E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial

We’re putting out a bit of a throwback episode for the most iconic (literal) blankie in film history - this week’s E. T. episode is guestless, with Griffin going rogue off the dossier, David making fun of Griffin for being an adult who likes toys and animation, and Ben getting emotional over a family film…decade of dreams, baby! Join us as we gush over the child performances, creature creation, and authentic emotionality of Spielberg’s canonical hit. Did you know that the Italian guy who designed E. T. kind of looks like E. T.? Or that Researcher JJ wrote his doctoral dissertation about the Reese’s Pieces product placement in this movie? Open the schools! But please - no frog dissections. Sign up for Check Book https://blankcheckpod.substack.com/welcome, the Blank Check newsletter featuring even more “real nerdy shit” to feed your pop culture obsession. Dossier excerpts, film biz AND burger reports, and even more exclusive content you won’t want to miss out on. Join our Patreon for franchise commentaries and bonus episodes. http://www.patreon.com/blankcheck Follow us @blankcheckpod on Twitter https://x.com/blankcheckpod?lang=en, Instagram https://www.instagram.com/blankcheckpod/?hl=en, Threads https://www.threads.net/@blankcheckpod?xmt=AQGzctAh4mbWTwYzCV1pzNT6AMV9o99EOfymi8TLR5mTde0 and Facebook https://www.facebook.com/blankcheckpodcast/! Buy some real nerdy merch https://kinshipgoods.com/blankcheck Connect with other Blankies on our Reddit https://www.reddit.com/r/blankies/s/gpcOkQr8Sv or Discord https://discord.gg/Q6YGSR3JrA For anything else, check out BlankCheckPod.com https://www.blankcheckpod.com/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

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

• 0:02Griffin Newman?

  David.

• 0:03David Sims?

  Yep.

• 0:03Griffin Newman?

  We did a live show.

• 0:04David Sims?

  Yeah, remember?

• 0:05Griffin Newman?

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

• 0:12David Sims?

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

• 0:15Griffin Newman?

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

• 0:18David Sims?

  Yeah, hey.

• 0:18Speaker 02

  Hey, everyone, or should I say, oh?

• 0:20David Sims?

  Oh.

• 0:22Griffin Newman?

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

• 0:31Speaker 03

  So just a few more days.

• 0:33David Sims?

  Yes.

• 0:33Speaker 03

  You can get it at dynasty.tv.

• 0:36David Sims?

  Dynasty.tv.

• 0:37Speaker 03

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

• 0:43David Sims?

  Oh, yeah. I was moving things around.

• 0:45Griffin Newman?

  Laptop was on.

• 0:46Speaker 02

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

• 0:48Griffin Newman?

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

• 0:50David Sims?

  I was locked in.

• 0:51Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, very locked in and you were funny.

• 0:53David Sims?

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

• 0:56Griffin Newman?

  Oh, thank you.

• 0:57David Sims?

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

• 1:02Griffin Newman?

  You might see me shine Marie's shoes.

• 1:04David Sims?

  Exactly.

• 1:05Speaker 02

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

• 1:07Griffin Newman?

  If that gets you off.

• 1:09Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 1:10Speaker 03

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

• 1:39Griffin Newman?

  B C Cast Pod?

• 1:46David Sims?

  B C Podcast.

• 1:48Griffin Newman?

  B C Podcast. Blank Check Podcast.

• 1:53David Sims?

  Wow, that was stupid.

• 1:54Griffin Newman?

  That was great.

• 1:55David Sims?

  That was so dumb.

• 1:56Griffin Newman?

  It was simple.

• 1:57David Sims?

  Yeah, it was simple. My god, our microphones are all glowing at the tip.

• 2:01Griffin Newman?

  Would you rather I call you Podcast Breath?

• 2:03David Sims?

  I was about to say that's what I would do.

• 2:05Griffin Newman?

  That's the Griffin move, but this is too important of a movie to do something that disrespectful to the film and to the medium of podcasting, the serious medium of podcasting.

• 2:14David Sims?

  Here's the thing about Penis Breath.

• 2:15Griffin Newman?

  We're starting out great, yeah.

• 2:17David Sims?

  Two things about it. One, my favorite thing about him saying Penis Breath, beyond the fact that it is such a specific insult.

• 2:23Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, and I got four things to say about it.

• 2:25David Sims?

  Versus just like calling him a jerk, calling him an asshole. Is that the mom cannot help but laugh because it's such a specific, like, she can't even shite it, because she's clearly being like, Penis Breath.

• 2:37Griffin Newman?

  It's a full laugh while she's attempting to scold him.

• 2:40David Sims?

  When I was a teenager, I met Chris Columbus.

• 2:44Griffin Newman?

  Hey.

• 2:45David Sims?

  Um, because my mom, I think, interviewed him for Harry Potter.

• 2:49Griffin Newman?

  So he sailed the ocean blue all the way over to London?

• 2:53David Sims?

  It was in London, and, um, and-

• 2:55Griffin Newman?

  That's kind of a good joke.

• 2:56David Sims?

  Yeah, it was a good joke, and maybe it was in her interview. I just, look, this is all I remember. The story was, it was right around when E.T. got revamped, right? It was for its 30th in 2002.

• 3:05Griffin Newman?

  Right, yep.

• 3:06David Sims?

  And someone asked him about it, he'd worked with Spielberg, right? And we're like, what do you think of the fact that Spielberg made a couple tweaks and he's changed this thing with the, you know, and he was like, as long as he hasn't changed the Penis Breath line.

• 3:18Griffin Newman?

  And he did.

• 3:20David Sims?

  He did?

• 3:20Griffin Newman?

  In the 20th version, they take out Penis Breath.

• 3:23David Sims?

  What?

• 3:23Griffin Newman?

  I think it gets dubbed over with something else.

• 3:25David Sims?

  No.

• 3:26Griffin Newman?

  The changes, the big changes in the 20th are Penis Breath, walkie-talkies removed, or walkie-talkies replaced guns digitally. No adults hold guns.

• 3:38David Sims?

  Oh, that's such an important detail. That's so dumb. Spielberg highly regrets it, and we're gonna talk about it.

• 3:42Griffin Newman?

  This is what's fascinating. Versus all the other times we've talked about this kind of tinkering, Spielberg, within one year of it, was like, that was a mistake, pulled the 20th version from circulation, and now it's hard to watch that?

• 3:53David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 3:53Griffin Newman?

  Which is why it's hard for us to-

• 3:55David Sims?

  It's out of circulation.

• 3:56Griffin Newman?

  Recount. Yes, you have to get the out-of-print DVD. And then he did the fucking CGI E.T. There's one scene where there's a holistic CGI E.T., and then he did a lot of face replacements and bits, and all of that sucks.

• 4:09David Sims?

  The penis breath thing, Griff, I don't think that's true.

• 4:12Griffin Newman?

  Are you sure about that?

• 4:13David Sims?

  Yes, I think you may have read that in this Ain't It Cool News article.

• 4:18Griffin Newman?

  You are 100% correct.

• 4:19David Sims?

  But it's not true.

• 4:20Griffin Newman?

  Okay.

• 4:20David Sims?

  The only dialogue that's changed, she changes, she doesn't say terrorist. She says something else like-

• 4:26Griffin Newman?

  In a post 9/11 world.

• 4:27David Sims?

  Because it was post 9/11, the off-screen dialogue of her saying to Michael, Michael-

• 4:32Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 4:33David Sims?

  Uh, you know, "You're not going out dressed like a terrorist." It's changed to like pirate or so, I don't know, like something like less offensive.

• 4:39Griffin Newman?

  Here's my favorite thing about penis breath.

• 4:42David Sims?

  Sensitive.

• 4:42Griffin Newman?

  Here's my favorite thing about penis breath. And obviously, none of us were alive in 1982. We can't speak to what it was like to be on the schoolyards and the immediate release of this movie. I like that it feels like an insult exclusive to this film.

• 4:57David Sims?

  Right, it's an ET-only insult.

• 5:00Griffin Newman?

  Otherwise, I'm like, it's astounding that it isn't even quoted more. Every time he says it and I'm waiting for it, it still hits me right, because it's surprising.

• 5:09David Sims?

  Yep.

• 5:10Griffin Newman?

  Penis breath.

• 5:11David Sims?

  It was nothing like that penis breath. Welcome to Blank Check's. I almost said special features, because I'm the one who introduces that stuff.

• 5:18Griffin Newman?

  B C Podcast.

• 5:20David Sims?

  Welcome.

• 5:20Griffin Newman?

  B C Podcast.

• 5:22David Sims?

  Yeah, see, the whole thing is Griff's like, let's do this intro where Ben does ET, but he's, Griffin has a good ET.

• 5:28Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 5:28David Sims?

  Do ET-

• 5:29Speaker 03

  Griff, you're a professional voice actor.

• 5:31Griffin Newman?

  Okay, so you repeat the part, you do the Elliot. B C Cast Pod.

• 5:37David Sims?

  No, we're not doing it again. Griffin, do the-

• 5:39Griffin Newman?

  Blank Check Podcast.

• 5:41David Sims?

  Do the, um, the ride, right? What's the, doesn't the ET ride, doesn't he say like your name at the end of it or whatever?

• 5:47Griffin Newman?

  Bye, David.

• 5:48David Sims?

  Right, and you're like, whoa, he said my name!

• 5:51Griffin Newman?

  Ben.

• 5:52David Sims?

  Would Kenny do Griffin?

• 5:53Griffin Newman?

  AKA Producer Ben, AKA The Ben Dooser. What if we loaded every Ben nickname into ET? I feel like his Griffin's a little funky. I've obviously done the ride many times, it's my favorite ride.

• 6:06David Sims?

  It's your favorite ride?

• 6:06Griffin Newman?

  I think it is. I think it's my favorite pure ride.

• 6:08David Sims?

  It's called ET Adventure?

• 6:09Griffin Newman?

  It rules, and we'll talk about it on Patreon.

• 6:13David Sims?

  Yeah, I think we'll, we'll, we'll put-

• 6:14Griffin Newman?

  I feel like it's always a little like, goodbye Griff.

• 6:20David Sims?

  Do they like have one person, it's not like a computer program that figures out how to say names, they just have one person read like a thousand names?

• 6:27Griffin Newman?

  This is what's great about it, is the ride is, I wanna say it's still sponsored by AT&T.

• 6:34David Sims?

  Sure.

• 6:34Speaker 03

  It's A-T or T, you have to choose now.

• 6:36David Sims?

  You do have to choose, you still have to choose now.

• 6:38Griffin Newman?

  10 comedy points, a decade of dreams, way to throw back to an all, all time moment on the show. They, if I remember correctly, the system is still, and the last time I went on was like two years ago, you get handed a phone card.

• 6:52David Sims?

  Uh huh, okay.

• 6:53Griffin Newman?

  While you wait in line, and then right before you board the ride, you hand that phone card to an operator, you tell them your name, they type your name into a computer, and they link it to knowing which number ride vehicle you're in, so it will time out properly. But it is still a pretty fucking manual system.

• 7:11David Sims?

  But that is, yeah, it's kind of an old fashioned way of doing it, right? I guess, what else are you gonna do?

• 7:16Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 7:17David Sims?

  This looks very fun, this ride, I'm watching it.

• 7:19Griffin Newman?

  David, we'll talk about it.

• 7:20David Sims?

  But it looks like a very chill.

• 7:23Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 7:23David Sims?

  Not, not too intense for, right?

• 7:26Griffin Newman?

  We've, we've talked about the scuttled Blank Check Goes to Orlando plans over the years, who knows if it ever happens? I have always felt like, if we could make it happen, this is the ride where you would walk off and be like.

• 7:37David Sims?

  Enchanting!

• 7:38Griffin Newman?

  I get where you're coming from. Not that you would be fully theme park filled, but I think you would have a Forky-esque wall comes down. I get it.

• 7:49Speaker 03

  It's one of the rides, it's one of the few rides that has actually stuck with me.

• 7:54David Sims?

  Wow!

• 7:55Griffin Newman?

  It is, it is enchanting, it is relaxing, it is-

• 7:57David Sims?

  Well, I like relaxing, I like hearing that.

• 7:59Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, and it's a fascinating combination of, the first half of the ride is you basically going through E.T. the movie as a ride.

• 8:07David Sims?

  And then you're like on his planet or something?

• 8:09Griffin Newman?

  Then, the second half of the ride is basically Spielberg being like, "These are the things I developed when Universal begged me to make a sequel."

• 8:16David Sims?

  Right.

• 8:16Griffin Newman?

  "And I decided it was better to leave the movie as is, but you know what? I'll let them write a sequel novel, and I'll put it in the ride."

• 8:22David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 8:22Griffin Newman?

  And you go to E.T.'s planet with a bunch of guys.

• 8:25David Sims?

  Love guys.

• 8:25Griffin Newman?

  A bunch of weird plant guys who are like, playing instruments on their belly and doing stuff, and then he says, "Your motherfucking name!", which rules, cuz I'm gonna say it. E.T. is the greatest friend of all time. I hurt my voice a little doing the voice. I have to take a sip.

• 8:43Griffin Newman?

  Pow, I just shit my pants. This is Blank Check with Griffin and David. I'm Griffin.

• 8:47David Sims?

  I'm David.

• 8:48Griffin Newman?

  It's a podcast about filmographies. Directors who have massive success early on in their careers and are given a series of blank checks to make whatever crazy passion products they want. And sometimes those checks clear and sometimes they bounce, baby. Sometimes they fly in front of the moon. And into film history.

• 9:05David Sims?

  Uh, E.T., the Extraterrestrial is the film today.

• 9:09Griffin Newman?

  I am gonna put forward a few hot takes.

• 9:13David Sims?

  Oh, boy.

• 9:13Griffin Newman?

  Here's my first one.

• 9:14David Sims?

  Okay.

• 9:15Griffin Newman?

  I think this movie is good.

• 9:16David Sims?

  Okay, that's not a hot take at all. That's wildly held.

• 9:19Griffin Newman?

  Okay.

• 9:19David Sims?

  Opinion.

• 9:20Griffin Newman?

  Second, and this is a hot take. I think this is one of the most successful movies of all time. Financial, just being financially, it's a take.

• 9:27David Sims?

  Matter of data.

• 9:29Griffin Newman?

  And third, I think this is one of the most important movies in history. Just kind of in like cultural, kind of omnipresent. These are hot takes. I don't want anyone to cancel me for this. I'm very excited to be talking about E.T.

• 9:39David Sims?

  I see what you're.

• 9:40Griffin Newman?

  It's a mini-series on the films of Steven Spielberg.

• 9:42David Sims?

  Uh, yes.

• 9:43Griffin Newman?

  We've been calling it Podrastic Cast.

• 9:45David Sims?

  Okay.

• 9:46Griffin Newman?

  Today, we've gotten to what I think is his best film.

• 9:48David Sims?

  I think it's sort of inarguably his. I have A.I. above it as a personal favorite. I think E.T. is.

• 9:55Griffin Newman?

  Do you have it at two?

• 9:56David Sims?

  His opus, yes.

• 9:57Griffin Newman?

  I, I mean. A.I. and E.T. are very paired, in my opinion. Ben, can you grab me a seltzer? This voice is gonna keep catching up with me. Uh, I think Empire of the Sun and E.T. are very linked. I think Catch Me If You Can and E.T. are very linked.

• 10:10David Sims?

  Sure.

• 10:10Griffin Newman?

  I think because it deals with so many of the core themes, he has other movies that are like adjacent to E.T. that I could understand, people ranking above or below. But I'm like, this is the cleanest example of everything that makes Steven Spielberg, Steven Spielberg. And I feel like it is this like incredible apex point of everything coming to a head.

• 10:32David Sims?

  Yeah, this is, yeah, look. Yeah, I mean, it's ET. This is always gonna be a tough episode. It's a, it's a, you know, there's, it's, it's, it's easy to go into superlatives because there's really no way to over superlative ET.

• 10:48Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 10:49David Sims?

  And its success is undeniable and it's the best.

• 10:54Griffin Newman?

  Talking about his blank check status. Watch the trailer for this movie. That very wisely hides ET. And all of the trailers for the movie, all you saw was his hands. And the glowing finger at the very end.

• 11:08David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 11:08Griffin Newman?

  Silhouette of the hand. I feel like you don't even see silhouette of the rest of his body. Um, so like seeing ET was surprised, was kept off the poster, the main poster image at the time was the two fingers touching, right? This is how the trailer opens. In 1975, he brought you Jaws.

• 11:25David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 11:26Griffin Newman?

  In 1977, he brought you Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Hmm, let's not pay attention to what happened in 1979. In 1981, he brought you Raiders of the Lost Ark. In 1982, he brings you ET, the Extraterrestrial.

• 11:39David Sims?

  Why not?

• 11:40Griffin Newman?

  If you're sitting in the theater and you see that trailer, you're like, great, you're promising me one of the greatest movies ever made. You're promising me the fucking pinnacle of Hollywood filmmaking and this movie like delivered.

• 11:53Griffin Newman?

  Right? There's like a confidence to that pitch. That is incredible it met and also met in a way where the weird contradiction of ET is like, this is his small, personal movie.

• 12:06David Sims?

  Yes, it is. Um, and it is undeniably smaller in scale than the films he's been making.

• 12:13Griffin Newman?

  Intimate film. And if you actually recount it, like five things happened in this movie.

• 12:17David Sims?

  Uh, sure. And nonetheless, it's an epic. It's sort of a little epic, as I think he put it.

• 12:22Griffin Newman?

  A mini epic.

• 12:24David Sims?

  Yes, and it has real sweep, sweep to it.

• 12:30Griffin Newman?

  Look, obviously a lot of that is John Williams, who we will talk about. A lot of that is just the emotion this film is able to tap into. Makes it feel operatic.

• 12:41Griffin Newman?

  When it is actually very contained and focused. And, and watching it today, it is just like astounding. As much as I still feel like E T is one of the movies that probably gets repeated in like the offices of studio execs all the time of wouldn't it be great to make something like E T? This thing would not pass one notes round. This thing would not survive. You just cannot imagine them not feeling the need to explain everything. Add bigger set pieces, blow it up, heighten the stakes, you know?

• 13:13David Sims?

  Sure, I think there could be. What I think the movie is missing, and I don't know if you guys agree with me, is Barb. I'll bring her in.

• 13:22Griffin Newman?

  You want Barb from Stranger Things?

• 13:24David Sims?

  Stranger Things is one of those like totemic shows that invented everything that happens in it, right? You know, it's like the tone, the vibes, the aesthetic, right?

• 13:32Griffin Newman?

  And then the Duffer Brothers went back in time after they created Stranger Things, whispered in Spielberg's ear.

• 13:37David Sims?

  Right.

• 13:38Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 13:38David Sims?

  Farted E T into Spielberg's ear. So, so you watch E T now and you're like, okay, well, obviously Stranger Things did it better. But then you're just watching E T and like, yeah, only Barb was here, you know?

• 13:47Griffin Newman?

  Look, I famously-

• 13:48Speaker 03

  You're being facetious.

• 13:49David Sims?

  I am being facetious.

• 13:50Speaker 03

  I just wanted to really crystallize that point.

• 13:53David Sims?

  I love to occasionally bring up Barb because I've never made it past like episode three of Stranger Things. I tried three times because that show was so popular.

• 14:03Griffin Newman?

  A second of it.

• 14:03David Sims?

  Uh, you know, trying to be like, this show is so popular. I'm sure I would, and I always, so I've tried three times. So I've watched-

• 14:10Griffin Newman?

  Poor Barb, poor forgotten Barb, this like very early character who dies. Yeah.

• 14:15David Sims?

  I've watched her die three times.

• 14:17Griffin Newman?

  Barb looms very large for you.

• 14:19David Sims?

  And then just been like, ah, I can't be bothered and just not tried with episode four.

• 14:24Griffin Newman?

  When you said Barb, I was like, do you want E T to go to Vista Del Mar? What are you implying?

• 14:29David Sims?

  Well, E T could hook up with Barb and Star.

• 14:33Griffin Newman?

  Barb and Star and E T.

• 14:34Speaker 03

  That would be so cute.

• 14:35David Sims?

  You know what rocks?

• 14:36Griffin Newman?

  Go to Vista Del Mar, Barb and Star?

• 14:37David Sims?

  Go to Vista Del Mar?

• 14:38Griffin Newman?

  That movie rules.

• 14:39David Sims?

  Such a good movie.

• 14:40Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, here's another movie that rules. E T, the Extraterrestrial from 1982.

• 14:44David Sims?

  Yes, we do.

• 14:45Griffin Newman?

  I have so fucking much to say. I hope people are hooting and hollering at a guestless episode. Cause we're gonna fucking expound on this thing. We had two great guests who were possibly hovering around it, but the whole time, every time we talked about it, we kept circling back to. And by the way, if we do E T guestless- That's all right. That feels kind of ID.

• 15:05David Sims?

  Oh, yeah.

• 15:06Griffin Newman?

  You know, there were two people kind of sniffing around and we were like, if it works, it works. But you know what? I'm down to just fucking just lay out and talk ET, the boys.

• 15:16David Sims?

  Um, here we are. When did you first see ET, the extraterrestrial?

• 15:20Griffin Newman?

  Great question. I, I cannot carbon date it. It was young. It was early. I feel like it was presented to me as if it were like the Grand Canyon.

• 15:29David Sims?

  Same.

• 15:29Griffin Newman?

  Like you are finally ready to understand a thing that is like key to our culture. But also I think what is still so specific about ET is it is presented to children as this rite of passage of like, are you finally ready to go through a profound emotional experience?

• 15:45David Sims?

  Can you handle the sort of more intense emotions of this big feelings movie?

• 15:49Griffin Newman?

  My guess is I saw it around five, if not younger, but like, I couldn't tell you.

• 15:54David Sims?

  I couldn't either.

• 15:55Griffin Newman?

  I, I remember very viscerally the experience of watching it for the first time and the emotional journey of it. And yet I can't pin what age it was because it's hard for me to think about a time before I had seen it.

• 16:05David Sims?

  I don't remember the first time I saw it, but I do just every time I watch ET.

• 16:10Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 16:11David Sims?

  Realize how written into my brain it is of just like Elliot's little shark toy. Things like this, you know, where I'm just.

• 16:18Griffin Newman?

  It's on his tongue.

• 16:19David Sims?

  Yeah, like all right, like the image of the blood on his finger, things where I'm just like, I these, all these things made such an impact on me at a young age. And they are so like, when I see them, it's almost like freaky deja vu. Like then I'm like remembering something that happened to me just because the movie was so kind of like, whatever.

• 16:38Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 16:38David Sims?

  Pounded into me.

• 16:39Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 16:40David Sims?

  What up, Ben?

• 16:41Speaker 03

  I mean, same.

• 16:43Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 16:43Speaker 03

  I, I saw it very young. I don't remember exactly when, but it's just been so, uh, it's ingrained in me, you know?

• 16:51David Sims?

  It really is.

• 16:51Speaker 03

  And, uh.

• 16:52David Sims?

  And we were all born after it came out. It's not like we even saw it, you know, uh, in theaters or whatever.

• 16:57Speaker 03

  And I remember the VHS tape having a little green corner at the bottom

• 17:02David Sims?

  Uh huh.

• 17:03Speaker 03

  of the, the version I had that just like, it always stuck out to me as seeing it on the shelf.

• 17:08Griffin Newman?

  Okay.

• 17:09Speaker 03

  And, and this also for sure implanted in my mind that I want to be abducted by an alien.

• 17:17Griffin Newman?

  So ET is kind of a real pivot point movie for you.

• 17:19David Sims?

  Definitely.

• 17:20Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 17:21David Sims?

  Uh, so.

• 17:23Griffin Newman?

  David, similar experience for you?

• 17:25David Sims?

  Uh, wanting to be abducted by an alien? No.

• 17:27Griffin Newman?

  No, no, no. Watching ET for the first time.

• 17:29David Sims?

  That's right. Just, yeah, no, no, I don't remember. I don't remember, uh, the first time I saw it.

• 17:33Griffin Newman?

  This though, like, it all implanted my brain, burned into me. I, it was not a movie I watched obsessively as a child. It was not a VHS we had. I remember this one very profound experience. And then my sister Romilly, longtime sister, she was nine years younger. When she was a couple of years old and it was like, is Romilly ready for ET? We rented it for her and I feel like I had possibly not seen it since the one time at that point. Romilly had a phase where she was obsessed with it and I feel like I watched it five times with her.

• 18:05David Sims?

  Sure.

• 18:06Griffin Newman?

  When she was like, you know, four and I was like 13. And then we took Romilly on the Universal ride. She got terrified because she didn't like actually meeting ET.

• 18:15David Sims?

  There is, there are no way that he knew how to say her name.

• 18:18Griffin Newman?

  It was bad. Yeah.

• 18:22Griffin Newman?

  It like activated some satanic chant in ET and he started talking backwards. No, and we were like, Romilly, Romilly, stop crying. He's gonna say your name. And then he goes like, goodbye.

• 18:35Griffin Newman?

  I will post it on social media, but afterwards at Universal next to the gift shop, they have a, like a photo op where you can get on the bike and ride in front of the moon with ET. And we were like, don't you want a photo with ET? And Romilly stopped crying for five seconds in order to do a perfect child. Like model, smiling face pose. We got the picture and then she got off and started bawling again. The photo's incredible.

• 18:56David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 18:57Griffin Newman?

  But so I watched it a lot in that period.

• 18:59David Sims?

  Sure.

• 19:00Griffin Newman?

  And then I've seen it, I want to say two or three times since then. They re-released it in IMAX a couple of years ago. Uh, I remember going to like a free public park screening.

• 19:11David Sims?

  ET.

• 19:12Griffin Newman?

  Uh, probably 10 years ago. That was weirdly the 20th version. Projected off a DVD where everyone like five minutes, someone was like, oh, fuck CGI.

• 19:20David Sims?

  Right.

• 19:20Griffin Newman?

  Um, but it is a movie.

• 19:22David Sims?

  Jabba the Hutt was there.

• 19:23Griffin Newman?

  Jabba was there. E.T. stepped on his tail.

• 19:25David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 19:26Griffin Newman?

  And then Jabba stepped on E.T.'s neck.

• 19:28David Sims?

  Uh huh.

• 19:29Griffin Newman?

  Um, but yeah, it's, it's just, it is a very important film to me. Despite it not really being like one of my movies.

• 19:37David Sims?

  Yeah, I hear what you're saying that, but this E.T.'s, yeah, right. To me, not a movie I'd wanna watch all the time.

• 19:44Speaker 03

  Do you think you outgrow it a little bit?

• 19:45Griffin Newman?

  I don't think so.

• 19:46Speaker 03

  Cause I, I definitely remember having it in my collection and at some point, and I, I watched it a lot. Cause I didn't have a lot of VHS tapes growing up.

• 19:53Griffin Newman?

  Okay, you owned it.

• 19:54Speaker 03

  I owned it.

• 19:55Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 19:56Speaker 03

  And at some point I was like, that's baby stuff.

• 19:58David Sims?

  Of course, when you're a teenager, you, right, you, you, you swing away, but then you swing back.

• 20:02Speaker 03

  Well, no, I hadn't swung back until today.

• 20:05David Sims?

  Oh wow, cause I swung back.

• 20:07Speaker 03

  I, I mean, well, I'm, I was destroyed.

• 20:09David Sims?

  Ben was pretty wrecked.

• 20:10Speaker 03

  Destroyed.

• 20:11Griffin Newman?

  Right, I, I can only imagine. I, I think, look, I've, I've talked about this a lot. Romilly being almost a decade younger than me, basically insulated me from needing to swing away from any childish stuff.

• 20:26David Sims?

  That's why.

• 20:27Griffin Newman?

  Cause I was just like, oh, I'll take her to every animated movie.

• 20:30David Sims?

  That's why you're the man in front of us today.

• 20:32Griffin Newman?

  Right, exactly. And obviously my love of the craft of like fucking puppets and animation, whatever, I still wanted to watch these things clinically as my adult brain was developing. But that made it okay for me to see everything.

• 20:42Speaker 03

  E.T.

• 20:43Griffin Newman?

  I, I do think, I just wanna call this out. I think also culturally, we were of a generation where there was this kind of like, you go through a phase where you think Spielberg is a corny, manipulative bullshit artist.

• 20:56David Sims?

  A hundred percent.

• 20:57Griffin Newman?

  And that was like a cultural thing of like, people love Spielberg as kids, then they get cynical about him if you get serious about movies, and then you maybe swing back. Now Spielberg is sort of like such an old master.

• 21:09David Sims?

  Yeah, he's like a guardian of cinema now. It's not the same.

• 21:12Griffin Newman?

  Mostly making adult dramas.

• 21:13David Sims?

  Yeah, he makes original movies too, so people are just like, oh, what, you know, it used to be like, ah Spielberg, he's, you know, playing to the middle of the pack.

• 21:20Griffin Newman?

  Right, now he feels like someone that like film Twitter protects more than the general public does and reveres, you know?

• 21:26David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 21:27Griffin Newman?

  But I do think that was like a thing of like, you're in the nineties and people are like, is E.T. like corny bullshit?

• 21:33David Sims?

  No.

• 21:34Griffin Newman?

  No, it's not. It's, it is, it is. I just think it's like one of the most emotionally astute movies ever made. I'm gonna say a lot of hyperbolic things in this episode.

• 21:43David Sims?

  You need to relax. I'm gonna need, I need you to relax because we're gonna go too crazy.

• 21:47Griffin Newman?

  It's so fucking good.

• 21:48David Sims?

  Yeah, it's very, very good. Steven Spielberg's ET, I'm gonna just open the dossier, just to sort of, just to kind of like, put a saucer under the cup. Kathleen Kennedy. A person who everyone has normal feelings about.

• 22:02Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, it's, look, it's my favorite thing to say when people like to complain about the things she has done in charge of Lucasfilm and go like, who is this woman anyway? Why'd she get this position?

• 22:13David Sims?

  Right, yeah, what successes she had.

• 22:15Griffin Newman?

  She produced ET?

• 22:17David Sims?

  He met her-

• 22:18Griffin Newman?

  The fuck are you talking about?

• 22:19David Sims?

  While working on 1941.

• 22:21Griffin Newman?

  Yes, she was John Milius's secretary.

• 22:24David Sims?

  Uh, and, right, she was working for John Milius, and so she starts working for Steven Spielberg, she's an associate, uh,

• 22:32David Sims?

  assistant producer, sorry, on Raiders, and associate producer on Poltergeist, and while he's working on Raiders, Spielberg is like, while I was doing all this Close Encounters research, I found out about this UFO case in Kentucky, go find out about it.

• 22:47Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 22:47David Sims?

  She goes and digs into it. There's a case where a family said they'd been visited from creatures from outer space. It's called the Kelly Hopkinsville encounter, it's a very famous UFOlogy thing. Family of 12 that all said, sort of like, these gray aliens, you know, hypnotized us. It's a classic, classic. The Return of the Secarcha Seven has just come out, and Spielberg hires John Sales off of that to basically like dramatize this.

• 23:11Griffin Newman?

  And this is the kind of fabled Lost project, Night Skies.

• 23:15David Sims?

  Correct. It's basically a horror thriller kind of movie about like families coming under attack by aliens, and Spielberg is like, thinking about making this, but he's like, what if like, 20 years from now, someone makes this movie and it's about, you know, you throw cups of water on them, and she's in baseball.

• 23:32Griffin Newman?

  It's just one of these fascinating things.

• 23:33David Sims?

  It's funny that Shyamalan, the heir to Spielberg at that moment, makes signs, which is Night Skies.

• 23:40Griffin Newman?

  Yes, it is.

• 23:40David Sims?

  With his, with Shyamalan's themes entered.

• 23:42Griffin Newman?

  Great point. It's just fascinating to me that this movie kind of comes from three different streams. Of like thought incubation, but all three start with Spielberg. Like, he's not intercepting anything from the outside, right? Like, there's this one impulse while still making Close Encounters that is like, what if I made a really scary alien movie?

• 24:03David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 24:04Griffin Newman?

  Rather than this spiritual one. Then the second thread is while he's shooting Close Encounters, and they are filming the stuff from the end of the movie where the aliens come out of the ship, and there's the one main Carlo Rimbaldi animatronic alien, who is the one who does the hand signals and really interacts with Richard Dreyfuss. He has this like thought of, what if this was like a student exchange program? What if Richard Dreyfuss gets on the ship and the alien stays behind? What happens if there's one alien on Earth? And he's thinking about that in like a Disney movie.

• 24:35David Sims?

  And is it a coincidence, maybe, that that movie was almost kind of anti-family a little bit?

• 24:40Griffin Newman?

  We'll talk about it.

• 24:41David Sims?

  Okay, look, John Sales delivers the script.

• 24:44Griffin Newman?

  Okay.

• 24:45David Sims?

  Spielberg is just kind of like, eh, this is like violent, I don't want this.

• 24:49Griffin Newman?

  Too scary, and also is this different enough from Close Encounters? Do I need to do this?

• 24:53David Sims?

  Um, and he's reading the script. One of the last images in the script is a little alien left alone looking at the sky. And Spielberg's like, well, that's interesting.

• 25:02Griffin Newman?

  Mm-hmm.

• 25:03David Sims?

  And so throughout making Raiders, he's trying, he's pondering this, and he's trying to get back to the tranquility, he says, the spirituality of Close Encounters. He's kind of lonely. His girlfriend at the time, Kathleen Carey, is in California. So is George Lucas. Harrison Ford is pooping his guts out all the time.

• 25:23Griffin Newman?

  Mm-hmm.

• 25:23David Sims?

  And Spielberg's like, I wish I'd like had a friend to talk to. Because, you know, it's been the days before he could just fire up Twitter and, you know, fire off some sexy posts.

• 25:32Griffin Newman?

  Twitter's a great place for friends.

• 25:34David Sims?

  Exactly, connect to the world in a really healthy way.

• 25:36Griffin Newman?

  Mm-hmm.

• 25:37David Sims?

  No, he's bored.

• 25:38Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 25:38David Sims?

  And he's like... Uh, you know, what if I were 10 years old again and I had like an imaginary friend? I feel like it's been turned into he like, there's this kind of apocryphal like Spielberg had an imaginary alien friend as a child. I think that that is not true.

• 25:55Griffin Newman?

  No, I think it's about him going back to the idea of imaginary friend.

• 25:59David Sims?

  Exactly.

• 25:59Griffin Newman?

  Right. And what is like, why do children do that? What is this like need to create a thing to fill a void? You know, a sense of like loneliness that needs to be replaced with like an imaginary loyalty? You know, cause it's like kids with friends have imaginary friends. It's not just like a thing of latchkey children who don't know how to socialize, but I think it's the notion of that like connectivity.

• 26:22David Sims?

  Right.

• 26:22Griffin Newman?

  I have an imaginary friend who was always gonna be there for me.

• 26:25David Sims?

  Right.

• 26:26Griffin Newman?

  That I can call on at any moment. That's what he's riffing on, not a specific imaginary friend of his childhood with a glowy finger.

• 26:33David Sims?

  Right.

• 26:33Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 26:34David Sims?

  Um, so, uh, you know, he's, he's pondering all of this and uh, he's thinking, of course, about his, his, his father being gone and, you know, when he was a young man and uh, that, that's how he comes up with Elliot and this, this kid whose dad is flown off to Mexico with another woman.

• 26:53Griffin Newman?

  Well, but here's the other part of this. The, the third stream is during Close Encounters, which he wrote, of course, he's like writing another script or at least noodling with the early stages of it, being like, maybe I write all of my movies. And it is his first attempt to try to make the thing that he kicks the can on for 40 years that eventually becomes The Fableman's, right?

• 27:13David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 27:14Griffin Newman?

  It's the first attempt of being like, do I want to make a movie about divorce? Maybe not a literal autobiographical film about my family, but I want to like excise the emotions of divorce and being a child of divorce. And like at many points over the next couple of decades, every time he sort of toys with it, he goes, eh, eh, eh, too hot to handle.

• 27:32David Sims?

  Sure.

• 27:32Griffin Newman?

  What he gets into is the idea of can I fold these three things together?

• 27:36David Sims?

  Um, yeah. Uh, so.

• 27:40David Sims?

  He is, he's got the sales draft. He's like, forget it. But he hands, he brings in Melissa Matheson.

• 27:46Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 27:47David Sims?

  Who had written The Black Stallion, 1975, 1979, Black Stallion.

• 27:52Griffin Newman?

  Is on set during Raiders.

• 27:55David Sims?

  Because she is dating Mr. Harrison Ford.

• 27:57Griffin Newman?

  Correct.

• 27:58David Sims?

  And she's one of the only people he's around there to talk to.

• 28:01Griffin Newman?

  Yes. She's written The Black Stallion, which he loves. She's written The Escape Artist, which was a notoriously kind of tragic and difficult production. And, uh, well, Francis Ford Coppola's son dies during the making of that film and, uh, of that film, whatever. It's a complicated movie, right?

• 28:18David Sims?

  Sure.

• 28:19Griffin Newman?

  The point is, he starts talking to her about like, I'm noodling with these ideas. There's the sales draft I have. There's this other thing I'm interested in, whatever it is. Melissa Matheson's like, I'm retired. I don't want to write anymore. But he keeps sort of talking through it to him.

• 28:31David Sims?

  She's.

• 28:32Griffin Newman?

  Until she finally sort of locks in. What, David?

• 28:35David Sims?

  Let me read the dossier.

• 28:36Griffin Newman?

  I watched so much special feature stuff last night.

• 28:39David Sims?

  Don't give me that look. I just feel like, why do we even have the dossier then?

• 28:43Griffin Newman?

  Cause it's great.

• 28:44David Sims?

  Okay. Well, she said.

• 28:46Griffin Newman?

  JJ phone home.

• 28:47David Sims?

  She's not into science fiction. She doesn't feel like a good writer. She didn't like Black Stallion. Spielberg says he is, he admired Black Stallion, which feels a little more, uh.

• 28:57Griffin Newman?

  Okay.

• 28:58David Sims?

  You know, couched in, but, um, she was feeling very unhappy and miserable about herself. She'd optioned a book for some, like for some screenplay that she couldn't finish. Uh, whatever. They all lean on her. Kennedy, Harrison Ford, Spielberg, all lean on her. She writes a draft. And, uh, she writes a book, a screenplay called ET and Me. Then it's called A Boy's Life. She consults with, uh, Harrison Ford's young sons, Willard and Benjamin.

• 29:23Griffin Newman?

  Good names.

• 29:24David Sims?

  Sure.

• 29:26Griffin Newman?

  Willard Ford.

• 29:27David Sims?

  And she says that multiple kids that she talks to, basically with this proposal of like, what would you do if you had an imaginary sort of alien friend? Bring up the healing, taking the owies away, right?

• 29:39Griffin Newman?

  Interesting.

• 29:39David Sims?

  And so she locks into that. It's like, okay, that can be what's sort of magical about him.

• 29:44Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 29:44David Sims?

  Uh, the other thing is that Harrison Ford's boys are obsessed with Dungeons and Dragons.

• 29:49Griffin Newman?

  Okay.

• 29:49David Sims?

  And, uh, she's like, okay, so I think like, I'm going to have them playing Dungeons and Dragons, have this sort of like seed the, uh, rich imaginative, imaginative stuff. There. I like that.

• 30:00Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, I do too.

• 30:02David Sims?

  Phone home, Melissa's line.

• 30:03Griffin Newman?

  Okay.

• 30:05David Sims?

  Spielberg's joke was, Melissa, are you working for me or AT&T? And she said, to quote Ben Hozsley, "It's AT or T and you have to choose now."

• 30:12Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, funny. But also, wait a second, Ben plagiarized that joke?

• 30:17David Sims?

  Uh, but-

• 30:18Griffin Newman?

  A decade of lies?

• 30:19David Sims?

  She's crazy.

• 30:23David Sims?

  Uh, Spielberg then has lunch with Kathleen Kennedy.

• 30:26Griffin Newman?

  Mm-hmm.

• 30:27David Sims?

  Uh, walks in with the screenplay. Kathleen Kennedy's meeting with someone at MGM, I think. And he's just like, "We could shoot this draft." It's the first draft and he's like, "We could shoot this to me."

• 30:36Griffin Newman?

  He says it is still-

• 30:37David Sims?

  It's the best first draft I've ever read.

• 30:38Griffin Newman?

  It's still, to this day, the best first draft he's ever read. Kathleen Kennedy said, "At that point in time, I'd maybe read five scripts."

• 30:44David Sims?

  Right, but Spielberg said, like, people would read it and cry.

• 30:46Griffin Newman?

  Correct.

• 30:46David Sims?

  Like, it's like, it's, you know, which is not usual for a screenplay.

• 30:50Griffin Newman?

  And Kathleen Kennedy was like, "Look, I didn't have enough perspective to understand how good the script was, but I knew it was great." And she's like, "Now, in the last 40 years, I've read thousands of scripts and nothing's as good as that first draft of ET." The other part of it is that Spielberg had been stewing on all the pieces of this for so long that he's basically during Raiders, like, going to her and being like, "Can I share some more thoughts with you?" So, like, the writing process is like, and I think it extends past when Raiders wraps, them meeting and spending days where he is just spilling notions and ideas to her. And then she's doing things like talking to Ford's sons and going, "What about this? What about this?" And they're like, meeting on it. They're talking through it a lot before she goes off, writes, comes back, hands them a perfect thing.

• 31:36Griffin Newman?

  And they're like, they probably adjusted less than 10% of what's in that draft.

• 31:42Speaker 03

  This lady is hanging with Steven Spielberg, writing ET and sleeping with Harrison Ford?

• 31:46Griffin Newman?

  I mean, it's kind of a dream.

• 31:48David Sims?

  Pretty, pretty good stuff.

• 31:49Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, it doesn't-

• 31:49David Sims?

  So I think being in love with Harrison Ford, especially back then, is kind of a tricky thing. He's kind of a grump, you know?

• 31:55Griffin Newman?

  Ben put the right focus on it, which is, she is getting to sleep with him. That's pretty cool.

• 32:01David Sims?

  Sure, I mean.

• 32:02Griffin Newman?

  Yes. Um, yes, but, but so I, it makes sense that this thing sort of like comes together so quickly. Cause it had been in him so long. She knew how to process it well. She was pulling from other places. When she finally sits down to write, it had all sort of been figured out. But I also think it is a key part of this movie for how much Spielberg didn't really want to talk about his childhood at length until later in life.

• 32:29Griffin Newman?

  Uh, but everyone knew that the divorce was seismic. I think people used to read this movie as being a lot more like one to one autobiographical. Where when you watch this film now, you're like, the circumstances of his childhood do not line up very well to this movie. It is speaking to a feeling. It is speaking to an emotional truth, but there is like not a ton of overlap here. And I think if Spielberg had tried to write this himself, it would never have even gotten close to being as good as her being able to process it and with a little distance form an actual story around this.

• 33:00David Sims?

  This isn't.

• 33:02Griffin Newman?

  It isn't.

• 33:03David Sims?

  It's not a, yeah, this is the, just because he's inspired by his, you know, his, his childhood, you know, search for a father figure and all that. And that's in the movie. It's right. It's not like some one to one movie about Spielberg's childhood at all.

• 33:17Griffin Newman?

  No, which is what I find fascinating. And it's a thing I'm going to just pin on the board right here in our conversation. That I was thinking a lot about on this most recent watch. What is ET about?

• 33:29David Sims?

  I have, I have plenty of answers.

• 33:31Griffin Newman?

  I have plenty of answers for you too, but I think part of the movie's power is that it actually is a little hard to pin down. That it is a little bit of like a mirror. And I think why this movie is so effective is I think it is about certain very specific things, but I think it is about them in a way that leaves enough room for everyone to like fill in the pieces of it. This is my take. We'll get into it.

• 33:56David Sims?

  I'm not sure I agree with that. Yes. I think ET is a very universal and powerful feeling that children have, which is why.

• 34:02Griffin Newman?

  I agree. That's what I think it's speaking to. That's what it's speaking to. Yes.

• 34:06David Sims?

  Well.

• 34:08David Sims?

  Rick Baker had been brought in to, I guess, design a bunch of monster aliens for Night Skies. And was basically told like, this is now a children's film and you have to design one alien.

• 34:19Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, was really upset.

• 34:20David Sims?

  So he got really mad.

• 34:21Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 34:22David Sims?

  And exits the project.

• 34:23Griffin Newman?

  He wasted my time.

• 34:24David Sims?

  Spielberg turns to Stan Winston, another icon.

• 34:27Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 34:29David Sims?

  And Stan Winston likes the script, but then he also checks in with Carlo Rambaldi.

• 34:34Griffin Newman?

  Who, of course, did the animatronic for Close Encounters.

• 34:37David Sims?

  Uh, for King Kong.

• 34:38Griffin Newman?

  Well, yes.

• 34:39David Sims?

  He did do the little alien in Close Encounters.

• 34:41Griffin Newman?

  The one kind of hero alien.

• 34:43David Sims?

  Is only on screen for 10 seconds or whatever.

• 34:47Griffin Newman?

  But Carlo Rambaldi comes from fucking Dario Argento movies.

• 34:51David Sims?

  He, is it rude to say he looks like E.T.?

• 34:54Griffin Newman?

  It is not. I had the exact same thoughts.

• 34:56David Sims?

  He's a very funny looking guy.

• 34:58Griffin Newman?

  People always talk about that, like Spielberg, like, you know, throughout, like, I want him to look a little like Einstein.

• 35:03David Sims?

  Yeah, that it's like he has Einstein's eyes.

• 35:04Griffin Newman?

  I want the intelligence and I want the kindness in this.

• 35:07David Sims?

  Bo Derek.

• 35:07Griffin Newman?

  And then I was just, well, yeah, he's, he's got Bo Derek's rockin' bod. He's a perfect 10.

• 35:12David Sims?

  Oh, my God.

• 35:13Griffin Newman?

  Carlo Rambaldi looks a lot like E.T.

• 35:15David Sims?

  Even his Wikipedia photo in the background blurred out is E.T. And it's like, you're like, look at this side by side.

• 35:23Griffin Newman?

  The shape of his head kind of triangulates. He's got these very rich, big, but wide set eyes. And then the kind of like small pointiness of his mouth and his nose.

• 35:31David Sims?

  Oh, my God. That's so funny.

• 35:33Griffin Newman?

  Right?

• 35:33David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 35:34Griffin Newman?

  And, and you look at him and there's a same kind of like odd, elusive, hard to pin down quality where you're like, this guy looks a little scary, a little intense, kind, emotionally like deep, you know? It's all there.

• 35:48David Sims?

  So, uh, Rambaldi, Spielberg decides he wants both. Uh, Stan Winston doesn't want to collaborate, so Spielberg just goes with Rambaldi. Uh, Stan Winston apparently intensely regretted that decision. No shit.

• 36:01Griffin Newman?

  Mm-hmm.

• 36:01David Sims?

  Obviously.

• 36:02Griffin Newman?

  Uh-huh.

• 36:02David Sims?

  Uh, and he's, you know, gives him this really great sort of suggestion of like, basically like, I want him to be off-putting, but not monstrous, which is kind of a tough needle to thread. And if the E.T. design is bad, this movie stinks.

• 36:15Griffin Newman?

  I agree.

• 36:15David Sims?

  It's really, would be really hard to overcome if you have like Mac and Me, like, you know, instead of E.T., right? The Mac and Me alien. Like, if you just have a stupid looking thing.

• 36:24Griffin Newman?

  And what's wild is like, you know, uh, Rambaldi comes from like someone who did Giallo movies, right? The year before this, he does Possession.

• 36:35David Sims?

  Great movie.

• 36:36Griffin Newman?

  The creature stuff that he does-

• 36:37David Sims?

  He actually designed Isabella Johnny. People don't know that she is a Carlo Rempoli animatronic-

• 36:41Griffin Newman?

  And that's the root of her recent, like, legal tax issues is like puppets shouldn't be filing taxes. She doesn't know-

• 36:49David Sims?

  Did she have tax issues?

• 36:49Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, I think she went to jail for a bit, possibly.

• 36:51David Sims?

  If you're French-

• 36:52Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 36:54David Sims?

  And, and you're a famous actor-

• 36:55Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 36:56David Sims?

  And then you get older-

• 36:57Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 36:58David Sims?

  Something weird happens.

• 36:59Griffin Newman?

  It is-

• 37:00David Sims?

  I don't know what it is.

• 37:01Griffin Newman?

  It is wild.

• 37:02David Sims?

  It's like a radioactive Half-Life thing where it's like, "Oh, time's up, you're about to get weird in some way or another."

• 37:07Griffin Newman?

  Right. Does like, is the biggest talent agency in France, uh, Monkey Paw Incorporated?

• 37:14David Sims?

  No, our, isn't the biggest talent agency the great guys from De Porcent, my favorite Netflix show?

• 37:19Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 37:20David Sims?

  I know it's not, it's probably, you know, what's, what's that show called? Call My Agent is the, uh, right. I love that show.

• 37:25Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, what about my monkey paw joke?

• 37:27David Sims?

  That was good, that was good.

• 37:28Griffin Newman?

  It does feel like the fame catches up with all of them in a weird way.

• 37:31David Sims?

  But have you ever watched Call My Agent?

• 37:32Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 37:32David Sims?

  So my mom was like, "Watch this show." I think I was like, uh-

• 37:36Griffin Newman?

  You might be surprised to hear that my mom was like, "Watch this show."

• 37:39David Sims?

  And I fired up with her.

• 37:41Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 37:41David Sims?

  I was, it was like, I was on vacation with her or something and we were trying to decide something to watch. It was a nightmare and she was like, "Watch this, let's watch this." And like immediately they're hitting you with like Cécile de France jokes, right? Of like, and I'm like, "This is so great. This is like inside baseball about French acting."

• 37:55Griffin Newman?

  It's so funny.

• 37:56David Sims?

  Anyway.

• 37:57Griffin Newman?

  Um, what I was gonna say is that possession designs are not that different from E.T.

• 38:03David Sims?

  Interesting.

• 38:04Griffin Newman?

  There is that sort of like fleshy, gooey, lumpy, brown, sort of like bio-organic body horror thing to E.T.

• 38:11David Sims?

  And it's just, give it nice eyes-

• 38:13Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 38:14David Sims?

  And more of a kind of old man vibes.

• 38:16Griffin Newman?

  The possession ones are fully terrifying, but it is what you're talking about, that line of like, there should be something a little off-putting for him, uh, in him. What will make him feel real is the idea that the audience has to kind of like learn to love him and warm up to him and start to see a personality in him, rather than all other movies like this design something that at first blush is cute, right? Like, they don't trust that they can get you there through performance and story. They're like, "Well, if he looks cute, it's easy to get people in." To invoke a movie we've covered in the past decade of dreams.

• 38:52Griffin Newman?

  When David Fincher was doing his casting process for Girl with a Dragon Tattoo, and all of Hollywood's hottest actresses were coming in and desperately vying-

• 38:59David Sims?

  And E.T. did audition for that.

• 39:01Griffin Newman?

  He did. And by the way, he had a good take.

• 39:03David Sims?

  He had a good take, sure.

• 39:04Griffin Newman?

  He had a good take. Um, he always said-

• 39:06David Sims?

  I am hacking.

• 39:07Griffin Newman?

  The problem was, he would see people like Scarlett Johansson, uh, who he was like, had a great performance, nailed the accent, had the characterization, and was like, "It is kind of impossible to not make Scarlett Johansson sexy." And we could like, put the piercings or the wigs on her, and it always still was like, fighting that. And he said to Sony, "I need Lisbeth to be like E.T." And they said, "What do you mean?" And he said, "I want it to be so if you see her on a poster, it feels a little bracing, and I trust that in the movie, you will warm up to it." And he said like, "E.T., if you see him as like a plush doll on a shelf, you're like, 'That thing is hideous looking.'" But if you've seen the movie, you connect to the design.

• 39:50David Sims?

  Uh, so, they, you know, he comes up with the E.T. design, it's a really good one.

• 39:54Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, he nailed it. It's fucking incredible. Beyond the design, it is just, I, I texted this in, in B.C. group text, Max Plus, our major All Hands on Deck group text-

• 40:06David Sims?

  Sure.

• 40:06Griffin Newman?

  As JJ was like, completing the dossier. And I said like, "Does E.T. give the greatest performance in the history of film?"

• 40:15David Sims?

  He's a cool guy.

• 40:16Griffin Newman?

  It is astonishing what they get out of like, obviously a real mishmash of mediums.

• 40:23David Sims?

  Right. Animatronics, puppets, guy in suit.

• 40:26Griffin Newman?

  Yes, but I think the thing in the E.T. puppet, that I, I struggle to think of another example of it being done this effectively, isn't just like, "Oh, there's an expressiveness to him." This puppet feels like it breathes. There are motors in it-

• 40:42David Sims?

  That's true.

• 40:43Griffin Newman?

  That are like, micro-expressions that are going on in moments in the film, that are not trying to sell an emotion, they are selling the idea that he just exists. There's always this kind of, just sort of like, flexing of his face.

• 40:59David Sims?

  Right. Um, I agree. I think E.T.'s cool. I do think he's right on the edge of looking completely fucked up and terrifying-

• 41:08Griffin Newman?

  Yep.

• 41:09David Sims?

  Which is why he's cool.

• 41:10Griffin Newman?

  Uh huh.

• 41:12David Sims?

  Uh, I like when he gets drunk, I like when he puts on flannel, like when he crushes some beers, we'll talk about it.

• 41:16Griffin Newman?

  Can I do a quick ranking of my five favorite comedians of all time?

• 41:21Griffin Newman?

  Number one, Steve Martin. Number two, drunk ET. Number two, number three, ET as it goes for Halloween.

• 41:28David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 41:29Griffin Newman?

  Number four, ET wearing lady clothes. Number five, Bernie Mac.

• 41:33David Sims?

  Um.

• 41:34Griffin Newman?

  These are three of the funniest bits in-

• 41:35David Sims?

  I ain't scared of you motherfuckers.

• 41:36Griffin Newman?

  History. Yeah, I love it when ET says that.

• 41:44David Sims?

  David? Yes. Moooo. Is that the City As Cow?

• 41:49Griffin Newman?

  The City As Cow is back.

• 41:50David Sims?

  Haven't heard from her in a while.

• 41:52Griffin Newman?

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

• 41:57David Sims?

  Okay.

• 41:57Griffin Newman?

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

• 42:02David Sims?

  Wow.

• 42:02Griffin Newman?

  The cow likes chicken.

• 42:05David Sims?

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

• 42:11Griffin Newman?

  Well, Movie 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 Movie does. Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma.

• 42:23David Sims?

  Yes.

• 42:23Griffin Newman?

  One of my favorite movies of the year.

• 42:24David Sims?

  Absolutely.

• 42:25Griffin Newman?

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

• 42:31David Sims?

  That is a line in the movie.

• 42:33Griffin Newman?

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

• 42:35David Sims?

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

• 42:39Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 42:39David Sims?

  Great friend.

• 42:40Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 42:40David Sims?

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

• 42:46Griffin Newman?

  Uh huh.

• 42:46David Sims?

  You know, legends, and I tip my cap, but Zach Cherry.

• 42:49Griffin Newman?

  Performances, friend of the show.

• 42:50David Sims?

  Friend of the show, Zach Cherry.

• 42:52Griffin Newman?

  Zach Cherry.

• 42:52David Sims?

  Also in it.

• 42:53Griffin Newman?

  This is true.

• 42:55David Sims?

  Such a cool movie. One of the queer Paul McCann. If you haven't heard about this movie, I don't know what's going on with you, but like, it obviously has, it was out in theaters this summer and now it's on Movie.

• 43:05Griffin 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.

• 43:19David Sims?

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

• 43:23Griffin Newman?

  What happens? 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.

• 43:35David Sims?

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

• 43:48Griffin Newman?

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

• 43:53David Sims?

  Damn right.

• 43:58Griffin Newman?

  David?

• 43:58David Sims?

  Yes?

• 43:59Griffin 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.

• 44:20David 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.

• 44:39Griffin 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.

• 44:55David 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 Ahearn, now on Audible. Listen to the darkness. Go to audible.com/listen to Dracula.

• 45:30Griffin Newman?

  David?

• 45:31David Sims?

  Yes?

• 45:31Griffin Newman?

  Ugh.

• 45:32David Sims?

  Uh oh.

• 45:33Griffin Newman?

  It's November.

• 45:34David Sims?

  Ah.

• 45:35Griffin Newman?

  And you know what that means, the old stereotype about November.

• 45:38David Sims?

  Turkeys?

• 45:39Griffin Newman?

  One long sprint to the finish line.

• 45:41David Sims?

  Oh, of course.

• 45:42Griffin 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.

• 45:50David Sims?

  No, though, maybe we should.

• 45:52Griffin Newman?

  We might get there eventually.

• 45:53David Sims?

  I can't remember. Big red one. We could call it the Big Red Podcast.

• 45:56Griffin Newman?

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

• 46:10David 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.

• 46:16Griffin Newman?

  And I'm awake.

• 46:17David 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.

• 46:25Griffin Newman?

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

• 46:33David Sims?

  Thank you for that voice.

• 46:34Griffin 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.

• 46:45David Sims?

  Um, yes, AG1, they've got now AG1 Pro.

• 46:50Griffin Newman?

  For the professionals.

• 46:50David Sims?

  Same daily drink now with a performance and recovery layer built in. So you 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.

• 47:08Griffin Newman?

  Thank God.

• 47:09David Sims?

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

• 47:13Griffin 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.

• 47:21David 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.

• 47:52David Sims?

  Spielberg has a script.

• 47:54Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 47:54David Sims?

  Spielberg has a little clay prototype of what ET looks like.

• 47:57Griffin Newman?

  Uh huh.

• 47:57David Sims?

  He goes to Columbia.

• 47:59Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 47:59David Sims?

  Where Night Skies was set up and they'd made Close Encounters. And they're like, this is gonna cost $10 million. That seems like a lot. Your last movie was 1941, because Raiders doesn't come out yet. That didn't do well.

• 48:09Griffin Newman?

  And let's remember that Columbia really had it.

• 48:11David Sims?

  We have a movie called Starman that we really like.

• 48:13Griffin Newman?

  Right. This is, I love when our podcast has gone on long enough that stories start to overlap and things we've covered in the past, like this web of shit. But Columbia really wanted a Close Encounters sequel, which is why he makes the director's cut to sort of satiate that need. But when he comes to them with Night Skies, I think they're like, look, this feels close enough to Close Encounters, even if it's not literally a sequel. We'll take what we can get. By the moment he comes in with a fucking clay maquette and is like, it's now about like a nice alien who befriends a sad boy. I think they're like, what the fuck are you talking about?

• 48:45David Sims?

  Sure.

• 48:46Griffin Newman?

  And I think I saw him talk about a lot in these special features I watched that span over decades, is that he kept on being like, this is me trying to make a Disney movie. And in 1982 and 1981, Disney was at their nadir. They are bad, right?

• 49:01David Sims?

  It's not quite a brand that you can sell to people in the same way. It's a bit of an embarrassing brand at that point.

• 49:06Griffin Newman?

  It's embarrassing. He was like, it's uncool. Disney Animation is in a bad place. Disney Live Action is in a worse place.

• 49:12David Sims?

  Like in 1982 or 1981 or whatever, like, you're talking, that's Fox and the Hound. Black Cauldron is 85. It's a, yes, it's a new deal.

• 49:21Griffin Newman?

  We're in a black hole. I mean, Tron comes out the same summer. They're trying to make Star Wars, right?

• 49:26David Sims?

  For the users.

• 49:26Griffin Newman?

  Yes. Or shitty family comics. We both love Tron. The animation movies are like struggles behind the scenes.

• 49:35David Sims?

  Columbia puts this project in turnarounds.

• 49:37Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 49:38David Sims?

  Spielberg goes over to Sid Scheinberg, his old mentor at Universal, and Scheinberg says, "I love it, but I'm not sure it's gonna be like a big commercial movie. I'll give you distribution, but I want you to raise some money with a bonding company." Spielberg does that and signs a contract that has strict penalties where he would give up percentage points if he went over budget or anything like that.

• 49:57Griffin Newman?

  He's trying to keep himself on rails.

• 49:58David Sims?

  Well, they're trying to keep him on rails as well. And, you know, so he does it really sort of quickly and sort of conservatively, if that makes sense.

• 50:12Griffin Newman?

  This movie was set up in the manner of a Blank Check project where everyone's like, "Look, the script is good. It's probably not commercial." He talks about how everyone working on it was like, "This feels like a fun project, but I don't know if it's gonna make any money." And his greatest wish was that it wouldn't lose Universal money. And Scheinberg just kinda took a flyer and like, "Look, we got a history. You've made some other hits for us."

• 50:34David Sims?

  There's also this, Howard Kazagian, who produced Raiders, claims that Spielberg was trying to make a musical at Universal called Real to Real,

• 50:42Griffin Newman?

  Okay.

• 50:42David Sims?

  which he could not get them to agree to. And he still kind of owed Universal a movie and does ET also. Like finally, he's like, "Well, let me just do ET."

• 50:50Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 50:50David Sims?

  Now, I'm not sure how, a grain of salt on that. You know, like, I don't know how much we should take it as like, great, Spielberg just getting something out of the way.

• 50:57Griffin Newman?

  Universal buys ET from Columbia for $1 million.

• 51:01David Sims?

  A million dollars.

• 51:01Griffin Newman?

  And instead just puts all their chips onto Starman.

• 51:04David Sims?

  Columbia does, yes.

• 51:05Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 51:06David Sims?

  So, uh, number one casting decision, Drew Barrymore. Bring her in, legendary child of the Barrymore acting family. She tells, famously tells Steven Spielberg a story about how she's like the lead singer of a punk band.

• 51:20Griffin Newman?

  Correct.

• 51:20David Sims?

  I'm not sure if that was like her like making something up or if it was like, quote unquote, "real."

• 51:24Griffin Newman?

  This is what he said, that she talked for minutes about how she had a punk band and they were gonna go play at CBGB's and her friends at school.

• 51:31David Sims?

  You know, confident. She's five years old.

• 51:33Griffin Newman?

  Right. And like six or seven minutes in, he was like, "This isn't real." Like, the more details she added, the more he went from like, maybe she's saying-

• 51:40David Sims?

  They were called the Purple People Eaters.

• 51:42Griffin Newman?

  Right. When she started out, he was like, "I guess maybe she plays with friends at school and she's- Started heightening to a degree. But then his realization was if she can sell me on this being a reality, this kid could sell me on anything.

• 51:54David Sims?

  I mean, she's it's the most delightful kid performance. It's incredible.

• 51:58Griffin Newman?

  It is a sounding.

• 51:58David Sims?

  Uh, Drew Barrymore is great. Uh, she, uh, was first, uh, interviewed for Poltergeist, obviously, to be little, uh, you know, little, what's her name? Carol?

• 52:09Griffin Newman?

  Yeah. And Altered States is her first movie? Is that right?

• 52:12David Sims?

  She had been in, she is, I think she's very young.

• 52:14Griffin Newman?

  She's very young.

• 52:15David Sims?

  Heather O'Rourke, Carol and Freely.

• 52:17Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 52:17David Sims?

  Um, anyway, uh, Elliot, obviously is a much tougher decision.

• 52:21Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 52:22David Sims?

  David.

• 52:23Griffin Newman?

  Jack Fisk? Oh, no, what were you gonna say?

• 52:24David Sims?

  David Hollander, um, I don't know who that is, uh, had been cast as some kid from Little House on the Prairie.

• 52:31Griffin Newman?

  Okay.

• 52:33David Sims?

  Is made to play D and D at Harrison Ford's house and was seen as too showy and assertive by Spielberg. So is uncast.

• 52:42Griffin Newman?

  Well, let's get ahead of one thing here, right? And it speaks to like, why the audition process included things like Drew Barrymore talking about being in a punk band. That Spielberg was like, for this to work, I need to like, create an experience for this children. Where they are like feeling things honestly.

• 53:00David Sims?

  Right.

• 53:00Griffin Newman?

  And also are like, taking some part in the authorship of this movie. So part of his thought, even though the script and his view is pretty perfect, is like, the thing that will make this work is if the kids are really in this in an honest way, and we have to sort of adjust around them and find the right personalities. And kids who have that level of imagination, emotional connection and all of that sort of stuff. So all the auditions are these weird tests to sort of like, see the personalities of the children as much as anything else.

• 53:29David Sims?

  That makes sense to me. Like, yeah, cause like, Henry Thomas reads, he's recommended, yes, by Jack Fisk. Uh, because he had played Stacey Space X Son in Raggedy Man. Uh, he reads and this reading is not very good, but then Spielberg's like, well, why don't you do this improv?

• 53:43Griffin Newman?

  It's part of what he said. He said he didn't seem comfortable with the language. You know, he wasn't good at learning lines. He does this improv that you can see that is-

• 53:50David Sims?

  It's a famous, you can watch it on-

• 53:52Griffin Newman?

  Have you ever seen this, Ben?

• 53:53Speaker 03

  I've not.

• 53:54Griffin Newman?

  It is this callback where he just describes to him the situation where he's like, okay, so government men have shown up and they want to do experiments on E.T. and they're gonna take him away from you. And E.T.'s getting sick and you have this emotional connection to him and he's your best friend and he's like, got it? And he's like, okay. And then they just start the improv and Henry Thomas like breaks into tears and does basically at the level of what you see in the final film, the emotional connection of like, you can't take E.T. away from me. And then it ends with him going, kid, you got the part.

• 54:27David Sims?

  Wow.

• 54:28Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 54:28David Sims?

  He does say it. You can hear him say it.

• 54:29Griffin Newman?

  It's like perfect, but he in that moment realizes like he's adjusting to all these kids of like, what's the way to direct this kid, right?

• 54:35David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 54:36Griffin Newman?

  What's the best way to get this performance out of them? I'm casting personalities, energies, emotions.

• 54:40David Sims?

  Corey Feldman is cast as a character called Lance, who is going to be Elliot's like nemesis. Uh, bully, whatever.

• 54:47Griffin Newman?

  Sure.

• 54:48David Sims?

  Gets taken out of the screenplay.

• 54:49Griffin Newman?

  Unnecessary.

• 54:50David Sims?

  Yeah, totally.

• 54:50Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 54:51David Sims?

  Feldman is very depressed, but obviously that's what gets him the parts in Gremlins and the Goonies.

• 54:54Griffin Newman?

  Yep.

• 54:55David Sims?

  Uh, which Spielberg produced.

• 54:56Griffin Newman?

  Mm-hmm.

• 54:56David Sims?

  Uh, Peter Coyote walks in. Spielberg hates him and then he puts some keys on his belt and Spielberg's like, I love it!

• 55:03Griffin Newman?

  Jingle, jingle.

• 55:05David Sims?

  Where'd you get those keys?

• 55:07Griffin Newman?

  They talk, they talk a lot about how he shot this movie like basically in continuity because he wanted the kids to have the emotional experience of like this building in real time. And part of the big calculation, which I would argue paid off really well, is like, when we get to the end of the movie, there will be an outpouring of emotion because these kids will genuinely be saying goodbye to the whole experience. And there's this great clip of Drew Barrymore where like at EPK, they ask her during filming, like, how, how has this experience been? And she just goes like, it's great because there are a lot of kids in this movie. And sometimes you work on other movies and there aren't other kids. So when you're not working, you don't have anyone to play with and it's lonely, but here they're kids all the time.

• 55:46David Sims?

  Right. They're playing together.

• 55:48Griffin Newman?

  That was like the attitude he wanted to create. One of Melissa Mathis' side jobs on top of being like an associate producer on the movie and being there to help rewrite stuff was like she also had to spend time with the kids all the time. And like do activities with the kids when they weren't being schooled so that she could learn them and adjust to them and pull from what they were feeling and whatever. And Peter Coyote makes this comment on one of these things I watched. I think it was like a Q and A for the 20th anniversary release where he was like, yeah, the vibe on the set was great. I mean, I had just come off of 10 years of living on different communes. And I rolled onto the set and I was like, yeah, this feels like a commune. And I'm like, wait, we're not going to unpack that at all?

• 56:25David Sims?

  That's cool. Good for you, Peter.

• 56:27Griffin Newman?

  But it does speak to his weird kind of earthy vibe.

• 56:29David Sims?

  Yeah, he's, he's a real hippie guy because his name, his birth name is like Robert Cohen. And when he was in college, he like ate peyote and was like, I am Peter Coyote.

• 56:40Griffin Newman?

  One of the coolest names.

• 56:41David Sims?

  It's a pretty cool name.

• 56:41Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 56:42David Sims?

  Uh, and he's, he's like a, you can read all about him. He, he discovered Zen, hanging out with the Beats, like was hanging out in Haight-Ashbury in the 60s and all that shit.

• 56:50Griffin Newman?

  Has a Hall of Fame voice.

• 56:51Speaker 03

  Sounds cool.

• 56:52David Sims?

  Uh, and then, and he sort of emerges from all of that and is like, I'll start acting again.

• 56:56Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 56:56David Sims?

  And he's a great actor. I love Peter Coyote. He's amazing in this movie. I think that we can talk about that later.

• 57:00Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 57:01David Sims?

  Um, Spielberg doesn't really storyboard this or plan it in the ways he'd been doing with like Raiders and all that stuff. Says he kind of winged it. Uh, I think it really helps the movie, uh, obviously, but it feels natural.

• 57:13Griffin Newman?

  He needs to work around the kids. He can't impose structure around them. He said a thing I, I liked where he was like, Melissa Matheson did this thing that no other writer I worked with ever did, which was when we started filming, she handed me, she had broken all the scenes onto cards. She had retyped scenes onto individual cards. So I had a stack of cards and that freed me from needing to carry the script around. And every day I would take the couple of scenes we were shooting and just put the cards in my pocket and then just be able to focus on those scenes. You know, like take a card out, show the kids, be like, this is what we're filming today. And this takes place after what we filmed yesterday and just really like zone into that reality.

• 57:52David Sims?

  Alan Davio shoots it. Obviously, he'd worked on Amblin.

• 57:55Griffin Newman?

  Mm-hmm.

• 57:55David Sims?

  With Spielberg. They hadn't worked together again.

• 57:57Griffin Newman?

  Spielberg moves on to like, much more established cinematographers. And then Davio says he heard the announcement of ET, and sent Spielberg, I think, a TV movie he had shot recently?

• 58:09David Sims?

  You need me to read from the dossier.

• 58:11Griffin Newman?

  Fucking read from the dossier.

• 58:12David Sims?

  Because that is not what it says in the dossier. We have to, listen.

• 58:15Griffin Newman?

  Go on.

• 58:16David Sims?

  Spielberg watched a TV movie called The Boy Who Drank Too Much, starring Scott Baio.

• 58:21Griffin Newman?

  Uh-huh.

• 58:21David Sims?

  But Spielberg watched it.

• 58:22Griffin Newman?

  Okay.

• 58:23David Sims?

  And noticed Davio's names in the credits.

• 58:25Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 58:26David Sims?

  And called him immediately. And was like, you need to shoot my next feature.

• 58:30Griffin Newman?

  Mm-hmm.

• 58:31David Sims?

  And Alan's like, why? And he's like, I just saw this thing on television and it knocked me out. Like, so, very nice of him, but basically also kinda like, hey, it's my old buddy Alan.

• 58:39Griffin Newman?

  It's one of his only movies.

• 58:41David Sims?

  Goes on to, of course, shoot Color Purple.

• 58:42Griffin Newman?

  Yes, he does this next run for The Trunk of the Eighties. Uh, it's one of his only movies not edited by Michael Khan.

• 58:48David Sims?

  Yeah, which is crazy. Why isn't it?

• 58:50Griffin Newman?

  I watched some.

• 58:51David Sims?

  Carol Littleton.

• 58:51Griffin Newman?

  Long Khan interview where I forget what it is, but he explained there was some.

• 58:55David Sims?

  I thought it sucked.

• 58:56Griffin Newman?

  No, there was some scheduling conflict. It was the one time he was on something else because he thought Spielberg wasn't gonna have a movie lined up. And I, I can't remember what he would have been doing at this time instead, but it, it doesn't seem like there was any.

• 59:09David Sims?

  No.

• 59:10Griffin Newman?

  Animosity or weirdness behind it.

• 59:11David Sims?

  Carol Littleton, who edited it, is a pretty famous editor in her own right, and also married to John Bailey, the very famous cinematographer. Fascinating. Uh, Hollywood, uh, down-the-line tech-power couple.

• 59:22Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 59:22David Sims?

  Um, anyway, uh, you know, uh, Spielberg starts shooting the movie. Um, ET is sort of the big, uh, question. We have the look, but how do we, you know, make it move around?

• 59:36Griffin Newman?

  I'm sorry, it's Poltergeist. It's that Poltergeist and ET were going at the same time, obviously, that those two shoots basically went back to back. And he asked Khan to oversee Poltergeist because he basically was like, I trust you and I'll be hands-on with ET. That's what it is.

• 59:50David Sims?

  Uh, so, uh, with ET, uh, they're like, he can't be a puppet like Yoda.

• 59:55Griffin Newman?

  Mm-hmm.

• 59:55David Sims?

  Because he doesn't, that won't make sense in a realistic environment. It makes sense in a fantasy environment, like, sort of hopping around.

• 1:00:01Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:02David Sims?

  So animatronics, Carlo Rambaldi wants to do animatronics, but Spielberg is like, he's not gonna feel alive. So whatever. They split the difference by just doing a lot of different things, I think is the answer, right? They do have some animatronics, they do have some puppetry, they also have people in the suits.

• 1:00:14Griffin Newman?

  You have a walk around ET, you have like mimes who are doing just hand motions. You have an animatronic, you have puppets, you have all these different things. I think part of what is so astounding about like the success of ET as a performance for me is that they're very smart about like, the design of ET is

• 1:00:37Griffin Newman?

  thoughtfully made in conjunction with what you're gonna need to get out of him in a performance, right? Like the extending of the neck is sort of like, well, to put like a little person in a suit and have them waddle around is gonna look silly, so better to give him like no feet and no legs. So it does just kind of like look like a lumpy shifting of weight and you've pre-established that. But also the neck can retract in so you don't have this unwieldy thing when he's moving. But when it's a planted animatronic, then he can get more expressive.

• 1:01:06David Sims?

  The neck makes it look like it's not a puppet or a person. Because you're like, well, nothing could fit in that neck.

• 1:01:10Griffin Newman?

  Exactly.

• 1:01:11David Sims?

  That's what's clever about the neck.

• 1:01:13Griffin Newman?

  But that he has this form that can kind of contract when you need him to walk.

• 1:01:16David Sims?

  Here's the truth. ET's real, he's just a real alien. They found him.

• 1:01:20Speaker 03

  Thank god.

• 1:01:21David Sims?

  Okay, he's just real. And that's the answer.

• 1:01:24Speaker 03

  That's the truth.

• 1:01:25David Sims?

  That's the actual truth. Carlo Rambaldi, you ever seen that guy? That's just ET in a human suit.

• 1:01:29Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, he fucked ET's mom.

• 1:01:33David Sims?

  And you may or may not know that fucking M&M's were the original in the script, but then Reese's Pieces came in. This is, and I am not saying this to roast him, I just know it about him because I've known JJ for years. JJ, our researcher. It was literally the Reese's Pieces deal and the sort of rise of merchandising in movies and all that. It was literally his PhD dissertation topic. Yes.

• 1:01:55Griffin Newman?

  It's one of those famous stories of-

• 1:01:57David Sims?

  He wrote 230 pages about this.

• 1:01:58Griffin Newman?

  M&M's being like, we don't fucking need you. We're M&M's. And then like, right, M&M's lost so much business and Reese's Pieces exploded.

• 1:02:06David Sims?

  But it's not just that Hershey's, who owned Reese's Pieces, you know, were like, oh, we'll do it. They were like, we'll do it and we'll craft a marketing campaign around it. It'll be like holistic.

• 1:02:15Griffin Newman?

  This is a chance to define ourselves.

• 1:02:16David Sims?

  And now that's what fucking American culture is.

• 1:02:19Griffin Newman?

  Okay, here are things I have to say. One, the entire-

• 1:02:23David Sims?

  ET's real.

• 1:02:25Griffin Newman?

  This is what I'm building off of. The entire- Visual scheme of this movie is built around, hey, it might be smart if we try to lean on backlighting.

• 1:02:36David Sims?

  Yeah, it's, it's, yes.

• 1:02:37Griffin Newman?

  It will make E.T. look more real. It will give him a tactility. It will not expose the sort of like seams of this puppet.

• 1:02:47David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:47Griffin Newman?

  Um, it does feel like that accidentally turns Spielberg on to what becomes his number one, like visual, uh, preference.

• 1:02:56David Sims?

  It's also like, as a kid, I remember it really affecting me how like their house is often really dark.

• 1:03:03Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:03:04David Sims?

  The shades are closed and it just feels depressing in there, not like oppressively so, but just a little gloomy. Like Elliot's room is kind of a gloomy mess. That first whole part where they're, uh, playing D and D underneath that kind of stained glass light in the big booth, which by the way, what is their house? Their house is crazy.

• 1:03:24Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:24David Sims?

  And like, what is Dee Wallace's job and how do they, I know it's in the valley and they're not like, it's not like they're like, it's a rich neighborhood, but like, I'm fascinated by this house.

• 1:03:32Griffin Newman?

  They're also, they're on the hill.

• 1:03:34David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:34Griffin Newman?

  Like it, it's, they're in this weird liminal space where they're like on the cliff, right on the edge of the perfect suburban housing community. But between that and the forest.

• 1:03:44David Sims?

  That's the thing. It feels like a new housing development. Yeah, it's like out there. Yeah. It's, it's very of the moment, but will be out of date in like a year. Right. There's gonna be more and more.

• 1:03:57Griffin Newman?

  You know, you're, you're correct that this like technical visual sort of like practical scheme ends up lending this emotional weight. And I also think he responds to that. And then when he starts working with Yannouch, it becomes the cliche of the Spielberg like pools of light from the window shed.

• 1:04:12David Sims?

  It's so crazy that I, look, this film lost best picture to Gandhi, obviously an error. But one of those things where, oh, Gandhi was this big historical epic, the Oscar voting pool was much, much. How did it lose best cinematography to Gandhi?

• 1:04:25Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:25David Sims?

  I've seen Gandhi. Gandhi is very watchable. It's not a movie where you're like, wow, the cinematography is incredible.

• 1:04:30Griffin Newman?

  It wins four Oscars? Does it win editing?

• 1:04:32David Sims?

  It won best original score, which we should mention, uh, John Williams wrote a pretty good score.

• 1:04:37Griffin Newman?

  We'll get to it.

• 1:04:39David Sims?

  Get into that. Um, it won best sound, uh, and sound editing back when they had two, uh, sound Oscars and it won best visual effects. And I think it won maybe like a sort of special makeup Oscar or whatever. I don't, maybe not.

• 1:04:52Griffin Newman?

  But it is insane that it didn't win cinematography, editing, and I would say original screenplay. What wins original screenplay this year?

• 1:04:59David Sims?

  Best screenplay written directly for the screen goes to Gandhi.

• 1:05:03Speaker 03

  Well, I mean Gandhi, like, is it like, is Gandhi a small, little, cute, nice guy?

• 1:05:09Griffin Newman?

  Has Gandhi ever brought flowers back to life?

• 1:05:12David Sims?

  Well, kind of. That is kind of his vibe.

• 1:05:14Griffin Newman?

  Does Gandhi have like a visible rib cage at all times? Like, fuck, we're backing into this.

• 1:05:20David Sims?

  I'm assuming neither of you have ever seen Richard Attenborough's Gandhi.

• 1:05:23Griffin Newman?

  Little bald guy, fuck!

• 1:05:26David Sims?

  It's just funny to think about. It's also funny that like Spielberg clearly is an admirer of Richard Attenborough's, puts him in Jurassic Park, likes, you know. Uh, and like Richard Attenborough at the time was, you know, graciously as the winner, it was like, I thought E.T. was a better movie. I thought, I think E.T.'s like a miraculous movie.

• 1:05:41Griffin Newman?

  Yeah. Neither of us have seen Gandhi.

• 1:05:43David Sims?

  Yeah, Gandhi is very, very watchable. It is one of those things where, I mean, for one, Ben Kingsley is just fucking ridiculously good in it.

• 1:05:51Griffin Newman?

  Well, I'm gonna throw out a hot take. I think he's a good actor.

• 1:05:54David Sims?

  He's a good actor, but it's, you know, it's just, it's a very straightforward, watchable, like, here is the life of Gandhi biopic. That by the end kind of sweeps you up and, you know, the funeral scene is crazy, you know, like it's effective, but it wasn't even like a big hit. You know, it was like a medium hit. It was a big hit, I guess, for a sort of big historical epic.

• 1:06:14Griffin Newman?

  That's what's kind of weird about it to me is I, I have Gandhi in one of those Columbia Classic Four kept me set. So I own it. I still just, I'm always like, oh, I'll watch Gandhi at some point. But you could see there being theoretically a David versus Goliath narrative that I think, for example, really helped Hurt Locker against Avatar, right? Where similarly, I don't know why I broke that into two words. There is like, here's the highest grossing film of all time. Does it need Best Picture as well?

• 1:06:46David Sims?

  Yeah, no, I think that's probably part of it.

• 1:06:48Griffin Newman?

  But yet, Gandhi was this kind of like classical Hollywood epic with big scale and all these extras and all these things you said. It's not like they gave it to ordinary people against E.T. Gandhi's kind of in a weird midpoint, you know?

• 1:07:01David Sims?

  Um, and it's, yeah, it's like, pretty good. Um.

• 1:07:05Griffin Newman?

  Can I, can I finish this epic point I'm building here about E.T. being real?

• 1:07:09David Sims?

  E.T.'s real.

• 1:07:10Griffin Newman?

  Backlighting, right? Second thing is Spielberg concocts a whole scheme, which is like, I want to hide the people operating E.T. at all times. They build these sets and everything around like, can we run cables into another room? If Drew Barrymore is interacting to E.T., I want her to feel like E.T. is real.

• 1:07:31David Sims?

  Right.

• 1:07:31Griffin Newman?

  I think for the other actors, he's like, look, it will help their emotional reality. But Drew Barrymore in particular, he's like, she's at a crux age where she might just straight up believe this is an alien. And if we can get that out of her, that's kind of magical, right? Like, just let's make it as, as little acting required as possible. And he feels like it's working. Like, oh my god, we fucking done it. We hide the guys, we run cables, throw a hole in the wall to another room. We keep that door locked. She never sees them. Like halfway through filming, she comes up to him one day and she's like, I have a secret. Can I show you? And he goes, sure. And she leads him by hand and opens the door to all the operators. And she's like, these are the guys who work E.T.

• 1:08:11David Sims?

  Right.

• 1:08:11Griffin Newman?

  And she's presenting it to him like she's figured something out.

• 1:08:14David Sims?

  Right, right.

• 1:08:15Griffin Newman?

  And he realizes she's known. And that for her, that's like part of the magic. And what she says now as an adult is, even if she couldn't put it in words, she understood that the emotion she was feeling from E.T. was a reflection of these people. And that she didn't need to believe E.T. was real, that she was like, A, the craft of it, but B, like, this is being performed by people who are pushing emotion through this. And it helps me to see them as people.

• 1:08:41David Sims?

  Right.

• 1:08:42Griffin Newman?

  So I know that that kindness is real.

• 1:08:44David Sims?

  Right.

• 1:08:45Griffin Newman?

  Um, and like, the other actors talk about it, where like, he said he cast Dee Wallace because he felt like she had a childlike spirit. This movie doesn't show an adult in full until Peter Coyote's like, full reveal, right? Is the whole visual scheme of like, the keys on the belt.

• 1:09:02David Sims?

  Apart from Dee Wallace, yes.

• 1:09:03Griffin Newman?

  That's the one. And he said, the reason is because she's like a kid.

• 1:09:05David Sims?

  She's the only kid, adult that they trust.

• 1:09:08Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:09:08David Sims?

  Or have a connection with. It's the magic of the fact that the first time you see Peter Coyote's face is not that you're seeing his face, although it's a lovely face.

• 1:09:16Griffin Newman?

  It's a lovely face.

• 1:09:17David Sims?

  And to be clear, I could do with 10 more minutes of the keys. The keys get me going. The keys look good, jangling around.

• 1:09:24Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, sound great.

• 1:09:25David Sims?

  You're seeing his face because he's making an emotional connection with Elliot. He's saying, I care about this too. I've always wanted to meet an alien since I was a kid. He's saying things that are finally getting through to Elliot.

• 1:09:36Griffin Newman?

  Correct.

• 1:09:37David Sims?

  It moves me to tears. I'm getting goosebumps thinking about the first time you see that sweet hippie's face.

• 1:09:44Griffin Newman?

  Do you give him a supporting actor nom for this?

• 1:09:46David Sims?

  I don't. I, it's an interesting, you know, maybe I should.

• 1:09:49Griffin Newman?

  You put Dee Wallace in lead?

• 1:09:51David Sims?

  Yeah, is that bullshit?

• 1:09:52Griffin Newman?

  We went over this in an episode that will come out in two months for our next mini-series.

• 1:09:56David Sims?

  I mean, I think I put her in lead because I wanted the people I have in supporting and supporting. I don't know.

• 1:10:01Griffin Newman?

  Do you have Drew in supporting?

• 1:10:03David Sims?

  I do have Drew in supporting.

• 1:10:04Griffin Newman?

  So that's the only argument I would kind of make for putting Dee Wallace in.

• 1:10:07David Sims?

  Exactly.

• 1:10:07Griffin Newman?

  You have Henry Thomas in lead?

• 1:10:08David Sims?

  Of course.

• 1:10:09Griffin Newman?

  Right. Do you have him win?

• 1:10:11David Sims?

  No, I do not.

• 1:10:12Griffin Newman?

  Who do you give it to in 82?

• 1:10:13David Sims?

  Paul Newman in The Verdict. I'm sorry. Leave me alone. It's one of my favorite screen performances of all time. As much as Henry Thomas is so fucking wonderful in this movie.

• 1:10:24Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:25David Sims?

  My supporting actors of 1982 are, this is a pretty good list.

• 1:10:31Griffin Newman?

  Okay, give it to me.

• 1:10:32David Sims?

  Rutger Hauer in Blade Runner.

• 1:10:33Griffin Newman?

  Great performance.

• 1:10:34David Sims?

  Sean Penn in Fast Times at Ridgemont High.

• 1:10:36Griffin Newman?

  Great performance.

• 1:10:37David Sims?

  Eddie Murphy in 48 Hours, which is a supporting performance.

• 1:10:41Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:42David Sims?

  Nick Nolte is the lead of that movie. By another 48 Hours, they are co-leads. I mean, Eddie's the lead, basically.

• 1:10:46Griffin Newman?

  It's more of a supporting performance than Kieran Culkin is in A Real Pain.

• 1:10:50David Sims?

  Sure. Uh, who's probably won an Oscar by this point. Or no, maybe no, this episode's coming out pretty soon. But he's probably gonna win an Oscar. Bill Murray in Tootsie.

• 1:10:57Griffin Newman?

  Wow, that one's kinda interesting.

• 1:10:58David Sims?

  And Kevin Bacon in Diner, which is a, I love Kevin Bacon anyway, but is a dynamite supporting.

• 1:11:03Griffin Newman?

  Sure, but that's awesome. A real David pick.

• 1:11:07David Sims?

  I mean, do I need to put Coyote in there?

• 1:11:09Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, maybe.

• 1:11:11David Sims?

  Um, how about The Keys? The Keys.

• 1:11:13Griffin Newman?

  Best Supporting Keys, you did give it, yeah.

• 1:11:15David Sims?

  Right, well, I gave it the honorary Golden Key Award, which I only give out in a year of great key film acting.

• 1:11:22Griffin Newman?

  Eighty-two, two thousand and three. We're all rushing towards the same. But he says this thing when he auditioned Dee Wallace, he was like, she's got this sort of like childlike thing to her, right? It is reflected in what you said, her laughing at penis breasts, she can't even contain it.

• 1:11:36David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:36Griffin Newman?

  She's kinda on their level, there is this feeling.

• 1:11:39David Sims?

  It's funny, cause I mostly think of her as like a screen queen, right? Like, that's largely Dee Wallace's career, right?

• 1:11:44Griffin Newman?

  Um, but he recognized this thing in her and that she's on their level from the beginning. This is a movie where the cameras are usually pretty fucking low to the ground. She's not too tall.

• 1:11:54David Sims?

  Yes.

• 1:11:54Griffin Newman?

  He shoots this movie from the perspective of children and of E.T., who is also, let's say it, a short king.

• 1:12:00David Sims?

  And is real.

• 1:12:01Griffin Newman?

  In Israel.

• 1:12:01David Sims?

  He's real.

• 1:12:02Griffin Newman?

  Yes, um, but he was like, she feels like one of them. And it is what, talking about this, the setup of this family not being one to one, but a thing that Spielberg I think is really connecting to is his mother, you know, was not always the most adult person. And when his parents split up, he is the oldest.

• 1:12:23David Sims?

  He's taking care of his sisters.

• 1:12:24Griffin Newman?

  With three younger siblings, there is a degree to which he is forced into a bit of a parent role.

• 1:12:27David Sims?

  Well, there's a degree to which he's the Michael. It's funny, it's like he's split across all the kids, like Michael is the one who's kind of responsible for his, his siblings.

• 1:12:35Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:12:35David Sims?

  But also is making fun of them and Spielberg talks about how he make fun of his sisters.

• 1:12:38Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:12:39David Sims?

  Elliot is this just emotional, like throbbing kind of emotional creature, right? Like his, his feelings are so on his sleeve.

• 1:12:48Griffin Newman?

  But he's.

• 1:12:48David Sims?

  Who's so in need of a parent.

• 1:12:50Griffin Newman?

  The middle child, which is so different than Spielberg's identity, and he is so much younger than Spielberg was at the time of the divorce.

• 1:12:56David Sims?

  Yeah, he is, Spielberg was more of a teenager.

• 1:12:58Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 1:12:58David Sims?

  Dee Wallace, to me, does not strike me as a Spielberg's mom analog really, because like she doesn't seem like this kind of floaty.

• 1:13:05Griffin Newman?

  Well, this is.

• 1:13:05David Sims?

  Art-y person, she mostly just seems busy.

• 1:13:07Griffin Newman?

  It's the most mathis and magic of she's reinterpreting stuff in her own way and then they're casting based on what she wrote rather than him trying to analog it to his own life.

• 1:13:14David Sims?

  I'm watching this with Forky and like when she leaves Elliot alone, Home Alone with a Fever.

• 1:13:20Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:21David Sims?

  Elliot's ten. We were kinda like, you know, I mean, again, you know, it's the single mom thing, right? Where it's like, these are latchkey kids. What can you do?

• 1:13:29Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:29David Sims?

  And we were like, you know, ten, you can leave a kid home alone. It's a little borderline. But I was like, but with a fever, I would probably

• 1:13:34Griffin Newman?

  Totally.

• 1:13:35David Sims?

  Kind of feel weird about it. When she leaves Gertie alone.

• 1:13:39Griffin Newman?

  It's kind of

• 1:13:39David Sims?

  At the age of five.

• 1:13:40Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:40David Sims?

  Just to go around the corner to like, get something like it's a, you do have, again, you're like, you're like, damn. Like, that is, that's a wild thing to do.

• 1:13:47Griffin Newman?

  It's

• 1:13:48David Sims?

  But, but again, this is a latchkey kid thing.

• 1:13:50Griffin Newman?

  It's very different from what we know about

• 1:13:52David Sims?

  What else is supposed to do?

• 1:13:53Griffin Newman?

  His mom, but there is a similar, he said that, one of the big things he insists on in the script is that they call her by her first name. Cause that's something he and his siblings did to his mom.

• 1:14:01David Sims?

  So fucking annoying.

• 1:14:02Griffin Newman?

  That they all call

• 1:14:03David Sims?

  My daughter does that sometimes. It's so annoying. They know so early that it's annoying.

• 1:14:07Griffin Newman?

  That's pretty funny. I give her some comedy points.

• 1:14:09David Sims?

  No, it's a good bit.

• 1:14:09Griffin Newman?

  Will you relay some comedy points to her when you get home tonight? Just give her five.

• 1:14:13David Sims?

  It's very interesting.

• 1:14:14Griffin Newman?

  It's maybe a little dangerous to give a young child five.

• 1:14:16David Sims?

  Isn't the first time I've watched this movie since I had a daughter and it is, my daughter's pretty close to Gertie in like personality.

• 1:14:22Griffin Newman?

  And age and

• 1:14:24David Sims?

  Yeah, I mean, Gertie's like five or six.

• 1:14:25Griffin Newman?

  She's got some Gertie vibes. Yeah.

• 1:14:28David Sims?

  And it was not, it was, yeah, it was interesting.

• 1:14:30Griffin Newman?

  Yeah. Um, the, the Dee Wallace thing is just like, right. Her not being able to contain the laugh. Them sort of treating her like one of the gang, right? She's not the same as Spielberg's mom, but there is this feeling of like, her energy creates a need for Elliot to kind of step up and be the leader. Which is more interesting because he is not the oldest child. And that Michael in some way is like a reflection of, I think, the bullies that Spielberg felt like he was sort of tormented with. And he talks about No, no, just I, I, the analysis of like, E T forces Michael to have to respect Elliot in an interesting way.

• 1:15:12David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:13Griffin Newman?

  Right?

• 1:15:13David Sims?

  But I still think of Michael as the protector. Elliot is E T. That's like the whole weird phenomenon that happens.

• 1:15:20Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:15:21David Sims?

  They become one being and Michael is the only one who's really attuned to that. Michael is kind of the secret hero of E T.

• 1:15:28Griffin Newman?

  Michael is great.

• 1:15:28David Sims?

  The scene where he goes and sits down with the toys.

• 1:15:31Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:31David Sims?

  Very quiet little scene. Really gets me every time.

• 1:15:35Griffin Newman?

  But the first 10 minutes of this movie are Michael and his friends.

• 1:15:38David Sims?

  Yeah, they're being kind of messed.

• 1:15:39Griffin Newman?

  The headphones kid and fucking C. Thomas Howell.

• 1:15:41David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:42Griffin Newman?

  For about 10 years, there seemed like the biggest movie star out of the E T cast. It is funny to think.

• 1:15:48David Sims?

  Cause he was in Soul Man?

• 1:15:49Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, he got to star in movies.

• 1:15:53Griffin Newman?

  But there, that first chunk is like Elliot being ignored, them kind of gently ripping on him.

• 1:15:59David Sims?

  Yeah, but he's annoying. Elliot's a bit of a whiner. He's younger than them, but he wants to. It's a classic, you know, younger sibling thing of like, they just wanna play D and D.

• 1:16:08Griffin Newman?

  It's also what Spielberg talks about, his unhappy childhood, right? This feeling, not even based on circumstances of what happened with his parents, but just like, he was a worried, sensitive, lonely child. He just felt this way all the time.

• 1:16:23David Sims?

  Yeah, very feely, very feely boy, uh, clearly, uh, and, you know. I think it's easy to get a little annoyed by Elliot at first, just in that way of like, ah, stop being such a little pain in the ass.

• 1:16:35Speaker 03

  He stepped on the pizza?

• 1:16:37David Sims?

  He, he did fu- it's not just that, it's that he then blows up the spot that they had gotten secret pizza.

• 1:16:43Griffin Newman?

  That's like-

• 1:16:43David Sims?

  You really feel for the kids being like, fuck!

• 1:16:46Griffin Newman?

  It's an anti-save-the-cat moment. It's a moment that threatens to turn you against the character forever. It's such a bold move to be like, everyone's gonna be angry at him.

• 1:16:55David Sims?

  You can't play D and D without pizza too. It's like, it's like, it's pizza, D and D pizza.

• 1:17:01Griffin Newman?

  And also from their perspective, he comes back, they're like, where's the pizza? He's like, I stepped on a, by the way, I found a goblin. You're like, excuse me, first of all, unforgivable crime. Second of all-

• 1:17:12David Sims?

  Pizza's dead.

• 1:17:13Griffin Newman?

  That's your excuse?

• 1:17:14David Sims?

  Second of all, clearly you're not ready to play D and D, cause we just like said the word goblin near you and you're like, ah, there's a goblin inside. There's a fucking goblin in our house.

• 1:17:25David Sims?

  Oh, Elliot, he's such a cutie pie though.

• 1:17:28Griffin Newman?

  Dee Wallace in one of these 20th anniversary Q and A things, they're talking about Spielberg's whole strategy of making the kids not see the puppeteers engage with E.T. is real. And then she interjects and she's like, I have to say, I'm being thrown off every time one of you guys talk about him as a puppet, cause to me, E.T. is real. And even 20 years later, I feel that way. And it's like, that's why he fucking cast her.

• 1:17:48David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:48Griffin Newman?

  Because there is a part of her that still cannot engage with E.T. as the adult at the time of the making of the movie, being anything other than like, another actor she worked with. Or not even actor, a real thing she reacted to.

• 1:18:02David Sims?

  E.T. is real.

• 1:18:03Griffin Newman?

  E.T. is real.

• 1:18:08Griffin Newman?

  David?

• 1:18:08David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:09Griffin Newman?

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

• 1:18:15David Sims?

  Hmm.

• 1:18:15Griffin 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?

• 1:18:26David Sims?

  It is an iconic video.

• 1:18:27Griffin Newman?

  Footage that became the most analyzed and debated in history. Fifty-nine years later, a reel of 16-millimeter film discovered in a safe changes everything.

• 1:18:36David Sims?

  Wow.

• 1:18:37Griffin Newman?

  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.

• 1:18:50David Sims?

  Of course. You've 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.

• 1:19:02Griffin 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."

• 1:19:10David Sims?

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

• 1:19:13Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:19:14David 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.

• 1:19:21Griffin 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.

• 1:19:35David Sims?

  I'm something of an expert in cryptozoology.

• 1:19:37Griffin Newman?

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

• 1:19:39David Sims?

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

• 1:19:55Griffin Newman?

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

• 1:20:11Griffin Newman?

  David?

• 1:20:11David Sims?

  Yes?

• 1:20:12Griffin Newman?

  Uh, uh, who are you wearing?

• 1:20:14David Sims?

  Uh, who am I wearing?

• 1:20:15Griffin Newman?

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

• 1:20:19David Sims?

  Well, I am wearing Quince.

• 1:20:22Griffin Newman?

  Well, well, well, what a Quince, Quince, Quincy dense.

• 1:20:26David Sims?

  It's a Mongolian cashmere zip dense sweater.

• 1:20:30Griffin Newman?

  Okay.

• 1:20:31David Sims?

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

• 1:20:33Griffin Newman?

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

• 1:20:36David Sims?

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

• 1:20:44Griffin 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.

• 1:21:00David Sims?

  Quince does rock. It's got high-quality staples made with these premium materials like 100% Mongolian cashmere.

• 1:21:07Griffin Newman?

  Like you're wearing red?

• 1:21:08David Sims?

  14 karat gold, Italian leather.

• 1:21:12Griffin Newman?

  Mama mia.

• 1:21:12David Sims?

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

• 1:21:32Griffin 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.

• 1:21:45David 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.

• 1:21:52Griffin Newman?

  Oh, well, well, well.

• 1:21:53David Sims?

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

• 1:21:57Griffin 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 Quint asks where you heard about them, let them know it was blank check is the best way to support the show.

• 1:22:43David Sims?

  The film begins, oh, we'll get to the release later. The film begins, uh, in the forest.

• 1:22:48Griffin Newman?

  Well, it first just begins with the letters E T. Coming up.

• 1:22:52David Sims?

  True.

• 1:22:52Griffin Newman?

  No, like preamble, no Universal Pictures presents studio logo, and then just E T fading in, the extraterrestrial fading in, and then the movie starting. It's a little ominous, especially because the logo is the hand drawn version, which otherwise we basically only see over his shoulder as he's like doodling E T. In school and writing his name. But there's something kind of just like no preamble, no ramp up, title, cast, and then we're in the forest and we're seeing this very shadowy backlit thing of this admittedly very cool spaceship design.

• 1:23:26David Sims?

  Uh, it's a cool spaceship, roundy, round boy.

• 1:23:29Griffin Newman?

  Looks like a flower pot.

• 1:23:30David Sims?

  Christmas ornament.

• 1:23:30Griffin Newman?

  I think it looks like a flower pot.

• 1:23:31David Sims?

  Sure. Cause they like flowers. These are botanists. That's how I always took it, right? These aliens are botanists.

• 1:23:36Griffin Newman?

  E T. Has said, when people asked for like direction on the development visually of E T.

• 1:23:41David Sims?

  E T. Has said this?

• 1:23:42Griffin Newman?

  I'm sorry, Steven Spielberg.

• 1:23:43David Sims?

  I was, I was more excited to hear what E T. Has said.

• 1:23:46Griffin Newman?

  E T. Says.

• 1:23:47David Sims?

  I am botanist.

• 1:23:48Griffin Newman?

  Phone home, grab phone. Um, Spielberg said that when they asked him about like the sort of biology of E T. That he would say to people like, I almost think E T. Is a plant.

• 1:23:59David Sims?

  He has like plant veins. I've heard this too. Like he's a planted side.

• 1:24:03Griffin Newman?

  Maybe think of him less as an animal on his planet, more like a plant.

• 1:24:07David Sims?

  Love it.

• 1:24:07Griffin Newman?

  Yes. Um, but that makes sense with the flower pot version.

• 1:24:10David Sims?

  They're studying, you know, whatever.

• 1:24:12Griffin Newman?

  You're seeing a lot of E Ts in this opening, but all in silhouette, all obstructed, all through trees.

• 1:24:16David Sims?

  Our E T.

• 1:24:17Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:18David Sims?

  Is kind of enchanted, I think by the, the lights. That's why he, um, Misses his flight. He's like looking at the valley. He's looking at the houses.

• 1:24:26Griffin Newman?

  It is.

• 1:24:27David Sims?

  And he's thinking like, one day, the ultimate valley movie will be made. Magnolia.

• 1:24:30Griffin Newman?

  It is the Wally thing?

• 1:24:31David Sims?

  But until then, this is the ultimate.

• 1:24:32Griffin Newman?

  That I love. And I feel like Wally is one of the only movies to kind of come close to touching E.T. magic at times.

• 1:24:38David Sims?

  I love Wally, but.

• 1:24:39Griffin Newman?

  I said.

• 1:24:40David Sims?

  Let's relax.

• 1:24:40Griffin Newman?

  Come close to touching it at times. I put so many fucking qualifiers on that.

• 1:24:46David Sims?

  And yet.

• 1:24:46Griffin Newman?

  And you're waving your hand.

• 1:24:47David Sims?

  I do not.

• 1:24:48Griffin Newman?

  I'm pushing back to your pushback, but what I like. I'm pushing back to your pushback to my pushback to your pushback. He's making the most disrespectful faces.

• 1:24:56David Sims?

  And I really liked Wally. I really liked Wally when it came out and have only grown to love it more.

• 1:25:00Griffin Newman?

  David's making stinky poo poo faces and I want to jump over the desk and strangle him.

• 1:25:04David Sims?

  It's, come on now. Nothing touches E.T. except for Mac and me, of course.

• 1:25:07Griffin Newman?

  Comes close to touching it at times.

• 1:25:11David Sims?

  What do you think, Ben?

• 1:25:11Griffin Newman?

  You won't even let me finish my fucking statement here.

• 1:25:13David Sims?

  Well, every time you say it, I wrinkle my nose.

• 1:25:16Griffin Newman?

  That's what I'm saying. It's making a stinky poo poo face.

• 1:25:18Speaker 03

  I'm sorry, Griff. He's, he's reaching.

• 1:25:21Griffin Newman?

  Come close to, I'll reach.

• 1:25:22Speaker 03

  He's reaching.

• 1:25:23Griffin Newman?

  I'm fucking to Tammy Matumbo. I got the wingspan. Let me reach.

• 1:25:29Griffin Newman?

  The thing I like is this very subtle implication that like, this guy's just a little different.

• 1:25:35David Sims?

  Yeah, he's a little different.

• 1:25:35Griffin Newman?

  He's just made a little different. It's not overstated and we don't get to see the personalities of the other E.T.s. But like you said, it's like.

• 1:25:42David Sims?

  There's a Brooklyn one.

• 1:25:42Griffin Newman?

  There's something in a like, Ed Burns.

• 1:25:46David Sims?

  Yeah, there's like one with glasses.

• 1:25:47Griffin Newman?

  Let me phone home. I gotta call my mom.

• 1:25:50David Sims?

  There's a demolitions guy. He's got like soot all over his face. Just trying to think of like what the guys would be. The E.T.s would be like, there's a gay one.

• 1:25:58Griffin Newman?

  But I like that, that we don't.

• 1:25:59David Sims?

  It's the eighties, so it's a little broad.

• 1:26:01Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, I'll let you do a take on what that one sounds like.

• 1:26:04David Sims?

  Fabulous.

• 1:26:07Griffin Newman?

  Wow.

• 1:26:08David Sims?

  Oh, boy.

• 1:26:10Griffin Newman?

  You go, girl.

• 1:26:12David Sims?

  Right, there's one girl one, obviously. Again, it's the 80s, so they're like, we can have one girl one and one kind of, you can pick, like, other minority.

• 1:26:19Speaker 03

  One racially ambiguous one.

• 1:26:21Speaker 04

  Slay queen, she ate. I put my whole E tussie into that damn thing.

• 1:26:31David Sims?

  This is what people miss about this show.

• 1:26:33Griffin Newman?

  They miss this?

• 1:26:34David Sims?

  I don't know.

• 1:26:34Griffin Newman?

  Have we not been giving them this?

• 1:26:35David Sims?

  This is sort of Phantom Podcast energy, right?

• 1:26:37Griffin Newman?

  Sure.

• 1:26:39David Sims?

  Yes, ET is gay. No, sorry, he's, um, he's hanging out. He's hanging out, he's looking at the valley, he misses his flight.

• 1:26:46Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, there's just, he just sort of gets caught up in a moment. The other ETs seem very like, okay, let's get in and get out, let's get some samples, right? It's data collection.

• 1:26:54David Sims?

  ET is a bit of a messy bitch, misses his flight home.

• 1:26:59Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:27:00David Sims?

  Then crashes on a 10-year-old's couch.

• 1:27:03Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:27:03David Sims?

  Eats everything in his fridge.

• 1:27:05Speaker 03

  Drinks beer.

• 1:27:06David Sims?

  Trashed in the daytime.

• 1:27:08Speaker 03

  In the middle of the day, yeah.

• 1:27:09David Sims?

  And then rips open all his toys and shit and makes like some weird DIY project and is like, let's go in the woods.

• 1:27:15Griffin Newman?

  Well, there's this-

• 1:27:15David Sims?

  And fucking turn it on.

• 1:27:17Griffin Newman?

  But beyond him being magical-

• 1:27:19David Sims?

  Relax, buddy.

• 1:27:20Griffin Newman?

  Beyond him being magical, there's this quite implication that like ET is a genius, but he can't get past the language barrier, right? And in the stuff, like the ride and the books, they make it more canonically like-

• 1:27:31David Sims?

  Oh, get out of here with the ride and the books.

• 1:27:33Griffin Newman?

  ET is a botanist and fucking whatever. I know, I'm just saying, right? There is an admittedly problematic robot chicken sketch that is sort of like, if ET goes up to his planet, is he the fucking Forrest Gump of his planet? Is he the fuck up?

• 1:27:44David Sims?

  Enough, enough. Let's stop invoking all these terrible things.

• 1:27:47Griffin Newman?

  But I-

• 1:27:47David Sims?

  I, I do sometimes wonder if ET's a-

• 1:27:49Griffin Newman?

  I agree.

• 1:27:49David Sims?

  If ET's, um, a child, like, or-

• 1:27:51Griffin Newman?

  It's a question.

• 1:27:52David Sims?

  Right, or like a young person on the crew or something, I don't know.

• 1:27:57Griffin Newman?

  I adore the movies.

• 1:27:58David Sims?

  Like the sort of El Fangor.

• 1:27:59Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:28:00David Sims?

  Uh, to the, you know, of the Andalites in, uh- Uh, Elfangor is the captain who dies and gives them their morphing power in Animorphs.

• 1:28:09Griffin Newman?

  Sure.

• 1:28:09David Sims?

  And then there's Axe, right?

• 1:28:11Griffin Newman?

  Uh huh.

• 1:28:11David Sims?

  And they meet, he's the only survivor and they meet him and they have an Andalite, but he's like a, he's like a teenager. He's like the baby, you know?

• 1:28:18Griffin Newman?

  Sure.

• 1:28:18David Sims?

  And that's kind of what ET might be.

• 1:28:19Griffin Newman?

  Elfangor is kind of the avenger of Animorphs, if I can just say some more words that are nonsense to 90% of our listeners. No, I, I just adore this movie's lack of definitive answers in all the things we're talking about, right? I love that you're just like, maybe he's a child or maybe he's an elder. Maybe he's a genius or maybe he's a fuck up, you know?

• 1:28:41David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 1:28:41Griffin Newman?

  Like so much of it is about like the struggle to form a line of communication, but just barely.

• 1:28:49David Sims?

  Ha, ET phone home.

• 1:28:52Griffin Newman?

  ET's lost.

• 1:28:53David Sims?

  Anyway, so he's lost and he goes to the shed of young Elliot and pretends to be a goblin.

• 1:28:57Griffin Newman?

  Right. And you have this like, you don't really see ET even sort of clearly until 15 minutes in. The first 10 minutes are largely this kind of like ET being left and Elliot like fighting to get a, just a fucking crumb of attention from his older brother and the friends and them all just kind of like overlapping dialogue, cutting him out.

• 1:29:20David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 1:29:20Griffin Newman?

  Uh, and then he slowly discovers this thing.

• 1:29:23David Sims?

  Yeah, uh, discovers him with the Reese's Pieces.

• 1:29:26Griffin Newman?

  The flashlight.

• 1:29:28David Sims?

  Have you guys ever?

• 1:29:30Griffin Newman?

  Eaten Reese's Pieces? Yes.

• 1:29:32David Sims?

  Yeah, I've eaten Reese's Pieces.

• 1:29:33Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, they roll.

• 1:29:34David Sims?

  I guess, I don't think my mom ever had a mercury thermometer. So I guess I never did the specific holding it to the bulb.

• 1:29:40Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:29:41David Sims?

  I did run it under the tap once and it kind of backfired. And maybe this has happened to you guys, you two pretend to be sick, because then I had like a temperature of like 103. Like it was like, you know, it's too hot, too fast. And then my mom was like, whoa, what is going on with you?

• 1:29:55Griffin Newman?

  I feel like we had a like plastic thermometer with a metal tip that was the sensor and I would put it under my armpit.

• 1:30:03David Sims?

  The, the, yeah, armpit. The thermometer was a thing when we were kids, for sure.

• 1:30:06Griffin Newman?

  Okay.

• 1:30:07David Sims?

  For annoying kids who couldn't keep it in their mouth, especially.

• 1:30:09Griffin Newman?

  Right, well, that was part of it, but I guess that wasn't me trying to trick.

• 1:30:12David Sims?

  But did you guys ever pull the thermometer trick?

• 1:30:14Griffin Newman?

  Oh, certainly, yes, yes. You also might be unsurprised to hear that I got sick so often, I didn't need to pull tricks. I was basically out one out of every five days.

• 1:30:23David Sims?

  Yeah, you just had to say, I feel sick, and your mom was like, sure you do.

• 1:30:26Griffin Newman?

  Right, Wednesday was like Grey Griffin day, where I was like lying there on the floor.

• 1:30:33David Sims?

  Uh, so Elliot stays home from school and meets ET.

• 1:30:38Griffin Newman?

  Takes it, because he wants to really lock in with ET. He shows ET his Star Wars action figures.

• 1:30:43David Sims?

  It's maybe the best, no, I have to stop saying maybe the best moment in the movie, but it is, it's so accurate.

• 1:30:49Griffin Newman?

  Yep.

• 1:30:50David Sims?

  This ten-year-old meets ET and he's like, alright, so this is Lando.

• 1:30:53Griffin Newman?

  And here, look, by the way, here's how Spielberg constructed this, right? He's like, let's put a bunch of cool shit in this room and let Henry Thomas do whatever he wants.

• 1:31:02David Sims?

  He arguably has too many toys. You're kind of like, this is a middle child. How does he have this cooler room with this many toys?

• 1:31:08Griffin Newman?

  A lot of them are probably inheritance from Michael, whatever, but it is, he was just like, show him whatever you'd be most proud to show him. Look around this room, describe in your own terms.

• 1:31:17David Sims?

  There is divorced kid energy too, I guess, of like, if your parents are divorced, often both parents then kind of will buy toys to try and get your affection and like a win.

• 1:31:26Griffin Newman?

  And it's part of him being the middle kid of like, Michael's like, sort of old enough to be like angry about this, right? Gertie is a little too young to fully process what's going on. Elliot would just be pure emotions about this thing. Um, I also love that it's like, this is a snapshot of a moment before Lucas goes in and is like, ugh, we have to come up with like Wookiee Pedia names for all these characters.

• 1:31:50David Sims?

  Right, so he's just Hammerhead.

• 1:31:52Griffin Newman?

  They're all Hammerhead, Walrus Man, like, there's no fucking Panda Baba, Moman, Nidon shit in here. He's just listing the toy names.

• 1:32:00David Sims?

  Real shit.

• 1:32:01Griffin Newman?

  Real shit. And then Lando, he loves Lando.

• 1:32:04David Sims?

  Save the best for last, this is Lando Calrissian.

• 1:32:06Griffin Newman?

  Kid's got good taste.

• 1:32:07Speaker 03

  It just feels so authentic. I was like, oh, how, how can a kid explain, like, humanity?

• 1:32:13Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:32:14Speaker 03

  And it's just like, using like the toys and the things and the objects that represent our culture that are around you.

• 1:32:21David Sims?

  Now he would be like, here's my favorite Twitch streamer.

• 1:32:23Griffin Newman?

  Yeah. Here's my favorite Fortnite skin.

• 1:32:27David Sims?

  Oh, good.

• 1:32:29Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:32:29David Sims?

  Jesus.

• 1:32:30Griffin Newman?

  He's asking ET to gift him some V-bucks.

• 1:32:34David Sims?

  Show Z T.

• 1:32:35Griffin Newman?

  I also think there's an element, yes.

• 1:32:38David Sims?

  Go ahead.

• 1:32:38Griffin Newman?

  No, and you have the Yoda moment later, right? Which is then accompanied by John Williams quoting his own score. Which is a little too cute, but I think works.

• 1:32:47Griffin Newman?

  But I also think there's an aspect of Spielberg almost being like proud and in awe of his friend. Where he's like, look, realistically, this kid would be obsessed with Star Wars. And also, it's cool that my friend made something that undeniably culturally pervasive? That it's not even me just putting in an Easter egg.

• 1:33:06David Sims?

  Sure, no, totally. Yeah, of course. These kids are right at the age, right?

• 1:33:10Griffin Newman?

  That hammerhead means something to an eight year old. I think it's something Spielberg is like, that's cool that George did it.

• 1:33:15David Sims?

  Let's just be honest, Griffin just loves that the kid loves toys.

• 1:33:17Griffin Newman?

  I do like that he's got a pretty good fig collection. I mean, this kid brings home six figures a month, if you know what I'm saying.

• 1:33:25David Sims?

  Don't like.

• 1:33:26Griffin Newman?

  That's me recirculating a fucking meme structure that's really big on like fucking action figure photography Instagram.

• 1:33:32David Sims?

  This could have been a big episode.

• 1:33:34Griffin Newman?

  It is a big episode. Remember when I said he put his whole E tussie into it?

• 1:33:37David Sims?

  That was good.

• 1:33:38Griffin Newman?

  Yeah. Put it on the fucking Mount Rushmore.

• 1:33:40David Sims?

  Damn it. See, I already had cut that out.

• 1:33:43Griffin Newman?

  No, it's back in.

• 1:33:44David Sims?

  It's back.

• 1:33:46David Sims?

  We're gonna keep calling it back.

• 1:33:47Griffin Newman?

  Keep it in and double it.

• 1:34:00David Sims?

  Yeah, so another thing, moment that really, you know, in a sort of heartrending way feels accurate to me is they're like, alright, he shows Michael E T, okay. And then they're like, alright, let's show it to Gertie. But they have to like threaten her toy with mutilation to kind of get her in line. It, it just breaks my heart watching that happen. Like, not, not like this like tragic way, but just in a like, it's honest, it's how a kid like that operates. Like, obviously, my kid cares most about her toys, right? He's like, you know, like.

• 1:34:32Griffin Newman?

  Matrix bear.

• 1:34:33David Sims?

  She does love Matrix bear. He's usually daddy bear, I will say.

• 1:34:37Griffin Newman?

  Well, cause Matrix is daddy.

• 1:34:39David Sims?

  I guess so. Um, and, uh, and then, but then Gertie gets it just like them, like the way Gertie gets it, the way they all get it with ET.

• 1:34:48Speaker 03

  But also.

• 1:34:48David Sims?

  Of like, this is our friend, it's not gonna hurt us, and the adults can't know about it.

• 1:34:51Griffin Newman?

  But the concept's a little too big for Gertie, so they have to introduce some stakes to get her to lock in and pay attention to what they're trying to impart upon her. It's also just such a perfect, like, I feel like, historic Spielberg piece of direction is the whip hand from the sort of serene, emotionally locked in, sensitive moment between Michael and Elliot and ET all connecting.

• 1:35:17David Sims?

  Right.

• 1:35:17Griffin Newman?

  Whip hand to Gertie, like kicking the door open.

• 1:35:20David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 1:35:21Griffin Newman?

  Right?

• 1:35:21David Sims?

  Gertie rocks.

• 1:35:22Griffin Newman?

  Then like whip hand to ET's reaction, Gertie's scream and ET's neck extending and screaming back in response, and them just needing to like muzzle her. But I, the Michael thing, I think it is like, the, what you're saying about like, Michael doesn't engage with Elliot because Elliot's annoying, right? At the beginning when he's being dismissive of him.

• 1:35:42David Sims?

  Aw, whiny and like, you know.

• 1:35:43Speaker 03

  And he's also, he's a, he's been a teenager, he's like, in that phase.

• 1:35:48David Sims?

  He wants to hang out with his fucking teen friends, he doesn't want his dumb younger brother to be like, playing D and D too, he's playing D and D.

• 1:35:54Griffin Newman?

  It goes a little into my read of what this movie's ultimately about, which I'll get to, but that like, Michael seeing that Elliot has connected to ET and there's a sort of like emotional intelligence now to what he's presenting to him, sort of with a new sense of like maturity, just totally recalibrates Michael immediately, right? Like for the rest of the movie, Michael respects Elliot.

• 1:36:17David Sims?

  Right, right.

• 1:36:19Griffin Newman?

  There's a part of him that has grown up the second he's connected to ET.

• 1:36:22David Sims?

  There, I just also think that's just, there's this bond of their, three of them are all like, we are in on this project together.

• 1:36:28Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:36:28David Sims?

  Of like, protecting ET.

• 1:36:30Speaker 03

  And the, the, the way that they get Gertie on board too, by saying that o- only kids can see ET is so.

• 1:36:38Griffin Newman?

  They have to turn it into a game for her.

• 1:36:40Speaker 03

  And I just.

• 1:36:40David Sims?

  But she does respond to that with, give me a break.

• 1:36:43Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:36:43David Sims?

  Like, so I do feel like she's kinda like, I'm older than you think I am. Yeah, she says, give me a break.

• 1:36:48Speaker 03

  Oh, I don't know, I.

• 1:36:49Griffin Newman?

  But she's playing this line all the time, I mean, there's sort of the stuff of her like saying too much to grownups when she shouldn't, and other times taking the responsibility very seriously. There's this aspect to Gertie of just like. It's amazing that this performance does not become overly precocious, wise beyond her years kid. Because she says things that are very much from a childlike perspective, but she says them with a level of confidence and authority, right?

• 1:37:18David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 1:37:19Griffin Newman?

  Like, isn't that the magic of the Drew Barrymore line deliveries in this?

• 1:37:23David Sims?

  I mean, I guess so.

• 1:37:24Griffin Newman?

  There's something that's a little bit like, hey, I wasn't born yesterday.

• 1:37:28David Sims?

  I, look, Drew Barrymore turned out to be a really good actor.

• 1:37:32Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:37:33David Sims?

  So it's one of those things in retrospect, I can be like, this is a great performance. You never know with these kid performances, is it just kind of a magical, you know, feat of directing? The right environment's been created for them, these are cute kids, they're being cute. You know, obviously with Elliot, with Henry Thomas, it's this, the emotions that come out of him are so raw that there is something kind of magic they're tapping into with that actor. And he's, and he turned out to be a good actor, too.

• 1:37:55Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, yes.

• 1:37:56David Sims?

  Um, but yeah, should I be nominating Drew Barrymore for best supporting actress? I don't know, I do, I love her so much in this movie.

• 1:38:05Griffin Newman?

  I mean, here's the argument in favor of it. As you said, she turned out to be a good actress, but there's, this is a distinctly different performance than any other performance she gives in the rest of her entire career. Like, even the rest of child Drew Barrymore, like Firestarter and fucking Cat's Eye are like, not this.

• 1:38:22David Sims?

  Well, that's, she starts doing this, right, this kind of genre horror-y route.

• 1:38:28Griffin Newman?

  And then her 90s, like Poison Ivy, Batman Forever, Shawshank is not this. And when she has her like late 90s.

• 1:38:34David Sims?

  Too fast, whatever, yeah.

• 1:38:36Griffin Newman?

  When she has her late 90s locks into what becomes the Drew Barrymore movie star persona, which is the kind of like goofy flower child thing, that is not this.

• 1:38:46David Sims?

  Is that kind of, does that kind of start with Wedding Singer?

• 1:38:49Griffin Newman?

  Wedding Singer is, Wedding Singer's the moment.

• 1:38:52David Sims?

  Because like before then, things like Scream or Boys on the Side, I feel like it's more like the kind of rebel- Wild child, young twenties Drew.

• 1:38:59Griffin Newman?

  No, and her and Sandler talk about this, that she's like, I'm at an inflection point. I want to push back. Like, I want to put the wild child shit behind me. And she saw Sandler on SNL and saw Billy Madison and was like, me and that guy. That would help both of us.

• 1:39:16David Sims?

  Fascinating to consider.

• 1:39:17Griffin Newman?

  Right, that turns me into something sort of like more girl next door. And I think there's an emotional basis to him that I can pull out of him.

• 1:39:25David Sims?

  Career is just so interesting in that, yeah, like things like in the early nineties, she's doing Poison Ivy.

• 1:39:30Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:39:30David Sims?

  And like six years later, seven years later, she's doing Never Been Kissed where the premise is like, this like lovable girl next door who never like had a fun experience in her life and is a big dork. And you're like, it's Drew Barrymore. Like, what do you mean? She's already been like crazy.

• 1:39:44Griffin Newman?

  Singer like shifts that immediately.

• 1:39:47David Sims?

  Yeah, no.

• 1:39:47Griffin Newman?

  And completely.

• 1:39:48David Sims?

  Successfully.

• 1:39:49Griffin Newman?

  And even the other stuff she does as a kid, like a reconcilable, reconcilable differences or whatever, it's a little like her arms crossed being like, I'm gonna stick it to my divorcing parents is not the same energy as Gertie. Gertie's a very specific thing. Spielberg talks a lot about how he needed to like really form a relationship with these children and make this set feel like a family to make these kids feel safe. And before this movie, he thought he never wanted to have children. I think largely because he was still working through the ways in which he felt like his parents fucked him up.

• 1:40:19David Sims?

  And he's becoming wildly successful and all this stuff.

• 1:40:22Griffin Newman?

  And the other thing with Spielberg, the interesting dichotomy to him is like, he is simultaneously someone who had to grow up way too fast and also didn't grow up. Right? He's sort of like stuck at odds with himself. And it's just sort of like, I'm fucking living it up. I'm making movies. I'm playing with toys. I have money. Why do I need to like burden myself with a family? But he knows that he needs to create this kind of environment to make this movie. Drew Barrymore is the one he gets closest to. And the largest reason for that is that Drew Barrymore has like a chaotic dysfunctional family. And the more she works on the movie, he's like, she has parents who don't pay attention to her, who are putting her in bad situations. Unlike Henry Thomas, who like talks all the time about how good his parents were, especially after the success of this movie.

• 1:41:07Griffin Newman?

  Being like, we have to make sure you're a normal kid.

• 1:41:09David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 1:41:10Griffin Newman?

  We are taking you out of Hollywood. We are not letting you work a ton. You're going to real schools, right? And it's just sort of like, I don't know how they pulled it off, but they did. I think he recognizes in Barrymore, like, this is at the brink of going really bad. Which it did for a while and it rebounded. But he always stayed close with her, right? And she talks about like, my relationship with Steven Spielberg was the first time that I recognized what a parent should be like. And he talks about in that, he saw like, fuck, I think I do want to be a dad.

• 1:41:41David Sims?

  I know. He's like, that's the thing where I get a little bit like, Steve, I actually need to know less about you sometimes. Like, but yes, he says this is what convinced him he should be a parent. I guess more people should just go out there and make ET if they're feeling a little on the fence about bringing kids into the world. Just go make ET.

• 1:41:57Griffin Newman?

  Just make one ET.

• 1:41:59David Sims?

  ET is real.

• 1:41:59Griffin Newman?

  ET is real.

• 1:42:00David Sims?

  Gay ET is not real. Yeah.

• 1:42:02Griffin Newman?

  Hmm. Gay T, gay T?

• 1:42:05David Sims?

  Gay T?

• 1:42:06Griffin Newman?

  Gay T? We're gonna come up with a better name for this.

• 1:42:10David Sims?

  No.

• 1:42:10Griffin Newman?

  Gay ET is real if you believe hard enough.

• 1:42:14David Sims?

  Right. Uh, there is a bit of-

• 1:42:15Griffin Newman?

  If all of our listeners clap their hands.

• 1:42:17David Sims?

  You know, obviously Peter Pan, you see, uh, Dee Wallace reading Peter Pan to Barrymore at one point than when DT dies. Spoiler alert.

• 1:42:24Griffin Newman?

  Sure.

• 1:42:24David Sims?

  Uh, she's basically doing the Tinker Bell wish he could come back kind of thing from Peter Pan.

• 1:42:31Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:42:31David Sims?

  Uh, Peter Pan's obviously just so influential and important for Spielberg and like, she feels like the most, you know, like, like Ben was saying about like, you know, like, I believe in ET, you know, vibe from her, right? Like, you know, like she, like, he is like a kind of magical fairy in her life.

• 1:42:49Griffin Newman?

  There is this, um, you know, Spielberg framing this as a Disney movie to people in a way that made them worried, right? He is like iterating on a canon of like formative trauma childhood movies, right? These things that his generation, people who grew up before ET existed, talk about of like, Old Yeller having to be put down at the end of the movie. Spoiler alert.

• 1:43:16David Sims?

  I fucking hate that dumb fucking movie. My parents made me watch it.

• 1:43:20Griffin Newman?

  Bambi's mom being shot at the beginning. These things that are like rites of passage for children that are like, part of watching this is this is gonna be tough and it's gonna make you have to work through some shit.

• 1:43:29David Sims?

  So silly.

• 1:43:30Griffin Newman?

  Spielberg is doing that, but he's also infusing it with this sort of like new Hollywood, character study, performance-based, non-plotty, you know, he's like not going for melodrama. It is, it is just this like perfect moment of like 10 different traditions of Hollywood all coming together at the same time, which I've talked about, that's part of Spielberg's development, is that he is this guy who is like forming a bridge between new and old Hollywood, but he's also doing that with the movie itself.

• 1:43:59David Sims?

  Old Yeller feels like this punishment that was inflicted on baby boomers, that they then inflicted on millennials.

• 1:44:06Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:44:07David Sims?

  That we are not inflicting. Old Yeller died.

• 1:44:10Griffin Newman?

  Done.

• 1:44:10David Sims?

  Millennials were forced to watch Old Yeller by their poor scarred parent. Did you ever see Old Yeller?

• 1:44:15Griffin Newman?

  No, actually.

• 1:44:16David Sims?

  But do you know what it's about?

• 1:44:17Griffin Newman?

  That's why Ben turned out the most normal out of us.

• 1:44:19David Sims?

  You know, and like my parents made me watch it. And then of course, at the end, yeah, there's young Yeller, not to spoil Old Yeller, but they're like, yeah, sure, we shot a dog, but don't worry, there's another dog, young Yeller.

• 1:44:30Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:44:30David Sims?

  And so you're sort of walking out half happy. But I remember as a kid, I was like, that sucked. It's not like as a kid, I was like, can't wait to watch Old Yeller. Can we, can we buy that on fucking VHS? And it's just great that we are just like.

• 1:44:42Griffin Newman?

  Done.

• 1:44:43David Sims?

  Done.

• 1:44:43Griffin Newman?

  Out of here.

• 1:44:43David Sims?

  We'll show our kids E.T., which is emotional and sad and then triumphant or whatever, but like, that's great. It's a great like arc and experience. Old Yeller is just like, yeah, you know, don't let your dog get rabies or else your dad's gonna have to shoot with a shotgun.

• 1:44:58Griffin Newman?

  Swing in with my take.

• 1:44:59David Sims?

  Yeah, fine. What is this fable take? It better not be Wally is better than E.T.

• 1:45:03Griffin Newman?

  I didn't say that. Don't make your stinky poo poo face. I'm not throwing this out as some revolutionary take, but as I keep hovering around it, I keep going back to like this core, basic thing, right? Which I think above all else, E.T. is just about in the abstract, having an experience that changes you forever.

• 1:45:22David Sims?

  Uh huh, sure.

• 1:45:23Griffin Newman?

  Right? And the way we're talking about the experience of like showing this movie to a child and forcing you to like think through your sense of the world and life and process emotions that you maybe haven't touched before and whatever.

• 1:45:35David Sims?

  Right.

• 1:45:35Griffin Newman?

  Like, that is what this movie is about to me more than anything. E.T.'s filling a void in the family structure. E.T. is like means of like emotional language for a kid who feels sensitive and overwhelmed by the world, but doesn't know how to actually make sense of it. Like, it's all these other things that are more specific. But I also think this movie is just about like experiences that change you irrevocably. And especially in your adolescence, growing up, these things that are these like stepping stones of maturation.

• 1:46:05David Sims?

  It's experiences that change you, but it's you have, but it's like because you have autonomy.

• 1:46:11Griffin Newman?

  Correct. You experience something.

• 1:46:13David Sims?

  Learning autonomy.

• 1:46:14Griffin Newman?

  Yes, in a way that is like adults trusting you or you commanding some level of trust to like do.

• 1:46:20David Sims?

  They have a whole experience that they don't, they don't need adults for.

• 1:46:23Griffin Newman?

  Exactly.

• 1:46:23David Sims?

  Like, you know, it's like they are learning how to have experiences without, you know, having their hands held.

• 1:46:31David Sims?

  And that's, you know, what the adults realize.

• 1:46:35Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 1:46:35David Sims?

  When the adults come in and bring all this bullshit with them, the, you know, all the crazy tech.

• 1:46:41Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:46:42David Sims?

  They, it takes them forever to realize that the kids already know more about E.T. and can, and have figured out E.T. way better than they can.

• 1:46:50Griffin Newman?

  What's, what's so touching about the Peter Coyote?

• 1:46:52David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 1:46:52Griffin Newman?

  Part is that he does get it and yet he kinda can't help.

• 1:46:56David Sims?

  He can't quite, right. He's empathetic.

• 1:46:59Griffin Newman?

  He recognizes what has happened and yet he cannot stop the wheels from spinning in his head of like, but this is an opportunity. There is a sort of like responsibility for us as a species to learn as much as we can from this.

• 1:47:13David Sims?

  But what I like about E.T. is none of that's being said. You just know it's true. You don't know who these guys are really or what they work for, what their ultimate goal is.

• 1:47:21Griffin Newman?

  Framing of like, this is a gift. This is a very special gift and I'm so happy he found you and you unlocked him in this way.

• 1:47:27David Sims?

  He's actually really jealous.

• 1:47:28Griffin Newman?

  But it's not like he is like, and we want to chop E.T. up to make like

• 1:47:32David Sims?

  Elliot says that.

• 1:47:32Griffin Newman?

  Fucking, you know, growth hormones or whatever, right?

• 1:47:35David Sims?

  They do.

• 1:47:36Griffin Newman?

  And it's not like we want to dissect him or any of this stuff. He's just sort of like, we need to learn more. And Elliot's like, this isn't about that.

• 1:47:45David Sims?

  Uh, yeah, for sure. Yes.

• 1:47:48Griffin Newman?

  I like that he's not a capitalist. I like that it's not like ET is a threat, that he's only five degrees off from coming from completely the right place.

• 1:47:58David Sims?

  Um.

• 1:47:59Griffin Newman?

  But there is that adult's part of it that he can't turn off.

• 1:48:03Speaker 03

  I did have a thought where I was like, fuck, wait, is ET like the cure for everything? And we just let him go?

• 1:48:10Griffin Newman?

  That's the question.

• 1:48:11Speaker 03

  You know what I mean?

• 1:48:11David Sims?

  What if we just chopped up ET and we're like, if you eat like one little

• 1:48:15Speaker 03

  Like a cell.

• 1:48:16David Sims?

  You live forever.

• 1:48:17Griffin Newman?

  I've heard of Bluetooth, but ET too?

• 1:48:19Speaker 03

  Cure for like, you know, all of these horrible diseases.

• 1:48:22Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:48:23David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 1:48:23Speaker 03

  But he's too cute. We gotta let him go.

• 1:48:25David Sims?

  You gotta let ET go. No, what, or like, right, what can these people teach us?

• 1:48:31Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:48:31David Sims?

  Like these healers, these scientists who are visiting us, but they're not visiting us and going like, you should not bomb. Like, you know, they're just kind of like, eh, we're just checking out some grass. Leave us alone.

• 1:48:43Griffin Newman?

  So first my other thing, I think that

• 1:48:44David Sims?

  Here's his other thing.

• 1:48:45Griffin Newman?

  ET being

• 1:48:46David Sims?

  Wally, yes.

• 1:48:48Griffin Newman?

  I'm so fucking angry at you.

• 1:48:50Speaker 03

  David, is there, what, is there a stink in the room?

• 1:48:52Griffin Newman?

  This is like dumb animation bullshit and you're Will Vinton disrespect all over again.

• 1:48:58David Sims?

  Who?

• 1:48:59Griffin Newman?

  I shouldn't even be re-invoking this stuff. Now he's gonna get more dismissive at

• 1:49:03David Sims?

  No, I, I won't do the Will Vinton bit. JD has to be here for that because JD is so good at like the ire of like, David, you haven't heard of, you know? Yeah, right.

• 1:49:13Griffin Newman?

  Um, I, I think this movie being a divorce movie is overstated. I think that is a prism that is helpful for it tackling what it needs to tackle, which is this sense of core loneliness as a child, right?

• 1:49:25David Sims?

  Hmm.

• 1:49:25Griffin Newman?

  That is like getting to a level of awareness that you're starting to identify sadness, fear, anger, these emotions that are starting to make sense to you, but you can't quite put your hands around.

• 1:49:41Speaker 03

  Right.

• 1:49:41Griffin Newman?

  And when I'm talking about these experiences that change you, they are the things that happen in your maturation as a human being that do help crystallize those things for you, whether they're positive experiences or negative experiences. The divorce creates the Structure for the void that ET can fill. But ET is not a father figure, you know?

• 1:50:01David Sims?

  I know, I think ET is something of a father figure.

• 1:50:03Griffin Newman?

  But I also think in a certain way Elliot's like a father to ET.

• 1:50:06David Sims?

  Yes, he is, absolutely.

• 1:50:07Griffin Newman?

  Is what makes it interesting is it is not a one to one thing.

• 1:50:10David Sims?

  It is not.

• 1:50:10Griffin Newman?

  It is a very complicated emotional thing.

• 1:50:13David Sims?

  That is true, but he is. He is like an emotional being that Elliot relates to.

• 1:50:21Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:50:21David Sims?

  And that is what he needs.

• 1:50:22Griffin Newman?

  And someone who hears him and like sees him and literally. The conceit of this movie that is so great that you almost think on paper is that one step too far. They are emotionally bonded, they feel the same things, they feel the same pain, they feel the same joy. It is just that he knows someone else totally gets what he's going through, right? Like that is what is going on metaphorically. The sense of like complete understanding from another person at an age where you're just like, am I totally alone in feeling this way? And that is the greatest fear.

• 1:50:54David Sims?

  ET, to continue the plot.

• 1:50:58David Sims?

  Elliot stays home, they meet ET, yada, yada, yada. Uh, he can levitate balls, like plasticine, or what do you call it in this country?

• 1:51:05Griffin Newman?

  Sure.

• 1:51:06David Sims?

  Uh, Play-Doh.

• 1:51:07Griffin Newman?

  He's got magic. Uh. He's making a solar system.

• 1:51:10David Sims?

  From over there.

• 1:51:11Griffin Newman?

  He's trying to communicate that he needs to, in fact, go home.

• 1:51:14David Sims?

  He can heal.

• 1:51:15Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:51:16David Sims?

  Uh.

• 1:51:16Griffin Newman?

  He can make flowers grow pretty again.

• 1:51:19David Sims?

  Uh, he can write, he can grow a flower, he can heal Elliot's cut.

• 1:51:22Griffin Newman?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:51:23David Sims?

  The flower device.

• 1:51:25Griffin Newman?

  It's such a simple fact.

• 1:51:26David Sims?

  Seated there.

• 1:51:27Griffin Newman?

  Yep.

• 1:51:28David Sims?

  Emotional payoff later.

• 1:51:29Griffin Newman?

  Yep.

• 1:51:30David Sims?

  Um.

• 1:51:31Griffin Newman?

  I mean, yeah, the whole movie is that, yeah.

• 1:51:33David Sims?

  And, uh.

• 1:51:35Griffin Newman?

  There's just a lack of over explaining.

• 1:51:37David Sims?

  Yes, exactly. The bond between them is communicated very simply. Elliot's getting some shit out of the fridge.

• 1:51:41Griffin Newman?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:51:42David Sims?

  A lot of shit, to be clear. He's really loading up.

• 1:51:45Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:51:45David Sims?

  ET opens an umbrella, it startles him, Elliot startled, drops everything.

• 1:51:49Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:51:49David Sims?

  That's all you need to know.

• 1:51:50Griffin Newman?

  Yep.

• 1:51:50David Sims?

  They're kind of becoming the same thing. Then we have this wonderful scene that I remember as a kid I would always forget about because it's the weirdest scene in E.T. Where E.T. starts ripping some Coors Lights. That scene's great. Nothing wrong with that. Throws on the quiet man, right? He's having a great time.

• 1:52:06Griffin Newman?

  You forget this. I'm like, this is the scene for me where I'm like, this is the weirdness that transcends this movie for me, that it's not playing it safe? That it's like taking weird turns?

• 1:52:16Speaker 03

  He's wearing a teddy bear's little pajamas.

• 1:52:21Griffin Newman?

  Right. Well, they've tried to hide E.T. in the plush pile, which I love.

• 1:52:24Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:52:25Griffin Newman?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:52:25Speaker 03

  But I love that he's found a little piece of clothing that fits him.

• 1:52:29Griffin Newman?

  But it's also such a weird, like, old man.

• 1:52:32Speaker 03

  I know.

• 1:52:33Griffin Newman?

  It's like a grandpa bathrobe.

• 1:52:35Speaker 03

  It rules.

• 1:52:35Griffin Newman?

  Just like, let grandpa sit in the comfy chair and watch his old movies.

• 1:52:39Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:52:39Griffin Newman?

  Right? Watch his stories or whatever.

• 1:52:41David Sims?

  Getting ripped.

• 1:52:42Griffin Newman?

  But it's like Elliot knows that if he takes one, more than one day off from school, he's gonna be pushing his luck. He has to go back to school. He trusts that E.T. now is comfortable enough in the home. He's not gonna do anything wrong, but in fact, E.T. gets too comfortable.

• 1:52:54David Sims?

  Did you guys ever dissect a frog?

• 1:52:56Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:52:57David Sims?

  It's so weird to me. Like, that never, I never did that. I think it's not really done quite as much anymore.

• 1:53:02Griffin Newman?

  You know what's even weirder?

• 1:53:03David Sims?

  Super weird.

• 1:53:04Griffin Newman?

  I want to say third or fourth grade, we not only dissected a frog, I remember with even greater specificity, we dissected a sheep's eyeball.

• 1:53:13David Sims?

  I've heard of that. I dissected, I think, a kidney once, like a sheep's kidney.

• 1:53:17Griffin Newman?

  What do you call it? Like vacuum sealed?

• 1:53:19David Sims?

  Yeah, of course.

• 1:53:20Griffin Newman?

  Plastic bags that he had to cut open with scissors and just plop on the table and be like, here's an eyeball.

• 1:53:25Speaker 03

  We did a heart. I don't remember what animal, but I remember that was really especially disgusting to me.

• 1:53:31Griffin Newman?

  I have to imagine this is done, right? That any listener of this show who is like 20 is like, what the fuck are you guys talking about?

• 1:53:37David Sims?

  I, I don't know. I think so. And, but obviously it's such a brilliant choice for this because... Elliot feels for the frogs, much like he feels for his little home frog friend. And obviously also Elliot is three sheets to the wind, so he frees all the frogs and then kisses.

• 1:53:51Griffin Newman?

  He's also drunk in the magic of movies, which turns to.

• 1:53:54David Sims?

  He's drunk on the magic of John Wayne and Maureen O'Hara.

• 1:53:56Griffin Newman?

  It's a hero.

• 1:53:57David Sims?

  Uh, I love him, uh, obviously having her stand on the, the kid who's lying down so that he can kiss her. It's great.

• 1:54:05Griffin Newman?

  Henry Thomas talks about when he read the script, he's like, this rules, I get it. Alien, ET, I love this guy. And he gets the kissing scene and he's like, I don't know if I want to do this movie.

• 1:54:14David Sims?

  Of course.

• 1:54:15Griffin Newman?

  Tells his parents, I don't want to do this movie. And it's like, I don't like girls. This sucks. Not just like, this is embarrassing to do. He's like, this seems revolting. I think they shot this first. It almost sounded like Spielberg said this was one of the only things that wasn't shot in continuity. Maybe to get him over the hump of the kissing thing, which he was so worried about.

• 1:54:34David Sims?

  Sure.

• 1:54:34Griffin Newman?

  And Henry Thomas is like, as a little, a little kid was just like, I need to nail this one so we can move on. And the beautiful thing of like, the door, the wind swiping open, the kid on the floor, him stepping on him so that he can kiss Erica Lanick from Baywatch.

• 1:54:51David Sims?

  Oh, sure. Is that who it is?

• 1:54:52Griffin Newman?

  Yes. Um, and that Henry Thomas like attacked it the first time and their like teeth clinked.

• 1:55:00David Sims?

  Classic.

• 1:55:00Griffin Newman?

  Like she was not ready. Their like teeth hit.

• 1:55:03David Sims?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:55:04Griffin Newman?

  And then Spielberg's like cut and he's like, great. So print moving on. And he's like, Henry, that looked insane. And Henry Thomas had to be like hoaxed into doing three more takes until it looked right.

• 1:55:15David Sims?

  Well, it's great.

• 1:55:18Griffin Newman?

  And drunk ET is the funniest shit in the world.

• 1:55:20David Sims?

  Drunk ET is funny.

• 1:55:21Griffin Newman?

  This is what I'm saying of him owning like, okay, what of the ET performance works the least? The walking looks goofy, so let's try to limit the walk to scenes where ET should look a little funny. It's funny when he's in a Halloween costume. It's funny when he's drunk. You don't really do the walk around ET that much, other than those moments. Cause you can tell outside of the spaceship, getting off and getting on, he knows like, let's like limit how much we do this. Cause this is when you stop taking EC, ET seriously as an emotional character.

• 1:55:54David Sims?

  Um, now, there's not much plot.

• 1:55:58Griffin Newman?

  This is what I'm saying. Like, five things happen in this movie. There is a long section that is just like everyone getting to know E.T. Then he communicates this one idea. I need to phone home, right? They make this sort of plan quietly. You don't see them really doing it.

• 1:56:14Speaker 03

  It's the Buck Rogers comic strip.

• 1:56:16David Sims?

  He sees the satellite dish. He kind of gets it from that.

• 1:56:19Griffin Newman?

  But it's, he's got a record player. He's got like a saw blade. He's got a floor. He's got an umbrella.

• 1:56:24Speaker 03

  It's a speak and spell.

• 1:56:25Griffin Newman?

  Yes. But, but basically it is like, it just happens in between scenes that he has constructed this thing that they're all gonna use Halloween as the cover because that's the night where parents let you go out and aren't too worried about you.

• 1:56:39David Sims?

  E.T. up as a ghost. It's a great bit, like you say.

• 1:56:42Griffin Newman?

  Gertie is like, you know, trusted with this secret which she can't hold. So she keeps on wanting to tell the grownups, but they keep on being like, uh, Gertie and her imagination. What is this weird thing, her new bit? What gets her talking about being a punk fan?

• 1:56:55David Sims?

  Another Pixar movie, but looks like Jessie when she's dressed as a cowgirl. It's got the little red hat.

• 1:57:01Griffin Newman?

  She does.

• 1:57:01David Sims?

  She's so cute.

• 1:57:02Griffin Newman?

  She does.

• 1:57:03David Sims?

  She's such a cutie pie.

• 1:57:04Griffin Newman?

  Doesn't she make a joke about like, this isn't my real costume?

• 1:57:07David Sims?

  There's a whole thing where she's like.

• 1:57:09Griffin Newman?

  They're gonna let her change the costume later.

• 1:57:10David Sims?

  I'm a cowboy pretending to be a ghost or whatever. She's so funny.

• 1:57:13Griffin Newman?

  She wants to be a ghost. Right, but it's, right, it's, so they can give E.T. the.

• 1:57:17David Sims?

  She should have won the Mark Twain Prize that year.

• 1:57:19Griffin Newman?

  She's so fucking funny in this movie.

• 1:57:21Speaker 03

  I know we're pushing along.

• 1:57:22Griffin Newman?

  Alligators in the sewer.

• 1:57:23Speaker 03

  Just a couple of things. Uh, after he gets in trouble for letting the frogs go free. There's apparently a deleted scene where Harrison Ford played the principal.

• 1:57:32David Sims?

  You can see it. Uh, it's, uh, on, you know, YouTube or whatever. Um, you don't see Harrison Ford, like it's a cameo where he's kind of in shadow, much like all adults.

• 1:57:41Griffin Newman?

  But even still, he was like distracting to the audience. They could just tell.

• 1:57:45Speaker 03

  It would just, that to me feels just so weird and unnecessary.

• 1:57:48David Sims?

  It kind of feels like, again, the less adults, the better.

• 1:57:50Griffin Newman?

  That's the thing. It's kind of breaking the adult rule. It's more than you even want. The amount of like the teacher you, you hear in that dissection scene is like as much as you can deal with.

• 1:58:00Speaker 03

  Right.

• 1:58:01Griffin Newman?

  You know?

• 1:58:02Speaker 03

  Uh, and then I just love too, when the mom gets the call about, you know, Elliot getting in trouble at school. That ET is just kind of like Pink Panthering.

• 1:58:13Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:58:13Speaker 03

  Like behind her and she just never sees him. I just love that little moment. It's so fun.

• 1:58:19Griffin Newman?

  First of all, I love you using Pink Panthering as a verb, but also it is one of those sequences where you're like, this is a difficult balancing act, Stephen. I don't know if I'm gonna buy this, that she somehow keeps just not noticing him. And it is to the credit of both her as an actor and the like puppeteering of ET that without it being too cute, they keep on just sort of selling that it's just like, she would just barely miss him.

• 1:58:47Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:58:47Griffin Newman?

  You know, she's a little too caught up in like running down the things in her head, you know?

• 1:58:52Speaker 03

  But she like puts the coffee can down, but she's like, you know, so chaotic and stressed out as a single mom that she doesn't really like clock that like it's gone missing.

• 1:59:02Griffin Newman?

  That the, what they use is not her being oblivious. It's that she's just sort of in like, oh fuck, what else do I have to do mom mode?

• 1:59:09Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:59:09Griffin Newman?

  But it is perfectly timed in stage where you never feel like it's breaking reality where I'm like, come on, she would have seen him now.

• 1:59:16David Sims?

  Yeah. Um, uh, Halloween.

• 1:59:20Griffin Newman?

  They have the Halloween thing. It is kind of a funny Mandela effect thing to a degree. And I'd say a lot of it is because of the Amblin logo. That the classic image of Elliot and ET riding in front of the moon is often transmuted with the end with the other kids.

• 1:59:38Speaker 03

  Sequence, yes.

• 1:59:39Griffin Newman?

  During the daylight with the red hoodie, whereas when he flies with ET in front of the moon, he's dressed up as a fucking ghoul.

• 1:59:46Speaker 03

  He is, he's a ghoul.

• 1:59:47Griffin Newman?

  He's in the gray sweatshirt with the squeaky face.

• 1:59:52Griffin Newman?

  That's the, that's the first time.

• 1:59:55Griffin Newman?

  The flight theme hits, right? Let's talk about John Williams for a second.

• 1:59:58David Sims?

  Flying, called Flying.

• 2:00:00Griffin Newman?

  Cause he talks about the secondary motif of the film, which is the, um, what, what sounds I would argue very similar to the AI score. The very gentle, kind of sad, lonely piano music that doesn't hit sweeping until the bike for the first time.

• 2:00:19David Sims?

  Why is Ben marking delete on that? I don't understand. What's he doing with his computer?

• 2:00:24Griffin Newman?

  Feel like to hear that for the first time?

• 2:00:28David Sims?

  Someone layer me doing that over the beautiful Alan Davia.

• 2:00:32Griffin Newman?

  I always thought there was no way to improve upon ET and perhaps we have stumbled upon it.

• 2:00:40David Sims?

  Dun dun dun. You know, I saw, this is jumping ahead to the end of ET, but it's relating to John Williams.

• 2:00:46Griffin Newman?

  Sure.

• 2:00:46David Sims?

  Uh, I saw Wicked, uh, in theaters, one of the first films. Yeah, Wicked Rocks, uh, one of the first films I saw in theaters after.

• 2:00:54Griffin Newman?

  See what I'm doing?

• 2:00:55David Sims?

  You're doing his stinky blue face, but that's fine. It's not that good. And one reason I liked Wicked is that Wicked makes the correct choice that very few movies make, which is that the final seconds of Wicked are someone going bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum. And it goes to black and then you fucking explode with happiness, which ET also does.

• 2:01:18Griffin Newman?

  I'd say Wicked though, is ending at a cliffhanger, which this is not, and we'll get to the fucking ending, but the ending is.

• 2:01:25David Sims?

  There's a cliffhanger in ET. Where's he going? Where's that bitch going? It's kind of the same ending, actually. They're both flying off.

• 2:01:31Griffin Newman?

  Cliffhanger that Spielberg is pot committed to never resolving versus Wicked being like come back in a U.

• 2:01:37David Sims?

  Gay ET 2026.

• 2:01:38Speaker 03

  Can I pick, can I pitch the tagline?

• 2:01:41Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:01:41David Sims?

  For gay ET?

• 2:01:42Speaker 03

  The extra extraterrestrial.

• 2:01:45David Sims?

  Oh, boy.

• 2:01:46Speaker 03

  Come on.

• 2:01:46David Sims?

  What? Your phone is ringing. Universal Pictures on the line. We're canceling Wicked 2. We don't need it with this solid gold.

• 2:01:54Griffin Newman?

  We're reinstating D I I, D E I.

• 2:01:59David Sims?

  But just for gay ET, even Trump agrees.

• 2:02:01Griffin Newman?

  Gay ET is healing the nation.

• 2:02:05David Sims?

  God. Oh, boy.

• 2:02:10Griffin Newman?

  He flies in front of the moon. It's very brief.

• 2:02:14Speaker 03

  It's beautiful.

• 2:02:14Griffin Newman?

  In both cases, though, it lasts much. It's a much shorter stretch of time than you think of, where I'm like, I almost expand it in my head into being this like triumphant two minutes of flying. But in both cases, it's very small. They just do like one arc into their landing spot in the woods. E T sets up his device.

• 2:02:33Speaker 03

  Mm hmm.

• 2:02:33Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:02:34Speaker 03

  I'm bawling.

• 2:02:35David Sims?

  Which is a cool device.

• 2:02:36Speaker 03

  By the way, I just want to say, I am at this point, really, it's, the movie is just destroyed me. I'm really like, yeah, affected.

• 2:02:44Griffin Newman?

  This movie just hits something magical. There is a story Spielberg told in one of these fucking things I watched about the first assembly cut they put together, right? And the movie was-

• 2:02:55David Sims?

  Where it was the David Sims score before Johnny come in.

• 2:02:58Griffin Newman?

  There was no score.

• 2:02:59David Sims?

  Right.

• 2:03:00Griffin Newman?

  Williams didn't even have a theme to hum him.

• 2:03:02David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 2:03:03Griffin Newman?

  And it was four hours long. And Spielberg, and Spielberg watched it. And his response was, I never in my life thought I would make a movie this good. And the way he recounts it is not a like, holy shit, Steve, you nailed it.

• 2:03:16Speaker 03

  Right.

• 2:03:16Griffin Newman?

  He is like, things came together on this, that even when I am watching a version of this that is twice as long as it should be, without music, without finish, without final effects and all of that sort of shit, he's just like, this is a miracle. This just fucking worked. The core emotion of this worked. And people talk about, like filmmakers are always like, that first assembly at is the worst feeling you will ever have in your life.

• 2:03:39Speaker 03

  Of course, because it's nowhere near where it's gotta be.

• 2:03:41Griffin Newman?

  You put it together and you're like, this is a disaster. My career is ruined. And he just could kind of see like, this just, something, we hit on something here. And it's only gonna get better from here. And he even said like, I, I don't know if it's gonna make any money. This feels very personal to me. But this exceeds all my expectations of what I ever aspired to do as a filmmaker. And then every step of the way, you fucking tighten that cut, you add the Williams. He does one test screening.

• 2:04:10Speaker 03

  Sure.

• 2:04:11Griffin Newman?

  To Universal where he was just like, I so badly just want this to be my weird little film. I just want them to not touch it.

• 2:04:18David Sims?

  Right.

• 2:04:18Griffin Newman?

  And they screened it.

• 2:04:19David Sims?

  You can have one test screening, but I don't want.

• 2:04:21Griffin Newman?

  The audience response was so ecstatic that they were like, we don't know if this is gonna make money, but this thing undeniably works with anyone who sees it. We're good. We get it. We're excited that we have a good movie to sell. We're behind it. And they just like, no notes, didn't touch it. But everyone goes through this whole fucking process being like, this might be a movie for 10 people. We hope we make back our budget. I think to them, they were like, he looks weird. It's an odd pitch for a film.

• 2:04:50David Sims?

  It's cheesy. It stars a bunch of kids.

• 2:04:52Griffin Newman?

  This sort of like open emotionality, a little bit dead after like.

• 2:04:55David Sims?

  Penis breath is kind of a weirdly specific thing to say.

• 2:04:58Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:04:59David Sims?

  Lose a lot of people right there.

• 2:05:00Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:05:01David Sims?

  It's weird that the score is a guy going, da da da. Anyway.

• 2:05:05Griffin Newman?

  I just love this balance of everyone being like, I think we're on to something here. And also I don't know if anyone else is gonna like it.

• 2:05:11David Sims?

  Uh, well, they did like it, but we'll get to that. Um, so ET flies in front of the moon. I just said to Ben's crying point. I always cry at one point in ET. And then I will also cry at other points that sort of move around, right? Like there'll be things that get me every time. I always cry when the bikes take off.

• 2:05:31David Sims?

  The second time, you know, wouldn't they? That is the most triumphant emotional moment in American Hollywood, you know, mainstream cinema.

• 2:05:40Griffin Newman?

  Here's a thought I had, very, very similar to what you just said. Last night while watching it, I'm like, the last 15 minutes of this movie are the pinnacle of Hollywood as an idea. I'm like, this is the entire notion of America being like, movies are an industry. We're gonna make a dream factory. We're gonna put too much money and hire a lot of craftspeople to try to make these like transcendent emotional experiences that travel across the world and across decades. And I just watched this and I'm like, it's this inflection point where he's getting like the best of old Hollywood, like artificial emotional magic with a sort of like more focused emotional realism.

• 2:06:20Griffin Newman?

  And just like the best people all at the top of their game, delivering perfectly, speaking things that you could not put into words.

• 2:06:30David Sims?

  At least until Jack Black showed up in the Minecraft trailer.

• 2:06:33Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 2:06:34David Sims?

  That was.

• 2:06:37David Sims?

  It's, um, yeah, it's, I think, Nick, our old researcher, Nick Loriano, had a Letterboxd review. Let me find it. Uh, that was essentially.

• 2:06:45Griffin Newman?

  I'll tell you what my review was.

• 2:06:47David Sims?

  It was very good and I, I invite you to read it out to us now.

• 2:06:51Griffin Newman?

  G period M Poland period. Let me try that again.

• 2:06:55David Sims?

  Go for it. You can do it. You can do it.

• 2:06:56Griffin Newman?

  G period M period colon, the good movie.

• 2:07:01David Sims?

  That's what he said.

• 2:07:02Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:07:02David Sims?

  What do you guys think? Ben?

• 2:07:05Griffin Newman?

  Five stars.

• 2:07:06David Sims?

  What do you think of that?

• 2:07:07Griffin Newman?

  I give it a perfect Uber ride.

• 2:07:08Speaker 03

  Yeah, I, I, yeah, I give it five stars.

• 2:07:10Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:07:11David Sims?

  Good job.

• 2:07:11Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, I think this thing's unimpeachable.

• 2:07:13David Sims?

  I do too, but.

• 2:07:14Griffin Newman?

  What was Nick's review?

• 2:07:15David Sims?

  I'm trying to find it. God, how many, how many friends of mine on Letterboxd have, uh, fucking watched ET? I guess it's a popular movie.

• 2:07:22Griffin Newman?

  Weird. It's almost like everyone has seen.

• 2:07:24David Sims?

  From 1975 to 1982, Steven Spielberg had a more powerful connection with the audience than anyone before or since.

• 2:07:31Griffin Newman?

  Yep.

• 2:07:31David Sims?

  And of all the films in that miracle run, this is the most wondrous. He is correct about the, the being in sync with what people are feeling and thinking.

• 2:07:40Griffin Newman?

  Here's what I find really fascinating about that.

• 2:07:41David Sims?

  Boring old, you know, sort of like Jimmy Carter, America or whatever, you know, like late seventies, early eighties America.

• 2:07:47Griffin Newman?

  Here's what I find fascinating about that. Much like our previous mini series subject, David Lynch, weirdly, I think Spielberg and Lynch are both artists who primarily try to work through their subconscious, right? Spielberg talks about the fact that he's like, never really done therapy in his life, that he will watch his movies 20 years later and be like, I guess this was that trying to get expressed out of my system. But that he doesn't didactically work through it before he tries to figure it had transmuted into a film, right? And like, people have that same sort of like, I can't speak to why Mulholland Drive made such an emotional impact on me.

• 2:08:27Griffin Newman?

  But those are elusive movies, right? That are not trying to hand you clean sort of like emotional arcs and story beats that can carry you through. Spielberg has like that aspect of being able to like, just pull some emotion out of his system that he can't even put into words and create the right delivery system for it and also like entertain. That is just insane. And it's, as you said, in that run of years, it's just like, he fucking knew how to say stuff to audiences.

• 2:08:55David Sims?

  He did.

• 2:08:56Griffin Newman?

  And it's not like he lost that, but he's got more, he became more complicated in what he wanted to try to say.

• 2:09:03Griffin Newman?

  And this is sort of like the pinnacle for me of all of it.

• 2:09:06David Sims?

  Right.

• 2:09:07Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:09:10David Sims?

  After Halloween, it's sort of interesting.

• 2:09:13Griffin Newman?

  So Elliot basically needs to go home because ET's device is taking too long and his mom's gonna be worried.

• 2:09:17David Sims?

  Yeah, Elliot goes home.

• 2:09:19Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:09:20Speaker 03

  The device is cool, cuz it does feel like it could work.

• 2:09:24Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:09:25Speaker 03

  A little bit.

• 2:09:25Griffin Newman?

  You just buy it enough.

• 2:09:27Speaker 03

  Like, the, the, I think the best component is.

• 2:09:30David Sims?

  The fork?

• 2:09:31Speaker 03

  That, yes, that they, he makes a.

• 2:09:33Griffin Newman?

  Of course, you would say that. You're married to a goddamn fork.

• 2:09:36Speaker 03

  That he makes a bespoke, like, record player.

• 2:09:39David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 2:09:39Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:09:39David Sims?

  Yeah. Uh, scratchy, scratchy, but yes, uh, what happens, uh.

• 2:09:43Griffin Newman?

  I love that it's like messy and like discombobulated, you know, where I'm like, oh, it's like the umbrellas over here and the wires are running here. It's not like a clean, tight, little, like, flick a switch and it goes on.

• 2:09:54Speaker 03

  But it's wind powered. It's just so cool.

• 2:09:56David Sims?

  Um, so.

• 2:10:00Griffin Newman?

  Michael goes back the next day to try to find ET.

• 2:10:02David Sims?

  Yeah, but this is where it all cracks open. Now the mom is worried. Where was Henry?

• 2:10:05Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 2:10:05David Sims?

  I mean, sorry, where was Elliot?

• 2:10:06Griffin Newman?

  Elliot.

• 2:10:07David Sims?

  Uh, you know, and then of course ET doesn't come back. Michael finds him by the culvert, you know, he's becoming great ET. He's all fucked up.

• 2:10:14Griffin Newman?

  This is, this begins.

• 2:10:16David Sims?

  I guess the idea is he's just sort of exposed to the elements. I don't, they don't even, it's also just Elliot's in turmoil. I don't know.

• 2:10:22Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, and also that I.

• 2:10:23David Sims?

  It's never again really explained like why ET starts to, it's, they sort of seed it with like, he's starting to look sick. They say that earlier. It's like, maybe he just can't be here for too long.

• 2:10:31Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, it's too much time away from his ecosystem. It's, right.

• 2:10:35David Sims?

  Cuz like, does he come?

• 2:10:36Griffin Newman?

  He's eating fucking Reese's Pieces only?

• 2:10:38David Sims?

  He isn't on the best diet.

• 2:10:40Speaker 03

  And it's like.

• 2:10:40David Sims?

  And course, and drinking course. Does ET come back to life?

• 2:10:44Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:10:44David Sims?

  You know, because of the love of the children around him? Yes.

• 2:10:46Griffin Newman?

  So maybe some Warby Parkers and Nora Frame.

• 2:10:49David Sims?

  He comes back to life because his people come back, right? Like, that's sort of how I take it. Like, it's like, they are part of whatever sustains him.

• 2:10:57Griffin Newman?

  It is not to once again jump to the end, but it is part of what is so devastating about like ET being like, come, and Elliot saying, stay. That they're both like, why don't you come to my world, right? And they're like, we can't. This could only ever last a week.

• 2:11:14David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 2:11:14Griffin Newman?

  We have to split up.

• 2:11:16David Sims?

  They gotta split up.

• 2:11:17Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 2:11:17David Sims?

  Which I don't, I would go.

• 2:11:19Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, of course you would. You'd fucking Roy Neary so fast.

• 2:11:23David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 2:11:23Griffin Newman?

  But that's like, this is the part of it that even though he hasn't had kids yet, he's doing this direct rebuke to Close Encounters, right? And this is what makes it such an interesting counterpoint movie to me is like, in speaking of these sort of like unresolved things, right? And like filling these like emotional holes from your childhood. And Spielberg like making movies that speak to his loneliness without really successfully working through them. The shift in, what is it? Five years between Close Encounters and E.T. Is like, Close Encounters is him still making a movie as a kid who ran away, joined the circus and won.

• 2:12:02David Sims?

  Right.

• 2:12:02Griffin Newman?

  And part of that is the pursuit of like, I made it out of my childhood home. I'm away from all the sadness and the anger. I've made it to Hollywood. I'm making movies. And great. I got on the ship and now that's what I was searching for. There was some siren call pulling me out of my home, away to something greater that will answer everything for me. And I think he has grown up enough in the five years between these two movies that he's now speaking to a thing that I think a lot of people who experience massive success early on in their careers have to face. Which is you get everything you think you wanted. And then one day you sit down, you go, fuck, I'm still not happy. That wasn't the thing.

• 2:12:44David Sims?

  Yeah, you push against the door, you open it.

• 2:12:47Griffin Newman?

  Right. And that causes some people to spiral out of control and other people have to start then doing the hard work. And E.T. is the inverse of Close Encounters, which is you are home and the things come to you and you have to work through them. You can't run away. Right? You can't just go on the ship. Enter this magical city of light.

• 2:13:07David Sims?

  No, you're not.

• 2:13:08Griffin Newman?

  And have it all be perfect. Right.

• 2:13:09David Sims?

  You know, the Andalite ship. That Elfangor and Aximili hang out on is all grass.

• 2:13:16Griffin Newman?

  Animorphs book series, just remind everybody, yeah.

• 2:13:18David Sims?

  It's all grass because, you know, Andalites eat through their feet.

• 2:13:22Griffin Newman?

  Okay.

• 2:13:23David Sims?

  I always liked that.

• 2:13:23Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, I bet you do.

• 2:13:25David Sims?

  They don't have mouths.

• 2:13:25Griffin Newman?

  Look what I'm doing.

• 2:13:26David Sims?

  Eh.

• 2:13:27Griffin Newman?

  Dan.

• 2:13:28David Sims?

  The Animorphs are way too powerful and cool for you to be doing stinky.

• 2:13:31Griffin Newman?

  You're fucking kidding me?

• 2:13:33David Sims?

  Animorphs are pretty cool.

• 2:13:34Griffin Newman?

  I hate that he doesn't get upset when I do it to him. And when he does it to me, it is, it, it, it fucking hits right in the heart.

• 2:13:40David Sims?

  I don't know what to tell you. I learned as a teenager to stop getting upset about people like not agreeing with me because I would get so upset. Like, right? You know what I mean? Like that, that thing where you're like showing your friend a movie and then they don't like it. And I would take it's, and I just built this armor of like, I just can't, I cannot let it get to me because then I'll just be upset all the time. Right? And I think it is kind of why I became a critic because I was just kind of like, I can just sort of feel what I feel about a movie and it'll be okay if not everyone agrees with me, right? You know, like you won't have that kind of chip on your shoulder.

• 2:14:11Griffin Newman?

  I want to pin this on, I want to pin this on, I'm gonna come back to this.

• 2:14:14Speaker 03

  Kirk me if I'm wrong. The Brits are kind of known for their emotional detachment.

• 2:14:18David Sims?

  And also for being sarcastic about everything anyone ever said.

• 2:14:22Speaker 03

  So there's maybe that and the soup.

• 2:14:23David Sims?

  Any feeling that anyone has, they're being like, rrrrr.

• 2:14:27Griffin Newman?

  What's all this then?

• 2:14:28David Sims?

  Except for then, obviously, if you watch like whatever, you know, an episode of Porridge and they're like, boo hoo hoo hoo hoo. And you're like, you got a lot going on in there, huh?

• 2:14:35Speaker 03

  What's Porridge about?

• 2:14:36David Sims?

  Uh, it's a prison sitcom. It's, I always think of Porridge.

• 2:14:39Griffin Newman?

  That was not gonna be my guess.

• 2:14:41David Sims?

  The whole thing with Porridge, you know, you moved to Britain.

• 2:14:43Griffin Newman?

  I was guessing it was a fucking sitcom about making dinner every night.

• 2:14:47David Sims?

  Exactly.

• 2:14:47Griffin Newman?

  It's a prison sitcom?

• 2:14:48David Sims?

  That's the thing, you moved to Britain.

• 2:14:49Griffin Newman?

  Cause they feed them porridge? Is that the idea? Okay.

• 2:14:51David Sims?

  But you moved to Britain and you, you know, you learn like, oh, right. They have their whole own pop culture history, right? That I don't know anything about.

• 2:14:59Griffin Newman?

  You moved to Britain as one does, as we of course know.

• 2:15:01David Sims?

  As I had to.

• 2:15:01Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 2:15:02David Sims?

  And it, to me, the, the fundamental.

• 2:15:04Griffin Newman?

  One of those rites of passage in every young man's life.

• 2:15:05David Sims?

  The British, the most British ass thing I ever learned. Was they were like, oh, we have all our great sitcoms, like It Ain't Half Hot Mum and L O L. And you're like, Jesus Christ, this is cartoon shit. And they're like, and Porridge. And you're like, stop right there. I'm sorry. What is Porridge? And they're like, what do you mean? It's a really funny sitcom. What's it about? This guy who's in prison.

• 2:15:27David Sims?

  How you the weirdest sense of humor on these people.

• 2:15:30Griffin Newman?

  How often would they make, please, sir, can I have some more jokes on porridge? That just feels like a fucking layup. If the show's called porridge and it's prisoners and they're asking for more gruel, right?

• 2:15:40David Sims?

  Probably made it once.

• 2:15:41Griffin Newman?

  You think they only made it once? Well, the probably only four episodes.

• 2:15:44David Sims?

  There's, I believe there are 20 episodes. I think it's a three season show.

• 2:15:47Griffin Newman?

  That ran for 30 years.

• 2:15:48David Sims?

  A hundred percent.

• 2:15:49Griffin Newman?

  It's just stealing the fucking Simpsons show, but it's funny every time.

• 2:15:52David Sims?

  Yes. Um, I believe porridge, I think is a major, major influence on the office. Like, that is one of the classic, like, Gervais and Merchant touchstones of, like, you can make a sitcom about, like, a sort of mundane, sad thing. Yeah. Anyway, porridge.

• 2:16:07Griffin Newman?

  They bring gray E.T. home.

• 2:16:09David Sims?

  Poor gray E.T. He's all gray.

• 2:16:12Griffin Newman?

  Both feels bad because he's connected to E.T.

• 2:16:14David Sims?

  Yes.

• 2:16:14Griffin Newman?

  In terms of physical health and also the worry of, like, what is this? Why can't I fix this? Right? And then Dee Wallace comes home and for the first time she has to engage with E.T. and it's such a beautifully played moment of them being like, Mom, they're so worried that they're gonna let her in on this. And they're like, Mom, we need to show you something. And she sees E.T. and her first response is like, oh, that's great. How did you do this? Right? She immediately responds to it like it's a fun art project they did. And they don't say anything to correct her. And Dee Wallace just plays the realization very quickly of like, wait a second, fuck, this is a living organism on the floor of my kitchen that is dying.

• 2:16:55David Sims?

  Um, very fun stuff, very normal. It is so terrifying. I mean, as a kid, the most terrifying image of E.T. is the spaceman arriving, right?

• 2:17:07Griffin Newman?

  The spaceman breaking through the windows.

• 2:17:09David Sims?

  The window, like, the way they come through, you know, the great Spielberg, you know, visual construction of, like, they're at every door. And then even the window, they're coming through the windows.

• 2:17:17Griffin Newman?

  It's like zombie movie shit.

• 2:17:18David Sims?

  As a kid, it is so terrifying.

• 2:17:20Griffin Newman?

  Yes. And he said it was one of the ways in which the shooting consequentially.

• 2:17:24David Sims?

  Right, really got to.

• 2:17:25Griffin Newman?

  Really helped because it's like when one day they show up to set and the house has now been, like, ruined with all this fucking plastic. It was upsetting. It was an invasion. They had spent, like, whatever, 30 straight days with this home feeling safe.

• 2:17:38David Sims?

  And it's amazing, like, the way it's just in the snap of a finger, suddenly, right, it's turned into like this lab, this quarantined lab, like, how does that happen so fast? But you're like, of course it does.

• 2:17:49Speaker 03

  She's like, this is my home, but it doesn't matter.

• 2:17:51Griffin Newman?

  She can't protect it.

• 2:17:53David Sims?

  In her, in their defense, there is a fucking alien in her house.

• 2:17:57Griffin Newman?

  Gray ass alien.

• 2:18:00David Sims?

  And she's probably like, what am I, you know, fucking plumbing insurance? It's a fucking alien, man.

• 2:18:05Griffin Newman?

  I love that as like a result of this movie, having like, you know, a budget cap on it, trying to keep itself on rails, right? Uh, and this ET animatronic puppet being so complicated that you're like, they couldn't build two of them. So for this sequence, they clearly just like cake ET with gray makeup.

• 2:18:25David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 2:18:26Griffin Newman?

  You know, like, there's something about the effect where you're like, oh, they didn't make a second sick ET puppet. You can tell that they've just layered something on top of the hero puppet and then washed it off later. There's something kind of like weirdly more upsetting about him just kind of being like dusted with powdered sugar.

• 2:18:46David Sims?

  Uh, yeah, it's, uh, it's so unsettling the way he looks, even though, right, ET always looks fucked up.

• 2:18:53Griffin Newman?

  But also they've so successfully-

• 2:18:54David Sims?

  He kinda needs a gay T to kinda juice him up, if you're asking me. Get him to the salon, get a facial.

• 2:19:02Griffin Newman?

  They've kind of, it's so successfully built up-

• 2:19:05David Sims?

  Tech can teach him how to cook.

• 2:19:06Griffin Newman?

  The pulsating interlife of ET that just like limiting the motion a little bit becomes like, oh my God, what the fuck is wrong with ET?

• 2:19:13David Sims?

  It's just funny that on Queer Eye, one guy is like, I'm going to change your house and make it look amazing.

• 2:19:19Griffin Newman?

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:19:20David Sims?

  And another guy is like, so this is how you make an omelet? You put eggs in it? You know, it's like, you know, it's a little imbalanced.

• 2:19:25Griffin Newman?

  David, beyond that, that one guy's like a culture expert and that his thing is just sort of like, here's an album you might like, I'm gonna send you a Spotify playlist.

• 2:19:32David Sims?

  My joke about the culture guy, and I know, I know on the new one, the culture guy's a little-

• 2:19:35Speaker 03

  His name's Karamo.

• 2:19:36Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, and he's my favorite.

• 2:19:37David Sims?

  My, my wife watches it and I don't.

• 2:19:39Griffin Newman?

  I haven't watched it in years, but I think Karamo's a real one.

• 2:19:42David Sims?

  She, she really likes the culture guy.

• 2:19:44Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:19:44David Sims?

  I just remember Jay in the original one, which I watched and loved.

• 2:19:47Griffin Newman?

  Right, he was the silly one.

• 2:19:48David Sims?

  And like literally would just kind of be like, you know, make sure to shake someone's hand when you meet them. It's kind of like, get the fuck out of here.

• 2:19:55Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:19:55David Sims?

  The other ones, this guy's tearing down walls in this guy's home. And you're like, you know, you should really like sign emails with best.

• 2:20:02Griffin Newman?

  And like Ted Allen has like a good brain for food.

• 2:20:05David Sims?

  Ted is the best.

• 2:20:05Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, that guy rules. But that Jay was sort of like, I recommend talking to people. And you're like, what?

• 2:20:12David Sims?

  Good, thanks, Jay. Really queer of you.

• 2:20:14Griffin Newman?

  You're not even like recommending activities? You're not telling me plays to go see?

• 2:20:19David Sims?

  I just love the, I know the original one would have the heartstringy moments a little bit, but it was kind of more just like, put some pants on, you're a mess. And the new one is always like.

• 2:20:27Griffin Newman?

  The most uplifting.

• 2:20:28David Sims?

  Oh, God, you know, it's so emotional by the end. It's always some hugely tragic story.

• 2:20:32Griffin Newman?

  I was into it for the first two seasons because I was like, this is surprising that like Queer Eye can actually get to me. By season three, I was like, guys, we're pushing it. I'm out. This is too much.

• 2:20:41David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 2:20:41Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:20:41David Sims?

  It's so well made. I sympathize with it as, you know.

• 2:20:46Speaker 03

  I mean, the ultimate lesson of the newer Queer Eye is like, you know how you can fix someone's problem? Just throw a bunch of money at it.

• 2:20:52David Sims?

  Money. Get you a new house. And here's how you make an omelet, as I was saying.

• 2:20:57Speaker 03

  Oh, well, of course. And there's that, learning how to make an omelet.

• 2:21:00David Sims?

  It's just funny that in one week you can change someone's house, but you cannot teach someone to cook in one week. So fundamentally, you can probably just teach them to like make risotto.

• 2:21:09Griffin Newman?

  These spacemen seemingly changed the house in like two hours.

• 2:21:13Speaker 03

  Yeah. They've wrapped the whole fucking house in plastic.

• 2:21:16Griffin Newman?

  They transform everything. They set up their fucking labs. And it is, it is part of what makes this section so upsetting. And I feel like this is when children start to cry and like convulse, right? And I feel like I've told this story before, but I went to see this park on the lawn screening of E.T. with my then-girlfriend and Derek Simon, my oldest and best friend, often invoked, and his now-wife, I want to say. And we were sitting on a fucking towel next to young parents who had maybe a three-year-old. And this section starts, E.T. is gray, Elliot's on a bed next to him. They're both sick. They're reaching out to each other. The girl just starts losing it.

• 2:22:00Griffin Newman?

  And the father just very calmly says to her, don't worry. This is what happens to everyone when they watch this movie.

• 2:22:07David Sims?

  Right.

• 2:22:07Griffin Newman?

  And he said it with the right tone that actually consoled her of being like, you don't have to be scared. What you're feeling right now is normal.

• 2:22:15David Sims?

  Yeah. Yeah.

• 2:22:16Griffin Newman?

  This is shared and it was just like there, there, it has stuck with me, the profundity of watching that happen to strangers next to me and knowing that this movie just exists on that fucking like spectrum, but it is that thing of like, the spacemen are scary. It is scary that not only ET is dying, but so is Elliot. It is so much more intense than you expect this movie to get.

• 2:22:39David Sims?

  Right.

• 2:22:39Griffin Newman?

  Right? In terms of the threat, which is still kind of abstract. As you said, we don't really know what their designs are for ET. I don't think they're ill intentioned, but you just see like this movie is within spitting distance of becoming like horribly traumatic.

• 2:22:54David Sims?

  Um, it's very traumatic. Uh, it's very traumatic to watch Elliot suffer. And I do feel like that is the thing they're most worried about in a way.

• 2:23:03Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:23:04David Sims?

  There is a compassion to even the medical stuff where it's, it's scary.

• 2:23:08Griffin Newman?

  I think ET dying would make children upset, but Elliot also at risk of dying and it, it being the sort of like they're feeling each other's pain.

• 2:23:17David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 2:23:17Griffin Newman?

  Is what pushes it over the edge to being a profound like formative experience for children.

• 2:23:23David Sims?

  Um, but you know, Elliot, uh, ET like disconnects from Elliot consciously, clearly to kind of.

• 2:23:29Griffin Newman?

  Try to save.

• 2:23:30David Sims?

  Heal him.

• 2:23:31Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:23:31David Sims?

  Which works. Um, that's when Peter Coyote comes in, so we see his face, all that that we were talking about. And ET dies and is dead for a good 15 minutes. Like it's like, it's not just a sort of like, he's dead, he's back kind of thing. Like it's a long thing.

• 2:23:46Griffin Newman?

  15, it feels longer than it is.

• 2:23:48David Sims?

  I'm gonna look it up. Let's find out.

• 2:23:50Griffin Newman?

  Let's find out.

• 2:23:51David Sims?

  Because it's like ET, you know, it's the, it's the whole ET on the table. Let's try this, let's try this, let's shock him, right? Which is so visceral, especially when you're a kid.

• 2:23:59Griffin Newman?

  Oh my God, the moment that is just a true reaction where Drew Barrymore says she didn't know what a defibrillator was. So when they're taking it out, and this was a big thing. Spielberg was like, hire real doctors. The main doctor was his GP or his internalist, I think he said.

• 2:24:13David Sims?

  Sure.

• 2:24:13Griffin Newman?

  And he was just like, when you give actors medical dialogue, you can tell that they're trying to remember the jargon on the page.

• 2:24:20David Sims?

  Of course. I mean, it's unavoidable.

• 2:24:22Griffin Newman?

  And especially with this where it's like, you want to believe in the reality of actual doctors operating on a fucking alien. He was like, don't get actors, get real doctors, have them go through the routine of what they would really do. And so he just kind of let them run with that.

• 2:24:38David Sims?

  Right.

• 2:24:38Griffin Newman?

  And they take out the defibrillators. Drew Berman doesn't know what that is. She doesn't know what it's gonna do.

• 2:24:43David Sims?

  No, it's scary.

• 2:24:44Griffin Newman?

  And when you have that reaction shot where the shock goes through and she like shudders. She like jumps. That is just like a real captured moment.

• 2:24:54David Sims?

  It's about, it looks like, it's about 10 minutes.

• 2:24:57Griffin Newman?

  Thank you.

• 2:24:58David Sims?

  Uh, you're welcome.

• 2:24:59Griffin Newman?

  Um, much appreciated.

• 2:25:01David Sims?

  Although it's even ET's revival, of course, is slightly drawn out.

• 2:25:04Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:25:05David Sims?

  They put him in the fridge thingy. Elliot talks to him, it's so genuine and lovely.

• 2:25:09Griffin Newman?

  The flower.

• 2:25:10David Sims?

  And then he walks by, you know, he doesn't see the light. Then he sees the flower. He's like, double take on the flower. I'm just like, Spielberg really takes his time with it. He's really playing you, you know?

• 2:25:21Griffin Newman?

  Somehow so quickly backs into an incredibly funny sequence of Elliot now needing to cover the fact that ET is coming back to life.

• 2:25:29David Sims?

  Right.

• 2:25:30Griffin Newman?

  To now play sad.

• 2:25:32David Sims?

  He's so good though.

• 2:25:32Griffin Newman?

  Which I do think like helps children get through the rest of the movie. Like, the movie needs a 10 minute respite from emotional devastation.

• 2:25:41David Sims?

  And then it revs up into the fun of the car chase, the tube, disconnecting the tube.

• 2:25:47Griffin Newman?

  Empowered, they're getting away with this on their own, but it's like.

• 2:25:50David Sims?

  Barb isn't there though. That would really make it feel powerful.

• 2:25:54Griffin Newman?

  There are some stranger things happening in this movie, let's admit it.

• 2:25:57David Sims?

  Um, but, uh.

• 2:26:01Griffin Newman?

  They plan the great escape.

• 2:26:03David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 2:26:03Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:26:04Speaker 03

  And I love that their ability to get away because they can maneuver on bicycles.

• 2:26:12David Sims?

  Right.

• 2:26:12Speaker 03

  And the adults.

• 2:26:13David Sims?

  The neighborhood.

• 2:26:14Speaker 03

  They know the neighborhood, but the adults, even with all of their power and resources, are, are like completely proven.

• 2:26:22David Sims?

  Well, in the defense of the adults, they didn't know the bikes could fly.

• 2:26:26Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, that's true.

• 2:26:27David Sims?

  Because the whole magic of it is like, they're doing it, they're getting away, and then they, they're cutting through these developments that aren't even built yet, right? Which is really cool, like the sort of, you know, and they're sneaking all around and you're

• 2:26:36Griffin Newman?

  New Detroit.

• 2:26:36David Sims?

  So long and you're with it. And then you're like, they're fucked. You know, they're going down the hill and you're like, no!

• 2:26:41Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 2:26:42David Sims?

  They've got the blockade and they've got the guns.

• 2:26:44Speaker 03

  Well, that's the thing.

• 2:26:45David Sims?

  Which is so scary.

• 2:26:46Speaker 03

  We talked about earlier in the episode, when she literally says, like, they're kids, no guns.

• 2:26:51Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:26:52Speaker 03

  I really think that that is a powerful part of the story.

• 2:26:56Griffin Newman?

  I agree, and I think it is part of the core cowardice of replacing it with walkie talkies, where Spielberg in 2002 was like, is this a little too intense? And by 2003 was like, what the fuck am I talking about? Because the positioning is so specific, where it's like, you see them with guns, and then once the kids come into range, they are not aiming at the kids. When the kids fly overhead, the guns are basically being held out of the way.

• 2:27:20David Sims?

  No, they're not aiming at the kids, but it's terrifying that they have guns.

• 2:27:23Griffin Newman?

  It's terrifying that they have them, but the adults have the wherewithal to be like, I can't fucking shoot a kid, right? There is a sense of intensity that also doesn't feel like a threat of real harm, but it's the appropriate raising of stakes.

• 2:27:35Speaker 03

  And I'm biased because I had a run in where I was quite young, trespassing, and got in trouble with the cops, but had a very scary moment that I don't want to get into.

• 2:27:46Griffin Newman?

  Sure.

• 2:27:46Speaker 03

  And I just feel like their instinct is to have guns, is to protect themselves.

• 2:27:51David Sims?

  In this stupid country.

• 2:27:52Griffin Newman?

  That's what's scary, is that that's the immediate instinct.

• 2:27:54Speaker 03

  Right.

• 2:27:55Griffin Newman?

  Right?

• 2:27:55Speaker 03

  Like, the guy has a shotgun.

• 2:27:57Griffin Newman?

  But this is the other thing about this movie. The bubble of E.T. is so contained, that you're like, these aren't the spacemen, these are the local authorities, right? They don't really understand what's going on. That there's so little ripple effect of anyone who has any interaction with E.T. up until this point, that I think part of them having the guns cocked and loaded, but not even aiming them anywhere at the kids, is just like, what is this that's been called in? Five kids on a bicycle with a weird, like, bundle of blankets in the basket? And then so quickly, when the adults turn, it's like, the bikes start flying. And it's such a great heightening up of just like, the first bike ride moment, despite it giving us the iconic image,

• 2:28:41Griffin Newman?

  is so brief, is a small distance, basically just insulates what would be a crash off the cliff, right? You don't have the confidence that E.T. will be able to lift five bikes.

• 2:28:55David Sims?

  Uh, true. No, I mean, it's, yeah, it gets me every time. I just start sobbing.

• 2:29:00Griffin Newman?

  And he does the fucking eyes, like, basically editing, uh, um, truck in, right? He cuts three times to closer and closer.

• 2:29:11David Sims?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 2:29:12Griffin Newman?

  Shots of Elliot. Elliot's worried that he's not gonna fucking do it. There's the question of is ET too weak to pull off the fucking shit again? And then just the ET close up in the basket.

• 2:29:25Speaker 03

  He's wearing the little blanket over his head.

• 2:29:27David Sims?

  Looks like a little babushka.

• 2:29:29Griffin Newman?

  Can I say it?

• 2:29:31Griffin Newman?

  Is this the greatest blankie movie of all time?

• 2:29:33David Sims?

  Well, people already, I think, are floating that in the Reddit.

• 2:29:36Griffin Newman?

  I'm stealing it from the Reddit.

• 2:29:37David Sims?

  Uh, very good stuff.

• 2:29:39Griffin Newman?

  And then they fly and you cry.

• 2:29:41David Sims?

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:29:41Speaker 03

  I cry for sure, too.

• 2:29:45Griffin Newman?

  It is, you can tell, A, watching it academically, right? Studying it intensely. You can see in the lead to the sequence, the shots where it is clearly an adult stunt double doing the bike riding. In Elliot's sweatshirt.

• 2:30:01David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 2:30:01Griffin Newman?

  And you can see in the kids flying, the shots where it is clearly little stop motion puppets. There is not like an invisibility of the effect, and yet the emotion.

• 2:30:11David Sims?

  I'm gonna tell you, the impact is invisible for me. I don't know what you're talking about.

• 2:30:15Griffin Newman?

  That's what I'm saying. I'm like, I'm watching it, trying to break it down, and I recognize the techniques. But that's me, like, putting my fucking no fun goggles on.

• 2:30:24David Sims?

  No fun.

• 2:30:24Griffin Newman?

  Because it is so perfectly constructed that you don't question any of it.

• 2:30:31Griffin Newman?

  When they did the re-release in IMAX a couple of years ago, I think it was 2022, I went to see it with our friends, Jordan Fish and Ray Tintori, and I believe I texted you right afterwards, and I said, here's a take. Is ET the greatest example of an already great film that is somehow improved most exponentially by the score?

• 2:30:51David Sims?

  I mean, maybe.

• 2:30:52Griffin Newman?

  You can think of movies that are like mediocre and the score makes it like a seven.

• 2:31:07Griffin Newman?

  So the first.

• 2:31:08David Sims?

  You like that part?

• 2:31:10Griffin Newman?

  Yeah. The first use of the flying theme is the first time he flies. The second time is when he comes back to life under observation. Sure. Right? They do a quieter version of it. And then this is when it really repels up. This is one 15-minute track. On the soundtrack, I think it has three slashes in its title. Because this is basically 15 minutes of unbroken music that cover the entire final section. Right? It is titled, excuse me, Escape slash Chase slash Saying Goodbye. It is everything from them leaving the home to the end credits, to black. And then end credits is his own theme. Williams said it was a very complicated piece because it responds so directly to so many moments, has to sync up to specific images and beats.

• 2:31:55Griffin Newman?

  Right? It has to go through all these different moments of like expression. And it's 15 sustained minutes, which is just an endurance test for all the musicians. And this is peak full orchestra, you know, like a fucking 1,000 violins and the drums and everything. And they tried scoring it a couple of times and it kept on being off. And they're doing it to picture. They have the movie locked in a cut that Spielberg likes. And Williams kept being like, it's a little off. We're not hitting all the beats. I don't want to have to stitch it together in post. Let's try it again. And Spielberg says, let's turn the screen off.

• 2:32:32Griffin Newman?

  Just play it for 15 minutes. Sure. You folks just feel it. Don't worry about the image. Play the piece as John has written in the most emotionally connected way you can, and I will re-edit the movie around it. Because Spielberg in that moment was like, this shit is fucking gold. And I don't want a worse version of the Williams track just because it fits my edit. It's easier for me to futz the fucking edit. There you go. Based on their timing. Good for him. And he was like, it was the only sort of editing pass he did at that point was just to adjust that a little bit. And he was like, and he did. He had to do like five little shiftings of things. It gave him a couple of new ideas, but basically he was like, just give this to me as if it's a fixed piece of classical music, and I will now edit to it as if it is a pre-existing track.

• 2:33:18Griffin Newman?

  And it is just astonishing. There is, you know, you have everyone getting to the ship in the woods, right? Everyone coming together at this moment, realizing they're going to have to say goodbye to ET. This dialogue that is incredible that I will get to in a moment. Okay.

• 2:33:35Griffin Newman?

  But like the score is swelling and building and building up to him walking up the ramp. Right? The door irising in on him and then it gets quiet. And you're like, oh, right. Well, the score hit the absolute peak of what it could do. And now it's going down to a settled mode. And yet, when the ship starts taking off, Williams ramps it up again. And within 60 seconds gets it bigger than it was 60 seconds earlier. When you thought it had hit its peak and it just feels it keeps on transcending and hitting a new plateau. As he's just like getting so much mileage out of these fucking closeups. That are every actor having a different but incredibly specific, personal response to it.

• 2:34:17David Sims?

  Dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun. Um, I want to point out a problem in the Wikipedia.

• 2:34:23Griffin Newman?

  Okay, do it.

• 2:34:24David Sims?

  Says that ET places his glowing finger on Elliot's heart and tells him he'll always be there. No, he doesn't. Puts it on his head.

• 2:34:30Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, puts it on his head.

• 2:34:31David Sims?

  Come on now, Wikipedia. Not heart. It would be lame if it was heart. Because ET doesn't know about human concepts of like, oh, our heart is kind of like, you know, a metaphor for our emotions. He's like, no, you'll remember me.

• 2:34:44Griffin Newman?

  Sure. Right.

• 2:34:45David Sims?

  Yeah, he does.

• 2:34:46Griffin Newman?

  I'll be right here.

• 2:34:49David Sims?

  Baby.

• 2:34:49Griffin Newman?

  Good ass baby. Um, here are the two things in the score that get me the most.

• 2:34:54David Sims?

  Okay.

• 2:34:55Griffin Newman?

  Very hyper-specific things.

• 2:34:57David Sims?

  Okay.

• 2:34:57Griffin Newman?

  One is at the start of the bike chase, when the strings just start going fucking crazy. Right? It's like, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da. Like, oh, my God, they're getting away with it. And the second is just the bum, bum, bum, bum of the finale.

• 2:35:11David Sims?

  Wicked. That's what I was just saying. I said that.

• 2:35:13Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 2:35:13David Sims?

  The timpani.

• 2:35:14Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 2:35:15David Sims?

  That's why Wicked rocks.

• 2:35:17Speaker 03

  Should we get Timpani's for the office?

• 2:35:18David Sims?

  Yes. We should have every episode. Bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum. Every time. So good. Yes. I mean, I love it. I love the ending. I love the triumph of it. I think. You know, it's not quite the Titanic level of you send everyone out happy in a sad movie. Because E T isn't a sad movie.

• 2:35:41Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:35:41David Sims?

  E T is a melancholy movie, whereas sort of, you know, you cry at the end. But I do think you just exit with a pep in your stack because of the music.

• 2:35:50Griffin Newman?

  Well.

• 2:35:51Speaker 03

  Jesus, tympanis are expensive.

• 2:35:53David Sims?

  Oh, yeah. Those things, yeah, they're expensive. How much do they cost?

• 2:35:56Griffin Newman?

  Well.

• 2:35:56David Sims?

  You got like forty dollar tympani at Walmart or whatever.

• 2:35:59Griffin Newman?

  Just one is five grand.

• 2:36:00David Sims?

  Yeah, but they're big.

• 2:36:01Speaker 03

  Shit.

• 2:36:03David Sims?

  We would only need one, to be clear. We don't need two.

• 2:36:05Griffin Newman?

  No, I, I, yes, we don't.

• 2:36:06Speaker 03

  What do you look at a whole set?

• 2:36:08Griffin Newman?

  Give me a second.

• 2:36:09David Sims?

  What are you, what, I'm giving you a second?

• 2:36:11Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:36:13David Sims?

  Okay. What, what are you doing?

• 2:36:15Griffin Newman?

  I'm just looking at as it is written in the script, okay? And this must feel like goofy shit to write and takes a lot of confidence to be like, no, this is exactly what it should be. E T, come. Elliot, stay. E T, ouch. Elliot, ouch.

• 2:36:32David Sims?

  Sure.

• 2:36:33Griffin Newman?

  I'll be right here.

• 2:36:34David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 2:36:35Griffin Newman?

  Bye.

• 2:36:36David Sims?

  Bye.

• 2:36:36Griffin Newman?

  I mean, that's like masterful shit that defies.

• 2:36:40David Sims?

  All there, the way they talk throughout the movie is so beautiful.

• 2:36:44Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 2:36:45David Sims?

  Where they're just kind of echoing each other and you're just feeling their connect. It is, it's beautiful.

• 2:36:49Griffin Newman?

  But the dialogue in this movie never like explains the themes.

• 2:36:53David Sims?

  Yes, that's why it's good.

• 2:36:54Griffin Newman?

  It never underlies them. It is, it, it, yeah, yeah.

• 2:36:58David Sims?

  One, there's one time when Michael kind of just says it explicitly.

• 2:37:02Griffin Newman?

  Uh huh.

• 2:37:02David Sims?

  Like Elliot feel like, you know, does to the adults or whatever. And it's fine because you need him to tell the adults.

• 2:37:08Griffin Newman?

  Someone to tell them.

• 2:37:08David Sims?

  But it's almost, you almost wish she didn't have to, like.

• 2:37:11Griffin Newman?

  But also the divorce movie part of this, I think the father is directly invoked two times, right? There is the like, well, you should call your father about this. And he says like, what, she's in Mexico with Cindy or whatever?

• 2:37:23David Sims?

  Yeah. And she, the mom is really upset because, and then coming back to the table and says he has, he hates Mexico.

• 2:37:29Griffin Newman?

  And Gertie says, what's Mexico?

• 2:37:30David Sims?

  Gertie says, what's Mexico? But Michael, again, Robert McNaughton, the most underrated performance in this movie, is really affected because he's the most mature.

• 2:37:38Griffin Newman?

  He gets it.

• 2:37:39David Sims?

  And he says to Elliot, like, can't you think about anyone else for a second?

• 2:37:42Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 2:37:42David Sims?

  You know, like you. Don't say that in front of her.

• 2:37:44Griffin Newman?

  And then there's

• 2:37:45David Sims?

  It's just gonna upset her.

• 2:37:45Griffin Newman?

  The one later moment where they sort of bemoan the, the end of the experiences that they used to have specifically with their father, going to the ballgames, you know, popcorn.

• 2:37:54David Sims?

  Yeah, that moment I don't like because again, it's just a li- like it was like, hey, remember when dad would go buy us popcorn? Where I'm like, do we need to say that? We know you miss your dad, but it's fine.

• 2:38:04Griffin Newman?

  It's literally only twice in the entire movie.

• 2:38:06David Sims?

  It's only twice. Um, so it's a good movie that ends well.

• 2:38:12Griffin Newman?

  Well, hold on, I want to say this.

• 2:38:14David Sims?

  What do you want to say?

• 2:38:15Griffin Newman?

  These final shots, the faces, right? Like Dee Wallace is kind of like overcome with emotion, but is sort of laughing. The boys, you know, like Michael and his gang are all kind of like looking up in awe. There is this like, whoa, this is cool. Gertie is kind of just like completely emotionally overwhelmed in a way that feels like, what if you told a four year old their pet died, you know? You're like emotionally beside yourself, but also can't really intellectually process it. Elliot is like borderline stoic. His eyes are full of tears. He's making these adjustments in his face, but he is like, not clenched jaw. But this final shot, what just kind of knocks me out and is the thing that every single time makes me cry as the drums are going.

• 2:38:58Griffin Newman?

  Is that this final shot is Henry Thomas in real time, over 20 seconds, starting to process. Right? Like that's what's on there. Everyone else has like a clear emotional response to what's going on. And Elliot is looking up and just being like, okay.

• 2:39:17David Sims?

  Right.

• 2:39:18Griffin Newman?

  So this is my life now. This is who I am. This is what has happened to me and what happens next. And is what Spielberg said always stopped him when he was trying to come up with fucking sequel ideas is like, what could I possibly say that is more impactful than ending on the note of Elliot not knowing how he moves past this? Not as like a core trauma that he'll never get over, but you do go like, if you've had this experience for a week of your life, then what the fuck is your life like as an adult after this?

• 2:39:47David Sims?

  Well, what happens is

• 2:39:48Griffin Newman?

  I don't think he's cursed.

• 2:39:49David Sims?

  Of course, we don't see it, but it's safe to assume that the government shows up, arrests the entire family, locks them up for the rest of their lives. It's possible that it happens.

• 2:39:58Griffin Newman?

  There's a terrible fucking commercial that Lance Accord directed with Henry Thomas that I hate and I think is sacrilegious. Where it's like, he comes back and it's like, thank God, I've been waiting for you. And it's so fucking maudlin and bullshit. But I think part of what like the difference between Wicked, which is like, well, we know this is half a story and we know where the story is going and whatever. The like, lack of answers at the end of E.T. I agree with you that the ending is so emotionally triumphant, you do walk out feeling something, but it's not a clean ending.

• 2:40:27David Sims?

  I'm not comparing the ending of E.T. and Wicked in any way, except they had tympani.

• 2:40:33Griffin Newman?

  You earlier said, I said, but Wicked ends with a sense of a cliffhanger and E.T. doesn't. And you said, E.T. is unresolved, but I'm like, staying in the unresolved portion is the point.

• 2:40:44David Sims?

  I'm just saying more movies should end with fucking triumphant orchestral music. Because movies are good.

• 2:40:51Griffin Newman?

  Yes, I agree.

• 2:40:52David Sims?

  People should just end with like, what's a really dumb movie? What's like a really dumb movie?

• 2:40:56Griffin Newman?

  Dumb and Dumber.

• 2:40:57David Sims?

  Yeah. Exactly. Should everyone, bum, bum, bum, bum.

• 2:41:00Griffin Newman?

  Okay, but what about Dumb and Dumber 2?

• 2:41:02David Sims?

  Bum, bum, bum, gay E.T. bum, bum, bum, which by the way, obviously should be the.

• 2:41:07Griffin Newman?

  Here's what I think more movies should do.

• 2:41:09David Sims?

  What?

• 2:41:09Griffin Newman?

  Have five E.T.s, each who represent a different area of self-improvement, culture, food.

• 2:41:14David Sims?

  Yes, that's true.

• 2:41:15Griffin Newman?

  Interior design.

• 2:41:16David Sims?

  E, e.

• 2:41:17Griffin Newman?

  Style.

• 2:41:17David Sims?

  Uh, e, queer.

• 2:41:19Griffin Newman?

  Grooming?

• 2:41:20David Sims?

  Queer, uh, yeah. Anyway, um, E.T.

• 2:41:24Griffin Newman?

  E.T.

• 2:41:24David Sims?

  Premiers at the, as a closing film of the Cannes Film Festival.

• 2:41:28Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 2:41:29David Sims?

  So I would say that suggests at this point, like you're saying, Universal knows they got something. They're not just putting it out, like, you know.

• 2:41:36Griffin Newman?

  Their thing is, as I repeat, their thing is, we show this movie to audiences and it fucking works. The response is undeniable. The question is if we can get people to go. How do we convince them to leave their home and take a chance on it when the movie's being sold as a tiny bit of a mystery box?

• 2:41:53David Sims?

  Sure. I mean, this is all a little bit, these documentaries all sorts of say, oh, the deck was stacked against me, Steven Spielberg.

• 2:42:00Griffin Newman?

  It wasn't stacked against it, but he was just saying like, you know, Jaws, Close Encounter, whatever. Like Raiders, he was like, this shit's gonna fucking work.

• 2:42:08David Sims?

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:42:09Griffin Newman?

  And he does say that the Cannes screening was the greatest emotional response he has ever had.

• 2:42:13David Sims?

  Standing O, everyone freaks out. Francois Truffaut sends him a telegram that says, you belong here more than me. Which is a line from Close Encounters, which he says, will never be equaled.

• 2:42:23Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:42:24David Sims?

  Uh, it opened in theaters in June. Uh, June 11th, 1982, and it made 359 million dollars, which is the most movie money a movie had made at that point, domestic.

• 2:42:35Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 2:42:35David Sims?

  Obviously not adjusted for inflation or whatever, but.

• 2:42:37Griffin Newman?

  But it basically holds that record until 1997.

• 2:42:39David Sims?

  Until, no, until Jurassic Park. Jurassic Park beats it.

• 2:42:42Griffin Newman?

  Doesn't Jurassic Park beat it worldwide but not domestic? I know we cover this.

• 2:42:45David Sims?

  Fucking no!

• 2:42:46Griffin Newman?

  We cover this in the Jurassic episode. We'll get to it, but I think that's what happened. And then I believe domestically ET is only dethroned by the Star Wars re-release adding on to the grand total of Star Wars in 1997. That's what I believe to be the truth.

• 2:43:02David Sims?

  This, I don't know. I guess maybe it's a worldwide thing. I have no idea, but Jurassic Park is listed as beating it.

• 2:43:07Griffin Newman?

  You folks will hear it settled in the Jurassic Park episode.

• 2:43:09David Sims?

  Um, and, uh, it's a hit. Uh, it does break through a sort of kid movie ceiling.

• 2:43:15Griffin Newman?

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:43:16David Sims?

  Um, that was seen to exist or whatever and, you know, and all that. Um, it's nominated for nine Oscars. It wins for Gandhi, wins Best Picture and Best Director.

• 2:43:26Griffin Newman?

  Rude.

• 2:43:26David Sims?

  And Best Actor.

• 2:43:27Griffin Newman?

  Rude!

• 2:43:28David Sims?

  Wow, that was a, you know.

• 2:43:30Griffin Newman?

  ET wasn't even nominated.

• 2:43:32David Sims?

  Uh, for acting.

• 2:43:33Griffin Newman?

  Correct.

• 2:43:33David Sims?

  No.

• 2:43:33Griffin Newman?

  And he gives a beautiful, sensitive performance in the film.

• 2:43:36David Sims?

  He does, he does. Uh, and, uh, they made a wonderful video game for the Atari, of course, that had no problems with it whatsoever.

• 2:43:44Griffin Newman?

  You know the Atari video game thing, right Ben?

• 2:43:46David Sims?

  You know, you must know that Ben.

• 2:43:47Speaker 03

  Oh, the really shitty game.

• 2:43:49David Sims?

  Where they made way too much of it because they were like, everyone's gonna buy it. It was like the worst game of all time.

• 2:43:53Griffin Newman?

  It sucks. It's basically unplayable. They dug a big hole and buried all the games there. It's helped into destruction of the environment. It kind of is the beginning of the end for Atari.

• 2:44:00David Sims?

  Yeah, it's beyond the beginning of the end for Atari. It's right. It's the code for Atari.

• 2:44:04Griffin Newman?

  But they stake everything on like, people are going to want to play ET. No matter what, we slap ET on a cartridge and people will buy it. And instead it like destabilizes the entire planet.

• 2:44:14Speaker 03

  And I think they like made one guy like program it in like such a short amount of time.

• 2:44:20David Sims?

  They had no time, exactly.

• 2:44:21Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, it's a perfect, dare I say it, boondoggle.

• 2:44:24David Sims?

  Um, you know, the, right, they improve on it in every way with the Xfinity commercial. That's a better film than ET.

• 2:44:31Griffin Newman?

  Touching work.

• 2:44:31David Sims?

  Right, and they're gonna improve again on it with gay ET, which is essentially ET3.

• 2:44:35Griffin Newman?

  Right, our film, which by the way, trademark, registered copyright.

• 2:44:38David Sims?

  Exactly, call me.

• 2:44:39Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:44:40David Sims?

  Obviously, right, there is this book, The Green Planet, or whatever, this, this kind of sequel novelization where Spielberg's like, let's leave it there.

• 2:44:48Griffin Newman?

  Professor, he's a good character.

• 2:44:49David Sims?

  Is he?

• 2:44:50Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:44:50David Sims?

  Is he now?

• 2:44:51Griffin Newman?

  PTR has really reclaimed him as one of their own.

• 2:44:53David Sims?

  Oh, I'm glad.

• 2:44:54Griffin Newman?

  And then made March of Botanikush, who's the stoner version of Botanikus.

• 2:44:59David Sims?

  Um, I would say with ET, okay, the ride is great, you guys like the ride, but generally with ET, it does seem like any attempts to do more ET were almost a folly. The game, the sequel ideas, uh, the remastering, you know, the 20th anniversary edition. Just leave ETB, Spielberg has been wise enough to do that.

• 2:45:18Griffin Newman?

  Yes, and he did an interview recently where he said he was scared in the wake of its success because he actually didn't have the contractual power to stop them from making it, but he had to implore them and he like-

• 2:45:29David Sims?

  And he had such growing clout that he could, obviously.

• 2:45:32Griffin Newman?

  And he said, you know, I went to-

• 2:45:33David Sims?

  Whereas with Jaws, he didn't have that power, they make a bunch of shitty sequels. Although people got so mad at me for saying they were shitty and I got so many texts from me thinking, Jaws 2 is good.

• 2:45:41Griffin Newman?

  Everyone cares about the Jaws.

• 2:45:42Speaker 03

  I mean, this is very recent.

• 2:45:44Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 2:45:44Speaker 03

  This is like two years ago.

• 2:45:46David Sims?

  He was just talking about it.

• 2:45:47Griffin Newman?

  With Drew Barrymore at the 92nd Street Y, which was a surprise event, it was supposed to be Meryl Streep doing Out of Africa.

• 2:45:54David Sims?

  Sounds like a snooze.

• 2:45:55Griffin Newman?

  As part of a like-

• 2:45:57David Sims?

  That, I think is-

• 2:45:58Griffin Newman?

  TCM 92nd Street Y crossover.

• 2:46:00David Sims?

  It's, it's the 40th anniversary, 30th, 40th anniversary.

• 2:46:03Griffin Newman?

  Right, so, uh, they, um-

• 2:46:06David Sims?

  They just subbed in Spielberg.

• 2:46:07Griffin Newman?

  She couldn't travel because of, I think, the California fires.

• 2:46:09David Sims?

  Sure.

• 2:46:10Griffin Newman?

  And they like announced at the last second, we're so sorry, Meryl Streep can't make it, we're replacing your event with an ET screening with Steven Spielberg and Drew Barrymore, which is maybe the greatest plus up of all time.

• 2:46:20David Sims?

  Bit of an upgrade.

• 2:46:21Griffin Newman?

  Um, but he said, and, and I heard him told other versions of the story, the interesting thing about watching the fucking Blu-rays for this movie is like every five or 10 years they do another anniversary edition of this film, so there's like all this legacy spec- Special feature shit. That's him commenting on it from like 10th anniversary, 15th, 20th, 25th, 30th. Right? Like you see the same stories evolve with more and more distance. But he said basically that they were like, could we please get a sequel? He earnestly tried. He developed some of the green planet stuff and then he goes back to them and he was like, guys, nothing I'm gonna give you is better than that. There's no ending better than what we just had. I really think we should have the confidence to step away and go, we made a perfect movie. And he was like, I respected that they.

• 2:47:04David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 2:47:04Griffin Newman?

  They, they accepted it.

• 2:47:06David Sims?

  Knew that. Yeah. Uh, you know, he is about to enter a bit of a funny period.

• 2:47:12Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:47:13David Sims?

  With Twilight Zone, Temple of Doom, Color Purple Empire, The Sun, Last Crusade, Always Hook. It's his softest, you know, underbelly kind of period.

• 2:47:22Griffin Newman?

  Awkward transitional period that doesn't produce bad movies, but produces weird movies and certainly films that have weird responses after E T is like such a fucking undeniable triumph in all.

• 2:47:34David Sims?

  To the point that he's like you two, I think of Spielberg is like you two in so many ways of like, when he's making Jurassic Park and Schindler's List. He's like, we're, I'm auditioning for my comeback in a way. And it's like, but you're still famous. And it's like, yeah, but like nonetheless, I kinda need to prove myself in this weird way.

• 2:47:50Griffin Newman?

  Well, we said in 1941 episode.

• 2:47:52David Sims?

  You two for Ben.

• 2:47:53Griffin Newman?

  Okay, yeah, sure. In the 1941 episode, we say that movie feels like Spielberg having the yips from how much success he's already experienced and trying to fuck up on purpose so he can break his own like streak that would become a burden for him were it to last longer. Sustained, right?

• 2:48:10David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 2:48:11Griffin Newman?

  It doesn't feel like he's doing that in the post E T run, but it does feel like he is like, this is the best version of this movie I'm ever gonna make. I can't keep doing versions of this. I have to morph. I have to evolve. I have to try other stuff. I have to branch out.

• 2:48:27David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 2:48:27Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:48:28David Sims?

  Um.

• 2:48:29Griffin Newman?

  And yet.

• 2:48:30David Sims?

  Weird. I just got an album downloaded on my phone.

• 2:48:37Griffin Newman?

  It is funny to think.

• 2:48:39David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 2:48:40Griffin Newman?

  That we are a year away from another Spielberg alien movie.

• 2:48:43David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 2:48:44Griffin Newman?

  Which will now be his first in 20 years.

• 2:48:46David Sims?

  Uh, first and fourth of the worlds.

• 2:48:47Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:48:48David Sims?

  Are we saying like, he hasn't made anything alieny since then, right? Um.

• 2:48:53Griffin Newman?

  And Coleman Domingo gave an interview and they were like, what can you say about it? And he said like six things that would apply to E T.

• 2:48:58David Sims?

  It's true. He's, I mean, he's overselling me. I'm worried. I'm so. Hyped now and Coleman Domingo, I feel like is such a sort of.

• 2:49:04Griffin Newman?

  The greatest showman?

• 2:49:05David Sims?

  Right, exactly. I'm worried he's getting me too hyped, but I'm very hyped for whatever that is.

• 2:49:10Griffin Newman?

  I'm excited in the way of like, I kind of trust that Spielberg would not make another Alien movie unless he really had a reason. That there's something new he wants to do or say from a different perspective.

• 2:49:22David Sims?

  E T opens number one at the box office, June 11th, 1982. Griffin, number two, the box office is another science fiction film. A sequel.

• 2:49:30Griffin Newman?

  It's a sequel.

• 2:49:31David Sims?

  It's a great film.

• 2:49:32Griffin Newman?

  Star Trek to the Wrath of Khan?

• 2:49:33David Sims?

  That's right.

• 2:49:34Griffin Newman?

  How many weeks it had been out?

• 2:49:35David Sims?

  Two.

• 2:49:36Griffin Newman?

  Okay.

• 2:49:36David Sims?

  Came out the week before.

• 2:49:37Griffin Newman?

  So it had one week. I feel like.

• 2:49:38David Sims?

  That movie's a big hit.

• 2:49:39Griffin Newman?

  This summer is a little notorious for a lot of high profile flops where other studios were just like, E T was a fucking buzzsaw. It like sucked up all the oxygen.

• 2:49:49David Sims?

  Huh. I mean, that Wrath of Khan, obviously is a big hit. I'm trying to think of what's coming.

• 2:49:53Griffin Newman?

  Tron comes out this summer and does okay.

• 2:49:56David Sims?

  Runner, The Thing.

• 2:49:58Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 2:49:58David Sims?

  Tron is probably a good example. Yeah, I'm looking through, I'm like, I'm looking, I'm going ahead.

• 2:50:03Griffin Newman?

  And a lot of those movies are darker, more mature.

• 2:50:06David Sims?

  But they're also genre movies that are, it's just kind of people clearly are like, well, I could also just see E T again, you know?

• 2:50:12Griffin Newman?

  People are just like chasing the dragon of E T and being like, you know what? If I buy a ticket to E T, the end is going to make me feel like a trillion dollars again.

• 2:50:20David Sims?

  Beastmaster.

• 2:50:22Griffin Newman?

  Sure.

• 2:50:22David Sims?

  Uh, number three at the box office is a sequel. Uh, we did a box office game for a future episode recently that was like sort of six weeks in advance of this one. Uh, and this sequel was in that box office.

• 2:50:32Griffin Newman?

  Oh, fuck. Yeah. And this episode we recorded yesterday. I'm already forgetting. It's kind of crazy how quickly I do the complete brain dump the second we finish the record.

• 2:50:43David Sims?

  Yeah. I mean, it's not, it's not a big deal that you don't remember this. It's a big sequel.

• 2:50:47Griffin Newman?

  We do a lot of episodes. It's a big sequel in 1982.

• 2:50:50David Sims?

  Yep.

• 2:50:51Griffin Newman?

  And it's a three. Not a trek, it's a three. And give me the genre again?

• 2:50:57David Sims?

  Um, Mr. T is in this film.

• 2:50:59Griffin Newman?

  Oh, it's Rocky III?

• 2:51:00David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 2:51:00Griffin Newman?

  The genre is movie with Mr. T in it.

• 2:51:02David Sims?

  Yes, he puties the fool.

• 2:51:04Griffin Newman?

  He does, he does in fact.

• 2:51:05Speaker 03

  He has.

• 2:51:06David Sims?

  Yeah, or is Mr. T in Rocky II? No, he's in Rocky III.

• 2:51:08Griffin Newman?

  He's in Rocky III, Clubber Lang. Rocky II is Apollo Creed again.

• 2:51:11David Sims?

  Yeah, and Rocky III is Clubber Lang, but Thunder Lips is also.

• 2:51:15Griffin Newman?

  Is in Rocky III, they're both in Rocky III.

• 2:51:17David Sims?

  Rocky III rocks, great movie.

• 2:51:18Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:51:18David Sims?

  Uh, not as good as.

• 2:51:20Griffin Newman?

  It's Rocky's.

• 2:51:21David Sims?

  Well, maybe it is as good as the other sequels. I don't know, they're all kind of good, except for five, which is kind of bad.

• 2:51:25Griffin Newman?

  It's a little light on, uh, robot wives.

• 2:51:28David Sims?

  Sure. Uh, number four at the box office is.

• 2:51:31Griffin Newman?

  Talking about the most cowardly shit of all time, when Stallone did his recut of Rocky IV and was like, I took out the robot, and I'm like, that's the best thing you ever did was having Paulie basically fall in love with a robot.

• 2:51:40David Sims?

  That is true, that is a great thing that happens in Rocky IV, a film that is forty-two minutes long and nonetheless has a room for that plot.

• 2:51:46Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 2:51:47David Sims?

  Uh, no, and it's like mostly montages and then like, you know, two big fights and a robot.

• 2:51:52Griffin Newman?

  The implication that Paulie fucks the robot, that they give him a robot who's like, he'll help you around the house, then the robot starts acting like a fifties housewife, and then Paulie starts implying that he puts his dick in the robot.

• 2:52:02David Sims?

  Well, you know what? You gotta put it somewhere, Paulie, I guess. I don't know. Number four at the box office is.

• 2:52:07Speaker 03

  That's a classic, uh, David Sims, The Atlantean.

• 2:52:10David Sims?

  Let's move on. Uh, number four at the box office is a film that came out one week before that is produced by Steven Spielberg and is kind of being underpucked by being released against E.T.

• 2:52:19Griffin Newman?

  But this is my point, Michael Caine had to cut one or the other.

• 2:52:22David Sims?

  Sure.

• 2:52:23Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:52:23David Sims?

  Uh, I still think that's MGM fucking up releasing Poltergeist then, but Poltergeist was obviously a solid hit.

• 2:52:29Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 2:52:29David Sims?

  But not an E.T.-sized hit.

• 2:52:31Griffin Newman?

  No, but you know what, uh, is an E.T.-sized hit? Less than twenty movies in history?

• 2:52:36David Sims?

  Sure. Uh, number.

• 2:52:38Griffin Newman?

  If you adjust for inflation, it's like five? Yeah, anyway, I don't know, go on.

• 2:52:41David Sims?

  Number five at the box office is a sequel, uh, opening new this week, A Legendary Bomb. Any classic, why on earth would you make a sequel to that movie? And then, of course, when you learn what the sequel is, you're like, well, why would you do that?

• 2:52:57Griffin Newman?

  Well, it's not The Sting Two.

• 2:52:58David Sims?

  No, but it's kind of like that.

• 2:53:00Griffin Newman?

  It's not Butch Cassidy and the Sun, no, that was a TV movie.

• 2:53:03David Sims?

  That's a TV movie.

• 2:53:03Griffin Newman?

  Uh, but it's, it's, it's kind of like that. It's a sequel.

• 2:53:09Griffin Newman?

  With a bad take?

• 2:53:10David Sims?

  No, it doesn't have a bad take. It's just like, none of the stars from the old movie are in it.

• 2:53:14Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, so it's Sting 2-y in that way.

• 2:53:17David Sims?

  Yeah, that's what I mean.

• 2:53:17Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, huh. None of the stars are... When was the original from?

• 2:53:21David Sims?

  Uh, the original from 1978.

• 2:53:24Griffin Newman?

  Okay.

• 2:53:25David Sims?

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:53:26Griffin Newman?

  Hmm.

• 2:53:26David Sims?

  Uh, it's got a great, great actress in it, making one of her first, uh, giving one of her first performances.

• 2:53:32Griffin Newman?

  It's not a Jaws sequel?

• 2:53:33David Sims?

  No.

• 2:53:33Griffin Newman?

  It's not. Is it, is it King Kong Lives?

• 2:53:36David Sims?

  No.

• 2:53:37Griffin Newman?

  That was a good guess, though. Linda Hamilton?

• 2:53:38David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 2:53:39Griffin Newman?

  Yeah. It's got a great actress giving one of her first performances.

• 2:53:43David Sims?

  Mm-hmm. She sings a great song.

• 2:53:44Griffin Newman?

  In 1982, she sings a great song and the movie stinks.

• 2:53:48Speaker 03

  Grease 2.

• 2:53:49David Sims?

  Correct! Michelle Pfeiffer.

• 2:53:51Griffin Newman?

  Ben.

• 2:53:51David Sims?

  I wanna Cool-Woo-Woo-Rider.

• 2:53:53Griffin Newman?

  Good job on that.

• 2:53:54David Sims?

  Cool-Rider.

• 2:53:56Griffin Newman?

  But now people love Grease 2. It's been reclaimed.

• 2:53:58David Sims?

  Yeah, but it's a piece of shit. But Cool-Rider rocks. What?

• 2:54:01Griffin Newman?

  Super yackie's gonna fucking come for your head.

• 2:54:03David Sims?

  Oh, boy. Uh, number six at the box office is a film that I'm guessing is not a dark drama.

• 2:54:10Griffin Newman?

  Hmm.

• 2:54:10David Sims?

  But I'm, I have to look it up because I actually don't know what it is. Oh, wait, I do know what it is, of course. It is Gene Wilder and Gilda Radner in?

• 2:54:17Griffin Newman?

  Hanky Panky?

• 2:54:17David Sims?

  Hanky Panky.

• 2:54:18Griffin Newman?

  Great title.

• 2:54:19David Sims?

  But it would be funny if that was like, I'm like, what's Hanky Panky? But it's like, oh, it's about the Holocaust. Oh, Jesus.

• 2:54:23Griffin Newman?

  Okay.

• 2:54:23David Sims?

  No, it's about, uh, it's sort of like a, I've never seen it. It's like a sort of jokey mystery movie?

• 2:54:28Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:54:28David Sims?

  Yeah. Okay. Cool. Is it any good?

• 2:54:31Griffin Newman?

  It's okay.

• 2:54:32David Sims?

  It sounds like it's bad.

• 2:54:33Griffin Newman?

  Eh, it's fine.

• 2:54:34David Sims?

  Uh, number seven at the box office is Porky's.

• 2:54:37Griffin Newman?

  Sure.

• 2:54:37David Sims?

  The Canadian softcore comedy that swept the nation.

• 2:54:41Griffin Newman?

  Talk about having to put your dick somewhere. Was it the?

• 2:54:44David Sims?

  It's so weird that they put their dicks through the holes in the wall.

• 2:54:48Griffin Newman?

  It is.

• 2:54:49David Sims?

  I guess, I guess they're stupid horny teenagers, but it's like, you're looking through them.

• 2:54:54Griffin Newman?

  Exactly. And I never have.

• 2:54:56David Sims?

  What do you think's going to happen?

• 2:54:57Speaker 03

  And yet unfortunately created a weird genre of pornography.

• 2:55:01Griffin Newman?

  Hmm. Yeah. What happens? Some mean lady yanks it, right? Isn't that the bit that they're like, oh, the hot girls in the shower will do something nice? And then like a fucking lunch lady comes in and is like, "Ah!" Schoolmarm or whatever?

• 2:55:14David Sims?

  Porky's made 109 domestic. It was crazy.

• 2:55:16Griffin Newman?

  Was it the number two or three movie that's here?

• 2:55:18David Sims?

  It was right up there. I'm not sure where it was, but...

• 2:55:20Griffin Newman?

  It's what, this is what I love in these like 70s, 80s years where like the modern blockbuster and films hitting these kinds of crazy numbers are first forming? Is you'll be like, the number one movie of the year is Star Wars and the number two movie of the year is Smokey and the Bandit? You know, there's like a huge gulf between the two?

• 2:55:38Speaker 03

  I'm trying to make a joke where it's like, it's aged like uranium, like it's, it's like so radioactive.

• 2:55:44Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:55:44Speaker 03

  Do you, I don't, I don't really know how to do it.

• 2:55:46Griffin Newman?

  There are three of them. They made a trilogy.

• 2:55:48Speaker 03

  It's crazy. It's so disgusting.

• 2:55:51Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:55:52David Sims?

  Um, number eight at the box office is a film.

• 2:55:56Griffin Newman?

  Anyway, we'll do those on Patreon.

• 2:56:00David Sims?

  I've seen, I think I've seen all three.

• 2:56:02Griffin Newman?

  I've seen none.

• 2:56:03David Sims?

  Porky's is bad, and then Porky's two is really bad, and then Porky's Revenge is like, it's not even fun.

• 2:56:10Griffin Newman?

  Porky's two is colon the next day?

• 2:56:12David Sims?

  Yes.

• 2:56:13Griffin Newman?

  And Porky's Revenge is the titular Porky getting back at these kids.

• 2:56:16David Sims?

  Yeah, the sort of mean sheriff-y guy.

• 2:56:18Griffin Newman?

  Okay.

• 2:56:19David Sims?

  He's a bar owner.

• 2:56:20Griffin Newman?

  He's like a bar owner.

• 2:56:21David Sims?

  I don't know what the fuck he is.

• 2:56:22Griffin Newman?

  He's like a boss hog.

• 2:56:23David Sims?

  Porky's, I feel like Porky's Revenge doesn't even have like nudity. It's just mostly like plot.

• 2:56:27Griffin Newman?

  I'm like, what are these movies about? It's a mean bar owner and some kids putting their dicks in places?

• 2:56:33David Sims?

  Kind of. It's like a sex comedy in a high school or whatever. Uh, uh, sorry. Number eight is Sword and the Sorcerer.

• 2:56:40Griffin Newman?

  Oh, sure.

• 2:56:40David Sims?

  The sort of, uh, Albert Pien.

• 2:56:42Griffin Newman?

  That was a, a big flop.

• 2:56:43David Sims?

  Yes, huge flop.

• 2:56:44Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:56:45David Sims?

  Uh, fantasy movie. Number nine is Visiting Hours. Not the Ed Sheeran song. No, no.

• 2:56:52Griffin Newman?

  Uh huh.

• 2:56:53David Sims?

  The 1982 psychological slasher film.

• 2:56:56Griffin Newman?

  Okay.

• 2:56:56David Sims?

  Starring William Shatner, Lee Grant, Michael Ironside.

• 2:56:59Griffin Newman?

  Good lineup.

• 2:57:00David Sims?

  Sounds pretty cool. It was a feminist journalist who's the target of a serial killer. Sounds cool.

• 2:57:04Griffin Newman?

  Who directed this picture?

• 2:57:06David Sims?

  Uh, of course, Jean-Claude Lourde.

• 2:57:07Griffin Newman?

  Jean-Claude Lourde?

• 2:57:08David Sims?

  The Canadian Jean-Claude Lourde.

• 2:57:10Griffin Newman?

  Okay.

• 2:57:11David Sims?

  Uh, and number 10 at the box office is Conan the Barbarian.

• 2:57:14Griffin Newman?

  Hmm. John Milius.

• 2:57:16David Sims?

  Great movie.

• 2:57:17Griffin Newman?

  Spielberg's old buddy.

• 2:57:19David Sims?

  Yeah. So that's ET for you guys.

• 2:57:21Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, I think it's good. He's one of my best friends. I'm trying to think if there are any other points I wanna make. What were the other pins I placed in, Ben? Do we keep track of the pins? I think I got to all the pins. I think I pulled the pins off the board.

• 2:57:34Speaker 03

  No, I think you got to all the pins.

• 2:57:35Griffin Newman?

  Yeah. But, um, no, I, I, I just, I, I think this film is kind of unparalleled for what it is doing.

• 2:57:43David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 2:57:44Griffin Newman?

  And it's, and it's just like undeniable, unwavering eternal power.

• 2:57:49David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 2:57:50Griffin Newman?

  At what it gets.

• 2:57:51Speaker 03

  It feels like you could watch it 200 years from now.

• 2:57:54Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:57:55Speaker 03

  And it still would have resonance.

• 2:57:57Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:57:58David Sims?

  I hope so.

• 2:58:01Griffin Newman?

  He's a great guy.

• 2:58:02David Sims?

  Yep. Bye.

• 2:58:03Griffin Newman?

  No, don't say bye.

• 2:58:05David Sims?

  See you later.

• 2:58:05Griffin Newman?

  That's not how the show ends.

• 2:58:08David Sims?

  The theme song's playing, the outro, we have tympani's.

• 2:58:12Griffin Newman?

  We have minutes before the drums hit.

• 2:58:14David Sims?

  No, sorry.

• 2:58:15Griffin Newman?

  Yes. Thank you all for listening. Tune in next week for Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. In this economy?

• 2:58:24David Sims?

  Um, or is it?

• 2:58:26Griffin Newman?

  Am I wrong?

• 2:58:28David Sims?

  Tune in next week for our Blankies episode with Joseph.

• 2:58:32Griffin Newman?

  Well.

• 2:58:33David Sims?

  Cinematrix Reed.

• 2:58:34Griffin Newman?

  Wow, reading Rain Joe himself. And in two weeks, tune in for Temple of Doom with our friend Olivia Krak.

• 2:58:39David Sims?

  Yes. Uh, right. Um, but next week is the Blankies, where we will discuss the best films of the year, the Oscars and all that.

• 2:58:46Griffin Newman?

  Maybe I decide to just nominate ET in a bunch of categories for 2024.

• 2:58:52David Sims?

  The real challenge is, will Griffin watch Emilia Perez before the Blankies episode?

• 2:58:56Griffin Newman?

  I will. I've said this. My concern is I'm worried I'm gonna like it.

• 2:58:59David Sims?

  If you like it, you like it.

• 2:59:00Griffin Newman?

  I know.

• 2:59:00David Sims?

  Some people like it.

• 2:59:01Griffin Newman?

  I know. I'm just a little scared that I'm kinda, the, the big swing nature of it, the messiness of it, is going to endear me to it to, to some degree. But also, I might hate it. We'll see. I will watch it. I will absolutely watch it before the Oscars.

• 2:59:15David Sims?

  You're gonna be mixed to negative, but I'm not sure.

• 2:59:17Griffin Newman?

  But I talked to, Green Book I only watched like two days before the ceremony when I was like, okay, time to just fucking get this over with. And I guess I will probably do the same with Emilia Perez.

• 2:59:26David Sims?

  Green Book's watchable, though.

• 2:59:28Griffin Newman?

  Green Book? This is the thing that's insidious about Green Book. It is very watchable.

• 2:59:32David Sims?

  Emilia Perez is not. I found, I find Emilia Perez a real slog.

• 2:59:35Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:59:36David Sims?

  Anyway.

• 2:59:36Griffin Newman?

  You know what isn't a slog?

• 2:59:37David Sims?

  Green Book.

• 2:59:38Griffin Newman?

  ET.

• 2:59:39David Sims?

  ET.

• 2:59:40Griffin Newman?

  Phone home. Ben?

• 2:59:42Speaker 03

  Coming up on our Patreon Blank Check special features, we are kicking off our Star Trek commentary series, where we will be covering the card era.

• 2:59:55David Sims?

  Yes.

• 2:59:56Speaker 03

  The Trek films.

• 2:59:57David Sims?

  That's right.

• 2:59:58Griffin Newman?

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:59:58David Sims?

  Star Trek Generations.

• 2:59:59Griffin Newman?

  Look to the stars.

• 3:00:00David Sims?

  Uh, is posting in a few days on our Patreon.

• 3:00:05Griffin Newman?

  A, a weird movie.

• 3:00:06David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 3:00:07Griffin Newman?

  In a lot of ways.

• 3:00:07David Sims?

  It's got its pluses and minuses.

• 3:00:09Griffin Newman?

  It's got, it certainly has its pluses and minuses. Um, thank you.

• 3:00:15David Sims?

  You're welcome.

• 3:00:16Griffin Newman?

  And as always,

• 3:00:19Griffin Newman?

  gay ET is camp.

• 3:00:20David Sims?

  That's right.

• 3:00:22Griffin Newman?

  Just to settle the debate.

• 3:00:30Speaker 03

  I need to pee so badly.

• 3:00:31Griffin Newman?

  Oh, okay.

• 3:00:32David Sims?

  I'll keep talking to Ben.

• 3:00:33Speaker 03

  No, don't.

• 3:00:34David Sims?

  Why not? Have fun.

• 3:00:36Speaker 03

  No, we'll just pause.

• 3:00:36David Sims?

  No, ET's real. Come on, let's talk about it. Let's just talk about how ET's real.

• 3:00:40Speaker 03

  I mean, I would love to hug ET.

• 3:00:45David Sims?

  Are you like, um, how, uh, Diego Luna is always like, I want to touch Jabba? Like, in interviews? Do you know about this? The actor Diego Luna, who plays Andor.

• 3:00:54Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 3:00:55David Sims?

  Um, so Andor, I don't think ever, you know, shares any space on screen with Jabba.

• 3:01:00Speaker 03

  Right.

• 3:01:00David Sims?

  But on the press tours, Diego Luna is like, I would love to touch him. Like, the texture seems so interesting.

• 3:01:06Speaker 03

  It kinda seems gross, though.

• 3:01:07David Sims?

  I know, but not to Diego Luna.

• 3:01:09Speaker 03

  He seems sticky and stinky.

• 3:01:10David Sims?

  He wants to touch Jabba.

• 3:01:13David Sims?

  Just let me touch. He just, he said it many, many times, and I hope someone has finally let him touch Jabba. Peter Coyote, one of the founders of The Diggers, Ben. You know, the Diggers, like these sort of famous hate asphery, uh, you know, street theater guys.

• 3:01:25Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 3:01:26David Sims?

  Left-wing anarchist types. Um, you know, so that's cool.

• 3:01:34David Sims?

  Don't you think? He's still alive, Peter Coyote. There he is. He's a cool guy. Just looking him up. I don't know why I'm still talking.