Clueless with Heidi Gardner

Okay, so you’re probably going, “Is this like a Noxzema commercial or what?” But seriously, this is actually a way normal podcast about one of David Sims’ favorite movies! SNL’s Heidi Gardner (a total betty) joins us to talk about Amy Heckerling’s beloved Jane Austen adaptation, and we’re rolling with the homies. Join us for Alicia Silverstone and Paul Rudd career discussion, a lot of local Kansas City lore, and Ben’s takes on Cher’s iconic fits. 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? 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.

• 0:31David Sims?

  So just a few more days.

• 0:33Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 0:33David Sims?

  You can get it at dynasty.tv.

• 0:36Griffin Newman?

  Dynasty.tv.

• 0:37David Sims?

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

• 0:43Griffin Newman?

  Oh, yeah. I was moving things around. 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.

• 1:10David Sims?

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

• 1:39David Sims?

  Why should I listen to you anyway? You're a podcaster who can't drive.

• 1:44Griffin Newman?

  That was way harsh, Ty.

• 1:46David Sims?

  You should call me David.

• 1:48Griffin Newman?

  Well, you're doing the character. That's not how you talk.

• 1:50David Sims?

  I'm inhabiting the character.

• 1:53Griffin Newman?

  We had to do a flip there because that was the quote that jumped out to me. And then I realized I am a podcaster who can't drive. It would be unfair if I accused you of being a podcaster who can't drive because you love driving, even though I usually do the quote.

• 2:07David Sims?

  A question to the, and please, our guest should weigh in on this too. Is Ty rich? Cause like this is a private school, I think, or I think, or it's like a really nice Beverly Hills school.

• 2:16Griffin Newman?

  It feels like it, yeah.

• 2:17David Sims?

  Everyone there is probably like, kind of well, but she's got the New York accent to sort of differentiate her and she's a little more alt. But like, is like, do you think what her parents are like? You know, music promoters or something, you know what I mean?

• 2:30Griffin Newman?

  You said, right before we started recording, that this is perhaps the movie you've seen most in your life.

• 2:34David Sims?

  I've thought about this movie a lot.

• 2:36Griffin Newman?

  They never.

• 2:37David Sims?

  They don't really get into it.

• 2:38Griffin Newman?

  Even get at why she moved from New York to Beverly Hills, right? It is an interesting question. You have to imagine it has to be some kind of parent job transfer.

• 2:47David Sims?

  Yeah, sure. Yeah, like, is it a showbiz thing? She's just so New York, you know?

• 2:53Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, it's a good question. I saw, I mean, like, Fast Times at Richmond High. Amy Heckerling's other totemic high school movie is a film we talked about is very class aware, but is also a movie that doesn't touch on parents at all.

• 3:08Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 3:09Griffin Newman?

  It is a thing on our recent watch that I clocked in the first time. You never see a parent in the entire movie, which doesn't feel like some stylistic choice, but it's just part of the tapestry. This is a movie that, like, Hade is the main parent you see.

• 3:22David Sims?

  Yeah, of course.

• 3:23Griffin Newman?

  But I also feel like you're invoking the parents.

• 3:25David Sims?

  You hear about them, but you don't see them.

• 3:26Griffin Newman?

  You don't see them at all.

• 3:27David Sims?

  No.

• 3:28Griffin Newman?

  No.

• 3:29Speaker 03

  But I hope that she's not rich, and I kind of hate that you ever put that in my.

• 3:35David Sims?

  Wow, I'm so sorry. I don't mean like rich in like an evil way, but I'm just like, so now I'll, I'll blow something a little bit here with, which is that Amy Heckerling wrote about this, right? Like she, in her biography, I think.

• 3:49Griffin Newman?

  Okay.

• 3:50David Sims?

  She talked about adapting Emma, Jane Austen's Emma, for Clueless.

• 3:53Griffin Newman?

  What is that, what does Emma have to do with Clueless?

• 3:56David Sims?

  And how do you transpose the characters, right? And she said Ty was really hard because that character, Harriet, is like of low birth, right? Is like the idea in Emma, she's a little lower class. And she was like, I didn't want to like get into wealth, like, because then everyone just seems like a huge asshole, right? Like, if it's like, oh, we're befriending the poor girl, like immediately, it's like, just throws it off. So she went for New York to be like, that's how I'll make her seem different.

• 4:24Griffin Newman?

  Which also makes her feel like the, the Heckerling in her character.

• 4:28David Sims?

  Right.

• 4:28Griffin Newman?

  In a lot of ways.

• 4:29David Sims?

  Right. And like, she dresses in a different, you know, she dresses in this kind of grungy way, which is like, cool, but is different.

• 4:36Griffin Newman?

  It is the very smart conceit of this movie of turning the class structure into just social clique, like hierarchy within a high school rather than within the outside world. But some other interview I watched with her on the, the special features, I think, she was talking about how her intent was to like make an idealistic high school. Where as much as there is like factions, everyone kind of gets along.

• 5:01Speaker 03

  Right.

• 5:01Griffin Newman?

  Everyone kind of has money to dress perfectly.

• 5:04Speaker 03

  New girl feels like enough for me.

• 5:06Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 5:06Speaker 03

  Just the new girl that doesn't know how to do her makeup yet feels like enough.

• 5:11Griffin Newman?

  And she has her own heightened dialect.

• 5:13Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 5:14Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 5:14David Sims?

  Just, I have a lot of questions like that I want to pose.

• 5:17Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 5:17David Sims?

  Just because I've thought about this movie so much.

• 5:20Speaker 03

  Mm-hmm.

• 5:20David Sims?

  And when I first saw it, I was only dimly aware of all of that stuff anyway. I was just like, this is, I get it, like, it's American high school, I don't know. And now I think about it a lot.

• 5:29Griffin Newman?

  David went to high school in the UK.

• 5:31David Sims?

  I did, that's so true.

• 5:32Speaker 03

  American high school, yeah.

• 5:33David Sims?

  With boys only, so very different social scene.

• 5:36Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 5:37David Sims?

  Not like this at all.

• 5:38Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 5:38David Sims?

  Did have the stoners, did have the jocks.

• 5:40Griffin Newman?

  Okay.

• 5:41David Sims?

  Did kind of have the AV kids, I guess.

• 5:43Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 5:44David Sims?

  But not like this at all.

• 5:45Griffin Newman?

  You had some kids at school who were sipping a bit of weed.

• 5:49David Sims?

  Sipping?

• 5:50Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, sip a bit of weed, I'm saying.

• 5:52David Sims?

  So Griffin does an English accent sometimes.

• 5:54Griffin Newman?

  It's accurate.

• 5:55David Sims?

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

• 5:56Griffin Newman?

  You get it, you get it, you understand dialects, this is what you do for a living.

• 6:00Speaker 03

  Sipping a bit of weed.

• 6:00Griffin Newman?

  Sipping a bit of weed, yeah.

• 6:02David Sims?

  You've done an English accent or two.

• 6:04Speaker 03

  You know, I have, and I, among friends, I think I can confidently do it. Whenever they have me do it at SNL, I doubt myself completely. We had a sketch this weekend that got cut where I was British and I was like, I'm kind of glad.

• 6:18Griffin Newman?

  Is it an, is it an in-your-head thing? Are there other things like that where you're like, don't make me do this? Because I feel like you, you, you have tremendous range.

• 6:26Speaker 03

  I, well, thank you. I remember when I thought the first time I could do a British accent, I was practicing at home. And then I called my friend Paula and left a message on her answering machine, just as a confused British woman that was like, "Hey Lori, I was just calling to see if we're still meeting tonight, could you give me a call back?" And I was like, oh, if I trick her.

• 6:48Griffin Newman?

  Sure.

• 6:49David Sims?

  Right, will she go for it?

• 6:50Speaker 03

  Then I can do it, you know, and I was just waiting the next day at school, just kind of like. What, did anyone call you last night?

• 6:57Griffin Newman?

  Any funny stuff happen on your answering machine?

• 6:59David Sims?

  Yeah, how's your answering machine? Do you give it a listen?

• 7:01Speaker 03

  And she was like, yeah, you called me last night. And I was just a British woman confused.

• 7:07Griffin Newman?

  But do you think when you get self-conscious about having to do a British accent at SNL, it's still you flashing back to that from high school?

• 7:15Speaker 03

  It might be, getting called out immediately.

• 7:17Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, because is there any other stuff like that you bump on where if they like throw you and ask, you're like, oh, fuck, that's my weak spot?

• 7:24Speaker 03

  I mean, singing is too. I'm not a singer. And also, they never put me in anything with singing. Where at this point, I am just kind of like, well, I am missing good opportunities. Where, so yeah.

• 7:38Griffin Newman?

  Okay.

• 7:38Speaker 03

  The singing. But I've tried harder and I definitely commit. It's just I don't always get the cue to come in on. I'm like a beat late.

• 7:46Griffin Newman?

  You do, you often do the singing during the like?

• 7:48Speaker 03

  The warm-up, which is insane. So I'm like, you guys use me when you need me for like a kind of a thankless thing. I mean, I enjoy warming up the crowd, but then you don't put me in the show.

• 8:00Griffin Newman?

  Okay.

• 8:00Speaker 03

  Doing, you know, a solo piece.

• 8:03David Sims?

  This is, I would, I would struggle with a lot of live comedy broadcasts on national television. I think I would be a little anxious about all of it. The idea of singing and being funny?

• 8:12Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 8:12David Sims?

  Is so like face-meltingly scary to me. Like, there's no way I could begin to think about that.

• 8:17Speaker 03

  So you do think, like, I think in my head while I'm like, bad singing is funny.

• 8:20David Sims?

  It is. That's true.

• 8:22Speaker 03

  But it can also be so annoying and grating. And I think our boss thinks that.

• 8:27David Sims?

  A little bit of that goes a very, very long way. And right, more than like 10 seconds of that, you're probably losing people.

• 8:33Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 8:33Griffin Newman?

  See, when I've had like auditions and stuff and people ask me if I can sing, my answer is always, I can comedy sing.

• 8:38Speaker 03

  Yeah, that's true. I think I can comedy sing as a character, but

• 8:41Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 8:42Speaker 03

  People at SNL have great voices in these music videos. They're singing as themselves.

• 8:47Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, yeah. Comedy sing, I feel like is a very specific thing, though. But when you're up against people who like, can comedy sing and real sing? Yes. Hey, you know what this is?

• 8:57David Sims?

  Please.

• 8:57Griffin Newman?

  This is Blank Check with Griffin and David.

• 8:59David Sims?

  Thank you.

• 8:59Griffin Newman?

  I'm Griffin.

• 8:59David Sims?

  I'm David.

• 9:00Griffin Newman?

  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?

• 9:13David Sims?

  Sure.

• 9:14Griffin Newman?

  I was trying to think of a better clueless, specific.

• 9:17David Sims?

  Whatever. I don't know.

• 9:19Griffin Newman?

  I was like, what's a thing I can say, say instead of baby? Sometimes they bounce.

• 9:23Speaker 03

  Sometimes. Sometimes they bounce and sometimes they're buggin'.

• 9:26Griffin Newman?

  Sometimes they're buggin'.

• 9:27David Sims?

  They are buggin'.

• 9:28Griffin Newman?

  Sometimes they're buggin'. Uh, this is a mini series on the films of Amy Heckerling. It's called Pod Times at Ridgemont Cast.

• 9:35David Sims?

  That's right.

• 9:36Griffin Newman?

  And today we are talking about your favorite film of hers, what you often refer to as your favorite movie of all time.

• 9:42David Sims?

  Basically, the one I've seen the most. I really think that's true. I think I've seen this movie more than any other movie.

• 9:48Griffin Newman?

  The other movies I feel like I hear you call interchangeably your favorite movie. Jerry Maguire, which we've covered.

• 9:53David Sims?

  Basically the same time and the exact same thing in that it is a movie I owned on VHS that I would watch with my mom all the time. You know, there's there, they occupy the same space.

• 10:01Griffin Newman?

  Yes. McCabe and Mrs. Miller, you've thrown out.

• 10:04David Sims?

  Yeah, but that, that I don't watch. That's like a good movie.

• 10:07Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 10:07David Sims?

  You know, I'm not like, you know, 10:30 at night like, well, that's like 45 minutes of McCabe.

• 10:11Griffin Newman?

  And then I feel like First Matrix, although maybe more Reloaded? Not, not the same.

• 10:17David Sims?

  Nah. Master and Commander.

• 10:19Griffin Newman?

  Master and Commander.

• 10:20David Sims?

  Yeah, sure.

• 10:20Griffin Newman?

  Spirited versus.

• 10:22David Sims?

  Yeah, Spirited Away. Sure, totally. My daughter, it's Totoro.

• 10:25Griffin Newman?

  This is one of your favorite movies we will ever talk about.

• 10:27David Sims?

  It's the number one.

• 10:28Griffin Newman?

  It's the number one.

• 10:29David Sims?

  I put it on a, I was in a bad mood Sunday night, like a long day. One of the twins blew a nap, right?

• 10:36Griffin Newman?

  Tariffs paused.

• 10:37David Sims?

  Ah, tariffs. I'm like, what do I do with my semiconductor money? Do I go in more? Do I pull back?

• 10:43Griffin Newman?

  Sure, sure.

• 10:45David Sims?

  And I put on Clueless and like, within two minutes, I'm just in the most like wonderful mood. Right? I mean, just the, it, cause it is such a bouncy, colorful, like peppy movie anyway. Like, it's very hard to be mad at Clueless, in my opinion.

• 11:00Griffin Newman?

  Can I throw out a white hot take right from the beginning? That I've sort of considered before, but re-watching it last night hit me really hard. I think this is the character you most aspire to be in movies.

• 11:10David Sims?

  You want me to be, uh, Cher Horowitz?

• 11:12Griffin Newman?

  I don't aspire for you to be Cher Horowitz. I think you idolize Cher Horowitz in a way where you're sort of like, I wish I could be my version of what Cher is in her life.

• 11:22David Sims?

  Is, she has, she's on a journey of sort of learn a little self-awareness and like emotional kind of growth and all that. You think I just want to like shop till I drop when I'm 16 years old and like a pal, I do love to gossip.

• 11:34Speaker 03

  That's true.

• 11:35Griffin Newman?

  Here's a thing that will often happen, and let's say our guest today.

• 11:40Griffin Newman?

  From Saturday Night Live, Heidi Gardner.

• 11:42Speaker 03

  Hello.

• 11:43Griffin Newman?

  Hi Heidi. Here's a thing that will sometimes happen in our office here.

• 11:46Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 11:47Griffin Newman?

  We're all just doing our little work before, after record.

• 11:50Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 11:50Griffin Newman?

  Two minutes of silence and then David just goes, "What's the gossip?"

• 11:54David Sims?

  What's the gossip?

• 11:55Speaker 03

  I like that.

• 11:56David Sims?

  Do you like to gossip?

• 11:57Speaker 03

  I do, and I have, I have friends that also are the, that pose the question, "What's the gossip?"

• 12:02David Sims?

  The download.

• 12:03Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 12:03David Sims?

  Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 12:04Griffin Newman?

  But David does like, focused on an email, then looks up and bangs his thighs. Like he's a king, "Bring me gossip."

• 12:11Speaker 03

  I get it.

• 12:12David Sims?

  Um, that's so funny, but I, maybe I do identify with Cher more than, more than I think. Like, I, I mean, that could be true. I, I love the performance and I love the character. And I love, I, I love Jane Austen and I was an English major and I read a lot of Jane Austen. And I always say Persuasion is my favorite Jane Austen novel, which is about an introvert who hasn't gotten married and is very shy.

• 12:37Griffin Newman?

  Also your favorite Dakota Johnson movie.

• 12:40David Sims?

  Moving on. That's the one where it's like, it is period setting, but like, they're talking like it's Fleabag, right?

• 12:48Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, that sounds right.

• 12:49David Sims?

  Yeah, I did see it.

• 12:50Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 12:51David Sims?

  Um, but then I'm like, maybe I like Emma Best, who's like, uh, uh, you know, a bit of a meanie.

• 12:57Griffin Newman?

  Mm-hmm.

• 12:57David Sims?

  And a little shallow and needs to learn, you know, a couple of lessons, but kinda has a good heart throughout anyway. You're kinda like, she means well.

• 13:04Griffin Newman?

  I think you like the balance of being a little mean and a little thoughtful.

• 13:07David Sims?

  Little salty, little sweet, all that.

• 13:09Griffin Newman?

  Loves getting people together.

• 13:11David Sims?

  Yes, I also just love this 97 minute movie that has a great joke every minute. Like, that's the other thing about Clueless. It's not just that I love to gossip. Drift just thinks it's a love to gossip.

• 13:22Griffin Newman?

  No, I'm, I'm, I'm.

• 13:23David Sims?

  Like, there is a great joke in every minute of this script. I really, I really, we could print it out and I could point on every page.

• 13:30Griffin Newman?

  Here's another thing.

• 13:30David Sims?

  That's a great line.

• 13:31Griffin Newman?

  That jumped out to me. I feel like there are less than five examples in this movie of something being a traditional setup punchline joke. Like, almost every joke is something that is funny because the sense of the character is so well established.

• 13:44Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 13:45Griffin Newman?

  Like, the sort of like, my surgeon says I should avoid activities with balls. I'm like, that's a joke. That's like a joke.

• 13:51David Sims?

  I mean, to be fair, it is a setup also for Dion saying, there goes your social life.

• 13:55Griffin Newman?

  That's what I'm saying.

• 13:56David Sims?

  Right, yeah, yeah.

• 13:56Griffin Newman?

  No, I'm saying that's a setup.

• 13:58David Sims?

  Right, yeah, yeah.

• 13:59Griffin Newman?

  And then there's like a slam dunk.

• 14:00David Sims?

  Oh, you're saying that is a setup joke, right?

• 14:01Griffin Newman?

  Right. Most of the jokes in this movie are just like, it's funny, that is exactly what this character would say.

• 14:07David Sims?

  You see how big I am about my shoes, and they only go on my feet.

• 14:10Griffin Newman?

  And every character's voice is so specific.

• 14:13Speaker 03

  You know what would be a cute little project for you, David? I'm just imagining.

• 14:17David Sims?

  I love getting a project.

• 14:19Speaker 03

  You said there's probably a joke every minute.

• 14:21David Sims?

  Yes.

• 14:22Speaker 03

  If you did print out the script.

• 14:23David Sims?

  I think I should.

• 14:24Speaker 03

  And you did highlight everyone. I know you have kids.

• 14:25Griffin Newman?

  Circle it, red pen.

• 14:26Speaker 03

  But just for fun, for you.

• 14:27David Sims?

  Kind of like Cher highlighting the September 3rd call. I just like sit down and I'm like, yep, that one's good.

• 14:32Speaker 03

  Just to honor the film.

• 14:33Griffin Newman?

  I'm just picturing you.

• 14:34David Sims?

  The ticket is the first notice. That, that, like, there are jokes like that where I'm like, it, on the 20th time, you realize that Hadiya knocked that out of the park. Right? You know, like, you're thinking about other things he says.

• 14:44Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 14:45David Sims?

  The ticket is the first notice. I mean, I can't do Dan Had.

• 14:47Griffin Newman?

  Have you heard her line about why she cast him?

• 14:49David Sims?

  Uh, no.

• 14:50Griffin Newman?

  She said, I want the dad to be an actor who would play a hitman in any other movie.

• 14:53David Sims?

  I mean, that's what, it was brilliant.

• 14:55Speaker 03

  Oh, good.

• 14:56Griffin Newman?

  It's so good.

• 14:57David Sims?

  He's still alive.

• 14:58Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 14:58David Sims?

  Uh, I was wondering, I was thinking about him, cause, you know, he's pretty old, but he hasn't done a lot of movies in a while. I wonder what's up with him.

• 15:03Griffin Newman?

  I used to live two blocks away from him, the apartment I lived in during the pandemic.

• 15:06David Sims?

  Oh, yeah.

• 15:06Griffin Newman?

  And I had a celebrity spotting at peak lockdown where he was fully masked, and yet, the, the hair poking out from the T-shirt collar.

• 15:16Speaker 03

  Wow.

• 15:17Griffin Newman?

  The eyebrows. I said, that is unmistakably dead to rights, Hadiya.

• 15:21Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 15:22Griffin Newman?

  I don't need to see the mouth and the nose. I know. I know. And he had the posture. Yeah.

• 15:27Speaker 03

  He's one, if you were smart and he wanted to still work, if I was making, like, good television right now, I would cast it.

• 15:35David Sims?

  You'd plug Hadiya.

• 15:37Speaker 03

  Put him in a White Lotus or something. Like, you would know, like, him, a Joan Cusack. Like, those are people, like, put him in a show.

• 15:42David Sims?

  Let's get him to White Lotus. Cause season two would have Marie Abraham, right? And that's fine. But like, let's have Dan Had.

• 15:47Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 15:47David Sims?

  Like, in that, that slot.

• 15:49Griffin Newman?

  Let's, let's do a White Lotus cast that is all 90s Paramount comedy supporting all-stars.

• 15:55David Sims?

  Okay, so Larry Miller? Yeah, put Larry Miller. Love that guy. Is he still alive? Yeah, still alive. Yeah. So, so it's just like a retirees White Lotus is the thing? Okay. We get, what about Alex Mack? Maybe call it the Gray Lotus.

• 16:08Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 16:08David Sims?

  Now I'm like, let's just have the cast of 10 Things I Hate About You. I'm like Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Alex Mack. Just get them all. I know Heath isn't with us anymore. Julia Stiles, all of them would work on The White Lotus. I think that's its own season.

• 16:19Speaker 03

  Julia Stiles feels like a major option.

• 16:22David Sims?

  They always have that person where you're like, oh yeah, like that person who was sort of a big star and then like transitioned to kind of like TV star, right? You know, like Leslie Bibb. Always works.

• 16:33Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 16:33David Sims?

  All right. Heidi, welcome to the show.

• 16:35Speaker 03

  Thank you.

• 16:36David Sims?

  What is your relationship with Amy Heckerling's Clueless?

• 16:39Speaker 03

  Okay, so.

• 16:40David Sims?

  Be funny, I feel like never seen it.

• 16:43David Sims?

  Can you describe it to me?

• 16:44Speaker 03

  It was major for me and the, the big thing I remember about it is obviously seeing the trailer, knowing Alicia Silverstone from the Aerosmith videos. It was like, that's the coolest girl in the world. Then it's like, she's gonna have this starring vehicle movie. This is the best, the preview, incredible. So my older brother, Justin, who's six and a half years older than me, he could drive at this point. So if we were gonna see the movie and we were movie buddies, it was usually Justin's pick.

• 17:11David Sims?

  So he was kind of taking you to the movies?

• 17:13Speaker 03

  Yes, but we were usually in agreement. But I want to say I had kind of blown the whole thing up. I want to say it was this movie that came out before Clueless, Mad Love, where it's like.

• 17:27David Sims?

  Oh, yeah.

• 17:28Speaker 03

  Check, check it out for dates.

• 17:29David Sims?

  Chris O'Donnell, right?

• 17:30Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 17:31David Sims?

  Uh, and Drew Barrymore. So that was May 26th, 1995, and this was July. Yeah. So Mad Love was a couple of months before.

• 17:39Speaker 03

  Okay, so I pushed so hard for an opening day Mad Love, you know? And Justin didn't really want to see it. You know, I'm probably 11 or 12 at this point and, you know, he's into college and was just like, I don't want to see Mad Love. And I'm like, what about when she, in the preview, when she holds her hands over his eyes and they're driving?

• 17:59David Sims?

  Iconic moment for the trailer.

• 18:00Speaker 03

  And then you can tell she goes psycho, you know? And is like scraping the walls and he's like, I don't want to see this movie. I begged, I pleaded. He was like, all right, fine, I'll take you to Mad Love. Even I could tell 20 minutes into Mad Love, it was bad.

• 18:13David Sims?

  This is a stinker.

• 18:14Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 18:15David Sims?

  Oh, boy.

• 18:15Speaker 03

  And my stomach dropped and I was like, I'm not gonna get to pick another movie for a long time.

• 18:19Griffin Newman?

  It's a terrible feeling.

• 18:20David Sims?

  You took your shot.

• 18:21Speaker 03

  Yeah. And probably at Mad Love, I probably saw the trailer for Clueless, you know, and was like, ooh, like, this is a good movie summer for me.

• 18:28Griffin Newman?

  So you're sitting there as Mad Love is bombing and knowing, fuck, have I ruined my play for Clueless?

• 18:34Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 18:34Griffin Newman?

  Which now is the next target.

• 18:35Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 18:35Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 18:36Speaker 03

  So.

• 18:37David Sims?

  I am now fascinated by it. I've never seen Mad Love. It's an Antonia Bird movie. She's a good filmmaker.

• 18:42Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 18:42David Sims?

  But I've, this, I think, was her, like, okay, I'll make an American romantic draw, and nobody cared.

• 18:48Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, they looked great.

• 18:50Griffin Newman?

  Sure.

• 18:50Speaker 03

  But I just knew. There's few movies, Biodeome is one of them, where I was so happy and then I know, knew this is a bad movie.

• 18:57Griffin Newman?

  Well, Ben's ears just perked.

• 18:59Speaker 03

  Is that your favorite movie?

• 19:00David Sims?

  It's a bad movie.

• 19:02Speaker 03

  I decided that.

• 19:03David Sims?

  It's a fun movie. As Cher says, you know, looking for love in high school is like searching for meaning in a Pauly Shore movie or whatever.

• 19:09Griffin Newman?

  Right, yes.

• 19:10David Sims?

  But it's trashy, but it's kind of fun. We can't deny that.

• 19:14Speaker 03

  Yeah, I, I think I walked out and I would think I was.

• 19:17Griffin Newman?

  Oh, my god.

• 19:17Speaker 03

  I think I was in seventh grade and I was like, this is stupid, which was big for me. I like stupid stuff.

• 19:23David Sims?

  It is so funny to me that they did that, right, the thing where they build the biosphere in Arizona, right? And people lived in it and someone was watching that. I was like, what if Pauly Shore was in that?

• 19:33Griffin Newman?

  Pauly in that thing.

• 19:34David Sims?

  Can we get like 10 million bucks? Like, is that enough?

• 19:37Speaker 03

  I love everything.

• 19:37David Sims?

  Pauly Shore's in that.

• 19:39Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 19:39Griffin Newman?

  It wasn't, that was a shorthand bad movie for about 10 years, where I feel like other critics, just because the title was so specific.

• 19:46Speaker 03

  Mm-hmm.

• 19:46Griffin Newman?

  Would be like, not since Biodeome.

• 19:49Speaker 03

  Yes, yeah.

• 19:50David Sims?

  Has Pauly Shore ever hosted SNL?

• 19:52Griffin Newman?

  Great question.

• 19:53David Sims?

  I don't think he has.

• 19:54Speaker 03

  I don't think he has either. I feel like I would definitely still be watching that episode, but.

• 19:59Griffin Newman?

  You'd be watching it on repeat.

• 20:01David Sims?

  So you thought you'd blown it.

• 20:02Speaker 03

  I thought I'd blown it.

• 20:03David Sims?

  Clueless is coming out.

• 20:03Speaker 03

  Clueless is coming out. It's like a week before Clueless comes out and I'm like, Justin, it's the summer. We were at, we were staying at our Mammon Bampos, that's my grandparents.

• 20:12Griffin Newman?

  Mm-hmm.

• 20:13Speaker 03

  Basically, the whole summer, above ground pool. It was just like a good summer.

• 20:18Griffin Newman?

  Uh-huh.

• 20:18Speaker 03

  And I remember saying to him, like, can we see Clueless on Friday? And he was like, absolutely not. I was like, Justin, please. It means a lot to me. It's a big deal. It's the girl from there also, the video? He's like, I don't care.

• 20:30David Sims?

  Right, you're trying to sex sell him, right?

• 20:31Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 20:32David Sims?

  You're like, hey, she's a hottie, her ventriff, we all knew it.

• 20:35Speaker 03

  It didn't work for Mad Love, so that was very much, so no.

• 20:38Griffin Newman?

  Belly button piercing.

• 20:38Speaker 03

  We're not seeing that.

• 20:39Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 20:40Speaker 03

  So then he says, and but I wouldn't shut up all day.

• 20:44David Sims?

  Right.

• 20:44Speaker 03

  So he says, I will make you a deal. So in the Kansas City Star, there was a movie critic, Robert Butler. And Friday, when movies came out, you'd get Robert Butler's reviews. And just for context, and that was our holy grail.

• 20:58David Sims?

  For 41 years, he was the critic for the Kansas City Star.

• 21:01Griffin Newman?

  He was your definitive voice.

• 21:02Speaker 03

  He was definitive, and I feel like we usually agreed with Robert Butler.

• 21:06Griffin Newman?

  Uh huh.

• 21:06Speaker 03

  So for context, like, it was a scale of one to four stars. A movie like, and I'll probably get this wrong, but a movie in my remembrance, like Sleepless in Seattle, would have gotten a two and a half. Like, he was, he was hard on comedies. Like, totally solid.

• 21:23Griffin Newman?

  Another David Faber, but that, but that's, that speaks to even a movie like that.

• 21:27David Sims?

  Oh, it's okay.

• 21:28Griffin Newman?

  That's high watermark of rom com. He's still a little bit, something has got to say.

• 21:32Speaker 03

  But it's right in the middle.

• 21:33Griffin Newman?

  Sure.

• 21:33Speaker 03

  It's a little better than middle. And so you're like, we're seeing it, you know?

• 21:37Griffin Newman?

  Mm hmm.

• 21:37Speaker 03

  And then a movie like The English Patient would be a four star movie.

• 21:41Griffin Newman?

  Sure, sure.

• 21:42David Sims?

  You liked your, your Tony Oscar classics.

• 21:44Speaker 03

  So he told me, we can see the movie if Robert Butler gives Clueless. And I was like, he's gonna say two and a half. And you know what? And that's possible in my brain. I think that's possible. He said, three stars. And I, I mean, everything I deflated. Like, my balloon of a person was like, there is no way Clueless is pulling three stars. I just know it. And it came out, and I opened it, and Clueless got three stars from Robert Butler. And my brother was in the pool, and I ran out on his, like, raft, and I ran out.

• 22:21David Sims?

  This sounds like it's right out of Clueless.

• 22:23Griffin Newman?

  It's so good.

• 22:24Speaker 03

  I ran out there, like, about to tell him, like, you know, like, America won the world or something. And I was like, Justin, Clueless got three stars.

• 22:35David Sims?

  Clueless is a teen movie that's way too clever to be wasted on teens, he says. Three stars. In fact, one would be hard pressed to name another recent laugh out loud comedy that works so efficiently.

• 22:47Griffin Newman?

  Wow.

• 22:48David Sims?

  He's very positive on it. I mean, as he should be, it's a really good movie.

• 22:52Griffin Newman?

  But I have to imagine in that moment, not only are you like, I have won.

• 22:56Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 22:56Griffin Newman?

  He has to drive me to Clueless. You're also like, Clueless is legitimately about to be great.

• 23:00Speaker 03

  A hundred percent.

• 23:01Griffin Newman?

  Right, you're not.

• 23:02David Sims?

  Here is Robert Butler's review. There it is.

• 23:04Speaker 03

  I'm so happy that. That wasn't a dream, it happened.

• 23:07David Sims?

  Nope, it happened.

• 23:08Griffin Newman?

  But that feeling of like, I'm not gonna have a mad love on my hands.

• 23:12Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 23:12Griffin Newman?

  If he likes this that much, I'm gonna be in hog heaven.

• 23:15Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 23:16Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 23:16David Sims?

  Did he enjoy it?

• 23:18Speaker 03

  My brother loved it. Yeah, he had to admit. This is killer.

• 23:21Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 23:21Speaker 03

  Uh, he was laughing throughout it.

• 23:23Griffin Newman?

  And did you have like the greatest afternoon of your life?

• 23:25Speaker 03

  Yes, because it, I mean, for a girl in seventh grade, clueless, who loved movies and comedy, but also loves aspirational people and women and girls at the ti- like, the way that it looks is so amazing.

• 23:43David Sims?

  Yes.

• 23:43Speaker 03

  You know, it was just, it's eye candy and comedy candy and, and then just seeing like Wallace Shawn, like, that's the guy from Princess Bride. You know, you're seeing so many people. It just does everything. It checks every single box.

• 23:55David Sims?

  It does.

• 23:56Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 23:56David Sims?

  I, uh, don't think I saw it in the, I would have been nine. I don't think I saw it in theaters. This was very much a movie I watched, like, my mom rented it and we watched it and it was like, we're gonna buy this and own it for life. Like, and we watched it constantly. Uh, it's definitely the first movie where I was like, uh, it's based on like a book that's like not teen, uh, high school shit, right? Like where that, because that was, became so popular, that format of movie was so big.

• 24:27Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 24:27David Sims?

  In the late nineties, the, you know, Ten Things.

• 24:30Griffin Newman?

  Romeo and Juliet.

• 24:31David Sims?

  Romeo and Juliet. But that, they're using the language there, but that was also a big me and my mom movie. We saw that together.

• 24:36Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 24:37David Sims?

  In theaters. This is a David and his mom episode, I'm realizing.

• 24:40Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 24:40Speaker 03

  In my head, I was about to be like, I think Can't Hardly Wait is based off of a novel, but it's not.

• 24:46David Sims?

  I love that movie. That's a good movie.

• 24:48Speaker 03

  Could be.

• 24:49David Sims?

  I feel like there's another really obvious one I'm forgetting right now.

• 24:51Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, what is, fuck.

• 24:52David Sims?

  Ten Things is the most obvious other one.

• 24:55Griffin Newman?

  Mm-hmm.

• 24:55David Sims?

  But Clueless is the, the finest example of the form, obviously, and just hits that kind of high-low culture thing, right? Where it's like, it's a dumb teen comedy in a way.

• 25:08Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 25:08David Sims?

  I guess. I mean, it's a very smart movie, but right, like, it has the sort of aesthetics of like a bubbly, silly, forgettable.

• 25:14Griffin Newman?

  Ten Things kinda didn't hit at the time.

• 25:17David Sims?

  It did okay.

• 25:18Griffin Newman?

  It did, it did okay. Okay, I just remember this movie coming out over the summer and then going back to school in September. And every girl in my year, their personality was clueless. Like, it had been the most overwhelming cultural sea change.

• 25:33David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 25:33Griffin Newman?

  I did not see it at the time. I probably saw it on TV like four or five years later. I think to a degree, I resented, like, what is this thing I'm not a part of?

• 25:42Speaker 03

  Mm-hmm.

• 25:43Griffin Newman?

  That they're all obsessed with and that my mom didn't want to take me to see.

• 25:47David Sims?

  Why didn't she want to take you to? Well, you were very young when this film came out.

• 25:51Griffin Newman?

  Uh, yeah, I mean, I was, I was six, seven.

• 25:55David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 25:55Griffin Newman?

  But what's

• 25:55David Sims?

  A little young for Clueless.

• 25:57Griffin Newman?

  Every girl in my grade, I remember one girl.

• 26:01David Sims?

  I'm doing like, sort of the slapping of hands.

• 26:03Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 26:03David Sims?

  Greeting, like, things that you could grab from Clueless if you're a kid watching.

• 26:07Speaker 03

  I wonder if I ever confidently pulled off a whatever.

• 26:10David Sims?

  Oh.

• 26:10Griffin Newman?

  Whatever. I, I just remember there was a girl in my year who said she had, she owned two copies of Clueless on VHS.

• 26:19Speaker 03

  What a brag.

• 26:19Griffin Newman?

  And I said, why two? And she said, for when I eventually run out the first one.

• 26:24Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 26:24David Sims?

  Yep, when you just degrade the hell out of it.

• 26:26Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 26:27David Sims?

  Um, my

• 26:27Griffin Newman?

  But it was like, they swung back with like a langui- like, they were all just speaking in Clueless talk.

• 26:32Speaker 03

  Can I throw out just a fun fact about me? I, cause I had multiple VHS of certain movies, et cetera. My most insane version of her story was I recorded Good Will Hunting on audio cassette so I could listen to it in the car.

• 26:49Griffin Newman?

  Ah.

• 26:49David Sims?

  That is amazing. So you like held your, like, your tape recorder up to the TV?

• 26:54Speaker 03

  Hundred percent.

• 26:55Griffin Newman?

  So just to be clear, you had it on VHS, but you also had a cassette version in case you weren't close to a screen.

• 27:01Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 27:02Griffin Newman?

  But you just wanted to get a hit.

• 27:03David Sims?

  You just want to hear that Danny Elfman score, those strings.

• 27:07Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 27:07David Sims?

  I, Paul Rudd is in this film, this is his first screen, screen credit.

• 27:12Griffin Newman?

  This is number one?

• 27:13David Sims?

  Yeah, because Halloween six comes out the same year.

• 27:16Griffin Newman?

  Okay.

• 27:17David Sims?

  Uh, but I think it came out more in the sort of Halloween range.

• 27:19Speaker 03

  Wow.

• 27:20David Sims?

  Um, and people will forget now, I'm sure you guys know, but Paul Rudd did, his career did not take off for years. Like, he kind of floundered or whatever, you know, he was like stuck in like cute twenty something guy where he's competing with everybody, I guess. And it's not till he's on Friends that I feel like he finally starts to pick up a little steam.

• 27:40Griffin Newman?

  I mean, I think you're missing the other part of it.

• 27:42David Sims?

  Go ahead.

• 27:43Griffin Newman?

  Which is, he's like, a big fan of alt comedy.

• 27:46David Sims?

  Yes, he is.

• 27:47Griffin Newman?

  He's going to all these shows.

• 27:48David Sims?

  You know, Wet Hot and obviously...

• 27:50Griffin Newman?

  They talk about that, like, he reached out to David Wayne and was like, "I'm a big fan of your guy's stuff. Do you have anything?" And David Wayne was like, "This guy's been in a movie."

• 28:00David Sims?

  Yeah, right.

• 28:01Griffin Newman?

  This is the most legitimate person we know.

• 28:03David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 28:03Griffin Newman?

  He has something vaguely resembling a name, even if it's sort of like what happened to the guy from Clueless, when they're putting together an indie budget. He's a big boon to them.

• 28:11David Sims?

  Oh, yeah, yeah.

• 28:12Griffin Newman?

  And I feel like...

• 28:12David Sims?

  He's somebody, he's in Romeo and Juliet, he's an object of my affection, like, he's in some movies.

• 28:16Griffin Newman?

  But that's like, right. This is like 95, 96, 97. And by the time that Wet Hot comes around in 2001, he had sort of fallen off a little bit.

• 28:24David Sims?

  A little bit.

• 28:25Griffin Newman?

  And then it's like, he's getting cool comedy cred, and then the Friends thing happens.

• 28:29David Sims?

  That's when he starts to...

• 28:30Griffin Newman?

  And those two things feed into...

• 28:31David Sims?

  My mom, who I'm just gonna talk about, Heidi, I'm not that obsessed with my mom.

• 28:35Griffin Newman?

  He's pretty obsessed with his mom.

• 28:36David Sims?

  Uh, in 2000, no one remembers this, but there was a TV mini-series version of The Great Gatsby starring, um...

• 28:44Griffin Newman?

  I remember this.

• 28:44David Sims?

  Toby Stephens and Mira Sorvino and Paul Rudd.

• 28:47Speaker 03

  Jennifer Tilly, yeah.

• 28:47David Sims?

  As Nick Carraway.

• 28:49Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 28:49David Sims?

  Uh, Jennifer Tilly is not in this, so she must have been in a different Great Gatsby. Um, and my mom interviewed Paul Rudd for this.

• 28:56Griffin Newman?

  Okay.

• 28:57David Sims?

  And she said on the phone, like, "My son, like, is like a big fan of yours." And he just went like, "Ah, Clueless."

• 29:04Speaker 03

  Ah!

• 29:05David Sims?

  And she was like, "Yeah, yeah, yeah." And he's like, "Yeah, no, I mean, that's nice." You know, but like, clearly, he was like, "I can't get out from under this fucking thing."

• 29:12Griffin Newman?

  I can't, right.

• 29:12David Sims?

  And it's so funny to think about that now, given how successful he is, that's all.

• 29:16Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 29:17Speaker 03

  Well, it's funny, you were even talking about he kind of had like a floundering career in rom-coms until Friends, because a big part of the equation for me is Paul Rudd is from Kansas City, where I'm from.

• 29:29David Sims?

  That's right.

• 29:30Speaker 03

  So, this guy, the fact there's a Kansas Cityan in the best movie of the summer.

• 29:35Griffin Newman?

  And did you, like...

• 29:36David Sims?

  Casey Boy makes big.

• 29:38Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 29:38Griffin Newman?

  You clocked that immediately.

• 29:39Speaker 03

  Yeah, I think we've... There had to be an article in the paper, probably by Robert Butler, a week later.

• 29:45Griffin Newman?

  Local boy does good, yeah.

• 29:47Speaker 03

  That... Yeah, that it was just the biggest deal in the world. So even you saying that, I'm like, wait, well, when you said, well, and then Romeo and Juliet. It's like Kansas City guy, but that's biggest movie ever. And then object of my affection, because I was about to say, what about object of my affection?

• 30:02David Sims?

  A film I saw in theaters, but it was not a big hit. It's not, it was not nothing.

• 30:07Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 30:08David Sims?

  It's a good movie. I like that movie.

• 30:09Griffin Newman?

  And he's really good in it.

• 30:10David Sims?

  He's really good.

• 30:11Speaker 03

  He's great.

• 30:11Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 30:11Speaker 03

  And then being a comedy nerd and liking all stuff and loving the state. When Wet Hot came out, we were freaking out that Paul Rudd was in it.

• 30:20David Sims?

  He's so good in it. And it was one of those things where it's not just like, oh, yeah, they got like a famous guy to be fine in it. I'm like, he might be the funniest guy in it.

• 30:28Speaker 03

  Hundred percent.

• 30:28David Sims?

  What is this? Yeah.

• 30:29Speaker 03

  And that Christmas after it came out, my friends and I, there was a bar in Kansas City called Harleen's that you could get into when you're eighteen, they didn't ID. And we went to this bar underage and Paul Rudd was there, uh, of age, um, as you should be. And we were like, oh, my God, it's the guy from Wet Hot, you know? And we went up to him freaking out about Wet Hot, American Summer, and he couldn't believe that, like, these teens.

• 30:53David Sims?

  Anyone even knew it.

• 30:53Griffin Newman?

  It's the flip of the Clueless phone call where he's like, oh, my God, you know me from that?

• 30:57Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 30:58Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 30:58Speaker 03

  And then he took a picture with us, um, giving like the, the stank face from Wet Hot. It was, it was incredible.

• 31:05David Sims?

  He's, he lived mostly in Lenexa? What's Lenexa? It's a, like a Kansas City suburb or something? I'm just reading about his, uh.

• 31:12Speaker 03

  I feel like it was Leewood, but I might be.

• 31:15David Sims?

  Look, I'm going by Wikipedia, which is not always right.

• 31:18Griffin Newman?

  I was, uh, I was, I was watching the Blu-ray for this movie, which is, we're coming up on the 30th anniversary of Clueless.

• 31:25Speaker 03

  Crazy.

• 31:26Griffin Newman?

  The Blu-ray I have is the 20th anniversary edition.

• 31:29David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 31:29Griffin Newman?

  And is basically loaded with special features from the 10th anniversary edition.

• 31:33Speaker 03

  Wow.

• 31:33Griffin Newman?

  So it is a bunch of interviews cut into different themed packages. That thing I love in that era where they're just like, we need eight special features listed on the back. And you watch them and you're like, this is one special feature cut into separate chunks.

• 31:47Speaker 03

  Right.

• 31:47Griffin Newman?

  This is the same batch of interviews you did with everyone 10 years later.

• 31:51Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 31:51Griffin Newman?

  And you're like, but this is 10 minutes just on the language. This one's just about the fashion, but it's all cutting in the same footage. They talked to everyone basically other than Silverstone, interestingly. And I, it was late that I clocked like, huh, she's the one person who's not here.

• 32:08Speaker 03

  Right.

• 32:08Griffin Newman?

  But there's a bunch of Paul Rudd clips and all these people in 2005. And Paul Rudd is at like such a transitional moment where like. Forty year old virgin is coming out that year.

• 32:18Speaker 03

  Mm hmm.

• 32:19Griffin Newman?

  Anchorman came out the year before. He's about to have the full comedy.

• 32:22Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 32:23Griffin Newman?

  Crossover threshold.

• 32:23Speaker 03

  I love you, man. Role models are gonna, yeah, hit.

• 32:26Griffin Newman?

  And he's saying that, like, he got sent the script and was like, ugh. And is like, reading it kind of begrudgingly. Where you have to imagine, he's like, I don't want to do like shitty, stupid teen comedies. Because he's such a comedy nerd.

• 32:40Speaker 03

  Mm hmm.

• 32:41Griffin Newman?

  He's like, assuming this is lowest common denominator. And then he's like fifteen pages in, I'm begrudgingly like, that's kind of funny.

• 32:49Griffin Newman?

  That's like, kind of a good joke. And then he's like, I got to the end of it and I was like, this is actually really well written. Like, this is good. Right. And then said he basically auditioned for every other character before Josh.

• 33:00Speaker 03

  Wow.

• 33:01Griffin Newman?

  He didn't want to play Josh. He wanted to do Elton or something like that. He wanted to play Murray. And he went in and was like, I want to read for Murray. And they're like, Murray's black. I was gonna say, duh. And he was like, I didn't get that. Yeah. You didn't get that? How close was he reading this script? It makes sense, though, if you like, think about Paul Rudd, a guy. Woman, lend me five dollars. He's like, hey, I can do that. He thought that was the bit.

• 33:24Speaker 03

  Love to see that.

• 33:25Griffin Newman?

  He thought the bit was, it's a white kid who's obsessed with hip hop and talks like this. Okay, okay.

• 33:29Speaker 03

  Wouldn't be funny.

• 33:30Griffin Newman?

  And Heckerling said in his defense, it's not stated in the script. Sure, sure. Right? But you imagine, here's this guy who's this unbelievably handsome. Right? Is like a cutie pie. Good looking guy. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But also has like this weird sense of humor. That he's like, the thing I don't want to do is play the like, heightened, boring, serious guy that she ends up with at the end. Like, playing the love interest could be constricting to your career. Let me play a silly guy. Let me play a silly guy. Let me play Elton. Let me play any of the other guys. Right. And that they just kept being like, you want to maybe read Josh? You want to maybe read Josh? And he liked the script so much that he agreed to do it. I have to imagine that the scripts he got sent after this was a hit. If he's reading the shitty versions of Clueless, asking him to play the Josh type again.

• 34:13Speaker 03

  Right.

• 34:13Griffin Newman?

  That's probably death to him.

• 34:15Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 34:16Griffin Newman?

  Which is probably why he spent a couple of years sort of floundering.

• 34:19Speaker 03

  Right.

• 34:19Griffin Newman?

  Cause he didn't like cash in on the obvious.

• 34:22David Sims?

  He also just needed to get older. I mean, it's the most boring observation in the world with Paul Rudd, just like, you know, just needed to hit his 30s and.

• 34:28Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 34:29David Sims?

  Look even better and.

• 34:30Griffin Newman?

  But object of my affection is him like not doing the obvious rom com thing.

• 34:35David Sims?

  Uh, yeah, no, because he's playing a gay guy.

• 34:37Griffin Newman?

  Right, right.

• 34:38David Sims?

  In the 90s.

• 34:39Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 34:39David Sims?

  Uh, yeah. And I mean, uh, he's in like Cider House Rules, but he's got kind of the boring role in that. He's, anyway, look, we'll talk about Paul Rudd. We'll talk about all of this stuff.

• 34:54Griffin Newman?

  David?

• 34:54David Sims?

  Yes.

• 34:55Griffin Newman?

  Mmm.

• 34:58David Sims?

  Is that the Cine's cow?

• 34:59Griffin Newman?

  The Cine's cow is back.

• 35:00David Sims?

  Haven't heard from her in a while.

• 35:01Griffin Newman?

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

• 35:07David Sims?

  Okay.

• 35:07Griffin Newman?

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

• 35:12David Sims?

  Wow.

• 35:12Griffin Newman?

  The cow likes chicken.

• 35:15David Sims?

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

• 35:21Griffin 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.

• 35:33David Sims?

  Yes.

• 35:33Griffin Newman?

  My favorite movies of the year.

• 35:34David Sims?

  Absolutely.

• 35:35Griffin Newman?

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

• 35:41David Sims?

  That is a line in the movie.

• 35:42Griffin Newman?

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

• 35:45David Sims?

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

• 35:49Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 35:49David Sims?

  Great friend.

• 35:50Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 35:50David Sims?

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

• 35:56Griffin Newman?

  Uh huh.

• 35:56David Sims?

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

• 35:59Griffin Newman?

  Performances, friend of the show.

• 36:00David Sims?

  Friend of the show, Zach Cherry.

• 36:02Griffin Newman?

  Zach Cherry.

• 36:02David Sims?

  Also in it.

• 36:03Griffin Newman?

  This is true.

• 36:04David Sims?

  Such a cool movie. It won the Queer Palmitan. 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, uh, this summer and now it's on movie.

• 36:15Griffin 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.

• 36:26David Sims?

  Right.

• 36:26Griffin Newman?

  Who lives at the summer camp.

• 36:29David Sims?

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

• 36:33Griffin Newman?

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

• 36:45David Sims?

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

• 36:57Griffin Newman?

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

• 37:03David Sims?

  Damn right.

• 37:08Griffin Newman?

  David?

• 37:08David Sims?

  Yes?

• 37:09Griffin 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.

• 37:30David 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.

• 37:49Griffin 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.

• 38:05David Sims?

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

• 38:40Griffin Newman?

  David?

• 38:41David Sims?

  Yes?

• 38:41Griffin Newman?

  Ugh.

• 38:42David Sims?

  Uh oh.

• 38:43Griffin Newman?

  It's November.

• 38:44David Sims?

  Ah!

• 38:45Griffin Newman?

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

• 38:48David Sims?

  Turkeys?

• 38:49Griffin Newman?

  One long sprint to the finish line.

• 38:51David Sims?

  Oh, of course.

• 38:52Griffin 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.

• 39:00David Sims?

  No, though, maybe we should.

• 39:02Griffin Newman?

  We might get there eventually.

• 39:03David Sims?

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

• 39:06Griffin Newman?

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

• 39:20David 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.

• 39:26Griffin Newman?

  And I'm awake.

• 39:27David 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.

• 39:36Griffin Newman?

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

• 39:43David Sims?

  Thank you for that.

• 39:44Griffin 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.

• 39:55David Sims?

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

• 40:00Griffin Newman?

  For the professionals.

• 40:00David Sims?

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

• 40:19Griffin Newman?

  Thank God.

• 40:19David Sims?

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

• 40:23Griffin 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.

• 40:31David Sims?

  Yes, so for a limited time, visit drinkag1.com/chek 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/chek. And after checkout, be sure to let them know that Belank Check sent you.

• 41:01David Sims?

  Amy Heckerling, just to open our dossier, research dossier, makes Look Who's Talking, and then she makes Look Who's Talking 2. Yes. These movies are hits, but she's very depressed. The first one's a mega hit. And she's like, "They basically forced me to make the second one right away." She gets attached to a remake of the Alan Renee comedy My American Uncle. Correct. It's gonna be called Rat Race. Not related to the later, actual movie called Rat Race. But she was literally gonna have rats running around in little business suits. She was gonna have that as a motif.

• 41:41David Sims?

  That at Disney, they keep giving her notes and they eventually pass and say, quote, "This is too smart." And so she says, "You want stupid? I'll show you fucking stupid like you've never seen." Okay. She also apparently worked on a movie called A Pyromaniac's Love Story, which does exist, a Billy Baldwin, John Leguizamo movie. I've never heard of that movie. What is that? I don't know. Okay, great. Two initial sparks that set her onto Clueless. One, she wants to center, she's like, "I'm so depressed, I wanna make a movie about someone who's happy." Like, "Why don't I just like, focus on the optimist, you know, rather than like, what I am? Like, let me, let me try to sort of get that going."

• 42:22David Sims?

  Amy Heckerling looks like a Tim Burton drawing, if people don't have a visual in mind. Yes, she does. She's got dark hair and she's, you're right, she's very emo looking. Yes. She has a meeting with Fox. For TV. Yeah, sure. And they're like, "We want to do like, a movie about cool people." No, it starts out as a TV show. Okay, whatever. I'm just, "We wanna do stuff about..." They were like, "We keep getting pitched..." Nerd stuff. Right. Like, because the nerds are cool right now, like Reality Bites, right? All grungy stuff. And they're like, "Please write us a TV show about cool kids, the in-crowd." And it was intended as a pilot at first.

• 43:05David Sims?

  She reads the 1925 novel Gentleman Prefer Blondes and she's sort of like, "Okay." Blondes, okay, right? Like the sort of the girl who everything works out for.

• 43:15Griffin Newman?

  She also said that when she started doing it, she was like, if that's what they want, I'll write it, but I'm gonna make it like so mean and vicious and satirical. And then as she started writing it and getting in the headspace of it, kind of going back to the like, I want to write something happy thing. She was like, I kind of like this person now. Aww.

• 43:34David Sims?

  Yes. She also, she watches old episodes of Gidget, which I've never seen, but Sally Field's sort of original starring role, and she's drawn to how much she likes Gidget. Uh, another kind of sunny character. Uh, and Gidget, I think, has a lot of hardship, right? Like she's, uh, similar to Cher, who doesn't have much hardship, but doesn't, her mom is gone and she's just with her dad or whatever like that. I think she's borrowing that a little bit. I mean, obviously it's just in Emma as well. Uh, she's also apparently walking around Central Park with her friend Wallace Shawn. Her daughter's rollerblading ahead of him. Everyone's listening to grunge music and drinking Snapple, she says. And, uh, she starts thinking about, uh, A Clockwork Orange and James Cagney.

• 44:15Griffin Newman?

  Her favorites?

• 44:16David Sims?

  Uh, and she says, I, what I love these things and what, it's not the crime and the killing in those things that interest me. It's seeing individuals who are confident and energetic and happy. How did they get that way? She's really in on, and she also loved Ed Wood, the Tim Burton movie, which is really, is about a really happy, charming guy, as much as he's crazy.

• 44:36Griffin Newman?

  Well, it only comes out a couple of months before this. It is more that the actual-

• 44:40David Sims?

  No, it comes out in the year before this, 94.

• 44:42Griffin Newman?

  But end of 94.

• 44:44David Sims?

  I'm just saying, she claims she was inspired by the real life figure Ed Wood and the Ted, Tim Burton film, which came out two months before Clueless started shooting. That's all I got for you.

• 44:53Griffin Newman?

  Okay.

• 44:53David Sims?

  Uh, and, uh, she loved Spicoli. She was like, I've never done Spicoli again from Fast Times. All right, but obviously the biggest influence is Emma.

• 45:03Griffin Newman?

  Well-

• 45:04David Sims?

  The Jane Austen novel, and when she rereads that, she realizes like, this is my protagonist. Like, I need to just modernize this.

• 45:10Griffin Newman?

  What I heard her say in, in one of these 2005 interviews is they pitched the show to Fox. Fox passes on it. Her other project sidelined. She lea-

• 45:21Griffin Newman?

  Her agent gets new representation. They go like, what have you been working on? Let me read your recent stuff. She gives them the pilot script. They respond, why would you waste this on TV? This should be a movie.

• 45:32David Sims?

  Right. Whereas now, if I wrote a movie script, every studio would be like, this should be ten episodes long.

• 45:37Griffin Newman?

  Yeah. But so then they said, like, can you come up with a movie off of this? And that's when she goes, what's the larger story if I'm making one thing? Connects to Emma. Had read it, I think, fairly recently again, and was taken by how modern it seemed. And how many modern comedies are still kind of riffing on it.

• 45:57David Sims?

  That Emma is confident and imaginative and like manipulative, like felt so modern to her. Have you, has anyone here read Emma?

• 46:05Speaker 03

  No.

• 46:06David Sims?

  No. It's a good book.

• 46:09David Sims?

  And I highly recommend the, the Romola Gary mini series of Emma. I think that's the strongest adaptation of Emma in recent times. Obviously, this is a Gwyneth movie, which is pretty good. And there was the recent Anya Taylor-Joy movie, which I thought was also pretty good, kind of nailed the whole, the whole thing in Emma, which is not in Clueless, weirdly, is the moment where she's awful to the sort of flibbertage of it. And Mr. Knightley, AKA Josh, says, that was badly done, Emma. And you're kind, and she just like has an existential crisis. Like she gets too mean. So great. Gives me goosebumps. They don't do it in Clueless. She kind of has her realization in other ways.

• 46:43Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 46:44Speaker 03

  Ty is almost the one who gets mean. Yeah.

• 46:46David Sims?

  Yep. That's kind of the moment.

• 46:49David Sims?

  But anyway, you'd already, right, the, the Gwyneth Paltrow Emma has happened, or is about to happen. The angly sense and sensibility is around now. Like Jane Austen is getting kind of hot again. Obviously, the big con for Pride and Prejudice is around now as well. And she just, look, it's obvious, but she's, you know, the town of Highbury becomes Beverly Hills, car, carriages become cars, a ball becomes a dance, the village is the mall, right? She's like, this is easy. And she invents this slang for the movie that is largely made up, right? Like some stuff is real.

• 47:27Griffin Newman?

  She had a friend who's a teacher and he brought her in to sit in on classes. And she's like, I pulled a couple things, but it was more fun to actually just invent stuff.

• 47:35David Sims?

  Right. For Christian, she comes up with his own, like Christian will speak like a Rat Pack character, she decides, like, which is to me, one of the funniest bits in the movie that only the dad calls him out on it. It's like, what is the matter with you? Um, and but everyone else like, I mean, bugging is real, right? But things like Betty and Baldwin and I don't know, like a lot of the stuff they say she's just making up.

• 47:57Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 47:57David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 47:58Speaker 03

  It's funny that you guys are giving all this context because when I knew that I was gonna do this podcast about Clueless and I knew the whole Emma part of it, but I I've just forgot. And I was like, just thinking about Clueless and definitely did my own rewatch. And I was like, oh, I bet she was just kind of like, I just want to do Fast Times again. I like in my like.

• 48:21David Sims?

  I think it is a little bit of that, like get back to that energy.

• 48:25Speaker 03

  But I was real lazy about it. I was just like, I think she just wanted to do that again. And there was like, but you center on one character a little more and there's a little more narration. That's it.

• 48:32Griffin Newman?

  So she has talked about that after Fast Times, she got offered like every teen movie script and said, I don't want to do this. And I think felt a very deliberate, like, I don't want to get stuck in here, especially as a female director in Hollywood, being like, if I keep making like female focused, coming of age, sex, relationship comedies, I'm never going to be able to make anything else.

• 48:54David Sims?

  I'll be stuck in the pigeonhole. That makes sense.

• 48:55Griffin Newman?

  She does these immediate hard pivots into like Johnny Dangerously and European Vacation to be like, look, I can make like boy comedies.

• 49:02Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 49:02Griffin Newman?

  Then Look Who's Talking is her like strategic rebound from two flops.

• 49:06David Sims?

  Have you seen Look Who's Talking?

• 49:08Speaker 03

  Yeah, but that one, oh, I I only saw that when I was like six to eight. European Vacation, uh, I recently saw again, which I watched a lot as a kid. And I was wondering, I'm glad you said that was a flop because I'm like, this feels like a flop.

• 49:27Griffin Newman?

  I I had never seen before and I like it a lot, but it is a weird, angry, mean movie.

• 49:32Speaker 03

  And it's so brown, like the color tones, I just, I'm just so used to her movies being so bright. And it also makes me not want to go to Europe at all. I'm like, it's like looking at a bowl of beans.

• 49:45David Sims?

  Like very damp and kind of gray.

• 49:47Speaker 03

  Dark greens, oranges. I'm like, what is going on?

• 49:50Griffin Newman?

  What I like about it is that it's a movie where everyone is awful.

• 49:53David Sims?

  Everyone is pissed off in that movie.

• 49:55Griffin Newman?

  But like Johnny Dangerously was a complete flop. European Vacation was basically a hit on the goodwill of the first movie.

• 50:01David Sims?

  But everyone involved had a bad time.

• 50:03Griffin Newman?

  Everyone had a bad time.

• 50:04David Sims?

  Everyone talks shit talks that movie, including her. They're like, it was miserable.

• 50:07Griffin Newman?

  And Christmas Vacation is such a course correction of like, we have to not do that again.

• 50:11Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 50:11Griffin Newman?

  Let's get back to this.

• 50:12Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 50:12Griffin Newman?

  And becomes so much brighter and sunnier. And then look who's talking is like, I need a hit. I come up with this talking baby hook. But then ends up making this movie that's like weirdly personal to her. Does the sequel. She's talked about that, I think by the time Fox reaches out to her and is like, could you develop a TV show for us? Like a decade had passed and I think she was like, do I, is it time to stop running away from the Fast Times thing?

• 50:38Speaker 03

  Right.

• 50:38Griffin Newman?

  It was less her being like, it's time to me to do this again because it was successful.

• 50:43Speaker 03

  Right.

• 50:43Griffin Newman?

  But I do think she said like, Spicoli is absolutely 10 years into my career, the thing I've created that has lasted the longest.

• 50:51Speaker 03

  Right.

• 50:51Griffin Newman?

  That has had the greatest impact. Like whatever we synthesized in Spicoli is infectious and has stayed. And has this kind of like, can I build the whole movie out of Spicoli thing?

• 51:01Speaker 03

  I, I, I mean, I want to base my life around Spicoli sometimes. Like I, obviously when you're a kid and you see, I just needed to take a left Spicoli turn. But like, when you see him as a kid, it's like funny and duh. And it just has stuck around for years. It's iconic, iconic. And then as an adult, whenever I watch that performance, I'm like, he's not even pushing it that much. Like it is so grounded.

• 51:27Griffin Newman?

  It's very grounded.

• 51:28Speaker 03

  It's, and I'm like, what? Because you look at it and it looks like a joke, but then.

• 51:32Griffin Newman?

  There's also just like.

• 51:33David Sims?

  He just seems kind of zen too, though. And what you're saying, you're just like, he's having a good time.

• 51:37Griffin Newman?

  There's such a center to him of like, this guy has it figured out.

• 51:39Speaker 03

  Yes. Like when Mr. Hands asks him why he's late and he's like, I just couldn't make it. Like it's just so, that's so real. It's like everyone else would lie and he's like, I just couldn't make it on time.

• 51:51David Sims?

  Almost amazing that Travis is in this movie.

• 51:54Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 51:54David Sims?

  Because he is a Spicoli type and yet they, I feel like they find a gentler or like kind of, like a slightly different energy.

• 52:01Griffin Newman?

  Here's another thing she said when she's like reading the book and trying to figure out like, who are the equivalent, what are the modern day equivalents to the social types in this book? Right? And she's like, this guy would be a stoner.

• 52:14David Sims?

  Yes.

• 52:14Griffin Newman?

  But can I do stoner again?

• 52:16Speaker 03

  Right.

• 52:16Griffin Newman?

  Like, didn't want to do it because of Spicoli.

• 52:19David Sims?

  Right.

• 52:19Griffin Newman?

  And then said, like, it's the only thing that maps properly.

• 52:22Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 52:23Griffin Newman?

  With the worldview and I just have to figure out a way to make a difference.

• 52:25Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 52:26David Sims?

  Again, right, she's like, I don't want Cher to be looking down on people for really kind of nasty reasons. But like, that he's just kind of a burnout, it does make sense that she'd be like, yeah, he's amusing, but like, we don't, we don't take that guy seriously.

• 52:39Speaker 03

  She's never the worst to him.

• 52:41Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 52:41Speaker 03

  You know?

• 52:41Griffin Newman?

  I don't want to be looking down on Cher. And it's why the title is so good, where you're like, the fatal flaw of this character is that she just kinda doesn't get it.

• 52:51David Sims?

  In the book, Robert Martin, that character, is like a farmer. And the idea is that she's telling Harriet, like, you can't marry him because he's too, like, basically, like, you're not gonna jump the ladder.

• 53:02Speaker 03

  Right.

• 53:03David Sims?

  Right, like, uh, and she's got to realize that she's gotta stop caring about status so much.

• 53:08Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 53:08David Sims?

  Um, but, uh, yeah, uh, he's amazing. And Breckin Meyer is so funny in this movie. He's so sweet.

• 53:13Speaker 03

  He's so sweet.

• 53:14Griffin Newman?

  I, I feel like, I'm, I'm gonna paraphrase this probably very poorly, but I remember reading some interview that you did years ago, Heidi.

• 53:22Speaker 03

  Mm-hmm.

• 53:23Griffin Newman?

  Where you talked about how like, your main driving force is trying to figure out how much emotional realism you can put into sketch comedy.

• 53:31Speaker 03

  Mm-hmm.

• 53:31Griffin Newman?

  Does this sound correct?

• 53:32Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah.

• 53:33Griffin Newman?

  To, to something you've said, just like, what is the most like, real visceral and perhaps like unsettling emotion?

• 53:40Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 53:40Griffin Newman?

  I can load into sketch comedy?

• 53:42Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 53:43Griffin Newman?

  And I feel like it is a thing that Amy Heckerling is so good at. Not that this movie has high drama in it. But like, the same with the Spicoli thing of like, what is so funny about Spicoli is that he feels like a real person.

• 53:54Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 53:55Griffin Newman?

  And same with the clueless characters where like, this is a movie where everyone is pitched at Spicoli level.

• 54:00Speaker 03

  Mm-hmm.

• 54:01Griffin Newman?

  Whereas the miracle of Fast Times is that like, it is able to simultaneously hold Spicoli and an abortion scene.

• 54:08Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 54:08Griffin Newman?

  And Jennifer Jason Leigh is playing really naturalistic and grounded.

• 54:11Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 54:12Griffin Newman?

  This is a movie that takes place entirely in a cartoon world.

• 54:15Speaker 03

  Hundred percent.

• 54:15David Sims?

  A little bit, yeah.

• 54:16Griffin Newman?

  With like, perfect timing and everyone knows the right thing to say at every moment. And yet, every character feels like a real person with a real inner life and like, hopes and dreams and feelings.

• 54:25Speaker 03

  Hundred percent. Like, and shout out to Travis Breckin Meyer in that, cause, you know, he does that speech where he does the acceptance speech for TARDIS.

• 54:34David Sims?

  So funny.

• 54:34Speaker 03

  And it's so funny, but it's even as someone who would love a role like that, I'm like, I don't know if I could pull that off, you know, but it does feel so real.

• 54:45Griffin Newman?

  It feels really real.

• 54:47Speaker 03

  He made it so real, like the way he thanks McDonald's.

• 54:51David Sims?

  Without which I would never be tardy. I mean, Ben, this is a character who probably speaks to you in a little, little bit, right?

• 54:57Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 54:58David Sims?

  I'm not trying to call you out.

• 54:59Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 55:00David Sims?

  He's into Marvin the Martian.

• 55:01Speaker 04

  I was definitely in the stoner clique in high school.

• 55:04Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 55:05Griffin Newman?

  Ben does a pretty good Marvin the Martian, too.

• 55:07Speaker 03

  Oh.

• 55:10Speaker 03

  I mean, even that moment where they're flipping through Ty's drawings.

• 55:14David Sims?

  Right.

• 55:15Speaker 03

  And they're just geeking out on Marvin the Martian and all their little drawings. And it's, it's because, it's almost because of little moments like that. Where you are like, oh, these are real people. They're doing such a good, and seeing those off moments, like, it all just fuels the, the monologues, but yeah.

• 55:32Speaker 04

  But I like that he goes through a change, too. I like that he gets kind of dunked on for being a stoner and has that realization of like, I should be better, right? Like, I don't need to fall into this clique, per se.

• 55:48Griffin Newman?

  Sure.

• 55:48Speaker 04

  And I love to see that change in the character.

• 55:50Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 55:51Griffin Newman?

  It's like, right, the, the thing they do rather than make it a class thing is like, this guy is lacking in ambition.

• 55:56Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 55:57Griffin Newman?

  Cause his priority is getting stoned all the time. And at the end of the movie, it's not like he shows up wearing a suit and tie and he's like, hello, uh, I'm here to talk business. It's just like, this guy's gotten a little more focused.

• 56:06Speaker 04

  He starts taking his skateboarding more seriously, which we love to see.

• 56:10Griffin Newman?

  But I also love that they have this meet cute and immediately you're like, they have great chemistry and these two characters should be together.

• 56:16David Sims?

  Right? Like any, every 20 minutes, they interact a little bit and you're like, yeah, they still have great chemistry.

• 56:20Griffin Newman?

  Every moment is so good and Cher is just like, no, absolutely not. This does not follow the rules. He, Breckenmeyer's and Alicia Silverstone both went to Beverly Hills High.

• 56:29Speaker 03

  Wow.

• 56:29Griffin Newman?

  Which is obviously like one of the schools that this is based on. And he said he read the script and was like, I can't play this guy. These are the guys who used to beat me up in high school.

• 56:38Speaker 04

  Wow.

• 56:39Griffin Newman?

  That he was like, I was the guy the stoners picked on.

• 56:42Speaker 03

  Wow.

• 56:44David Sims?

  Shrek and Meyer is so cute.

• 56:45Griffin Newman?

  He's so cute, but I was just sort of-

• 56:46David Sims?

  He should be in Shrek 5 and he should change his name to Shrek and Meyer. I think you should think about that.

• 56:51Griffin Newman?

  You have had that change.org petition up for about a decade now.

• 56:54David Sims?

  He seems great. What's he up to recently? I have not, uh-

• 56:57Griffin Newman?

  He writes for Robot Chicken?

• 56:58David Sims?

  Yeah, I know he's in the Robot Chicken world, right? I guess that's what he's mostly doing.

• 57:02Speaker 03

  You know what's great too, and I've learned this the hard way in comedy, falling on my face a lot, and I get this note a lot from producers and Lauren, is that I see it with Travis. It's like, even if you're a loser or a stoner, like, you gotta play it joyful in comedy. Like, you can't make the audience sad. And sometimes it works, but like, for the most part, it's like, if you're- They're like, "Fine, play a loser, but love that you're a loser." You know, like, he's loving his tardies. He's loving that he's getting called out about it. And, you know, there have been a few times, like, in a sketch or something, and I'll just offhandedly, like, you know, mention, like, my crippling debt or something. And like, Lauren or one of my producers is like, "Why? Why that?" You know?

• 57:45Speaker 03

  And I'm like, "'Cause it's funny, 'cause when I was a kid, that did happen." And, you know, you have to laugh at it, but it's like, it is also sad to maybe talk about it in therapy, you know? So-

• 57:55Griffin Newman?

  I mean, I like sad comedy, but he is- He's like the quiet MVP of the movie for me.

• 58:00Speaker 03

  Yeah, same.

• 58:01Griffin Newman?

  And it speaks to like, the fact that he is also coming at it from the same angle as Amy Heckerling, of like, "These were the kids I, like, stood against in high school."

• 58:12Speaker 03

  Mm-hmm.

• 58:13Griffin Newman?

  And now I'm trying to understand their point of view in a positive way?

• 58:17Speaker 03

  Which is kind of, you know, I went to an all-girls Catholic high school, and I was not a stoner. And I don't even know that there was like, a lunch table full of stoners, but I do know certain girls that I knew smoked weed and like, and that there were this group of guys that did too, that, you know, they'd hang out with them on the weekend. And I think I was just- It wasn't necessarily that any of them were mean. They they also, they just seemed like

• 58:44Speaker 04

  They're a little scary.

• 58:45Speaker 03

  A level up, you know, like they're a little more mature. Yeah, but they would've been like, if you came to the party, it's like, hey, what's up? You know, but then if you're like, oh, I don't want that. It's like, okay, she's not chill.

• 58:55Griffin Newman?

  Cher's whole thing in this where she's like to tie like, you gotta stop doing drugs. That's like, not the thing that like

• 59:01David Sims?

  But it's okay to get laced at a party. Yeah. She makes it, she's not anti-drugs. She's just kind of anti-drugs all the time.

• 59:07Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 59:07David Sims?

  Yes.

• 59:08Griffin Newman?

  But I absolutely had that attitude in high school without wanting to be a narc because I was scared of doing drugs.

• 59:14Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 59:14Griffin Newman?

  And I was just like, oh, you're one of those people.

• 59:16David Sims?

  I just don't want to be involved.

• 59:18Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, I just actually like retaining my brain cells. Like, I had that.

• 59:21Speaker 03

  Oh, you did?

• 59:22Griffin Newman?

  Right, which I think is similarly coming out of this like fear of

• 59:25Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 59:26Griffin Newman?

  That seems like an intense thing that I'm not ready for.

• 59:28Speaker 04

  And so what, now you remember your life? That must be nice.

• 59:33David Sims?

  You were just stressed out anyway. That's all you're remembering. Look.

• 59:36Speaker 04

  The advice is not good, by the way. I just want to interject and say, smoking weed at a party when you don't smoke weed

• 59:42Griffin Newman?

  Oh, the worst.

• 59:42Speaker 04

  is the worst idea.

• 59:43David Sims?

  Yeah, you're just gonna have a shitty time.

• 59:45Speaker 04

  You just immediately get in your head and so bad.

• 59:48Griffin Newman?

  Overstimulated.

• 59:49Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 59:51David Sims?

  Although she, she's, you know, she takes one drag and kind of just mingles. She's, she

• 59:56Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 59:56David Sims?

  Cher handles most things with aplomb. God, God bless her. Like, she does get her ass to the valley and like

• 1:00:02Speaker 04

  She's that person. She doesn't struggle, really. She doesn't have adversity in her life.

• 1:00:07David Sims?

  Like, she shows up to that party in like a, you know, really, really expensive dress and she somehow doesn't stick out or whatever.

• 1:00:14Speaker 04

  What is the credit card bill that her father is paying monthly? Do we want to try and guess?

• 1:00:20David Sims?

  Look, here's my bigger

• 1:00:21Speaker 04

  Here's my bigger question.

• 1:00:22David Sims?

  And we gotta talk about this.

• 1:00:23Speaker 03

  Wow, good, good one.

• 1:00:25Speaker 04

  I have a list of some of my favorite. We can get into it. Is? Well, I do have that, but just more like looks and like style.

• 1:00:33Griffin Newman?

  Ben is getting into fashion, lady.

• 1:00:34Speaker 03

  I've only recently heard Elia. I thought it was a new designer. So then when I did the Clueless re-watch, I was like, oh, damn, Elia's been around.

• 1:00:43Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:00:43Speaker 03

  Expensive for a while.

• 1:00:45David Sims?

  How much would that cost?

• 1:00:47Griffin Newman?

  That ally address at that time? I mean, thousands, tens of thousands of dollars.

• 1:00:53David Sims?

  Here's my question.

• 1:00:54Speaker 03

  Really, right?

• 1:00:55David Sims?

  Is Mel a good dad? Because on the one hand, he's got a bit of a spoiled child who seems to get whatever she wants. They live in a mansion.

• 1:01:05Griffin Newman?

  Drives without a license.

• 1:01:06David Sims?

  Right. He's a workaholic. He yells at everybody. But at the same time, he seems to have raised a relatively sort of emotionally centered kid. Like, given all of this? Like, she's got a good heart, you know, like? And you kind of, like, they have enough moments together that you're kind of like, I think he's a little responsible for this. The mom's obviously, she never knew her mom.

• 1:01:28Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:01:29David Sims?

  It's just an interesting question.

• 1:01:31Speaker 03

  He feels present to me.

• 1:01:33David Sims?

  Yes, he is, right.

• 1:01:34Speaker 03

  Workaholic, but a lot of that work we see on site.

• 1:01:37David Sims?

  He's at home. He's doing it at home.

• 1:01:39Speaker 03

  For me, it, seeing their relationship always felt like a dream scenario, especially when they bring home the, like, takeout. Which, it just, I'm like, this kind of seems cool. Dad's working a lot. I get to help. I get to highlight some numbers.

• 1:01:55David Sims?

  Right, exactly. She's pitching in, like, he's trying to instill some sort of work ethic.

• 1:01:59Griffin Newman?

  But even, that's part of it. He is successful in doing that, and also, the journey of this movie is her understanding why to do things for other people.

• 1:02:08David Sims?

  Yes.

• 1:02:08Griffin Newman?

  But very early on, she is, as much as she is self-centered.

• 1:02:11David Sims?

  She's trying to get him to drink his juice, and she's like...

• 1:02:13Speaker 03

  We see that early.

• 1:02:15David Sims?

  You know, this is what I'm saying. Like, it's the balance she strikes here is impossible.

• 1:02:20Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:02:21David Sims?

  In most movies, you just make the dad more of a hard ass or more of a comical, right?

• 1:02:25Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 1:02:26David Sims?

  And she just does enough to make their relationship feel very, like, grounded, despite how cartoonish she is.

• 1:02:32Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:02:32Griffin Newman?

  You know what they said, which I thought was really interesting? She was basically legally emancipated at 15, I think.

• 1:02:39David Sims?

  Amy Heckerling.

• 1:02:40Griffin Newman?

  Alicia Silverstone.

• 1:02:41David Sims?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, sure.

• 1:02:42Griffin Newman?

  So by the time they filmed this movie, she's 17. But she's been emancipated and working for like two years. She's done the trilogy of Aerosmith videos. And she did The Crush, which was her one other.

• 1:02:54David Sims?

  That's her first big movie.

• 1:02:55Griffin Newman?

  Right. And this is also just, uh, I feel like Seth Rogen did an interview recently when he was promoting the studio, talking about how much the industry's changed in the last 20 years. And he said, the way it used to work is we could write a script like Superbad. And the studios would read it, and if they thought it was funny, they would option it and green light it and then go, now who do we cast? If the script was good, then you figure out who you can get. And if you can get a name, you get a name and then maybe the budget goes up. But if not, they've already committed to making it.

• 1:03:24Speaker 03

  Right.

• 1:03:24Griffin Newman?

  We'll get unknown stars or rising stars and we'll make it for cheaper.

• 1:03:28Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:03:28Griffin Newman?

  And this was a similar thing where, just to complete the arc of it, her new reps read it, tell her to write it as a full feature script. It's set up at Fox, it's being developed at Fox for a while. Then her and Twin Caplin have said there were a rash of movies that were seen as dumb comedies about stupid people that flopped. I think a lot of.

• 1:03:49David Sims?

  Airheads is the big one.

• 1:03:50Griffin Newman?

  Airheads and PCU?

• 1:03:52David Sims?

  PCU, but the big roadblock, Amy Heckerling says, is that there was a movie called Airheads that didn't do very well. Now, we all know Airheads, a funny movie.

• 1:04:00Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:04:01David Sims?

  Um, and so the movie being called Clueless was hurting it. That is until Scott Rudin.

• 1:04:06Griffin Newman?

  Yes. The king of string cheese.

• 1:04:11David Sims?

  Uh, Olympic phone thrower Scott Rudin gets his hand on the script. He had just produced The Addams Family.

• 1:04:16Griffin Newman?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:04:17David Sims?

  Uh, he also produced The Firm. And the minute he gets his hand on the script, there's a bidding war.

• 1:04:21Griffin Newman?

  Right, he says this script is great.

• 1:04:23David Sims?

  Like, uh, Heckerling's like, nothing had changed about the project at all.

• 1:04:26Griffin Newman?

  Didn't change a comma.

• 1:04:27David Sims?

  But his involvement just gets.

• 1:04:28Griffin Newman?

  Fox drops it, puts it in turnaround, he reads it, says, this is good. And then everyone bids again against it competitively. Paramount, she's thrilled with because she's like, they own MTV and Nickelodeon. They have like the distribution systems to promote this to the audience we need to get to. But, but then immediately is like, I want to cast Alicia Silverstone. I think she had Alicia Silverstone in mind even when it was set up at Fox.

• 1:04:51David Sims?

  Yes, she always wanted the crush girl slash the Aerosmith girl.

• 1:04:54Griffin Newman?

  And was like, you know, she's untested as a movie star. And yet, they were just like, she's kind of buzzy.

• 1:05:01David Sims?

  Fox wanted Reese Witherspoon or Angelina Jolie.

• 1:05:04Speaker 03

  Wow.

• 1:05:05David Sims?

  Crazy to think about.

• 1:05:06Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:06David Sims?

  Uh, Heckerling was dead set on her. Uh, Alicia Witt, apparently, read and came close. Tiffany Theeson, coming off of Saved by the Bell. Keri Russell was considered for this role. Uh, there was another girl that they were like, you gotta go see this girl. She's in this movie called Flesh and Bone. Gwyneth Paltrow.

• 1:05:24Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:24David Sims?

  Heckerling didn't get around to seeing it. Uh, Josh was a nightmare to cast. Uh, Adam Horovitz was her first choice.

• 1:05:32Griffin Newman?

  That kind of makes sense.

• 1:05:33David Sims?

  Yeah, totally. Uh, Ben Affleck was, I mean, it's just these names where you're like, Jesus, all these guys were just floating around.

• 1:05:39Griffin Newman?

  Crazy about it too is sometimes you read about these like casting what ifs and you're like bullet dodged. They ended up with the only person who could have played this. I think they landed on the best cast possible and yet you read the alternates and it speaks to like a generation of talent bubbling.

• 1:05:53Speaker 03

  Totally.

• 1:05:53Griffin Newman?

  Where you're like, Chappelle was like number two for Murray.

• 1:05:56David Sims?

  Right.

• 1:05:57Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:05:57Griffin Newman?

  You know, they're all these.

• 1:05:59Speaker 03

  Yeah, you could.

• 1:06:00Griffin Newman?

  They could all work.

• 1:06:00Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:06:01Griffin Newman?

  But, um, she's 17 when they filmed this and it, it, Heckerling and Kaplan said like, when she got on set and just started on the first day, she so immediately had it. And she was bringing the missing piece that we couldn't have written, which was there was an innocence to her.

• 1:06:20David Sims?

  Right.

• 1:06:20Griffin Newman?

  And a childlike quality to her and like a guilelessness. That was just came out of her actually being that young.

• 1:06:27Speaker 03

  Right.

• 1:06:28Griffin Newman?

  And like the Haitians thing was actually just her mispronouncing that word. Right. And she went to the crew and was like, no one correct her. We couldn't have planned this better. It says so much about the character. And she's nailing this monologue. No one make herself conscious about it.

• 1:06:43David Sims?

  She rocks. Also considered, okay, whatever. Brittany Murphy is brought in very early and she is just like Ty. Right? Like, that's just such a natural performance. She's so good. We all love Brittany Murphy, obviously. Dan Hedaya, she wanted Harvey Keitel, but he was too expensive. But that's the vibe she was going for. She saw Blood Simple and was like, that guy. Lauryn Hill was the first choice for Dion, or was it the one that Stacy Dash beat out? Stacy Dash is very good in this movie.

• 1:07:15Griffin Newman?

  Famously 29 years old.

• 1:07:17David Sims?

  She is. She does read older, too.

• 1:07:19Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:07:19David Sims?

  But I just like that she's meaner, but not too mean.

• 1:07:23Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:23David Sims?

  If that makes sense.

• 1:07:24Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, totally.

• 1:07:24David Sims?

  And like that she's kind of like, alright Cher, you know, like when Cher wants to do something nice. And then she's like, eh, this is kind of fun. But like, she's not that nice, but she's nice enough. She feels grown up, though.

• 1:07:35Griffin Newman?

  Yes. Twin Caplan, who I keep on referencing, who plays Miss Geist.

• 1:07:41David Sims?

  She's also her producer.

• 1:07:42Griffin Newman?

  Was the associate producer and is like heckling's one of her closest collaborators. She said this thing that I've never considered before.

• 1:07:48David Sims?

  Sarah Michelle Gellar was the runner-up for Amber.

• 1:07:51Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:07:52Speaker 03

  Oh.

• 1:07:53Griffin Newman?

  That just makes a lot of sense of, I think, a thing I love about teen movies. Is she was like, the great thing about making teen movies is you get to cast new people who are so full of energy. And so eager to prove themselves. If you have a cast of like 20 teenagers, you're getting all these people who are like just trying to make their mark.

• 1:08:14Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:08:14Griffin Newman?

  And they show up to set with so much energy and so much like creativity and so many ideas.

• 1:08:19Speaker 03

  And want to bond, too, because at that age, you just want to make friends. And then you, you know, people in their 30s and 40s are just kind of like, I need my alone time.

• 1:08:28Griffin Newman?

  Right. No one's throwing around weight. And you like, watch all this fucking like B-roll, behind the scenes footage they have, and it's just everyone doing bits.

• 1:08:35Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's camp.

• 1:08:36Griffin Newman?

  In between takes, which then feeds into the energy.

• 1:08:39David Sims?

  DP Phil Pope, Bill Pope, the great Bill Pope.

• 1:08:41Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 1:08:41David Sims?

  One of the greatest cinematographers alive.

• 1:08:43Griffin Newman?

  Who does the Matrix trilogy and Spider-Man 2 and Army of Darkness.

• 1:08:47David Sims?

  He says this is the most fun he ever had making a movie. Like, and then they had no money and he had to do lots of sort of innovative stuff, which is often true with him. It's him making Bound around the same time. And he says, if we'd had more money, we would have fucked this movie up. We would have like shot ourselves in the foot somehow.

• 1:09:02Griffin Newman?

  He meets with her and says, how do you want this movie to look? And she said, happy. And he said, what does happy mean? And she said, you know, like happy. And so he went through and got like a reference book full of photos of things that he thought captured happiness and brought this giant book to her.

• 1:09:16David Sims?

  Right.

• 1:09:17Griffin Newman?

  And laid it all out and she was like happy, not happy, happy. And he was like, truly, as much as that sounds vague, by the end of it, I had a completely solid idea. I was able to look at the commonalities because she was throwing something out, which is like, I know how I want it to feel. So now let's figure out, let's reverse engineer what creates the kind of imagery that conveys that feeling.

• 1:09:40Speaker 03

  Yeah, cuz I, you know, growing up in the Midwest, even watching Clueless now and seeing the way they dress and the hats and, you know, I was watching a lot of movies, TV. I loved Saved by the Bell.

• 1:09:51David Sims?

  Yep.

• 1:09:52Speaker 03

  But it makes me, I'd never seen something that looked like that. I'd seen cool girls before, cool guys, but stylistically, it's different. And so I am like, wait, is that what people looked like in Beverly Hills? Like, or did someone just nail that aspirational element in a way?

• 1:10:12Griffin Newman?

  I think so. It's the same as the language where it's like, she took like 10% inspiration from the real world. She like heightened it by 90% comedically and put her own spin on it, but then it impacted the culture in a way where then it did become the thing.

• 1:10:25Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:10:26Griffin Newman?

  Like, there's this odd sort of like, she came up with this warped version of what was actually going on that then became the model that everyone copied.

• 1:10:34David Sims?

  But you're, you're right, Heidi, that this does feel like science fiction in a way. Like, Fast and Furious 1, how you watch it now and you're like, oh, I love this aesthetic. I love their clothes.

• 1:10:43Griffin Newman?

  But half of it feels like a documentary.

• 1:10:44David Sims?

  Yeah, 100%. And this, you're just like, they are space aliens.

• 1:10:48Speaker 03

  They are.

• 1:10:49David Sims?

  Yes, especially Cher and Dion.

• 1:10:51Speaker 03

  Especially Dion, like the last scene at the wedding when Dion has the flowers in her hair. You know, they just figure out a new, it's just so colorful and yeah.

• 1:10:59Griffin Newman?

  Cher has like 55 outfits in this movie.

• 1:11:02David Sims?

  That rocks.

• 1:11:03Griffin Newman?

  The costume budget was $200,000.

• 1:11:05David Sims?

  It should have gotten an Academy Award nomination. It's one of the classic examples of when the Oscars don't recognize contemporary costume design.

• 1:11:12Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:11:13David Sims?

  Every look in this movie is astonishing. Even like the boys, even how the boys all have a very specific look, like Elton with his big baggy sweaters.

• 1:11:20Speaker 03

  But also that Elton at prom, he's like, he almost looks like a vampire.

• 1:11:27Speaker 03

  And like, I just clocked that recently where I was like, wait, and I can't remember.

• 1:11:32David Sims?

  My foot hurts. Can I go to the bathroom?

• 1:11:35Speaker 03

  It's Elton and I can't remember. I think he's dancing with Amber at that point. Their looks, it's low key, you're seeing it like far away, but I'm like, wait, those looks too. And it's different. It's like, he was wearing a hoodie and now he's Interview with the Vampire. It's like, who did this? This is genius.

• 1:11:51David Sims?

  There's one outfit that Amber has, this one, oh God, it would, it's these outfits that you glimpse for like two seconds.

• 1:11:58Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 1:11:58David Sims?

  Where she's got like a sort of stewardess uniform, but there's like a gold dollar sign on it.

• 1:12:03Griffin Newman?

  The costume designer said, and can you call out her name? Mona May, I think is her name.

• 1:12:07David Sims?

  Yeah, let me look it up.

• 1:12:09Griffin Newman?

  Said that the game for Amber was that all of her outfits are themed.

• 1:12:13David Sims?

  Right, right, right. Amber's maybe trying a little too hard in a way.

• 1:12:17Speaker 03

  Which I can totally tell, and it's great, and so camp, but recently watching it again, there's one outfit she has. I think it's during like maybe the debate scene or it's a classroom scene. She has a black sweater on, just a black tank. On the sleeves, there's like furry cuffs on the sleeves. And like she kind of walks past, I only see a little of her bottoms and I was like, are those jeans? And I was shocked to see Amber in jeans, but it was like the most like just understated outfit. But it was, I was almost like, oh, I want to wear that outfit now. It's like very, but it was just like, I'm like, well, why did you even decide she gets jeans? It looks so cool, like.

• 1:12:53Griffin Newman?

  But everything in this movie feels like so thought through and deliberate in that way.

• 1:12:58Speaker 03

  Yes. I'm like, there's a reason for the jeans and the reason is the outfit looks great, but I'm just still shocked because it's Amber.

• 1:13:04Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:05David Sims?

  Is Cher's yellow sort of tartan like suit skirt, like is that her, the most iconic look in Clueless? Like it's, it's a tough debate. There's the red plaid. That's really good. Matching outfit. Yeah, Ty has some amazing looks in this.

• 1:13:21Speaker 03

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:13:21David Sims?

  And I like that the looks Cher finds for Ty are not the looks Cher would wear. Like, that's how much of an eye Cher has.

• 1:13:27Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 1:13:28David Sims?

  She can dress anybody.

• 1:13:29Speaker 04

  Like, she's like preppy but still grunged.

• 1:13:31David Sims?

  Right. She knows how to find Ty's niche. Right.

• 1:13:34Griffin Newman?

  But that's why I also go back to, Dan Hedaya has raised Cher well because she's not trying to impose her world on everyone else.

• 1:13:42Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 1:13:42Griffin Newman?

  She is trying the best that she can to help other people.

• 1:13:45Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:13:46Griffin Newman?

  In the way they want to be helped.

• 1:13:47Speaker 03

  She's spoiled, but I almost feel like it's in a good way. Like, he calls her out for the traffic tickets, but like any teenager, she's still gonna-

• 1:13:55David Sims?

  Ticket is the first notice.

• 1:13:56Speaker 03

  Yeah, she's still gonna go drive.

• 1:13:58David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:58Speaker 03

  But she is going home and getting called out for these things, you know, like, he's-

• 1:14:02David Sims?

  Yes. She's spoiled in that she has whatever clothes she wants.

• 1:14:06Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 1:14:06David Sims?

  But she doesn't seem like she's required certainly to like, get good grades and kind of like, do her work what-

• 1:14:13Speaker 04

  The joke of any time, there's like a cutscene and then she has a new shopping bag.

• 1:14:19Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:14:19Speaker 04

  It just, they hit that over and over again, and it's funny every single time.

• 1:14:24David Sims?

  What's the size?

• 1:14:25Speaker 03

  And he has to spoil, like, if you really think about it, he lost his wife.

• 1:14:29David Sims?

  Right. He's not the one kid.

• 1:14:30Speaker 03

  This is only, yeah, like, you gotta spoil your baby girl.

• 1:14:33Griffin Newman?

  He's recently divorced.

• 1:14:34Speaker 03

  With clothes.

• 1:14:35Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:14:36David Sims?

  Yes. I also like that, I mean, again, this is what happens when you watch Cher, Clueless a thousand times. When Josh's mom calls, looking for him, a character we never meet.

• 1:14:47Griffin Newman?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:14:47David Sims?

  Who is just, whatever, the lady that, right.

• 1:14:49Griffin Newman?

  Hedaya's ex-wife.

• 1:14:50David Sims?

  Hedaya was married to for a few years. She likes Cher.

• 1:14:52Griffin Newman?

  Divorced wives, not children.

• 1:14:53David Sims?

  She's like, okay, sweetie, I'll see you later. Like, everybody likes Cher, right? Like, you know, Cher would be a good stepdaughter to have. It's clear, like, Cher was like, not a pain about having a stepmom or whatever.

• 1:15:03Griffin Newman?

  I think another rookie mistake would be to have Josh and Cher hate each other until the end.

• 1:15:09David Sims?

  Sure.

• 1:15:09Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:15:09David Sims?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. And instead, they're just kinda like-

• 1:15:11Griffin Newman?

  Josh makes some jokes at her expense, but he clearly respects her, and it's what makes the moment of him standing up and being like, she's not dumb.

• 1:15:19David Sims?

  Right.

• 1:15:19Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:15:19Griffin Newman?

  So affecting, is he knows that and has always known that.

• 1:15:23Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:15:23Griffin Newman?

  It's not a thing he's learned. It's very easy to sort of like, make the superficial jokes about her, but he loves when she's able to call out the, the Polonius thing.

• 1:15:31David Sims?

  Polonius moment, so good.

• 1:15:33Griffin Newman?

  Right. And she, like, is able to make fun of him for being boring.

• 1:15:36Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 1:15:37Griffin Newman?

  But she thinks he's smart. She doesn't dislike him ever.

• 1:15:40Speaker 03

  No.

• 1:15:40David Sims?

  No, why does he keep coming over there?

• 1:15:42Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:15:43David Sims?

  He's like, hang out with Mel?

• 1:15:44Speaker 03

  But also, it is a mansion.

• 1:15:46David Sims?

  It is a mansion, and he can like, sit by the pool. But I love that he sits by the pool in, like, long sleeves.

• 1:15:52Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:15:52Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:15:52David Sims?

  To read Nietzsche.

• 1:15:54Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:15:54Speaker 03

  Now, you-

• 1:15:55David Sims?

  Go in the pool.

• 1:15:56Speaker 03

  You said we never see his mom.

• 1:15:59David Sims?

  Right.

• 1:15:59Speaker 03

  I think we actually see her once.

• 1:16:00David Sims?

  Okay, where's her-

• 1:16:01Speaker 03

  Do you know what I'm-

• 1:16:01David Sims?

  At the wedding, or where?

• 1:16:03Speaker 03

  I think that woman who's sitting next to him when Cher's walking down the aisle and smiles at him. There's a woman-

• 1:16:08David Sims?

  Ah.

• 1:16:09Speaker 03

  Who like, gives him a look like something's changed. And I'm like, and it doesn't make sense that Josh's mom would be at Mrs. Geist's wedding.

• 1:16:16David Sims?

  Well, who knows? It's a small- Look, Beverly Hills is small, right? Like, as much as, right, as much as all the-

• 1:16:21Griffin Newman?

  It also doesn't necessarily make sense the wedding would happen in Cher's backyard.

• 1:16:25David Sims?

  But Cher loves to throw a party.

• 1:16:27Griffin Newman?

  It's a tight-knit community.

• 1:16:28David Sims?

  But Cher has kind of taken control of Miss Geist's, like, life.

• 1:16:32Griffin Newman?

  And you have to imagine that, like, Cher would invite her.

• 1:16:35Speaker 03

  True.

• 1:16:35Griffin Newman?

  Right?

• 1:16:36Speaker 03

  Yeah, I want your mom to come.

• 1:16:37Griffin Newman?

  Right, in the, in the name of, like-

• 1:16:38Speaker 03

  I think we'll see her.

• 1:16:39Griffin Newman?

  Let's everyone be friendly.

• 1:16:40Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 1:16:42David Sims?

  Yeah, well, I, the impression I get is that, that, that her dad broke up with the mom because he's a workaholic.

• 1:16:47Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 1:16:47David Sims?

  They probably didn't even dislike each other, they probably just never saw each other, right?

• 1:16:51Speaker 03

  Hundred percent.

• 1:16:51Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:16:51David Sims?

  Because they're both divorced, they both have, not divorced, you know, they have kids already, and anyway.

• 1:16:57Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:01Griffin Newman?

  David?

• 1:17:01David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:02Griffin Newman?

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

• 1:17:07David Sims?

  Hmm.

• 1:17:08Griffin 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?

• 1:17:19David Sims?

  It is an iconic video.

• 1:17:20Griffin Newman?

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

• 1:17:43David Sims?

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

• 1:17:54Griffin 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.

• 1:18:03David Sims?

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

• 1:18:06Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:18:07David 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.

• 1:18:14Griffin 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.

• 1:18:28David Sims?

  I'm something of an expert in cryptozoology.

• 1:18:30Griffin Newman?

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

• 1:18:32David 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.

• 1:18:48Griffin Newman?

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

• 1:19:04Griffin Newman?

  David? Yes? Uh, uh, who are you wearing? Uh, who am I wearing? I'm doing like an impression of a red carpet correspondent, asking who you're wearing right now. Well, I am wearing Quince. Well, well, well, what a Quince, Quincy dense.

• 1:19:19David Sims?

  It's a Mongolian cashmere zip sweater.

• 1:19:23Griffin Newman?

  Okay.

• 1:19:24David Sims?

  It's a sort of a brown, would you agree?

• 1:19:26Griffin Newman?

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

• 1:19:29David 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.

• 1:19:36Griffin 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.

• 1:19:53David Sims?

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

• 1:20:00Griffin Newman?

  Like you're wearing red hair?

• 1:20:01David Sims?

  14 karat gold? Italian leather.

• 1:20:04Griffin Newman?

  Mama mia.

• 1:20:05David 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 good together all season long.

• 1:20:25Griffin 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.

• 1:20:38David 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.

• 1:20:45Griffin Newman?

  Oh, well, well, well.

• 1:20:46David Sims?

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

• 1:20:50Griffin Newman?

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

• 1:21:37David Sims?

  Hello, I'm Chris Richards, general manager at Saffron Volkswagen Richmond. I'm here to announce an exciting new program that I want you to listen to. Here's my friend, Happy.

• 1:21:46Speaker 05

  Hi, I'm Happy Harry Turner, special finance manager at SaffronCredit.com. If you're in an open Chapter 13 bankruptcy, recently filed a Chapter 7, or you've been turned down because of credit challenges, don't give up. For nearly 30 years, I've helped people get reliable transportation when others said no. Visit SaffronCredit.com. Remember, I'm not happy unless you are.

• 1:22:10David Sims?

  Clueless. So Clueless begins with a great montage set to Kids in America. This movie has a banging soundtrack, obviously, like, kinda like Fast Times, where she just, like, picks stuff of the moment that's really, really good.

• 1:22:24Griffin Newman?

  Although a thing I think that's smart is, Fast Times, she's obviously, like, closer to that age, right?

• 1:22:30David Sims?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:22:31Griffin Newman?

  And she's clearly picking music that she likes to make the kids about as hip as she is. She knows she's getting older here, and so half the soundtrack is cool, modern covers of songs that Amy Heckerling likes. You know, like, she's doing a lot of, like, covers of 70s and 80s songs, and then stuff like Radiohead.

• 1:22:49David Sims?

  There's Radiohead, there's the Mighty Mighty Boss Tones. He appears in the movie.

• 1:22:54Speaker 03

  Cameo.

• 1:22:55Speaker 04

  I always loved about the Mighty Mighty Boss Tones that they had a dancing man.

• 1:22:59David Sims?

  Yeah, you gotta have a dancing man.

• 1:23:01Speaker 04

  I mean, it's kind of, it's definitely a thing in the ska scene.

• 1:23:04Griffin Newman?

  Every time I watch it, I get confused, and I think it's gonna be the Never Knock On Wood song, which I know isn't Boss Tones, but sounds so much like it. Do you know what song I'm talking about?

• 1:23:14Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 1:23:15David Sims?

  Uh, that, I think that is.

• 1:23:16Griffin Newman?

  Is that that?

• 1:23:17David Sims?

  It's called "The Impression That I Get."

• 1:23:19Griffin Newman?

  Okay.

• 1:23:20David Sims?

  Yes.

• 1:23:20Griffin Newman?

  But it's not the song in this movie.

• 1:23:21David Sims?

  No.

• 1:23:22Griffin Newman?

  I guess it just more speaks to-

• 1:23:23David Sims?

  They're singing "Where Do You Go."

• 1:23:24Griffin Newman?

  Boss Tones having a real, specific sound.

• 1:23:26David Sims?

  Did you ever listen to ska, Faze, Ben?

• 1:23:28Speaker 04

  Unfortunately, yes.

• 1:23:29David Sims?

  You did? Oh, how long? Did you like the Boss Tones? What are other ska bands?

• 1:23:34Speaker 04

  I would say the big one for me, I mean, there's all the British stuff, which is great, but there was Catch 22, which is a Jersey band, and I went to see them a couple of times.

• 1:23:44Griffin Newman?

  Did you ever real Big Fish, Ben?

• 1:23:46Speaker 04

  I did. Less Than Jake, The Toasters. I mean, there was so much of, like, the mid 90s into the aughts of just, I think they called it third-wave ska.

• 1:23:56David Sims?

  Jeez. Ska is one of those things that someone had to explain to me what it was.

• 1:23:59Speaker 04

  Suicide Machines.

• 1:24:01David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:01Speaker 03

  Can I ask a Scott if these are considered ska? Because- Now, No Doubt is kind of ska.

• 1:24:08David Sims?

  Or they began as ska. They started as ska.

• 1:24:11Speaker 03

  So I went to a No Doubt concert and there were three bands on the bill and I was just lucky to see No Doubt. But then it was The Urge and 311. Would you say those two are?

• 1:24:23David Sims?

  So 311 are kind of like a jam band, right? Or are they not? I don't know. Aren't they like fish adjacent? They don't have enough brass, I think, in their songs. They need that brass. You gotta have brass. According to Wikipedia, The Urge combined several genres. Hardcore punk, ska, reggae, funk. That sounds like they're in that world.

• 1:24:41Speaker 03

  Yeah. Okay.

• 1:24:43David Sims?

  311, I think, is maybe like reggae more.

• 1:24:47Speaker 03

  Yeah, okay. I see how it all came together, but I've always wondered, was I at a pure ska show? I don't think I was.

• 1:24:53Griffin Newman?

  I did clock that in the first 90 seconds of this movie. I paused it at 90 seconds to check the runtime. There are three different needle drops in the first 90 seconds.

• 1:25:05David Sims?

  Kids in America, I don't know what else.

• 1:25:06Griffin Newman?

  Fashion by David Bowie plays for like 20 seconds.

• 1:25:10Speaker 03

  Wow.

• 1:25:11David Sims?

  Right, because that's during her, right. We see her life. She has a perfect life. It looks like a Noxzema commercial or whatever her joke is. But, you know, she's got her computer that sorts her clothes for her. She's got her daddy, who she's giving orange juice to. The computer is so sick.

• 1:25:27Griffin Newman?

  The computerized closet was a big, right, September of that year, when all the girls come back from summer break and to watch Clueless. It had become the greatest aspiration. Computerized closet.

• 1:25:37David Sims?

  Does such a thing exist? That actually feels like science fiction.

• 1:25:40Griffin Newman?

  Richie Rich has McDonald's in his house as the number one cool thing you could have.

• 1:25:44Speaker 03

  And some girl got it, I'm sure.

• 1:25:45Griffin Newman?

  Some girl got it.

• 1:25:46David Sims?

  I love the joke that she and Dion are both named after great singers of the past who now do infomercials. That was like, so some of those jokes my mom had to explain to me, right? She's like laughing so hard and I'm like, what do you, who's Dion? What are you talking about? And she would just, and I think this was just important, building me up as the well-rounded person that I am today. You know what I mean?

• 1:26:05Speaker 03

  I love that you would even ask or had a parent that would explain. I just laughed at everything and never asked. Like in Planes, Trains, where his hands between two pillows. I just didn't get that until maybe a year ago. Like, really didn't.

• 1:26:21David Sims?

  Really is good though.

• 1:26:21Speaker 03

  I was still laughing at what I thought I was laughing at.

• 1:26:25David Sims?

  You just weren't thinking about it.

• 1:26:26Speaker 03

  I didn't think butt cheeks. I just didn't, I just didn't go anywhere near it.

• 1:26:30Griffin Newman?

  I have a very distinct memory of. Going to see Something About Mary with my dad. And the hair gel scene happens with the come on the ear. And my dad's laughing hysterically and I said, what is that? And through tears, he went, I don't know.

• 1:26:49Griffin Newman?

  Just didn't want to have to explain it to me in the moment. And pretended that he, I went, why are you laughing? He went, I don't know. I just, I don't know what it is. Pay attention to them, just watch the movie. And I was sitting there doing the math and I was like, hmm. What are things I've heard people talk about that are inappropriate that I haven't seen yet? And I had the very distinct thought, I guess that must be a condom. That's my memory is sitting there at like eight or whatever. So I'm at Mary and being like, a condom must be goo.

• 1:27:22David Sims?

  Oh, man. Um, so Cher goes to school with Dion and she's rich and Dion is rich and Dion is dating Murray. And

• 1:27:33Griffin Newman?

  Faison's so good.

• 1:27:34David Sims?

  He's so, every second of that guy is funny.

• 1:27:38Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:27:38Speaker 03

  There should be more of them, honestly.

• 1:27:40David Sims?

  He's always funny.

• 1:27:41Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:27:42David Sims?

  He's always

• 1:27:42Griffin Newman?

  He's always funny.

• 1:27:43David Sims?

  And he kind of is like Paul Rudd and all these other guys where I'm like, he also aged superbly.

• 1:27:49Griffin Newman?

  Oh, he has aged incredibly.

• 1:27:50David Sims?

  Fucking same, like now, basically. He's so good.

• 1:27:54Griffin Newman?

  Well, here's another interesting thing.

• 1:27:56David Sims?

  Because I'm keeping it real. My favorite is when he's like shaving his eyes because he's keeping it real. His hair is barely changed.

• 1:28:02Speaker 03

  I know.

• 1:28:03Griffin Newman?

  So many

• 1:28:03Speaker 03

  And she's so mad.

• 1:28:04David Sims?

  She's so mad.

• 1:28:05Speaker 03

  I have to clock in my head every time. I'm like, is it that much of a change?

• 1:28:08David Sims?

  No, no.

• 1:28:08Speaker 03

  It's not.

• 1:28:09Griffin Newman?

  No, no, not at all. So many of these 90s, uh, studio comedy guys end up in the robot chicken sphere because of Seth Green, obviously. And he was similar, I think, like doing voices for whatever. And then he got really interested in the art of stop motion. He does his own stop motion now.

• 1:28:27David Sims?

  Faison?

• 1:28:27Griffin Newman?

  If you follow Faison on Instagram, he just posts like 20 second social media, uh, stop motion tests.

• 1:28:34Speaker 03

  He fully went and worked at Stupid Buddy Studios where they do robot chickens.

• 1:28:38Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:28:38Speaker 03

  I think he interned there.

• 1:28:39Griffin Newman?

  This guy just seems lovely.

• 1:28:41Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:28:41Griffin Newman?

  He's always funny.

• 1:28:42Speaker 03

  It's like how Ken Griffey Jr. now is a sports photographer. He just photographed.

• 1:28:49David Sims?

  He was at the Masters.

• 1:28:50Speaker 03

  Long Island at the Masters.

• 1:28:51David Sims?

  He was like an accredited photo, you know, it's like, it's not he's doing it for fun. Like he was in the photo pool, you know?

• 1:28:57Speaker 03

  That's so cool.

• 1:28:58Griffin Newman?

  To your point, the fact that this guy was just like, this is really cool. Can I intern here?

• 1:29:03Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:29:04Griffin Newman?

  Like, I want to learn this the right way.

• 1:29:06David Sims?

  He's done everything, like, right? He's right, he doesn't, there's nothing else he needs to do. He's also in the amazing movie Uptown Girls starring Brittany Murphy. He's in, um, uh, Josie and the Pussycats.

• 1:29:19Griffin Newman?

  Well, yeah.

• 1:29:20David Sims?

  Uh, which we've covered, obviously.

• 1:29:22Griffin Newman?

  With, with Breckin Myers.

• 1:29:24Speaker 04

  He also hosts a podcast with Zach Braff.

• 1:29:26David Sims?

  Interesting. And they, they, are they watching all the episodes of Scrubs on that one?

• 1:29:29Griffin Newman?

  No, we're like, they're watching all the episodes of Friends.

• 1:29:32David Sims?

  That would be funny.

• 1:29:33Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:29:34David Sims?

  You know what? Yeah, exactly. We're like, we like Frasier. We're just going to recap Frasier. Fuck you. You don't get to learn anything about Scrubs. No behind the scenes tales for you. So, okay, so, yeah, well, it's hard to do the plot of Clueless. Uh, it's a pretty gentle movie. Um, Cher, yeah, she's got Josh. We've, we've already sort of laid out all the, about the, the sort of the setup here.

• 1:29:56Speaker 04

  I love in high school movies where they establish the rules of the world in the cliques and go through and show everyone, the stoner kids. I just, I always love how these movies have that in the beginning and just, it's, it's like.

• 1:30:12Griffin Newman?

  Well, this is another.

• 1:30:13Speaker 04

  An important thing, I think, as a kid to see.

• 1:30:16Griffin Newman?

  Another thing I love about high school movies is like the ensemble ecosystem. Where you sort of have these feelings of like, this is another thing we lose when studios stop making theatrical comedies, right? Which is like comedies made with a proper budget and a proper scale where you're able to build full sets or like get good locations.

• 1:30:35Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:30:35Griffin Newman?

  And have like 25 primary actors on set every day.

• 1:30:39Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:30:39Griffin Newman?

  Not like we have to shoot this person out in four days because they're only in three scenes. Everyone's in the background of every sequence.

• 1:30:46Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:30:46Griffin Newman?

  Like, you're constantly feeling like there is a cohesive world to all these clicks bouncing off each other. Even when the guy's not the focus of this shot.

• 1:30:54Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:30:54Griffin Newman?

  You're seeing Faison in the background.

• 1:30:56Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 1:30:56Griffin Newman?

  He's there.

• 1:30:57Speaker 03

  I mean, anytime someone tells me, like, oh, the whole movie takes place in a car. I'm like, bummer.

• 1:31:03David Sims?

  Yeah, right. Let's go places.

• 1:31:05Speaker 03

  I mean, maybe it just worked in some way, but I'm like, yeah, let's go places and meet a bunch of people and like, yeah.

• 1:31:12David Sims?

  Um, Ty doesn't enter for the first 15, 20 minutes.

• 1:31:16Griffin Newman?

  The first 20 minutes is just her. This movie is her getting the bad report.

• 1:31:19David Sims?

  Getting the bad, the bad grade in debate.

• 1:31:21Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 1:31:22David Sims?

  Uh, from Wallace Shawn and embarking on the, the setup, uh, between Twin Cap and Wallace Shawn.

• 1:31:27Griffin Newman?

  And then having the moment of self-realization of, I feel good that I made other people happy.

• 1:31:32David Sims?

  Right. It's not just that I did it to get my grade up. I, right.

• 1:31:35Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 1:31:35David Sims?

  I'm thrilled by the, uh, the connection I forged.

• 1:31:39Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:31:39David Sims?

  They are so cute. Old, old people can be so cute, as they say.

• 1:31:42Speaker 04

  I love that, uh, they established that they're students, but it's not a typical teacher-student relationship. Where it feels a little bit like they don't have to take school that seriously. They're not like bad kids necessarily. There's just this nuance there that I've really picked up.

• 1:32:01David Sims?

  It's the way they're all sitting differently in their chairs, like.

• 1:32:06Griffin Newman?

  This is the part of this movie that watching it last night finally hit for me of like, this is too close to home.

• 1:32:11Speaker 04

  Oh, same answer.

• 1:32:12Griffin Newman?

  I did not go to Beverly Hills High.

• 1:32:14Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:32:14Griffin Newman?

  But I went to like the weirdo fucking New York liberal artsy rich kid version of that. Where I, I, it was in that scene in particular where I was like, oh, right. This is the thing that I'm so grossed out by looking back at my own high school is like, all the kids felt too empowered.

• 1:32:31Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:32:31Griffin Newman?

  And when Ty has the line about like, all of you speak like grownups.

• 1:32:34David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 1:32:34Speaker 03

  Right.

• 1:32:35Griffin Newman?

  Like, all my high school classes were everyone being like, okay, whatever you say, Mr. Blank. You know, like a little like, we're all equals here.

• 1:32:42Speaker 04

  And yet the teacher.

• 1:32:43Griffin Newman?

  They're beating you on everything.

• 1:32:44Speaker 04

  Kind of accept it. Like, that's just what the vibe is.

• 1:32:47David Sims?

  Elton being like, I left my cranberry CD. Can I, can I get a pass? Like, uh, the, the. The gym practice where Cher just gives the speech about like, this is not like enough athletic. And she's like, okay, and she just goes back.

• 1:33:01Griffin Newman?

  The combination of like, all these kids have clearly been very empowered and supported by their parents.

• 1:33:06Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:33:07Griffin Newman?

  And also because they're in like, an actual hub of culture. They're like, we're not cool for high school, we're cool in the real world.

• 1:33:14Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:33:14Griffin Newman?

  We are wearing actual top designer fashions. We're going to the actual cool concerts.

• 1:33:20Speaker 03

  They don't hear no a lot.

• 1:33:21Griffin Newman?

  Right, right.

• 1:33:22David Sims?

  No, they're not hearing, you're right.

• 1:33:24Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:33:25David Sims?

  So then, yeah, like, the first thing is, while Sean and Twin Caplin, while Sean, king of 90s, you know, comedy, right? I mean. Come in.

• 1:33:34Griffin Newman?

  But you see this arc of her, like, I can finesse all my grades up, and everyone else, she has a better angle. But this guy, she can't fucking talk around.

• 1:33:42Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:33:42Griffin Newman?

  She has to change something in his life to change his point of view.

• 1:33:45David Sims?

  Yes.

• 1:33:46Griffin Newman?

  Which is another great Hadea thing, that he's, I mean, it's when he says, like, I couldn't be prouder than if you actually got good grades.

• 1:33:51David Sims?

  Yes, if they were based on your grades.

• 1:33:52Griffin Newman?

  That he has raised her to understand how to like,

• 1:33:55David Sims?

  Argue.

• 1:33:56Griffin Newman?

  argue her way into things, yeah.

• 1:33:58Speaker 03

  Cool.

• 1:33:59David Sims?

  But right, Cher's first real moment of altruism is adopting Ty,

• 1:34:04Griffin Newman?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:34:05David Sims?

  Uh, which Dion is against, because Dion's like, this will hurt our social stock. And Cher is like, willing to take the hit, I guess.

• 1:34:11Griffin Newman?

  But she comes out of the Geist thing being like, I want to do more of this.

• 1:34:14Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:34:14Griffin Newman?

  She's still doing it in a somewhat self-serving way of like, what makes her feel good is making other people cool.

• 1:34:21Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:34:21Griffin Newman?

  It is the thing she feels the most confident in, I know how to like, train someone, I can do a mini My Fair Lady

• 1:34:27Speaker 03

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:34:28Griffin Newman?

  on anybody, which makes me feel powerful. And there's enough compassion that she's trying to do it their way. She's not dressing Miss Geist like herself.

• 1:34:35Speaker 03

  Mm-mm.

• 1:34:36Griffin Newman?

  She's not dressing Ty like herself. But it still is a reflection of, look how hip I am.

• 1:34:40Speaker 03

  Totally.

• 1:34:41David Sims?

  And Josh is sort of impressed with it too, when he watches them doing Buns of Steel together. He recognizes that she is sort of, that she means well.

• 1:34:50Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:34:50David Sims?

  Right?

• 1:34:50Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:34:51David Sims?

  Um, and, uh, god, he's so cute. Everyone's so cute. Everything's so colorful, I just have the movie on right now.

• 1:34:57Griffin Newman?

  Paul Rudd is my number one go-to, that's what I wish I looked like guy.

• 1:35:01David Sims?

  Uh, sure, yeah. Any, any era of Paul Rudd?

• 1:35:05Griffin Newman?

  Basically.

• 1:35:05David Sims?

  When's Rudd hottest?

• 1:35:07Griffin Newman?

  When's he hottest? I I kind of like every look.

• 1:35:11Speaker 03

  Mm hmm.

• 1:35:12Griffin Newman?

  I've invoked this before in the podcast, but I had a gay friend be like, you're not like queer at all. And I was like, no. And he was like, like, if you had to sleep with one guy, who would it be? And I said, Paul Rudd, he went, fuck, you are straight.

• 1:35:24David Sims?

  That's so straight.

• 1:35:27Griffin Newman?

  That's the straightest answer I've ever heard. But when I look at him, I'm like, God, that's the best a guy can look. And I think part of it is also that he's so funny. And I'm like, I wish that is, I I wish I could perform the exact same way as him. I wish I moved like him.

• 1:35:41David Sims?

  I think, so even Mean Girls, which is sort of the Clueless of the next generation, right? Which is a good movie, right? Has a little more stakes to it. I guess in the sort of popularity, unpopularity thing. Clueless doesn't have a, there's no real villain. There's no real threat to their existence in any way. Journey. Like, the worst thing that happens to her is Ty gets a little more popular than her and she's kind of like, I don't know what to do about that.

• 1:36:06Griffin Newman?

  And she gets like, held at gunpoint, but the stakes of the movie are are self-realization.

• 1:36:10David Sims?

  So sweet. He he's not gonna shoot her. The way he says, thank you. And he runs off.

• 1:36:17Speaker 03

  I'm always so shocked when a movie can figure that out where it's just kind of a good hang. And you could watch it for hour. I mean, it's great that Clueless is 97 minutes, but I feel like you could, you're just enjoying it so much. But not a lot of like major stakes stuff is happening, which same with Fast Times until the abortion, I feel like, you know? But Clueless is that without the abortion.

• 1:36:41David Sims?

  Yeah, Fast Times is a little darker.

• 1:36:42Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:36:43David Sims?

  Um, right, Clueless, it would be weird if there was some big problem in this movie in a way. Like, you're like, oh, these people don't have that kind of life.

• 1:36:52Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, I think the narration helps it a lot because you are so centered from the point of view of the character. And you're in her head and you understand the way she thinks. And so you're starting the movie kind of laughing at her a little bit more and then staying on the journey of her starting to like, reassess things and get a better understanding of the universe. That's another thing, by the way, that is just, I think, very underrated as like a tricky directing thing. Is here's a movie that's like 50% montage and is going in and out of narration. And there was a clip I saw on one of the behind the scenes things where Amy Heckerling is watching playback of a take. And her script supervisor has a stopwatch.

• 1:37:31Griffin Newman?

  And she's reading out loud the voiceover narration to make sure before they print the take, is that gonna time out well?

• 1:37:39Speaker 03

  Oh, my god.

• 1:37:39Griffin Newman?

  Because of course, in the moment, she's just filming Alicia Silverstone doing the thing.

• 1:37:44Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:37:44Griffin Newman?

  And then later, in a one-er, she's gonna need to have Alicia Silverstone have the space to do that proper voiceover.

• 1:37:50Speaker 03

  Yeah, and it's so like marvelous, marvelously done too, because it's so narration-heavy in the beginning.

• 1:37:58Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:37:59Speaker 03

  And then there's points where it really takes a break, you know? And then she pops back in. It's just, it's so perfectly crafted in that way.

• 1:38:05David Sims?

  And it shouldn't, obviously, like, doing voiceover narration can really blow up in your face, but it's perfect.

• 1:38:11Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:38:11David Sims?

  Because she's so self-assured.

• 1:38:13Speaker 03

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:38:14David Sims?

  And it's that kind of classic, like, when you have a unreliable narrator, but she doesn't know, like, when she sounds like, um, whatever. Not clueless, I guess, right? Like, she doesn't get the moments where she sounds a little...

• 1:38:30Griffin Newman?

  We talked about in our Higher Learning episode, weirdly, the concept of, like, page 20 knowledge, of when you get to page 20 of the book and you're like, "Yeah, I think I get this."

• 1:38:38Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:38:39Griffin Newman?

  And like, this kind of empowered teenager is like, "I think I figured everything out. I'm 16 now. I get it."

• 1:38:44David Sims?

  Yes.

• 1:38:45Griffin Newman?

  And it's why it helps to be inside her head, because, like, the narration dips away when she's starting to question her understanding of reality, which at the beginning of the movie is so solidified in her mind.

• 1:38:55David Sims?

  She's half-right. She does have life figured out. It's just that she's not mature, and she sort of know, like, she hasn't had sex and she hasn't really dated, like, she's known, I guess, not to dip into stuff that she doesn't know how to control, maybe.

• 1:39:10Speaker 03

  This is why I feel like women my age who saw Clueless at the time they did are also super into the whole Real Housewives franchise, because, like, the thing you want, I feel like, as a woman, is to watch someone aspirational and not self-aware and completely themselves, and that makes for really good television.

• 1:39:31Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:39:31Speaker 03

  Like, and that is what, you know, there's moments, obviously, where Cher becomes self-aware, but the moments where she's not, it's very funny, and... And she looks great.

• 1:39:41David Sims?

  She looks great throughout. Everyone looks great.

• 1:39:44Speaker 03

  I was also thinking about when you read the people that were also up for the role of Cher. I was trying to be like, I was like, oh, my gosh, yeah, Reese Witherspoon, I think I can see it. Or Angelina Jolie did it up. But I, I wonder if it was just having the context of seeing her a little bit in those Aerosmith videos. Like, I don't think I had a context of Gwyneth Paltrow, Angelina Jolie, or Reese Witherspoon before that. I'm sure I saw a very small, like, supporting role of them. But there was something about being like, that is the ultimate cool girl who everybody wanted to look like. And yeah, now she gets the next big thing. It was.

• 1:40:24Griffin Newman?

  Right. And yet also like, kinda didn't have a voice at that point.

• 1:40:27Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:40:27Griffin Newman?

  It was like such a, like, an established piece of iconography.

• 1:40:31Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 1:40:31Griffin Newman?

  There was, she was in three videos.

• 1:40:33Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:40:34Griffin Newman?

  There was a trilogy of Alicia Silverstone is the avatar for modern Aerosmith.

• 1:40:38Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 1:40:38Griffin Newman?

  As the ultimate cool girl.

• 1:40:40Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 1:40:40Griffin Newman?

  And now here's a movie that's like based around her talking.

• 1:40:43Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:40:43Griffin Newman?

  And you're realizing like, oh, she knows how to deliver jokes.

• 1:40:46Speaker 03

  Yeah. I think that also brought people out to the theater.

• 1:40:49Griffin Newman?

  Totally. Yes.

• 1:40:50Speaker 03

  Yeah. More than the other actresses at the time would have.

• 1:40:53David Sims?

  She was also the first person to get a belly button piercing. Like, I know that's not true, but that's sort of what it felt like.

• 1:40:58Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:40:58David Sims?

  It was like she took that mainstream.

• 1:41:01Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:41:01David Sims?

  By doing that in the Aerosmith video. Crying is the one, and Crazy is another one of them, right? I'm trying to remember the three.

• 1:41:07Speaker 03

  And, um, wait, Cryin', Crazy.

• 1:41:10David Sims?

  Cryin' is the one where she falls off the bridge at the end.

• 1:41:13Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:41:13David Sims?

  Cause she's emo.

• 1:41:15Griffin Newman?

  Amazing is the third one.

• 1:41:16David Sims?

  That one I don't know as well.

• 1:41:17Speaker 03

  Yeah, that one's a little like, it's more in a void. It's taken out of the real world and it's more in a void.

• 1:41:23David Sims?

  90s Aerosmith? Where do you fall on that?

• 1:41:28Griffin Newman?

  You're more of a Honkin' on Bobo guy, right?

• 1:41:30David Sims?

  What is that?

• 1:41:31Griffin Newman?

  That was their late, uh, blues album. Harmonica-based blues album called Honkin' on Bobo. I think it was like 2012.

• 1:41:38Speaker 04

  I missed that one, Griff.

• 1:41:39Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:41:39Speaker 04

  Uh, their early stuff is incredible. Toys in the Attic.

• 1:41:43David Sims?

  Yes.

• 1:41:43Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:41:44Speaker 04

  Quintessential, like, album of the 70s?

• 1:41:47David Sims?

  It's just the 70s, yeah, for sure.

• 1:41:49Speaker 03

  Get a Grip was my first CD.

• 1:41:51David Sims?

  So that's 90s Aerosmith. That's like prime 90s. That was, that was your first CD?

• 1:41:55Speaker 03

  Ever. Yes.

• 1:41:56David Sims?

  Right.

• 1:41:56Speaker 03

  Top of the Tower.

• 1:41:57David Sims?

  1993.

• 1:41:58Speaker 04

  Top of the Tower.

• 1:42:00David Sims?

  The Tower begins.

• 1:42:01Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:42:02David Sims?

  That's the one with the cow udder.

• 1:42:03Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 1:42:04David Sims?

  Right.

• 1:42:04Griffin Newman?

  Oh, sure. With the pierced, one of the pierced.

• 1:42:07David Sims?

  And that has Cryin' and Crazy and.

• 1:42:10Speaker 03

  Livin' on the Edge.

• 1:42:10Griffin Newman?

  Does it have Amazing as well? Does it have all three?

• 1:42:12David Sims?

  Yes, it has Amazing, it has all three Silverstones.

• 1:42:15Speaker 04

  I mean, listen, it had hits.

• 1:42:17Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, it's weird.

• 1:42:18Speaker 04

  There's so many hits.

• 1:42:19Speaker 03

  And even not the hits, but it's weird to think of myself as a nine year old being like, "Livin' on the Edge."

• 1:42:26Speaker 03

  In my room, like, what the fuck is going on? But I think it was Alicia Silverstone that made it even more palatable for me. It's like, if she signs off on this.

• 1:42:35Griffin Newman?

  They were so smart in terms of reinvention.

• 1:42:37David Sims?

  God bless, like, old people should still make music, but like, why did teens go for them? They looked old, like, you know?

• 1:42:45Griffin Newman?

  In the eighties, they used Run DMC to make themselves relevant again. In the nineties, they used Alicia Silverstone and then later Liv Tyler to make themselves like relevant to young girls again.

• 1:42:55Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 1:42:55Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:42:56David Sims?

  Yes, uh, um, Permanent Vacation, which is an eighties Aerosmith album.

• 1:43:03David Sims?

  Starts off with a song called Heart's Done Time. And I think it's so good, except for when you put it on, it's so overproduced and like loud, you know what I mean? Like that era of rock music where it was just like, everyone was just pushing up on all the sliders. And you're like, you don't need to do that. But it was just, I guess, the peak of that era. That's all.

• 1:43:24Speaker 03

  Do you remember, uh, the song Janie's Got a Gun?

• 1:43:27David Sims?

  Of course.

• 1:43:28Speaker 03

  So, and that's kind of got an epic video and I was really into it. Another one where I would have been even younger at that point. I would have been sixty and a half singing like, "Janie's got a gun." But at the time, my dad.

• 1:43:39David Sims?

  Pump.

• 1:43:39Speaker 03

  Yes, okay. My dad had a girlfriend who knew that I watched the video a lot. Didn't think that was appropriate, but then also, uh, pulled me aside and was like, "I don't want you saying gun. I don't want you singing that."

• 1:43:53Griffin Newman?

  That's a bad word.

• 1:43:54Speaker 03

  So if you want to sing that, replace gun with flower.

• 1:43:57Speaker 04

  Jane's Got a Flower.

• 1:43:58Speaker 03

  Jane's Got a Flower was my, my jam.

• 1:44:01Speaker 04

  Your dad is a huge music fan, right?

• 1:44:03Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:44:04Speaker 04

  And you have like a massive record collection?

• 1:44:05Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 1:44:06Speaker 04

  Cause I watched your AD and we just have to shout out.

• 1:44:08Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:44:09Speaker 04

  Your home in Kansas City is incredible.

• 1:44:11Speaker 03

  Thank you.

• 1:44:12Speaker 04

  The design of it.

• 1:44:13Speaker 03

  Thank you.

• 1:44:13Speaker 04

  It's iconic. I, I love watching those, like I love that series and your, your house is one of the standouts for me.

• 1:44:21Speaker 03

  Well, you're welcome anytime. I love to host.

• 1:44:23Griffin Newman?

  We almost talked about this before record, but I, I need to bring this up now.

• 1:44:27Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:44:27Griffin Newman?

  Your dressing room at SNL.

• 1:44:29Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:44:29Griffin Newman?

  Feels very clueless styled.

• 1:44:31Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:44:32Griffin Newman?

  If not deliberately.

• 1:44:33Speaker 03

  Right.

• 1:44:34Griffin Newman?

  And you described it as like your dream.

• 1:44:37Speaker 04

  It's like a teen space.

• 1:44:38Speaker 03

  It is. It's, you know, my childhood bedroom was covered floor to ceiling in cutouts from Entertainment Weekly and Variety and Hollywood Reporter Oscar ads like that. And then posters.

• 1:44:49Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:44:49Speaker 03

  My dressing room now is that, but with Christmas lights and chili pepper lights, cause my mom loved those. And then things that I wasn't able to buy at the time or memorabilia. And so it is just a.

• 1:45:04Griffin Newman?

  TV VCR combo.

• 1:45:05Speaker 03

  TV VCR combo.

• 1:45:07Speaker 04

  But there's a video people can watch to be clear.

• 1:45:09Speaker 03

  Yeah. Oh, yeah. I did that on AD too.

• 1:45:12Speaker 04

  On AD as well.

• 1:45:12Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:45:12Speaker 04

  So does everyone get their own dressing room? I don't even know the rules of this.

• 1:45:15Speaker 03

  Yes. So typically when you.

• 1:45:17Speaker 04

  When you start, do you get like to, you have to move up the ladder to get your own?

• 1:45:22Speaker 03

  Usually, um, I got my own dressing room, maybe like three or four seasons in. And then we moved around and we had to spread out more during COVID. And then I, I got my own again, like my fifth or sixth season. And then you've seen the dressing room. You know how elaborate it is.

• 1:45:39Griffin Newman?

  It's elaborate.

• 1:45:40Speaker 03

  Then my like seventh season, they were like, hey, sorry. Like with the cast number, you're going to have to share again.

• 1:45:46Speaker 04

  Because there's a lot of people in the cast right now.

• 1:45:48Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:45:48Griffin Newman?

  Cause you also laid down roots. Like I've been in a couple other SNL dressing rooms and everyone else feels like they have it set up in a way where it's like, I could move out of here in an hour if you needed me to.

• 1:45:57Speaker 04

  It's like a switch.

• 1:45:58Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 1:45:59Speaker 04

  The cops are coming, I can back.

• 1:46:00Griffin Newman?

  Drop of a hat, I can rock and roll. Your place you've put down.

• 1:46:03Speaker 03

  I have anxiety about when I will need to.

• 1:46:05Griffin Newman?

  It's complicated.

• 1:46:06Speaker 03

  Do the move. Um. But they were like, and you're gonna have to move upstairs. And I was like, I, I really don't like this. But also just go to my dressing room. And if you still feel the same way after being in there. And they're like, okay, you don't have to move.

• 1:46:19Griffin Newman?

  This would be actually.

• 1:46:20David Sims?

  So they tried to move you off the eighth floor?

• 1:46:23Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:46:23David Sims?

  Yes.

• 1:46:23Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 1:46:24David Sims?

  Who was your original roommate?

• 1:46:25Speaker 03

  My original roommate was Melissa Villasenor. And then Ego was my second year roommate. And then since then, I've been solo.

• 1:46:33David Sims?

  SNL thing is, it's like college.

• 1:46:35Speaker 03

  It is.

• 1:46:35David Sims?

  What people are talking about, it really does feel that way sometimes.

• 1:46:38Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, I, through your extended generosity, I went to the Michael Keaton episode this season.

• 1:46:44Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 1:46:45Griffin Newman?

  Uh, my idol.

• 1:46:46David Sims?

  You love Mike.

• 1:46:47Griffin Newman?

  My guy, my number one guy. And I knew going in that there was a sketch you had been pushing really hard to get on the air.

• 1:46:53Speaker 03

  Mm hmm.

• 1:46:53Griffin Newman?

  And at the end of dress rehearsal, it was like on the board as the last sketch of the night. Where it's like, right, is it gonna make it on or not?

• 1:47:01Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:47:02Griffin Newman?

  And I sat there watching the show and was feeling such secondhand stress the entire fucking time. Where it wasn't like I couldn't enjoy the show. But suddenly I was so hyper fixated on the like, high school aspect of it.

• 1:47:15Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 1:47:16Griffin Newman?

  And all I was doing was watching like Lauren standing on the floor and watching people do their sketch. And then the second it ended, look to him for approval. Like, I was so hyper fixated, like, how are the sets gonna come together in time? And how's everyone feeling right before and after the sketch starts?

• 1:47:33Speaker 03

  It's insane. A couple of times this season, uh, we've had, cause you do, you see people watching on the floor. Like, you know, Ego had a big, uh, update a couple of weeks ago and people like zoomed out to show the crowd on the floor. And it's like Paul Rudd, Adam Scott, Lin-Manuel. There was a sketch I did this season, I'm a huge sports fan, where, uh, I did the sketch and then I ran off. And three of the San Francisco 49ers were there. And like, they were like, yeah. I didn't know that they were there. I was just like, George Kittle? Christian McCaffrey? What?

• 1:48:08David Sims?

  They were just there hanging out, just like there to have fun?

• 1:48:11Speaker 03

  Yes, and pumping me up.

• 1:48:12Griffin Newman?

  But also, I'm sure you have no time to process that because you already now need to be like running somewhere else to do something.

• 1:48:17Speaker 03

  A hundred percent. And you want to take a second to be like, and also a week ago, I was going out for a sketch and, you know, only had like a 90 second change or something. And I probably changed in 50 seconds and I had 40 seconds to go. And the cast of Southern Charm was in the hallway.

• 1:48:34David Sims?

  Just watching that happen?

• 1:48:35Speaker 03

  Oh, shit. Oh, my God. And my dresser is like, let's go.

• 1:48:38David Sims?

  Right. To me, I imagine what they do to Miss Geist, where like you're walking and there are people just like taking clothes off of you and putting clothes like that.

• 1:48:46Griffin Newman?

  It's like, yeah.

• 1:48:47David Sims?

  Right, yes.

• 1:48:48Speaker 03

  Yes. And you're responsible to it. And I'm so comfortable now doing it. And like, I'll know what I have under, because sometimes you underdress things. So as I'm, if I know that I have proper amounts of clothing, I'll be changing myself as I'm running. But then I remember there's an audience that thinks I'm about to like flash them. I'm like, you still need to go behind a curtain.

• 1:49:08David Sims?

  Oh, there has to, right. Just the sense of propriety.

• 1:49:11Speaker 03

  They'll freak out.

• 1:49:12Griffin Newman?

  The tableside guac sketch on that episode, right? I'm like watching the time narrow.

• 1:49:17Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 1:49:18Griffin Newman?

  And I'm looking and I'm like, it's not even 10 to one. It's like five to one.

• 1:49:21Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 1:49:21Griffin Newman?

  Right? How many pages that's a sketch supposed to be? And I'm looking on the floor and watching people furiously rewriting cue cards.

• 1:49:29Speaker 03

  A hundred percent. Yes.

• 1:49:30Griffin Newman?

  And it's like, you've had like 12 different versions of this sketch over a week and you're going out there and there've been cuts made 30 seconds before.

• 1:49:36Speaker 03

  I know.

• 1:49:37Griffin Newman?

  How is your brain not short circuiting?

• 1:49:39Speaker 03

  You just have to do it. But it is like a sketch like that, that used to be 10 pages, a typical sketch, like then becomes four and a half.

• 1:49:47Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 1:49:47Speaker 03

  It makes no sense.

• 1:49:50Griffin Newman?

  But you're making these edits that you're like, I hope this still works.

• 1:49:53Speaker 03

  A hundred percent.

• 1:49:53Griffin Newman?

  If we pull this line out, the sketch doesn't collapse.

• 1:49:56Speaker 03

  Yes. Yes. It's insane.

• 1:49:58David Sims?

  I mean, I could just talk about this all day. I'm trying to, clueless, clueless.

• 1:50:01Speaker 03

  Clueless.

• 1:50:02David Sims?

  Yeah. So they, they, they get the teachers together. That's wonderful. They, they remake Ty. She's immediately attracted to Travis, but they steer her towards Elton, a... About as villainous as a character as there is in Clueless, and he's not villainous, really. He's just kinda like a mean, rich kid, right?

• 1:50:20Speaker 03

  Just into someone else, which is something we all experience.

• 1:50:23David Sims?

  And he's got, he's, he's got the most kind of like, no, I need to date like a successful, rich girl brain. And I mean,

• 1:50:30Speaker 04

  Do you know who my dad is?

• 1:50:32David Sims?

  Right. And obviously, if you watch Clueless a million times, you realize that Elton is hugging and kissing Cher every single time he's near her.

• 1:50:38Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 1:50:39David Sims?

  And she's just completely oblivious. But that all peaks at the party. The party is great. Amy Heckerling is so good at a party. You know what I mean? Five Fast Times has great partying. This is, this is a great party. Don't you, doesn't this feel like a real party?

• 1:50:54Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:50:55Griffin Newman?

  Yes. It is, one of the special features I watched, this, this suck and blow thing seems to have been the single most difficult thing in the filming of the entire movie. Where they could not get it to work. They were using a real credit card. They were like, it's not sticking.

• 1:51:09Speaker 03

  Cause now it looks like a social security card.

• 1:51:11Griffin Newman?

  Yes. So they changed it to that, cause they were like, we need cardboard. It can't be plastic. Then it still wasn't working. So they cut tiny holes in it. Where they were like, maybe it will keep a suction. That didn't work. So then they ended up putting lip gloss and chapstick on everyone's mouths.

• 1:51:27David Sims?

  Oh, that's so funny.

• 1:51:28Griffin Newman?

  But you watch it and it's like, as if they were staging like an action set piece and they're like stressed out that the explosions aren't going off in real time. You watch like Bill Pope tearing his hair up, being like, okay, how do we fix this?

• 1:51:40David Sims?

  I definitely watched that move, this movie when I was 10 years old and I was like, am I gonna have to do that at a party? I have to do this like elaborate?

• 1:51:46Griffin Newman?

  Such a stressful game.

• 1:51:47David Sims?

  Kissing chicken game? Like, what is this?

• 1:51:50Griffin Newman?

  I'm like, either we're making out or we're not. I'd rather not make out than feel the stress of bashing this game.

• 1:51:55David Sims?

  Did Clueless make this up? It's made up, right?

• 1:51:57Speaker 03

  One of the things that brought forth into our culture. What I love about the party too, and what Heckling does span of time wise, is that it's Christmas around the party and you just know.

• 1:52:09David Sims?

  Right. You got the snowman.

• 1:52:11Speaker 03

  Yeah. And that happens in Fast Time. And it's just like another comfort moment.

• 1:52:15David Sims?

  Wow. There's an entire Vulture article just about the party scene.

• 1:52:18Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:52:19David Sims?

  Murray's keeping it real, obviously. Tara Reid apparently was on set just hanging out.

• 1:52:25Griffin Newman?

  Cool.

• 1:52:25Speaker 03

  Wow.

• 1:52:27David Sims?

  But I'm not from California. I don't know the valley as well. I only know it from movies, but this is what I thought of when I thought of the valley for so long. This kind of house, this kind of like anonymous vibe. Yes.

• 1:52:39Speaker 03

  Looks kind of mid-century ranch style.

• 1:52:42Griffin Newman?

  Well, also the great LA joke of everywhere in Los Angeles is 20 minutes away.

• 1:52:46Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:52:47David Sims?

  Okay.

• 1:52:47Griffin Newman?

  When he demands she leave the party.

• 1:52:48David Sims?

  That is a thing that was burned in my memory. And then I got to LA and they were like, nothing. You can't get lunch in 20 minutes if it's down the road. Everything takes an hour. Like,

• 1:52:57Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:52:57David Sims?

  And is it just that traffic's gotten worse or something?

• 1:53:00Griffin Newman?

  Here's what I would say. I'd say-

• 1:53:02David Sims?

  Is he, does he live in a sort of reality bubble where he's like, everything takes 20 minutes? Like, and he doesn't know what time is anymore?

• 1:53:08Griffin Newman?

  My experience as someone who goes to LA and, and now just does ride shares everywhere, right? As a podcaster who can't drive, is that like, if everything is working perfectly, it's all 20 minutes away.

• 1:53:21Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:53:21Griffin Newman?

  If there is a minor hiccup on the road, everything becomes an hour.

• 1:53:25Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:53:26Griffin Newman?

  Right. So you're like, if you get lucky, it's somehow 20 minutes to get anywhere.

• 1:53:30Speaker 03

  Because Kansas City, if anyone wants that ideal, Kansas City really is, everything's 20 minutes away. In a perfect way.

• 1:53:37Griffin Newman?

  A perfectly laid out city.

• 1:53:38Speaker 03

  Yeah. And there's just never not come with that much traffic.

• 1:53:41Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:53:41Speaker 03

  So I do believe it exists. And when I think about that, the layout of LA, and I lived there for a long time, it should be like that.

• 1:53:48Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 1:53:49David Sims?

  She gets robbed at gunpoint. I guess this is sort of her lowest point.

• 1:53:54Griffin Newman?

  Well, you're skipping over also. She's maneuvering to try to get Ty in the car with Elton.

• 1:53:58David Sims?

  Yes, yeah, yeah.

• 1:53:59Griffin Newman?

  And then he is clearly maneuvering to get Cher in the car with him. Our friend Jamie Loftus, the great Jamie Loftus, has said that in her mind, this is like the best scene of how you deal responsibly with a situation where you're being sexually pressured.

• 1:54:13David Sims?

  Sure.

• 1:54:13Griffin Newman?

  She's like, this is like the thing I would show to high school girls on how to handle it.

• 1:54:17David Sims?

  Yes.

• 1:54:18Griffin Newman?

  Cause he, he's not like villainously like sex monster.

• 1:54:21David Sims?

  He's being a jerk.

• 1:54:22Griffin Newman?

  He's being pushy.

• 1:54:23David Sims?

  He's being pushy and then he's kind of like, Cher, get back in the car, get back in the car, which is like, kind of like- It's, you know, it's pressury. It's gross.

• 1:54:32Griffin Newman?

  And she's just like really firm about like, I don't feel comfortable with this.

• 1:54:35David Sims?

  Right.

• 1:54:36Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 1:54:36David Sims?

  And of course, she does get robbed, but uh,

• 1:54:38Griffin Newman?

  She does.

• 1:54:38David Sims?

  You know, and that sucks. Um, but uh, and her dress gets ruined.

• 1:54:42Griffin Newman?

  Uh huh.

• 1:54:43David Sims?

  I guess.

• 1:54:43Griffin Newman?

  But then Josh has to come pick her up. The fact that Josh is so quick to pick her up, even when he's making out with a hip, intellectual college student, does start to belie the fact that he maybe has feelings for her. I do love the recurring motif of like, you hear the brief snippets of the Radiohead song multiple times. And Cher's always kind of dismissive of like, oh, your crunchy, like heady college student music. And it's only when she falls for him at the end that like, the song plays in full.

• 1:55:10Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:55:11Griffin Newman?

  And she gets it now.

• 1:55:12David Sims?

  Yes.

• 1:55:12Speaker 03

  This brings up an interesting part for me, which I just discussed for someone, with someone. Um, where do we think Josh goes to college?

• 1:55:22David Sims?

  Great question.

• 1:55:23Griffin Newman?

  Great question.

• 1:55:24David Sims?

  I assumed UCLA, but I don't actually know. Now, he's an undergrad, right?

• 1:55:28Griffin Newman?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:55:28David Sims?

  I know he wants to be a lawyer. He's not in law school.

• 1:55:31Griffin Newman?

  No.

• 1:55:31David Sims?

  The idea is that he's just, like, he's like 19.

• 1:55:34Speaker 03

  Yes, that's what I think.

• 1:55:35David Sims?

  Me too. Okay.

• 1:55:36Speaker 03

  And I think that we only, we see him in his dorm room in that scene with the girl, you know? And otherwise, he's at their house or his mom's or something like this. But Easter egg, which is just interesting, is that in a later scene, he's wearing a KU hat, which Paul Rudd went to KU.

• 1:55:54David Sims?

  He did.

• 1:55:55Speaker 03

  Yeah. And obviously, it was just like, but I feel like, did he just get that buy with wardrobe? Because.

• 1:56:01Griffin Newman?

  I think so.

• 1:56:01David Sims?

  Yeah, because it doesn't make sense.

• 1:56:02Speaker 03

  It doesn't.

• 1:56:03David Sims?

  If you had it all.

• 1:56:04Speaker 03

  Yeah, just college kids don't wear other college hats.

• 1:56:07Griffin Newman?

  No, absolutely not.

• 1:56:08David Sims?

  I mean, maybe he's a huge Jayhawks fan? What were the Jayhawks doing in the 90s?

• 1:56:12Speaker 03

  Yeah. Well, oh, that's true. Like, maybe Josh is.

• 1:56:15David Sims?

  Like, it's kind of like a Duke thing, you know, like not, you know, where it's just like,

• 1:56:18Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:56:19David Sims?

  A big college team. I'm, I'm, I'm really.

• 1:56:22Speaker 03

  But who I watched it with was like, do we think he went to KU? And I was like, and he's flying to Beverly Hills?

• 1:56:27Griffin Newman?

  No, no, impossible.

• 1:56:29David Sims?

  Why would he? And that's like, why would he go to like a big state school in the middle of the country?

• 1:56:33Speaker 03

  That isn't tracking for me. I think if you go that far away from home for school, you're only, you only go home at Christmas. And you're lucky if it's Thanksgiving, but you see your family one time a year.

• 1:56:43David Sims?

  Right. I think he goes to USC or UCLA or whatever.

• 1:56:47Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, he has to because she calls him.

• 1:56:49Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:56:50Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 1:56:50Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:56:51Griffin Newman?

  She has to know he's close by.

• 1:56:52Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 1:56:53David Sims?

  Um, yes. And he's got a pretentious pseudo-girlfriend, not even girl, I don't know.

• 1:56:59Griffin Newman?

  Fling.

• 1:57:00David Sims?

  Fling, something. Uh, but we don't know much else about him. Just he doesn't want to hang out with his mom, I guess.

• 1:57:06Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:57:07David Sims?

  Why? I guess she's just a bummer, right? I don't, or he doesn't know, he doesn't like the new husband. That's what it is.

• 1:57:12Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah, yeah.

• 1:57:12David Sims?

  He mentions the new husband.

• 1:57:14Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 1:57:14David Sims?

  Um, I'm sorry, I'm just trying to look up Kansas City, uh, Kansas seasons in the nineties. Just really stressed out.

• 1:57:21Speaker 03

  We were, I mean, around that time, we were great. Roy Williams was the coach.

• 1:57:24David Sims?

  Right, that's the thing.

• 1:57:25Speaker 03

  Yeah. I mean, I, I buy it all. I just was like.

• 1:57:27Griffin Newman?

  So that's the internal logic. Yes. I had, uh, for years when I was acting.

• 1:57:33David Sims?

  Paul Pierce, Ralph LaFrance, this is a good T-Jack phone.

• 1:57:36Speaker 03

  Paul Pollard, yep.

• 1:57:37Griffin Newman?

  Uh, I had a, my, Derek Simon, my oldest childhood friend.

• 1:57:42David Sims?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:57:42Griffin Newman?

  Uh, we made a T-shirt of like his, like preschool class photo. Where he just had a really funny pose, where he just kinda like looked like a cool guy.

• 1:57:51Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:57:52Griffin Newman?

  It was like his mom had dressed him like a little gentleman.

• 1:57:54Speaker 03

  Right.

• 1:57:54Griffin Newman?

  And he was just kinda feeling himself that day. He was like a three-year-old and he looked really confident. And so we made shirts of it and would wear it. And whenever I would do any sort of shoot and they were like, can you bring some T-shirts for home? I would always force that shirt.

• 1:58:08Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:58:08Griffin Newman?

  On camera.

• 1:58:09Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 1:58:09Griffin Newman?

  Cause I just thought it was so funny. And I was like, as long as nothing I'm in ever becomes so successful that the T-shirt is established. I can keep getting away with this.

• 1:58:19Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 1:58:20Griffin Newman?

  I can keep doing like fucking college humor shorts, shorts where I wear this shirt. And I have to imagine there was a similar thing of Paul Rudd being like, if I can just wear the hat of like my alma mater for five seconds, it's a win.

• 1:58:32Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:58:33Griffin Newman?

  It's for me.

• 1:58:34Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 1:58:35Griffin Newman?

  It hopefully doesn't break the reality of the movie too much.

• 1:58:37Speaker 03

  Yeah. I was thinking about that recently. I was like, why don't I just lie? Not that I'm on red carpets that much, but like when you're asked what you're wearing, I'm like, why don't I just say like Kansas City places? Even if they're restaurants.

• 1:58:49Griffin Newman?

  Oh, sure.

• 1:58:50Speaker 03

  You know, like Winstead's.

• 1:58:52Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:58:53Speaker 03

  You know, like just to get it out there.

• 1:58:55Griffin Newman?

  Just to boost it. Yeah.

• 1:58:56David Sims?

  Everyone go to Winstead's.

• 1:58:57Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:58:58David Sims?

  I'm looking it up. Steak burgers?

• 1:58:59Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 1:58:59David Sims?

  All right. Ooh, this is fun.

• 1:59:01Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's really fun.

• 1:59:02David Sims?

  Um, never been to Kansas City.

• 1:59:06Speaker 03

  Well, you're welcome. Everyone's welcome.

• 1:59:08David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 1:59:08Speaker 03

  Yeah. Great city. Very fun.

• 1:59:10David Sims?

  Um, okay, so Elton makes his move. She realizes she's been a little foolish about all of this. Of course, Elton was never interested in Ty. He's a bit of a self entitled jackass. So now Ty's bummed out. Cher is bummed out.

• 1:59:25Griffin Newman?

  You have the diner scene that also reveals that Cher is a virgin.

• 1:59:28David Sims?

  Right.

• 1:59:29Griffin Newman?

  Which is this first sort of moment of like Cher is presenting herself as so much more worldly than she is.

• 1:59:34Speaker 03

  Mm hmm.

• 1:59:35Griffin Newman?

  Yes. She is playing high status with Ty, who has done a lot more than she has.

• 1:59:39David Sims?

  Yes. Ty is a more worldly girl in some ways.

• 1:59:42Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:59:43David Sims?

  Exactly. Um, and that's when Christian enters the, the scene as a transfer, right? Like, we actually get the info right at the start. The buzz on Christian is that he's doing one semester in Chicago, one semester here.

• 1:59:57Griffin Newman?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:59:58David Sims?

  She says that.

• 1:59:58Griffin Newman?

  And he's a bit of a Baldwin.

• 2:00:00David Sims?

  Uh, yes. What do we think of Christian? Kind of the one cast member that did not have much of a career, Justin Walker.

• 2:00:07Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, and I think he's incredibly good in this.

• 2:00:10David Sims?

  In this movie, but he's like got barely any credits otherwise. I don't know what the deal is. Um, it's such a good bit.

• 2:00:17Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 2:00:18Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:00:18David Sims?

  He, and of course Cher loves him. Like, like, like, he's perfect for her because he's kind of non threatening and he's so put together and kind of got this like classy like, right?

• 2:00:28Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 2:00:29Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:00:29Griffin Newman?

  The stages of it are just so funny.

• 2:00:31David Sims?

  Yes.

• 2:00:31Griffin Newman?

  From like, here's like. You know, she's saving herself for Luke Perry, right, is the joke.

• 2:00:36David Sims?

  Sure.

• 2:00:36Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:00:36Griffin Newman?

  And then this guy comes in and he does have this sort of Luke Perry vibe.

• 2:00:40Speaker 03

  But see, I, I have, he's the one that doesn't track for me in the movie because he doesn't have the Luke Perry vibe. He has the Jason Priestley vibe and also looks like a brother of Jason Priestley.

• 2:00:49David Sims?

  He looks a lot like Jason Priestley.

• 2:00:51Speaker 03

  And I just could never figure out, I'm like, why is Cher into him necessarily? Like, there was just.

• 2:00:58David Sims?

  Cause he dresses well. I really think it's that. Good, no, go ahead.

• 2:01:02Speaker 03

  He's almost too much, he's got the Chandler Bing shirts and like, it just never added up for me.

• 2:01:09David Sims?

  But I think she's, she, she doesn't want to have sex with somebody. So she kind of likes that he's kind of sexually not threatening.

• 2:01:15Griffin Newman?

  Luke Perry would be too intimidating for her in real life.

• 2:01:19Speaker 03

  Dripping sex and gonna have, they're gonna have, yes.

• 2:01:21Griffin Newman?

  Jason Priestley's the, the safer version of it.

• 2:01:23David Sims?

  He's someone, she can ask him, what do you think of Amber? And he can go, Hagsville, like looking down his glasses. Like, that's, that's the kind of chat she likes to have.

• 2:01:32Griffin Newman?

  Well, it's why the transposing of Jane Austen onto high school makes so much sense.

• 2:01:38David Sims?

  Yes, that character is completely different in the book because his whole thing in the book is that he has a secret fiance that he can't reveal. They just dump that because that, they didn't know how to transpose that.

• 2:01:48Griffin Newman?

  The point is, why isn't she interested? Why isn't he interested in her? Why doesn't he want to be with her? I'm just saying more globally, the idea of taking that era of novel and transposing into high school culture is like, that is the one modern place where this sense of like, who belongs together.

• 2:02:03Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:02:04Griffin Newman?

  Feels like so overwhelming. Where I think, as you said, like Cher doesn't actually want to be in a relationship. She's scared of sex. She's scared of intimacy, right?

• 2:02:14David Sims?

  Right.

• 2:02:14Griffin Newman?

  She's scared of like, having to be vulnerable with anyone else.

• 2:02:18David Sims?

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:02:18Griffin Newman?

  Having to like, share power with anyone else. So her thing with Christian is just like, on paper, this seems like the right kind of guy for me to date. And I think Heckerling does a good throttling of like, in every scene.

• 2:02:33Griffin Newman?

  His weird Rat Pack affectation is heightened.

• 2:02:36Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:02:37Griffin Newman?

  It's not as apparent the first time you see him. And then it's slowly creeping in like, on paper, this seems like a Jason Priestley runoff. And then you're like, he's got this weird 50s like Swing Cat thing. And then you realize he's gay.

• 2:02:50Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 2:02:50Griffin Newman?

  You're sort of peeling him back.

• 2:02:52Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 2:02:52David Sims?

  You think the death of Sammy Davis Jr. left an opening in a Rat Pack is another joke my mom had to explain to me when I was 10. But is so funny.

• 2:03:00Griffin Newman?

  So funny.

• 2:03:01David Sims?

  I got a 45 and a shovel. I doubt anyone would miss you. It's, it's the right level of like, he is scary, but you're also like, this is sweet.

• 2:03:08Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:03:09David Sims?

  You know?

• 2:03:10Griffin Newman?

  Even just the simpler, do you drink? No, I'm good. I wasn't.

• 2:03:14Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:03:14David Sims?

  I was asking if you drink.

• 2:03:16Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:03:17David Sims?

  Him telling her to put something over the dress and she puts like the thinnest see-through, like, like kind of camisole or whatever. It's so funny.

• 2:03:25Griffin Newman?

  But that's part of why she's attracted to him. It's like her, her not understanding what she would want in a relationship.

• 2:03:33Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:03:33Griffin Newman?

  At this stage is her just being like, a guy who complements all my outfits.

• 2:03:37Speaker 03

  Totally.

• 2:03:38Griffin Newman?

  What do you mean?

• 2:03:39Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:03:39Griffin Newman?

  A guy who every day goes like, what did you do to your hair? That's amazing.

• 2:03:42David Sims?

  Her joke of, he dresses better than me. I don't know what I would bring to the relationship.

• 2:03:46Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:03:48David Sims?

  Uh, but he's very sweet at the, at the ska show.

• 2:03:50Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:03:50David Sims?

  I don't know.

• 2:03:51Griffin Newman?

  I, there's an interesting thing too of like, in that diner scene, right before Christian enters, where like Cher is sharing the story of Alton in the car. And like making it about herself, but also it's like, she's delivering this bad news to Ty, which is like, he's not interested in you. He's been interested in me the whole time. He's making, you know, he made a pass that failed and now we're like shutting this guy out.

• 2:04:18Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:04:19Griffin Newman?

  And Ty is getting so emotionally worked up about a guy, they basically talked her into liking.

• 2:04:24Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:04:25Griffin Newman?

  That Cher's like persuasiveness has kind of completely warped her brain.

• 2:04:29Speaker 03

  I love that scene then later where Ty is like, they're burning the Elton box of stuff. She like kept like the towel from when he helped her at the party and stuff and. I, I so, I, the amount of shit I saved from guys that like definitely didn't like me, or paid me no mind, or, or playbills of like, you know, just like.

• 2:04:51Griffin Newman?

  This was important.

• 2:04:52Speaker 03

  It was so, I love that scene.

• 2:04:55Griffin Newman?

  It's another, a dialogue exchange I love is, he's too good for you. If he's too good for me, then why am I not with him?

• 2:05:01Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:05:02Griffin Newman?

  Which I would like hate when people said that to me.

• 2:05:05Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:05:05Griffin Newman?

  You know, when I was like 15 and had some crush on somebody and they were like, she's, you're too good for her anyway.

• 2:05:09Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:05:10Griffin Newman?

  And I'm like, that doesn't make me feel.

• 2:05:11David Sims?

  Like, that doesn't help this, this situation. I mean, the scene later where she goes to her dad to say like, I like this boy and he doesn't like me back.

• 2:05:20Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 2:05:20David Sims?

  And he's just like, well, then he's just stupid.

• 2:05:22Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:05:22David Sims?

  Is so sweet.

• 2:05:23Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:05:24David Sims?

  And again, it's just getting the right, like the right mix of aggression and kind of like, you know, good heartedness from him, right?

• 2:05:31Speaker 03

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:05:32David Sims?

  Where he's kind of bucking her up in the right way, being like, you have a work ethic. You, you, you care about people. Like, it's not, you're not just an airhead. Like, yeah.

• 2:05:40Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:05:40David Sims?

  I don't know. It's just nice.

• 2:05:41Griffin Newman?

  Yes. But even just like, right, her whole, I mean, cause right before Christian's introduced, you have the, the all the young dudes thing of her explaining why she's so disappointed by the boys of her generation.

• 2:05:54Speaker 03

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:05:54Griffin Newman?

  Right? Like, why can't they put in an effort?

• 2:05:57Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:05:57Griffin Newman?

  Christian is all effort.

• 2:05:59Speaker 03

  Yes. Yeah.

• 2:06:00Griffin Newman?

  That is the main thing I think she's attracted to.

• 2:06:02Speaker 03

  Totally.

• 2:06:03David Sims?

  Who would you most, Travis is the answer of who would you most want to like hang out with? Well, I would, for me, it's Cher. But like Travis is probably the easiest.

• 2:06:10Griffin Newman?

  Travis and Murray. Yeah.

• 2:06:11David Sims?

  Murray's probably a pretty good hang.

• 2:06:13Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:06:13David Sims?

  Yeah. Uh, Christian definitely just, yeah, my, my, my teeth hurt a little bit at a certain point.

• 2:06:20Speaker 03

  Mm-hmm. For sure.

• 2:06:21Speaker 04

  Christian saves Ty at the mall.

• 2:06:24Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:06:25Speaker 04

  Which is actually, it's played up that like, she's talking later.

• 2:06:30David Sims?

  Being over the top about it. Right.

• 2:06:32Speaker 04

  About it's a near death experience, but it's really scary.

• 2:06:36Speaker 03

  It's so scary.

• 2:06:37Speaker 04

  Like the stakes of it. And like, that these guys are being so reckless.

• 2:06:41Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:06:41Speaker 04

  It's fucked up.

• 2:06:42Speaker 03

  Yes. I'm not trying to apologize for them, but she also shouldn't have never sat on them.

• 2:06:48Griffin Newman?

  No.

• 2:06:48Speaker 03

  Also, her up there is so scary.

• 2:06:50Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:06:50Speaker 03

  Just in general.

• 2:06:52David Sims?

  Cause that's slippery, that like the hand railing, it's like a metal.

• 2:06:56Speaker 03

  Yes, it's scary from the second she's just talking to them, I'm worried.

• 2:07:00Griffin Newman?

  No back support, yeah.

• 2:07:00David Sims?

  In the book, she faints because she has like an encounter with local like travelers. It's completely different. I shouldn't even bring it up.

• 2:07:08Griffin Newman?

  That's wild.

• 2:07:09David Sims?

  Look, it's the early 19th century, guys.

• 2:07:11Speaker 03

  They also knew like such the way to, because that, yeah, if she's talking about a near death experience and we're all agreeing that it is scary. But also they didn't, they still kept it in kind of a light bubbly clueless world, you know, because you're kind of like, what was that? You know, we're adults now, so we're talking about it and saying it's scary. But I have to imagine in the movie theater, I wasn't like, oh, you know, like I, I knew she was gonna be okay, like, yeah.

• 2:07:40Griffin Newman?

  And the immediate joke is how quickly like through the game of telephone, the story gets heightened.

• 2:07:44Speaker 03

  Yes, yes.

• 2:07:45Griffin Newman?

  It's crazy proportions.

• 2:07:46David Sims?

  Yes, but it does elevate Ty in a way that's sort of out of Cher's control.

• 2:07:51Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:07:52David Sims?

  And this does unbalance her. And rather than turning her into a villain, I feel like causes her to look inward. And what she finds inside of her is that she likes to help people and she's like, I guess I'll help with the Pismo Beach disaster, right? I'll like help, you know, like.

• 2:08:10Speaker 03

  Was that made up?

• 2:08:11David Sims?

  It's made up.

• 2:08:11Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 2:08:12David Sims?

  Now, Pismo Beach is real.

• 2:08:13Speaker 03

  Yes, I've been there.

• 2:08:14David Sims?

  My wife had the same question. She was like, what's the Pismo Beach disaster? And I'm like, I don't know, let me go, but it is just made up. But imagine all of your belongings, you know, the way Twin Caplin sells it, you know, your memory is gone in a second.

• 2:08:26Griffin Newman?

  The separate boxes for appetizers and entrees.

• 2:08:30David Sims?

  Daddy, you didn't like that red caviar, right?

• 2:08:32Griffin Newman?

  But that's an example of what I'm talking about where it's just like, that is not a setup punchline joke.

• 2:08:37Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:08:37Griffin Newman?

  That is a joke based on that character being so well established.

• 2:08:42Speaker 03

  And she's earned it.

• 2:08:43Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 2:08:43Speaker 03

  But it's ridiculous, but it makes sense.

• 2:08:46Griffin Newman?

  With such good intentions, she just doesn't think about like, what do you mean? That's not important.

• 2:08:51Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:08:51Griffin Newman?

  To separate it into courses.

• 2:08:53David Sims?

  What is her line?

• 2:08:54Griffin Newman?

  These are people who don't have food.

• 2:08:56David Sims?

  What is her line about the skis? I can get you the exact line probably, but Daddy, some people lost all their belongings. Don't you think that includes athletic equipment? Yes.

• 2:09:07Griffin Newman?

  Right, it's coming from such a good place.

• 2:09:09David Sims?

  Yes. Yes, isn't everyone like, she's a little clueless, as the title says. Good. And like, she has her moments, like when she's watching the news and she's like, I thought that they declared peace in the Middle East, which is, I'm like, that's the right kind of dumb girl joke, where it's like, why would she need to know about like, the Balkan crisis? She's only 16 years old, right? Like, that tracks to me. Like, she's never so silly.

• 2:09:32Griffin Newman?

  No, and the Polonius moment is like, I remember what Mel Gibson says, and he didn't say that, right?

• 2:09:39David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 2:09:39Griffin Newman?

  And it's like, okay, she knows Hamlet because she has a crush on Mel Gibson, but also, she was paying attention.

• 2:09:45David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 2:09:45Griffin Newman?

  She listened and she remembers the lines.

• 2:09:48David Sims?

  Uh, yes, she, exactly. She's not just, she's not just watching, getting lost in Mel Gibson's eyes, or whatever.

• 2:09:57Speaker 02

  Acast powers the world's best podcasts. Here's a show we recommend.

• 2:10:04David Sims?

  I'm Connor Tomlinson from Love on the Spectrum. History is my thing, and I've been waiting my whole life for a show like this one.

• 2:10:11Speaker 02

  And I'm Carter Roy, and this is What the Fact. Three facts a week, each with the whole story behind it. The history class you actually wished you had in school. New episodes every Wednesday. Follow What the Fact wherever you listen, or subscribe on YouTube at What the Fact Pod. Acast helps creators launch, grow, and monetize their podcasts everywhere. Acast.com.

• 2:10:39David Sims?

  I like that she realizes that she likes Josh, the fountain lights up behind her, and doesn't go right after him. Instead, does the Pismo Beach, like, starts to just sort of do shit that are, that is nice.

• 2:10:50Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:10:51David Sims?

  And it's not until Josh defends her with Mean Suspenders, boy. So mean.

• 2:10:55Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:10:56David Sims?

  Uh, that they find they have their moment and she gets Josh to sort of like, you know, whatever, admit that.

• 2:11:03Griffin Newman?

  She's viewing herself as above Josh because Josh is like an unfun dork in her mind, right? Like he's like the buzzkill who wants to be a grown up.

• 2:11:11Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:11:11Griffin Newman?

  And she doesn't get it. And the moment she has that realization, she's just like, I don't even know what type of woman he wants to be with.

• 2:11:17Speaker 03

  Right.

• 2:11:17Griffin Newman?

  But I imagine it isn't me. And I like that she doesn't do this complete pretending to be a different person, but you notice the next couple of scenes, she starts dressing down.

• 2:11:25Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:11:26Griffin Newman?

  She's still.

• 2:11:26Speaker 03

  She's way low key.

• 2:11:27Griffin Newman?

  She's still Cher.

• 2:11:28Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:11:29Griffin Newman?

  But it's like all more toned down.

• 2:11:31Speaker 03

  The cardigan, like.

• 2:11:32Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:11:32Speaker 03

  Just a T-shirt and jeans. Yeah.

• 2:11:35David Sims?

  Um, yeah, you're right. You're right. She's a little, a little less loud or whatever. And everyone kind of starts, you know, like Travis, uh, whatever focuses up on his skateboarding.

• 2:11:48Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:11:48David Sims?

  Deanna Murray.

• 2:11:49Griffin Newman?

  He goes to weed rehab.

• 2:11:50David Sims?

  Yes. Little, little on the nose.

• 2:11:52Griffin Newman?

  A little, right. Refromat.

• 2:11:54David Sims?

  They went to 12 steps for.

• 2:11:55Speaker 03

  I know. That was the thing. I was like, the rewatch, I'm like, oh, you really? Oh, okay. He's, he's in rehab.

• 2:12:01David Sims?

  He's okay.

• 2:12:02Speaker 03

  He's in the program.

• 2:12:03David Sims?

  Cause he smoked a lot of weed. I don't know. He's pretty functional, honestly.

• 2:12:06Speaker 03

  Maybe it was too much. I mean, yeah.

• 2:12:08Griffin Newman?

  The 2025 version of that joke would be like, he's giving up nine of his bongs and only keeping one because he doesn't want to be stoned all the time.

• 2:12:16Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:12:16Griffin Newman?

  And this movie has to frame it as like, he has signed up for like weed anonymous.

• 2:12:22Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:12:23Griffin Newman?

  And it's like fully weaned himself off the devil's lettuce.

• 2:12:26Speaker 03

  Yeah. He's only sober in one. Like he would be like doing mushroom chocolate and not like.

• 2:12:31Griffin Newman?

  Right. Right.

• 2:12:31Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:12:31Griffin Newman?

  Versus, this movie has a little bit still of the nineties. Like, is weed the innate sign of an unserious person?

• 2:12:38Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:12:39Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:12:39David Sims?

  Uh, Deanna Murray, uh, like get closer, have sex, seem to mature a little bit.

• 2:12:46Griffin Newman?

  Because of the freeway sequence, which is a perfect, this is a perfect representation of why I don't drive. Like, I watched this sequence in the movie and I'm like, this is what I imagine it would feel like all the time.

• 2:12:57Speaker 03

  Right.

• 2:12:57David Sims?

  The first time you drive on a highway is scary.

• 2:12:59Griffin Newman?

  I would feel like Cher and I'd be crashing into people's fucking rearview mirrors and I end up on the freeway and suddenly everything's moving really fast and I can't get off it.

• 2:13:06Speaker 03

  Was that a major stunt? Because the semi is terrifying. It actually looks very close to them.

• 2:13:12David Sims?

  They do a great job, like, exactly, making it feel very high pressure.

• 2:13:16Griffin Newman?

  What's the funny part of them having Bill Pope shoot this is you're like, this is the scene that's his bailiwick, basically.

• 2:13:21David Sims?

  I think there's also just a good joke to how, um, like, tiny their world is. That they really wouldn't be getting on the freeway much by themselves. They don't need to, right? Like, and, uh, god, I guess, yeah, the fir- I, I was, maybe it's this movie's fault. I was scared to like merge on, like when I'm learning how to drive.

• 2:13:41Griffin Newman?

  It's terrifying. How does anyone do this?

• 2:13:43David Sims?

  You have to go really fast, really quickly and then just kind of get in there?

• 2:13:47Speaker 04

  It's scary to drive on those freeways in LA too. The first time, it's so intense.

• 2:13:52David Sims?

  The first time I drove in LA, I had to like, make a left off of like Sepulveda or some big ass road. And I'm like, oh, okay, I'll just, where's my turning lane? And then it's like, no, you just kind of have to turn left across like eight lanes of traffic.

• 2:14:06Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:14:06David Sims?

  That's just kind of what we do here.

• 2:14:08Griffin Newman?

  Nightmare.

• 2:14:08David Sims?

  And I asked like an LA person, I was like, is that, did I fuck up? Did I? And they were like, no, that's just, this is driving in LA.

• 2:14:14Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:14:14David Sims?

  It is scary.

• 2:14:15Speaker 03

  I drove there for 10 years and I won't now. I'm too scared.

• 2:14:18David Sims?

  You, you're, now you're like, I'm getting an Uber. I don't want to do it.

• 2:14:20Speaker 03

  Yeah, I'll drive in Kansas City and I wouldn't even drive here. It's, I'm very scared of it. I, I did it like four years ago and when I got on the highway, I felt the way they felt in Clueless. I was like, this is coming at me so fast.

• 2:14:32David Sims?

  They're very large and they do go fa- I love, see, I love it. I, I was so nervous about it and then I was just like, oh no, it's fine. Like, merging is not scary to me.

• 2:14:40Speaker 03

  I hope I get back to that.

• 2:14:41Speaker 04

  It's more scary driving on the other side of the road.

• 2:14:44David Sims?

  Well, did you do that?

• 2:14:45Speaker 04

  Well, I just went to St. Croix recently.

• 2:14:47David Sims?

  Oh, that's right.

• 2:14:47Speaker 04

  So they have American-style cars.

• 2:14:50Griffin Newman?

  You might know that Ben's still on island time.

• 2:14:52Speaker 04

  Yeah, I know. The beads are starting to come out. Uh, but you have to drive on the other side of the road, so it's really weird. Cause the driver is then on the shoulder side.

• 2:15:02David Sims?

  Yes, that's fucked up.

• 2:15:03Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:15:04David Sims?

  And it, I imagine just turning is just, your brain's all fucked up.

• 2:15:08Speaker 04

  Making a right turn is like, you're, it just, it's, I couldn't rewire my brain in the moment. It was just so weird.

• 2:15:14David Sims?

  Yeah, I don't like that.

• 2:15:14Speaker 04

  It was, I had a few moments where I just was really like, pretty terrified, driving around.

• 2:15:20David Sims?

  Don't drive around.

• 2:15:22Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, join my side. Never drive around.

• 2:15:24David Sims?

  No, I mean, I love, I actually love driving, which is weird of me, considering what an anxious person I am about travel.

• 2:15:30Griffin Newman?

  But that ends with Marie consoling Dion, which then is like, after that day, her virginity stopped being technical. Yeah.

• 2:15:39Speaker 03

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:15:40David Sims?

  Um.

• 2:15:41Speaker 04

  Yeah, her, like, lace, I guess, hat that she wears in the highway scene, Dion.

• 2:15:47Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah, yeah. It's so good. I know.

• 2:15:50Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:15:50Speaker 03

  It's like a doily beret.

• 2:15:52David Sims?

  Yes.

• 2:15:53Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:15:53Speaker 04

  Totally.

• 2:15:54Griffin Newman?

  But that's like a realization moment for her too. I mean, I, I think it's later where Sheriff says the thing about like recognizing the good in everyone she knows or the things, you know, she likes about them and says like, how sweet they are when no one else is watching.

• 2:16:07Speaker 03

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:16:07Griffin Newman?

  That there's this awareness that their relationship seems to be based in fighting, but it's kind of a like comedic exhilarating fighting.

• 2:16:14Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:16:15Griffin Newman?

  That they don't actually mean.

• 2:16:16Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:16:17Griffin Newman?

  As much as that's sort of their weird love language.

• 2:16:19Speaker 03

  Yes, totally.

• 2:16:20Griffin Newman?

  And then she's like, if no one's watching, they're just really gentle with each other.

• 2:16:23Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:16:24David Sims?

  Yeah, which I love.

• 2:16:25Speaker 03

  They're not performative, yeah.

• 2:16:26Griffin Newman?

  And she witnesses that for the first time because like the fear of the life and death stakes of being on the freeway.

• 2:16:32Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:16:32Griffin Newman?

  Has caused the defenses to go down, which I think in that moment makes her realize like this is an actual relationship.

• 2:16:37David Sims?

  I don't have this with anybody.

• 2:16:38Griffin Newman?

  It's not a guy just saying, you look fantastic.

• 2:16:40David Sims?

  And obviously, the person she's most vulnerable and closest to is Josh, who she will lounge around in her PJs and like watch Ren and Stimpy with him and all that. And like, that's, that's the, she just needs to realize it. And she does realize it. And they make out and they go to the wedding of the teachers together. And then the movie ends.

• 2:16:58Griffin Newman?

  In the, when there's the, um.

• 2:16:59David Sims?

  And you're so happy. You want nothing else.

• 2:17:01Griffin Newman?

  I can't believe you just speed ran through it that much. Your favorite movie.

• 2:17:05David Sims?

  What am I missing?

• 2:17:06Griffin Newman?

  The thing I was gonna say is at the wedding, when there's the bouquet throw.

• 2:17:09David Sims?

  Yes.

• 2:17:10Griffin Newman?

  Amy Heckerling is one of the bridesmaids.

• 2:17:12David Sims?

  Oh, sure. Okay.

• 2:17:13Griffin Newman?

  And she framed herself out. Cause she, they were like, she's really shy. She doesn't like being on camera. But we thought it was funny. She's in one of the dresses. She's basically cut out of the frame.

• 2:17:22Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 2:17:23Griffin Newman?

  But then in the bouquet throw, she thought they were all being too civil. And was trying to encourage them to be rowdier and more competitive in it and they couldn't do it. So she just started throwing elbows and pushing them.

• 2:17:35David Sims?

  Oh yeah, I see her.

• 2:17:35Griffin Newman?

  And if you watch the scene, her head is down, she's clearly trying to not be seen on camera. But all the chaos is being instigated by her in the middle of it.

• 2:17:43Speaker 03

  There is someone that it looks like Alicia Silverstone falls directly on. Like, it looks like someone.

• 2:17:50Griffin Newman?

  It might be her.

• 2:17:50Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:17:51Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:17:51David Sims?

  Did you guys ever watch the TV show, The Sitcom Clueless?

• 2:17:55Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:17:56Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 2:17:56David Sims?

  It existed for, I want to say, what, like, four or five years? Like, it was like, three years, okay.

• 2:18:00Griffin Newman?

  And like, 60% of the cast carried over.

• 2:18:02Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:18:03David Sims?

  Yes, although not the two stars. But we did have Stacy Dash, Donald Faison, and Eliza, or Lisa, I'm not trying to say.

• 2:18:11Griffin Newman?

  Donovan.

• 2:18:12David Sims?

  Donovan.

• 2:18:12Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:18:13Griffin Newman?

  But then also, uh...

• 2:18:14David Sims?

  And Twink is in the first season.

• 2:18:15Griffin Newman?

  Twink and Wallace Shawn was in the first season as well.

• 2:18:17David Sims?

  And Wallace Shawn was in the first season, but Michael Lerner plays the dad. Kind of a different vibe.

• 2:18:22Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, but it, but it's similarly established, serious actor.

• 2:18:26David Sims?

  Yes.

• 2:18:26Griffin Newman?

  A different Coen Brothers All-Star.

• 2:18:28David Sims?

  And then the guy, David Lasher, who plays Josh, gets written out after season one. After season one, it went to UPN and it became a different show.

• 2:18:35Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 2:18:35Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:18:35Griffin Newman?

  Josh was not much of a character and Ty was not much of a character.

• 2:18:38David Sims?

  Right.

• 2:18:39Speaker 03

  Yeah. It didn't ever, I watched it, but it didn't ever hip for me. It just...

• 2:18:44David Sims?

  No, it's not very good.

• 2:18:45Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:18:45Griffin Newman?

  I was watching last night some of the Fast Times sitcom, which is all up on YouTube, because I'd been like, who needs to fucking watch this? And then I found out she wrote and directed half of the episodes.

• 2:18:57Speaker 03

  Oh.

• 2:18:57Griffin Newman?

  So I was a little curious about how that translation was.

• 2:19:00Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:19:00Griffin Newman?

  And it's very strange because it's her trying to do Fast Times on network television in 1986.

• 2:19:07David Sims?

  I imagine it doesn't work.

• 2:19:08Griffin Newman?

  And so it feels like this is like Freaks and Geeks 15 years ahead of its time, where it's like, she couldn't make it as like edgy and complicated as she wanted to. It was, it got canceled, was seen as a failure, and I was like, oh, I wonder what failure was, what the scale was in 1986? The last episode got 10 million viewers, and they were like, well, this is unacceptable. Gone.

• 2:19:31Speaker 03

  Insane.

• 2:19:32Griffin Newman?

  Ten million.

• 2:19:32Speaker 03

  Ten million.

• 2:19:33Griffin Newman?

  It's the seventy second.

• 2:19:35David Sims?

  Get it off the air.

• 2:19:35Griffin Newman?

  Show on network television, but like that's, um, Courtney Thorne Smith is the Jennifer Jason Lee part and Claudia Wells, who's the original Jennifer in the first Back to the Future is, um, Phoebe Cates.

• 2:19:49David Sims?

  Sure.

• 2:19:50Griffin Newman?

  Like it has good actors on it.

• 2:19:51Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:19:52Griffin Newman?

  But it all feels very superficial.

• 2:19:55Speaker 03

  Right.

• 2:19:55Griffin Newman?

  And even if The Clueless Show wasn't as good, I think Clueless was a tone that was easier to translate to TV.

• 2:20:00Speaker 03

  Totally.

• 2:20:01Griffin Newman?

  Whereas Fast Times, you're like, you're taking the cursing and the drugs and the sex out. It all feels a little strange.

• 2:20:07Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:20:08David Sims?

  Are there any other lines from Clueless I haven't shouted out? Heidi, is there anything else we haven't touched on? You know, it's a big movie.

• 2:20:17Speaker 03

  Clueless.

• 2:20:20David Sims?

  Isn't My House Totally Classic? The columns tape all the way back to nineteen seventy two. That's a good.

• 2:20:26Speaker 03

  Her Jeep is awesome.

• 2:20:28David Sims?

  Jeep is so good.

• 2:20:29Speaker 03

  It's so good.

• 2:20:29David Sims?

  Such a great car for someone who doesn't know how to drive to own as well.

• 2:20:33Speaker 03

  And it's like, it's not the odd, like, I don't know, you'd think convertible, but it's like, no, the cool girl would have the white Jeep.

• 2:20:40Griffin Newman?

  It looks like a Barbie power wheel.

• 2:20:42Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:20:42Griffin Newman?

  That's what I like about it.

• 2:20:43David Sims?

  Yes, it does.

• 2:20:44Griffin Newman?

  It's a child's idea of a cool car.

• 2:20:46Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 2:20:46Griffin Newman?

  Right. Versus convertible would actually be cool.

• 2:20:48Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:20:49David Sims?

  Yes, uh, I was just having a snack at my girlfriend's. Where in Kuwait? The way that he yells at Ty, get out of my chair, when she's sitting in his chair. Um, anything else, guys? No? Yes? No? Before we do the box office game?

• 2:21:04Griffin Newman?

  I'm scrubbing through.

• 2:21:05David Sims?

  I totally pause. An iconic line.

• 2:21:08Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:21:09Speaker 04

  I mean, I guess Kai and Josh kind of have this tension a little bit.

• 2:21:14David Sims?

  I think it's mostly in her head, though.

• 2:21:16Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 2:21:16David Sims?

  Like, I mean, or I mean, Ty obviously has a crush on Josh, but I feel like Josh is never actually aware that Ty is interested in him.

• 2:21:21Speaker 04

  He's just being a good guy.

• 2:21:23David Sims?

  He's just nice.

• 2:21:23Griffin Newman?

  Yeah. Right.

• 2:21:25Speaker 03

  Totally.

• 2:21:25David Sims?

  He's just a good fella.

• 2:21:27Griffin Newman?

  I do like that the sign that Travis has like gotten his act together and become a serious enough person that Ty can date him is that he's now professionally skateboarding.

• 2:21:36Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:21:37Griffin Newman?

  Right? And it's like, he's given up his bongs and now he's doing it within like a competitive structure.

• 2:21:42Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:21:43Griffin Newman?

  It's also funny that they have like an espresso stand there. And Cher has like a tiny little paper Starbucks cup, which you're like, oh, in 1995, that must have been a joke equivalent to them all having cell phones of like, look at how mature and hip these kids are.

• 2:21:57Speaker 03

  Totally.

• 2:21:58Griffin Newman?

  They drink Starbucks.

• 2:21:59David Sims?

  Uh, I like that, right? He says he can't drink coffee, Christian, because of his ulcer. And she's like, what about those cappuccinos? I think that was just foam.

• 2:22:06Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:22:06David Sims?

  Yeah, that line's really funny.

• 2:22:07Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:22:08David Sims?

  Obviously, Christian's obsession with Tony Curtis is very funny.

• 2:22:12Speaker 04

  I never got to have a pager.

• 2:22:14David Sims?

  I had a pager. I had a pager.

• 2:22:16Speaker 04

  Really?

• 2:22:16David Sims?

  Yes. My mom got me a pager after nine 11. Or was it before? It was, it was, I think it was after nine 11, because before I was gonna, she wouldn't give me a cellphone.

• 2:22:24Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:22:25David Sims?

  So she got me a pager.

• 2:22:26Speaker 03

  Wow.

• 2:22:27David Sims?

  And we used it like twice.

• 2:22:29Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 2:22:30David Sims?

  It would have, you, you could call a number and read a message and it would, I would get sent like a text message that would like scroll on the pager.

• 2:22:38Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:22:39David Sims?

  And that was ostensibly the point, right? Was like for an emergency, she could like give me a message. I never used it. It was so stupid, but it would tell me the news and soccer scores.

• 2:22:49Griffin Newman?

  Wow.

• 2:22:49David Sims?

  So they would just like come up on the pager.

• 2:22:51Speaker 04

  It's just one of those pieces of technology that you see in movies, it comes up and it's something I'm, I'm like, I'm like, kinda almost like, I wish, jealous, like, I wish I had had that moment in time to have that piece of technology.

• 2:23:06Griffin Newman?

  It's like the 30 Rock beeper king thing. Technology is cyclical. It's coming back around. Maybe you can make the beeper happen again.

• 2:23:11Speaker 04

  Oh shit. Yeah. There could be improvements and there's maybe a way of like, there's the cell phones that only do certain things, right? I don't remember the name of it.

• 2:23:22Griffin Newman?

  Dumb phones.

• 2:23:23Speaker 04

  Dumb phones. There's like maybe some version where it's like, you can still text message with people, but it's just more involved.

• 2:23:30Griffin Newman?

  Ben, I think you have to go in the opposite direction.

• 2:23:32Speaker 04

  What?

• 2:23:33Griffin Newman?

  People who are going towards the smartphone or the dumb phone, why not sell them a smart beeper instead?

• 2:23:39Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 2:23:39Griffin Newman?

  They don't want the super complicated smartphone in their life that's sucking up all their attention.

• 2:23:44Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:23:44Griffin Newman?

  They want to downsize, but rather making a dumber phone, why not make a smarter beeper?

• 2:23:48Speaker 03

  That just tells you, like, this is how many emails you've gotten in the last three hours and texts that makes you realize like, oh, I gotta get back to my phone.

• 2:23:56Griffin Newman?

  Right. I gotta get back to it.

• 2:23:58Speaker 03

  Or I don't.

• 2:23:59Griffin Newman?

  I gotta get back to my phone.

• 2:24:00Speaker 03

  There's sometimes where you're in a movie and you're like, I'm gonna get out of this movie and I'm gonna have 67 texts and 100 emails and you have zero and you're like, oh.

• 2:24:06Griffin Newman?

  Wow. Worst day of my life. Yeah.

• 2:24:09Speaker 03

  But that, or it feels like the best day.

• 2:24:11Griffin Newman?

  Well, yeah.

• 2:24:11Speaker 03

  And you're like, and I'm not as popular as I thought.

• 2:24:13Griffin Newman?

  I tru- there are few feelings I love more than waking up and going, oh my god, no new texts.

• 2:24:18Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:24:19Griffin Newman?

  I got nothing to catch up with.

• 2:24:20David Sims?

  Texts do stress me out.

• 2:24:21Griffin Newman?

  Day starts fresh?

• 2:24:23Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 2:24:24David Sims?

  I'm in too many group chats.

• 2:24:25Griffin Newman?

  Okay, let's start a couple more.

• 2:24:26David Sims?

  Yeah, let's do it. Um, Clueless came out July 21st, 1995. Made 55 millions, 56 million dollars.

• 2:24:33Griffin Newman?

  Open to 10.

• 2:24:34David Sims?

  Domestic, open to 10.

• 2:24:35Griffin Newman?

  It had legs.

• 2:24:36David Sims?

  Like tripled its budget. It was, it was a big, solid hit, but it also had major longevity. It was a VHS classic.

• 2:24:42Griffin Newman?

  People were buying too.

• 2:24:43David Sims?

  Cable classic.

• 2:24:43Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:24:44David Sims?

  Obviously.

• 2:24:44Griffin Newman?

  And I mean, the sitcom is on the air a year later.

• 2:24:47David Sims?

  Um, there was the spinoff, uh, sitcom, which Heckling worked on the first six episodes and then was like, okay, I don't need to do this. Um, but this is the last successful movie that she makes.

• 2:24:58Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:24:58David Sims?

  And like Loser is a big theatrical movie that kind of made some money, I guess. And then that's kind of...

• 2:25:04Griffin Newman?

  It's definitely seen as a disappointment.

• 2:25:06David Sims?

  But it's a disappointment, yeah.

• 2:25:07Griffin Newman?

  And then her last two movies, she is very openly talked about having to claw to get a very meager budget. Not being able to make films on the scale that she wants to. Both of those films, we will talk about shortly, but I think that the public sort of line on both of them is like, it's a little depressing to see her not be given the tools that she used to have.

• 2:25:27David Sims?

  Uh, there is the Clueless musical, uh, which...

• 2:25:30Griffin Newman?

  Is about to open in the West End.

• 2:25:32David Sims?

  Yes.

• 2:25:32Griffin Newman?

  It was playing off Broadway.

• 2:25:34David Sims?

  From Katie Tunstall. And when Heckling is making this movie, she's like, this should be a musical. People should start singing, like...

• 2:25:39Griffin Newman?

  I think it was, it, it ran very briefly off Broadway at the beginning of 2020, I want to say with Dove Cameron playing Cher. And there was a really good New York Times interview or piece profile on Amy Heckerling talking about like, the lasting influence of Cher in her life and this whole arc of starting a script, thinking she was mocking this character and then coming to really respect someone who could be that positive.

• 2:26:02Speaker 03

  Right.

• 2:26:02Griffin Newman?

  And be that happy and everything. Um, and so, yeah, she was hoping it was going to transfer to Broadway. The pandemic happened, the thing set on ice for a couple of years, and now it's finally about to open on the West End. And she's very involved in it.

• 2:26:14Speaker 03

  A number with shopping bags.

• 2:26:16Griffin Newman?

  I'm sure there are several.

• 2:26:18Speaker 03

  Yeah, and for me, I'm, and this is for me, I call a fatal flaw. I do not care for musicals and I'm so glad it was never a musical. Or it is one, but I'm like, it's already such a heightened world. If they would have broke out in songs in the mall, I would have been like, no.

• 2:26:32Griffin Newman?

  Are there any musicals you like?

• 2:26:33Speaker 03

  I like, um, Pippin a lot.

• 2:26:36Griffin Newman?

  Okay.

• 2:26:36Speaker 03

  And I think I like Godspell. I like the music in it. And I like Phantom of the Opera, just because it was a big deal when I was a kid. And I like that song.

• 2:26:47David Sims?

  I think we could win you over. This, this is suggesting to me that there's, there's musicals.

• 2:26:51Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, there's space. There's room to play here. Yeah.

• 2:26:53David Sims?

  If you like Godspell, you like Pippin. I don't know. Those are very musically musicals in a lot of ways. Uh, all right, Griff, box office game. This opens number two.

• 2:27:01Griffin Newman?

  Okay.

• 2:27:01David Sims?

  At the box office. Uh, so what's number one? It's a big hit of the summer. I saw it with my whole family. You might've been too young, but maybe you did too.

• 2:27:10Griffin Newman?

  It's a family hit. Or was it just a massive deal?

• 2:27:12David Sims?

  It's a true story film.

• 2:27:15Griffin Newman?

  Apollo 13?

• 2:27:16David Sims?

  There you go.

• 2:27:16Speaker 03

  Wow.

• 2:27:17David Sims?

  I was like, I don't need to say space movie. He'll get it.

• 2:27:19Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:27:20David Sims?

  Apollo 13, a great film. Basically always hits.

• 2:27:23Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, I definitely watched that on TV the first time.

• 2:27:25Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:27:25Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, right.

• 2:27:26Speaker 03

  Yes, I know.

• 2:27:26Griffin Newman?

  Because, right, this, this is June 1995 or July 1995. I don't care about Tom Hanks yet. And then Thanksgiving Toy Story is gonna come out. So by early 96, I'm like, well, Tom Hanks is obviously my favorite actor.

• 2:27:40Speaker 03

  So 94 was Forrest Gump, right? You didn't care about him?

• 2:27:43Griffin Newman?

  Right. So then by 96, I'm going through the Tom Hanks VHS.

• 2:27:47Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:27:47Griffin Newman?

  Collection because I gotta fill in knowing what Woody's face looks like. Yeah.

• 2:27:51David Sims?

  Um, third is a rom com that's a bit of a flop, uh, that is better known for the sort of, uh, well, it's actually, it kind of made money, but it's better known for what's going on around the movie.

• 2:28:03Griffin Newman?

  Was there a real life coupling?

• 2:28:05David Sims?

  A real life scandal.

• 2:28:06Griffin Newman?

  A real life scandal?

• 2:28:09Griffin Newman?

  Was there an affair?

• 2:28:10Speaker 03

  Oh, um, was it, um, wait, okay, wait, nine months?

• 2:28:18David Sims?

  It's nine months. Hugh Grant in Nine Months.

• 2:28:22Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, okay.

• 2:28:22David Sims?

  A movie where I feel like no one even remembers what the plot is, but everyone remembers that he got a blowjob on this trip. Like, and that was, that was what the movie was about.

• 2:28:30Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:28:30David Sims?

  Have you seen Nine Months?

• 2:28:32Griffin Newman?

  I've still never seen it.

• 2:28:32David Sims?

  Chris Columbus's Nine Months, written and directed by Chris Columbus.

• 2:28:36Griffin Newman?

  Yes, and Chris Columbus's, we've said this many times on the show, Heidi, but Chris Columbus's contention is that it got like the highest test screening scores in the history of Fox. And everyone was like lighting cigars and saying like, this is gonna be bigger than Mrs. Doubtfire, which he was just coming off of, right? And he was like, if Hugh hadn't gotten that blowjob, it would have been my highest grossing film. And I'm like, I think there is no universe. You look at the cultural tale of that movie, which is nonexistent. People don't remember which movie he was promoting when he got the blowjob.

• 2:29:07Speaker 03

  Right.

• 2:29:08Griffin Newman?

  Which movie he went on Leno to talk about the blowjob with.

• 2:29:11Speaker 03

  That's never gonna be Doubtfire.

• 2:29:12David Sims?

  The premise is just, he gets someone pregnant, Julianne Moore.

• 2:29:16Griffin Newman?

  I remember my parents coming home from date night seeing Nine Months and being like, Robin Williams is funny. And I was like, oh, it's a Robin Williams movie. And they're like, he's in like 10 minutes.

• 2:29:23David Sims?

  Okay.

• 2:29:24Griffin Newman?

  He's uncredited.

• 2:29:26David Sims?

  Number four?

• 2:29:26Speaker 03

  It was a two and a half. I'm sure Robert Butler gave it a two and a half.

• 2:29:29Griffin Newman?

  A classic two and a half.

• 2:29:30Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:29:30David Sims?

  Uh, number four at the box office, and I'm gonna find out what Robert Butler gave it. Um, is a Ben favorite, an action film, a sequel? We've covered it on this show.

• 2:29:39Griffin Newman?

  Is it Under Siege 2 Dark Territory?

• 2:29:40David Sims?

  Under Siege 2 Dark Territory.

• 2:29:43Griffin Newman?

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:29:43David Sims?

  Great movie.

• 2:29:44Griffin Newman?

  Which a listener very kindly sent us on LaserDisc. We now have on LaserDisc here.

• 2:29:48David Sims?

  Great.

• 2:29:49Speaker 03

  Cool.

• 2:29:50Griffin Newman?

  So you can see that beautiful square. Have you ever seen the movie?

• 2:29:52David Sims?

  Heidi, you don't seem that excited.

• 2:29:53Speaker 03

  No, I do. That is me being like, cool. That's cool.

• 2:29:57David Sims?

  Uh.

• 2:29:58Speaker 03

  Yes, I have seen that.

• 2:29:59David Sims?

  Looks like Robert Butler skipped reviewing Nine Months. At least his review has not been uploaded to the internet.

• 2:30:03Griffin Newman?

  What about Under Siege 2?

• 2:30:05Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:30:06David Sims?

  It's basically just a big CD.

• 2:30:07Speaker 03

  I bet Under Siege 2 got a one and a half.

• 2:30:11David Sims?

  It sounds like he was a really, like, for the time, like, he liked classy.

• 2:30:16Speaker 03

  Yeah, he was the skull and Ebert, for sure.

• 2:30:20David Sims?

  Number five at the box office, we were just talking about it on one of our many text threads, Griffin.

• 2:30:24Griffin Newman?

  We were just talking about it on one of our many.

• 2:30:26David Sims?

  Sexy horror film.

• 2:30:28Griffin Newman?

  Is it Species?

• 2:30:29David Sims?

  Species.

• 2:30:30Speaker 03

  Wow.

• 2:30:30David Sims?

  What if an alien, what if alien but with boobs?

• 2:30:33Griffin Newman?

  We have a really, really cool group text called News and Deals that ostensibly is to talk about announcements and sales on physical media.

• 2:30:42Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 2:30:42Griffin Newman?

  But ends up being a wide-ranging conversation and we just honed in on Species being a formative first time I saw boobs movie for many people in the thread.

• 2:30:50David Sims?

  Have you seen Species?

• 2:30:51Speaker 03

  I have totally. I saw that with my brother Justin. I'm sure that was one where the.

• 2:30:55David Sims?

  Right, Justin's like, we have to go. But that movie is violent.

• 2:31:00Speaker 03

  It's really good.

• 2:31:01David Sims?

  It is good. It's a very fun.

• 2:31:03Griffin Newman?

  We were saying that.

• 2:31:04Speaker 03

  Natasha Henstridge?

• 2:31:05David Sims?

  Yes.

• 2:31:05Griffin Newman?

  Astonishing it hasn't been rebooted.

• 2:31:07David Sims?

  Heidi.

• 2:31:07Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:31:08David Sims?

  Incredible work saying Natasha Henstridge's amazing last name, where you're always like, oh, it's Natasha Henstridge or Henstridge, Henstridge. It's just this.

• 2:31:18Griffin Newman?

  It's a good word.

• 2:31:19David Sims?

  I love looking at it. Henstridge.

• 2:31:20Griffin Newman?

  Henstridge.

• 2:31:22David Sims?

  Yes, love, love her.

• 2:31:23Griffin Newman?

  Sim said, I can't believe Sydney Sweeney has not already bought the rights to Species.

• 2:31:28David Sims?

  Some, like, young star needs to be like, I'm rebooting Species. It's coming back.

• 2:31:34Griffin Newman?

  Species Legacy.

• 2:31:35David Sims?

  Yeah, whatever.

• 2:31:36Griffin Newman?

  Henstridge makes one appearance at the end.

• 2:31:38Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:31:41David Sims?

  So that's the top five. You've also got opening at number six, Free Willy 2: The Adventure Home, sort of unnecessary sequel. He already.

• 2:31:48Griffin Newman?

  Necessary.

• 2:31:49David Sims?

  He already was freed.

• 2:31:50Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, he hasn't gotten home yet.

• 2:31:52David Sims?

  I guess. I remember even as a kid being like, I think we've told the Free Willys, like, when I was seeing in theaters. I was like.

• 2:32:00Griffin Newman?

  What I was digging into the other day, unsurprisingly, Free Willy the Animated Series, where they were like, we gotta raise the stakes on this. So in Free Willy the Animated Series, there is like a league of Captain Planet-esque villains. There's like cyborg men who are like, I hate the ocean. Free Willy must be captured. And this boy is still just like, Willy, jump. But you got these guys with like drill submarines and lasers trying to attack Willie. And you're like, the movie's just about a kid trying to get a

• 2:32:29David Sims?

  It is the most, he wants to get the

• 2:32:31Speaker 03

  I hate the ocean.

• 2:32:32David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 2:32:34Griffin Newman?

  I hate Willie.

• 2:32:36David Sims?

  Number seven is Pocahontas.

• 2:32:38Griffin Newman?

  Uh huh.

• 2:32:39David Sims?

  Which I rewatch with my daughter, it still just does not hit for me.

• 2:32:42Griffin Newman?

  Look, I understand it is a deeply problematic movie.

• 2:32:44David Sims?

  It's not just it's problematic, it's very like slow and stately. The songs are nice.

• 2:32:49Speaker 03

  Yeah, color of the wind.

• 2:32:50David Sims?

  And it looks

• 2:32:50Griffin Newman?

  Just find the riverbank?

• 2:32:51David Sims?

  Yeah, no, it's a good looking, well.

• 2:32:53Griffin Newman?

  Should I marry Cocoum?

• 2:32:55David Sims?

  Yeah, but this is the thing, it doesn't have a lot of, you know, like juice.

• 2:32:59Griffin Newman?

  Doesn't have juice, what about Cocoum?

• 2:33:01David Sims?

  Who's, yeah, sure.

• 2:33:02Griffin Newman?

  The guy she's supposed to marry?

• 2:33:03David Sims?

  Yeah, sure she, it's like, no one's really that fun. I don't know.

• 2:33:07Griffin Newman?

  Yeah. Oh, so wait.

• 2:33:08David Sims?

  The raccoon.

• 2:33:09Griffin Newman?

  Flit and Miko aren't getting a rise out of you?

• 2:33:11David Sims?

  My daughter's briefly obsessed with Tarzan.

• 2:33:14Griffin Newman?

  Well, that one I don't get.

• 2:33:16David Sims?

  Ah, it's so weird.

• 2:33:17Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:33:18David Sims?

  Anyway, those very serious late 90s Disney movies.

• 2:33:20Griffin Newman?

  What's your Disney Renaissance feeling overall, Heidi?

• 2:33:23Speaker 03

  Oh, definitely. Yeah, that era.

• 2:33:26Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:33:26Speaker 03

  I mean, Robin Hood's my favorite, but definitely, yeah.

• 2:33:29Griffin Newman?

  Robin Hood and Jungle Book are my two.

• 2:33:31David Sims?

  Sure, sure.

• 2:33:31Speaker 03

  Robin Hood and Beauty and the Beast are my two, but The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast were, were just magical.

• 2:33:37David Sims?

  Yes.

• 2:33:38Speaker 03

  Um, and then I just, I tapered off around the Tarzan, Pocahontas.

• 2:33:43David Sims?

  You're getting too old for it.

• 2:33:44Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. So.

• 2:33:45David Sims?

  My daughter's obsessed with Little Mermaid right now. She will not allow the scene where Ursula gets big to be shown to her, though.

• 2:33:52Griffin Newman?

  Interesting.

• 2:33:53David Sims?

  Like, she saw that once and was like, like truly like classic.

• 2:33:56Griffin Newman?

  But she tends to like villains, right? She loves Cruella.

• 2:33:58David Sims?

  She's obsessed with Ursula as

• 2:34:00Griffin Newman?

  Until, but as long as she maintains a normal size.

• 2:34:03David Sims?

  Her getting big is scary. It is scary, but she gets way too big and then they run her through with a ship.

• 2:34:09Griffin Newman?

  But she's not scared by Vanessa.

• 2:34:11David Sims?

  Which is Vanessa?

• 2:34:12Griffin Newman?

  Vanessa's when Ursula becomes

• 2:34:14David Sims?

  No, she loves that because she's like, what's she doing? And I think she's learning like Trickery is like, you know, being introduced to her.

• 2:34:20Griffin Newman?

  Good lesson.

• 2:34:21David Sims?

  She's tricking her, him.

• 2:34:22Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:34:23David Sims?

  Eric, whatever. Indian in the Cupboard, number eight.

• 2:34:26Griffin Newman?

  A banger.

• 2:34:27David Sims?

  Pretty good movie.

• 2:34:28Griffin Newman?

  A movie that rules.

• 2:34:29David Sims?

  Had that been, had it on VHS.

• 2:34:30Griffin Newman?

  We will cover on this podcast someday.

• 2:34:32David Sims?

  Oh, will we?

• 2:34:33Griffin Newman?

  It's directed by?

• 2:34:34David Sims?

  I don't remember.

• 2:34:35Griffin Newman?

  Frank Oz.

• 2:34:36David Sims?

  Oh, sure. Yeah.

• 2:34:39David Sims?

  First Night, the serious King Arthur movie with Richard Gere and Sean Connery.

• 2:34:44Griffin Newman?

  Directed by David Zucker.

• 2:34:45David Sims?

  Directed by David.

• 2:34:46Griffin Newman?

  Jerry Zucker.

• 2:34:46David Sims?

  One of the Zucker's.

• 2:34:46Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:34:47David Sims?

  And number 10, the great Batman Forever, R.I.P. to Val Kilmer.

• 2:34:51Speaker 03

  That was 10?

• 2:34:52David Sims?

  Well, it's been out for two months at this point.

• 2:34:55Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 2:34:55David Sims?

  It's made a healthy 170.

• 2:34:57Griffin Newman?

  The big Memorial Day movie. Yeah.

• 2:34:59Speaker 03

  And no Mad Love.

• 2:35:00Griffin Newman?

  No Mad Love.

• 2:35:01David Sims?

  Where, where is Mad Love? Mad Love is not even on the charts.

• 2:35:05Griffin Newman?

  Wow.

• 2:35:06David Sims?

  So it probably left theaters within weeks.

• 2:35:09Speaker 03

  Can I tell you a formative thing that summer that was a Batman Forever thing?

• 2:35:14Speaker 03

  Okay, so I would always see movies with Justin. My mom was like, you guys go together. Heidi's your younger sister.

• 2:35:20Griffin Newman?

  I'm nine years older than my sister, so I had a very similar dynamic where I was the Justin.

• 2:35:24Speaker 03

  Yes, and you're the responsible one and all this stuff. So I had seen Batman Forever the weekend that it opened with my best friend Ashley and her dad. Justin wanted to see it either that next week or that Sunday at Ward Parkway. And I was just like, I've already seen it. And he was like, well, I guess you could see something else. We could split off. And so I went and saw Waterworld. He saw Batman Forever.

• 2:35:51Griffin Newman?

  Wow.

• 2:35:52Speaker 03

  We both agreed we weren't telling mom, you know? And then I let it slip that I went and saw. Or we both were just talking about two different movies and she figured out, she was like, wait a second, you were in Batman Forever while your sister was in Waterworld? What the hell? And she got so mad at me and she said, do you know that you could have been sitting in that movie? And someone could have come over to you with a needle and injected you with something and then we would have never seen you again.

• 2:36:18David Sims?

  What?

• 2:36:19Speaker 03

  Yes, like it was obviously a news story of the time.

• 2:36:22David Sims?

  Yes, I do, sure, a panic.

• 2:36:24Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:36:24Griffin Newman?

  So Romley, my little sister, would, would watch SNL with us, with my brother and I, even when she was young and liked SNL a lot. And I guess she was probably. Eleven, maybe, when the MacGruber movie came out. And I remember I was supposed to pick her from school and take her to see something.

• 2:36:43Speaker 03

  Right.

• 2:36:43Griffin Newman?

  And there was probably some kid movie.

• 2:36:45Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:36:45Griffin Newman?

  Or teen movie that was like what we assumed we were gonna see.

• 2:36:49Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:36:49Griffin Newman?

  And I sort of said to her, I was like, this is my moment to be the cool brother. I think she's old enough. Where I was like, you know, Romilly, if you wanted to, we could see MacGruber.

• 2:36:59Speaker 03

  Love it.

• 2:36:59Griffin Newman?

  But you can't tell our parents.

• 2:37:02David Sims?

  Right.

• 2:37:02Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:37:03Griffin Newman?

  I'll do this if you're cool about it. Cause I was like, it's cool that she likes comedy.

• 2:37:08Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 2:37:09Griffin Newman?

  I was like, if she may be on the path to becoming a comedy nerd, she was not.

• 2:37:12Speaker 03

  Right.

• 2:37:12Griffin Newman?

  But she was interested in seeing it. And I took her to see MacGruber and like had this kind of electrifying, like watching her at eleven be like, oh my God, I can't believe I get to see these jokes.

• 2:37:22Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 2:37:22Griffin Newman?

  Sort of the inverse of my experience with my dad taking me to see Something About Mary, which my mom never let him live down.

• 2:37:28Speaker 03

  Right.

• 2:37:29Griffin Newman?

  And then like four days later, this is when I've like, I'm out of the house. I'm, you know, not living with my parents. My mom calls me in a fury and says, you exposed my daughter to MacGruber?

• 2:37:43Griffin Newman?

  And I said, she told you? And she went, she wouldn't stop singing the theme song during dinner.

• 2:37:48David Sims?

  MacGruber!

• 2:37:49Griffin Newman?

  And I was like, Romilly!

• 2:37:52Speaker 03

  So good.

• 2:37:52Griffin Newman?

  How did you give this up? And also, it's on the show. You should have just lied and said, yeah, I know the song from the sketch.

• 2:37:58Speaker 03

  Yeah. She was just too excited.

• 2:38:00Griffin Newman?

  She just blew it.

• 2:38:00Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:38:01Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:38:01Speaker 03

  Too excited. I get it. Little sister vibes.

• 2:38:04David Sims?

  Yeah, that was always gonna happen.

• 2:38:06Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:38:07David Sims?

  MacGruber, R.I.P. Val Kilmer.

• 2:38:09Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:38:10Griffin Newman?

  Everything comes back to.

• 2:38:11David Sims?

  Great guy.

• 2:38:11Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:38:12Speaker 03

  Pass.

• 2:38:14David Sims?

  Heidi, thank you for coming on the show.

• 2:38:16Griffin Newman?

  Thank you so much.

• 2:38:16Speaker 03

  Thank you for having me.

• 2:38:17David Sims?

  Really love to have you. I'm glad.

• 2:38:19Griffin Newman?

  Uh, is there anything else you wanna plug aside from Saturday Night Live?

• 2:38:22David Sims?

  Night Live.

• 2:38:23Speaker 03

  Winsted's in Kansas City.

• 2:38:25Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:38:26David Sims?

  Yeah, let's get our asses there.

• 2:38:28Speaker 03

  Let's just do a Winsted steak burgers. It's been an establishment since I was a kid.

• 2:38:33David Sims?

  Looks like the onion rings look pretty good to me.

• 2:38:35Speaker 03

  They're great.

• 2:38:35Griffin Newman?

  What's your go-to order?

• 2:38:37David Sims?

  Cherry Limeade.

• 2:38:38Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah. Just the regular limeade, which it has sherbet in it. And then like a single steak burger with the fifty fifty. And the fifty fifty is either fries and onion rings, onion rings and tots, onion rings. Or or or tots and fries.

• 2:38:53David Sims?

  I am all about that, like an onion ring, something blend is great to me. Cause like if I just get onion rings, I kind of feel insane if I just.

• 2:39:02Griffin Newman?

  It's always more than I want if the plate is just that. What, tell me about their fry structure.

• 2:39:07Speaker 03

  Uh, they just have a thin fry.

• 2:39:11Griffin Newman?

  I like that.

• 2:39:12Speaker 03

  Yeah. Well, no, no, no, no. You know what? Winstead's has a steak fry. Winstead's has a steak fry that you always end up adding kosher salt to. They give you the pack and you salt it up.

• 2:39:25David Sims?

  Yeah, I think it's time for the steak fry to make a comeback. I think, you know what I mean? People aren't giving us steak fries.

• 2:39:30Griffin Newman?

  I'm disappointed every time.

• 2:39:31Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's my least favorite. I would say bring back a curly fry.

• 2:39:35David Sims?

  Yeah, you know what?

• 2:39:37Speaker 03

  And amazing.

• 2:39:37David Sims?

  Well, here my, here's my thing with curly fries. If they are good, they're so good. If they're like frozen curly fries, which they often are, you know what I mean? They're like, they're fine. If you can make a proper, good curly fry, they're the best.

• 2:39:47Speaker 03

  I feel like I've seen the bag of frozen curlies that I'm like, no friend of mine's family ever bought those and neither did we. So I don't, I haven't even had them.

• 2:39:56Griffin Newman?

  Fries, but like certain restaurants you'll go to and you're like, these seem frozen. But I'm gonna say this, I'm gonna stand by the statement.

• 2:40:03David Sims?

  Here we go.

• 2:40:04Griffin Newman?

  I prefer a frozen curly fry to the world's best steak fry.

• 2:40:07David Sims?

  But here, my thing with the steak fries, I'm like, I wanna see a good one. There's gotta be a good one out there. Show me the good one.

• 2:40:14Griffin Newman?

  There's some reason this continues.

• 2:40:17Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:40:18Griffin Newman?

  In our culture, someone must have done this well at some point.

• 2:40:20Speaker 03

  The basket weave one is good.

• 2:40:23Griffin Newman?

  Oh, like the waffle fries?

• 2:40:24Speaker 03

  Yeah, waffle is probably more technical.

• 2:40:26Griffin Newman?

  I put steak fry dead lowest.

• 2:40:28Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:40:29Griffin Newman?

  I like a good crunch.

• 2:40:30Speaker 03

  Even I put a potato wedge above it.

• 2:40:33Griffin Newman?

  Same, I, you know what? Because steak fries is either fish or foul.

• 2:40:37Speaker 03

  Yeah, go all the way. Yeah. Also referred to as a jojo fry.

• 2:40:40Griffin Newman?

  A jojo fry?

• 2:40:41Speaker 03

  I don't know, at my college it was.

• 2:40:43Griffin Newman?

  Okay.

• 2:40:43David Sims?

  Yes, they are potato wedges, sometimes known as jojo fries. Interesting. Oh, in the Midwest, like, yeah.

• 2:40:51Speaker 04

  The Times recently did an article where the title is reviled or underappreciated edible spoons.

• 2:40:57David Sims?

  America's least popular fry, but some chefs are still devoted to them.

• 2:41:01Griffin Newman?

  Hmm.

• 2:41:02David Sims?

  So there's people out there doing steak fries and trying to do them well.

• 2:41:05Griffin Newman?

  And also, more importantly, New York Times is still committed to hard hitting journalism.

• 2:41:09David Sims?

  Thank God.

• 2:41:10Griffin Newman?

  They're doing the work.

• 2:41:11David Sims?

  It looks like the Park Avenue Kitchen does like a fancy steak fry with stuff on it. That's cool. I want to see a regular steak fry like blow my socks off. I don't know if it can happen. What are your favorite fries in New York?

• 2:41:24Griffin Newman?

  That's a really good question.

• 2:41:25Speaker 03

  Oh, um, okay, there's, these are just places that SNL does the after party. And at the end of an SNL, it's good to have fries. So La Avenue, that's in Saks Fifth Avenue, they have a restaurant. Their fries are really good. Um, Mermaid Oyster Bar, their fries are seasoned with Old Bay.

• 2:41:44David Sims?

  Oh, that's great.

• 2:41:45Griffin Newman?

  Really good.

• 2:41:46David Sims?

  I love that. I love Old Bay.

• 2:41:47Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:41:48David Sims?

  That's, that's good. Yeah, La Avenue, I feel like that's the, again, having just read the Lorne book. That's like where Lorne like is always at a corner table or whatever, right? Like it's where he has the big dinner.

• 2:41:57Speaker 03

  Uh huh.

• 2:41:58David Sims?

  Yes.

• 2:41:58Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:41:59Griffin Newman?

  Are people reading the Lorne book at SNL or do they not want to be spot? Like, are they putting like a fake book cover on it?

• 2:42:04Speaker 03

  I think a fake book cover.

• 2:42:06Griffin Newman?

  If I worked on the show, I'd be like, I have to read this book, but also I don't want to be the person who's reading the book while I work here.

• 2:42:12Speaker 03

  I think it's one of those things that like you would read years later when you're to it. Like I haven't seen the Saturday Night movie because I just be like being at work.

• 2:42:20Griffin Newman?

  Also, you're a big part in it in a weird way.

• 2:42:22Speaker 03

  In the.

• 2:42:23Griffin Newman?

  I'm joking.

• 2:42:23Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 2:42:24David Sims?

  It would be funny if everyone in the, in the, the Jason Ribeiro movie is like, you know, one day a girl called Heidi will walk through these doors.

• 2:42:31Griffin Newman?

  We have a recurring bit about how that movie does so much compression of timeline of things that happened in the first five years of the show.

• 2:42:37Speaker 03

  Right.

• 2:42:37Griffin Newman?

  That were also like at one point they cut to a delivery room or Keenan's being born. That they want to call dibs on every single thing that happened over 50 years.

• 2:42:47Speaker 03

  Love that scene.

• 2:42:48Griffin Newman?

  So I'm just imagining like a scene in the movie where your parents go to SNL and they're like, we're thinking someday we'd name our daughter Heidi.

• 2:42:56Griffin Newman?

  Many, many years from now.

• 2:42:58Speaker 03

  The deleted scene. It's special feature.

• 2:43:00David Sims?

  Wow, look at my kids. Look at them. Just got a picture of the twins.

• 2:43:04Speaker 03

  What are their names?

• 2:43:05Griffin Newman?

  Uh, we're gonna beat these out.

• 2:43:08David Sims?

  And?

• 2:43:09Griffin Newman?

  Right, but on the podcast, we call them Bebop and Rocksteady.

• 2:43:12Speaker 03

  Cool. I like that.

• 2:43:13Griffin Newman?

  That's the code name.

• 2:43:14David Sims?

  Ah, um, thank you for coming. Yeah, we're done. We're just chatting now. Ben left.

• 2:43:20Griffin Newman?

  He's the only one who can end the episode on a technical level.

• 2:43:23David Sims?

  I don't know. Anything else? Yeah, Heidi, are you in a?

• 2:43:25Speaker 03

  Anything else? There's a big charity event I do in Kansas City.

• 2:43:30Griffin Newman?

  Oh, yes.

• 2:43:30Speaker 03

  Yeah, every end of May, early June called the Big Slick.

• 2:43:34Griffin Newman?

  Oh, okay.

• 2:43:34Speaker 03

  There's also Thunder Gong.

• 2:43:35Griffin Newman?

  Thunder Gong. That's what I was thinking.

• 2:43:36Speaker 03

  Big Slick, we raise money for pediatric cancer at Children's Mercy Hospital. And it's a really fun event if you're thinking about coming to Kansas City. Uh, you know, we play like a celebrity baseball game at Kauffman Stadium.

• 2:43:50David Sims?

  Hell, yeah.

• 2:43:51Speaker 03

  It follows, a Royals game follows after, which is really fun. And then we show, we do a big show at the T-Mobile Center. Um, like last year, you know, we have, um, like stand-ups, like Jeff Ross, Fortune Feimster. He did a roast. She did stand-up. Male Non-Johnny did stand-up. We did a Hot Ones challenge because a host of Hot Ones was there. Patrick Mahomes was throwing balls, signing footballs, throwing them into the audience to Travis Kelsey. It's like so much fun to all raise money.

• 2:44:22David Sims?

  And you're bringing like all the, the, the, the big shots of Kansas City together. This is so exciting.

• 2:44:27Speaker 03

  Rob Riggle started it and then he got Paul Rudd and Jason Sudeikis in, then Eric Stonestreet, David Kechner, and then they brought me in as a host.

• 2:44:34Griffin Newman?

  It is incredible that there's like such a good batch of generational, right, Kansas City comedy all-stars.

• 2:44:39David Sims?

  Ham was just on the show, but he's St. Louis, right? He's from, right.

• 2:44:43Speaker 03

  But he's done the Big Slick. Like, yeah.

• 2:44:45David Sims?

  Is he a Royals fan? No. Is he a Chiefs fan? No.

• 2:44:48Speaker 03

  No, he's a Chiefs fan, but I bet he's a Cardinals fan.

• 2:44:50David Sims?

  He's a Cardinals and Blues, right, fan, but he's, he's a Chiefs fan because there's no Kansas City.

• 2:44:55Speaker 03

  No St. Louis.

• 2:44:56David Sims?

  I mean, sorry, no St. Louis football team. Yeah. I want to go to Kaufman Stadium.

• 2:45:00Speaker 03

  It's beautiful. Yeah.

• 2:45:01Griffin Newman?

  Live show? David, you want to do a live podcast at Kaufman Stadium?

• 2:45:04David Sims?

  Feel Kaufman Stadium? Apparently it seats 37,000. Do you think we could do that? There are still tickets available to our town hall show. Yes, and that show, that theater seats a little less than 37,000.

• 2:45:15Speaker 03

  I know my friend Austin in Kansas City is a Blank Check listener. Shout out to Austin.

• 2:45:21David Sims?

  Austin, thank you for listening. I hope you enjoyed this episode and we're done. Ben's got to go to the dentist.

• 2:45:26Griffin Newman?

  Thank you all for listening. Please remember to rate, review, and subscribe. Tune in next week for loser.

• 2:45:32Speaker 03

  Ooh.

• 2:45:33Griffin Newman?

  And as always, Ben has to go to the dentist because he broke his crown.

• 2:45:40David Sims?

  Not my crown, I cracked my molar.

• 2:45:42Speaker 03

  Let's get him out of pain.

• 2:45:43Griffin Newman?

  Oh, yes.

• 2:45:44David Sims?

  Fuck, you think so? Maybe.

• 2:45:46Speaker 03

  You'll need something.

• 2:45:53Speaker 04

  Blank Check with Griffin and David is hosted by Griffin Newman and David Sims. Our executive producer is me, Ben Hostly. Our creative producer is Marie Bardi Salinas. And our associate producer is A.J. McKeon. This show is mixed and edited by A.J. McKeon and Alan Smithy. Research by J.J. Birch. Our theme song is by L.A. Montgomery in the great American novel, with additional music by Alex Mitchell. Artwork by Joe Bowen, Ali Moss, and Pat Reynolds. Our production assistant is Minnick. Special thanks to David Cho, Jordan Fish, and Nate Patterson for their production help. Head over to BlankCheckPod.com for links to all of the real nerdy shit. Join our Patreon Blank Check Special Features for exclusive franchise commentaries and bonus episodes.

• 2:46:38Speaker 04

  Follow us on social at Blank Check Pod. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter, Checkbook, on Substack. This podcast is created and produced by Blank Check Productions.