25 Griffin Newman? Yeah. Speaking to him, he has something to say and you hear it in the score and I love Quincy Jones.
1:06:30 Speaker 04 Yes.
1:06:30 Griffin Newman? Feels like Quincy Jones doing a bad John Williams.
1:06:33 Speaker 04 Yes, exactly.
1:06:34 David Sims? It's a horrendous score.
1:06:35 Griffin Newman? And it like, it has these weird themes where you're like, that almost sounds like ET. That almost sounds like Indiana Jones. Like he's trying to match the Spielberg movie version of the movie, which doesn't help.
1:06:45 Speaker 04 Not in this story, no.
1:06:48 Griffin Newman? But then like Spielberg needing to be like, well, look, the like root of all this movie is the sexual violence. So I have to find ways to depict this and maybe it's not going to be graphic, but it's going to be visceral and it's going to be painful. But the way he knows how to make his camera expressive also is like very pop art.
1:07:03 Speaker 04 Yeah.
1:07:04 Griffin Newman? And then all the sort of like intimacy and romance. He's just like, can I reduce that to like one scene with a kiss? And I think that kiss scene is very well done on its own. I think that scene-
1:07:15 Speaker 04 If we took it outside of the context of what it is supposed to represent entirely, yes, I agree.
1:07:21 Griffin Newman? I think it's like beautifully acted and staged and conceived. And if that were the first scene that leads to the start of the thread of their relationship, whether or not that is depicted in an incredibly visual graphic way, but at least it's just textually like pointed-
1:07:36 Speaker 04 Something, yes.
1:07:37 Griffin Newman? I'd be like, man, he handled this well. I'm watching the scene. I'm like, this is a kind of intimacy I don't see in his early films that we've been watching. And then it's like, and that's enough of that. I did it.
1:07:47 Speaker 04 Yeah, no more.
1:07:47 Griffin Newman? Aren't you happy?
1:07:48 Speaker 04 It's like, isn't that like the main way she gets any type of joy in her sad, sad life? And then we're just like, nah, nah, don't include it.
1:08:00 Griffin Newman? David?
1:08:01 David Sims? Yeah.
1:08:01 Griffin Newman? This episode is brought to you by XYZ Films and the acclaimed new documentary Capturing Bigfoot.
1:08:07 David Sims? Hmm.
1:08:07 Griffin Newman? On October 20th, 1967, Roger Patterson captured 59 seconds of film showing a creature walking through the Northern California woods. I wonder if you can log that on Letterboxd?
1:08:18 David Sims? It is an iconic video.
1:08:19 Griffin Newman? Footage that became the most analyzed and debated in history. 59 years later, a reel of 16 millimeter film discovered in a safe changes everything. Capturing Bigfoot reveals the untold story behind the world's greatest mystery told for the first time by Patterson's own son and the people who were there. This is a story about family legacy, broken friendships, and how far people will go to protect a secret.
1:08:42 David Sims? Of course, you got the classic, what they call Patterson Gimlin film. Everyone knows of Bigfoot out in the woods, like the famous Bigfoot picture. This has other stuff shot by him that no one's ever seen. That's what makes this movie different.
1:08:54 Griffin Newman? But we're also talking brand new 4K scans of the original film taken from the Patterson family archives that some historians have called the best rendering of the footage ever seen.
1:09:03 David Sims? I feel like we've all seen that footage as like grainy.
1:09:06 Griffin Newman? Yes.
1:09:06 David Sims? You know, that you see, you know, whatever. You see it in a documentary for two seconds, but this is restoring it and making it look much more clear.
1:09:13 Griffin Newman? There's also a companion podcast, the Capturing Bigfoot Podcast, which goes deeper into the legend and lore of Bigfoot and the Patterson Gimlin film, featuring weekly episodes with experts in cryptozoology, urban legends, and filmmaking.
1:09:27 Speaker 03 I'm something of an expert in cryptozoology.
1:09:29 Griffin Newman? Well, of course, yes, but that's more of a hobby.
1:09:32 Speaker 03 Yeah, this podcast, Capturing Bigfoot Podcast, is hosted by the director of the film, Mark Evans, and it's available for free on YouTube and Spotify with exclusive episodes and content available on Patreon to members of the Capturing Bigfoot Society.
1:09:47 Griffin Newman? Uh, Capturing Bigfoot is now available to rent or own on Amazon Prime Video. Learn more about Capturing Bigfoot at capturingbigfoot.com.
1:10:03 Griffin Newman? David?
1:10:03 Speaker 03 Yes?
1:10:04 Griffin Newman? Uh, uh, who are you wearing?
1:10:06 Speaker 03 Uh, who am I wearing?
1:10:07 Griffin Newman? I'm doing like an impression of a red carpet correspondent, asking who you're wearing right now.
1:10:11 Speaker 03 Well, I am wearing Quince.
1:10:14 Griffin Newman? Well, well, wow, what a Quince, Quince, Quincy dance.
1:10:19 Speaker 03 It's a Mongolian cashmere zip-dense sweater.
1:10:23 Griffin Newman? Okay.
1:10:23 Speaker 03 Uh, it's a sort of a brown, would you agree?
1:10:25 Griffin Newman? Yeah, it's like, maybe like a, uh, what would it, a chocolate?
1:10:29 Speaker 03 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.
1:10:36 Griffin 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.
1:10:53 Speaker 03 Quince does rock. It's got high-quality staples, made with these, uh, premium materials like 100% Mongolian cashmere, 14-karat gold, Italian leather.
1:11:04 Griffin Newman? Mama mia.
1:11:05 Speaker 03 All timeless, versatile pieces that feel special to unwrap and become everyday favorites long after the holidays. These cashmere sweaters, like the one I'm wearing, start at just $60. Lineup doesn't stop there. You've got premium down jackets, wool outerwear, uh, cashmere accessories, everything your loved ones need to stay warm and look.
1:11:23 David Sims? Put together all season long.
1:11:24 Griffin 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.
1:11:37 David Sims? Um, so yeah, obviously I'm wearing Quince sweater right now. I've got Quince bedding at home. Ooh, they've got Christmas stockings.
1:11:44 Griffin Newman? Oh, well, well, well.
1:11:45 David Sims? They got tree skirts. Garlands if you want to go Christmas mode.
1:11:49 Griffin Newman? Your tree deserves to be dressed in Quince as well. And when it comes to gifting, Quince has a lot more than clothing. Think fine jewelry, leather bags, the aforementioned hotel quality bedding, chef grade cookware and five star luggage. Basically plenty of ways to find something special for everyone on your list. If you want to give the gift of quality this holiday season, download the Quince app for app exclusive offers or go to quince.com. Get free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. That's a year now available in Canada and the UK too. Ding dong. And when Quince asks where you heard about them, let them know it was blank check. It's the best way to support the show.
1:12:37 Speaker 06 Welcome to 215 Maple Drive. We just put this property on the market.
1:12:43 Speaker 05 Love the crown molding.
1:12:44 Speaker 06 Oh, wait until you see the walk in closets and the bathroom tile.
1:12:48 Speaker 05 Does it have Verizon FiOS? You know, 100% fiber internet.
1:12:52 Speaker 06 No FiOS, but it looks like it's got cable. Let's check out the kitchen.
1:12:55 Speaker 05 No FiOS? Yeah, no, thank you.
1:12:59 Speaker 06 Don't you want to see the rest? Okay, bye bye. Get Verizon FiOS because when you're moving, it's 100% or nothing.
1:13:09 David Sims? Whoopi Goldberg loved the book and had written to Alice Walker saying, if it's ever turned into a movie, I want to be a part of it, even if I just play a Venetian blind. Good line. So Quincy and so Walker suggests Goldberg to Spielberg. And so Spielberg goes to, he doesn't know her. He goes to see a stand up performance along with Walker, Quincy Jones, Michael Jackson and Lionel Richie. Cool.
1:13:35 Speaker 04 Just a regular show. Yeah.
1:13:37 David Sims? Yeah, just hanging.
1:13:38 Griffin Newman? Was this, was she on Broadway at this point or was this?
1:13:40 David Sims? I don't know. Um, I think she did this for them. I think it's, I don't think they like went to see, yeah. He was like, hey, do a set for us.
1:13:49 Speaker 04 Oh, okay. I was genuinely, I was like, at like the stand, just like her hitting up.
1:13:54 David Sims? Comedy tip your bartender.
1:13:55 Speaker 04 Yeah.
1:13:56 Griffin Newman? Well, she's such a weird, I mean, well.
1:13:58 David Sims? And he loves her. It works even though she apparently did a joke about ET getting hooked on dope in an Oakland jail. Spielberg is very charmed and despite the rumor that Diana Ross was the first choice for this, which is insane to think about.
1:14:12 David Sims? He's like, uh, I want you to do it. Whoopi is, uh, like, I don't know if I'm up to that. What if I played Sophia? You know, uh, sort of supporting character Oprah, you know, Oprah's character. And, uh, and then eventually she's like, wait, Steven Spielberg is trying to cast me as the lead in this movie. Like, what is it? I should just do what he says. Like, I'll say yes, absolutely.
1:14:34 Griffin Newman? Right. And I mean, Whoopi is astonishing in this movie. It is like one of the great debut performances in the history of film, I would argue. And then launches like, as you were saying, and we'll unpack, one of the most unique careers in entertainment history. Like there is no parallel to her really. When you like step back and go like, she has done everything at least twice. You know, like it just covers all of it, but it is, uh, such an interesting. I don't know. I feel like this is what I was trying to get at earlier, but like, here's this woman who's like basically like kind of synthesizing a new form of comedy at the time. Where when you're saying like, she's referred to as a comedian, but she was like more doing character stuff, but would also do monologue.
1:15:16 Griffin Newman? She like can recite jokes, but was very quickly doing like longer form kind of theater pieces. And then becomes like a sensation, has like this one woman, uh, off Broadway show that keeps growing and growing. But I think there was like, you read the reviews at the time, people go like, how could you translate this? Like Whoopi Goldberg is so her own universe. She is so complete. Just leaving her alone on stage for two hours. She can create like, you know, an entire reality. What is like the proper vehicle for her? You don't put her on a fucking sitcom, you know? Like, what's the movie you make for her? To then do this big swing to put her in this dramatic role that is so quiet and so reactive and is like 90% just her face?
1:15:58 Speaker 04 Yeah.
1:15:58 Griffin Newman? And is so underplayed. Right, and have her just like knock it out of the fucking park? And now be like, great, and now I'm Whoopi Goldberg and I have the cachet. No one can tell me what to do, I'm gonna do exactly what the fuck I want to do with my career.
1:16:09 Speaker 04 She's gonna do Theodore Rex.
1:16:11 Griffin Newman? Right.
1:16:12 Speaker 04 Yeah.
1:16:12 Griffin Newman? I'm just gonna like follow all of my own whims.
1:16:15 Speaker 04 Yeah.
1:16:16 David Sims? Is that what happens in Theodore Rex?
1:16:17 Speaker 04 I think so.
1:16:17 Griffin Newman? Yeah, yeah.
1:16:18 David Sims? Whoopi, very intimidated on set, doesn't, says she really didn't know what the hell was she was doing. Said Spielberg and her had a bond over like movie nerdery. So he would be like, hey, do Boo Radley when he gets caught in To Kill a Mockingbird. And she knew what that was. Or like, do Indiana Jones finding the girl at the end? Like, what, he would like reference things for her and she would.
1:16:39 Griffin Newman? He recognized he was as encyclopedic as he was of watching every single movie that would like air on television.
1:16:45 David Sims? Right, do Gaslight, like when Danny Glover's being insane to her, do Gaslight. And she apparently would like be like, yep, I know what you're talking about.
1:16:50 Griffin Newman? What's crazy about it to me is that like on paper is like, this is how you shouldn't direct somebody, right?
1:16:56 David Sims? Hey, imitate other acting.
1:16:57 Griffin Newman? Right, and I think it is like to Spielberg's credit that he is flexible enough to be like, what do I need to help this person? Here's someone Whoopi Goldberg, who is like undeniably as powerful a performer as anyone on the planet, but also has not had to act within this context and this structure, has not had to play a role like this before, has not been on a shoot like this before. And he's just like, oh, you know what? If I point to a scene and go like, you know the face that Cary Grant makes in that moment? Can you do that? She actually is able to replicate that in a way that isn't hollow? Can access the real emotion from the surface level? I request of what I want?
1:17:36 Speaker 04 That's fantastic. Like, I know Whoopi Goldberg, just as someone who's watched the movies and has seen The View. So to hear this stuff, I'm like, yes, she's cool. I was compared to her, I went to film school, I was the only black girl in my class. I had locks and they were just like, you're Whoopi Goldberg. So they just called me Whoopi Goldberg all the time.
1:17:57 Griffin Newman? You must have loved that.
1:17:58 Speaker 04 Oh, it was definitely interesting. And they also, because I lived in a decent apartment based on a scholarship thing, they're like, oh, the only reason you would have money is that your dad is Sam Jackson. So I would. They jumped to Sam Jackson. They jumped to Sam Jackson as a black person they know that would have a daughter that looks like me.
1:18:17 Griffin Newman? Whose last name is Mobley.
1:18:18 Speaker 04 Yeah, his last name is definitely Mobley.
1:18:20 Griffin Newman? Right.
1:18:21 Speaker 04 They don't like to talk about it very much. It's a whole thing.
1:18:23 Griffin Newman? Sure, yeah.
1:18:24 Speaker 04 So to hear that she's like, cool as hell, there is a bit of, I don't like reclamation of that, where I'm like, I don't know, she is pretty cool. Okay, they could have called me Whoopi. But if they had known that, not just because I had locks and was black.
1:18:35 Griffin Newman? What I find so interesting about Whoopi is that like, there are all these stories of like, when she wanted to do Star Trek, right? Like, Next Gen is happening. And she goes to her agent and she's like, I want to be on Star Trek. And he's like, you're Whoopi Goldberg. You can't be on Star Trek.
1:18:52 David Sims? You're not gonna be a guest star on Star Trek.
1:18:54 Speaker 04 No, I want to be on Star Trek, though.
1:18:55 David Sims? And she's like, Star Trek was important to me. Like, I want, you know, her was important to me. Like, I want to be on the new Star Trek.
1:19:00 Griffin Newman? Right. And they were like, that will like, damage your legacy. That devalues you. You're a movie star now. You have Academy Award nominations.
1:19:06 David Sims? Karina Karina.
1:19:07 Griffin Newman? Right.
1:19:07 David Sims? It's you and Leota, baby.
1:19:09 Griffin Newman? Because it wasn't even like, I want to be a guest star on one episode. She's like, can I have like, a recurring partner? Like, we're not cutting you down to a fucking contract on Star Trek.
1:19:17 Speaker 04 I don't know, it sounds pretty cool. Let's do it.
1:19:19 Griffin Newman? But she just totally was like, you know what I want to do? Shit I want to do.
1:19:22 Speaker 04 Yeah.
1:19:22 Griffin Newman? And I feel like she'll do these interviews now, much like Quincy Jones, one of the best interviewers, will just say wild shit and now has a TV show where she just says wild shit every day.
1:19:31 Speaker 04 Yeah.
1:19:31 Griffin Newman? And in some ways, that does sometimes abstract her of like, what's Whoopi's deal? She's just like, some kind of like, woman who just says crazy shit? And then like, pops up and does stuff? But you're like, no, she's done everything. And like, part of what is held against her is that she was not protective of her, like, prestige in that way. I think that she was just like, I don't give a shit. I'm gonna like, host the Oscars. I'm gonna do this. I like cartoons. I like whatever. And you're like, she like, broke eight million doors. But in a way that just kind of makes it feel like, oh, yeah, I'm like, Whoopi Goldberg is like, the American flag. She's just like, an object that we look at.
1:20:07 Speaker 04 Yeah, that's always there. That's always doing something.
1:20:09 Griffin Newman? Like, I feel like, uh... Our buddy Alex Rast Perry and I always talk about how when we were children, we were like, there are 10 famous people.
1:20:17 David Sims? Sure.
1:20:18 Griffin Newman? There are 10.
1:20:18 David Sims? She was one of them.
1:20:18 Griffin Newman? Right. It's like Whoopi Goldberg, Danny DeVito, Arnold Schwarzenegger. Like, who are the people who could exist in both the Academy Awards and the Kids' Choice Awards? Those are the 10 people where you're like, and a lot of them, part of it is just like, they don't look like anyone else. They have an interesting name.
1:20:33 Speaker 04 Yes.
1:20:33 Griffin Newman? They appear in all kinds of things, you know? They'll be in commercials and also like cartoons and whatever.
1:20:39 David Sims? Whoopi egotid.
1:20:40 Griffin Newman? Whoopi egotid.
1:20:41 David Sims? Oh, yeah. Early.
1:20:42 Griffin Newman? An early guy.
1:20:43 Speaker 04 Is she in an episode of 30 Rock talking to?
1:20:45 Griffin Newman? She is the one.
1:20:46 Speaker 04 Yes, yes.
1:20:47 Griffin Newman? She is the one he consults.
1:20:48 David Sims? That's the Roger. Roger.
1:20:50 Griffin Newman? Yeah. But I feel like that's kind of, I don't want to say taken away from her, but people are like, oh, yeah, I guess like Whoopi Goldberg.
1:20:56 Speaker 04 Yeah, but they don't put her on the pedestal that she deserves to be on.
1:20:59 Griffin Newman? Yes.
1:21:00 David Sims? And now she's just on The View and I feel like she says something out of pocket every day and everyone's just like, ah, Whoopi's crazy. Who cares?
1:21:07 Speaker 04 She just cashes checks, takes a limo, I guess, to and from and yeah, lives her life.
1:21:10 Speaker 03 Isn't the greatest stage name of all time?
1:21:13 Griffin Newman? Whoopi?
1:21:13 David Sims? It is an incredible.
1:21:15 Speaker 04 What's her real name? Sorry?
1:21:16 Griffin Newman? Elaine Johnson?
1:21:16 David Sims? Karen Elaine Johnson.
1:21:18 Speaker 04 What?
1:21:18 Griffin Newman? Elaine Johnson. Yeah.
1:21:19 Speaker 03 Yeah.
1:21:19 Speaker 04 Karen Elaine Johnson?
1:21:21 Griffin Newman? Yeah, I mean, Whoopi Goldberg is an incredible.
1:21:23 Speaker 04 How'd she get the Goldberg?
1:21:24 David Sims? Uh, I think it's a part of her family. Like, there's some, like, forebear. Although then she did the Henry Louis Gates Jr. Show and he was like, we didn't find any Goldberg.
1:21:35 Speaker 04 Yeah.
1:21:37 David Sims? But she claimed that it was.
1:21:38 Speaker 04 Okay. We all claim stuff. Let's do it.
1:21:40 David Sims? Yeah, she got Whoopi from Whoopi Cushions, like genuinely.
1:21:43 Griffin Newman? Yeah.
1:21:43 Speaker 04 What?
1:21:44 David Sims? Yeah.
1:21:44 Speaker 04 That's lovely.
1:21:45 David Sims? Um, uh, love Whoopi. Danny Glover cast largely, he was in, he's in pieces in the, uh, Places in the Heart. Pieces in the Heart. That's a weird movie. Uh, Places in the Heart. Spielberg loved that performance casting without an audition. Glover says, Glover grew up in San Francisco, not in the South, but he was the first generation in his family to do so. His family's from Georgia. He would spend every summer going back to Georgia, working on the farm. So he like, was like, I very much understood like this environment, you know, this kind of childhood. Quincy Jones.
1:22:18 Griffin Newman? I, I just want to say 84 Places in the Heart. In 1985, Witness, Silverado, and The Color Purple.
1:22:25 David Sims? Wow. He's the villain in Witness.
1:22:27 Griffin Newman? But he basically, like, 1979, inmate and escape from Alcatraz. You know, like, three or four tells you've never heard of. And then it's like, he's in one movie that like gets on the Oscar radar. The next year, he's in three big movies, two years after that Lethal Weapon. It's like, it was this incre-
1:22:41 Speaker 04 He's nice.
1:22:42 Griffin Newman? He's 39 in this?
1:22:44 David Sims? Sure, yeah.
1:22:44 Griffin Newman? Like, he'd been around.
1:22:46 David Sims? Mostly a stage actor.
1:22:47 Griffin Newman? But mostly a stage actor. And then it's just sort of immediately identified as like, yeah, movie star.
1:22:51 David Sims? I guess so. He's a very interesting movie star in a way. I love Danny Glover. He's one of my favorite actors.
1:22:56 Speaker 04 So wait, when he was too old for this shit? He was only like 43?
1:22:59 David Sims? He's not that old.
1:22:59 Griffin Newman? He's younger.
1:23:00 Speaker 04 Yeah.
1:23:00 Griffin Newman? He's like 41.
1:23:01 Speaker 04 Oh, God.
1:23:02 David Sims? But he looks too old for this shit. You believe it.
1:23:05 Speaker 04 You do.
1:23:06 David Sims? It's great acting.
1:23:07 Griffin Newman? The last 30 minutes of this movie, when they like shave his hairline back, you just see that execs were like, oh, my God, we could make this guy retirement age.
1:23:13 David Sims? This guy could be too old for some shit.
1:23:15 Griffin Newman? Right.
1:23:15 David Sims? We'll have to figure out what it is.
1:23:16 Speaker 04 Yeah.
1:23:17 Griffin Newman? Be young enough to actually do the action scenes, but play that he's too old.
1:23:21 David Sims? Well, also, when they age him up in this movie, you're just like, this looks like Danny Glover from 2000.
1:23:26 Speaker 04 That's exactly, genuinely, I was like, Royal Tenenbaum's Danny Glover, right there. Boom.
1:23:29 David Sims? He's so fucking funny in the Royal Tenenbaum.
1:23:31 Speaker 04 Yes.
1:23:32 Griffin Newman? But like, there's the famous-
1:23:33 David Sims? When he calls him Coltrane, he laughs so much.
1:23:37 Griffin Newman? He's so good.
1:23:38 David Sims? He was really funny in that movie.
1:23:39 Griffin Newman? This, the Max von Sydow thing, where the makeup was so good in The Exorcist, that he was like, it fucked up my career, because people thought I was 80.
1:23:45 David Sims? He's like, he's so old.
1:23:46 Griffin Newman? Right.
1:23:47 Speaker 04 He was 80 for a long time to me. Yes, you're right.
1:23:49 Griffin Newman? Totally. And he was like, and then when he caught up to looking as old as he looked in The Exorcist.
1:23:52 David Sims? Like, let's get you back in the movie.
1:23:55 Griffin Newman? Danny Glover weirdly had the opposite thing, where they like age him up in this, and people were like, wait, do you want to play older all the time?
1:24:03 Speaker 04 That's the dream.
1:24:03 David Sims? Quincy Jones, at one point, is catching a red eye for some- He's in Chicago, okay? He turns on the TV. He sees a show called AM Chicago, has an exciting young new host, Oprah Winfrey, calls Steven Spielberg. Quincy Jones really was kind of wild for this one, because like, all of his choices make sense. You're like, yeah, Whoopi Goldberg, Danny Glover, Oprah Winfrey, these are great choices.
1:24:26 Speaker 04 Yeah.
1:24:26 David Sims? But like, imagine being Steven Spielberg, being like, all right, how do I get my handle on this like, black lesbian drama set in the South? And Quincy Jones is like, I'm watching this local Chicago TV, like, fucking daytime host. She's perfect for Sophia. We're gonna cast her. Spielberg's just like, okay. She'd never been in a movie. She found being in a movie really difficult. Like, it's not like Oprah Winfrey was like- A natural actor, like, you know, and she talks about like how tough it was.
1:24:53 Speaker 04 Like, hey, your role is like being insulted, being hit.
1:25:00 David Sims? And then being like catatonic, like, you know, all fucked up.
1:25:06 Speaker 04 Oh, the makeup in this movie is the way like they make the, the son of Danny Glover.
1:25:14 Griffin Newman? Harpo?
1:25:14 Speaker 04 Harpo, yes. Oh, Harpo. Yeah, yeah.
1:25:16 Griffin Newman? Oh, first production company.
1:25:17 Speaker 04 Yeah, she just, she ran with that. His makeup, when he's supposed to be old, made me laugh out loud at the movie. And I'm like, that is not what I'm supposed to be getting from this scene. But they put a bald cap on him where you can see the seam of it. They just like kind of put wrinkles around their eyes to be like, look, they're old now. And I'm like, but they're old. Okay.
1:25:35 David Sims? He looks insane.
1:25:36 Speaker 04 He looks truly, I'm like, who put this wig on this man? Did they hire people that knew how to do wigs? Like, you're like, what?
1:25:45 Griffin Newman? Well, and like the Oprah makeup looks very like Lanchene. Like, it looks very like, you know, I, I understand we are trying to like show the lasting physical scars of this woman's like experience and the indignity she's suffered, but it is like stylized in a way that looks universal monsters.
1:26:03 Speaker 04 It's like, uh, the substance, that's what I got from her eye prosthetics in that movie.
1:26:08 Griffin Newman? But she does this, she does noble son and then doesn't do a movie until beloved, sorry, native son. And then, uh,
1:26:14 David Sims? Comes, I mean, she becomes Oprah.
1:26:15 Griffin Newman? Right. Becomes Oprah, but also it's just like, movies are tough. I don't need to do that again.
1:26:18 Speaker 04 So she chose to do beloved where it's also black pain?
1:26:21 Griffin Newman? That's what's, it's, I find it interesting, right?
1:26:24 David Sims? Beloved is her doing the Quincy Jones thing, where it's, it's her making kind of the same decision of like, I, I think I can get this
1:26:30 Griffin Newman? This book is so important.
1:26:31 David Sims? Tough book made into a movie.
1:26:33 Griffin Newman? I can protect someone else from fucking up.
1:26:34 David Sims? My choice is this incredibly talented white director who's not like, again, connected to the South or like, you know, this sort of heritage or.
1:26:43 Griffin Newman? But he's got empathy in space.
1:26:44 David Sims? But he's a good director and it's like the result again is a movie where like this is well made. It's not bad.
1:26:50 Griffin Newman? No.
1:26:51 David Sims? But why was this the choice?
1:26:52 Speaker 04 Would anyone re-watch beloved?
1:26:54 David Sims? Why the fuck would you rewatch?
1:26:56 Speaker 04 Yeah.
1:26:58 David Sims? I guess you could. It's a really interesting movie.
1:27:00 Speaker 04 I saw it in theaters. Like my, this is important.
1:27:03 David Sims? Right. We're gonna go see the, of course.
1:27:04 Speaker 04 And so it was like, do you hate me? What?
1:27:07 Griffin Newman? And it is.
1:27:08 David Sims? I mean, you must have been like 12 years old.
1:27:10 Speaker 04 Yeah, I know. That's what I'm like, is my mom mad at me? Do the directors hate me?
1:27:14 Griffin Newman? Sure.
1:27:14 Speaker 04 Does society dislike black women, which is a different thing, but Jesus Christ, this is a lot.
1:27:20 Griffin Newman? It is a fascinating counterpoint to this movie where it's sort of like what you were saying, David, of like, that's a movie that is like, okay, we're not gonna do like magical uplift.
1:27:28 Speaker 04 Yes.
1:27:29 Griffin Newman? And instead it is just like punishing and like very difficult to watch. And thus like has no cultural permanence whatsoever, like did not translate. But then she like is so burned out by that experience that she's like, I'm not gonna do a movie again. It's just fascinating to me that it's like Oprah just like quietly gets an Academy Award nomination for her first performance ever, then becomes the most like important woman in media. Right? Becomes, I think, like the first black billionaire, period. And then like over 10 years later is like, it is my responsibility to try to do this again.
1:28:01 Speaker 04 Yeah.
1:28:02 Griffin Newman? And then was like, this sucks. I hate this.
1:28:03 Speaker 04 Yeah, why are we doing this?
1:28:04 Griffin Newman? I don't wanna do this anymore.
1:28:05 Speaker 04 Good for her.
1:28:06 Griffin Newman? And it was like, oh, it's weird. Oprah was in like two movies. And then the last decade, she's just like quietly like done a handful of films.
1:28:12 David Sims? Yeah, she started acting and she's really good.
1:28:14 Griffin Newman? She's really good. She's always good.
1:28:16 Speaker 04 It's probably a bit easier, though, like.
1:28:17 Griffin Newman? I think so.
1:28:17 David Sims? In smaller roles.
1:28:19 Speaker 04 Yeah.
1:28:19 Griffin Newman? Well, hey, Wrinkling Time is a really big role. She's like a giant.
1:28:25 Griffin Newman? Have you seen that movie?
1:28:27 Speaker 04 No.
1:28:27 Griffin Newman? Can he's tallest Oprah you'll ever see in your life.
1:28:30 Speaker 04 The tallest Oprah, okay.
1:28:31 Griffin Newman? The tallest Oprah you'll ever see in your life.
1:28:32 Speaker 03 How tall are we talking?
1:28:33 David Sims? I don't know, like 800 feet?
1:28:35 Speaker 04 800 feet?
1:28:36 David Sims? She's like a giant.
1:28:37 Griffin Newman? Yeah, like a true giant.
1:28:38 David Sims? So.
1:28:39 Speaker 04 Taller than a skyscraper?
1:28:42 David Sims? Spielberg and Jones want Tina Turner to play Sugar Avery. That's the only person like top choice that they don't get.
1:28:46 Speaker 04 Fascinating.
1:28:48 David Sims? Tina Turner is like, I fucking lived that shit, bro. I fucking was married to Ike Turner. I do not want to make that movie. I'm gonna go make Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, literally.
1:28:59 Griffin Newman? You know what I haven't lived?
1:29:01 David Sims? Thunderdome, yeah.
1:29:02 Griffin Newman? That's a new experience for me.
1:29:04 David Sims? Spielberg apparently, Spielberg had worked with Margaret Avery. She's in Something Evil and.
1:29:11 David Sims? Like apparently didn't even remember and no one was even that excited about her. But I mean, it's an incredible performance.
1:29:17 Griffin Newman? Was mostly a TV theater actor at this point? Yeah, it's incredible in it.
1:29:20 David Sims? Uh, movie cost about $15 million. Spielberg accepted only a minimum salary.
1:29:26 Speaker 04 Yay.
1:29:27 David Sims? Unbelievable of him.
1:29:27 Speaker 04 Yes.
1:29:29 David Sims? It was shot in North Carolina where you grew up. It was set in Georgia, of course, it's a colorful set in Georgia, but as Kenny's told me, it was shot in North Carolina and she's right. And it was heavily storyboarded, just like all Spielberg movies. Alan Davio, who shot ET, shot it. His first instinct was to shoot in black and white. Then he was like, I'm being a coward. That's me sugarcoating it more, like me fearing the violence even more, trying to distance it even more. So he doesn't do that.
1:29:58 Griffin Newman? So here's an interesting thing. He talks a lot about on Schindler's List, which is the movie where he succeeds finally in like making the transition that he's trying to make on this film. And on Empire of the Sun, right? Where he's like, how do I make the movie that is actually like staring reality in the face? That isn't caught up in like Spielberg candy coating. Yes, and he's dealing with serious issues and pain and what have you, not entertainment first and foremost. And that movie, he talks about that he was like, I had to let go of storyboards. I didn't want to be like mathematical about it. I would like show up and I would feel it out and it was improvisatory.
1:30:38 Griffin Newman? And I think part of that for him was that he was just like, I need to like be connected to the actual emotions of this thing, which is not a thing he lived through himself, but a thing that happened to his people that he perhaps has a greater psychic connection to. And he's filming in similar spaces and all of this, right? It's exactly what you're saying of like Spielberg sitting down with the script and being like, okay, so how do we shoot the father raping?
1:31:02 Speaker 04 Yeah.
1:31:03 Griffin Newman? And like storyboarding it might be like the beginning of the problem where even if he's kind of making good choices.
1:31:12 Griffin Newman? Thinking about it that clinically?
1:31:14 Speaker 04 Yes.
1:31:15 Griffin Newman? Which isn't to say he shouldn't have like planned out shots?
1:31:17 Speaker 04 Yeah, yes, but where it's like this will match this exactly versus what is the feeling? How do we best portray what is happening in front of the camera?
1:31:24 Griffin Newman? Cause Spielberg's problem at this point in his time is that he is too entertaining and he is too good of a communicator, right? It is what makes people go like, is this all just like manipulative bullshit? When people are starting to tire of the Spielberg thing of like, you know, what? He's gotta pull at the heartstrings every fucking time. He's gotta have the moments of awe and wonder and all this sort of shit. That like he, he, it is so hard for him to not turn something into
1:31:54 Speaker 04 Yeah.
1:31:54 Griffin Newman? A moment of like grand aesthetic movie magic that he does need to like figure out how to, I don't know, like tie his arms behind his back to some degree?
1:32:04 David Sims? Yeah.
1:32:05 Griffin Newman? And be more of an interpreter?
1:32:07 David Sims? Talk about the movie.
1:32:08 Griffin Newman? Versus an orchestrator, yeah. I mean, it just, it comes up right from the beginning because you're like thrown into the deep end of like some of the most extreme shit in the movie.
1:32:17 Speaker 04 Like to me, the thing that stuck with me most is this cheesy, sappy score plus the voiceover narration, which I'm like, I don't know, do they have to make her sound like that? Whatever. Okay. But that over, uh, blood, baby being taken, a dad saying, don't tell your mom. Like that, it just.
1:32:39 Griffin Newman? You have so much so quickly. There is a real like, you know, this character lives in hell and we're like speed running through it.
1:32:47 Speaker 04 Yes.
1:32:48 Griffin Newman? And even to a degree, you know, that it's like, this movie stars Whoopi Goldberg. We're still on the young version of her. It takes 30 minutes, I think I want to say before you get to Whoopi.
1:32:58 David Sims? Yeah.
1:32:58 Griffin Newman? And so you're just like, man, there's like a lot to get through.
1:33:01 Speaker 04 That little girl goes through a lot of pain.
1:33:03 Griffin Newman? A ton before the movie's really gonna kind of begin in earnest. And it's, yes, it's, it's the kind of thing that in a book you can take longer to sort of live with, and this movie needs to like.
1:33:14 Speaker 04 Get through it real quick.
1:33:15 Griffin Newman? Barrel through, which it just is, is overwhelming. But yes, you set up this woman, her abusive father has, uh, father two children with her, has taken them away. Um, and then is basically sold off into marriage to Danny Glover, who is interested in her sister, not in her.
1:33:32 Speaker 04 Who's like 12?
1:33:34 Griffin Newman? Yes. Uh, and her abusive father is like, take the older one.
1:33:38 Speaker 04 Yeah.
1:33:39 Griffin Newman? Um, she's separated from her sister, who's her closest tie in life.
1:33:44 Speaker 04 Her only friend.
1:33:45 Griffin Newman? Yes. Her, her, her, like, kind of her entire life, like her entire grounding force.
1:33:50 David Sims? The guy who plays her father, Leonard Jackson, is very like indelible to me. And I think it's because he's in like Sesame Street a lot and like Shining Time Station. He was a lot of like TV I watched as a little kid. Cause I was watching it being like, who is this guy? This face is so familiar. Like, I really know this guy. And that's, that's what I think I know him best from. Anyway, carry on.
1:34:12 Griffin Newman? Oh, and they're, they're split up. There's this sort of like, we'll communicate through letters. That's how I'll let you know that I'm still alive. The device of the book. Um, but that's basically the 30 minute mark. Not, not to say we're past all of that, right? But like at 30 minutes, you get to like, here's Whoopi. Now she's grown up. She's stuck in a fucking horrible situation. She hasn't spoken to her sister in 10 years.
1:34:35 Speaker 04 She doesn't seem to do much of like, she doesn't have anyone she can relate to at all.
1:34:39 Griffin Newman? No, no, she's just, it, it is what she plays incredibly well. I think is someone who basically as a survival mechanism has just kind of, um,
1:34:55 Griffin Newman? it's interesting. There's like the two sides of like, you know, Oprah plays Sophia as this sort of like zombie like despondence.
1:35:01 Speaker 04 Yeah.
1:35:02 Griffin Newman? Right? Like as much as she is trying to like turn herself off to insulate herself from the pain of her reality, where she gets to ultimately in the movie, there is this feeling of like, uh, great sorrow within her that she carries, that she's trying to like, um, I don't muzzle, so it doesn't overtake her.
1:35:20 Speaker 04 Right.
1:35:21 Griffin Newman? Whereas Whoopi, it's almost just sort of like, uh, how do I put it? She, she's just trying to like disengage, right?
1:35:30 Speaker 04 She shut herself off entirely. She's like completely closed down because it is only pain outside of that.
1:35:36 David Sims? It's very sad. It's my insight into that, uh, that situation. But there is this Spielbergian. Nostalgia for the childhood, nonetheless.
1:35:46 Speaker 04 Wait.
1:35:46 David Sims? The hand clapping, the singing and the stuff like that, you know?
1:35:49 Speaker 04 Um, visually, it reminds me a lot of, what is it? Daughters of the Dust?
1:35:54 David Sims? Oh, yeah. An incredible movie.
1:35:55 Speaker 04 Yeah, which is visually striking and it comes later, but there's visual similarities. And it's just interesting to watch Daughters of the Dust and be like, oh, look how this is evocative of a whole thing. And there it's like, I don't know if this is like right for child rape. I don't.
1:36:10 David Sims? Yeah. Daughters of the Dust is an interesting movie to talk about because that's Julie Dash. That's like one of the first movies directed by a black woman.
1:36:16 Speaker 04 Yes.
1:36:17 David Sims? In America.
1:36:18 Speaker 04 Yeah.
1:36:18 David Sims? Like that's theatrically, because I think the first movie directed by a black woman is a dry white season, but that's um, using policy who's French or whatever. But like, that's how unusual it was for a black woman to make a movie.
1:36:30 Speaker 04 Right.
1:36:31 David Sims? Period. Daughters of the Dust is amazing.
1:36:33 Speaker 04 Yes.
1:36:34 David Sims? But it's, uh, you know, it's an art film. It's kind of light on plot. It's very experiential. It's in this sort of Gullah dialect. So it's like, you know, it's, it's like not a commercial film.
1:36:47 Speaker 04 It's like a memory piece.
1:36:48 David Sims? Julie Dash never gets to make another like, you know, movie like that again, really? You know? All that. She should be making like, or whatever, like, you know, they should be finding Julie Dash's or using whatever like, and yeah, instead, like when there's the hand clapping, the, this motif that Spielberg puts at the beginning and the end of the movie. I'm like, huh, that's powerful. That's getting me right here, but I'm also kind of like, is that kind of bullshit?
1:37:12 Speaker 04 Yeah.
1:37:12 David Sims? You know, I don't know. Like, you know, that it's kind of working to me a little too easy. I don't know.
1:37:17 Griffin Newman? There was, I, I, I sent it to the group text, but there was an interview from when Hook was coming, or it just come out on 60 Minutes. That's sort of a like checking in on Steven Spielberg, the king of Hollywood. And the interview is trying to like, uh, not, not trying to soften it a little bit, but they're like, Hook doesn't seem to be like totally working, right? It's like, here's this guy kind of on like a semi victory lap, but this is the last movie he makes before he goes on to his Jurassic Schindler year where it's like undeniable. Spielberg, you did it, you won everything, right? Uh, and it's him at this inflection point and they're kind of grilling the like. Permanent adolescence part of it and asking him about his like obsession with childhood and all these things.
1:37:58 Griffin Newman? And he's showing this big office that Universal built for him where he has like fucking 80 arcade cabinets and whatever. Things I can't relate to surrounding yourself with childhood.
1:38:05 Speaker 04 I don't see that at all.
1:38:07 Griffin Newman? At all. Not in a very sober spare office.
1:38:09 Speaker 04 Yeah.
1:38:11 Griffin Newman? But the interviewer asked him some question about his childhood and like why did he wants to recapture? And he's like, I don't have any fondness for my childhood. And he's like, you don't? And he's like, I just have no good memories. And he's not being like, you don't understand how difficult it was. But he's just kind of very soberly saying like, when I think back on it, there's just like not a single happy thought. I just wasn't happy, you know?
1:38:32 David Sims? Fascinating.
1:38:33 Griffin Newman? It's kind of fascinating because it feels like if anything, that is the connection point he has into this movie.
1:38:39 Speaker 04 Yeah.
1:38:40 Griffin Newman? Just like some feeling of like deep existential sadness as a child. That was not circumstantial in the way it is for this.
1:38:47 Speaker 04 Yeah, yeah.
1:38:48 Griffin Newman? Right?
1:38:49 Speaker 04 Hopefully, yeah.
1:38:49 Griffin Newman? But like in that first 30 minutes, I feel him sort of connecting to something, if not in one to one experience, which is probably the thing where she's like, if you could translate the Elliot feeling in E T to this. You know, is there like some parallel here? But then it also makes it kind of odd when the movie is all about like the power, those like brief moments of connection and grace have in her childhood amidst all of this. And trying to recapture that where it's like, is there any analog for that in his life? No, he ran off and he joined the circus and he like looked back and was like, and now I make fun.
1:39:25 Speaker 04 Yeah.
1:39:25 Griffin Newman? I make fun in magic.
1:39:28 David Sims? So you're saying that's why these Steven Spielberg is a perfect choice to make the color purple?
1:39:31 Speaker 04 Perfect choice.
1:39:32 Griffin Newman? 10 out of 10.
1:39:33 Speaker 04 The only one who was making art that black people would like.
1:39:37 David Sims? He hadn't done anything about abuse. Again, it's not like, that almost sounds silly to me to say, because it's not like, oh, we need an abuse director for this movie. We need someone who really knows his way around.
1:39:46 Speaker 04 Who would you count as a, an abuse director?
1:39:48 David Sims? That's what I'm saying. But like.
1:39:50 Griffin Newman? I just had on like five jokes I could have made.
1:39:53 Speaker 04 I want to hear three of them. I want to hear three of them.
1:39:55 Griffin Newman? Roman Polanski.
1:39:56 Speaker 04 Oh, okay, okay.
1:39:57 Griffin Newman? I was going to go down that kind of like territory. Yeah, John Landis. I mean, that's a different, that's going back to Twilight Zone, the movie. Yeah, okay.
1:40:06 David Sims? ET has trauma in it. Close Encounters has this kind of darkness to it.
1:40:11 Griffin Newman? Part of Spielberg's thing is like being able to make these things a little allegorical or being able to make them sort of like elliptical where it's like, here is something like the one scene of the kiss that represents a sort of like notion of a thread.
1:40:24 Speaker 04 Yeah.
1:40:24 Griffin Newman? That you fill in the blanks and I don't have to depict it.
1:40:26 Speaker 04 Right.
1:40:27 Griffin Newman? You know, one of the movies I struggle with the most that we have covered on the show was Lolita, which is like another very bizarre book to adapt into a movie and try to make into a commercial studio film at that time. Right. And part of what I find so bizarre about that film is that they're like, we are adapting Lolita. Also, because of codes and regulations, we can never once directly acknowledge what is going on in this movie. And it feels like this sci-fi movie where everyone is like talking around what's going on.
1:40:55 Speaker 04 Yeah.
1:40:55 Griffin Newman? And it's like, why bother making this if you can't depict this? And there's this self censorship in Spielberg where he's just like, well, the romance I'm going to take out, but the abuse I have to put on.
1:41:06 Speaker 04 Yeah, you have to keep the, the pain in. That's why people are coming to it.
1:41:10 Griffin Newman? And I'm gonna try to do the PG 13 version of it that isn't like inflicting suffering upon the audience in like a cruel or malicious way.
1:41:17 Speaker 04 Yeah.
1:41:18 Griffin Newman? But then it's also like, then, then what are you doing?
1:41:21 Speaker 04 What are you saying?
1:41:21 Griffin Newman? Here.
1:41:22 Speaker 04 Right. The book is saying something interesting about humanity and pain and recovering from that. And there's like, the end has this recovery and this understanding of what God is in a really cool way and they get rid of it.
1:41:35 Griffin Newman? Well, especially if you don't have anyone who's kind of like pulling her out and forcing her to connect other than in very brief moments, you know, and it's the movie, he is so deliberate as a storyteller that he is not creating a world where you can imply what is happening in between the scenes and fill in the gaps. It feels like he's saying like, no, in my version of the movie, they don't have sex.
1:41:59 Speaker 04 Nope.
1:41:59 Griffin Newman? Right. This just isn't.
1:42:00 Speaker 04 A shoulder touch is the love that she's getting.
1:42:03 Griffin Newman? Truly the end of it.
1:42:04 David Sims? And it is gonna be, it's sort of old school Hollywood stuff. It'll all be in eyes and gestures and right, feeling and emotion and you can read things.
1:42:12 Griffin Newman? He nails and the shit though, like Whoopi nails.
1:42:14 David Sims? And Whoopi's really, really, really good.
1:42:15 Griffin Newman? You get to the dinner table scene and Spielberg said that he like encouraged Whoopi and Oprah to improvise a lot. You know, that's the big scene because obviously Whoopi doesn't like talk that much. Otherwise.
1:42:27 David Sims? You were talking about quite late in the movie.
1:42:29 Griffin Newman? Yeah.
1:42:29 Speaker 04 Yeah.
1:42:30 Griffin Newman? But he knows this as someone who has that ability. And I think also to his credit, perhaps he's just like, hey, you know what? If we cast this movie well, and these people are in this environment on the day, they might find the language to say things that me and my fucking Dutch writer couldn't identify at a desk. Right? Maybe let them feel it out and see if anything comes up.
1:42:51 Speaker 04 Was that shot? Do you know if that was shot later in the filming process?
1:42:54 David Sims? That's interesting. I wonder. Yeah, I don't know.
1:42:56 Speaker 04 Like when they got the time to like.
1:42:58 David Sims? Like.
1:42:58 Speaker 04 Jive and gel as a community.
1:43:00 Griffin Newman? I don't know. The thing I just know is that it was like a repeated thing that she has said that he was constantly encouraging her to improvise and go like, if anything feels right, say it. And same thing to Oprah. And that scene in particular is like the most ecstatic version of it. I think in a lot of ways is the best scene in the movie. A lot of it's just that like Whoopi is coming in like it gets so fucking hot and it is so cathartic. When we've had to watch.
1:43:23 Speaker 04 We've been waiting.
1:43:24 Griffin Newman? Yes.
1:43:24 Speaker 04 She's got a knife in her hand. She's yelling and we're like, yes, these people deserve it. And I love, love, love. And this happens in the book too, that she's like, I hate you and your kids are shitty.
1:43:36 Griffin Newman? Yeah.
1:43:37 Speaker 04 That that was like, I, cause we, as an adult with no children, oftentimes it's like, hey, you can't comment on children. But I love.
1:43:47 David Sims? You don't want to bring that. Yeah.
1:43:48 Speaker 04 Yeah.
1:43:49 David Sims? The further burn of like, you know what? Actually, your kids suck.
1:43:52 Speaker 04 Suck dude.
1:43:53 David Sims? I don't like their vibe.
1:43:54 Speaker 04 Yeah. But also. I love that.
1:43:55 Griffin Newman? We've been watching this movie for two hours and we're like, these kids do suck.
1:43:58 Speaker 04 Yeah, they do.
1:44:00 Griffin Newman? Say it. Everyone in this movie is unbearable. And she just like, it is, I think this movie would not have worked at all. Its success in its time, I think hinges entirely on that scene delivering so hard of the emotional release of like, yes. And now she's going to be able to fucking take her life into her own hands. And we end the movie with a little bit of uplift.
1:44:22 Speaker 04 A smidgen?
1:44:23 Griffin Newman? A smidgen.
1:44:24 Speaker 04 Yeah.
1:44:24 David Sims? A, a right, a hope of. Better days ahead and at least right being, you know, being liberated from the worst of it and all that. It's not like, it's like, yeah, and then everything was fantastic. I don't know.
1:44:37 Griffin Newman? You, you at least have an opportunity to try to make a better life for yourself at the end of the movie, right? She is finally given a little space and a set of circumstances where there is a possibility to rebuild a life.
1:44:48 Speaker 04 Yeah, and her sister's back and we don't really get into that, but yeah.
1:44:52 Griffin Newman? But I, I think it is to Goldberg's credit that she nails that scene so fucking hard, as is Oprah, as is everyone at that table, right? The whole scene is kind of like perfect. But it is such a wild switch flip. When you just have this character barely be able to string together six words above a whisper for the two hours leading up to that. And you have these small moments of connection, but they don't really feel like she has ever been given any space to be herself, which as an idiot who hasn't read the book, I'm like, I understand the dramatic function of having this romance with Shug in her life that like excesses this part of herself, that helps her discover herself,
1:45:36 Griffin Newman? that like builds a path for this kind of catharsis.
1:45:39 Speaker 04 I, I really like that. And in the movie, they do maintain where, so they're all having dinner, which seems to be like a normal thing. And then Shug is like, hey, I'm about to leave. Uh, BT dubs, Seeley's coming with me. And that is the thing that seems to open the floodgates and allows her, like that, that Shug was like, hey, we are doing something that is not the norm. And now Seeley's like, okay, I'm gonna curse all y'all out. I'm gonna tell these children that they're stupid, that these people suck, your daddy sucks. I hope you die. I hope everything you touch turns to ash. I hope you have pain till you do right by me. Nothing, nothing's gonna go right for you. And I love that.
1:46:15 David Sims? I love it too. And I love that it like sort of works, right? You're, the implication is like she has, has kind of messed him up in some way. But that it's also not like, and then he fell out off a cliff, like a Disney villain. And he was dealt with. It's like, no, he's still there and all this shit is still there. And like, you know, it's not like there's some. You know, triumphant downfall of the bad guys in this movie and this story, right? I don't know.
1:46:41 Griffin Newman? But you have, you have the suppression of the letters, right?
1:46:44 David Sims? Yes. The big, the, the big violation, right?
1:46:46 Griffin Newman? Right, right. The thing that finally breaks her above all else of all the indignities in her life.
1:46:50 Speaker 04 Yeah, it's like, he did a lot. Like, he, he beat this woman, but it's the letter keeping.
1:46:54 Griffin Newman? It's the letter keeping.
1:46:55 Speaker 04 That's the thing.
1:46:56 Griffin Newman? And also that the letters, when she finally gets one, are like, hey, by the way, you won't believe the incredible shit that's been going on over here.
1:47:05 Speaker 04 I live in Africa.
1:47:06 Griffin Newman? Right.
1:47:07 Speaker 04 I'm doing stuff. Oh, I'm with your kids, BTW, they, they are totally alive.
1:47:11 Griffin Newman? Right. What a miracle.
1:47:12 Speaker 04 I'm with them.
1:47:13 Griffin Newman? They got great parents. Everything's awesome.
1:47:15 Speaker 04 You know, life and how it could be nice? I've been having that. Good luck with your terrible existence.
1:47:20 Griffin Newman? Right. Which like, basically she gets this letter that's like, we've been living in a Steven Spielberg movie and it rules. I'm so sorry I haven't been able to get hold of you. I'm worried that things are probably pretty bad, but I thought you might like to know that we're like, kind of killing it over here. There, there is something in, rather than, it gives her this sense of like, uh, internal strength to, for the first time, consider that there is an alternate way her life could go, after you imagine assuming the worst, which is she's been dead for decades.
1:47:55 Speaker 04 Yeah.
1:47:56 Griffin Newman? Right? And now to get this letter that's like, and then you won't believe what happened next. I found your children. Like, all this stuff, right? That, that, like, the betrayal combined with the sort of first, like, revealing of a window to another viewpoint.
1:48:13 Speaker 04 Yes.
1:48:14 Griffin Newman? But all of that is internal. Like, all of that is just kind of like, and, and Whoopi sells it. But like, an arc the movie has not really built outside of like, an ecstatic 10 minute sequence of Spielberg lovingly, like, shooting Africa.
1:48:32 Griffin Newman? And Quincy going hard and like Whoopi just really playing the shit out of reading a letter.
1:48:38 Speaker 04 And there's one moment, and in the book, I feel like it doesn't go like this, but in the movie where she's being asked to shave mister and you can tell she's about to slit a throat.
1:48:49 David Sims? She's like, maybe I kill him right here.
1:48:50 Speaker 04 Yeah. And honestly, maybe this says something about the way I was raised in the South and like the plays that I saw, but it was like, hey, if a man beats you, you gotta kill him.
1:48:59 David Sims? Right. You're right.
1:49:01 Speaker 04 You gotta Earl had to die and that's just like how it's gonna go. So I was like, I don't know, man. Just like if the law isn't involved in you guys' life every day like that, I feel like we should just slit his throat.
1:49:14 David Sims? You're, are you referencing the Dixie Chicks song goodbye Earl?
1:49:19 Speaker 04 That you weren't raised like that? You weren't raised with the Earl had to die? We as a, like, that is a thing that will get friends together. Like, you want to really submit your female relationships? Kill a man.
1:49:30 David Sims? My, my favorite version of that is the Miranda Lambert song Gunpowder and Lead, which I think is underrated, uh, one of her best songs, which is also about, she's like, I'm going to shoot this person who hit me. So fucking good. His fist is big, but my gun's bigger. He'll find out when I pull the trigger is the, is the bridge. It's really, really good.
1:49:47 Speaker 04 That's very real.
1:49:48 Griffin Newman? Country western sims over here.
1:49:49 David Sims? I am. People, people make fun of me. Right. Like Alex likes to do hip hop sims. Country western sims rarely comes out, but he's there. I love country music. Ben and, Ben and Griff exchanging a little look.
1:50:02 Speaker 04 Yeah.
1:50:03 Griffin Newman? It's just a decade of dreams.
1:50:04 David Sims? Giddy up. Yeah. Decade of dreams.
1:50:07 Griffin Newman? New Lord.
1:50:07 David Sims? I love country music. Miranda Lambert, one of the great songstresses of our lifetime.
1:50:12 Griffin Newman? Uh, the shaving sequences are so insanely well done.
1:50:15 David Sims? Shaving is crazy.
1:50:17 Griffin Newman? Shaving.
1:50:17 David Sims? Why do men, why did men ever do that?
1:50:19 Speaker 04 Do that?
1:50:20 David Sims? A hundred percent like.
1:50:21 Speaker 04 I don't trust people to like do my nails half the time, but you're saying you're gonna hold to where my important veins and arteries are?
1:50:28 David Sims? No one should have ever shaved until they invented like, you know, a big razor. When it was like, all right, here we.
1:50:33 Griffin Newman? I go slice.
1:50:34 Speaker 04 A truly weapon for murder. And then you're just like, yes, I trust often a stranger to just scrape that against my delicate neck. That's wild.
1:50:42 Griffin Newman? But it's a kind of a perfect Spielberg setup, right? To have this guy be like, here, I'm handing you a murder instrument. And by the way, if you cut me, I'm gonna murder you, right?
1:50:54 Speaker 04 But I could murder you first so quickly.
1:50:56 Griffin Newman? That's what's interesting about it for me is like, and I think these sequences work well because they are less verbal. And he's able to just do kind of like Spielberg, like imagery and moments and looks and whatever. But the weird like dynamic of like, you are holding the weapon. And yet psychologically, he is still convincing you that if you try to kill him, you'll end up dead first. And it's like, yeah, right. The first time she's sort of aware of the power, but wouldn't even consider it. And is actually just afraid of the harm of accidentally nicking him. And the second time she comes so close to doing it. But like the way he just constructs those sequences and the tension of it. And it's like, it does, it feels very visceral and it makes you in the way that Spielberg can go like,
1:51:40 Griffin Newman? it is insane that we just hold blades up to our neck.
1:51:44 David Sims? Well, it's just like, there's a lot of, you know, like, um, obviously, uh, Sarah, uh, Sophia, sorry, the Oprah character. The foremost example of like, what, what Ceeley is absorbing around her. It's like, yeah, that's a woman who speaks up and is like, you know, destroyed for it.
1:51:58 Speaker 04 Yeah.
1:51:59 David Sims? You know, like she has one moment of sort of outspoken behavior. That's justified. And literally her life is ruined. Like, and which is one of the craziest things in The Color Purple, that it's just like, we're just gonna cut ahead to eight years later. She's out of jail and she's ruined. And like, that's, you know, two minutes in the movie, right? Like the, the leap just sort of happens in the movie.
1:52:19 Griffin Newman? It's really, I had to rewind it just to make sure I.
1:52:21 David Sims? To be like, right, hey, wait, wait, wait, wait, we're not gonna have like sequences of Sophie in prison, maybe to understand what's going on. It's like, no.
1:52:28 Griffin Newman? No, just like years gone.
1:52:29 David Sims? Yeah.
1:52:30 Griffin Newman? And then they say like, and eight years later, the final indignity, they made her go work for truth. I've. Right, which the Christmas sequence is also.
1:52:37 David Sims? Dana, Dana.
1:52:38 Speaker 04 I love that sequence.
1:52:39 Griffin Newman? Christmas sequence is incred- that's a- there are like, there are sequences in this.
1:52:43 Speaker 04 Yes.
1:52:44 Griffin Newman? That are so undeniably effective. He's able to, in this kind of odd Spielberg way, identify where the humor is in it, find the stakes, find the real emotion, like be this kind of like five tool player filmmaker who's giving you a full feast and is giving you this kind of like old school, like Hollywood weepy. I just, I think that scene is so beautifully played out because you're already kind of unmoored by the, the jump in time.
1:53:12 Speaker 04 Yes, it's eight years she's been.
1:53:13 Griffin Newman? Right. You'd be like, holy shit, and we're just here now and it's over. And now like here's this woman who is unrecognizable, is wearing Quasimodo makeup.
1:53:21 Speaker 04 Yes.
1:53:21 Griffin Newman? Has a very different physicality, right? And then this moment of like bringing her back to her family, you know, I mean, the driving sequence is fun and you're like, right. But then the, the realization of, oh, she's going to get this taken away from her.
1:53:36 Speaker 04 Yeah.
1:53:37 Griffin Newman? And Dana Ivy saying like, I don't know her either.
1:53:40 Speaker 04 Yeah, you're like, lady, lady, lady, come on.
1:53:43 David Sims? Love Dana Ivy.
1:53:45 Speaker 04 I, she's in Sabrina, which.
1:53:48 David Sims? The remake of Sabrina, yes.
1:53:49 Griffin Newman? With Red Hulk, yeah.
1:53:50 Speaker 04 Yeah, with Red Hulk.
1:53:51 Griffin Newman? Yeah.
1:53:52 Speaker 04 Uh, and I, I hate that I love that movie.
1:53:55 David Sims? Do you?
1:53:56 Speaker 04 Everyone.
1:53:57 David Sims? Sidney Park.
1:53:58 Speaker 04 So many people have told me how bad that film is and so intellectually I know it is bad, but I will have a crush on Red Hulk until I die. I'm not taking it back. I mean it.
1:54:11 David Sims? Yeah.
1:54:12 Speaker 04 Harrison Ford is a cutie patootie and, um, is it Julie Armand? Yeah, she, I'm like, go for it. Sleep with a billionaire who you work for. Do your, do whatever you want, man.
1:54:24 David Sims? Um, I gotta watch that movie. I've never seen.
1:54:26 Griffin Newman? I've never have either.
1:54:27 David Sims? Because it was not like.
1:54:29 Speaker 04 And no one likes it.
1:54:30 David Sims? Yeah. And I watched the John Williams documentary the other day that was on Disney Plus that you guys have referenced, I think, on prior episodes, which briefly references that score.
1:54:40 Griffin Newman? Oh, sure.
1:54:41 David Sims? I guess, because it's like one of his forgotten sort of sweeping 90's scores. And I was like, huh, do I need to watch Sidney Park?
1:54:48 Griffin Newman? Kinda, yeah.
1:54:49 Speaker 04 Just on a Saturday afternoon, just give it a shot.
1:54:52 David Sims? Alright, fine.
1:54:53 Griffin Newman? But I, the whole Christmas sequence, I think he like, uh, there, there is such a masterful control of like silence and body language and like him actually letting the performances sell it and letting it being a little bit unspoken.
1:55:07 Speaker 04 Just like the shoulders falling when it's like, "Well, uh, it was nice seeing you once, children, and I'm, uh, gone forever."
1:55:14 Griffin Newman? Yes, yes, yes. It's what's weird about this movie is like, yeah, that he will-
1:55:20 Speaker 04 Some sequence, great!
1:55:21 Griffin Newman? Over-deliver and under-deliver at the same time and you're like, there is like, no ill intent in this movie.
1:55:28 David Sims? Right. This is not a maliciously made film or whatever. Yeah, no, no.
1:55:32 Griffin Newman? No, and there's also like no incompetence.
1:55:34 Speaker 04 Not, yeah, these people know what they're doing.
1:55:36 Griffin Newman? Yes.
1:55:37 Speaker 04 Mostly, they know physically, technically what they're doing, yes.
1:55:41 Griffin Newman? Right. Um, but, but like you saying the thing of like the, the dynamic of the shaving, right?
1:55:47 Speaker 04 Yes.
1:55:47 Griffin Newman? Like, obviously that's the tension of the scene, but it feels like Spielberg has only internalized it, it to a like movie thriller degree, right? Which he's able to express well, but I don't think if he totally understands where that character is at that moment.
1:56:09 Speaker 04 For that to be like, because it's Shug's running to stop her from killing him 'cause she can tell-
1:56:17 Griffin Newman? Yeah.
1:56:17 Speaker 04 From quite far off that this lady's gonna do this thing. It, it felt contrived in a way that I didn't like, similarly to, uh, when Shug is singing as she's walking, like, towards the church at the end, and there's a sort of like, "Oh, but God, but God, um, it's a black movie, we're gonna put God in it, right?"
1:56:41 Griffin Newman? Right, right, which, yes, that's, it does, it does feel like that. It does feel like Spielberg being like, "And, and this is important."
1:56:49 Speaker 04 Yeah, right, right?
1:56:50 Griffin Newman? Right? I'm correct in that that's important?
1:56:52 Speaker 04 Yeah.
1:56:53 Griffin Newman? Yeah.
1:56:54 David Sims? I don't think Spielberg has a particularly spiritual side at this.
1:57:00 Griffin Newman? Really ever.
1:57:02 David Sims? Honestly, even when-
1:57:03 Griffin Newman? He talks about that it's-
1:57:05 David Sims? Schindler's List, like he talks about like, sort of getting back in touch with his Jewishness.
1:57:10 Griffin Newman? And he's like, her going through conversion later in life made me like relive it. And then I sort of became a better Jew in my 40s.
1:57:16 David Sims? But I still, I don't think of him as like a spiritual-
1:57:19 Griffin Newman? I don't either. That's the thing.
1:57:20 David Sims? Like an artist, like whether or not he's had personal-
1:57:22 Griffin Newman? It feels very cultural. It's about traditions. It's about lineage.
1:57:26 David Sims? And he's someone who understands, yeah, the power and the scariness of like family. And this is a movie about what, what a betrayal family can be, right? Like, you know, all of, so much of Seeley's family is, you know, hostile and abusive and against her and like, turns out to be not her family. Or, right, there's like, you know, revelations.
1:57:46 Griffin Newman? The Indiana Jones movies are the most explicitly theological movies he's made, right? And they're all about like fighting this idea of it. I think a lot of his movies kind of take place in a godless world. I think a lot of his movies are about like these kind of like inexplicable, incomprehensibly huge acts and events that in a universe that refuses to sort of give you answers.
1:58:10 Speaker 04 I, when I say that it's like, oh, we were throwing God in it, I don't necessarily mean there's any sort of theologic ideology behind it. I do think it is like, black people, church, throw some black church in this movie.
1:58:25 Griffin Newman? I, I agree.
1:58:26 Speaker 04 Does that make sense? Am I being insensitive?
1:58:28 Griffin Newman? I agree with you. And I'm saying, I think that's the exact thing that Spielberg kind of can't relate to, which is the sort of like turning to God for some sense of comfort or answers, right? Like to him, and I think it speaks to his like sad, worried child thing. He's just like, when I grew up, nothing made sense to me and I felt like alienated and alone. And what made sense to me were movies and TV shows. And so I made them. And now I'm good at recreating feelings to make other people feel things, right?
1:58:56 Speaker 04 Right.
1:58:56 Griffin Newman? And the way that there are these sort of like huge acts in his film, the divine interventions, whether they're like a shark or- ET coming to the grave. If it's the worst thing or the best thing, right? Part of it feels like, and we don't really know what to make of this. I it's it's kind of, the world is bigger than you can understand, right? There are inexplicably good and bad things, but there's no sort of like guiding light.
1:59:19 Speaker 04 Yeah.
1:59:19 Griffin Newman? We struggle to find answers and anyone who tries to like pursue them is maybe like, that's not what it's about. It's about the internal journey of how you respond to this thing. Where then the movie being like, and then we found church feels really insincere coming from him.
1:59:33 Speaker 04 Yes.
1:59:33 Griffin Newman? And like, maybe I'm way out of line in my pathologizing of this, but like, we spent a lot of time thinking about this guy. And you look at like, you know, I feel like when people mock like the end of um, uh, War of the Worlds. It's a similar thing.
1:59:49 Speaker 04 How did those kids live?
1:59:50 David Sims? How did they?
1:59:51 Griffin Newman? It feels sort of insincere where you're just like, that's not where these movies go.
1:59:56 Speaker 04 Yeah.
1:59:56 Griffin Newman? That's not really his language of like, and then you make it and the brownstone's in perfect shape.
2:00:01 Speaker 04 Yeah.
2:00:01 Griffin Newman? Yeah.
2:00:02 Speaker 04 Sorry, I I watched that movie also in theaters also was like, that girl had been dead so fast. What are we doing?
2:00:09 David Sims? Justin Chatwin rubbing, running like into a tank and then later he's just like, hey dad.
2:00:13 Speaker 04 Yeah, what's up?
2:00:14 David Sims? That's, we've talked about.
2:00:16 Speaker 04 Sorry, sorry.
2:00:17 Griffin Newman? But I feel like most, yes, most Spielberg movies kind of end with this note of like, and people have to live with shit. For the degree that it's like, here's like the king of like wonder and uplift. Most of his movies, he's good at finding a good ending point to leave you feeling kind of good. But if you actually dig into where his movies resolve himself, they're messy as hell. In a way that's interesting and I think makes them stick. You know, it's like you're putting the fuck Ark of the Covenant in a crate and being like, so the what now? What are you talking about? And the guys swim up to shore at the end of Jaws and you're like, they just survived a shark attack. And they're like, their friend was murdered, you know?
2:00:54 David Sims? And like. Acquaintance.
2:00:56 Griffin Newman? Okay.
2:00:56 David Sims? They're not friends of acquaintance.
2:00:58 Speaker 04 I like this distinction. It's like, their emotions shouldn't be that.
2:01:02 Griffin Newman? Quinn.
2:01:02 Speaker 04 It was just an acquaintance. It doesn't matter that much, right?
2:01:07 Griffin Newman? But like, this is his first movie that is really kind of, I'm I'm running in my head if I can back this up. I think I can. I think this is like his first movie that is really trying to contend with like human evils.
2:01:19 Speaker 04 Hmm.
2:01:20 Griffin Newman? Right?
2:01:20 Speaker 04 Yeah, it's not a thing coming from the sky or the sea.
2:01:22 Griffin Newman? It's not supernatural, but it's also not like bureaucratic. It's not institutional.
2:01:28 Speaker 04 It's that guy.
2:01:29 Griffin Newman? It's an abstract idea of like the law chasing the like honeymoon lovers in Sugarland Express, which is also like a low level, you know, like all this sort of stuff. It's like, what if there is like an unfathomable level of like human suffering? And it is like not abstracted. It is like looked at directly in the eye, is perpetuated by people, is perpetuated out of basically their own smallness. I mean, that's what this movie really comes to, right? What is so cathartic in the dinner table scene is like also the Adolf Caesar character needing to be like, you're right, I raised him poorly.
2:02:03 Griffin Newman? I'm bad and I fucked him up.
2:02:04 Speaker 04 Yeah.
2:02:05 Griffin Newman? This is like a bad lineage of bad people who don't know how to.
2:02:08 Speaker 04 I raised a bad son, his kids are shit. We're all bad.
2:02:11 Griffin Newman? And you look around this table and the collateral damage of all of this. And it's just like men will, will literally do the color purple to avoid going to therapy. Right? Like to a certain degree.
2:02:20 Speaker 04 I'm doing a little clap into the microphone. That was great.
2:02:23 David Sims? Loves to avoid going to therapy.
2:02:24 Griffin Newman? It's a great joke, but uh, I think that places him in a story that he has no idea how to actually end.
2:02:33 Speaker 04 Yeah, because the end of the book is very much so like her and Mr. Kind of like develop a, not a friendship exactly, but like a comfort with each other in a certain way and Shug and all these other people where it is like, hey, these people kind of rehabilitate and acknowledge the fact that the, at the harm that they've caused each other and God, and they, they smoked pot and I'm like, good for them.
2:02:59 Griffin Newman? Yeah.
2:03:00 Speaker 04 Um, but they know, of course they didn't do that in the movie in the eighties where they come to God or whatever, but I really like that development that can happen in the book that Spielberg does not seem to have a handle on.
2:03:11 Griffin Newman? Well, that's the internal life stuff, which he just is the stuff that like, of course he doesn't know what to do with.
2:03:18 Speaker 04 Yeah.
2:03:18 Griffin Newman? Right. But I, but I also think, I think the ideas of what this movie is like. Grappling with are things that he just like, doesn't know how to work through because you can't blow up the shark.
2:03:31 Speaker 04 Yeah.
2:03:31 Griffin Newman? Right?
2:03:32 David Sims? Right. This is the thing. You can't have a Danny moment where Danny Glover gets pushed off a cliff like Gaston.
2:03:37 Griffin Newman? Right. And even the sort of moment.
2:03:38 Speaker 04 I would like to see it, but yeah, you're right. You're right. You're right.
2:03:41 Griffin Newman? The moment of kind of grace of him like receiving the letter and sending the money and being like, I should do one good thing.
2:03:48 Speaker 04 The one.
2:03:49 Griffin Newman? Right. Still doesn't like resolve anything. It doesn't heal any wounds. It's done in sort of like private, right? It's basically just this one quiet, silent moment of his own reckoning of like, I can do one good thing in my life. I will never have the ability to say I'm sorry or like own up to any of this.
2:04:13 Griffin Newman? But, but then it's like, he's trying to push the movie's equivalent of the brownstone at the end of Where the Worlds where it's like, well, what if they have the house and the church and they're all together and they're happy and the kids had a good education, then they'd just be happy for the rest of the time, right?
2:04:27 Speaker 04 Everything's fine.
2:04:27 Griffin Newman? Right. They got there.
2:04:28 Speaker 04 Yeah.
2:04:29 Griffin Newman? They got to like, I don't know. They, they, they got to fucking Emerald City. Like there's a degree of that, right?
2:04:37 Speaker 04 Yes.
2:04:38 David Sims? I feel like, yes. I feel like we, I'm trying to think of what we have. We haven't talked about Shug Avery enough, in my opinion. That's sort of the, uh, you know, plotline. We've sort of talked around. Cause like those sequences of her singing and of the club are very, very cool. And I don't know. I just want to know everyone's opinion on them.
2:04:58 Griffin Newman? Well, I, I think, uh, we're saying there's sort of, you know, the, the three Shug, uh, Sophia, Seti thing, right?
2:05:08 Speaker 04 Seeley?
2:05:08 Griffin Newman? Seeley, excuse me, triangle of the three of them and like, understanding Seeley's pathology through seeing the examples of how the women who try to step out of line are treated in society.
2:05:19 David Sims? Right. Sophia is beaten down and imprisoned for saying hell no to somebody essentially.
2:05:23 Griffin Newman? Right.
2:05:25 David Sims? Like one time and the musical, obviously it's a big song, it's a great number.
2:05:29 Speaker 04 So are you saying I should or shouldn't see the musical?
2:05:32 David Sims? I, some people liked the movie. Did you ever see it?
2:05:35 Griffin Newman? I never saw it. No.
2:05:36 David Sims? I, I found the way.
2:05:37 Speaker 04 No Fantasia's in it.
2:05:38 David Sims? Yeah, that, I mean, the, the performers are, are pretty good in it. It's not, it's, I found the way it was made a little hermetic feeling like, like a lot of movie musicals where I just kind of like, this doesn't feel like it's set anywhere and like, but it's kind of, I mean, it's pretty watchable. I think it's a strange musical. Fundamentally, like in a way, much as this is kind of a strange, but it's a tough thing to adapt into a, you know, progressive, you know, Hollywoody.
2:06:04 Griffin Newman? But that felt like that was Oprah really getting behind it and being like, we need a new way to get the story back out to people.
2:06:11 David Sims? Which I understand it's again, it's, it's watchable. I don't know. It's okay. Okay.
2:06:18 David Sims? Do you like musicals?
2:06:21 David Sims? Okay. Well, then I don't think.
2:06:23 Speaker 04 I like some musicals, but I have to realize like, oh, you like these three musicals that you grew up on and you're not really interested in any others. So, uh, oh my God, West Side Story is one that we watched in music class in elementary school. It doesn't make a lot of sense, but I watched that one all the time. It's a, it's like, did win best picture? It was, okay. I was like, somebody you, I, you should know, um, you should be able to answer these questions immediately. I, so West Side Story, uh, The Sound of Music and Oliver.
2:06:55 David Sims? Oh, I mean, these are classic sixties, you know, big Hollywood colorful musical movies.
2:06:59 Griffin Newman? I feel like all three movies I saw for the first time, uh, on VHS in school, broken up into classes.
2:07:06 David Sims? Yes. Kind of fun classics on, I mean, I, Oliver also won best picture and that's the one where you're like, this one's best picture. Like, but it is fun.
2:07:15 Speaker 04 It's, but it's not as, I mean, come on, please.
2:07:17 David Sims? God and sitting.
2:07:18 Griffin Newman? I thought you were going to break into the full song.
2:07:20 David Sims? Anyway, uh, but, but okay. So Sugar Avery, right. So Sophia's beaten down. Sugar Avery is this independent and impressive figure in a way, but she is also somewhat, you know, marginalized and like a little tragic and like.
2:07:32 Griffin Newman? Right. There, there is a more sort of, uh, quiet suppression around her, right? Like Sophia is like really pushing lines and being like pushed back. Whereas Shug, there's just this kind of like, she's not a serious woman.
2:07:44 David Sims? Right. Yeah. A little bit. Um.
2:07:48 David Sims? But it's but like she is this gateway to Seeley considering whatever independence and sexual independence.
2:07:56 Speaker 04 Yeah, like I like when Shug is singing Sister, which is a song I grew up with. And this is part of the reason why I thought I was like, I've seen this movie a zillion times. Because that sister, that one, people, I heard that throughout my childhood. But in that moment in the movie, it is clear that Seeley is experiencing something and is being seen as a human with thoughts and emotions and like potential in a way that she hasn't before. And I really liked that scene.
2:08:26 David Sims? These men, right?
2:08:27 Speaker 04 Yeah, none of them have. I also kind of like, I mean, it's very, very silly. But the way that Spielberg shoots, oh, Sophie's about to fight this girl. I liked that.
2:08:40 Griffin Newman? Yes.
2:08:40 Speaker 04 Yeah.
2:08:40 Griffin Newman? Yes. No, I think it's what makes Margaret Avery's performance so good is she enters the movie late and you're just like, this is the first person who actually like sees her and listens to her.
2:08:52 Speaker 04 Yes.
2:08:53 Griffin Newman? Right?
2:08:53 David Sims? Right.
2:08:53 Griffin Newman? When this character.
2:08:54 David Sims? Is paying any attention to her.
2:08:55 Griffin Newman? We've been seeing this movie mostly from this character's viewpoint, who is the one who silently looks and listens.
2:09:00 Speaker 04 Yes.
2:09:01 Griffin Newman? And I also think she successfully comes in and you're like, this is the only person in the movie who has a bulletproof sense of self. Right? Just comes in like completely self possessed, does not care what anyone thinks, for how much Sophia is like brash and pushy and like won't take shit from anybody or whatever. You see the hesitation in her. I think Oprah plays that well. It is someone who is trying to fight against a system but understands what she's up against. Whereas Shug to some degree is just sort of like, I'm me.
2:09:31 Speaker 04 I'm me. I really like that in the book because she continues to I'm me her way throughout. I feel like in the movie, and this was a little bit frustrating, they do have her interacting with the preacher character. And at that moment, it doesn't feel as much like I am me, I'm standing here, I am powerful. I am completely accepting of who I am and think that I have worth. It seems like she's going to the church to talk to the preacher guy. And she She's like asking for worth in a certain way. And then they reiterate that when she's like walking through the church at the end of the movie singing and being like, I'm a person. And then like she hugs the, and that's like her big moment when she hugs the pastor. Am I making any sense at all?
2:10:13 Speaker 03 Yeah, the movie loses sense of her.
2:10:14 Griffin Newman? Yeah. I think the other part of it is that she kind of,
2:10:20 Griffin Newman? her gift is that she doesn't consider that she should be feeling limited in any way, if that makes any sense. You know, like that, uh, let me word this better. The scene, the scene, the kiss scene, right?
2:10:33 Speaker 04 Yeah, that one.
2:10:34 Griffin Newman? Having the conversation about sex and, and suddenly the entire act of sex is being discussed for the first time in a Spielberg movie ever. But where she's sort of radicalized by like, what do you mean you don't get enjoyment out of?
2:10:45 Speaker 04 Yes.
2:10:46 Griffin Newman? Right? That it's not that she's naive enough to think that all sex is positive, but that she kind of can't consider a world in which it's only negative and you've never experienced any light. Versus like Sophia being someone who is like making moves that have statements behind them of her trying to purposefully like, push back against the idea of what she's told. Uh, Shug seems a little bit like unencumbered by that line of thinking, which then reduces other people to be like, well, she's a floozy. She's a singer. You know what showbiz women are like. She's not a real person, right? And you see all the, see this with Sailor of like, oh no, she's able to actually connect to other people. She has an internal life. She's not just some like,
2:11:29 Griffin Newman? whatever, but it does take a little bit away from her to have her need to consult someone else.
2:11:34 Speaker 04 Yes.
2:11:35 Griffin Newman? Which also then ties back into this, like, what is this movie's like, relationship to organized religion? I don't say in a conspiratorial way, but almost looking to it as an easy solve. Right? Like, well, isn't just like the ultimate salve for all of this? If you just like know that God loves you?
2:11:52 Speaker 04 Yes.
2:11:52 Griffin Newman? And you can find love and acceptance here. And like you find your way to the other side of the rainbow.
2:11:57 Speaker 04 Yeah.
2:11:58 Speaker 03 I mean, an important detail though, is the pastor is her father.
2:12:00 Speaker 04 Yes.
2:12:01 Speaker 03 Which I think we should mention because that I think she's looking for acceptance.
2:12:05 Speaker 04 Yes.
2:12:06 Griffin Newman? Yeah. And you read about when this film came out and there was controversy and a lot of it was over like, This movie, every single man in this movie is the most horrific monster who has ever existed.
2:12:19 Speaker 04 Yes, that is also, I remember learning about that. We're like, hey, all the black men are mad. This movie shows them as bad people and we don't like that. And I was like, I don't know. Like these men are bad.
2:12:31 Griffin Newman? But, but then you get into this conversation where you're like, if there is like one studio film starring a black cast every three years, then it's hard to not have it also feel like it's representing something larger because there's no counter argument.
2:12:43 Speaker 04 True.
2:12:44 Griffin Newman? Yeah.
2:12:45 Speaker 04 I was like, is there a good man in the movie?
2:12:48 Griffin Newman? Well, I'd say it's kind of that character, but in such a small way.
2:12:53 David Sims? I mean, Harpo is, is not so bad. He's terrible.
2:13:00 Speaker 04 I was like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.
2:13:02 David Sims? He's kind of just an idiot.
2:13:03 Speaker 04 He brings that sweet girl around. Yeah. So the best we can say about men is that some of them are idiots and therefore harmless.
2:13:10 Griffin Newman? He's a sillier evil.
2:13:11 Speaker 04 Yes, a sillier.
2:13:12 David Sims? He's a bit of more buffoonery or whatever. But, um, no, I mean, look, it's in the book. Like the book is incredibly skeptical of these power dynamics, like between the genders at this time.
2:13:23 Speaker 04 There's one good guy in the book that I like.
2:13:25 David Sims? Remind me.
2:13:26 Speaker 04 It is the one that takes, uh, Nettie to Africa.
2:13:30 David Sims? Right. Sure. Well.
2:13:31 Speaker 04 He's good.
2:13:31 David Sims? Good job by him.
2:13:32 Speaker 04 Yeah, he's the one, the one good guy. And then they don't go into that.
2:13:37 David Sims? There's one good guy in this movie, Steven Spielberg, who accepted a DGA minimum. No, I don't know. Like, it's just like, this movie was a hit. It got nominated for 10 Oscars. Obviously it didn't win any, which was a bit of a rebuke.
2:13:48 Griffin Newman? At the time, it held the record for the most nominations without a single win and notably did not get Spielberg a nomination. He won the DGA, which I think was the first time that someone won the DGA without being nominated for an Oscar. Like, it was a weird thing. And in that Hook interview I mentioned earlier, where the guy's like, so is Steven Spielberg bitter about not having won the Oscar yet? Do you sit there going, why not me? When will it be my time? And Spielberg's like, you know, like, he actually was pretty reasonable about it and was just like, look, I'm not going to like complain. I have my success. I don't feel like they're saying not you. They're saying not yet. Gives me something to prove, you know, like it makes me work harder. And then he's like, the one that hurt me with color was Color Purple.
2:14:28 Griffin Newman? Color Purple, it felt personal that it was like the most nominated movie and I was the one thing left out. But it does speak to the sort of weirdness of being like, okay, Steven, good job. Like we're missing to existence.
2:14:40 David Sims? Well, also again, who nudged him out? Do you know?
2:14:44 Griffin Newman? In 1985.
2:14:45 David Sims? We'll talk Oscars in a second. Yeah. Like where the other four director nominees directed the other four best picture nominees. Sidney Pollack, Hector Babenko, John Huston, Peter Weir.
2:14:54 Speaker 04 Hector Babenko, what was?
2:14:56 David Sims? Kiss of the Spider Woman.
2:14:56 Speaker 04 Okay, thanks.
2:14:57 Griffin Newman? Yeah.
2:14:57 David Sims? No problem.
2:14:58 Griffin Newman? Which talking about like, that's.
2:15:00 David Sims? Another queer movie.
2:15:01 Griffin Newman? I was trying to remember when in timeline, but like what exists in queer cinema at that point? That was like a revolutionary movie, but was also like made independent wildly outside of the studio system. Right. Who, who nudged him out?
2:15:13 David Sims? Akira Kurosawa or ran the, you know, Japanese master in his sort of final years. It's not like, it's like, oh yeah, they nudged him out for, you know, Mr. Bullshit directing like, you know, stupid.
2:15:27 Griffin Newman? But it's the same thing. It's the same thing with the Jaws here.
2:15:30 Speaker 04 I'm, I'm sorry. I'm just visualizing a poster.
2:15:36 Griffin Newman? I think that movie's underrated.
2:15:38 David Sims? Of course you do.
2:15:39 Griffin Newman? I do. I think, no, you're right. Mr. Bullshit made a couple of good movies. He's not a great director, but he's made some great films.
2:15:44 David Sims? For Jaws, he was nudged out by Fellini. Here he's nudged out by Kurosawa. These are, but as you know, it's highly esteemed. Now, if I'm Spielberg, maybe in the back of my mind, I'm like, John Huston for Christie's honor, that movie's a snooze.
2:15:56 Griffin Newman? That's what I would say. Like in all these cases, the person who snubs him is someone who is like humongous, right? And legendary and the kind of person Spielberg reveres. But then it's like, it's interesting that Hector Babenko makes the cut and he doesn't, considering how big his status was, but it was all this.
2:16:10 David Sims? Yeah. Hector Babenko, I'm sure it was the kind of that thing of like, hey, man, Steven Spielberg gets to make what he wants. Good for him that he wanted to make something a little different than an alien movie or whatever. Hector Babenko like fought in scratch to make this little, you know, indie movie about.
2:16:23 Griffin Newman? Here's a movie without concession. That's.
2:16:25 David Sims? Right. Right. About, uh, you know, a gay man and a leftist revolutionary in prison chatting about Brazilian politics. Like, and it's like, fuck, okay. Yeah, that's hard to get across the line. Good job. Maybe that's what it was, or maybe it's just because I just feel like if this movie was. And I think, again, I do think this movie is generally good and watchable. But if this movie was great, like if this was like a really amazing movie, it would be a seismic film that was, that won all the Oscars and like was remembered like totemically to, right? Do you know what I mean? Where it's like, this could have been one of the biggest movies of the eighties. It kind of was a big movie that I, I don't know.
2:17:06 Speaker 04 But not as big as it could have been.
2:17:08 David Sims? It could have been like his Schindler's List. It's probably just not a Spielberg movie.
2:17:12 Griffin Newman? That's the thing. You're like, what were you gonna say?
2:17:15 Speaker 04 No, it's just the way that you're describing it is almost like, oh my gosh, we have this dish. It has everything that you like, but it's missing one spice that would make it really come together and be a memorable meal. And I'm wondering, what do you think that spice would be?
2:17:27 Griffin Newman? Salt.
2:17:28 Speaker 04 Salt, it's missing salt.
2:17:29 David Sims? No, that's like, the joke is it's like, fuck, we forgot to put salt, you know? It's like, it's like, everything about, all the elements here are great, except the director you've picked is a little off for it. And it's like, well, the director of the movie kind of needs to be on for it.
2:17:44 Griffin Newman? But the answer, I think, is just point of view.
2:17:46 David Sims? Yeah, because it is a well-directed movie in terms of like how it looks and what it, you know, it's not, it's not like a badly directed movie. No one looks in the camera.
2:17:57 David Sims? It's always my joke. Spielberg forgot to tell what people, stop looking at the camera. Look over there.
2:18:04 Griffin Newman? I forgot one thing.
2:18:10 Speaker 06 Welcome to 215 Maple Drive. We just put this property on the market.
2:18:16 Speaker 05 Love the crown molding.
2:18:17 Speaker 06 Oh, wait until you see the walk-in closets and the bathroom tile.
2:18:21 Speaker 05 Does it have Verizon FiOS? You know, 100% fiber internet.
2:18:25 Speaker 06 No FiOS, but it looks like it's got cable. Let's check out the kitchen.
2:18:28 Speaker 05 No FiOS? Yeah, no, thank you.
2:18:32 Speaker 06 Don't you want to see the rest? Okay. Bye-bye.
2:18:35 David Sims? Get Verizon FiOS because when you're moving, it's 100% or nothing.
2:18:42 David Sims? There was a time my wife made a cake without sugar. Like she forgot to put sugar in the cake.
2:18:47 Speaker 04 How did that cake taste?
2:18:49 David Sims? It tasted, it was like, it was like a pumpkin cake or a sweet potato, you know, something like that. And it was one of those things where like, one bite in, I was like, this is the strangest sensation because this is what it's supposed to be. It has the texture and it tastes like pumpkin or whatever, but what is wrong? I feel crazy right now that you realize like, oh, right. It's not sweet. It's supposed to be sweet.
2:19:10 Griffin Newman? Sure, but like here's, here's the, here's the alternative to that metaphor. It's like Spielberg's reading the recipe, right? Which is the book, The Color Purple.
2:19:18 Speaker 04 Yes.
2:19:19 David Sims? And he's like- Very well. Alice Walker was impressed by how well he read it.
2:19:22 Griffin Newman? Right. And he's like, looking and he's like, am I reading this right? Four tablespoons of oregano in a birthday cake? And the book is like, this cake has oregano.
2:19:31 Speaker 04 Yeah.
2:19:31 Griffin Newman? And he's like, you know what? I don't feel comfortable enough with oregano.
2:19:34 David Sims? That's a really good-
2:19:35 Griffin Newman? I'm gonna leave the oregano out.
2:19:36 David Sims? I'm just gonna make a regular cake.
2:19:37 Speaker 04 Yeah.
2:19:37 David Sims? I will put salt and pepper on it. I'm just not gonna, I'm not gonna, I don't know what that is.
2:19:41 Griffin Newman? Right. And everyone's like, the oregano is the dicey part of it.
2:19:44 Speaker 04 Yeah.
2:19:44 Griffin Newman? But also if you're not putting it in there, maybe this-
2:19:46 Speaker 04 Don't have a cake.
2:19:47 Griffin Newman? Different recipe.
2:19:49 Speaker 04 I like that.
2:19:50 Griffin Newman? Thank you.
2:19:52 Griffin Newman? It is interesting. I kept watching it. I'm just like, this movie continually keeps landing just barely on the side of, I think this is good. With like humongous qualifiers. And you saying like, well, if it had been perfect, then it would be one of the most seismic American movies of all time. And yet this movie like, has a humongous legacy.
2:20:12 Speaker 04 Yes.
2:20:13 Griffin Newman? And even though that legacy continues to be like, relitigating it in a lot of ways, to the extent that you felt like you had seen it, and I felt like I had seen it too. And I grew up in fucking West Village of New York. Like it was not like, passed on to me culturally in the same way, but I have this very distinct memory of like, the school I went to, there was a bookstore that was like a block away that we passed by every day when my parents were dropping me off and picking me up from school, that had a giant poster of The Color Purple facing towards the window. And I would just see this thing every day for like, 10 years. That was like, okay, Steven Spielberg, Color Purple, Hewlett's Prize.
2:20:52 Speaker 04 This is a thing. This is a big thing.
2:20:54 Griffin Newman? Right. I was just like, this is 10 years after this movie came out. And I understand you're telling me these names 10 years ago, before I was born, made something that still deserves to hang in like a bookstore window. And then I asked my parents, I'm like, is that one of the best movies ever made? And they're like, it's okay.
2:21:12 Speaker 03 It is.
2:21:13 Griffin Newman? It kinda works.
2:21:16 Speaker 03 I'll shout out when Seeley leaves and Danny Glover's character is left to his own devices. The house is fucked up.
2:21:26 Speaker 04 I mean, it was fucked up when she got there and then it goes back to being fucked up.
2:21:30 Speaker 03 Like farm animals.
2:21:31 Speaker 04 Yeah.
2:21:32 Speaker 03 Like it, it's, it's like such an extreme version of this has become a bachelor pad.
2:21:40 Speaker 04 That is a level of dirt. I, I, it's hard for my brain to wrap around. I keep a very clean home. I don't like mess at all. That you would have, like, I don't even let people wear shoes into my home.
2:21:53 Speaker 03 Or should you?
2:21:54 Speaker 04 That you would have animals that poop that, I mean, we all poop, but like they poop and then they don't wipe. It's just.
2:22:00 Speaker 03 Can I tell you about a rule I have?
2:22:03 Speaker 04 I want to hear it.
2:22:04 Speaker 03 No, like outside pants in the bed.
2:22:08 Speaker 04 Yes, yes.
2:22:09 Speaker 03 Like you can't sit in the bed.
2:22:11 Speaker 04 Clothes generally.
2:22:12 Speaker 03 Like take, no pants for some reason.
2:22:15 Speaker 04 Cause your butt.
2:22:16 Speaker 03 You know, yeah.
2:22:17 Speaker 04 And you're rubbing against where everyone else's butt was and butt sweat. And it's like a combination of things that means that you are bringing that into your home. And yet like where you sleep, where you spend potentially eight hours a day, you want to be rubbing against that? That's, don't do that.
2:22:31 Griffin Newman? Okay. Can I run a couple of simulations by you and ask what you would do in these circumstances?
2:22:34 Speaker 03 I'm putting on my VR goggles.
2:22:36 Speaker 04 I want to, yes, please.
2:22:38 Griffin Newman? Okay. You're like, oh, exhausting day, right? I want you to just imagine a scenario in which you, David Sims, feel overwhelmed by life. Are sleep deprived.
2:22:48 Speaker 03 My balls hurt.
2:22:49 Griffin Newman? Possibly have multiple plates spinning. David got snipped.
2:22:51 Speaker 03 I think he's locked in.
2:22:52 Griffin Newman? He's locked in. Okay.
2:22:53 Speaker 03 Locked all the way in.
2:22:54 Griffin Newman? And you're like, oh, okay. I have like 10 minutes before I have to turn around and like leave the house and go somewhere else. Right? This is like a quick pit stop. And you're sort of like, I just want to like lie down for five minutes. Do you in that situation go, I need to change into sweatpants for five minutes to be able to lie on the bed? Or? The fact that I don't have enough time to change into sweatpants and out means I shouldn't be lying down.
2:23:19 Speaker 04 These are not, these.
2:23:20 David Sims? The pants come off.
2:23:21 Griffin Newman? But then you put them back on?
2:23:22 David Sims? Later, yeah.
2:23:22 Speaker 04 The pants can come off and on, but you are acting as though the only surface in your home where you are able to lay down is your bed.
2:23:29 Griffin Newman? I was gonna say, the next option I was gonna say.
2:23:30 Speaker 04 Couch?
2:23:32 Griffin Newman? But you will allow outside pants on the couch? Okay.
2:23:34 Speaker 04 Outside pants are allowed on the couch.
2:23:35 Griffin Newman? So the bed just has a level of?
2:23:38 Speaker 04 Sanctity.
2:23:39 David Sims? I agree. I mean, that was, that's my proposal. Can you, where are you from in North Carolina?
2:23:43 Speaker 04 Charlotte, North Carolina.
2:23:45 David Sims? The great, the great city.
2:23:46 Griffin Newman? The Hornets?
2:23:47 Speaker 04 Yes. We, for a while, we weren't, for a while, we weren't.
2:23:50 Griffin Newman? I was fifty fifty on that.
2:23:51 Speaker 04 But yes, we are the Hornets again. That is the team that I was very attached to as a child.
2:23:56 David Sims? Oh, like, did you have a starter jacket?
2:23:58 Speaker 04 I didn't have a starter jacket, but I had like a lot of big t-shirts. I don't know why, but like kids in my middle and elementary school wore like big t-shirts and Umbro shorts. And we were like, we look fucking good.
2:24:07 David Sims? Probably did.
2:24:08 Speaker 04 Yeah.
2:24:08 David Sims? And that was, you know, the teal and purple, very cool, like.
2:24:12 Speaker 04 Yes. And, oh, they would come to like events, like we had a, I'm like so cool, but in sixth grade, we had a trip to dendrology camp. And like a bunch of schools sent kids to a park and we learned about leaves and stuff. And then the hornet came out and did a little dance.
2:24:27 Griffin Newman? Can you say that word again?
2:24:28 David Sims? Oh, like, like mascot, the hornet.
2:24:30 Speaker 04 Yeah.
2:24:31 David Sims? Cool.
2:24:31 Griffin Newman? What, what kind of camp?
2:24:32 Speaker 04 Dendrology.
2:24:33 David Sims? I had to look it up. It is the study, the science and study of wooded plants.
2:24:38 Griffin Newman? Wow.
2:24:38 Speaker 04 You guys didn't go to dendrology camp?
2:24:40 David Sims? You know, I meant to and I, I fucking forgot.
2:24:44 Speaker 04 You had to make up songs about different types of leaf structures? You guys didn't have to do that?
2:24:48 David Sims? Can you look at like bark and be like, oh, this is this kind of tree?
2:24:51 Griffin Newman? Do you still have it in the back of your hand?
2:24:52 Speaker 04 I, oh my God. Mostly no, just like a few types of leaves. And somebody did a song to the thong song, but it was like, ooh, that chunk's so scandalous. And I will remember that until the day that I die.
2:25:05 Griffin Newman? Sounds like a good way to make learning fun.
2:25:07 Speaker 04 Yeah, yeah.
2:25:08 Griffin Newman? Yeah.
2:25:08 David Sims? You are from exactly where they shot the movie, essentially.
2:25:11 Speaker 04 And my family is from like rural South Carolina. So between North Carolina and Georgia, obviously. And we went to black churches growing up and then I would visit my hyper religious relatives in Maryland where I thought Maryland was the north, but a lot of Maryland is the south and they have some backward ass churches.
2:25:32 David Sims? Uh, no, yeah, Maryland is, uh, you know, uh, was, didn't secede, but was a slave state. And, uh, yeah.
2:25:41 David Sims? You know?
2:25:42 Speaker 04 That's where I learned about, uh, white Jesus on the wall of a black church. Thought that was very fascinating. And then, uh, did you get?
2:25:50 David Sims? Like it was a black church that was like, but we.
2:25:52 Speaker 04 We pray about white Jesus. Yeah. And I'm like, what? That seems weird.
2:25:56 David Sims? Yeah, sure.
2:25:56 Speaker 04 Um, and then chick tracks, have you heard of these?
2:25:59 David Sims? I do.
2:25:59 Griffin Newman? Yes.
2:25:59 David Sims? I do. Yeah. Because they were, they became like an internet phenomenon.
2:26:02 Speaker 04 Yeah.
2:26:03 David Sims? Even though they're from a long time ago, but the internet like discovered them when I was a teenager. They're very strange.
2:26:07 Speaker 04 They are very strange and I, I would take them because it was like, and boy.
2:26:11 David Sims? Well, they're comic books.
2:26:12 Speaker 04 Yeah. And I'm like, if I'm bored at church, I need something to read. So they had like a little container where there were different, uh, chick tracks in each of these little slots. And I would take the, the new ones because I needed something to read during church.
2:26:23 David Sims? Chick tracks.
2:26:24 Griffin Newman? What are?
2:26:24 David Sims? Yeah. And they're like little comic books that are very, sort of evangelical, but like very, very hardcore. Uh, uh, whatever orthodox or right wing or whatever, how, I mean, it's what taught me that even some, some evangelical Christians don't just hate, you know, Jews and homosexuals. They hate Catholics. Like, you know, they, they hate fucking everybody.
2:26:44 Speaker 04 I'm like, no, you guys are worshiping Mary. It's actually the devil Catholics are bad.
2:26:48 David Sims? Yeah. Where it's like, oh, but because he was a Catholic, straight to hell. No way out. And you're just like, what?
2:26:55 Speaker 04 The cartoons would be like, and so then he went to hell. And it's just like him roasting in hell.
2:27:00 David Sims? And there's a little cartoon of him like, yeah, in hell. And they're like, he's not getting out. Uh, whoo. Chick tracks. Yeah. They always just have a pretty, there's not usually a way out. Like chick tracks aren't usually like, but you know, a couple of simple things.
2:27:14 Speaker 04 There was one about a Muslim character and he's like, what? I'm not worshiping God. Oh, I'll just worship God then.
2:27:21 David Sims? And then, if you make the, the switch, the chick tracks are on board with you.
2:27:25 Speaker 04 Yeah. Very important to my upbringing. Yeah. But growing up in the South, like, yeah, this was such a big part of it, the songs. And my church did have really good music. Um, in fact, when I watch other movies about church and they don't have good music, I'm like, this doesn't make any sense to me.
2:27:40 David Sims? Reflect the experience.
2:27:41 Speaker 04 Why are you going there if there's not good music?
2:27:45 David Sims? This movie has terrible music. I mean Quincy Jones, but I mean, like, I do think that hurts it.
2:27:49 Speaker 04 Like when, um, Shug is.
2:27:50 Griffin Newman? The Shug song, those songs are great.
2:27:52 David Sims? Yeah.
2:27:52 Speaker 04 On her way to church, she's singing and I'm like, yes, this seems more like what people sang in church.
2:27:57 Griffin Newman? Just to kind of like go back full circle, I mean, it's the other part of this movie that's just like the fact that it successfully introduces Danny Glover, Oprah Winfrey, and Whoopi Goldberg to a wider audience all at once. And then the three of them are so impactful, not just in the work they do, but also just as like cultural leaders in a lot of ways. Like Danny Glover is maybe the most like overtly political movie star of all time.
2:28:21 David Sims? Yeah, yeah.
2:28:21 Griffin Newman? Arguably, you know?
2:28:23 David Sims? Sure, okay.
2:28:23 Griffin Newman? And like Oprah is someone who like at points in time could arguably win presidential elections.
2:28:29 David Sims? That's so they
2:28:29 Griffin Newman? Was kind of the Joe Rogan of her moment, if you will.
2:28:32 Speaker 04 I mean, Joe Rogan, we'd say like evil, lawful evil.
2:28:37 David Sims? My head's on the microphone.
2:28:38 Speaker 04 Lawful neutral or if we're looking at that grid. Wait, what did you say?
2:28:44 David Sims? When he said Joe Rogan, I just got upset. Ben, how you doing? Ben's, it looks like Ben is rolling a cigarette. I think he's just playing with a post.
2:28:54 Speaker 03 There's something I just do again.
2:28:57 Speaker 04 Do you have like a collection of rolled up pieces of paper over there? He's showing us several pieces of paper.
2:29:02 Speaker 03 A 3D triangle.
2:29:04 David Sims? Ben Origami.
2:29:05 Griffin Newman? Yeah, I feel like this is a movie that Spielberg does not point back to that often when discussing his own legacy, which he is not loath to do.
2:29:12 David Sims? It doesn't really come up in those sort of retrospective films about him or anything like that.
2:29:16 Griffin Newman? And he doesn't talk about it with shame. He doesn't talk about it with pride. He's just sort of like, that's another one. I think I did some things right, did some things wrong. He's usually pretty like unsentimental when he looks back on his work in that kind of way. But there is something to like Glover, Winfrey, and Goldberg all point back to this movie all the time because it changed their lives, you know? And like, and so it kind of like has always remained in the conversation.
2:29:39 Speaker 04 Yes.
2:29:40 Griffin Newman? Which is then also furthered by Oprah being like, I'm gonna get this on Broadway. Like, I'm gonna do like, it just, it's, I don't know. It's, it's an odd thing where it's not just like, you know, there's certain, I feel like we've all had this experience, right? Where it's like, you're reading like a huge like American book in school and they're like, we're gonna show you the movie. The movie's not great. But it is what it is and it might help you guys understand the book.
2:30:03 David Sims? Right. They gotta fill a week here. So you're gonna watch the movie.
2:30:05 Speaker 04 Right. That was the Scarlet Letter when I was growing up.
2:30:08 Griffin Newman? Wait, the Demi Moore?
2:30:08 David Sims? The sexy one with Demi Moore?
2:30:10 Speaker 04 Yeah, we watched that.
2:30:10 David Sims? You're allowed to watch that in school?
2:30:12 Speaker 04 Also, uh,
2:30:12 David Sims? It's got boobs.
2:30:14 Speaker 04 The, the crucible?
2:30:16 David Sims? Yeah. Oh, yeah. That, that makes more sense. Cause that's not an amazing movie, but at least that's it.
2:30:19 Griffin Newman? That's the exact kind of thing.
2:30:20 Speaker 04 There was a big poster and this is.
2:30:22 David Sims? Daniel Day Lewis going, huh?
2:30:23 Speaker 04 Yeah. And all the women in my class, girls, we're girls, we're under 18, we're girls. So we sat.
2:30:29 David Sims? There were some adult women for some reason.
2:30:31 Speaker 04 There were. Um, all the girls sat on one side of the class so we could stare at the Daniel Day Lewis poster because, uh,
2:30:38 Griffin Newman? He looked good in that movie.
2:30:39 Speaker 04 He, he looked real good.
2:30:40 David Sims? He looks very intense too.
2:30:41 Speaker 04 Yes. We're like, oh, that's what men are like. That's nice.
2:30:45 Griffin Newman? That might be kinda like peak unvarnished handsome from him.
2:30:48 David Sims? Yeah, it's a mid nineties, big beardy kind of face for him.
2:30:52 Griffin Newman? Yeah. Um, but no, my point was just, I feel like this movie is constantly talked about in that sort of context of like, the good versus the bad and like what it got right and what we know today and what we, you know, with yada, yada, yada. But yet I don't think it's presented in that way of like, look, it's not a great adaptation, but it is what it is. Like the movie kind of has its own reputation as its own work, not just as, this was the time they tried and didn't really succeed in cracking the color purple, which is part of what's interesting about it versus maybe like, I, I, I don't know, a more successful literal adaptation, although as you said, like, maybe this is a work that doesn't really translate to that form.
2:31:30 David Sims? Yeah, it's, it's tough. Again, the book is nothing really like this. Yeah. And because of the epistolary thing and because of the fact that it's all in the vernacular, like, I remember when I started reading it, I was like very thrown by that because I think I had the Spielberg movie in my head of like, this isn't just like, kind of a like, let me take you back to this time with like an omniscient narrator of like, okay, it's the deep south. It's the early 1900s. It's not like that at all. Instead you're like right with Seeley and like her trying to describe her situation and it, you know, begins in a similar way. Obviously her situation is bad.
2:32:05 Speaker 04 Yes. And it's a lot of dear God and then dear Nettie. And then, uh, so she thinks something happens to Nettie, but I like that it is letters and I, I listened to the audiobook cause.
2:32:16 David Sims? Oh, interesting.
2:32:16 Speaker 04 Are we all like, are we pro, anti like?
2:32:19 David Sims? I'm not anti audiobook. I have never. I shouldn't say this because God knows they'll sponsor the podcast. I've never really been an audiobook person. But I'm a podcast person. I think I just read book. I read book on, on phone and Kindle and stuff.
2:32:33 Speaker 04 You read book on phone?
2:32:34 David Sims? But who narrated the audiobook?
2:32:36 Speaker 04 Alice Walker.
2:32:38 Speaker 04 And I, so, nah, I had a stroke. It has affected my brain. It is harder for me to read books. But I love books, so I listen to a lot of audiobooks now.
2:32:49 David Sims? This is why it's good. I would ban audiobooks, but now that I've heard your story.
2:32:53 Speaker 04 Thank you, thank you.
2:32:54 David Sims? This is why it's good there's audiobooks.
2:32:55 Griffin Newman? I like David's way of it.
2:32:56 Speaker 04 Okay, cool.
2:32:57 Speaker 03 The thing that is tough about it is when you're talking to somebody, it's like, feels weird to be like, I listened to a book.
2:33:04 Speaker 04 Yes, exactly. Where I'm like, I want to say like, oh yeah, I read that. But I technically read it and then I feel guilt about it. And it's like a thing I'm holding inside, so.
2:33:13 David Sims? Let it out.
2:33:14 Speaker 04 But yeah, I read the audiobook. I think Alice Walker does a good job and it is much easier for me to understand Southern vernacular English when it is spoken than having to read it, so.
2:33:25 David Sims? A hundred percent.
2:33:26 Speaker 04 I think that my experience was probably a little bit easier.
2:33:29 David Sims? Well, I read it.
2:33:31 Griffin Newman? This, this movie was a big box office success.
2:33:34 David Sims? Yeah, well, do box office came in a second. I do want to acknowledge the Oscars. It's really a terrible, terrible Oscars because it's no offense to this movie. Well, some offense. It's the Out of Africa Oscars.
2:33:43 Griffin Newman? Right.
2:33:43 David Sims? And it does feel like it's like they can't settle on something like Color Purple because whatever they've, you know, it's not hitting quite big enough. And instead they settled for an even sort of duller, you know, literary epic. Like in, in my opinion.
2:33:57 Griffin Newman? But we're sort of like, right, this feels the most like an Oscar movie.
2:34:00 David Sims? Out of Africa was a big hit. I'm not, have you seen Out of Africa?
2:34:02 Speaker 04 I have not seen Out of Africa.
2:34:04 Griffin Newman? I've never seen it.
2:34:05 David Sims? Meryl Streep and Robert Redford.
2:34:06 Speaker 04 We like both of those people.
2:34:07 David Sims? We do. And it's, it's a very, very handsome movie, you know? Have you never seen it? I'm assuming, no, because.
2:34:14 Speaker 04 They're in Africa, I presume?
2:34:16 David Sims? Unfortunately, yes.
2:34:18 Speaker 04 Um, and they're, I'm, I'm guessing sabs in the dark. Uh, are there wild animals of some sort?
2:34:24 David Sims? Yeah, there's some wild animals and stuff.
2:34:26 Speaker 04 Okay.
2:34:26 David Sims? It's a whole.
2:34:27 Speaker 04 Do we have a, a large sun going down?
2:34:30 David Sims? Big game, safaris.
2:34:33 Speaker 04 Vistas, et cetera.
2:34:34 Griffin Newman? Isn't like the poster literally what Kenesha's describing, but with like a tiger?
2:34:38 David Sims? Pretty much, pretty much.
2:34:40 Speaker 03 It's just the sun though, like vibrantly orange.
2:34:45 Speaker 04 That, this is the movie.
2:34:46 David Sims? Look, I watched every best picture winner.
2:34:48 Speaker 04 Okay.
2:34:48 David Sims? Like that, it was something I eventually decided, I was like, yeah, there's, I only, there's only like 15 or 20 at this point. I'm going to watch them just, you know, I'll just go back and I'll clear off every, and I, when I got to out of Africa, I was truly like, this should only be watched if you want to watch every, but like, it's like the most homework ass. You're just like.
2:35:06 Griffin Newman? But that's sort of, that's what.
2:35:07 David Sims? Some people like it.
2:35:08 Griffin Newman? A lot of us.
2:35:08 David Sims? I shouldn't, you know.
2:35:09 Griffin Newman? Like this year, 2025 Oscars where people are like, it doesn't feel like there's a front runner. You're like, something has to win by default.
2:35:16 Speaker 04 Yes.
2:35:16 Griffin Newman? Something will be anointed the best picture of 2025.
2:35:19 David Sims? The other nominees for best picture, Kiss of the Spider Woman, Pritzy's Honor, which is a movie I watched recently. Have you ever seen Pritzy's Honor?
2:35:25 Griffin Newman? No, I know you love it, right?
2:35:27 David Sims? No.
2:35:27 Griffin Newman? Oh, really?
2:35:28 David Sims? I put it on, I put it on thinking I was gonna love it. I was like, John Huston, Jack Nicholson, Angelica Huston.
2:35:34 Griffin Newman? Yeah.
2:35:34 David Sims? Kathleen Turner, mob comedy. How is this gonna be bad? It starts up and you're like, this is like, I'm, I think I'm expecting like Moonstruck with the mob, right? Like, I'm like, a big eighties Italian movie where everyone's like, you know, a being a, giving a big performance.
2:35:48 Griffin Newman? Even married to the mom.
2:35:49 David Sims? Even married to the mom.
2:35:50 Griffin Newman? Even married to the mom.
2:35:51 David Sims? It is so like leaden and dull and you watch it and you're like, what the fuck was everyone smoking that this was considered good? Like, and again, all the people involved are good, although Nicholson is sort of trying to do like a Brooklyn accent.
2:36:04 Griffin Newman? Oh, great.
2:36:04 David Sims? So, and like, so Angelica Huston wins supporting actress that year. And it was kind of this, I think the narrative for her was like, one, we love Angelica Huston, great actor. But it was like, she got her way into John Huston's movie. He didn't want to put her in it and she fought to be in the movie anyway, because he's her father.
2:36:21 Griffin Newman? Oh, yeah. The other narrative was that it was the, this sort of like, what was her first movie again?
2:36:26 David Sims? Her, Angelica Huston's first movie.
2:36:28 Griffin Newman? Yes.
2:36:29 David Sims? A Walk with Love and Death.
2:36:31 Griffin Newman? I think he was so thoroughly trashed in that movie.
2:36:34 David Sims? Right. So it was like a comeback for her.
2:36:35 Griffin Newman? Ultimate nepo baby. He cast his daughter. He's so enamored with her. She sucks in this. Fuck you. Go away. Where like, she kind of won the Oscar in like a kind of clapback of like, look, she fought her way into another movie.
2:36:48 David Sims? Right. She's fine in the movie. Like she's good even, I guess. She's very glamorous and like, oh, Angelica Huston. But again, I was watching it being like, and now she's about, there's going to be some big scene where I'm like, I get it.
2:37:00 Speaker 04 Yeah.
2:37:00 David Sims? And you watch fucking The Color Purple and you're like, both Oprah Winfrey and Margaret Avery have like scenes where you're like, holy shit. You know, like, you know, how did this not win an Oscar? Didn't win an Oscar.
2:37:10 Griffin Newman? The answer is probably if one or the other had been nominated, they probably would have won.
2:37:13 David Sims? Maybe. Maybe. Obviously both deserved nominations.
2:37:16 Griffin Newman? Yes.
2:37:17 David Sims? Whoopi Goldberg loses to Geraldine Page for The Trip to Bountiful.
2:37:20 Griffin Newman? What? Which is kind of seen as a shock. Whoopi won the Golden Globe. I mean, like you read Ebert's review and he's like, Whoopi Goldberg is going to win the Oscar. Like everyone was sort of like, this is an undeniable.
2:37:30 David Sims? Which she should have.
2:37:31 Griffin Newman? Yes.
2:37:31 Speaker 04 Who is this other person and what is this other movie?
2:37:34 David Sims? Geraldine Page is like this legendary old American actress and it was like a late career movie. And so kind of like, you know, she's, look, I've never seen it, so I don't want to make fun of it, but it's like.
2:37:47 Speaker 04 You don't want to make fun of it, but you, that's how you would describe the movie, of course.
2:37:52 David Sims? It's just like, you know.
2:37:55 David Sims? Fucking ladies.
2:37:58 Speaker 04 Okay. And that's the one that won best actress. Gotcha.
2:38:00 Griffin Newman? But the eighties were not great for the Academy Awards, but I feel like this was in particular, a real recurrence, which was like, what wins best actress or best supporting actress? And it's like a legendary beloved, like sort of like legend of the stage who had a movie career, but was never fully a movie star. And was always a little bit like, take it for granted, but everyone in the industry loved. And then they like show up with a carpet bag and a movie at 85 and people are like, fine, here you go.
2:38:26 Speaker 04 To take it.
2:38:27 Griffin Newman? That, because F. Murray Abraham gives her the Oscar, right?
2:38:29 David Sims? Uh, that would make sense.
2:38:30 Griffin Newman? This is the moment I remember. I've never seen Trip to the Bountiful, but.
2:38:34 David Sims? To Bountiful.
2:38:34 Griffin Newman? Trip to Bountiful.
2:38:35 David Sims? Weirdly Anne Bancroft also nominated that you're like sarcastically goes like. Geraldine Page, when she's in that, like she knew it was gonna happen, which is funny. Anyway, Carrie.
2:38:44 Speaker 04 What was Anne Bancroft nominated for?
2:38:45 David Sims? Agnes of God.
2:38:46 Griffin Newman? Oh, sure.
2:38:47 David Sims? The Norman Jewison noir movie.
2:38:49 Speaker 04 Yeah, sure, sure, sure.
2:38:49 David Sims? Never seen it. Anyway.
2:38:52 Griffin Newman? I think Whoopi was sort of seen as the frontrunner.
2:38:54 David Sims? Sure, yeah.
2:38:54 Griffin Newman? And F. Murray Abraham is presenting his last year's winner and he opens the envelope and he like catches his breath. And he says something reclamped to the effect of like, it is my great honor to be able to bestow this act, this Academy Award to, in my opinion, the greatest actor alive, Geraldine Page.
2:39:15 Griffin Newman? There is like this sense of like, we are finally giving this woman respect for a movie that will never be watched ever.
2:39:21 Speaker 04 Okay.
2:39:21 David Sims? Right, right. She was a big actor who'd been nominated for a bunch of Oscars and she's a great actor. Like, I got no beef with Geraldine Page, just that the trip to Bountiful kind of looks like a movie where ladies go, "Wah, wah, wah." That's all. That's all I'm saying. And I don't know if it's true or not. For all I know, it's actually about Geraldine Page is like a badass action hero. Who's got to get to Bountiful, the villain's lair.
2:39:42 Griffin Newman? I mean, Whoopi wins for Ghost five years later.
2:39:44 David Sims? She does. And that's obviously like a dynamite supporting performance that she might have won for anyway. But there is, I think, an element of like, overdue.
2:39:53 Griffin Newman? But the five years in between, she makes a lot of like comedy vehicles, becomes like a successful bankable movie star in the sort of like Whoopi Goldberg persona that she has crafted for herself. And then talks about how hard she had to fight to get cast in Ghost because they were like, well, you're not a serious actress now. Like, within five years, they were like, Whoopi Goldberg is gonna make this feel like a comedy. And it's like, she was in the color purple.
2:40:15 Speaker 04 Yeah, come on.
2:40:16 Griffin Newman? It's just, yeah.
2:40:17 Speaker 03 The trip to Bountiful is actually a revenge war movie.
2:40:20 Speaker 04 What?
2:40:25 David Sims? They killed her squad. Now she's gonna get them all.
2:40:30 David Sims? This is for the lieutenant.
2:40:33 David Sims? No, I, what is, I don't know what the trip to Bountiful is about. Well, you know what? Road drama film. I'm gonna watch Sidney Pollack's remake of Sabrina. I'm gonna watch the trip to Bountiful. I'm gonna do the work.
2:40:42 Speaker 04 Truly, don't, like, if you don't like it, I don't want you to be like, Kenees doesn't know.
2:40:46 David Sims? Kenees, you're gonna have to give me your phone number and I will text you.
2:40:49 Speaker 04 I'll give you my phone number.
2:40:51 David Sims? All right.
2:40:52 Speaker 04 You know what?
2:40:52 David Sims? Let's be friends.
2:40:53 Speaker 04 Let's be friends.
2:40:54 David Sims? I think you're cool too.
2:40:54 Speaker 04 Okay, but yeah, let's all be friends.
2:40:56 David Sims? But I, I hope that me-
2:40:57 Speaker 04 We had the chat before.
2:40:58 David Sims? Yeah, yeah. Totally.
2:40:59 Griffin Newman? I'm gonna say this to you in all honesty, Kenees. Sabrina is one of those movies that, much like you're saying, I just hear everyone go like, and obviously that sucks. It's just stated as like, well, it's a given, of course, we all know that was terrible.
2:41:11 Speaker 04 Yes.
2:41:11 Griffin Newman? And every time I see like a clip from it, I'm like, I think I would like this.
2:41:15 David Sims? She's a teenage witch.
2:41:20 David Sims? What's not the love?
2:41:21 Griffin Newman? I am not.
2:41:22 David Sims? There's a quiz master, she's got two ends, the cat talks. The cat talks.
2:41:27 Griffin Newman? Yeah. Her boyfriend's name is Harvey, that's because that was the name of the comic imprint. No, I have always thought like, I bet I would like this if I saw this. And I've been worried to watch it because people are so dismissive of it.
2:41:40 Speaker 04 Let yourself like it.
2:41:41 David Sims? You ever think about how in Sabrina, she's got the friend with the red hair in season one? And then they recast the actor, they, they said their new character, in season two, she just gets a new friend.
2:41:50 Speaker 04 Are you talking about Melissa Joan Hart's Sabrina, the Teenage Witch? Because there was another one with that chick who was in Mad Men.
2:41:56 David Sims? Oh, that's true. There was the Netflix one that was like, Sabrina, the dark witch of the Gothic-ness. No, I'm talking about the sitcom from the movie. There is an amazing, like, I TikTok that I found once of like, you know, out of pocket moments from sitcoms that no one noticed at the time, where like, you know, there's the ants, Hilda and Zelda, right? And Carolyn Ray and the other one. And Hilda's like, oh, man, we haven't fought this much since we picked opposite sides of the civil war.
2:42:26 David Sims? It's like, what is that? How did that slip through? Fucking-
2:42:29 Speaker 04 So wait, which one were you?
2:42:31 David Sims? Exactly, wait a second.
2:42:32 Speaker 04 Which side did you choose?
2:42:34 Griffin Newman? Marie was, was working on the checkbook, the blank check newsletter on Substack, subscribe if you haven't already, and was talking about, in relation to our Twin Peaks, episode eight conversation, what are the most insane things broadcast on television? Right? And I was like, everyone was throwing out like obvious examples. And I was like, that night where TGIF traveled through time. And everyone else in the thread was like, what the fuck are you talking about?
2:42:59 Speaker 04 I don't remember this.
2:43:00 Griffin Newman? You remember that historic night where the entire TGIF lineup ended up time traveling? And I had to unpack this and be like, let me make sure I'm not getting this wrong.
2:43:08 Speaker 04 Yeah.
2:43:09 Griffin Newman? There was an, I think Sabrina was the first and Salem-
2:43:13 David Sims? And Sabrina is a sorceress.
2:43:14 Griffin Newman? Salem cast like a bad spell and an orb created a time travel effect.
2:43:18 David Sims? He eats a magic time ball.
2:43:20 Griffin Newman? Okay, he eats a magic time ball and the Sabrina- Yes, the Sabrina episode that night was set in the 60s with Sabrina leading second wave feminism.
2:43:28 Speaker 04 Good for her.
2:43:29 Griffin Newman? And has like bra burning jokes. And then all the, like Boy Meets World was about like Cory shipping out for the Vietnam War. Am I wrong about this? For the Korean War?
2:43:36 David Sims? I can tell you that the episode was called No Guts, No Cory.
2:43:39 Griffin Newman? Every episode started with Salem walking onto the set of a different show and then it going doo doo doo doo. And then they ended up in a different time period.
2:43:47 Speaker 04 This sounds lovely.
2:43:48 Griffin Newman? It was insane.
2:43:49 David Sims? Salem had so much attitude. That cat was silly. I love that cat.
2:43:53 Griffin Newman? Let's play box office game.
2:43:54 David Sims? Uh, this film came out Christmas time, 1985, and limited release. So we're going to do this limited release, but no, it's semi-limited. It's opening at number eight, $1.7 million on 192 screens.
2:44:06 Griffin Newman? It made $98 million domestic.
2:44:08 David Sims? It was a big hit considering it's 94 million, but yes.
2:44:11 Speaker 04 I mean, how much did the musical remake make?
2:44:13 David Sims? Well, you know what? It was one of the weirdest box office performances ever, that musical remake, because it like made like $20 million on like day one and then fell off really fast. And it was one of those things where like lots of church groups and like, community groups had bought tickets en masse for like Christmas or whenever it was.
2:44:32 Griffin Newman? They like, they planned out really well. It's, it's one of the weirdest disproportionate, like 45% of its entire gross happened in 24 hours.
2:44:40 David Sims? $18 million on Christmas Day.
2:44:42 Griffin Newman? And ends up at like 45?
2:44:43 David Sims? Ended up at 60.
2:44:44 Griffin Newman? Okay.
2:44:45 Speaker 04 Okay.
2:44:45 Griffin Newman? Okay.
2:44:45 David Sims? Um, but anyway.
2:44:46 Speaker 04 But still not as much as his predecessor 30 years-
2:44:49 Griffin Newman? And if you like, adjust for inflation, Color Purple, like, perform like fucking American Sniper.
2:44:53 Speaker 04 Yeah.
2:44:54 Griffin Newman? Yeah, did like Transformers.
2:44:57 Speaker 04 I like that. That's the first one we go.
2:44:58 Griffin Newman? It was the highest grossing PG 13 movie of that year. PG 13 being a new rating.
2:45:02 David Sims? Number one at the box office is a sequel. It's been out for a month. It is still number one at the box office. Think it might've been the highest grossing in this series.
2:45:14 Griffin Newman? It's not Star Trek IV, is it?
2:45:15 David Sims? After the first one? No.
2:45:17 Griffin Newman? No. It's the highest grossing after the first. Oh, it's Rocky IV.
2:45:20 David Sims? Rocky IV.
2:45:21 Griffin Newman? It is the highest grossing.
2:45:22 David Sims? Is it the highest grossing even including Rocky?
2:45:24 Griffin Newman? Unadjusted, unadjusted, yes.
2:45:26 David Sims? Maybe unadjusted.
2:45:27 Griffin Newman? Unadjusted is the highest.
2:45:28 David Sims? Have you seen Rocky IV?
2:45:29 Speaker 04 No.
2:45:30 David Sims? Have you seen any Rocky? Yeah, sure.
2:45:32 Speaker 04 And then I've seen Creed.
2:45:34 Griffin Newman? Yeah.
2:45:34 Speaker 04 Well, not the most recent one.
2:45:37 Speaker 04 Well, it's okay. So I had a question on Jonathan Majors for a very long time. And then I, it turns out he's bad. So I didn't watch it.
2:45:43 David Sims? Do you even want to engage with like pre-canceling films?
2:45:46 Speaker 04 Cause like I know he's bad, but my pussy doesn't. And so.
2:45:49 David Sims? You're allowed to say that.
2:45:51 Griffin Newman? He's allowed to say that.
2:45:51 David Sims? He does not know he's bad.
2:45:52 Speaker 04 Okay.
2:45:53 David Sims? I'm like, Jack, I mean, like, people can yell at you, but we'll stop them.
2:45:56 Griffin Newman? David and I have talked about a lot how fascinating it is that that movie came out, was a really big hit, was well liked. People were like, Michael B. Jordan's a good director. He pulled it off. And like Jonathan Majors, here's finally, they've been hyping him up for years. This is the performance that makes him kind of undeniable.
2:46:09 Speaker 04 Uh huh.
2:46:09 Griffin Newman? And then like, all the shit goes down like within three weeks after the movie had already made $150 million.
2:46:15 David Sims? Right. It was a huge success.
2:46:16 Griffin Newman? And it was basically agreed upon that we were never going to acknowledge the movie ever again. But we keep talking about Quantumania and Kang as like a problem, but it's not forgotten. I mean, Creed 3 feels like it's been memory hole.
2:46:29 David Sims? Majors is good in that movie.
2:46:30 Griffin Newman? He's very good in it.
2:46:31 David Sims? Um, but like that movie was great outside of him.
2:46:35 Speaker 04 Will Michael B. Jordan ever get to direct again?
2:46:37 David Sims? Yeah. Oh, yeah.
2:46:38 Griffin Newman? He's doing, he's doing a Thomas Crown Affair remake.
2:46:42 Griffin Newman? Which is the thing he's been attached to do for over a decade and he's finally fucking doing it, which is exciting.
2:46:47 Speaker 04 They're making another Thomas Crown Affair?
2:46:49 Griffin Newman? Yeah.
2:46:50 Speaker 04 So I, I think one of the times I wrote you the most enthusiastically was when you covered the Thomas Crown affair. And I was like, I posted that. I was like, uh, truly one of the best days of my life. Um, I love this so much. It's my interest converging in a way that causes me deep joy and happiness. Uh, and then you had, uh, someone from Ringer Verson, who was it?
2:47:08 Griffin Newman? Amanda Dobbins.
2:47:09 Speaker 04 Amanda Dobbins. Oh my God. Oh my God.
2:47:11 Speaker 03 Yeah. Denise and I were chatting before you guys got here and you said something about that movie that was really encouraging, which is it, uh, instilled to be excited about becoming 40.
2:47:23 Speaker 04 Yes.
2:47:23 Speaker 03 Oh yeah. Cause, cause it's a right. It's a 40 something.
2:47:25 Speaker 04 It's a 40 something romance. I saw that as a young teenager and I was like, that's the age.
2:47:31 Griffin Newman? I got something to look forward to.
2:47:32 Speaker 04 I've, I've always wanted to like, I brought truly in that she wears two outfits that stuck with me to the point where I bought a powder blue pantsuit and wore it with a white turtleneck folded down. And she also, this is the scene when she interrogates Thomas Crown. Oh my God. This is, I'm sorry. Um.
2:47:48 Speaker 03 So there's still time for me to become a master thief?
2:47:50 Speaker 04 There is still time for you to become a master thief. In fact, that was his like first time as master thief. I think he like played a few things practicing, but then he did this art heist at the Met and it was his first time. So it could be your first time.
2:48:04 Speaker 03 Topped his cherry.
2:48:06 Speaker 04 I like you.
2:48:06 Speaker 03 Art thief cherry. Oh, I like you too.
2:48:08 Speaker 04 You're, you're a cool guy.
2:48:09 Speaker 03 I'm, I'm, you give me like 18 compliments. It's like, I don't like it. Do nice to me.
2:48:13 Speaker 04 Why?
2:48:14 Speaker 03 No, I'm joking.
2:48:14 Griffin Newman? Yeah. Well, if we start talking about Sean Millan, then she'll flip in the opposite direction. Those are when I get the angry messages from you where you're like, what the fuck are you guys talking about?
2:48:22 Speaker 04 Yeah. You guys sound insane right now. Um, and also you, cause you were originally, you wrote me and you were like, Hey, um, do you want to do, uh, who was the last one that you guys released?
2:48:32 Speaker 03 David Lynch?
2:48:33 Speaker 04 Yes. You were like, is there a David Lynch film that you want to do? And I was like, oh, I'm so sorry. I absolutely hate David Lynch. I couldn't possibly. I feel, I like, I love you guys' podcast. Like, I feel like a kid with cancer who's like been given a make a wish or something. Just be in here.
2:48:47 Griffin Newman? No, no, but.
2:48:47 Speaker 04 But then you were like, oh, but it'd have to be with David Lynch. And I was like, oh, I'm sorry. I'm gonna have to give that make a wish back. I absolutely couldn't, even if I tried.
2:48:55 Griffin Newman? We planned so far in advance.
2:48:56 Speaker 04 Yes.
2:48:57 Griffin Newman? That I often when it's like, we are overdue. We need to get you on. Can I show you what we have right now? And if there's nothing here, I promise I'll circle back in like five months. But it does mean that there's often a long gap. And then even if it's like five months later, it's like, great, the one you picked is five months from now.
2:49:12 Speaker 04 Hell, yeah.
2:49:12 Griffin Newman? But I always prefer to like, wait for what feels like.
2:49:16 Speaker 04 I really appreciate that.
2:49:17 Griffin Newman? I was never gonna, yes. What else is in the, the top five, David?
2:49:21 David Sims? Oh, back to the box office game. Number two at the box office is a sequel, a terrible sequel to a film we have covered. We have not covered the sequel nor ever shall we.
2:49:30 Griffin Newman? We never shall?
2:49:31 David Sims? I don't think so.
2:49:32 Griffin Newman? We never shall. We covered a made feed?
2:49:34 David Sims? Yeah, covered the original.
2:49:35 Griffin Newman? We covered the original. Is it a Jaws sequel?
2:49:37 David Sims? No.
2:49:38 Griffin Newman? Hmm.
2:49:39 David Sims? Cause I could see us doing a Jaws Patreon. I mean, that's.
2:49:42 Griffin Newman? Could we? That's a little.
2:49:43 David Sims? Deep, I feel like for us, but you know, you never know.
2:49:46 Griffin Newman? We'll never get, how, this is number two?
2:49:48 David Sims? Two of two.
2:49:49 Griffin Newman? Two of two.
2:49:49 David Sims? Yeah, the series ends here.
2:49:51 Griffin Newman? The series ends here definitively. Same stars?
2:49:54 David Sims? Uh, yeah.
2:49:55 Griffin Newman? Not the same director, though, obviously. No. And can you give me a genre?
2:50:00 David Sims? Adventure, romance.
2:50:01 Griffin Newman? Oh, it's, this is the fucking.
2:50:04 David Sims? It keeps coming up.
2:50:04 Griffin Newman? It sucks. It's.
2:50:07 David Sims? It does. Louis Teague film.
2:50:09 Griffin Newman? Jewel of the Nile.
2:50:10 David Sims? The Jewel of the Nile, the sequel to Robert Zemeckis's Romancing the.
2:50:13 Speaker 04 I remember Romancing the Stone. Does it still have Kathleen Turner?
2:50:15 David Sims? Michael.
2:50:16 Griffin Newman? It's both of them.
2:50:16 David Sims? And, and Tito's back?
2:50:18 Speaker 04 Oh.
2:50:18 Griffin Newman? It's so bad. It is so bad.
2:50:22 Speaker 04 What happened to her after like Serial Mom? What?
2:50:24 David Sims? I, that's a, Serial Mom is a good shout as like, a, a great later performance for her. Like, I feel like that is kind of the end.
2:50:33 Griffin Newman? She's.
2:50:34 David Sims? But she had already kind of run out of thread by that point. I feel like Serial Mom is John Waters being like, Kathleen Turner rocks. Like, why isn't she in a more shit?
2:50:41 Griffin Newman? She has very severe arthritis.
2:50:43 David Sims? She does, but that's, I feel like that came on later. Like, I feel like she's already kind of lost the movie star juice by the nineties.
2:50:50 Griffin Newman? I, I think a lot of that is unfortunately, despite everything that Rene Russo tried to teach us. Hollywood's well-established prejudice against women over the age of 40. There's shit also like the, what's it called, VI Wachowski? Where she like adapted that book series that was like a long-running book series. And it was like, this is gonna be her sort of like Dirty Harry series. And that one didn't perform and it was a like, oh, people don't want women in action movies. Kind of like there, but then early 2000s, she did The Graduate on Broadway. And I felt like that-
2:51:18 David Sims? First it was on the West End and there was, she got naked and everyone was like, wah! Like it was truly one of those things where like the British press was like, she fucking is naked in this thing. It's on stage!
2:51:30 Speaker 04 The Brits love nudity. Don't have it on my channel for just 10 galore.
2:51:34 David Sims? Yeah. The whole thing-
2:51:35 Speaker 04 You're British-ish.
2:51:36 David Sims? Is you move there, I'm British-ish. And you're like, in Britain? And now this isn't true anymore because this finally got done away with. But like in the old Red tabloids, the Red Top tabloids, on page three, there was a nude woman whose breasts were revealed.
2:51:50 Griffin Newman? The page three girls.
2:51:51 David Sims? The page three girls, right? Literally it was like, you sick fucks can only make it one, you refuse to turn like eight pages.
2:52:00 Griffin Newman? We promise if you get past the cover.
2:52:02 Speaker 04 Yeah, then you get tits.
2:52:04 Griffin Newman? At least in your peripheral vision.
2:52:05 Speaker 04 Jeez, and you were like, they-
2:52:08 David Sims? And I'm like, as a little boy, I'm like, what is it? And yet at the same time, right, if you like say tits, British people are like, oh, what are you talking about? Fuck it out. It'd be all crazy right now. It's just the weird kind of, they're so funny about that.
2:52:23 Speaker 04 But they were upset that she had her-
2:52:24 David Sims? They weren't upset, they were just like, ah!
2:52:27 Speaker 04 Oh, they were thrilled. They were like, we gotta buy tickets.
2:52:29 David Sims? Yes.
2:52:29 Griffin Newman? She did it on Broadway and then she did-
2:52:31 Speaker 04 She also got naked on Broadway.
2:52:33 David Sims? I believe so.
2:52:33 Griffin Newman? She did Virginia Woolf as well, right?
2:52:35 David Sims? Uh, sure. Yeah, yes, she did, I think.
2:52:36 Griffin Newman? I feel like she had a 2000s, like, you know what, Hollywood's turned their back on me. I'm gonna like take on great roles on stage and I believe won a Tony for something at some point.
2:52:45 David Sims? At least was nominated for a Tony.
2:52:46 Speaker 04 I just like her voice so much.
2:52:48 Griffin Newman? She was supposed to do, uh, George Lucas talk show recently.
2:52:51 David Sims? Oh, really?
2:52:52 Griffin Newman? Said she's just gonna reschedule and do it again soon, but I was very-
2:52:54 David Sims? What was the connection? Like what, what's the, is there a George Lucas project she wants to discuss?
2:52:59 Griffin Newman? Well, what Connor loves to talk about is that George Lucas produced Body Heat, but took his name off of it because he thought people wouldn't think a movie was sexy if George Lucas's name was- It was sort of the Mel Brooks thing.
2:53:11 Speaker 04 Aww.
2:53:12 David Sims? Um, all right. So number three, the box office Griffin. Now, this might've been a porch classic. Ben, I got, I've got a porch classic alert.
2:53:21 Griffin Newman? Okay.
2:53:21 David Sims? This one. Never actually checked in. Not a director. A director we already bad mouthed on this episode, but he's made comedy hits.
2:53:28 Griffin Newman? John Landis?
2:53:29 David Sims? Yes.
2:53:29 Griffin Newman? Spies Like Us?
2:53:30 David Sims? Spies Like Us.
2:53:31 Griffin Newman? Yeah.
2:53:32 David Sims? Chevy and Dan Aykroyd. No, I've never seen it. Yeah.
2:53:35 Speaker 04 I've heard of it.
2:53:35 David Sims? Yeah, it's not a good movie.
2:53:37 Griffin Newman? Yeah, I've never seen it.
2:53:38 David Sims? Great poster.
2:53:39 Griffin Newman? Great poster.
2:53:39 Speaker 04 They're wearing like furry hats?
2:53:40 Griffin Newman? Yes.
2:53:41 David Sims? In the snow.
2:53:41 Griffin Newman? Yeah, in the snow. Yeah.
2:53:42 David Sims? Um, yeah, I feel like, uh, kind of a, like, for everyone involved, like them sort of looking for better days, right? Like Landis, Chevy, Aykroyd.
2:53:52 Griffin Newman? Yes.
2:53:53 David Sims? I don't know.
2:53:53 Griffin Newman? Yeah.
2:53:54 David Sims? Spies Like Us. Uh, number four, the box office is the best picture winner. I already slammed it. And out of Africa, new this week.
2:54:00 Griffin Newman? Mm hmm.
2:54:01 David Sims? Number five at the box office, I think we've discussed this film before. Uh, so we must've done a, we must've done something in this timeframe recently because a couple of these are very familiar. Uh, it's a Christmas film.
2:54:12 Griffin Newman? Mm hmm.
2:54:14 David Sims? And it's like about like, like one of the main Christmas guys.
2:54:18 Griffin Newman? Is it Santa Claus, the movie?
2:54:19 David Sims? Correct.
2:54:20 Speaker 04 What is Santa Claus, the movie?
2:54:22 David Sims? We, because I feel like we recently talked about this. That's so it was like, no one's ever actually just done a movie about Santa.
2:54:27 Griffin Newman? The weird producers of the Christopher Reeve Superman movies were like, we just had the greatest idea of all time. Santa Claus, the movie. And you're like, what makes it the movie?
2:54:35 Speaker 04 Yeah.
2:54:35 Griffin Newman? And they're like us saying it is. Us putting a title on the poster that implies.
2:54:40 David Sims? We got the right.
2:54:41 Speaker 04 Santa Claus.
2:54:42 Griffin Newman? For the first time ever, official Santa Claus.
2:54:46 Speaker 04 Okay. What type of Santa Claus is this? It's not like a the Santa Claus.
2:54:50 David Sims? Dudley Moore, right?
2:54:51 Griffin Newman? But Dudley Moore plays an elf.
2:54:53 David Sims? Okay.
2:54:53 Griffin Newman? And like John Lithgow plays a businessman who hates Christmas or some shit.
2:54:57 David Sims? I'm sure he had to reach really hard.
2:54:58 Griffin Newman? I forget who plays Santa. Like a third of the budget was paid for by Coca-Cola and McDonald's, I think.
2:55:03 Speaker 04 Okay.
2:55:04 Griffin Newman? It's like a notorious disaster.
2:55:06 David Sims? Yeah, I don't think it made a lot of money. I just remember when I was a kid, some other kid telling me like, you've never seen Santa Claus, the movie? It's like the movie about Santa Claus. And I was like, what? David Hubbleston plays Santa Claus.
2:55:17 Griffin Newman? There we go.
2:55:17 David Sims? You know, it's very Santa like me.
2:55:18 Griffin Newman? Yeah. I, I soft pitched recently a Patreon series called Christmas Cole. Worst depictions of Santa.
2:55:25 Speaker 04 Who else is?
2:55:26 Griffin Newman? My pitch for the four.
2:55:27 Speaker 04 Okay.
2:55:28 Griffin Newman? I'm not going in chronological order here. Santa Claus, the movie. Fred Claus, Santa Claus Conquers the Martians.
2:55:35 Speaker 04 What? Yeah, I've never heard that.
2:55:36 Griffin Newman? Legendary B movie, one of the most insane movies ever made.
2:55:39 Speaker 03 I sampled it in one of my slow Christmas albums.
2:55:41 Griffin Newman? There we go.
2:55:42 Speaker 03 And I watched a little bit of it. It's very absurd.
2:55:45 Griffin Newman? And of course, the reason for the season, the movie I walked out of and said, attention must be paid. I must, I must break this movie down is Red One, the worst film ever made.
2:55:54 Speaker 04 The worst film ever made?
2:55:56 Griffin Newman? It's, I, it's not-
2:55:57 David Sims? That was the inspiration, right? Red One.
2:55:59 Griffin Newman? I think it represents an idea for culture.
2:56:01 David Sims? I'm excited.
2:56:02 Griffin Newman? I don't think it's the worst one ever made, but I think in a lot of ways, it is the greatest distillation of everything that is wrong.
2:56:07 David Sims? Been making a lot of pronouncements recently. I was gonna say that.
2:56:09 Speaker 04 Is it like, some movies are, I know they're not going to be good, but I like to take like half of an edible and get the big tub. I love that experience of watching a bad movie while eating caramel popcorn while a little bit high. Would this be good for that? Or would I even from that experience walk away like upset and disappointed?
2:56:27 Griffin Newman? I think it would, I think it would upset you. I think it would upset, I think there are things in it that would genuinely upset you, especially in a modified state like that.
2:56:36 Speaker 04 Okay.
2:56:37 Griffin Newman? Yeah.
2:56:37 Speaker 04 All right.
2:56:38 David Sims? Um, in six to 10, we've got White Nights, the Taylor Hackford ballet movie with Heinz and Borishnikov, the big two. Um, we've got a Disney re-release of 101 Dominations.
2:56:51 Griffin Newman? One of your daughter's favorite movies?
2:56:53 David Sims? She had a huge phase with that movie. She has not watched it in a while, but she loved Cruella. She was, I mean, not, to be clear, not-
2:57:00 Griffin Newman? Like her actions?
2:57:01 David Sims? Not Craig Gillespie's film Cruella. She liked Cruella in the movie. She called her the grumpy queen.
2:57:05 Griffin Newman? Mm-hmm.
2:57:05 Speaker 04 Well, but she should see Cruella then.
2:57:09 David Sims? We'll get to it. Right now, it's-
2:57:11 Griffin Newman? Doesn't your daughter have a bunch of questions about why did Cruella pretend to hate dogs?
2:57:16 Speaker 04 Yeah.
2:57:17 Griffin Newman? No.
2:57:18 Speaker 04 Where she came from? Why her hair's dyed like that?
2:57:20 David Sims? Yeah, right, yeah, right. Yeah, she wants to know the origins of, right, did a dog knock her mom off a cliff or whatever happens in that movie? My daughter right now, unfortunately, it's all Frozen. They watched it at school.
2:57:30 Speaker 04 Just one or Frozen one and two?
2:57:31 David Sims? This is what I wanted to tell you. So both, she likes both, but she distinguishes them by there's the regular Frozen, as you refers to, which is Frozen One. And then Frozen with the Pants, because she one point told me that princesses wear dresses. And I was like, princesses don't have to wear dresses, they can wear pants. And she was like, princesses wear dresses. And I was like, Elsa wears pants in Frozen Two, remember? When she runs into the water, she's wearing pants?
2:57:54 Speaker 04 Yeah.
2:57:54 David Sims? And she was like, show me that right now. And I like, I like queued it up and I showed it to her and she watched and she was like, she is wearing pants. I agree with you. And so now she will specifically be like, I want Frozen with the pants. And I'll be like, but you want it from the beginning, right? Cause she's not going to wear pants until an hour into this thing.
2:58:11 Griffin Newman? Yeah.
2:58:12 David Sims? And she's like,
2:58:13 Griffin Newman? Right now, like Disney, Disney Animation headquarters, they're playing this back and they're like, okay, fuck.
2:58:19 David Sims? We never thought of this.
2:58:20 Griffin Newman? What are we doing for part three?
2:58:21 David Sims? Cause my daughter likes to sometimes put a dress on, any dress. It just has to be, and then just dance around to music and then we, we clap and she bows.
2:58:29 Speaker 04 Oh, nice.
2:58:30 David Sims? Which is very great. Uh, very cute, but, but you know, still trying, trying to just get her, you know, get her away from the thought of like, girls wear dresses and princesses.
2:58:39 Griffin Newman? They just need to make a big bottom wear choice for Frozen three. If they fuck this up, the whole thing is gonna crumble.
2:58:45 Speaker 04 Frozen, but tropical. It's like a whole thing. And then they got, they have shorts on. Yeah.
2:58:49 David Sims? And so, uh, I 100, but she does love 101. No, I'm just number eight, Color Purple. Number nine, Enemy Mine. A movie I've been thinking about a lot because Andy Samberg on the Lonely Island podcast keeps talking about how you would try to work it into sketch.
2:59:04 Speaker 04 What is that?
2:59:05 David Sims? It's like, I know, and they eventually got it in. It's this role, uh, Will King Peterson movie about like a human and an alien gets stranded on a planet together.
2:59:15 Griffin Newman? Quaid and Louis Costa Jr.
2:59:16 David Sims? And Louis Costa Jr. is in like alien makeup. Louis Costa Jr. is like coming off an Oscar.
2:59:21 Griffin Newman? Yeah. It's like,
2:59:21 Speaker 04 I definitely had mentally switched that around. Okay.
2:59:24 Griffin Newman? So he's the alien, like bearded Quaid and Lou, like, yeah, collecting his like post Oscar, like, uh, and, and the crux of the movie is like these two different species stranded on a planet together, sort of surviving. And then I, I, I think I can say this because it's what the culture reputation of the movie is. The sort of twist is that it turns out that he is able to become pregnant.
2:59:48 Speaker 04 The alien.
2:59:49 David Sims? Fuck. I need to see it. I need to see.
2:59:52 Speaker 04 And he gets pregnant?
2:59:53 Griffin Newman? They have a child, I believe.
2:59:55 Speaker 04 So they, they fuck.
2:59:57 Griffin Newman? This is what I'm trying to remember.
2:59:59 Speaker 04 We don't see that, though.
3:00:00 Griffin Newman? I don't think so.
3:00:02 Speaker 04 You don't think so?
3:00:03 David Sims? I gotta watch it. Alright, so Sabrina, Enemy Mine, what was the other thing I'm watching? Oh, Trip to Bounce, oh my god, I gotta check it out.
3:00:10 Griffin Newman? Red one.
3:00:11 David Sims? Red one, I am gonna watch it. Number 10 is Chorus Line, which I feel like was not the hit they wanted it to be. That's Richard Attenborough, post Gandhi, being like, I'm gonna adapt the biggest hit on Broadway ever. And it like, did okay, you know?
3:00:27 Griffin Newman? I need to pee so badly.
3:00:28 David Sims? Okay, yeah, well, we've been talking for way too long.
3:00:30 Griffin Newman? Yeah.
3:00:31 David Sims? No, no, no, no, no.
3:00:32 Speaker 04 Cause one is a lie, what an incredible guest.
3:00:34 David Sims? Not way too long.
3:00:35 Speaker 04 That's very nice and kind of you. I do wanna say before we wrap things up, no, I don't, I didn't drink enough water too. So I intentionally dehydrated myself so that I wouldn't have to. Yeah, cuz you guys, I listened to the pod, I know you guys go so long, so I was like, do not fill up on water. You're gonna have to pee. Um, the person who plays Nettie as a child does some of the weirdest acting I've ever seen in my life. And I, I'm sorry, it caught me so off guard that I felt irresponsible not mentioning it. Yeah, I just needed to know, like, I needed to say, when she screams, ah, and waves her hands in the air, and that's supposed to be a big pivotal moment of emotionality from these two characters, I said, I must mention this on the podcast, and that's it.
3:01:14 Griffin Newman? It's worth calling out, especially cuz he is historically very good with children.
3:01:18 David Sims? Yeah.
3:01:19 Speaker 04 Yeah.
3:01:19 Griffin Newman? Yes, it might, it might speak to the fundamental, he might not just totally have a grasp on the character.
3:01:25 Speaker 04 Yeah.
3:01:25 Griffin Newman? Yes.
3:01:25 Speaker 04 Okay, sorry.
3:01:26 Griffin Newman? No, no, I think.
3:01:27 Speaker 04 I want you to pee, I want you to have the ability to go pee.
3:01:30 Griffin Newman? Canis, thank you so much.
3:01:31 Speaker 04 Thank you so much for having me, you guys are, this is, this is a dream come true, thanks guys.
3:01:35 Griffin Newman? You're the best. It's, it took far too long. Anything, anything specific you wanna plug?
3:01:40 Speaker 04 Follow me on the websites that we all follow each other on, obviously. If we've dated, I'm sorry.
3:01:46 David Sims? Ah, come on.
3:01:47 Speaker 04 Actually, I'm not sorry, I was a nice lady to date, okay?
3:01:50 Griffin Newman? Yeah, you used this platform to say this.
3:01:53 Speaker 04 Yeah, I was a nice lady to date, I'm a good cook, I do stuff, I'm like, a reasonable person, and you guys were fine, we were not compatible.
3:02:02 Griffin Newman? There we go.
3:02:03 David Sims? I, I wanna hear all, I, I have.
3:02:04 Griffin Newman? And maybe even a you're welcome, maybe let's throw a you're welcome out there.
3:02:07 Speaker 04 You're welcome, okay?
3:02:08 Griffin Newman? If you're listening to this show and you dated Canis, you're welcome.
3:02:10 Speaker 04 Yeah. And you don't write me about this on Instagram.
3:02:14 Griffin Newman? Don't do that. Don't.
3:02:15 Speaker 04 Okay, you can, but we're not gonna get back together. That's just not gonna happen.
3:02:19 David Sims? Are you doing a hot guy draft?
3:02:21 Speaker 04 Oh, I love. Okay, so this is my birthday thing and I love it so much and you guys are all invited. Well, not the listeners. I'm talking to the people.
3:02:27 Griffin Newman? Sure. Thank you.
3:02:29 Speaker 04 Uh, so every year we do a Hawkeye draft and I put polls up online and people vote to say who the Hawkeyes are and what they should be ranked on a scale of one to five. Then we take those people, we divide them into three tiers. Some people get like green, silver, or gold stickers. They represent one, three, or five points and you have to make a team of 15 points. It's very, very silly. People who work in sports media do come and they are the commissioners for this draft.
3:02:58 David Sims? Wow, love it.
3:02:58 Speaker 04 Um, and it's really fun and we decide who is the hottest and we make teams. We yell at each other. We have like very, it's, it's super silly. It's my favorite thing in the world.
3:03:08 Griffin Newman? Who won last year?
3:03:09 Speaker 04 Uh, so this year for my birthday, or shit, it was last year.
3:03:12 David Sims? Twenty twenty four.
3:03:13 Speaker 04 Um, okay, so twenty twenty four, it was a team of Denzel Washington, Yaga Abdul-Mateen, Simulu, Shadé, and a fifth person that I can't remember. But that was the winning team of hotness. Uh, the lesbian team was really mad that ever. Are you okay?
3:03:31 David Sims? I'm fine.
3:03:33 Speaker 04 It was a team of lesbians and they made a team and nobody else liked who they said was hot. It was like they were on an island by themselves.
3:03:39 David Sims? Fascinating social experiment.
3:03:40 Speaker 04 Yes.
3:03:41 Griffin Newman? You're doing the work, Denise.
3:03:42 Speaker 04 I, I, I majored in psychology. This is my experiments with human behavior and thought and I love it so much.
3:03:49 Griffin Newman? Uh, everyone, everyone, uh, uh, look out for that. I'll certainly be following very closely this year. Uh, thank you for being here. Thank you all for listening. Uh, tune in next week for Empire of the Sun.
3:04:01 David Sims? Uh, yeah.
3:04:03 Griffin Newman? Kind of an odd double down from Spielberg?
3:04:05 David Sims? Yeah, it is. A slightly better movie, but also, yeah, not perfect, in my opinion. Him striving for the kind of serious movie he will eventually make better. I don't know. Have you seen it?
3:04:16 Griffin Newman? Yes, I have.
3:04:16 David Sims? Okay.
3:04:17 Griffin Newman? Yeah, excited to see it again. I've only seen it once.
3:04:19 Speaker 03 Over on the Patreon, coming up in a few days, we have a bonus Spielberg episode we're doing about Twilight Zone the Movie.
3:04:27 Speaker 04 Hmm.
3:04:27 David Sims? Wow.
3:04:28 Griffin Newman? Oh, just his part.
3:04:31 David Sims? But his part's really bad.
3:04:32 Griffin Newman? Yep.
3:04:33 Speaker 04 Okay.
3:04:33 David Sims? And amazing story.
3:04:35 Griffin Newman? Which are better? Yeah, his more amazing story segments. Uh, and doing Star Trek Next Gen?
3:04:41 David Sims? Yeah, we are in the middle of that. Star Trek: Insurrection is next.
3:04:45 Speaker 04 Oh.
3:04:46 Speaker 03 The one where they're on the planet where people don't age and Picard gets a crush.
3:04:50 Griffin Newman? What if Star Trek was Ringling? F. Murray Abraham.
3:04:53 David Sims? F. Murray Abraham is there. Do you like Star Trek, Anis?
3:04:55 Speaker 04 No.
3:04:56 David Sims? That's fine. You just seemed interested, so I was like.
3:04:58 Speaker 04 I am interested. My mom loves Star Trek. My mom's like this weird, cool person where she likes Star Trek and she's on bowling and pool leagues. And so I like, want to be cool to my mom, I guess.
3:05:11 David Sims? Right, that's not automatically cool to all people.
3:05:13 Speaker 04 Oh, no.
3:05:14 David Sims? To your mom, yeah.
3:05:15 Speaker 04 Yeah, yeah, yeah. So like, sometimes I like try to pick up on things that are going on in the Star Trek world so I can like, be cool to my mom.
3:05:22 Griffin Newman? Yeah, that's like how I'll say to my dad, like, I heard someone hit a ball yesterday, huh? Another hoop?
3:05:28 David Sims? Uh, did you know Anis is a twin?
3:05:30 Griffin Newman? I did know this. Yeah.
3:05:31 David Sims? You just revealed that to me.
3:05:33 Griffin Newman? Anyway.
3:05:33 Speaker 04 Where and when?
3:05:34 David Sims? Oh, you weren't here yet. You weren't here yet.
3:05:36 Griffin Newman? It's a piece so badly.
3:05:37 Speaker 04 Yeah, we were chatting. It's a whole thing. Bye. Thank you so much.
3:05:39 David Sims? We love you.
3:05:40 Griffin Newman? And, and, and as always, we've talked a lot about the color purple for nearly three hours, but I would just like to take this final opportunity on mic to re-center the real focus, the color red.
3:05:54 David Sims? Red one?
3:05:55 Griffin Newman? Red Hulk.
3:05:56 David Sims? Oh, yeah.
3:05:58 David Sims? Hail to the chief.
3:05:58 Griffin Newman? Hail to the chief.
3:06:06 Speaker 03 Blank Check with Griffin and David is hosted by Griffin Newman and David Sims. Our executive producer is me, Ben Hostly. Our creative producer is Marie Bardi Salinas, and our associate producer is A.J. McKeon. This show is mixed and edited by A.J. McKeon and Alan Smithy. Research by J.J. Birch. Our theme song is by L.A. Montgomery and the Great American Novel, with additional music by Alex Mitchell. Artwork by Joe Bowen, Holly Moss, and Pat Reynolds. Our production assistant is Minnick. Special thanks to David Cho, Jordan Fish, and Nate Patterson for their production help. Head over to blankcheckpod.com for links to all of the real nerdy shit. Join our Patreon Blank Check Special Features
3:06:48 Speaker 03 for exclusive franchise commentaries and bonus episodes. Follow us on social @BlankCheckPod. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter, Checkbook, on Substack. This podcast is created and produced by Blank Check Productions.
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