Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore with Katey Rich

"Martin Scorsese doesn't make movies about women" - WRONG. "Martin Scorsese doesn't make movies that would work as a long-running workplace sitcom" - ALSO WRONG. Katey Rich joins us to chat about Scorsese's unexpected follow-up to Mean Streets, 1974's Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore. We're talking diners, Ellen Burstyn, parenting strategies, "women's pictures," and far more Hootie & The Blowfish than you'd expect from this episode. We're also not "trying silence," okay? Buy the Hootie and the Blowfish shirt Katey (and David) have. https://www.ebay.com/itm/388663998041?var=&mkevt=1&mkcid=16&mkrid=711-127632-2357-0&sssrc=4429486&ssuid=&ssspo=ik44zhd9tnw&stype=1&widget_ver=artemis&media=COPY Listen to the Screen Draft eps with Griffin https://screendrafts.libsyn.com/pixar-super-draft-with-griffin-newman-angelique-jackson-adam-b-vary-and-dane-mcdonald and Katey. https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/martin-scorsese-super-draft-part-two-with-katey-rich/id1431963108?i=1000641778135 Read about how Katherine LaNasa says Ghost of Ex-Husband Dennis Hopper Haunted Her: 'It Was Super Upsetting.' https://people.com/the-pitt-katherine-lanasa-ghost-ex-husband-dennis-hopper-haunted-upsetting-12001319 Read Vincent Canby’s review. https://www.nytimes.com/1975/02/02/archives/flim-view-terrific-toughtakling-alice.html Subscribe to Prestige Junkie at the Ankler https://theankler.com/prestige-junkie/ and Fighting in the War Room. https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/fighting-in-the-war-room-a-movies-and-pop-culture-podcast/id762922035 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.

• 0:21Griffin Newman?

  A podcast for everyone who has ever dreamed of a second chance. The marketing on this movie was insane. I mean, I'm gonna, I'm gonna put forward that it's insane that the poster for this movie is just

• 0:34David Sims?

  The end of the movie?

• 0:35Griffin Newman?

  Burson and Christopherson smiling.

• 0:37Speaker 02

  It's hot people. You don't want to see that?

• 0:39David Sims?

  I think it worked because people were like, well, I'd like to see that. I'd like to, I'd like Chris Christopherson to take me in his loving arms.

• 0:47Speaker 02

  You like Ellen Burstyn, like his beard.

• 0:48Griffin Newman?

  We all want that. Would you argue that's not really what the movie is?

• 0:53David Sims?

  But what would you say the movie is? Just like her crying? Like, you don't want that? Yeah, but that's not gonna go on a poster.

• 0:59Griffin Newman?

  I think it's funny, this is like, you know, it's Ellen Burstyn's Oscar winning performance.

• 1:04David Sims?

  I would say it's an element. It's a strong element of the movie. No one's walking out of there being like, well, there was no Chris Christopherson hugging in that film. I feel cheated. Like, it's in there.

• 1:14Griffin Newman?

  But I think this movie is more than anything about a woman stuck in cycles. And this movie poster presents it as if like one door closed and another one opened.

• 1:25David Sims?

  It is definitely open.

• 1:27Griffin Newman?

  Eventually. The door creaks open and she's like, I think it's safe to walk through this door.

• 1:31David Sims?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 1:32Speaker 02

  I mean, throwing out the idea that a movie about a woman is being sold with a man on the poster, like, who, that's never been done before, obviously.

• 1:39Griffin Newman?

  And him being above the title is kind of nuts.

• 1:41David Sims?

  It's Ellen Burstyn and Chris Christopherson in, I mean, what, this is two years? No, where,

• 1:47Griffin Newman?

  where are stars born relative to this?

• 1:49Speaker 02

  After this, right?

• 1:50David Sims?

  After, two years after. This is, this is the early, um, him acting. We can talk about it.

• 1:54Speaker 02

  But he's already very famous.

• 1:55David Sims?

  But he's very famous.

• 1:56Griffin Newman?

  Very famous.

• 1:57David Sims?

  You know, he's a, he's someone you want, you know, to, to show off because it's like, hey,

• 2:01Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:02David Sims?

  Exactly. We got, we got this guy. God.

• 2:04Speaker 03

  Oh, he wrote that song.

• 2:06Griffin Newman?

  He did.

• 2:06Speaker 03

  Dang.

• 2:07Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:07Speaker 03

  He's the best. I'm not a Chris Christopherson guy, I have to admit.

• 2:11Griffin Newman?

  You're a big Whistler guy, though, right?

• 2:13David Sims?

  It's the character he plays in Blade.

• 2:15Griffin Newman?

  Blade's assistant?

• 2:16Speaker 03

  Oh, oh, right. Yeah.

• 2:18David Sims?

  Blade, you gotta go get those vampires.

• 2:20Speaker 03

  For a second there, I was like, is Thor asking me if I like Whistling?

• 2:23Speaker 02

  Or like the, like Whistler's mother, the painting?

• 2:26David Sims?

  Oh, whoa. This has just got 100% jauntier in this room.

• 2:31Griffin Newman?

  I'll say I like Whistling, which is the verb I use for watching Blade movies.

• 2:36David Sims?

  Right. I'm, I'm gonna have a, is he in Trinity? Is he in the third one?

• 2:39Griffin Newman?

  He is, but he dies for the second time, I wanna say.

• 2:42David Sims?

  Rip.

• 2:42Griffin Newman?

  Cause he dies in the first one. The second one, he's back alive and they don't explain it. The third one, they kill him for good.

• 2:47Speaker 03

  But then Whistler's daughter shows up.

• 2:50David Sims?

  Right. Whistler's daughter is Jessica Biel, right?

• 2:53Speaker 03

  Whenever I have a daughter, I hope she looks like Jessica Biel from Seventh Heaven.

• 2:57Griffin Newman?

  Right. And then Planet of the Apes, uh, Estella, Planet of the Apes, Parenthetical 2001.

• 3:03David Sims?

  Sure.

• 3:04Griffin Newman?

  Estella Warren is his daughter.

• 3:06Speaker 03

  Ah, she's my daughter. I'm a human. I hope these apes don't kill me. Ah. Damn apes. You can make the check out to, it's K R I S.

• 3:18Griffin Newman?

  We can't do our favorite bit on that movie because it's too early, but the idea that the, you can see the actor doing direct deposit on their phone on camera.

• 3:28David Sims?

  Uh, yep. Chris Christopherson, the handsome boy is here.

• 3:35Speaker 02

  What a good looking guy.

• 3:36Griffin Newman?

  The handsome boy is the nickname?

• 3:38Speaker 02

  He's a man, David.

• 3:39Griffin Newman?

  Yeah. I think calling him a boy is immediately offensive.

• 3:42Speaker 02

  There is a boy in this movie who is distinctly a boy. So you gotta set Chris apart.

• 3:46David Sims?

  Christopherson, the young handsome new boy is here.

• 3:49Speaker 02

  The rancher.

• 3:50Griffin Newman?

  I think Chris Christopherson is as much of a man as anyone has ever been. That is an adult.

• 3:55David Sims?

  He's an adult man.

• 3:56Griffin Newman?

  Uh, and the boy in this movie has the foulest mouth he's ever heard. That's a brutal thing coming from Chris Christopherson to say, that's the foulest mouth I've ever heard.

• 4:06David Sims?

  Right. You imagine Chris has probably met a couple, uh, saucy, uh, fellas over the years.

• 4:11Speaker 02

  Spending all that time on the ranch, you know? You're not talking to enough people and not, uh, not used to it.

• 4:16Griffin Newman?

  I just think it's funny that this movie was sold as a second chance rom com and then spawned a non, nine season workplace sitcom. And you watch it and you're like, it's just like a pretty tender, small character study about a sad woman.

• 4:28Speaker 02

  But the minute that you start with the Mel's Diner sequence, you're like, oh, I would spend nine seasons here.

• 4:33Griffin Newman?

  It makes sense.

• 4:34Speaker 02

  It emerges fully formed as the setting for a show that you would watch.

• 4:37David Sims?

  If you showed someone the first five minutes of this movie, so the crazy prologue, right? And maybe just a couple of minutes of her with a husband she doesn't really like that much. And you were like, now hit pause. Now what if I told you this turned into a hit sitcom? You'd be like, what part of it turned into it? But exactly.

• 4:53Griffin Newman?

  Episodes and a spin off.

• 4:54David Sims?

  What if you show someone the lack, the last half of the movie? They would be like, oh, sure. I can see it.

• 4:59Griffin Newman?

  Ben looks befuddled. Producer Ben looks befuddled. There was a wildly successful sitcom that ran for nearly a decade called Alice's Restaurant that was based on this movie that was a workplace diner sitcom.

• 5:10David Sims?

  Uh, ticker, it was just called Alice.

• 5:12Speaker 02

  Just called Alice. It's all you need.

• 5:13Griffin Newman?

  Oh, really?

• 5:13David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 5:13Griffin Newman?

  Why did I think it was called Alice's Restaurant?

• 5:15Speaker 03

  Alice's Restaurant is

• 5:16Griffin Newman?

  A play, right?

• 5:17Speaker 03

  No, it's the Woody Guthrie's son.

• 5:19Griffin Newman?

  Oh, that's what I'm thinking. Yes, sorry. I knew I was getting confused or something.

• 5:23David Sims?

  It was just called Alice. It was the longest running, uh, sitcom starring a woman until Roseanne. It ran for nine seasons.

• 5:32Griffin Newman?

  Linda Lavin, the great Linda Lavin.

• 5:33David Sims?

  It was, I mean, yeah, it was very successful. Like, it spent a good half of its time on the air being like a top 10 show.

• 5:41Griffin Newman?

  And here's what's crazy. Diane Ladd in this movie plays Flo, right? A different actress plays Flo on the sitcom.

• 5:47David Sims?

  Everyone is different except for one person.

• 5:49Griffin Newman?

  Vic Tayback. Yes. The, the, the cook is the same actor, right? But everyone else is different because it was, you know, you're a movie actor. You don't go down to TV. The show is so successful, they spin off Flo into her own show. And then to replace Flo in the dynamic, they hire Diane Ladd to play a new waitress.

• 6:07David Sims?

  What's wrong with that?

• 6:07Griffin Newman?

  That's how big the show was. That at first, she's like, I'm not doing a sitcom of the movie I was in. And then five years later, she was like, I would gladly join the cast.

• 6:15David Sims?

  I'd love to. And in fact, where can I sign on the dotted line?

• 6:18Griffin Newman?

  But it's just like, what if it's just this fun diner minus any abusive relationships?

• 6:23Speaker 02

  Have you guys ever watched Alice? I thought about doing it for this and I didn't.

• 6:26Griffin Newman?

  I never have. I know kiss my grits, which is the catchphrase.

• 6:30Speaker 02

  Which Diane Ladd doesn't say in the movie, right? She's talking about grits.

• 6:34Griffin Newman?

  She's talking about grits. They get close.

• 6:35Speaker 02

  She's got plenty of like fun, colorful language.

• 6:38David Sims?

  You know, Polly Holiday on the show. That was a show.

• 6:41Speaker 03

  What do I do with these grits? Should I hug them? Should I gently caress them?

• 6:45David Sims?

  David was just telling us to kiss morning grits.

• 6:47Griffin Newman?

  He was telling us to kiss morning grits.

• 6:49Speaker 02

  Evening grits also a solid, I mean, if you go to Waffle House, it's open 24 hours. You can have grits any time of day.

• 6:54Griffin Newman?

  What's your Waffle House order? Cause you live in a Waffle House area.

• 6:57Speaker 02

  Scatters mother uncovered. Also the name of a Hootie and the Blowfish album.

• 7:00David Sims?

  Well, where I owned it on CD.

• 7:03Speaker 02

  Why did I wear my Hootie and the Blowfish shirt that I recently found at my parents' house? I gladly buy you one.

• 7:09David Sims?

  Google.com, Hootie and the Blowfish shirts.

• 7:11Griffin Newman?

  Alec Frost Perry is rubbing his hands together right now at this reveal. I don't even know what he's gonna do with this, but he's gonna do something.

• 7:18Speaker 02

  He's gonna bully me somehow.

• 7:19David Sims?

  I lived in Britain where Hootie and the Blowfish, much like sort of Matchbox Twenty, Dave Matthews Band, some of these like American bands.

• 7:26Griffin Newman?

  All nighted.

• 7:28David Sims?

  No, it's just one of those things like completely failed to translate. Like, you know, they were, you know, they were brought over as like, this is one of the hottest bands in America right now. Their album just went like double diamond. And in Britain was like, I think we're okay.

• 7:40Speaker 02

  Is this like how we don't get Robbie Williams? Like, it just never landed here?

• 7:43David Sims?

  That just never made it over. But I was gifted cracked rear view when I was 10 years old and I, I, I gave it a spin on the old Discman.

• 7:52Speaker 02

  Southern frat rock not translating does make sense to me.

• 7:54David Sims?

  The whole thing with Hootie and the Blowfish, and I've done this rant before, is like, oh yeah, is that Darius Rucker's voice is incredible. Like, that's, it's the thing where you listen to it, you're like, he fucking rocks.

• 8:04Griffin Newman?

  And now he's become a massive solo country.

• 8:06David Sims?

  And then he had his country career and you're kind of like, God bless him. Cause, you know, anytime you listen to Hootie and the Blowfish, you're like, all of this is pretty ordinary sounding, except who the, Hootie? Hootie be Hootin'.

• 8:17Griffin Newman?

  I feel so bad for him.

• 8:19David Sims?

  He's so good. I know his name's not Hootie.

• 8:20Griffin Newman?

  But that's, that's the thing. It's, it's the blondie problem. He could never come out from under being Hootie.

• 8:26Speaker 02

  If you guys ever, so as I've talked about.

• 8:28David Sims?

  The Jerry Maguire gag.

• 8:28Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 8:29David Sims?

  No, I'm not Hootie, you know?

• 8:30Speaker 02

  As people who've listened to the show before know, I grew up in South Carolina. I don't live there now, but so if you drive into South Carolina from Charlotte, there's a, like a visitor's area there. And there is a video, like a South Carolina tourism video that Darius Rucker made. He's the star of it. It's like, hey, welcome to my state. I love it here. If he wanted to run for governor of South Carolina, he would win 100%.

• 8:49David Sims?

  Hootie?

• 8:49Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 8:50David Sims?

  But you would just have to be Hootie.

• 8:51Speaker 02

  So well, no, but he is, he is like a treasure. So he is doing just fine.

• 8:55David Sims?

  You know, I agree. The man's a treasure. Let's, let's give him treasure status.

• 9:01Speaker 02

  I'm so glad I got us here.

• 9:02David Sims?

  Put him in the trunk. Yeah. He's treasure.

• 9:04Griffin Newman?

  It is funny to imagine, put him in the trunk.

• 9:06David Sims?

  He's treasure.

• 9:07Griffin Newman?

  It's funny to imagine he could run, probably win with the name Darius Rucker on the ballot.

• 9:14David Sims?

  Just going, I love America. Can't do his voice.

• 9:17Griffin Newman?

  The second he won, everyone would be like, well, Governor Hootie.

• 9:20Speaker 02

  Governor Hootie. Yeah.

• 9:22Griffin Newman?

  It didn't matter.

• 9:22Speaker 02

  He'd probably be fine with it.

• 9:24Griffin Newman?

  He'd just have to accept it.

• 9:25Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 9:25Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 9:26David Sims?

  I'm not liking any of their merch.

• 9:28Griffin Newman?

  Hootie and the Blowfish? You're thinking about buying something?

• 9:30David Sims?

  I just, I had a thought, but I'm not.

• 9:32Speaker 02

  The shirt I have is from the 1995 tour that I went to. It's my first ever concert and it's, uh, it has, they don't look like you on the back. If you go on eBay, it's on there.

• 9:42David Sims?

  They have the, um, There's the Friends episode that's about, one of the very few Friends episode that tried to touch on like, sort of matters of like, class and money.

• 9:54David Sims?

  Usually Friends didn't really touch this stuff and it's like, oh, they all live in giant apartments. And like, don't worry about it.

• 9:58Griffin Newman?

  This is the one that Mike Lee guest directed?

• 10:00David Sims?

  Exactly. It's the only one that acknowledges that three of the Friends are kind of like, make good money and three don't. And it's, it's about that. And like, and a Hootie and the Blowfish concert is-

• 10:10Griffin Newman?

  Let's break this down.

• 10:11David Sims?

  Do you remember who the three-

• 10:12Griffin Newman?

  Ross makes good money.

• 10:13David Sims?

  Ross is Ross.

• 10:14Griffin Newman?

  Monica makes good money.

• 10:15David Sims?

  Chandler and Monica.

• 10:16Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 10:17David Sims?

  Are the like, quote unquote, richer. And then like Joey, Phoebe and Rachel are the, but it, it might be Rachel is, I can't remember where it is.

• 10:25Speaker 02

  Cause Rachel sometimes works for Ralph Lauren, but she doesn't always.

• 10:28Griffin Newman?

  Rachel comes from money?

• 10:29David Sims?

  Yes, but of course she gets, she has to cut off all her credit cards.

• 10:32Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 10:33David Sims?

  Cause she didn't marry the dentist.

• 10:34Speaker 02

  But Monica and Ross come from money too. They all grew up in the same like rich town, right?

• 10:37David Sims?

  They're coded, they're coded as like suburban.

• 10:40Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 10:40David Sims?

  Like, you know, like they're fine or whatever. Um, but, but it's sort of just like, it's saying like, you know, like Ross, I think it might be right. I can't. But it's like, yeah, Ross, these guys have white collar jobs. They, they make money, blah, blah. And like Joey, he's a struggling actor. Phoebe, Lord knows how she's bringing the rent together. She does Smelly Cat. Like what, what is Phoebe's job? Right? You know? And, and the crucial thing is that they, the rich ones get to go to a Hootie and the Blowfish concert.

• 11:05Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 11:05David Sims?

  And it's like, one of those things where it's like, no grander experience than seeing Hootie and his Blowfish.

• 11:13Griffin Newman?

  David, I think I found the right piece of Hootie merch for you. I just texted it to you.

• 11:16David Sims?

  Send it along to me.

• 11:17Griffin Newman?

  I think you would rock the shit out of this. And Ben, as someone into fashion, I want your advice. Okay. I just think.

• 11:23David Sims?

  Oh boy.

• 11:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, I can't see it.

• 11:24Griffin Newman?

  I'm gonna, I'm gonna show it to you.

• 11:26Speaker 02

  All right.

• 11:26David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 11:27Griffin Newman?

  It is a charcoal colored bucket hat. On one side it says, the group therapy tour.

• 11:32Speaker 02

  Okay. I don't know.

• 11:34David Sims?

  I assume.

• 11:34Griffin Newman?

  There's this, there's this kind of tie dye logo.

• 11:37Speaker 02

  It's a little American flag.

• 11:39Griffin Newman?

  Cutie in the Blowfish.

• 11:40David Sims?

  I cannot see Sims wearing this.

• 11:42Griffin Newman?

  Sims would rock the shit out of this.

• 11:44David Sims?

  Bucket hat guy.

• 11:45Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 11:46David Sims?

  I'm not usually to be found.

• 11:48Speaker 02

  You didn't hear they're back?

• 11:49David Sims?

  They're always, you know, threatening, right?

• 11:51Griffin Newman?

  David, you said you're not a huge bucket hat guy? But did you know that this one has an adjustable drawstring attached and the sizes run small?

• 11:59David Sims?

  Thank God. Just in case I needed to especially hug the old noggin.

• 12:05Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 12:06Speaker 02

  I can't imagine a hat with a drawstring.

• 12:08Griffin Newman?

  You could get a-

• 12:08Speaker 02

  You gotta get it.

• 12:09Griffin Newman?

  A go in home candle.

• 12:11David Sims?

  Is your-

• 12:12Speaker 02

  Oh, you're on like the Hootie website?

• 12:13David Sims?

  Is your shirt like this?

• 12:14Speaker 02

  Nope. Not, that's not, great for an audio medium.

• 12:18David Sims?

  I'm just trying to see what vintage era, or is it like, does it look like this? Like, um, you know, the crack for your view?

• 12:25Speaker 02

  Nope. It's not even that one. Okay. All right.

• 12:27David Sims?

  We're hunting.

• 12:28Speaker 02

  I know.

• 12:28David Sims?

  This one is a hundred bucks on eBay.

• 12:30Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 12:30David Sims?

  Cause it's a, it's a tour shirt from like 95. Like, you know, it's like-

• 12:34Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 12:34David Sims?

  Fucking how many people though? Yeah, right.

• 12:36Speaker 02

  The one I found at my parents' house. It's from 99, a very under appreciated tour. And I was like, should I just sell this thing and send my kids to college? It was not worth quite that much.

• 12:44Griffin Newman?

  Remember that?

• 12:44Speaker 02

  Thinking on to it.

• 12:45Griffin Newman?

  Remember all that concern that when, uh, the year 2000 hit, Hootie and the Blowfish were gonna go back down to zero, that they were gonna crash? We thought we were gonna lose them.

• 12:55Speaker 02

  Yeah. That's why, that's why I saw them on tour in 1999, obviously.

• 12:59Griffin Newman?

  Y2H?

• 13:01David Sims?

  Man, people tuned in. They hit play on their little pod catcher going, oh, Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore with Katie Rich on Blank Check. We love it. Definitely a 10 minute Hootie run kicking this one off, right?

• 13:13Griffin Newman?

  People are disappointed only because they were certain it was gonna open with 10 minutes of Becker.

• 13:18David Sims?

  Becker's done.

• 13:19Griffin Newman?

  What were you gonna say?

• 13:20Speaker 02

  I like to think I bring less chaos to this podcast than your average guest. Like I try, I try to- But then I just started with the Hootie thing. So I'm sorry.

• 13:29David Sims?

  Tangents, cause you and I and you and Griffin.

• 13:31Speaker 02

  We have plenty to talk about.

• 13:32David Sims?

  And we have kind of, you know, shared brain waves about kind of like-

• 13:37Griffin Newman?

  Reference points.

• 13:38David Sims?

  Right. The, the sort of entertainment weekly era of being a teen who loves movies and all. I don't know. I just feel like we got a lot of, lot of roads we can go down.

• 13:47Speaker 02

  A hundred percent. Get ready. Let's go down some roads.

• 13:48David Sims?

  And you know, Hootie sang about those roads in his song, I Wish I Could Remember. Unfortunately, I was like, if only I could make a lot of detailed Hootie and the Blowfish references, which I don't know that I can.

• 13:57Speaker 02

  Uh, I, I texted you the shirt that I-

• 14:00David Sims?

  All right, here we go.

• 14:00Speaker 02

  So you can now see it. It is the exact shirt. I did buy this one off eBay. Now I have two Hootie shirts. And this is the one that I got at the tour in 1995.

• 14:08David Sims?

  God bless. Wait, so you bought, you bought a shirt on?

• 14:11Speaker 02

  Oh yeah. Last summer, like around my birthday, I was like, you know what I'm giving myself? It's a Hootie and the Blowfish shirt for my birthday.

• 14:15David Sims?

  This is why we're pals. Oh, this shirt is pretty fresh.

• 14:19Speaker 02

  It's green and blue. And hang on Griffin, I gotta text it to you too.

• 14:23David Sims?

  Hit the old dropdown menu on this and hit and buy it now.

• 14:27Speaker 02

  Yes. All right. I'm texting it to Ben also. So now everyone loves it when we text each other on the microphone.

• 14:33David Sims?

  Time.

• 14:35Speaker 02

  There you go. There you go.

• 14:36David Sims?

  How you punish me? I remember that one.

• 14:38Griffin Newman?

  David, you have the voice of an-

• 14:40David Sims?

  I've got the voice of a Hootie.

• 14:41Griffin Newman?

  Oh my God.

• 14:43David Sims?

  I'm a terrible singer.

• 14:44Speaker 02

  Not based on that.

• 14:46David Sims?

  Well, I'll leave it there then. I'll, I'll stay, end on a high. Uh, what was, um, Running from an Angel? What was the, only want to be with you?

• 14:55Speaker 02

  Only want to be with you.

• 14:55David Sims?

  People were basically like, this band needs to be legally like disbarred from music.

• 15:00Speaker 02

  The Miami Dolphins were in that music video.

• 15:03David Sims?

  Because it was just like fucking, you know, MTV played it like four billion times a day. MTV was like, wait, there's a, a rootsy rock band with a black guy? Like this checks all her boxes. Fucking blanket the airwaves. Like we gotta get this guy everywhere. Maybe we cut that out.

• 15:20Speaker 02

  I should have worn it.

• 15:21David Sims?

  I just bought it.

• 15:22Speaker 02

  All right. It's gonna be, we'll link it in the show notes. So everybody can go, we're gonna write out all the eBay stores of these Hootie shirts. Great.

• 15:28David Sims?

  Time.

• 15:31Griffin Newman?

  It's very funny. Uh, the Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore, or the Alice sitcom Wikipedia, has a section of differences between the film and television series. And it's like a various-

• 15:44Speaker 02

  Harvey Kite hell not included.

• 15:46Griffin Newman?

  That's the thing. It's all stuff like Alice's maiden name was Graham. Television series. Alice's maiden name was Spy Vac. And you're like, film, sad. Sitcom, doesn't touch dark stuff. Like, that's what they're not saying. They're into like very granular details.

• 16:03Speaker 02

  Did you go through the guest stars of who was on this?

• 16:06Griffin Newman?

  Crazy. This is one of those sitcoms.

• 16:08David Sims?

  It was a hot show?

• 16:09Speaker 02

  Jay Leno was on it?

• 16:10Griffin Newman?

  Celebrities would appear.

• 16:12David Sims?

  Here's something.

• 16:12Griffin Newman?

  Girls' celebrities would appear as themselves.

• 16:15Speaker 02

  Joel Grey as himself.

• 16:16Griffin Newman?

  George Burns goes like, how much for a tuna meal?

• 16:21David Sims?

  Joel Grey. It is set in Arizona. Like it's still like, it's not like they like, Alice moved to a diner in Hollywood or whatever. But people are just passing on through, I guess. It's a funny thing because like, it was a hit show, but you can tell by its kind of lack of Emmy noms, that it was never taken very seriously. Like Lavin got a grand total of one nom.

• 16:43Griffin Newman?

  And she's a legend.

• 16:44David Sims?

  She's a legend.

• 16:44Griffin Newman?

  Recently passed.

• 16:45David Sims?

  Yeah, recently passed. She's fucking, of course she's Seth Cohen's grandma on the OC. Um, and that was her only ever, uh, Emmy nom, which is rude. Rude to Lavin.

• 16:55Speaker 02

  She and Chris Christopherson both passed, uh, 2024.

• 16:59David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 17:00Griffin Newman?

  But David, I'm sorry. I told you not to do that. Just for the record.

• 17:04David Sims?

  They asked, it was kind of like a weird, kind of like-

• 17:06Griffin Newman?

  I know, but I said, why you?

• 17:10Griffin Newman?

  You just don't need to meddle in their business.

• 17:13David Sims?

  So Chris Christopherson died at the grand old age of 86.

• 17:15Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 17:16David Sims?

  And I feel like Linda Lavin also, uh, lived a very long time. She, Linda Lavin.

• 17:20Speaker 02

  She was 87.

• 17:21David Sims?

  87, yeah.

• 17:22Griffin Newman?

  At the time we're recording this, Ellen Burstyn, 93, still working.

• 17:26David Sims?

  I will say about Lavin, like, I don't look at Ellen Burstyn and go like, Linda Lavin's a TV version. It's a totally different type of character.

• 17:33Griffin Newman?

  There's also a crazy thing is that Ellen Burstyn later does a sitcom in the eighties, the Ellen Burstyn Show.

• 17:38David Sims?

  Was it good? That was a fucking riot.

• 17:40Griffin Newman?

  I think it was just like a family sitcom, but that's another person where I don't go like, obviously let's get her on a multi cam.

• 17:46David Sims?

  You know, I think it was one of those things where it's like, if you're someone like Ellen Burstyn, where it's like, you are a tremendous actress, you're an Oscar winner, and you've been in huge movies like The Exorcist, but you're never gonna be treated like a movie star by Hollywood because it's a sexist industry and you're a little older and you're more of like a great actor than you are like a-

• 18:03Griffin Newman?

  Theater and loved teaching and maybe just wanted the consistent.

• 18:06David Sims?

  And then like the call just comes along like, hey, do you want the consistent work and paycheck of one of these network shows? Right? She only did it, it only aired-

• 18:14Griffin Newman?

  13 episodes. Megan Mullally was her daughter. Elaine Stritch was also on it.

• 18:18David Sims?

  I think Elaine Stritch played her mom.

• 18:21Griffin Newman?

  Or no, played her mom.

• 18:22David Sims?

  Played her mom.

• 18:22Griffin Newman?

  Seven year age difference. Yes.

• 18:25Speaker 02

  Her, her eighties are a lot of movies I've never heard of, just going through her credits.

• 18:29David Sims?

  It's interesting because like Ellen Burstyn is a Hall of Famer, right? She's a legend. There's no question.

• 18:33Griffin Newman?

  I think she's one of the best screen actors. I mean, best-

• 18:35David Sims?

  She's mostly a legend because she told you to shut the fuck up that one time.

• 18:38Griffin Newman?

  That's not what she said. And you know, that's not what she said.

• 18:40David Sims?

  She said try silent.

• 18:41Griffin Newman?

  Correct. And you gotta give credit.

• 18:42Speaker 02

  It's actually way better than her telling him to shut the fuck up.

• 18:44Griffin Newman?

  That's why it needs to be correct.

• 18:46David Sims?

  Nothing better. Nothing better.

• 18:47Griffin Newman?

  I think she's one of the greatest actors of all time.

• 18:49David Sims?

  But she no doubt has, as Katie's saying, when you look at her filmography, like just a bunch of stuff where you're like, what on earth is that? Like-

• 18:55Speaker 02

  Well, it's what happens to women who are the stars of their movies. What are you gonna do with them?

• 18:59Griffin Newman?

  But then also two additional Oscar nominations in the eighties. Like we're saying like, well, that's a weird decade for her.

• 19:05David Sims?

  So what were her dying young? Did she get?

• 19:07Griffin Newman?

  Oh no, resurrection in 1980.

• 19:09David Sims?

  Eighty, yeah.

• 19:10Griffin Newman?

  And then I guess, uh, same time next year is 78.

• 19:14David Sims?

  Right.

• 19:14Griffin Newman?

  Did she get nominated for that?

• 19:15David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 19:17David Sims?

  Yes, she did. Like she got a bunch of Oscar noms and she won one.

• 19:21Speaker 02

  Well, she's in Twice in a Lifetime, the movie that Amy Madigan got her nomination for, which I had never heard of until the Amy Madigan run.

• 19:28David Sims?

  But I remember when she got her, uh, you know, nomination for Requiem for a Dream, it was that classic Oscar thing of like them being like, and where have you been? And she's like, I've been here. You're so good in the movie where you played a crazy drug addict. And she's like, okay, well, you know, I've been in other stuff too.

• 19:44Griffin Newman?

  I do think that led to a then kind of elder statesman. She's, she's now a legendary, immediate, instant gravitas.

• 19:53David Sims?

  Great actor. Um, we stan. And, uh, you know, today we discuss on a podcast that Griffin's about to introduce, the film that won her an Oscar.

• 20:01Griffin Newman?

  Yes. Which unfortunately, in my opinion, steals the Oscar for what might be the greatest screen performance of all time.

• 20:08David Sims?

  Oh, well then we can, oh, is it a, is it a Gina Rollins?

• 20:11Griffin Newman?

  Woman Under the Influences this year.

• 20:13David Sims?

  Yeah, I mean, obviously that's a fucking- Great performance.

• 20:16Griffin Newman?

  Ellen Burstyn wins and Martin Stewart says he goes up to Cassavetes and Rollins at the Oscars, like near crying and he's like, I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry.

• 20:24David Sims?

  To make this fucking thing.

• 20:26Griffin Newman?

  Cause this one also feels really Cassavetes inspired.

• 20:29David Sims?

  Sure.

• 20:30Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 20:30David Sims?

  I mean, it's Marty. We'll talk about it. It's in the research, I'm sure. Yeah.

• 20:34Speaker 02

  Well, and like, this is also among the great actress performances. Like, I think she's incredible in this movie.

• 20:39Griffin Newman?

  It's phenomenal. I just.

• 20:40David Sims?

  She's amazing in this.

• 20:41Griffin Newman?

  I would have given her the Oscar for one of the two previous nominations.

• 20:45Speaker 02

  For like The Exorcist.

• 20:46Griffin Newman?

  But this is a fascinating ripple effect.

• 20:47David Sims?

  Last Picture Show.

• 20:48Griffin Newman?

  I think she's amazing in Last Picture Show. I obviously love the Chloris Leachman win, but if I had a ballot for seventy-two, I would pick Burstyn.

• 20:55David Sims?

  Well, let me now look, while, while I pull up some Oscar pages so we can relitigate this for a second.

• 21:01Griffin Newman?

  Blank check with Griffin and David. I am Griffin.

• 21:02David Sims?

  I'm David.

• 21:03Griffin Newman?

  We're about to relitigate some Oscars, but not as much as we will in next week's episode. This is a podcast about filmographies, directors who have massive success early on in their careers and are given a series of blank checks to make whatever crazy passion projects they want. Sometimes those checks clear and sometimes they bounce baby. Sometimes they do a gig for hire to prove.

• 21:22David Sims?

  That they can do that they're versatile.

• 21:24Griffin Newman?

  A lack of limitations and it ends up being a bit of a guarantor because it wins.

• 21:29Speaker 02

  Wins dang Oscar.

• 21:29Griffin Newman?

  An actor.

• 21:30David Sims?

  Makes some money.

• 21:31Griffin Newman?

  It makes some money.

• 21:31Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah. And it's a TV show.

• 21:33Griffin Newman?

  And launches this.

• 21:35Speaker 02

  Does Scorsese make money from Alice? Okay.

• 21:38Griffin Newman?

  No, no. Good. Successful. You can tell who has good teams by who gets baked into deals like that. Cause there are people who just cash checks forever. I mean, this is the MASH story that I love is that Robert Altman had no stake in MASH. He had no upside from the film's box office success because they didn't want to hire him, that he took the DGA minimum and waived any participation. It also meant he waived any participation in ancillary things that would go on later. His son, who was kind of a burnout and he wanted his kids to work on the movie. He was like, can you write a song for the dentist? His son writes Suicide Is Painless, gets paid every time any episode of MASH airs anywhere in the world.

• 22:24Griffin Newman?

  And he like.

• 22:24Speaker 02

  That is good.

• 22:25Griffin Newman?

  Hated his son for that.

• 22:27Speaker 02

  Oh, okay. That's less good. I thought he'd be proud of him.

• 22:29Griffin Newman?

  I don't think so.

• 22:30Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 22:31Griffin Newman?

  I don't think so.

• 22:31Speaker 02

  All that gets together.

• 22:33David Sims?

  What's her?

• 22:33Griffin Newman?

  This is a mini-series on the films of Martin Scorsese. It is called Podcast Fellas.

• 22:38David Sims?

  That's right.

• 22:39Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 22:39David Sims?

  No problems.

• 22:40Speaker 02

  This is my first time hearing this.

• 22:41Griffin Newman?

  I looked to you. I wanted to see your response. You accepted it.

• 22:44Speaker 02

  Such a short list of options you had too. Like, just not a lot of titles.

• 22:48Griffin Newman?

  Pod list doesn't cast here anymore.

• 22:50David Sims?

  That's what we should have called it.

• 22:51Griffin Newman?

  The pod of knocking at my cast.

• 22:53Speaker 02

  This castnessence?

• 22:56Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, that one's tough.

• 22:58Speaker 02

  I'm not saying it was my best one.

• 23:00Griffin Newman?

  The pod of in a cast.

• 23:01Speaker 02

  The pod of Cast Street.

• 23:02Griffin Newman?

  There is a C in there. Yeah, yeah. Pods of new cast. But no, it's called Podcast Fellas because that's what we are. We're a couple of Podcast Fellas. And, and today.

• 23:13Speaker 02

  And sometimes girls.

• 23:14Griffin Newman?

  We have a pod lady with us, joining us. As, as we love to say, kind of the first blank check guest ever.

• 23:21Speaker 02

  It's very important.

• 23:21Griffin Newman?

  Yes, very important. Helps codify the box office game.

• 23:25David Sims?

  That's right.

• 23:25Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 23:26Griffin Newman?

  And also importantly, mother of still record holder, youngest guest ever on the show.

• 23:32Speaker 02

  It's true.

• 23:32David Sims?

  Almost.

• 23:32Griffin Newman?

  Baby Charlie.

• 23:33Speaker 02

  Yeah. Is the, are the listeners ready for the age of that baby from the Titanic episode? Because it's important to talking about this movie too, which is that Charlie, Charlie's about to turn ten.

• 23:41Griffin Newman?

  He's about to turn ten.

• 23:42Speaker 02

  As when this episode is out, I assume people have already turned ten because it's very soon.

• 23:46Griffin Newman?

  When he was on pod, he was baby.

• 23:47Speaker 02

  He was three months old.

• 23:49Griffin Newman?

  Now he's a little man.

• 23:49David Sims?

  He's so crazy that he brought a three month old baby to a blank check.

• 23:52Speaker 02

  It's completely crazy. It's really evidence that none of us knew anything about babies, is the fact that I did that.

• 23:59David Sims?

  Katie, to remind you, because we were trying to remember this on the subject, your last episode with us was intolerable.

• 24:03Speaker 02

  Yes. When I stepped back in the studio, I was like, oh yes, now I remember us talking about George Clooney.

• 24:07David Sims?

  Remember Prince of Tides? But I was like, no, but you've done something since then. I couldn't remember. Yes.

• 24:11Speaker 03

  Okay, this is also your tenth.

• 24:13Speaker 02

  No.

• 24:14David Sims?

  It is.

• 24:14Speaker 02

  Really?

• 24:15David Sims?

  Wait a second.

• 24:17Speaker 02

  My decade of dreams, Charlie's decade of dreams.

• 24:20Griffin Newman?

  Are we counting Titanic as two or one?

• 24:21Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 24:22Speaker 03

  Counting him as one.

• 24:23David Sims?

  Right.

• 24:23Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 24:23David Sims?

  It is a real ten.

• 24:25Griffin Newman?

  It's the Kill Bill question. Yeah.

• 24:28Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 24:29David Sims?

  Yeah. This is your true tenth episode because Titanic doesn't really count. So congratulations.

• 24:33Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 24:34David Sims?

  Now let's relitigate these Oscars. All right. So her first nomination, as you put out, pointed out, was for The Last Picture Show. She lost to her co-star Chloris Leachman. Now, they're both great in the movie.

• 24:44Griffin Newman?

  They are. I just think Burstyn, Burstyn's my favorite performance in that film period.

• 24:48Speaker 02

  But that was like, she was like brand new. I guess they were all brand new back then. Yeah.

• 24:52David Sims?

  The other, I would say, big nominee there is Ann-Margret in Colonel Knowledge, which is a great performance. And I'll just say it, Ann-Margret, kind of a looker. You've also got Barbara Harris in Who Is Harry Kellerman and Why Is He Saying Those Terrible Things About Me, an Ulu Grossbard film I've never seen, but obviously has an iconic title.

• 25:11Griffin Newman?

  Incredible title. Yeah.

• 25:12David Sims?

  And then Margaret Leighton in The Go Between, which is a masterpiece and she's very good, but like, you know, I would say with them, with there, it's kind of like, right, pick. And like with Chloris, it's just kind of like, that's her Oscar, man. Like she doesn't, you know, she doesn't have too many more swings at the, at the movie award app, you know, whatever. Okay. So then she loses for The Exorcist.

• 25:35Griffin Newman?

  Uh huh.

• 25:35David Sims?

  To Glenda Jackson for A Touch of Class. Now, we respect Glenda Jackson.

• 25:39Griffin Newman?

  I've never seen that film.

• 25:40David Sims?

  I've, I love her, you know, for Women Who Loves is an amazing movie.

• 25:44Speaker 02

  And she had won three years previously.

• 25:46David Sims?

  She had, it's a surprising, I think, four, but yeah, you know, like surprising second win for her. And I think the reason she won was it was a bit of a weird year. Like, it's Ellen Burstyn in The Exorcist, who's amazing in The Exorcist, is a mild stretch as a lead.

• 26:01Speaker 02

  Yeah, I would agree.

• 26:02David Sims?

  She sort of counts, but like she's not really in the back half of the movie, obviously. And like.

• 26:06Speaker 02

  She's not the thing you come out of The Exorcist talking about. As great as she is.

• 26:09Griffin Newman?

  It's a powerhouse performance. It's a, it's a little.

• 26:12David Sims?

  And she broke her damn tailbone.

• 26:13Griffin Newman?

  It's a little like Michael B. Jordan in Sinners minus the skill piece of the twins thing, right? Where you're like, there is such a centering force in this film, which was also the highest grossing film of its year.

• 26:23David Sims?

  It was a hit and she's great in it. I'm not, and then you got.

• 26:26Speaker 03

  Wait, wait, is the devil the lead?

• 26:28Griffin Newman?

  Well, I would say like Linda Blair is the lead.

• 26:30Speaker 02

  And they put Linda Blair in supporting in that classic kid thing.

• 26:33David Sims?

  But I mean, like, she's the one, like, the movie's happening to her. Everyone else is a little bit in and out.

• 26:40Griffin Newman?

  I think Burstyn's the lead. I accept this.

• 26:42David Sims?

  Fine. I accept it. Okay. But I think it might've hurt her for a win.

• 26:45Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, possibly.

• 26:46David Sims?

  And then you got Marcia Mason, the great Marcia Mason, in Cinderella Liberty, the James Caan movie, Mark Reddell movie. I've never seen it. We got Barbra Streisand in The Way We Were. We Stan.

• 26:55Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 26:56David Sims?

  We Stan. Yeah, sure. I think that movie is a little silly.

• 27:00Griffin Newman?

  It's silly, but I think that's an excellent movie star performance.

• 27:02David Sims?

  Yes, I agree. And then you've got Joanne Woodward in Summer Wishes, Winter Dreams.

• 27:05Griffin Newman?

  I've never seen that one.

• 27:06David Sims?

  Not a movie I have seen.

• 27:07Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 27:08Speaker 02

  No, this is a lot. I have only seen The Exorcist.

• 27:09David Sims?

  Maybe we could sneak it over to Ellen.

• 27:12Griffin Newman?

  It is astounding to go through these and realize how rarely the best actress nominees were from Best Picture.

• 27:18Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 27:18David Sims?

  It was a ghetto.

• 27:20Griffin Newman?

  The nineteen fifties.

• 27:21Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 27:21David Sims?

  It's a little better now with the ten noms.

• 27:23Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 27:23David Sims?

  You know, or whatever. But I bet you even now, if we didn't have the ten noms, it would remain a bit of a ghetto.

• 27:28Speaker 02

  Oh, definitely.

• 27:29Griffin Newman?

  There are so many movies that do not exist outside of one lead actress nomination for a movie star.

• 27:35Speaker 02

  Is it, is The Exorcist getting the horror sobbery with this too? Cause The Exorcist is obviously a big breakthrough.

• 27:42David Sims?

  And it did win two Oscars.

• 27:43Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 27:44David Sims?

  But it was, yeah, it was, the noms were the reward, a little bit of kind of like, well, you know, you, it won screenplay.

• 27:52Griffin Newman?

  PP?

• 27:53David Sims?

  Now, there's actually not a ton of PP in The Exorcist. Some.

• 27:56Griffin Newman?

  I didn't say most PP. I said best PP. It's notable.

• 27:58David Sims?

  I thought the category was just best goo. I mean.

• 28:01Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 28:02Griffin Newman?

  Well, no, see, it was like the, it was like the best score musical comedy drama thing. It, most years it's best goo. This is one of those years where they split it into best vomit and best PP.

• 28:13Speaker 02

  There's just too much to choose from.

• 28:14Griffin Newman?

  And then Exorcist winning both made them think, maybe let's make it one category again.

• 28:18David Sims?

  It won best adapted screenplay and best sound. It, you know, and you're like, how did it lose? It was a hit, but it's like, it lost to The Sting, which was just also a phenomenal.

• 28:26Griffin Newman?

  Oh, so right. What, they were two of the ten highest grossing movies ever.

• 28:30David Sims?

  Yeah, they were just both movies that had like played for a billion years. I mean, it's, it's an insane five. It's The Sting, The Exorcist, and American Graffiti. So three just like, critically acclaimed powerhouse blockbuster out of nowhere movies and out of nowhere in different ways.

• 28:47Griffin Newman?

  Three of the most profitable movies of all time.

• 28:49David Sims?

  Tru, tru, tru, tru, tru. Like, people are gonna like this. It's like, people are gonna love it.

• 28:55David Sims?

  Exorcist, obviously. And then, and then the other two nominees are A Touch of Class, which they, they really went for the kind of like British comedy back. They loved to sneak those in.

• 29:03Griffin Newman?

  Sure.

• 29:03David Sims?

  And then Ingmar Bergman's Cries and Whispers.

• 29:06Griffin Newman?

  They loved Bergman. They, they gave him proper respect.

• 29:09David Sims?

  Well, he was at his, right. They loved him in the, in the final favors of his career. They would, they would, they would roll out the carpet for him and I assume he would not attend. I don't actually know, but have a feeling he didn't really show up to a lot of those ceremonies.

• 29:20Griffin Newman?

  Or he was a party animal.

• 29:22David Sims?

  Yeah, maybe he was there being like, I love this show being hosted by Burt Reynolds, Diana Ross, John Huston, and David Niven? Is that the one where there's the streaker and Niven goes like, he's got a tiny dick?

• 29:33Speaker 02

  Uh, that's the dream team. Those four people. We always wanted to see them together.

• 29:36David Sims?

  The big four. It's just like, whenever I see Diana Ross, I'm like, where's John Huston? Her, her counterpart.

• 29:43Griffin Newman?

  You look naked without David Niven by your side. That is so funny that it's like.

• 29:48Speaker 02

  Oh, no, this is the year before Chinatown. So we're not in John Huston and that mode.

• 29:52David Sims?

  Correct. Chinatown is the year after.

• 29:55Griffin Newman?

  So you're like, director first and foremost, menacing character actor secondly, right? But before his most notable film role.

• 30:03David Sims?

  But.

• 30:03Griffin Newman?

  He has played the greatest ape.

• 30:04David Sims?

  MC.

• 30:05Griffin Newman?

  Yes, third MC, then like the biggest pop star.

• 30:11Griffin Newman?

  And a feet British man. And then who's the fourth again?

• 30:14Speaker 02

  Uh, Burt Reynolds.

• 30:15David Sims?

  Burt Reynolds. Like, you know, he's just kind of like, hi.

• 30:17Griffin Newman?

  Just the dude, dude, leading man.

• 30:19David Sims?

  You've heard of me.

• 30:19Griffin Newman?

  Yeah. Chewing gum on stage, presumably.

• 30:22David Sims?

  When you, if you, if you think about a world where Ellen Burstyn never wins an Oscar, then you're like, okay, well then maybe did she win for Requiem? Does she win for Requiem as a makeup?

• 30:32Griffin Newman?

  But it's the swank year, right?

• 30:33David Sims?

  No, no, it's the Julia Roberts year.

• 30:35Speaker 02

  Ooh.

• 30:35David Sims?

  And that was just a tough train to stop. Nor should it.

• 30:38Speaker 02

  No, you don't, you don't take that away.

• 30:40Griffin Newman?

  I agree. Would, would you both agree with the idea that she probably came in second?

• 30:48David Sims?

  Ellen Burstyn?

• 30:49Griffin Newman?

  I remember there being-

• 30:50David Sims?

  I think-

• 30:50Griffin Newman?

  A bit of a thing, cause Ellen Burstyn hadn't accepted her own award of wouldn't it be nice for her to give a speech that year? She doesn't-

• 30:57David Sims?

  Although I will say, whenever anyone trots out that argument, I'm like, we're splitting hairs.

• 31:01Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 31:02David Sims?

  Come on now.

• 31:02Griffin Newman?

  She won, but she didn't say a thing.

• 31:04David Sims?

  She didn't get to give a speech. I'm like, okay. I mean, Laura Linney was the critic fave that year, but I could see the argument for Ellen Burstyn was me-

• 31:12Speaker 02

  I still feel like back then critic faves didn't get you as far at the Oscars.

• 31:15Griffin Newman?

  Totally. That was a real nomination is the win.

• 31:17David Sims?

  Of course it was.

• 31:17Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 31:18Griffin Newman?

  Enjoy your Saturday at the Spirit Tent.

• 31:20David Sims?

  I can tell you that best actress musical or comedy that year was the not Oscar nominated Renee Zellweger for Nurse Betty.

• 31:26Griffin Newman?

  Oh, yeah.

• 31:28David Sims?

  But that, there were, but there's, the only overlap there was Juliette Binoche was nominated for Chocolat.

• 31:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, are we underestimating the Chocolat train?

• 31:37David Sims?

  This movie is so funny.

• 31:40Speaker 02

  They had chocolate fever back then.

• 31:42David Sims?

  The chocolate makes them horny.

• 31:43Griffin Newman?

  I did watch Chocolat for the first time, like in the last five years, and it does kind of fucking-

• 31:47Speaker 02

  It's still terrible.

• 31:49Griffin Newman?

  One of those things where if you remove any, like, what did it get, what did it steal nominations from? And you just watch it as its own thing. It is delightful.

• 31:59Griffin Newman?

  I mean, it's, I think I made this joke possibly, but Alfred Molina plays Snidely Whiplash even more than the time he literally played Snidely Whiplash.

• 32:07David Sims?

  I made that joke, but it's, it's very true.

• 32:08Griffin Newman?

  He shows up with a mustache and is like-

• 32:10David Sims?

  Where is all this chocolate? Cause he's Lithgow in Flashdance, right? I mean, Footloose, like Lithgow's like the town has to ban dancing.

• 32:17Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 32:18David Sims?

  Millian is just like, no chocolate. I ban it from these walls.

• 32:23Griffin Newman?

  So thin and so long.

• 32:24David Sims?

  It's making women talk back to their husbands.

• 32:26Griffin Newman?

  He plays such a sniveling little fuck with a cape. It's amazing.

• 32:30Speaker 02

  Oh my God, he has a cape.

• 32:31Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 32:41David Sims?

  David?

• 32:42Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 32:45David Sims?

  Is that the Cineas cow?

• 32:47Griffin Newman?

  The Cineas cow?

• 32:48David Sims?

  I haven't heard from her in a while.

• 32:49Griffin Newman?

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

• 32:54David Sims?

  Okay.

• 32:55Griffin Newman?

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

• 32:59David Sims?

  Wow.

• 33:00Griffin Newman?

  The cow likes chicken.

• 33:02David 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.

• 33:09Griffin Newman?

  Well, Mubi is a global film company bringing great cinema to the world and to you. Curating and elevating visionary filmmaking, all handpicked, always. That's what Mubi does. Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma, one of my favorite movies of the year.

• 33:22David Sims?

  Absolutely.

• 33:23Griffin Newman?

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

• 33:29David Sims?

  That is a line in the movie.

• 33:30Griffin Newman?

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

• 33:33David Sims?

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

• 33:38Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 33:39David Sims?

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

• 33:44Griffin Newman?

  Uh huh.

• 33:44David Sims?

  Legends and I tip my cap, but Zach Cherry.

• 33:46Griffin Newman?

  Performances, friend of the show-

• 33:48David Sims?

  Friend of the show Zach Cherry.

• 33:49Griffin Newman?

  Zach Cherry.

• 33:50David Sims?

  Also in it.

• 33:51Griffin Newman?

  This is true.

• 33:52David Sims?

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

• 34:02Griffin Newman?

  Hannah Einbinder plays the filmmaker attempting to reboot the Camp Miasma franchise, trying to track down the original final girl from the first movie to, to make some sort of legacy sequel, who's played by Gillian Anderson, who lives at the summer camp.

• 34:16David Sims?

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

• 34:21Griffin Newman?

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

• 34:33David 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.

• 34:45Griffin Newman?

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

• 34:50David Sims?

  Damn right.

• 34:56David Sims?

  Hey Blankies, producer Ben here. Don't you hate when you record a three hour plus podcast on an empty stomach? And then you are so hungry, you start hallucinating that David's a big turkey and that Griffin is a glazed ham? Well, thankfully, with today's sponsor Huell, I don't ever need to attempt eating the two friends. The Huell Black Edition Powder is a complete meal that's ready in just 30 seconds. That's what I love about Huell. It's not just a supplement, it's a complete meal you have instead of food. Not some other powder you shake on top of other food. Now, can I be honest about my relationship to high protein?

• 35:42David Sims?

  Honestly, guys, and I won't lie, I'm just winging it. But with Huell Black Edition Powder, I get 40 grams of protein at less than $3 per meal. All I need to do is mix it with water or milk and in 30 seconds, bing, bang, boom, I got 27 essential vitamins and minerals with no artificial sweeteners, colors, or flavors. And with the RTD bottle, it's grab and go version, I get 35 grams of protein, seven grams of fiber, all for under $5 a meal.

• 36:20David Sims?

  So once again, with Huell, which is spelled H U E L, I don't need to eat Griffin and David. I can have a complete meal fast. So get this limited time offer, make healthy eating simple. Get Huell today with our exclusive offer of 15% off online with code CHECK at huell.com/CHECK. New customers only. Thank you to Huell for partnering and supporting our show.

• 37:01David Sims?

  Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore.

• 37:03Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 37:04Speaker 02

  Is that the movie you're here to talk about?

• 37:05David Sims?

  Are you trying to tell me something about where, where Alice is?

• 37:08Griffin Newman?

  Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore is a 1974 American romantic comedy drama film, according to Wikipedia.

• 37:16David Sims?

  I guess that's what I'd call, I would call it a drama.

• 37:19Griffin Newman?

  I call drama in a character study.

• 37:20David Sims?

  A sort of, right, a light or, you know, quiet drama. Directed by Martin Scorsese, written by Robert Getchell.

• 37:28Griffin Newman?

  Who has quite a career. I wanted to do a little sidebar.

• 37:30David Sims?

  Goes on to write, uh, Bound for Glory and, you know.

• 37:34Griffin Newman?

  Well, that makes sense. You're like, oh.

• 37:35David Sims?

  Writes a very, very grounded, although he's one of four, I will say credited screenwriters on Mommy Dearest. So I guess that's, that's not all on him. Then he made the Patsy Cline biopic Sweet Dreams with Jessica Lange. He wrote that. He wrote a Bette Midler movie called Stella. I don't really know that.

• 37:53Griffin Newman?

  That's a Stella Dallas remake.

• 37:55David Sims?

  Oh, fuck, it is. Wow.

• 37:57Griffin Newman?

  This is like genuinely a fascinating career. He got points on the Alice sitcom for creating the character.

• 38:02David Sims?

  You got, you got, you got. Yeah. If you're the writer, you're gonna get points.

• 38:04Speaker 02

  But then he- He says he did okay, but come on.

• 38:06Griffin Newman?

  He writes Point of No Return, the LaFemna Kida remake.

• 38:09David Sims?

  Right, yeah. And then he does This Boy's Life.

• 38:11Griffin Newman?

  And The Client.

• 38:12David Sims?

  Yeah. So he was a, you know, he was a work, work guy, work horse.

• 38:17Griffin Newman?

  We call him a work guy.

• 38:18David Sims?

  He's a work guy.

• 38:18Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 38:20David Sims?

  The film, uh, yeah, was, uh, you know, a 1974 Christmas release that got good reviews, made money, won an Oscar, was a solid notch in Scorsese's career. I feel is often obviously under discussed. It's very recently getting a Criterion Disc.

• 38:36Griffin Newman?

  I, I believe Marie has gotten her hands on it today and is delivering it to the office tomorrow. One day late for me to have watched this flashy Criterion Disc. Not Marie's fault. We're in fact getting it early.

• 38:46David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 38:47Griffin Newman?

  But, but was hoping it would time out better. But yes, it, it has only been on DVD for the last 15, 20.

• 38:54David Sims?

  I rented it on the old iTunes. It looked all right.

• 38:57Griffin Newman?

  The tunes for the eyes.

• 38:59David Sims?

  It looked all right.

• 38:59Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 39:00David Sims?

  And it's a film we should discuss. And with us is, have we, have we introduced Katie Rich?

• 39:04Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 39:04David Sims?

  Yeah, ten time guest.

• 39:05Griffin Newman?

  The great Katie Rich.

• 39:05David Sims?

  Katie Rich, who I think, I think of you as a fair, like you discovered this movie back when you did the Scorsese screen dress?

• 39:11Speaker 02

  Yeah. I didn't want to come on here and promote someone else's podcast. This is my podcast. But no, I did screen dress and with the Scorsese group ranking. So I was in charge of the middle 10.

• 39:20David Sims?

  Yeah, it seemed like quite a stressful approach.

• 39:22Griffin Newman?

  It's a very chill podcast. Nothing stressful has ever happened on that show.

• 39:25Speaker 02

  Not a lot of work. Uh, this one was especially chaotic. Emily St. James, a friend of us and of the show, was on the 30 to 21 group.

• 39:33David Sims?

  Right. Didn't she fuck everything up by drafting something last or whatever?

• 39:36Speaker 02

  Group effort of fucking everything up, but just like chaos reigned on that. Like they didn't want to deal with the Dylan doc. So they left us with like No Direction Home Bob Dylan in the middle 10. We were like, I don't want to get, or like, I think they left us-

• 39:48Griffin Newman?

  Out of here.

• 39:49Speaker 02

  They left us with Who's That Knocking At My Door, which I don't know if you guys have done that episode already. Right now, it's a perfectly fine movie. It belongs in the bottom 10 of Scorsese.

• 39:57David Sims?

  I would put it down.

• 39:58Griffin Newman?

  Fun, fun.

• 39:58David Sims?

  Well, but that's what I don't understand about this approach of like, they get to choose.

• 40:03Speaker 02

  Making a group project? Well, it's, it leans into the chaos of it.

• 40:07David Sims?

  Now I'm looking, I mean, this podcast, I will confess, well, there's just, oh, there's like vetoes. Oh, the Patreon members got to veto things?

• 40:14Speaker 02

  I don't think that affected what we did. They, someone was trying to-

• 40:17David Sims?

  You had the Irishman 29th?

• 40:19Speaker 02

  I, that wasn't me. Blame Emily.

• 40:21David Sims?

  They did, sorry.

• 40:23Speaker 02

  Bring this up with your friend Emily St. James, not me.

• 40:26Griffin Newman?

  What was Dead Last and what was number one?

• 40:27David Sims?

  Dead Last was Shine a Light, which like, sure, but it looks like someone tried to put-

• 40:31Speaker 02

  Worst one.

• 40:32David Sims?

  Fine. I mean, but again, it's, it doesn't count. Like, I mean, what are our parameters here?

• 40:36Speaker 02

  It's making it even 30, I think. They bring Shine a Light and a Rolling Thunder review, which I don't think was a theatrical thing. That was a Netflix thing, which is actually kind of fun.

• 40:43David Sims?

  And as a lover of rules, it's stressing me out.

• 40:45Griffin Newman?

  He's smiling and throwing his thumbs up.

• 40:47David Sims?

  But no, it looks like someone tried to put The Departed last.

• 40:50Speaker 02

  Yes, that was their real chaos. It was trolling. I think we wound up putting The Departed in our middle 10, which I would, I would put it in my top 10, honestly.

• 40:58Griffin Newman?

  You're wondering why someone tried to put The Departed last. You must've missed that Frank Costello was a guest on that episode. I smell of rad on this podcast.

• 41:07Speaker 02

  I think they did Age of Venescence as number one. I wasn't on that one either. We were in the, we had twenty to eleven.

• 41:13David Sims?

  And they have Goodfellas two Taxi Driver three. I mean, like,

• 41:17Griffin Newman?

  Age of Venescence is number one.

• 41:18David Sims?

  It's a little too chaotic, guys. This is a little much.

• 41:21Speaker 02

  I'm, I, I tried to make it less chaotic. My big accomplishment is-

• 41:24David Sims?

  Their veto system really messes with stuff because then it's like stuff will get bumped up.

• 41:28Speaker 02

  There's a lot of rules, a lot of, like, I, we wound up putting Wolf of Wall Street in our middle ten because our pal Joe Reed is not a fan of it and I didn't have the ability to veto it, to bump it up. I would put Wolf of Wall Street in my top ten. But the thing I'm really proud of from our group is that we left Alice for the top ten. Like, we said, collectively said, we're not drafting Alice. You guys can have it in there because I think it's, I think it's in my top ten.

• 41:50Griffin Newman?

  It's really excellent.

• 41:51David Sims?

  That's totally fine and it's a great movie, but Cape Fear is number ten. I just don't know about this.

• 41:56Griffin Newman?

  Cape Fear does not belong in the ten.

• 41:57David Sims?

  No, what's going on? And it feels like because you guys left dishes, it's weird that there's like movies that vaulted the list because the prior guys just didn't want to talk about them.

• 42:06Speaker 02

  It's an exquisite corpse thing where you're like, oh, I guess who's that knocking at my door is number nineteen somehow.

• 42:11David Sims?

  You did the Pixar one. I feel like you had like an aneurysm doing that episode.

• 42:15Griffin Newman?

  I said this respectfully to the fine folks at the Screen Drafts podcast.

• 42:18David Sims?

  They have asked you to come on and I've been like, I've heard your episodes are four hour long. I won't be doing that. I'm sorry.

• 42:22Speaker 02

  You would die.

• 42:23David Sims?

  Right.

• 42:23Griffin Newman?

  I did it once with JD and we did Jim Henson movies and we had a wonderful time-

• 42:28David Sims?

  And your friends.

• 42:28Griffin Newman?

  JD and I were in sync and we were like the fucking Bash Brothers.

• 42:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, you gotta do it with your friends.

• 42:32Griffin Newman?

  Right. And it was, it was contained, right? And then they were like, do you want to do a Pixar mega draft? It's every Pixar movie, which at that point maybe was twenty one or twenty two. And I believe it took six hours. Everyone else was on the West Coast. I finished the episode and the garbage trucks were coming to collect. The sun was rising. This was deep lockdown and I say this, I say this kindly. I don't blame anyone involved in this episode. This is just what it was. It was the worst day I had in the pandemic.

• 43:03David Sims?

  I remember-

• 43:04Griffin Newman?

  And that's the most damning thing I could say about any twenty-four hour period.

• 43:08David Sims?

  Yeah, that's a, that's tough.

• 43:10Speaker 02

  What I will say-

• 43:11Griffin Newman?

  I couldn't handle it.

• 43:11Speaker 02

  I'm, so it's exhausting every time I have done that. And then at the end of it, I say, wow, but I watched every Martin Scorsese movie and it felt-

• 43:17Griffin Newman?

  That's the nice part.

• 43:18Speaker 02

  Right. I mean, you guys are doing the same thing. That part of it paid off so much for me because I still think about it all the time.

• 43:23Griffin Newman?

  We have a podcast that gives us an excuse to do the same thing on a more manageable schedule.

• 43:26Speaker 02

  Although you do make some long episodes.

• 43:28Griffin Newman?

  We do, but I-

• 43:29Speaker 02

  I don't know if anyone's heard about that.

• 43:30Griffin Newman?

  But I get stressed out even when like the, our friends at the Big Pick are doing drafts and they're like, I have to watch eighty things to prep for one episode.

• 43:38Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 43:39Griffin Newman?

  You know, or Hall of Fame's or-

• 43:40Speaker 02

  We did the Big Pick Oscar changing things like we were just doing and I was figuring out how to prep for that. And like, you can't watch everything, but knowing what you need to pay attention to, it is, when you have that wide afield, it gets really crazy.

• 43:50Griffin Newman?

  But that's the thing. You're just sort of like, well, what? I don't need to watch summer wishes, winter dreams or whatever. I'm sure that's some bullshit.

• 43:56Speaker 02

  And then Chris Ryan shows up being like, guess what? I have a hot Joanne Woodford take.

• 44:01Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 44:02David Sims?

  What's that noise? Oh, it's the dossier cracking open.

• 44:04Griffin Newman?

  Creak!

• 44:05Speaker 02

  Oh, Ben, you are on it today. Good job.

• 44:07David Sims?

  Ben's doing great. He's guarding against my mental health. Sometime during the protracted and difficult production of William Friedkin's nineteen seventy-three classic, The Exorcist.

• 44:17Griffin Newman?

  PPV.

• 44:19David Sims?

  Which, as you may or may not know, as with many a Friedkin film, was a bit of a trying shoot.

• 44:24Speaker 02

  Some personalities are playing here.

• 44:25Griffin Newman?

  Yes, there are some wild stories about that film.

• 44:27David Sims?

  Yeah, where such as like Friedkin would just fire a gun without telling anyone to make everyone freak out like on camera.

• 44:35Griffin Newman?

  And then say like, action!

• 44:36David Sims?

  And then like tie a harness around Ellen Burstyn, just fucking break her tailbone and like the entire set was a refrigerator and Max Von Sydow had makeup on, but by the time the movie was over, he just looked like that.

• 44:48Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 44:49David Sims?

  So that film is really, really hard, but they make it and the studio, which is a little studio called Warner Brothers.

• 44:56Griffin Newman?

  David's wearing his Warner Brothers shirt.

• 44:58David Sims?

  Realizes it might have something special on its hands and is pretty impressed with one Ellen Burstyn.

• 45:03Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 45:03David Sims?

  Basically, John Calley is the in charge of Warner Brothers. They're looking at dailies of the film and they basically just like call Ellen Burstyn or like, we want to do a movie.

• 45:11Griffin Newman?

  What do you want to do?

• 45:12David Sims?

  Exactly. Like,

• 45:13Griffin Newman?

  You got the one check, Ellen.

• 45:14David Sims?

  We have a pile of scripts. Take a look. Like, we'd like to be in the Ellen Burstyn business. Ellen Burstyn, who I think is like a woman of taste.

• 45:22Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 45:22David Sims?

  Or like, you know, a really, a great actor, but also clearly a very intelligent one and a very thoughtful person who, you know, tries to give a shit, right? I don't know.

• 45:31Griffin Newman?

  And she's, she's one of the earliest members of the actor studio, studies under Lee Strasberg, is like real protector of the flame of the sort of, I don't know, the beauty of acting.

• 45:43David Sims?

  She studied under Lee Strasberg when he only had a half inch of chest hair and it wasn't even white yet.

• 45:50Griffin Newman?

  He would sit there all day and just grit his teeth.

• 45:52David Sims?

  Four inches.

• 45:52Griffin Newman?

  Try to push it out.

• 45:55David Sims?

  Like in Godfather, he actually doesn't die when they shoot him because the, the chest hair just catches the bullet.

• 46:02Griffin Newman?

  She's, she is a rare American to have the triple crown of acting, as it's called, where she has an Emmy, a Tony and an Oscar.

• 46:09Speaker 02

  What's her Tony for?

• 46:10Griffin Newman?

  Her Tony is for same time next year. And she has two Emmys, one for an episode, I believe, of Law and Order SVU. The other one, of course, for political animals.

• 46:22Speaker 02

  Oh, wow.

• 46:24David Sims?

  Which you were on.

• 46:24Griffin Newman?

  Which I was on.

• 46:25David Sims?

  And she told you to try silence.

• 46:26Griffin Newman?

  No, you're forgetting, I was three times in a project with her.

• 46:30David Sims?

  It was like, you're like, I've worked with you before and she's like, never.

• 46:32Griffin Newman?

  Correct. Try silence was on draft day, which was the third and final time I worked with Ellen Burstyn.

• 46:39David Sims?

  She started building into her contract after that.

• 46:41Griffin Newman?

  Except I never worked with her. The conversation was in the makeup trailer.

• 46:45David Sims?

  I know, I know, I know.

• 46:46Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 46:46David Sims?

  And just in case someone hasn't heard the story, but it's an old episode.

• 46:50Griffin Newman?

  Hitmaker Simons in the makeup trailer for draft day.

• 46:53David Sims?

  Who's a bit of a chatterbox, let's be honest.

• 46:55Griffin Newman?

  We like to talk, us silly boys. We were, probably not even talking about Blu-rays. Who knows what we would have been talking about. Mr. Show sketches or some shit. And she showed up in the makeup trailer and I thanked her because at the wrap party for not political animals, but possible side effects, a pilot directed by Tim Robbins that wasn't picked up where she basically played the matriarch of the Sackler family.

• 47:20David Sims?

  Right. She was, it was like Succession with medicine and she was Brian Cocker.

• 47:23Griffin Newman?

  I went up to her at the wrap party and told her how, how much I was a fan of her work and how much she meant to me and that I was trying to start and she recommended me an acting teacher who was very, very important in my life.

• 47:33David Sims?

  You said I used this person and-

• 47:34Griffin Newman?

  So I say that to her and she said, I don't remember being on that show.

• 47:39Griffin Newman?

  If you say so. And I was like-

• 47:41David Sims?

  She wasn't like, what a moving thing to hear.

• 47:43Griffin Newman?

  I mean, I say this in a mean way.

• 47:44David Sims?

  Right.

• 47:45Griffin Newman?

  But she is an intense woman.

• 47:46David Sims?

  Okay.

• 47:47Griffin Newman?

  And then I went back to talking and she goes, well, I'm glad that helped you. And then I went back to talking to Tim and after like ten minutes, she went, Griffin? And I went, yes? And she went, try silence.

• 47:56David Sims?

  You didn't even say, why don't you try silence?

• 47:59Griffin Newman?

  No, it was, it was command.

• 48:00David Sims?

  It wasn't an invitation.

• 48:01Griffin Newman?

  It is the most withering thing anyone has ever said. Tim has described it as witnessing a murder. Like, five minutes later, she apologized.

• 48:08Speaker 02

  Well, and why not take it to him? He was talking too.

• 48:11David Sims?

  Ellen Burstyn realized it was so devastating that she was like, look, I, look, I was, you were being a little loud. I'm sorry.

• 48:16Griffin Newman?

  You might be surprised to hear, and Ellen Burstyn is someone who can command a lot of force without raising her voice.

• 48:21David Sims?

  I imagine.

• 48:22Griffin Newman?

  She does it rarely, you know? The entire makeup trailer went silent and draft day was a fairly low budget studio movie.

• 48:30David Sims?

  They were shooting on set. They, they stopped talking. They didn't even know why. Dennis Leary shut up.

• 48:35Griffin Newman?

  It was like six to ten chairs in the makeup trailer. Like, everyone was in there. So there's a full line of people, all with their own like hair and makeup people. And it like twenty people are just stunned silent. And after five minutes, she goes like, I'm sorry, it's just that I, I use this time to try to run my lines. She said something like that. I apologize.

• 48:53David Sims?

  You're on fucking draft day, Ellen. Come on, what are your lines? Don't draft that guy.

• 48:57Griffin Newman?

  Sonny, I'm your mother.

• 48:58David Sims?

  I don't remember what she does in that movie.

• 49:00Griffin Newman?

  She plays Kevin Costner's mother, of course.

• 49:02David Sims?

  Great. It's just so funny to imagine like-

• 49:05Griffin Newman?

  Your father would be proud of your drafting.

• 49:07David Sims?

  Or not.

• 49:08Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 49:09David Sims?

  Her to imagine like her and Dennis Leary like sharing scenes, which I'm sure they do not.

• 49:13Griffin Newman?

  The three things I was in that she was in, she played the same role basically in all three.

• 49:19David Sims?

  The, the elusive matriarch slightly domineering.

• 49:22Speaker 02

  She was very good at it.

• 49:23Griffin Newman?

  Josh Lucas's mom, Sigourney Weaver's mom, and then Kevin Costner's mom.

• 49:27Speaker 02

  That's like a wide age range of people's moms she's playing.

• 49:30David Sims?

  But you know, actors who can cover a lot of ground themselves, age wise.

• 49:34Griffin Newman?

  And at that point, Ellen Burstyn just read as old lady. Like, it was just sort of like, this is your classic old lady on screen who isn't trying to look young. You know, she hasn't had like bizarre shit done.

• 49:46Speaker 02

  I mean, she's in her nineties now. I mean, and she's thriving.

• 49:48David Sims?

  She famously, my favorite awards thing with her is that she was nominated for an episode of Big Love that I think she maybe doesn't have a line in, but she was just submitted kind of by mistake because they like submitted a whole host of actors from Big Love for guest actress or whatever. And I think voters were just kind of like, Ellen Burstyn in Big Love? I assumed she was good. Let's give her the nom. And they had to like apologize for giving her a nomination.

• 50:11Griffin Newman?

  That also happened with that TV movie that Bob Balaban directed. That was, what was it? It's Susan Sarandon and Ray Fiennes, I want to say. It's like a butler who killed the woman he works for.

• 50:22Speaker 02

  Wait, is this Mrs. Harris, which I'm just looking up?

• 50:24David Sims?

  I think so. It was Big Love. Oh, you're saying, oh, no, no, Mrs. Harris was a big thing.

• 50:28Speaker 02

  This one is Annette Bening and Ben Kingsley, which is not off of what you were discussing.

• 50:32Griffin Newman?

  That's what I'm thinking of. There's like, that, that movie has like a faux mockumentary style where it will cut to talking heads occasionally. Ellen Burstyn did a cameo as a favor where they cut to her and she goes like, I never liked her anyway.

• 50:46David Sims?

  Oh, maybe that is what I'm thinking. Oh, yeah.

• 50:48Griffin Newman?

  Maybe that's- She has one line and it was like an automatic nomination. And she was just like, this is offensive. You should un-nominate me and nominate someone else. And I believe Entertainment Weekly did a rundown and they were like, look, she makes like fifteen choices in her three seconds. They were like, this is a ridiculous nomination and clearly people didn't watch it, but also this is sort of proof of how good she is.

• 51:11Speaker 02

  I mean, David and I were talking about the Emmys before coming here. The Emmys are completely ridiculous in what they nominate. They say the name, like Don Cheadle got that nomination for the like-

• 51:19David Sims?

  For fucking Secret Invasion or whatever.

• 51:20Speaker 02

  Forty seconds. He was in a Marvel show.

• 51:22Griffin Newman?

  The Captain America museum or whatever and being like, pretty good exhibit.

• 51:25David Sims?

  Being like, goddamn!

• 51:26Speaker 02

  I think people see that name. They're scrolling through like, I don't know what this is. I don't know what this is. And they're like, great, Don Cheadle, I've heard of you.

• 51:31Griffin Newman?

  Especially if someone's a movie star and they're in a project that people know is legitimate, but didn't watch. They're like, that was like a real thing, right? That was an HBO movie? How shitty could it be?

• 51:40Speaker 02

  Even with like movie stars on TV all the time now, it still has that weird like, oh, Ellen Burstyn, it must be, I mean, if she's in it, it makes it seem legit.

• 51:47Griffin Newman?

  Correct.

• 51:48Speaker 02

  She was nominated for House of Cards. I didn't know she was on House of Cards.

• 51:51Griffin Newman?

  Did she play Frank Underwood's mom?

• 51:53Speaker 02

  Probably. It seems like a good guess. She plays Elizabeth Hale. I don't know.

• 51:58Griffin Newman?

  She played the leader of the cult, did she not?

• 52:01David Sims?

  Yeah. She's like a matriarch or something. Sounds like something Ellen Burstyn would do. I'm going to move on to the script she was sent. She was sent a big pile of scripts. And she's like, it was an education. Every woman in these scripts is either the victim, the understanding wife of some hero out saving the world, or a sex object of some sort. There's no script where the woman was the protagonist. Stories were about men and women played a role in that man's story. So.

• 52:28Griffin Newman?

  Let's also call out Ellen Burstyn had like

• 52:30David Sims?

  No, thank you.

• 52:31Griffin Newman?

  Three bad marriages that all ended before the time she makes this movie. She, she knows from dysfunctional marriage.

• 52:38David Sims?

  She tried divorce.

• 52:39Griffin Newman?

  She tried divorce several times.

• 52:40David Sims?

  Neil Burstyn, her third husband is who she gets her name from.

• 52:44Griffin Newman?

  Yes, was schizophrenic and I think fairly unbalanced.

• 52:49David Sims?

  Her actual name is Edna Giluli.

• 52:53Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 52:53David Sims?

  Which you can see why she didn't use that as a stage name because it doesn't quite trip off the tongue. So it's early in the women's lib moving as she says, it's the seventies. We're starting to look up and wake, you know, wake up and look around. And she wanted to make a different kind of film. And so she finally reads Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore, a script by Bob Getchell. She sends it to John Kelly. He likes it, but it had been optioned by David Suskind. And so he had no deal at a studio, but he had it. On the last possible day, he picks up his option to block them. Rude of him because he doesn't have a studio. And so her agent calls him or maybe Tony, you know, someone,

• 53:33David Sims?

  her agent calls him and is like, Ellen wants to do this movie. And he's like, I'm doing it with Anne Bancroft. And he's like, we have a fucking green light from Warner Brothers. Like if we can do this, like you, you have like an idea of doing something someday. Or, you know, we have a studio, like who will make this movie? And, and Suskind said, hmm, I think we should make this movie with Ellen Burstyn at Warner Brothers. You know, now this is crazy. John Kelly then says to Ellen Burstyn, do you want to direct it?

• 54:00Griffin Newman?

  Crazy.

• 54:01David Sims?

  That is pretty wild.

• 54:02Griffin Newman?

  That is kind of, I don't know, without parallel in this time period.

• 54:08David Sims?

  Pretty much. I mean, like, I mean, all the stories. Wife is directing, like, you know, there's.

• 54:12Speaker 02

  Her name is Joanne Wood.

• 54:14David Sims?

  But it's like, when you think about like female directors in the studio system.

• 54:18Griffin Newman?

  I mean, how hard Streisand had to fight.

• 54:20Speaker 02

  Uh huh.

• 54:21David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 54:22Speaker 02

  I mean, Lena Vertmuller is getting that first woman best director nomination around the same time. Yeah. I just wonder if that causes that somehow.

• 54:29David Sims?

  Maybe. I mean, I think it might be just truly John Kelly being like, this is a cheap movie. I want to be in the Ellen Burstyn business and you know, you pick the script like.

• 54:39Speaker 02

  It's talent management.

• 54:40Griffin Newman?

  We're also still in new Hollywood risk taking era. And here's someone who kind of represents the new guard of acting styles. Here's someone who's kind of like a female De Niro in terms of like, she's locked in, some whole different process. Maybe she'd get interesting performances out of other people.

• 54:55David Sims?

  So instead she calls up a handsome Italian director by the name of Francis Coppola.

• 55:04David Sims?

  And says, you know, anybody? And he says, why don't you watch a little movie called Mean Streets? It hasn't even come out yet, but I recommend it. And she watches Mean Streets and Coppola had just seen it and been like, I like this De Niro guy. I think I'll put him in my movie, The Godfather, part one, one.

• 55:20Griffin Newman?

  Her quote was, she said, you go look at a movie like Mean Streets. Or no, that's what Francis said to her. She said, it felt exactly what Alice needed because it was a wonderful script and well-written. But for my taste, it was a little slick.

• 55:31David Sims?

  Script's a little slick.

• 55:32Griffin Newman?

  You know, in a good way.

• 55:33David Sims?

  Some grit.

• 55:34Griffin Newman?

  In kind of a Doris Day, Rock Hudson kind of way. And I wanted something a little bit more gritty. It's smart to just go like, okay, I like the script and the foundation of this. But if someone deals with it on a superficial level, I think it's not going to work. So how do I get someone who's sort of like, hire a director against type for the film to bring it down?

• 55:52Speaker 02

  I have a hard time imagining that script of feeling, I wonder if like, did he change the script itself? Or is it really just all in style that changes how this feels?

• 56:00Griffin Newman?

  I don't know. Maybe it's three episodes of the sitcom that he retroactively submitted.

• 56:04Speaker 02

  Or it's the Chris Christopherson rom com that the poster makes you think it is.

• 56:09Griffin Newman?

  But it does make you consider how cool it would be if like either Safdie brother did this today.

• 56:13Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 56:14David Sims?

  Yeah. I wonder if there's an analog because there are some directors who've done stuff like this. But yeah, like, I don't have to think, but love this. She meets with this, as she puts it, small nervous little guy.

• 56:24Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, that's a good way to describe him.

• 56:27David Sims?

  And, you know, he's like, he's excitable and they're talking about it. And she says, you know, it's hard to tell from that film, Mean Streets, what you know about women? Do you know anything about women? Which is a fair note.

• 56:38Griffin Newman?

  Have you met one?

• 56:39David Sims?

  And he says, no, but I'd like to learn, which is pretty cute.

• 56:42Griffin Newman?

  Pretty good answer.

• 56:43David Sims?

  Burstyn said his intelligence beamed through his face. So we went to work together.

• 56:47Speaker 02

  Had he started any of his failed marriages by this point? Where are we? Where are we in the Scorsese bad husband history?

• 56:54Griffin Newman?

  One divorce down.

• 56:55David Sims?

  Yeah. It's the classic like sixties, you know, he's, yeah, he's not married to Julia Cameron yet. He's divorced from Lorraine Brennan. Like the sixties early marriage where it's like, well, we had to live together and our parents would be mad. Like, you know.

• 57:08Griffin Newman?

  I wanted to have sex, which of course.

• 57:09David Sims?

  I met a woman when I was twenty.

• 57:11Speaker 02

  He has years of being a bad husband and still ahead of him at this point. Much more to learn about women.

• 57:17Griffin Newman?

  Revolutionized the field of bad husband.

• 57:19Speaker 02

  Oh, I assume you guys have talked about Mr. Scorsese, the documentary over the course of doing this. But just the amount of his ex wives and daughters in that movie who are like, yeah, he was terrible. We love him though.

• 57:29David Sims?

  Yeah, but it's just like, he did rock. I never saw him. He wasn't really around much.

• 57:34Speaker 02

  It's just really remarkable how affectionate they are for all the horrible things. Not like horrible, but he was not beautiful.

• 57:41David Sims?

  He was mostly absentee.

• 57:42Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 57:43David Sims?

  Yeah. Right. It's not like, yeah.

• 57:45Speaker 02

  I would not want to have been married to him at this time.

• 57:48Griffin Newman?

  The vibe I got, right? Because in talking about a movie about bad marriages and such, we don't want to like, imply a different kind of bad marriage.

• 57:56Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 57:57Griffin Newman?

  You watch that and it just feels like everyone who married him kind of felt bad for him. Not that they were marrying him out of pity, but they were just like, I was just really worried about him. Like everyone talks about him like a little danger, like fawn, that they tried to nurse back to health. And they were like, ultimately it ran back into the woods.

• 58:15Speaker 02

  He and Robbie Robertson just stayed up all night for three days. And I said, you go buddy, go live your life.

• 58:19Griffin Newman?

  Call that the woods.

• 58:22David Sims?

  So they, they get to work. He's dating Sandy Weintraub at the time.

• 58:27Griffin Newman?

  Okay.

• 58:28David Sims?

  And she sort of was the one who kind of read the script from across his desk or whatever. And said like, this is good. Like, you know, this has interesting characters. Because I assume he was basically just getting all like gangster movies, like being sent to him, right?

• 58:41Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 58:42David Sims?

  So it's like, he's smart. He's like, I should make something completely different, right? Like what better way than, you know, than, you know, to, to avoid being typecast. Alice was a way of trying to find another way. Can I make genre in Hollywood? It was something like a vehicle, like a Betty Davis vehicle or Joan Crawford vehicle. I enjoyed those movies like Mr. Scaffington. So this would be a way of embracing the genre. It is so funny that even young twenty something Martin Scorsese making movies about guys. Right. Who shoot each other is like, but I am a huge movie nerd who has seen every single like.

• 59:12Griffin Newman?

  Every great director has made a women's picture.

• 59:14David Sims?

  Right. I have great respect for Mr. Scaffington.

• 59:17Speaker 02

  Well, you do have to assume the script did not include the prologue in this. That looks like the Wizard of Oz set on a farm.

• 59:22Griffin Newman?

  Wild.

• 59:23Speaker 02

  It's gorgeous.

• 59:24Griffin Newman?

  I mean, you start out with like a fucking like Douglas Stirk opening credit sequence.

• 59:28Speaker 02

  Yeah. Like the silk rumpled in the background with the titles over it.

• 59:31Griffin Newman?

  You feel like you're watching the wrong movie.

• 59:34David Sims?

  And obviously, as you just pointed out, very inspired by Mr. John Cassavetes. Which you see a little bit.

• 59:40Griffin Newman?

  And do an actor driven movie.

• 59:42David Sims?

  He has a great relationship with his mom. That's like, it's different from this movie, but he has like a chatty.

• 59:49Griffin Newman?

  Firecracker.

• 59:50David Sims?

  Right. Informal kind of relationship with his mom. And so he's investing a little bit of that in there. You know, his dad is clearly sterner and more reserved, but his mom is a cut up. Like she's funny. Getchell's screenplay, apparently he wanted to change the third part dealing with the farmer. Okay. He means Chris Christopherson.

• 1:00:08Speaker 02

  Get rid of Chris? You can't.

• 1:00:09David Sims?

  I don't know. It's like the beginning is not quite right and the last sequence is not quite right. They rewrote it together. They weren't satisfied. Then they start doing some improv in New York with Ellen. That's kind of cool. And then they would sort of throw it back to Getchell. I don't know. They're just describing rewriting the movie. Who cares? They did a good job.

• 1:00:27Griffin Newman?

  There is an alleged like three and a half hour cut of this movie that I'm sure is more of an assembly than a proper cut. But this is one of those movies where I would watch kind of any footage they have.

• 1:00:37David Sims?

  I'd watch them all hanging and I would watch an entire movie set at a diner. But I would say this is a well paced movie. It does not need to be long.

• 1:00:43Griffin Newman?

  It is, but I'd be curious. I mean, and that's the difference between him and Cassavetes where there's like, the famous story of him screening husbands and a killing and being like, the audience is enjoying it too much. We're adding an hour into it. Like Cassavetes was like, if the audience is enjoying it too purely, I've done something wrong. And it doesn't feel like this movie is taking easy outs. But you can tell that Scorsese is like, I'm not trying to punish people.

• 1:01:08David Sims?

  As mentioned earlier, David Suskind once viewed this as an Anne Bancroft vehicle. Supposedly at one point Diana Ross was attached.

• 1:01:15Griffin Newman?

  Wow, wow, wow.

• 1:01:16David Sims?

  Which is crazy. I mean, obviously she was like, well, I'll only do it if David Nibbitt is there.

• 1:01:21David Sims?

  My bow.

• 1:01:22Griffin Newman?

  And obviously Walter Houston plays my son.

• 1:01:24David Sims?

  John Houston. Walter Houston might have died by then.

• 1:01:27Griffin Newman?

  Walter Houston could play the chef.

• 1:01:29David Sims?

  He's like, there.

• 1:01:30Speaker 02

  There you go. He's out.

• 1:01:32David Sims?

  Order up. Shirley MacLaine in 2005 said she turned it down because she didn't know who Scorsese was. JJ adds in parentheses.

• 1:01:40Griffin Newman?

  That doesn't make perfect sense.

• 1:01:41David Sims?

  To be a false memory. Like, there's no way that's true.

• 1:01:44Griffin Newman?

  But she said in other places that the script was offered to her. I don't think she would have been offered the Scorsese version, but the script obviously had been around.

• 1:01:52Speaker 02

  Well, if it was kicking around a studio, like presumably every actress in that industry.

• 1:01:55Griffin Newman?

  She's one of the people you would have offered anything to.

• 1:01:58David Sims?

  Ellen Burstyn says the biggest regret she has is she didn't take a producer credit. She should have because she was like, I was the shepherd of the film. I should have been an executive producer. I didn't ask. I demurred. Oh, I don't need credit. I'm the star. If I had been an executive producer, I would have gotten points on that fucking sitcom.

• 1:02:15Speaker 02

  Made that Alice money.

• 1:02:17David Sims?

  Like, because I do feel like usually it'd be like, oh, well, it's a credit. Who cares? And Alice is the one scenario where like, you're telling me this small domestic drama turned into a regular paycheck?

• 1:02:27Griffin Newman?

  Yes. I mean, she made, she did make one of the coolest deals of all time eventually for.

• 1:02:31David Sims?

  For Exorcist?

• 1:02:32Griffin Newman?

  For The Last Exorcist. Do you remember this?

• 1:02:34David Sims?

  It's like they created an acting school or something?

• 1:02:36Griffin Newman?

  They created a scholarship that runs indefinitely.

• 1:02:39David Sims?

  Right.

• 1:02:40Griffin Newman?

  They kept offering her money.

• 1:02:41David Sims?

  They were like, we'll give you a million dollars. Okay. You're gonna be in the movie for five days.

• 1:02:44Griffin Newman?

  I don't give a shit. And they're like, $10 million, 25% of the gross. And she was just like, here are the actual terms. Scholarship for acting school every year granted full ride in perpetuity. And made them like, make a commitment to doing that.

• 1:03:01David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:01Griffin Newman?

  Which rules.

• 1:03:02David Sims?

  Of course, the only downside is she's in the movie for like two minutes being like, I too was once an exorcist. Ah, I think that's her eyes gouged out. And you're like, what?

• 1:03:11Speaker 02

  The kids who get that acting scholarship don't need to know that.

• 1:03:13Griffin Newman?

  Well, they make them watch the movie, unfortunately.

• 1:03:15David Sims?

  It's so funny that they were like, we have to have you in the movie. Why? So we can gouge your eyes out two minutes in.

• 1:03:20Griffin Newman?

  That's definitely a reshoot thing though, right? It sounded like.

• 1:03:23David Sims?

  No, that movie felt clean to me, Griff. That movie felt, nobody touched it.

• 1:03:27Griffin Newman?

  The famously bleak thing about that movie is they make the big rights deal like in summer 2020. And they were like, we don't have a script yet, but can we really wait and take the chance of Ellen Burstyn dying?

• 1:03:41Speaker 02

  Here we are six years later.

• 1:03:42Griffin Newman?

  Exactly. So they wrote a couple scenes just to be able to shoot with her in 2020, then didn't finish the script until a year later.

• 1:03:50Speaker 02

  God.

• 1:03:51Griffin Newman?

  Then when they shot the rest of the movie, they were like, huh, the stuff we shot with Burstyn doesn't really fit. So then they reshoot and they were like, what if you don't have eyes?

• 1:04:00David Sims?

  What if I gouged out to just kind of have something shocking happen halfway in the movie? She did not attend the Oscars, as we mentioned. She was busy starring in Same Time Next Year on Broadway with Charles Grodin.

• 1:04:10Speaker 02

  Oh, which is what she went to Tony for.

• 1:04:12Griffin Newman?

  Tony for. And then we'll get an Oscar nomination.

• 1:04:14David Sims?

  She thought, got, Mort Gottlieb, sounds like a guy. Uh, I'm not gonna look up who that is. Thought she should fly back to Los Angeles to take, you know, to, to, you know, go to the Oscars. And she was just like, I didn't want to disappoint people. I didn't, you know, I don't want, no offense to understudies, but like, people are paying to see me and Charles, like.

• 1:04:33Griffin Newman?

  It happened a lot in the seventies.

• 1:04:34Speaker 02

  People just didn't go to the Oscars in the seventies.

• 1:04:37Griffin Newman?

  And they went like, I didn't realize it was a big deal.

• 1:04:39Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:04:40Griffin Newman?

  And now like, when Sean Penn doesn't go, it feels like seismic.

• 1:04:43Speaker 02

  Sean Penn is the first acting winner to not go since Paul Newman won in the eighties.

• 1:04:49Griffin Newman?

  So we're not actually.

• 1:04:50David Sims?

  That is crazy.

• 1:04:51Griffin Newman?

  We're not counting Anthony Hopkins.

• 1:04:53Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. Okay. We have him in the past.

• 1:04:55David Sims?

  Forgiving him because he was.

• 1:04:56Speaker 02

  He was asleep in Wales.

• 1:04:58Griffin Newman?

  Right, right.

• 1:04:59Speaker 02

  But less living Oscar winner, non-Anthony Hopkins in the eighties. Isn't that nuts?

• 1:05:03Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:04David Sims?

  That is funny.

• 1:05:05Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:05:05David Sims?

  Remember when the Oscars were like, and now best actor. Oh, Anthony Hopkins and the father. Well, good night.

• 1:05:11Speaker 02

  You have to do your Joaquin Fetus impression while doing that.

• 1:05:14David Sims?

  I forgot it was Joaquin.

• 1:05:15Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:05:16David Sims?

  Joker himself.

• 1:05:17Speaker 02

  Just like the ultimate prank. Of the moment him being like, I really want to be.

• 1:05:20David Sims?

  Even Joaquin, the weirdest guy in the world, is like, this feels awkward. Even I'm getting a sense that this is awkward.

• 1:05:38David Sims?

  Kris Kristofferson. It's just his fifth film.

• 1:05:41Griffin Newman?

  What has he done?

• 1:05:41David Sims?

  Just done Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid.

• 1:05:43Griffin Newman?

  Well, she's phenomenal.

• 1:05:44David Sims?

  Which is such a cool movie.

• 1:05:45Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:46David Sims?

  Have you ever seen that one, Ben?

• 1:05:48Griffin Newman?

  I haven't.

• 1:05:49David Sims?

  I think.

• 1:05:49Griffin Newman?

  I know.

• 1:05:50David Sims?

  It has a bit of a vibe you might gel with.

• 1:05:53Griffin Newman?

  The Dylan connection. It's like. Dylan's really good.

• 1:05:55David Sims?

  Dylan rocks in it. The music is so cool, obviously.

• 1:05:59Speaker 02

  We'll watch it together, Ben. I haven't seen it either. I love a western.

• 1:06:01David Sims?

  You know, he's also in Dennis Hopper's insanely normal, the last movie. That's his first appearance.

• 1:06:07Griffin Newman?

  Right. Which was, that title's a threat. Dennis Hopper was like, I'm trying to end movies forever. That movie ruled.

• 1:06:14David Sims?

  That movie is very cool.

• 1:06:15Griffin Newman?

  That's another one you would like.

• 1:06:16David Sims?

  I assume you, have you been enjoying the recent Catherine Lannasa from the Pitt Press Cycle of I am haunted by Dennis Hopper's ghost?

• 1:06:24Speaker 02

  I interviewed her last year and she does just like, she will drop a Dennis Hopper, just like, it doesn't have to get into it, but just like, you know, everyone just needs to know.

• 1:06:31David Sims?

  That lady.

• 1:06:32Speaker 02

  She married him when she was like 19.

• 1:06:33Griffin Newman?

  The craziest fucking thing is she was saying like, you know, he was the great love of my life and so he continues to haunt me. Obviously, we got divorced and then he married someone else after me, but when he was dying, they were in the process of getting divorced. So I was the last person he was married to where it ended on good terms. And I'm like.

• 1:06:52David Sims?

  Hence, this ghost comes to my house.

• 1:06:53Griffin Newman?

  You also got divorced. What are you talking about?

• 1:06:56David Sims?

  But we patched it up.

• 1:06:57Griffin Newman?

  In the afterlife.

• 1:06:58Speaker 02

  And now she's married to, what's his name from Melrose Place?

• 1:07:02Griffin Newman?

  Who she married?

• 1:07:02Speaker 02

  Oh, my God. Hang on.

• 1:07:04Griffin Newman?

  Okay.

• 1:07:05David Sims?

  I love her.

• 1:07:06Speaker 02

  You can Google this faster than I can. Grant Show?

• 1:07:09David Sims?

  Oh, I love Grant Show.

• 1:07:10Speaker 02

  They, but they're married.

• 1:07:11David Sims?

  Remember when he was on the threesome show or foursome? Swingers.

• 1:07:14Griffin Newman?

  Swing town.

• 1:07:15David Sims?

  It was called Swing Town.

• 1:07:16Griffin Newman?

  Swing town, I remember.

• 1:07:17David Sims?

  CBS was like, can we do a show about swingers on CBS? And it's like, well, you're allowed to have nudity and sex in your show. And they're like, no. Well, can you have drugs in your show? Like, not really. It's like, well, then why are you making that?

• 1:07:29Griffin Newman?

  It's gonna be so risque. In episode six, someone mentions that they saw a butt.

• 1:07:36Griffin Newman?

  That's what the two thousands were like. They were so jealous of HBO and they'd be like.

• 1:07:39David Sims?

  We want one of those.

• 1:07:41Griffin Newman?

  Yeah. Dennis Lewis, the job where they were like, he's gonna say shit one time every other episode.

• 1:07:47David Sims?

  We'll, we'll, we'll, we'll give TV Guide advance warning that this is one of the episodes he says shit on. Quietly as he exits a room.

• 1:07:55Griffin Newman?

  Ah, shit.

• 1:07:56David Sims?

  Exactly. Uh, he was also in a film called, starred in a film called Cisco Pike, which I've never seen, but.

• 1:08:02Griffin Newman?

  Oh, sure.

• 1:08:03David Sims?

  It's like Gene Hackman, Karen Black, Kris Kristofferson, Harry Dance, Dean Stanton, and the Warhol superstar, Viva. I mean, like, how bad could that be? That sounds fun. Maybe a little formless. Who knows?

• 1:08:16Griffin Newman?

  I was gonna say that movie was called Quiet Calm Conversations on the Set.

• 1:08:22David Sims?

  Everyone's easy to deal with the movie.

• 1:08:25Griffin Newman?

  Disagreements. The motion picture.

• 1:08:28David Sims?

  And then he's in something called Bloom in Love, a Paul Mazurski movie I've never seen, starring George Segal, where I assume he's got. Like, I feel like he was often kind of the energy beardo guy, right? You know, he's coming in off the bench.

• 1:08:43Griffin Newman?

  I was double checking this.

• 1:08:43David Sims?

  You some sort of hot, cool energy.

• 1:08:46Griffin Newman?

  Viva is Gabby Hoffman's mother.

• 1:08:47David Sims?

  Oh, there you go.

• 1:08:48Griffin Newman?

  Yes, right. I was trying to remember who it was, but yes, sorry. Go on.

• 1:08:52David Sims?

  So Scorsese is like meeting him and basically being like, I love Pat Garrett. And Kristofferson's like, everyone fucking hated that movie. What's the matter with you? And, uh, you know, they had a great relationship after some early, you know, nervousness or whatever.

• 1:09:11David Sims?

  Kristofferson, this is an interesting way Burstyn puts it. It's like, he just couldn't accept that he was an actor. After every take, he'd cringe and be like, oh, man, that was dog shit. Like, he just had no, like, you know, confidence in his own ability. And I bet you that Burstyn and Scorsese are both kind of like, I don't know, man. Pretty hot.

• 1:09:29Speaker 02

  I know if I'm Ellen Burstyn, I'm so annoyed by that being like, dude, get on my level.

• 1:09:33David Sims?

  No, she loves it. She says he was wonderful. Like, you know, we would be really connected. He was a new voice in America. Like, I mean, you know, how, how do you not have a crush on this guy, you know?

• 1:09:46Griffin Newman?

  Marty?

• 1:09:47David Sims?

  No, but Kris, Kris Kristofferson.

• 1:09:49Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:09:49David Sims?

  Marty, I feel like you're a little more like, oh, Marty, you're so great.

• 1:09:52Griffin Newman?

  No, Kris Kristofferson is just one of the most, I feel like inarguably hot people.

• 1:09:57David Sims?

  He's just the camera lover.

• 1:09:59Speaker 02

  Crazy.

• 1:10:00Griffin Newman?

  Unbelievable. Yeah.

• 1:10:02David Sims?

  Alfred Lutter, who plays little Tommy, they did, they saw 300 Kids.

• 1:10:06Griffin Newman?

  So goodness.

• 1:10:08David Sims?

  And Sandy Weintraub, the, you know, says, hey, Marty, you gotta see this guy. She, he sees this kid. And they say, what do you want to be when you grow up? And he says, a stand-up comic.

• 1:10:16Griffin Newman?

  Marty must have loved that.

• 1:10:18David Sims?

  And exactly. They're, they're, and he's like, let's get him in the room with Ellen. And they're like, hey, just, you know, improv or whatever. And, uh, they start just kind of like bouncing off each other. And there you go. He's really great.

• 1:10:29Speaker 02

  Do we have any idea how much, how much of their scenes together are improv?

• 1:10:32David Sims?

  I think a lot. I think a lot of their kind of rat-a-tat is like, you know, they're back and forth stuff.

• 1:10:37Speaker 02

  So perfect.

• 1:10:38Griffin Newman?

  Yes. And you kind of can't script that stuff, especially as a child.

• 1:10:41David Sims?

  The way she's kind of like, what? You know, like half the time, like that way you are as a parent where you're like, I'm picking up, I think I'm picking up where you're putting up, but what are you talking about?

• 1:10:48Speaker 02

  This is like the huge thing for me in this, in both the times I've watched it, again, having an almost 10 year old. It's like, when you like, love this kid and you had to put up with him, but like, if he tells you that story one more fucking time, you're gonna jump out the window. That joke that he's trying to tell her, where she's like crying, asking him to stop telling that joke.

• 1:11:04Griffin Newman?

  He, he reminds me a lot of myself in that way, when, when you tell me about these things. Yes.

• 1:11:09Speaker 02

  Just like, I mean, they're like, the dynamic of your kid who you love and is the thing you'll do anything for, but you're like, you're so annoying. I cannot listen to you for another moment. I think she is meaner to her kid. David, you can tell me what you think than I would be to my children. I would not.

• 1:11:22Griffin Newman?

  Bit of a breaking point in this film.

• 1:11:24Speaker 02

  Them out of the car and make them walk the final mile to get home, I would think.

• 1:11:28David Sims?

  Yeah, no.

• 1:11:29Speaker 02

  There are, but there are some relatable moments in this movie.

• 1:11:32David Sims?

  I would say there's some seventies, like, oh, you'd get a phone call about this these days.

• 1:11:38Griffin Newman?

  I mean, it's a movie that builds to spanking. It is a movie about how do you.

• 1:11:42Speaker 02

  We'll talk about the hitting kids part of it too. Or like Jodie Foster, juvenile delinquency and.

• 1:11:47Griffin Newman?

  Jodie Foster.

• 1:11:48Speaker 02

  Holy shit. She's amazing.

• 1:11:49Griffin Newman?

  It's unbelievable.

• 1:11:50Speaker 02

  Well, I assume we'll get to her in the dossier also.

• 1:11:52David Sims?

  I am about to tell you that Jodie Foster shot all her stuff two days.

• 1:11:56Griffin Newman?

  Wow.

• 1:11:56Speaker 02

  Oh, my God.

• 1:11:57David Sims?

  Real pro.

• 1:11:58Speaker 02

  What a pro.

• 1:11:58David Sims?

  It was like doing another commercial first. She came in, bang, bang, bang. Two days, she knew all her stuff.

• 1:12:02Griffin Newman?

  Two days, two bottles of wine. That was all.

• 1:12:06David Sims?

  And this is a Scorsese. And there's this damn situation with the welfare workers where a woman came over to me and said, "Stop." And I was like, "What do you mean, 'stop'?" And they were like, "Stop, she has to go to school." And I was like, "Okay."

• 1:12:15Griffin Newman?

  She's Jodie Foster. She's in the grand tradition, Judy Garland. Judy Garland, we're 20 hours a day.

• 1:12:19David Sims?

  Uh, you know, they've got a lot of like actor studios, people kind of peppered in the background here, a lot of Ellen Burstyn faves, you know, are filling in the cast. What were you gonna say, Katie?

• 1:12:29Speaker 02

  Oh, just where Jodie Foster was, and I got on her Wikipedia page. She was like doing Disney stuff, but this is still before anything where she's a star.

• 1:12:36David Sims?

  Obviously, this is how Marnie knows her for Taxi Driver, which is the next movie he makes. Uh, but she's really only done a couple of movies. Right. She's and but but she's like a TV star, right? Like she's.

• 1:12:47Griffin Newman?

  She did the Paper Moon TV show.

• 1:12:49David Sims?

  We love it.

• 1:12:51Speaker 02

  Didn't know that existed.

• 1:12:51Griffin Newman?

  She played Addie Prey on that. Am I wrong in thinking that she even replaced Tatum O'Neil in some later version of Bad News Bears? Or am I conflating the two things? I know she was the voice of one of Charlie Chan's children on the Hannibal Barrett Charlie Chan cartoon, which I'm looking up here, has aged perfectly.

• 1:13:09David Sims?

  I was about to say, sounds like something you'd want to be pushing out right now.

• 1:13:12Speaker 02

  Something that you would know and no one else would know.

• 1:13:14Griffin Newman?

  Correct. This is a perfect junk in my brain forever.

• 1:13:17David Sims?

  You're conflating that Jodie Foster was supposed to be the star of Bad News Bears, turned it down to do a little movie called Taxi Driver.

• 1:13:25Griffin Newman?

  There we go.

• 1:13:25David Sims?

  Yes. But no, she'd done some Disney movies. She'd done a lot of like TV stuff.

• 1:13:30Speaker 02

  And Freaky Friday is much later. That's after Taxi Driver.

• 1:13:33David Sims?

  Like, I think, right? Like, it's like, that's, uh, that's the same year as Taxi Driver.

• 1:13:38Speaker 02

  That's nuts.

• 1:13:39Griffin Newman?

  That's nuts.

• 1:13:40David Sims?

  What can I tell you?

• 1:13:41Griffin Newman?

  You can do it all.

• 1:13:42David Sims?

  And Bugsy Malone is also the same year.

• 1:13:44Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 1:13:45Griffin Newman?

  All three of those are 76.

• 1:13:46David Sims?

  Wow. But, you know, she'd done the, uh, the, the Tom Sawyer movie. She's basically like sort of the second lead of that. That's before, whatever, you know, she's a punky little kid, little tomboy. That's her thing.

• 1:14:00Speaker 02

  The perfection of her as a queer icon in this movie, like just from the jump of her being like, "Yeah, this is funny." This woman had to come out of the Golden Globes 40 years later.

• 1:14:08Griffin Newman?

  It is so funny that it's like this overt in this movie, and then it's just like, "Quietly, let's just go back in the closet and not really talk about it for a while."

• 1:14:16Speaker 02

  They weren't ready.

• 1:14:17Griffin Newman?

  Uh, I want to call out, uh, Lea Goldani. Goldoni?

• 1:14:22David Sims?

  Yeah, sure.

• 1:14:22Griffin Newman?

  Who was the female lead in Shadows, the Cassavetes movie?

• 1:14:25David Sims?

  Ooh, yeah. Leila. Leila.

• 1:14:27Griffin Newman?

  Leila Goldani. Um, but is a movie about, uh, white passing African Americans?

• 1:14:33David Sims?

  I mean, if you've ever seen that iconic Shadows poster, that's her face.

• 1:14:36Griffin Newman?

  She is incredible in that film.

• 1:14:38David Sims?

  Yes.

• 1:14:38Griffin Newman?

  She was a fully Caucasian woman. The success of that movie, critically.

• 1:14:43David Sims?

  She's Italian, I believe.

• 1:14:44Griffin Newman?

  Yes. Uh, damaged her career.

• 1:14:46David Sims?

  Right, because they assumed, right.

• 1:14:48Griffin Newman?

  It's this insane thing where she was a white person playing a white passing black person who then lost roles because people assumed she was black and couldn't play white. So it just feels like this was kind of a men she moved for Scorsese to throw her a role.

• 1:15:02David Sims?

  And like we said, you know, he's, he's a devotee of Cassavetes.

• 1:15:06Speaker 02

  Well, and she's in, what, two scenes, like in the very beginning where they're doing like the dress fitting and then the yard sale.

• 1:15:11David Sims?

  She's the one who's with her when she gets the phone call that her husband.

• 1:15:14Speaker 02

  Like, that relationship between the two of them is so perfect and real, and you know so much about them. So as soon as she gets that phone call and then they say goodbye at the car and like the little boys are rolling their eyes at them and they're so emotional. It's just wonderful.

• 1:15:26Griffin Newman?

  She got a BAFTA nom for this.

• 1:15:28Speaker 02

  Oh, my God. Deserved.

• 1:15:29David Sims?

  They loved this movie.

• 1:15:32Griffin Newman?

  Alice Fever. They gave it Best Picture, right? I think they did.

• 1:15:36David Sims?

  Um, yeah, the BAFTAs loved this movie. This movie traveled well, I guess.

• 1:15:40Speaker 02

  Did they nominate Diane Ladd also?

• 1:15:42David Sims?

  Well, the Oscars did, obviously.

• 1:15:44Griffin Newman?

  I believe so. Let me double check that. But I think it won screenplay picture actress. And then it got, yes, it got double noms. Diane Ladd won the BAFTA.

• 1:15:54Speaker 02

  Oh, my God.

• 1:15:55Griffin Newman?

  Lea Goldani was nominated.

• 1:15:56David Sims?

  And this is, you know, the BAFTAs treated this like a 75, because they didn't make it to Europe till 75. So this would be 1976 BAFTAs.

• 1:16:04Griffin Newman?

  So it's beating.

• 1:16:05David Sims?

  It won, it beat Barry Lyndon Dog Day Afternoon in Jaws, which I might have some notes on that, as much as I like this movie. Uh, and she won Best Actress and, uh, and Diane Ladd won Best Supporting Actress and it won Best Screenplay. Yeah, they fucking went nuts for it. I can only imagine the British viewing audience being like, "What's this movie about? Like an Arizona diner waitress is better than Barry Lyndon? Are we sure?"

• 1:16:27Griffin Newman?

  Jenna Rowland's won the Golden Globe.

• 1:16:31David Sims?

  Uh huh.

• 1:16:32Griffin Newman?

  Against her.

• 1:16:32David Sims?

  She's pretty good in that, uh, that there movie.

• 1:16:34Griffin Newman?

  I think it's maybe the best performance ever committed to film. Burstyn didn't win any of the Critics Awards. So I think it must have been seen as a slight surprise, especially considering the BAFTAs come so much later, because I think basically New York Film Critics, NBR, uh, they all gave it to Jenna Rowland.

• 1:16:53Speaker 02

  Sure. It's a tough call, man.

• 1:16:55Griffin Newman?

  It's a tough call.

• 1:16:57David Sims?

  Who am I giving it to? I guess we'll find out.

• 1:16:59Speaker 02

  Oh, get that spreadsheet going. Anybody nominate Alfred Lutter?

• 1:17:03David Sims?

  Indeed gave it to one Jenna Rowland's for A Woman Under the Influence. My other nominee, Sissy Spacek for Bad. Wait, why do I have Faye Dunaway for Chinatown here?

• 1:17:12Griffin Newman?

  I don't know. You're a crazy person.

• 1:17:13David Sims?

  Uh, Ellen Burstyn, Brigitte Mira for All You Fear It's the Soul.

• 1:17:17Griffin Newman?

  Oh, sure.

• 1:17:17David Sims?

  Incredible movie. Uh, anyway, the movie Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore is about a lady named Alice Hyatt, who lives in New Mexico and has a kid, uh, whose name is.

• 1:17:30Speaker 02

  Tommy?

• 1:17:31David Sims?

  Sounds right.

• 1:17:32Griffin Newman?

  Wanted to be a singer. Damn it, she is a singer. Is a singer.

• 1:17:35David Sims?

  Uh, she's a former singer, and now she's married to a guy called Donald, who is a Coca-Cola delivery truck driver, played by Billy Greenbush.

• 1:17:44Griffin Newman?

  This guy sucks.

• 1:17:45Speaker 02

  Real piece of work.

• 1:17:46David Sims?

  But who, he sucks in just kind of like a boring shitty way.

• 1:17:49Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:17:49David Sims?

  It's not even like a true kind of like page turning melodrama, kind of like, "He's the nastiest husband and she casts it." It's just like, she's just stuck with this loser.

• 1:17:59Speaker 02

  Or not even like Harvey Keitel later, where you're like, "He's got charisma."

• 1:18:02David Sims?

  He's just a fucking loser.

• 1:18:03Griffin Newman?

  Keitel is compellingly awful.

• 1:18:05Speaker 02

  Oh, my God.

• 1:18:06David Sims?

  Yeah, and it's Keitel too. So you're kind of like, "Hmm, can't stop looking at this guy."

• 1:18:09Griffin Newman?

  We've been talking about this, Katie. It is just so funny that for Who's That Knock at My Door and Mean Streets, Keitel is Scorsese's analog. It is, and in a way where past those two movies, I would say Scorsese does not have self-insert characters. You feel him as the character watching the movie and making the movie, but there doesn't feel like there's someone who represents him. The second he stops having those characters, he's like, "Harvey, here's the deal. I'll still put you in my movies. You only play the most contemptible people in the world."

• 1:18:37David Sims?

  You play real shithead.

• 1:18:38Griffin Newman?

  Child pedophile Judas.

• 1:18:40Speaker 02

  Judas, literal Judas.

• 1:18:41David Sims?

  Hey, it's a complex portrayal of Judas, okay? Yes, the name is, name is a bit of a scarlet letter or whatever.

• 1:18:48Griffin Newman?

  But it's funny that in this one, you're like, "Oh, maybe he plays like a sweet guy."

• 1:18:51David Sims?

  He's like, "Hey, I'm your friend."

• 1:18:52Speaker 02

  And you're like, "He's good looking? Like, I know this guy. Let's see what he does."

• 1:18:56David Sims?

  Big a mess.

• 1:19:00David Sims?

  So, yeah, I mean, Ben, what do you, Ben, what did you think of this movie? I haven't, uh, I haven't even gotten your take yet, because I feel like it's a kind of a bad movie.

• 1:19:07Speaker 03

  I had never seen it before.

• 1:19:08David Sims?

  No, sure. No, I just mean like the vibe is sort of Ben appropriate.

• 1:19:11Speaker 03

  I loved it.

• 1:19:11David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:12Griffin Newman?

  It's really good.

• 1:19:12Speaker 03

  It's, it, um, it really reminded me of my mom and our dynamic.

• 1:19:17Speaker 02

  Your mom sounds really cool.

• 1:19:19David Sims?

  And I can see Ben having a bit of a Tommy, you know, little Ben.

• 1:19:22Speaker 03

  A hundred percent. But she, uh, my mom was, uh, so funny and silly, but slightly aloof. Like she was always a little unknowable. So I just, yeah, I really saw a lot of her in this character.

• 1:19:36Griffin Newman?

  Hey, Ben, the actor Alfred Lutter, who plays Tommy, New Jersey legend.

• 1:19:42Speaker 03

  Oh.

• 1:19:43Griffin Newman?

  He's from Ridgewood. He graduated from Ridgewood High School. Then he got a Bachelor of Science and Civil Engineering from Stanford.

• 1:19:50David Sims?

  Well, that's not New Jersey, but sure.

• 1:19:52Griffin Newman?

  Well, it's still, but we can be proud of him.

• 1:19:54David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:55Griffin Newman?

  Master of Science degree. He founded Lutter Consulting, a company providing technology strategy. And he later started a website called Lynda.com. What is Lynda.com?

• 1:20:06Speaker 02

  It has a Wikipedia page.

• 1:20:08Griffin Newman?

  Lynda.com became LinkedIn Learning.

• 1:20:11David Sims?

  Oh, wow. It's sort of like, uh, online.

• 1:20:15Griffin Newman?

  It was an online learning site that LinkedIn bought. Wow.

• 1:20:20Speaker 02

  He was like an early tech guy.

• 1:20:21Griffin Newman?

  Yeah. The original tech man.

• 1:20:24David Sims?

  The original tech man, they call him.

• 1:20:25Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:25Speaker 02

  Well, I, so the, the, this movie reminding you of your mom, Ben, is, I think is another thing that feels so important about it to me, that it's about like the relationship between a parent and a child in a way that I just don't think that many movies do it, where it's like, it's a relationship. There's a push and a pull. It's not about a mother's love. It's not about like a kid looking up to their parents. It's like actually complicated. And I can't get over how like real that feels and how rare it is. Maybe you guys have better examples than I do.

• 1:20:50Griffin Newman?

  No, I'm thinking as a counterpoint to this Kramer versus Kramer, which is not a movie I love, where.

• 1:20:55David Sims?

  But it's a very watchable, well acted movie.

• 1:20:58Griffin Newman?

  It's a bad film, but it's not a movie I deeply care for. And a lot of people credit Hoffman's Oscar win for how good he is with the kid. But that feels a little more like an actor showing off how good his chemistry can be with a kid. And that movie also sets him up to be like, "You'll never believe how surprisingly good this guy is." Like, it's like Big Daddy without the jokes of like, "He really gets it together."

• 1:21:21Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:21:21Griffin Newman?

  I, it doesn't feel like a very accurate portrayal.

• 1:21:25Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:21:25Griffin Newman?

  And it, it's so reductive in sort of the way it treats the Meryl Streep character.

• 1:21:29Speaker 02

  It's like so plot driven, being like, can he step up to it?

• 1:21:32Griffin Newman?

  Totally. And it's like, "Oh, he makes good breakfast. What an incredible dad."

• 1:21:35Speaker 02

  Yeah. And like in the very beginning of this movie, the husband's being a jerk about something or another, and she goes over to the son and she's basically like, "Hey, look, help me out here. You gotta get, we gotta get around this guy." Like, they are co-conspirators getting through this. And that is so often what, especially as your kids get older and you can be like, "Look, give me a break here. I'm trying my best. You're trying your best." Like, it's almost like she's letting him kind of see, like, she's just a person who's trying to figure this out. And again, she's making some choices I wouldn't make. But I love that it makes it, they're not equals, but it makes it a real back and forth, which parent-child things don't do often.

• 1:22:05Griffin Newman?

  Well, let's also call out the inciting incident of this movie, which is.

• 1:22:08David Sims?

  It's hard to get kids to act on screen like this. Like, it's impressive, you know, yeah.

• 1:22:11Griffin Newman?

  Uh, her piece of shit husband dies. They get in a bad fight.

• 1:22:15David Sims?

  Yes.

• 1:22:16Griffin Newman?

  He hits her. It does not seem like this is the first or only time this has happened.

• 1:22:19David Sims?

  He's a loser. He sucks.

• 1:22:21Griffin Newman?

  And then a day later, he dies in a meaningless Coca-Cola truck accident.

• 1:22:25David Sims?

  Well, it's meaningful. All that Coke's not gonna get delivered.

• 1:22:28Griffin Newman?

  But I'm saying.

• 1:22:29David Sims?

  There's people thirsty.

• 1:22:29Speaker 03

  See out there.

• 1:22:30Griffin Newman?

  You're right. You're right.

• 1:22:32Speaker 03

  They need a pep in their.

• 1:22:33Griffin Newman?

  It was a costly death.

• 1:22:34Speaker 02

  Didn't you just imagine like little Marty like staging that accident, like the tableau of like the people hanging out of the car? It's just like, there's some blood on the street. It's perfect.

• 1:22:42Griffin Newman?

  Well, you also imagine him being friends with Spielberg and being jealous of like duel and being like, I have one shot to show the aftermath of duel, you know? They're not letting me stage action sequences yet.

• 1:22:53Speaker 02

  Nope.

• 1:22:54Griffin Newman?

  But she's grieving a bad relationship.

• 1:22:57Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:22:57Griffin Newman?

  She's experiencing real grief for this and her son is as well. And she tries to take this as an opportunity to uproot her life, something she's clearly dreamed of doing, but not felt the courage to do. It felt too radical to blow up her life in order to do that. But now her life is blown up for her. And so so much of the weird tension between her and her son is that her son is like grieving the loss of a father who he's starting to realize like maybe sucks.

• 1:23:21Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah. And the kid is just getting into the age where you start thinking of your parents as people too.

• 1:23:26Griffin Newman?

  He was already feeling that way.

• 1:23:28Speaker 02

  Yeah. Like he's at the perfect phase to see her as a person and to look back at his dad. It's not just like a hero.

• 1:23:33Griffin Newman?

  Right. He was putting salt in the coffee, which does feel, let's call it out, very Ben.

• 1:23:39Speaker 03

  That's a little Ben move.

• 1:23:41Griffin Newman?

  Definitely. Yeah.

• 1:23:42Speaker 02

  Ben, I was wondering if like something where she's saying like, if you keep your mouth open one more time, I'm gonna throw you out. He just like opens his mouth as wide as he can. Is that a little Ben move?

• 1:23:49Speaker 03

  Yes, definitely. Like, I'll show you. I know the workaround.

• 1:23:54Speaker 02

  You can't slam my mouth shut while you're driving.

• 1:23:58David Sims?

  So what happened? So his husband dies. I think it's really well played by her where she's sad because her husband died. Plays the emotion quite honestly. But just you just kind of buy that she pretty quickly is kind of like snapped out of a dream or whatever, like that she's just kind of like, let's just go. Like, there's nothing fucking, there's no reason for us to be here. Like.

• 1:24:19Griffin Newman?

  Well, it's the past tense, present tense thing of like, I think of myself as someone who wanted to be a singer and didn't have the courage to follow through.

• 1:24:25David Sims?

  Right.

• 1:24:25Griffin Newman?

  And then she just decides like, I am a singer. I sing. There's nothing keeping me here. Why not reconstruct my life around this dream?

• 1:24:33Speaker 02

  And fairly quickly, that scene of her singing at the piano at home where like it lingers on her singing for a while and you get the kid outside and he's kind of like reframing how he thinks of her. Like, it's an interesting venture into his perspective about her talent, which you don't get that much of. And it's, I mean, it's just like really well done. That's one of the early moments where you're like, oh, here's, here's Marty testing it out, figuring out what he can do with the camera.

• 1:24:52Griffin Newman?

  And the Leila Goldauny character reads as her one person support system. Where you're just like, this is kind of scary for her to go out. There are no, you know, she, there's the notion of the family home of going back to where she came from. But it doesn't feel like there's a solid base of support from her family extended.

• 1:25:12Speaker 02

  Yeah. Do we even know who's in Monterey? Like she talks about it all the time, but like, who are they going to?

• 1:25:16Griffin Newman?

  Not really?

• 1:25:17Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:25:18David Sims?

  Yeah. I mean, you also have no sense of the kid's life, but he's a kid, I guess.

• 1:25:23Speaker 02

  It's gonna make those kids go where you want them to.

• 1:25:25David Sims?

  He could be like, I have friends at school. It's like, too bad, baby. We're fucking in the.

• 1:25:29Speaker 02

  We got Jodie Foster and some wine waiting for you.

• 1:25:32David Sims?

  So she gets them to Phoenix, right? Like, that's where she gets them to where she starts singing. I mean, this says she finds work as a lounge singer, like in the narrative.

• 1:25:42Griffin Newman?

  Kind of.

• 1:25:43David Sims?

  I would barely call what she's singing in lounges. It's like, if there's like a microphone over there, if you really want to go over.

• 1:25:50Speaker 02

  The griminess of these bars that she's going to, like bars in the seventies just were not, they didn't seem like fun places to hang out.

• 1:25:56David Sims?

  I had my antenna up the whole time. I'm like, geez, is someone gonna be like a mega creep or whatever? And instead they're all just kind of like, I don't know. Like, you know.

• 1:26:03Griffin Newman?

  There's the.

• 1:26:03David Sims?

  They're mostly just kind of like old. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But no one's ever like, oh yeah, you can have this gig if you come with me over here.

• 1:26:10Griffin Newman?

  There's no compliance.

• 1:26:12Speaker 03

  But this was kind of a style of a bar of a very particular time.

• 1:26:16David Sims?

  And basically just like, kind of don't bug anyone. Like, sing something that'll be nice in the background, but like.

• 1:26:21Griffin Newman?

  This is like a little value add on beyond.

• 1:26:24Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:26:24David Sims?

  Right.

• 1:26:25Speaker 02

  Right. Bars with no windows. Like, I remember them being somewhere around when I was a kid, like after this. But like you would never, like, women wouldn't go to these bars, much like, you wouldn't bring your kids into any of these places.

• 1:26:35Griffin Newman?

  But let's also just call out the like, the velvet opening titles, then this like blood red, soundstage completely, as you said, very like beginning of Wizard of Oz.

• 1:26:45David Sims?

  It felt like the one big idea Marty has, right? Like, he's like, I want to do this. I know I don't have a lot of money, but like, I want to do this one thing.

• 1:26:52Griffin Newman?

  Right. This, this little girl like practicing this hymn over and over again. It literally says like Monterey, California, Alice, a young girl.

• 1:26:59Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:27:00Griffin Newman?

  And then it's just sort of like her loneliness. You only see her parents in like silhouette, basically.

• 1:27:04Speaker 02

  And they're like yelling at her.

• 1:27:05Griffin Newman?

  Yeah. You, you get a sense of why this person didn't have the courage to follow their dreams and has settled in their life.

• 1:27:12Speaker 03

  That's what this movie brought.

• 1:27:13Griffin Newman?

  And she's singing a song about caring and no one cares about her.

• 1:27:16Speaker 03

  I mean, he was a good kisser, guys.

• 1:27:19Speaker 02

  Oh, the husband?

• 1:27:20David Sims?

  Give it up for Donald. I think that's his name. Donald.

• 1:27:23Speaker 02

  I love when she tells the kid, like, ask me again in a few years and I'll explain it to you. It's like, what are you gonna say to him when he's 14?

• 1:27:28Griffin Newman?

  Yeah. It's not a good conversation. That's, that's really just pushing things off.

• 1:27:32Speaker 03

  Well, I think she'll say to slightly open your mouth.

• 1:27:35Speaker 02

  Uh huh.

• 1:27:36Speaker 03

  Instead of like, you know, try and tighten your lips.

• 1:27:38Griffin Newman?

  While you're, you're about to eat someone's skull with that kind of pet mouth right now.

• 1:27:43David Sims?

  This film was shot in Tucson, Arizona, where it's set.

• 1:27:46Speaker 02

  Why is it set in Arizona?

• 1:27:48David Sims?

  Why not?

• 1:27:48Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 1:27:49David Sims?

  But I don't want to tell you.

• 1:27:50Griffin Newman?

  Really good answer.

• 1:27:51David Sims?

  Don't really know. I mean, Marty says it was a movie town. You could do anything you want there. It's a great town to shoot in.

• 1:27:56Speaker 02

  I was just thinking about Spielberg, like having kind of that like Southern US part of things to himself and Marty being like, let me out of New York.

• 1:28:02David Sims?

  It's a place back then, you know, Arizona in, you know, after the war, but you know, 60s, 70s, it's sort of like, there's a ton of space. It's cheap as hell and it's growing. And like, it's not even really begun to explode in the way that the Southwest would. But like, it makes sense for somewhere someone's gonna go where it's like, well, you know, there'll be something for me to do over there, right? You know, like, it's like.

• 1:28:22Speaker 02

  Jodie Foster says it's a weird place.

• 1:28:24David Sims?

  I think it's a weird. I mean, like, honestly, like, the Southwest obviously has its own character to it now. But yeah, back then, I bet you it was pretty weird.

• 1:28:31Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:28:31David Sims?

  Like a lot of.

• 1:28:31Speaker 02

  I don't know a single thing about Tucson, except for what I saw in this movie, basically.

• 1:28:35David Sims?

  I think, I don't know much about Tucson either. It's not far from Phoenix. I think of it as the kind of crunchier, more liberal cousin to Phoenix. It's a big town. I don't know.

• 1:28:43Griffin Newman?

  The Jodie line is my favorite single line of writing in this movie, which is weird, very weird. He's even weird for Tucson and Tucson is the weird capital of the world.

• 1:28:51David Sims?

  Right. I mean, it's, it's the college, you know, it's where the University of Arizona is. So it's got the, you know, you know, the, you know, from college towns. You're a southern gal from college towns.

• 1:29:01Speaker 02

  Duke University right around the corner.

• 1:29:03Griffin Newman?

  You live in like an old school house, right? You like accidentally became.

• 1:29:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly. I don't just live with a 10 year old and a seven year old. I live with like 20, 20 year olds.

• 1:29:11Griffin Newman?

  Or I guess more of a neighbor's house, maybe.

• 1:29:12Speaker 02

  Yeah. You're warring with the frat boys at the store.

• 1:29:16David Sims?

  So, yeah, they went a week over, uh, production, you know, they went a week over schedule, went a little over budget. You know, it's Marty just getting ready for his real sojourns over budget.

• 1:29:26Griffin Newman?

  But a little over budget's 1.6 million.

• 1:29:28David Sims?

  Yeah, it was budgeted at 1.6 and ended up more like 1.8 or whatever.

• 1:29:32Griffin Newman?

  Sure.

• 1:29:33David Sims?

  There was a gas crisis, which was an issue that to do with that.

• 1:29:36Griffin Newman?

  Interesting. I was gonna say, this was also, you know, Mean Streets was basically an independent film that became a negative pickup for Warner Brothers. This is him like making a film for Warner Brothers. I think that must have also been appealing to him. You know, it's a lot easier to sell them. David's showing us his shirt.

• 1:29:52David Sims?

  I'm wearing the seventies logo.

• 1:29:53Griffin Newman?

  It's a lot easier to sell them on something like Taxi Driver that seems really risky at Columbia, when it's like, you made a studio film, you were responsible enough, the amount you went over budget was more than covered by the success and you won someone an Oscar.

• 1:30:07Speaker 02

  Do we think he had final cut on this? Probably not, right?

• 1:30:09David Sims?

  Definitely not.

• 1:30:09Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:30:11David Sims?

  Well, you never know in the seventies, I guess.

• 1:30:12Griffin Newman?

  I don't think they cared as much.

• 1:30:14David Sims?

  I don't know.

• 1:30:15Griffin Newman?

  If you tested well, they wouldn't.

• 1:30:16David Sims?

  Yeah. My guess is, well, anyway.

• 1:30:18Griffin Newman?

  And they're not like, look, on page 15, we need Alice already at the diner. Like, they're not coming in with those dumb notes.

• 1:30:25David Sims?

  I will say, and yet this was turned into a sitcom.

• 1:30:29Speaker 02

  They got Alice at the diner.

• 1:30:30David Sims?

  New Hollywood. And then they're, they watch and they're like, I get nice seasons out of this.

• 1:30:33Griffin Newman?

  But actually diner page one every Tuesday night.

• 1:30:37David Sims?

  Why do they end up in Tucson? Well, there was literally a gas crisis and they could not make it to Tucson, basically. It has nothing to do with the picture. It has everything to do with production is what Martin's.

• 1:30:46Griffin Newman?

  Wow. Okay.

• 1:30:47David Sims?

  There you go. Everything, nothing was shot in LA, except the opening sequence was on a lot, obviously. The, the, the red prologue, he basically says, I had a chance to use a Hollywood set. How else are you gonna do a flashback? How do you want to do a flashback? That's the whole point. Goddamn script opened and said flashback 1948 Monterey, California. And he was just adamant, you know, they're like, what if you do like black and white? Like that, that would make more sense. And he's just like, the character's hung up on movies. I feel like she would remember in this kind of half fantasy way. It should look like a 40s movie. It should look kind of indoors. He admits, I got a little crazy with the redness.

• 1:31:28Griffin Newman?

  It's very red.

• 1:31:29David Sims?

  I had fun with the fog. It feels like Marty being like, I love old movies.

• 1:31:34Griffin Newman?

  Let me make stuff.

• 1:31:35David Sims?

  Access just for a day or two to the tricks and tools.

• 1:31:39Griffin Newman?

  Who knows how long I get this.

• 1:31:40Speaker 02

  Has he ever been on a soundstage before doing that? Like, probably not, right?

• 1:31:43David Sims?

  And he says, it's a square screen. It's 130 to the Academy ratio. You know, the first scene is Tobacco Road. It's copied exactly. Obviously Wizard of Oz, Dueling the Sun for the redness of the sky, Little East of Eden, Little Gone with the Wind. You know, he's got a lot of.

• 1:31:57Griffin Newman?

  It was like.

• 1:31:58David Sims?

  Will and Cameron Menzies, Invaders from Mars.

• 1:32:01Griffin Newman?

  Of course. It's like, it was like one fifth of the budget.

• 1:32:05David Sims?

  It cost $85,000, which was a lot. So yeah. And he's like, and my first feature, Who's That Knockin' costs $35,000 for the whole movie.

• 1:32:13Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 1:32:15David Sims?

  So yeah, it's like him for the first time getting to, you know, play in Hollywood.

• 1:32:19Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:32:20David Sims?

  And Warner Brothers watches the movie and their one thing is like, can we fucking cut that weird, crazy opening with all the red? And Marty's like, take my name off the picture. Like, I'm going crazy. You know, like immediately. I'm sure they were just like, oh, Jesus, who cares?

• 1:32:37David Sims?

  Burson ran into Peter Bogdanovich and says, I'm doing Alice with this guy, Martin Scorsese. And he said, tell him not to move his camera so much. And Ellen says, I did not relay that to Marty.

• 1:32:46Griffin Newman?

  He moves it quite a bit. It's funny how.

• 1:32:48David Sims?

  Loves to move that camera.

• 1:32:49Griffin Newman?

  This feels like his most kinetic camera work until Goodfellas.

• 1:32:53Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:32:54Griffin Newman?

  This movie in sequences has the coke energy and the way the camera moves into the conversations.

• 1:32:59David Sims?

  Yes.

• 1:33:00Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:33:01David Sims?

  One idea, he wanted as many women in authority on the picture as possible. Sandy Weintrup is the producer. Toby Raffelson, art director. Marcia Lucas is the editor. He wanted it to be as honest as possible. He wasn't trying to make a feminist tract, but he wants this movie, you know, about women to be in front of women and being like.

• 1:33:18Speaker 02

  He wanted to find out what women are like.

• 1:33:19Griffin Newman?

  Know what you don't know.

• 1:33:20David Sims?

  Yeah. And trusts Marcia's judgment implicitly. And he says like, hey, you know, I know a stained glass guy.

• 1:33:27Speaker 02

  I was delighted by the return of Marcia Lucas as a character for this podcast. I don't know how long it's been since you guys have gotten into martial lore.

• 1:33:33David Sims?

  She only edits, what, his first three or four? Like it's a Taxi Driver. Is Taxi Driver the last time?

• 1:33:38Griffin Newman?

  I think so.

• 1:33:38David Sims?

  With him? Cause Thelma reappears.

• 1:33:40Griffin Newman?

  And then she goes on to Star Wars.

• 1:33:41David Sims?

  Oh, no, New York, New York is her last.

• 1:33:42Griffin Newman?

  Oh, okay.

• 1:33:43David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 1:33:44Griffin Newman?

  Which was famously easy movie to edit. Settled.

• 1:33:47Speaker 02

  And to make.

• 1:33:48Griffin Newman?

  Yes. Yes. Everything about it.

• 1:33:50David Sims?

  The first cut, okay, this is your thing. The assembly was three hours and 16 minutes. Ton of character stuff gets thrown out. You know, like the husband, there's a lot more of him, you know? I mean, wisely, they reduced him to about 10 minutes. He's like, we have to get in the car.

• 1:34:07Speaker 02

  You don't need anything from him to find out what his deal is.

• 1:34:10Griffin Newman?

  That's the difference is, you know, Cassavetes was like, I want to make movies primarily out of the scenes that anyone else would cut out of a film. The scenes that are not the interesting part or the exciting part, but I want to show where the drama is in that. And it makes sense that Marty would want to shoot all of those things and then ultimately whittle it down to that stuff helps inform the other stuff. Keep the most exciting moments and the major plot points. It helps that he dies within 15 minutes or less.

• 1:34:37David Sims?

  Completely agree. Yeah. Now, I want to talk about, I want to give you some news on the, like some research on the ending, but let's talk about the movie first to get to the ending, because it's an iconic ending, obviously. But shithead husband dies. She goes to, she goes to Phoenix. She starts being a lounge singer and she meets a handsome fellow.

• 1:34:54Griffin Newman?

  Harvey Keitel, chill.

• 1:34:55Speaker 02

  She calls him a baby, one or a child?

• 1:34:58David Sims?

  Kind of a baby face. And he has kind of the mopy haircut, like it makes him look younger.

• 1:35:02Griffin Newman?

  She's so adamant that he looks like he's underage. And I'm like, Harvey Keitel was born looking like a Vietnam vet.

• 1:35:09David Sims?

  He doesn't look like underage. I'll give you that.

• 1:35:12Griffin Newman?

  He's got the kind of quality for Harvey Keitel.

• 1:35:17David Sims?

  And it's that thing where you see actors when they're young now. So you're like, oh my God, they look so young.

• 1:35:22Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:35:23Speaker 02

  Like De Niro looks more like a baby at this point than Keitel does, I think.

• 1:35:26Griffin Newman?

  Keitel's just always had old man features. Yes, even when he was young and his skin was smooth.

• 1:35:33Speaker 02

  But she shouldn't have trusted him. She, her first instinct was correct.

• 1:35:36David Sims?

  Yes. Her first instinct is correct. He is, well, he's a married guy who's having an affair. I mean, it's actually not that complicated.

• 1:35:43Griffin Newman?

  He's also violent.

• 1:35:44David Sims?

  Yeah, no, he's a jerk as well. But like, his big secret is just like, oh, I am cheating on my wife with you. It's sort of his dark secret.

• 1:35:52Griffin Newman?

  But David, it's justified because he says his wife is crazy.

• 1:35:55David Sims?

  She's crazy. For example, she shows up asking why I'm sleeping with another woman. How dare she?

• 1:36:00Griffin Newman?

  She's angry. I fuck other people. This lunatic.

• 1:36:03Speaker 03

  This calls for a switchblade.

• 1:36:07Speaker 02

  Breaking some glass, the door, and then does the entire dresser. Yeah.

• 1:36:12Griffin Newman?

  It is funny that like Scorsese is now doing the break of you're no longer my leading man. And yet in this performance, he kind of gives everyone the like showreel to be like, hey, and here's how you use Harvey Keitel.

• 1:36:24David Sims?

  He does.

• 1:36:25Speaker 02

  And they do.

• 1:36:26David Sims?

  I wonder if Keitel resents it in a way of kind of like, the way Marty shifted me to the supporting character, the villainous character, that just became my type, like.

• 1:36:35Griffin Newman?

  Cause even when he's the lead, he's a villainous lead.

• 1:36:38Speaker 02

  Well, is there a story, if you've done Taxi Driver yet, of like why it's not Keitel, why it's De Niro in the lead?

• 1:36:43Griffin Newman?

  Never even considered. And beyond that.

• 1:36:45David Sims?

  That was a De Niro part.

• 1:36:47Griffin Newman?

  Beyond that, a sport was written to be black and very wisely, the studio was like, if the pimp is black, people will burn down the.

• 1:36:55David Sims?

  The end of this movie is a little charged.

• 1:36:57Griffin Newman?

  Right. So, yeah, no, it was always De Niro. He was obsessed with De Niro. I mean, I think, I think it truly was like, he fell in love with him on Mean Streets and was like, this guy is the key.

• 1:37:07Speaker 02

  As does everybody who watches Mean Streets. And De Niro is unbelievable in that movie.

• 1:37:11Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:37:12David Sims?

  Yeah, he pee good.

• 1:37:13Griffin Newman?

  He pee good.

• 1:37:14David Sims?

  He pee good.

• 1:37:15Griffin Newman?

  He pee good, which is different than pee pee good, the award they gave to The Exorcist.

• 1:37:20David Sims?

  So good.

• 1:37:22Speaker 02

  I love that at the end of that Keitel scene in the motel where like they get out of there and the camera just stays for a little bit. And you see all of the wreckage. It made me think about, I haven't rewatched Raging Bull in a while, but like that big like domestic fight there. And like in that movie, like you're with the guy. And this is like the woman's point of view of this like dumb bullshit these men are bringing home with them.

• 1:37:39David Sims?

  Obviously in Raging Bull, that stuff is very powerful and it's very, but like this stuff gets me even more where she's just trying to keep it together for the kid.

• 1:37:45Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:37:46David Sims?

  After all that happens.

• 1:37:47Griffin Newman?

  This is Ellen Burstyn's superpower. Her fastball is like, has anyone better at quiet suffering than her? She has this fascinating balance of feeling really steely and strong and the kind of person who could say, try silence and break you for decades. And also at all times, you're like, is she on the verge of breaking down in tears?

• 1:38:04David Sims?

  I just wish you had recorded her saying, try silence, so that I could then play it on the podcast when I need you to try silence.

• 1:38:10Speaker 02

  You got the big red button in front of you. You can just play try silence to wrap up the show.

• 1:38:15David Sims?

  She's just, I feel like that's kind of where she wins the Oscar more than anything, right? It's just how well she plays the sort of, and just like the betrayal of like, I fucking, you know, let someone in.

• 1:38:29Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:38:30David Sims?

  Like, I'm in this like fragile situation. He seemed nice, you know? And then here I am again, like in front of my kid, like getting humiliated like this and like being scary, you know?

• 1:38:40Griffin Newman?

  What felt irresponsible to her was that she was starring in an affair with a man who was so much younger. Like she was like, this is silly and maybe not like wise of me. What she realizes is I fell for the same type of guy again, which I think really devastates her.

• 1:38:54Speaker 02

  Well, and it's so episodic, cause like you could make a version of this movie where she gets on the road and lands at the diner and the movie's about the diner, but you need this sense of like, oh no, like something in me is making these choices again. I gotta get out of this.

• 1:39:05David Sims?

  You need her to sort of abandon her dream again. She's just starting to be like, well, maybe I could take it. And it's like, no, I need to get the fuck out of here. I need to just take a job as a waitress. I need to just keep my head above water for the kid.

• 1:39:19Griffin Newman?

  It's also so big though, that it's not, the movie's not Nashville. It's not, I always wanted to be a country music star. And now I'm going to pursue my dream. It is, I miss singing.

• 1:39:29David Sims?

  Right. I liked that.

• 1:39:30Griffin Newman?

  For a living.

• 1:39:31David Sims?

  Right. Like once upon a time, I liked that.

• 1:39:33Griffin Newman?

  I'm also happy if that paycheck is 50% serving beers and 50% singing one song a night, you know?

• 1:39:39Speaker 03

  And that was also the moment right before she met her husband.

• 1:39:42Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:39:42Speaker 03

  It really is like, she's like, I want to start right from where I left off.

• 1:39:46Griffin Newman?

  The last sort of free version of myself.

• 1:39:49Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:39:50Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:39:51Speaker 03

  Can we also shut up before we move on to the diner? I love the bar owner.

• 1:39:55Speaker 02

  Mm hmm.

• 1:39:56Speaker 03

  The one that hires her.

• 1:39:57Griffin Newman?

  Yes. Yes.

• 1:39:58Speaker 03

  He's just got some great funny moments. He has this one part I wrote down where she asks, what's a song he likes? And he just starts saying lyrics to her. And she's like, I don't know that song. And he's like, well, why'd you?

• 1:40:12Griffin Newman?

  I mean, ironically, this.

• 1:40:13Speaker 03

  I really like that.

• 1:40:15Griffin Newman?

  This is a movie made up of characters that feel like they could be sitcom archetypes, and yet all of them are played like real people.

• 1:40:21David Sims?

  Right. It's like Cassavetes sitcom, right? Yeah. I mean, and then the sitcom, I, I never really watched Dallas. I maybe seen it on TV once, but like, I assume it's more sitcom sitcom.

• 1:40:30Griffin Newman?

  The, the Criterion Disc has all nine seasons on it, right?

• 1:40:34Speaker 02

  I'm gonna find out.

• 1:40:35David Sims?

  You have to play it backwards.

• 1:40:36Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, you should at least have the pilot.

• 1:40:38David Sims?

  Yeah, throw it on there.

• 1:40:39Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:40:40David Sims?

  So, uh, yeah, when's the water fight scene? I love the water fight scene. That's a classic, like, mother-son thing where it's like, we're having fun. We've kind of, we've, it's gone out of control.

• 1:40:52Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:40:53David Sims?

  Because boys are too excitable.

• 1:40:55Speaker 02

  I think it's after that.

• 1:40:56David Sims?

  Is it? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:40:57Speaker 02

  But yeah, it is a little bit like, you can mess with your kid in a way, like, she's not hurting him, but like, they're both taking it too far because you kind of like, get on your kid's level and do things like that.

• 1:41:07David Sims?

  You are a parent of a child, of two sons.

• 1:41:09Speaker 02

  It's true.

• 1:41:10David Sims?

  Katie Rich. I am also a parent of two sons, but they are, they are.

• 1:41:13Speaker 02

  In a different, in a different part of life.

• 1:41:14David Sims?

  You are a parent of sons closer to this, this age range. And like, you, I feel like, can speak more to, right, like, what that is like. And what, what maybe, when, when can you say, what I might be in for, but like, like, to what it's, this feels like an underrated mother-son movie, underrated only in that it's not discussed all the time. Like, it was rated well at the time. But like, it does feel like it kind of name nails that specific dynamic. You don't see like, that's a, a less discussed dynamic in movies, right?

• 1:41:42Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:41:43David Sims?

  Mother-son.

• 1:41:43Speaker 02

  Like, I remember, again, talking about like, Charlie as a baby who was on this podcast. I remember having this baby and being like, why are there not movies about, like, the relationship between a parent and a baby? Because this is the most fascinating relationship I've ever had in my entire life.

• 1:41:54David Sims?

  Sure.

• 1:41:55Speaker 02

  There is a reason for that. Like, I now am aware that they, it's better if they can talk, but it's just like.

• 1:41:59Griffin Newman?

  Totally nailed it. There's no reason to make any other commentary on that.

• 1:42:02David Sims?

  What a film.

• 1:42:03Speaker 02

  It is just a specific thing of like, I made this person, I am responsible for this person. And, but like, they, they turn you into a kid again in some weird way. They make you think about things. Like, they say the weirdest stuff and you kind of just have to roll with it. They tell terrible jokes in that way. And like, the two of them against the world. Like, and David, you may have this feeling, if you're just like, even without your wife, you're just with your kids, you're like, all right, it's just us, we gotta figure this out. Like, you're worried about, we gotta get through the subway or down the street. And this is such a heightened version of that, where it's like, I got you under my arm and we're gonna make our way through the world. And it's really moving, the, the way that it gets into the weirdness of it, but also has that kind of bedrock, we're in, we're in this together part of it.

• 1:42:44Griffin Newman?

  I want to say a couple things. First of all, Laine Bradbury is the actress who plays Rita, who's Katey's wife, who I think is incredibly good.

• 1:42:51Speaker 02

  She is so good.

• 1:42:52Griffin Newman?

  In one extended scene.

• 1:42:53Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:42:54Griffin Newman?

  It's just a smart decision to not have it be the like, she comes storming in, who's the harpy, who's sleeping with my wife.

• 1:43:00Speaker 02

  She's just so sad.

• 1:43:01Griffin Newman?

  She's so sad and she's so empathetic. And she's like, I'm trying to warn you, I'm trying to save you.

• 1:43:05Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:43:05Griffin Newman?

  Even more than I'm mad at him and I'm trying to catch him.

• 1:43:08Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:43:08Speaker 03

  She also has a son.

• 1:43:10Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:43:10Speaker 03

  Who has some kind of health issue.

• 1:43:12Griffin Newman?

  Yes. And he's clearly just doesn't want to deal with the extra difficulty of that burden, of that responsibility.

• 1:43:19Speaker 02

  And Ellen burst in that scene where she just immediately is just like, oh yeah, okay.

• 1:43:22Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:43:22Speaker 02

  We have to have this conversation. She's not trying to get out of it. She's not trying to make any excuses. She like, takes responsibility instantly.

• 1:43:28Griffin Newman?

  The water fight scene is basically right after her first day at the diner, I think. And it's, it, you feel that it's her trying so hard to make her son's life fun again, because there's been so much upheaval and it's like.

• 1:43:39David Sims?

  And then there just comes that point where she's just kind of like, okay, all right.

• 1:43:41Griffin Newman?

  I need to be a parent.

• 1:43:43Speaker 02

  It's like, you gotta sit down at the diner and be bored. I don't care if you're bored.

• 1:43:46Griffin Newman?

  Yeah. That feeling of like, not just, I want to console him emotionally, but just like, this has all been so dramatic that I can't even pretend it's normal. So what if instead I act like a little kid for like, one night?

• 1:43:58David Sims?

  I get to his level a little bit more.

• 1:44:00Griffin Newman?

  And at least it's just kind of fun. Just because people have probably been yelling at the podcast, I didn't make this connection. Basically, the only other movie that Alfred Lutter was in is Bad News Bears.

• 1:44:09David Sims?

  Oh, sure.

• 1:44:10Griffin Newman?

  Where he plays the brainy nerd in that and the first sequel.

• 1:44:12David Sims?

  Okay, movie. You know what's great?

• 1:44:14Griffin Newman?

  The Bad News Bears?

• 1:44:15David Sims?

  Yeah, but do you know what else?

• 1:44:17Griffin Newman?

  Saying bad news bears as a term.

• 1:44:19Speaker 02

  Baseball. There we go.

• 1:44:21Griffin Newman?

  Less so.

• 1:44:22David Sims?

  Baseball, the crack of the bat!

• 1:44:23Speaker 02

  I, I.

• 1:44:24Griffin Newman?

  Crack of the bat I do like.

• 1:44:25Speaker 02

  I don't remember if this comes before or after the water, but there's like, the kid in the hotel room alone, where he's like, sitting two inches from the television and watching some old movie. I don't, I didn't recognize it. I don't know if you guys did.

• 1:44:34Griffin Newman?

  Good question.

• 1:44:35Speaker 02

  But that felt like Scorsese self-insert, like this lonely boy watching old movies by himself.

• 1:44:40Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, except this kid doesn't have asthma, so he can go out and flirt with Jodie Foster.

• 1:44:44Speaker 02

  He just chooses not to.

• 1:44:45Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:44:45Speaker 03

  I feel like he's watching though, something where it has a singer that's kind of in the tradition of what his mom is pursuing.

• 1:44:53David Sims?

  It's a Betty Grable movie called Coney Island.

• 1:44:55Speaker 02

  Oh, there you go.

• 1:44:56David Sims?

  And, right, and those old Betty Grable movies, that's the kind of music Scorsese was thinking of when she's like, I wish I was a singer.

• 1:45:03Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:45:04David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 1:45:05Griffin Newman?

  Cool. But yes, she gets to Mel's diner and we establish what will be one of the greatest ensembles in sitcom history.

• 1:45:11Speaker 02

  And it is immediately like, oh yeah, I want to hang out here.

• 1:45:14Griffin Newman?

  Diane Ladd is so fucking goodness.

• 1:45:16David Sims?

  She is money in the goddamn bank. I swear to God. Like, because like, she got the Oscar nom for this, and you watch the movie and you're like, huh, like, she doesn't have a huge role. Like, funny that she snuck in, but then you just think about her and you're like, she's just so great every second she's on screen.

• 1:45:32Griffin Newman?

  It's incredible.

• 1:45:32David Sims?

  And she communicates the authenticity of the character just so perfectly.

• 1:45:36Griffin Newman?

  And it's sort of like a Star is Born performance of just like, I just love watching this person.

• 1:45:39David Sims?

  A hundred percent.

• 1:45:40Speaker 03

  And I like that they don't get along initially.

• 1:45:42David Sims?

  She's pretty tough with her at first.

• 1:45:44Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:45:44Speaker 03

  Yeah. Making comments about her body in front of everyone, but then they have that scene where she freaks out when the short order cook or whatever asks her, where's Vera? And her line is, she went to shit and the hogs ate her.

• 1:46:01Griffin Newman?

  And the like explosion of the, what is it, the ketchup all over her apron?

• 1:46:05David Sims?

  Right. The great Valerie Curtin as Vera, the sort of the quieter.

• 1:46:10Speaker 02

  She's so funny. I mean, the very end of the movie, when they're in the bathroom talking and it just keeps coming back to Vera, like, trying to like, handle all the places. She's like, crying when people are throwing napkins at her. It's amazing.

• 1:46:21David Sims?

  The cousin to Jane Curtin.

• 1:46:24Speaker 02

  Of course.

• 1:46:25David Sims?

  Of course.

• 1:46:26Griffin Newman?

  But the scene where they're finally sort of endeared to each other and Diane Ladd starts giving her the tips and here's how you get good tips. And then it turns into them like sunbathing.

• 1:46:38Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:46:38Griffin Newman?

  It goes from this moment of just like, reflection and respect to just like, actually, let's try to get some color.

• 1:46:44Speaker 02

  Well, and it's like female friendship again. And it made me think about Scorsese, like, Age of Innocence or Silence or these other movies where he's like, what is this world? How can I figure out how this works? And it is kind of him being like, what's it like to be a woman with a friend? And that, that curiosity drives it and makes it feel so true in the process.

• 1:47:00Griffin Newman?

  Yeah. Yeah. And he, and he hired good people. He surrounded himself with good people.

• 1:47:04Speaker 02

  He did.

• 1:47:05David Sims?

  You guys ever work in a diner?

• 1:47:07Griffin Newman?

  No.

• 1:47:07David Sims?

  Did you ever work in a diner, David?

• 1:47:09Griffin Newman?

  No.

• 1:47:10David Sims?

  Just like, seems like such a cool, you know, like, gig.

• 1:47:15Speaker 02

  Oh, he seems so hard.

• 1:47:17Griffin Newman?

  I mean, nothing feels more stressful to me than imagining that.

• 1:47:20David Sims?

  When I say cool, I don't mean like, cool to do, but just like, it's like having like, epaulettes, you know, stars on your, on your.

• 1:47:28Griffin Newman?

  It's, it's a bad vibe. It's a purple heart.

• 1:47:30David Sims?

  What's more badass than being like a line cook or a fucking diner waiter?

• 1:47:33Speaker 02

  Yeah, the scariest people you are ever gonna meet in your life.

• 1:47:35David Sims?

  I went to my friend Caitlin's wedding last weekend and.

• 1:47:38Griffin Newman?

  Humble brag.

• 1:47:39David Sims?

  Thank you. A co-host, a co-host of, it's different.

• 1:47:42Griffin Newman?

  Secret podcast.

• 1:47:43David Sims?

  My, my not secret podcast about baseball that you should definitely subscribe to. And we drove through Pennsylvania, the great state. And we stopped at a diner in Scranton that had Real Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore vibes, where we walked in, because we're hungry. And it's like, we're in a rush. You know, we're trying to, it's a seven hour drive. And we walk in, we're like, oh fuck, should we turn around? Because the vibes were bad.

• 1:48:04Griffin Newman?

  In what way?

• 1:48:05David Sims?

  The, the, one, there was kind of just no one around. I mean, there were customers, but there's no waiters around. And then we see one waitress and she has just like, the worst like scowl on her face. And we're just like, oh boy. And we're like, hey, and she's like, yeah. And we're like, okay. And we like, sit down. And then like, we are served fantastic food. Like, the food rocked. Like, an exceptional BLT and grilled cheese sandwich, right?

• 1:48:28Speaker 02

  They don't need to woo you, they got great food. You can do whatever you want.

• 1:48:31David Sims?

  And then I, we realized like, oh, there's some drama happening where the waitress, I think, just maybe got in a fight with another customer. And then maybe got chewed out by a boss. And now she's complaining to somebody else about, you know, how fuck this plate, you know what I mean? And then when she like, gave us her check, we were like, the food was really great. And she's just like, you know, that actually means a lot to hear it. And we're like, oh my God.

• 1:48:54Speaker 02

  You made her day!

• 1:48:55David Sims?

  What is happening in this way? This fucking time? And that's what it's like, you know, Alice doesn't live here anymore. We're like, what's going on with all these people? They're just so intense. And like, they're such.

• 1:49:05Speaker 02

  This is every Waffle House.

• 1:49:07David Sims?

  Around, right?

• 1:49:08Speaker 02

  Yeah. I know, we started with it, but you go in that Waffle House, because you see the whole kitchen is right there in front of you. And you're just, you sit there long enough, you can figure out everybody's feeling, everyone's mad at each other.

• 1:49:15David Sims?

  He's in Waffle House even more intense, causes 24 hours. So you have to be like, you're like a fucking Navy SEAL in there if you're working like the night shift.

• 1:49:23Speaker 02

  Absolutely everything.

• 1:49:24Griffin Newman?

  The Waffle House storm warning thing is fascinating.

• 1:49:27Speaker 02

  It's totally real.

• 1:49:28Griffin Newman?

  Right, David?

• 1:49:28David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 1:49:29Speaker 02

  The Waffle, the Waffle House index, where if the Waffle House close, if some Waffle House is closed, it's orange. It's like the National Weather Service or FEMA or whatever branch of the government still cares about this stuff.

• 1:49:38Griffin Newman?

  Threat.

• 1:49:39David Sims?

  Right. If, if Waffle House has to be like.

• 1:49:41Speaker 02

  You better get the fuck out of there.

• 1:49:42David Sims?

  Maybe a limited menu today.

• 1:49:44Speaker 02

  They will, they will, yeah, if Waffle House is closed, you better get FEMA in there immediately to help everybody else.

• 1:49:49Griffin Newman?

  They don't even take their notes from the government. The government goes like, oh fuck, that Waffle House is closing.

• 1:49:54Speaker 02

  Yeah. Because those people are, they have seen absolutely everything.

• 1:49:57David Sims?

  I want to go to Waffle House.

• 1:49:58Speaker 02

  Come on! You, you remember pre-COVID, you guys, like, we're driving to Florida.

• 1:50:02Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, we had a plan.

• 1:50:02Speaker 02

  Yeah, there was a plan. Then David had a bunch of kids.

• 1:50:04Griffin Newman?

  Summer 2020. He kept having, he kept slipping and having another kid.

• 1:50:10Speaker 02

  It can still happen. Throw everybody in the car.

• 1:50:11David Sims?

  The closest Waffle House at least last I checked is in Allentown, Pennsylvania.

• 1:50:15Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:50:15David Sims?

  I went there.

• 1:50:16Speaker 02

  When I lived here, I remember looking it up at some point because I'm so deeply devoted to Waffle House.

• 1:50:21David Sims?

  Two hour drive. It's pretty far.

• 1:50:23Speaker 02

  I think you might be mad if you drove two hours to Waffle House. It's one of those things where it's like, I need something that's open now. And when you're a teenager, it's somewhere you can go. And that is where the.

• 1:50:32David Sims?

  It's still there. It's near Allentown.

• 1:50:33Griffin Newman?

  I've never had a Waffle House meal not exceed my expectations. And I go in with sky high expectations and every time it just delivers.

• 1:50:44David Sims?

  I like the waffles too, to be clear. Obviously the hash browns are what everyone talks about, but I.

• 1:50:47Speaker 02

  Do they have a hash brown bowl now where you can get like a hash brown with cheese and an egg on top of it? This isn't coming. It's really good. It's good.

• 1:50:54David Sims?

  I don't know if I need any new fangled additions.

• 1:50:57Speaker 02

  Been there probably for 15 years. It feels so new fangled to me. Oh, yeah.

• 1:51:01Griffin Newman?

  Whipper snapper.

• 1:51:02Speaker 02

  Uh huh. You can't change these things on me.

• 1:51:04Griffin Newman?

  Kristofferson doesn't enter the movie until like an hour and 15 minutes.

• 1:51:08David Sims?

  He does not. If you saw the poster and we're like, can't wait to see Chris K. It's, it's. You're kind of like, where's my guy? You know, especially since like we've already had a she wants to be a musician arc.

• 1:51:20Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:51:20David Sims?

  And he didn't appear for that.

• 1:51:22Griffin Newman?

  And two bad relationships. Yes.

• 1:51:25David Sims?

  And then he's just like, you know, what's his name? David. Hey, it's my name. Hey. He's a, he's one of the guys. He's a customer. He's divorced. He's a rancher. Got a farm.

• 1:51:35Griffin Newman?

  Plays a little guitar.

• 1:51:37David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 1:51:38Speaker 02

  And he's that kid.

• 1:51:38David Sims?

  Got a nice little beer. He's got some blowing locks. Might want to run your fingers through him.

• 1:51:43Griffin Newman?

  He does. But he shows up around the same time that she finally kind of gets her standing within Mel's.

• 1:51:48David Sims?

  I mean, god damn, like Harvey Keitel fucks her up so bad that she won't fuck Chris Kristofferson right away. Like she should be fucking him right away and Keitel should be on the set.

• 1:51:58Speaker 02

  But she's got to learn how to have some restraint.

• 1:52:00Griffin Newman?

  Life is tough. Yeah. Life is tough.

• 1:52:02Speaker 02

  However, he is, he does spank kids and she does get mad at him as saying, you're the kind of guy who hits kids. And then watching this now, you're like, yeah, don't, don't.

• 1:52:11David Sims?

  That doesn't feel shocking to me in the same way.

• 1:52:13Speaker 02

  She gets so mad at him about it.

• 1:52:15David Sims?

  Sure. Well, he shouldn't spank her kid.

• 1:52:17Speaker 02

  I guess that's what it is.

• 1:52:19David Sims?

  Dad.

• 1:52:19Griffin Newman?

  I, but I think he wants to be.

• 1:52:21Speaker 02

  When he comes back to her, you, I was waiting for him to be like, oh, and yeah, I shouldn't have hit your kid. And he doesn't do that. He's kind of like, yeah, man.

• 1:52:27David Sims?

  Do that. Yeah.

• 1:52:29Speaker 02

  I, it's not a sticking point for me.

• 1:52:30David Sims?

  To be clear, I'm not pro spanking kids. I just feel like in the seventies, plenty more kids were getting spanked, right? I mean, I assume.

• 1:52:36Speaker 02

  Agree, but then the extent of what she was mad at him for it, like, does he apologize enough for that? For her to take him back in that great scene.

• 1:52:43David Sims?

  So much together. And like the last thing that poor kids, yeah, needs is someone laying hands on him. Exactly. Like he's witnessed violence. He's just been in that, you know, she understands her kid emotionally.

• 1:52:54Speaker 02

  Jerk in that scene with Chris Kristofferson.

• 1:52:56David Sims?

  12 year old.

• 1:52:57Griffin Newman?

  It's got the foulous mouth. We should also call out that he has been sneaking around with Jodie Foster drinking wine.

• 1:53:04Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:53:05Speaker 03

  Drinking wine shoplifting.

• 1:53:07Griffin Newman?

  Learning about grown up stuff.

• 1:53:08Speaker 02

  Mm hmm.

• 1:53:10Griffin Newman?

  Being bad.

• 1:53:10Speaker 02

  Jodie Foster has a foolproof plan for a shoplifting from that guitar store though.

• 1:53:15Speaker 03

  That's the classic move.

• 1:53:16Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:53:17Speaker 03

  Create a distraction and someone else grabs the thing, shoves it down their pants.

• 1:53:21Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:53:22Speaker 03

  Been there. Done that.

• 1:53:24Speaker 02

  Are you more the kid or are you Jodie Foster? Like of these kids, who are you relating to more?

• 1:53:30Griffin Newman?

  Interesting.

• 1:53:30Speaker 02

  What does she say to the cops when she leaves the police station? Like, she say like suck it pigs or something?

• 1:53:35Griffin Newman?

  I think so.

• 1:53:36Speaker 02

  It's so good.

• 1:53:37David Sims?

  It is so good. She's pretty cool.

• 1:53:39Griffin Newman?

  She's a badass.

• 1:53:39Speaker 03

  I was a little bit of the bad influence at times, but then also sometimes the one took the bad.

• 1:53:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's an exchange.

• 1:53:47David Sims?

  Yeah. Yeah.

• 1:53:50David Sims?

  Yeah. What happens? I mean, I mean.

• 1:53:53Speaker 02

  They hang out at his ranch.

• 1:53:53Griffin Newman?

  Yeah. Once the, uh, the spanking happens, uh, we're pretty close to the resolve of the movie.

• 1:54:00David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 1:54:01Speaker 02

  You get the great scene with them in the bathroom where Diane Lads, like, are you mad at him? It sounds like you love him and she's crying and they're laughing and it's perfect.

• 1:54:07Griffin Newman?

  She doesn't want to fall into the same thing again.

• 1:54:09Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:54:09David Sims?

  Why would she?

• 1:54:10Griffin Newman?

  And it's, she's jumping at the first trigger. But ultimately the, the fact that this man is willing to apologize.

• 1:54:17David Sims?

  And is Chris Kristofferson.

• 1:54:19Griffin Newman?

  He is Chris Kristofferson. Your face keeps turning bright red. What's going on on your screen?

• 1:54:24Griffin Newman?

  You don't know.

• 1:54:24David Sims?

  Turning bright red?

• 1:54:25Speaker 02

  It is. There was something weird.

• 1:54:26David Sims?

  I do have a Reader's Digest story about the Titan, Titan implosion, which happened three years ago. Rest in peace to all those beautiful people. Open and there might, there, I think it was a weird autoplay.

• 1:54:37Speaker 02

  It's very relevant to this current conversation.

• 1:54:40Griffin Newman?

  It looks like a Waffle House storm warning is happening on David's face.

• 1:54:43Speaker 03

  Jodie Foster says when she exits the police station, so long suckers.

• 1:54:48David Sims?

  Yeah. Very, uh, she's got kind of a Road Runner energy to her.

• 1:54:52Speaker 02

  Oh my God. Follow her anywhere.

• 1:54:54David Sims?

  Remember when that fucking thing, I feel three years ago, it feels like it happened 10 years ago.

• 1:54:59Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:54:59Griffin Newman?

  It was three years ago.

• 1:55:00Speaker 02

  I know exactly where I was.

• 1:55:02David Sims?

  Forget where they're like, a thing, a thing's lost down there. And I'm like, oh, oh, what is it? And they're like, I'll check it out. It's this, uh, kind of metal tube a guy threw together. It's got like a PlayStation controller. I'm like, this was being sent down regularly.

• 1:55:16Griffin Newman?

  And it was like one guy in there alone? No, like 10 rich people.

• 1:55:19David Sims?

  There would be those cartoons where it was like, you know, five little stick figures inside and you're just like, what is this?

• 1:55:25Speaker 02

  You sound like James Cameron who spent a lot of time on television there being like, I knew it wasn't going to work.

• 1:55:29David Sims?

  Mistake for me.

• 1:55:29Speaker 02

  I could have told you that thing was going to explode.

• 1:55:31David Sims?

  Thing of where he's like, I knew they blew up. Fuck them.

• 1:55:34Speaker 02

  Would you, uh, stay with a man who spanked your children without permission?

• 1:55:38David Sims?

  It is something I feel very strongly about actually. I think it would really upset me, but I mean, I don't live in 1973.

• 1:55:42Speaker 02

  I know. I know.

• 1:55:44David Sims?

  Differently then, but I know, I'm not pro spanking. No.

• 1:55:47Speaker 02

  It made me think about how, I don't know if you experienced this too, David. It's like, other kids are much more annoying to me than my own. Like I have a much higher threshold for like what I can put up with from my kids. And like you're around like your kids, friends, and you're just like, I can't do this right now, but.

• 1:55:59David Sims?

  Yeah, no, I mean, right. Hard not to be like judgy.

• 1:56:03Speaker 02

  Or just like, uh, like my tolerance has reached a limit. Like I cannot listen to your jokes anymore. You don't belong to me. I don't have to do this. So I guess Chris Kristofferson being like, I'll listen to this kid's bad jokes. Cause he gets, do you guys understand the joke that he's trying to tell about the nuts?

• 1:56:17David Sims?

  I do not.

• 1:56:18Speaker 02

  I can't figure it out.

• 1:56:19David Sims?

  It really pissed me off, honestly. Even in the movie, I was like, shut the fuck up.

• 1:56:22Speaker 03

  It makes no sense.

• 1:56:24Speaker 02

  Cause he tells it to Chris Kristofferson too, who's doing the same thing and being like, mm hmm, I'm really doing my best here.

• 1:56:29David Sims?

  I mean, I feel like the joke is that, that, you know, the nuts are balls and like, there's kind of like a dirty joke.

• 1:56:37Speaker 02

  You sound like the kid explaining it, but I still don't really.

• 1:56:40David Sims?

  It just never quite gets resolved. And they, like, the adults keep kind of like interrupting him to give sort of what they think is the punchline. I think is they want him to shut up. And so that ruins it only more. He's, you know, he's a little annoying, but uh, yeah, no spanking. You know, you don't want to associate discipline with violence.

• 1:56:57Speaker 02

  Would you go live on that ranch though? He's growing like alfalfa, I think, or?

• 1:57:02David Sims?

  Look.

• 1:57:02Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 1:57:03David Sims?

  I don't want to live in Arizona.

• 1:57:04Speaker 02

  You're a city boy. You don't want to live on this ranch.

• 1:57:05David Sims?

  Well, I'm just saying like, if I wanted to live in the countryside, my guess is I would want a more verdant and moist.

• 1:57:11Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 1:57:12David Sims?

  Uh, part of the world. I'm not really a dry heat guy. Not what I grew up with. Not really what I'm used to. I think I'd probably.

• 1:57:18Speaker 02

  Need a steamer and not a sauna.

• 1:57:19David Sims?

  Yeah. Oh, you know, I am. I love a steamer.

• 1:57:21Speaker 02

  I know. I know.

• 1:57:21David Sims?

  Yeah. Exactly.

• 1:57:22Speaker 02

  Uh, you Ben, would you go live on that ranch?

• 1:57:25Speaker 03

  I'd love to ride a dang horse.

• 1:57:26David Sims?

  Yeah, you love the horse.

• 1:57:28Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 1:57:28David Sims?

  Yeah. But you know, are you built for Phoenix? Like, what do you think? Arizona? Like.

• 1:57:33Speaker 03

  No.

• 1:57:33David Sims?

  Getting out there. Cacti.

• 1:57:35Speaker 03

  I couldn't do it.

• 1:57:35David Sims?

  Tumbleweeds.

• 1:57:36Speaker 03

  I've actually never been to the desert.

• 1:57:39David Sims?

  Is that a, is that a goal we could make for you?

• 1:57:41Speaker 02

  Ooh, road trip.

• 1:57:42David Sims?

  Cause I mean, you like.

• 1:57:43Speaker 02

  Next time you go to LA, it's not that far. You can drive like two hours out and you're in the desert. And I, I, as like an east coaster, I had the same thing where you get out there. You're like, God, those mountains are like a hundred miles away. How is this possible?

• 1:57:53David Sims?

  Right. Now Griffin, I'm going to, I'm not one of them. I want to speak for you, but I'm also going to assume like the, the Arizona desert, maybe not.

• 1:58:00Speaker 02

  You're not moving to that ranch with Chris Kristofferson?

• 1:58:02David Sims?

  What about a visit?

• 1:58:03Griffin Newman?

  I did, I did a.

• 1:58:04David Sims?

  Get a cup of coffee, you know?

• 1:58:06Griffin Newman?

  I've been to Arizona. I did a, a short film in Albuquerque a couple of years ago.

• 1:58:12David Sims?

  Yeah, I remember.

• 1:58:13Griffin Newman?

  Uh, and my body, uh, almost, uh, retired.

• 1:58:17David Sims?

  You got off the plane and your body was like, I'm going to sit this one out. You're going to figure it out all by yourself.

• 1:58:22Speaker 02

  Physically incompatible.

• 1:58:23Griffin Newman?

  We shot a, we were supposed to shoot a thing. Uh, it was like a survivalist, post apocalyptic thing. And I'm supposed to be someone who's not well suited for that. And even then, uh, we, we shot a thing at the top of a mountain, very high altitude. And my eyes were just like, oh, by the way, we're not going to open.

• 1:58:43Griffin Newman?

  I couldn't stop crying and I couldn't keep my eyes open and we had to shoot around it and they put me in a car and put the car seat all the way back and then like poured a bunch of water on a towel and I just lay there with a wet towel over my eyes for like two hours.

• 1:58:57David Sims?

  We gotta voice this guy's.

• 1:58:58Griffin Newman?

  Reset a little bit.

• 1:59:00David Sims?

  Sounds pretty good.

• 1:59:01Griffin Newman?

  A little bit.

• 1:59:02David Sims?

  Wow.

• 1:59:03Griffin Newman?

  There was also like a dust storm.

• 1:59:04David Sims?

  So let's keep you in the northeast.

• 1:59:05Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, I like being here.

• 1:59:08Speaker 02

  I would think that Scorsese honestly would be in the same way.

• 1:59:10David Sims?

  I think he helped.

• 1:59:11Speaker 02

  He does not feel like a creature of the West.

• 1:59:13David Sims?

  But I think he found it very interesting. It's just an alien landscape.

• 1:59:15Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:59:16David Sims?

  And film wise, it was exciting for him to have this alien landscape.

• 1:59:19Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, he goes back for Killers of the Flower Moon 40 years later.

• 1:59:22Griffin Newman?

  And I assume he directed from within a plastic bubble.

• 1:59:24David Sims?

  I sort of assume that too.

• 1:59:26Speaker 02

  Probably for both of those movies.

• 1:59:27David Sims?

  The ending is very, very like great, is great cinema. Because it's got this sort of touch of ambiguity to it. It's got this kind of earthy naturalism to it.

• 1:59:36Speaker 02

  Oh, the, the variant with them walking down the street.

• 1:59:38David Sims?

  You know, and just him coming back to not, now it's written as more of a straightforward happy ending. They get married. Burson is just like, I don't want it to have that kind of a cut and dry ending. Like, why does she have to end up with a man?

• 1:59:52Speaker 02

  Mm hmm.

• 1:59:54David Sims?

  So, you know, she insists on rewrites and Warner Brothers is like, we're not fucking doing an unhappy ending. Like they're like, we had just done Scarecrow, the, uh, Paul Mazursky, right?

• 2:00:05Griffin Newman?

  No, I'm not, no, I'm sorry.

• 2:00:06David Sims?

  Like Grusberg? No, uh, no, it's neither.

• 2:00:09Griffin Newman?

  It's, it's the gambler guy, Carl Rice? Is that who it is?

• 2:00:13David Sims?

  No, come on. I'm so annoyed by this right now.

• 2:00:15Griffin Newman?

  Jerry Shasberg.

• 2:00:16David Sims?

  There we go.

• 2:00:17Griffin Newman?

  Jesus Christ.

• 2:00:17David Sims?

  It only took seven tries. Fucking obviously Jerry Shasberg. What an embarrassing thing for me to say.

• 2:00:21Griffin Newman?

  Ben's mocking us right now.

• 2:00:23David Sims?

  Petting Needle Park, you know, um, and he's like, and Scarecrow is a happy ending and that made no fucking money. We're not doing an unhappy ending again. And Ellen Burstyn's like, I'm not saying unhappy ending. I'm just saying, does she need to end up with a man? Like, are you telling me she doesn't end up with a man? Isn't unhappy ending?

• 2:00:38Griffin Newman?

  Everything can't be perfect at the end.

• 2:00:40David Sims?

  And he's like, what I'm telling you is she doesn't end up with a man. We're not making the movie.

• 2:00:45Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 2:00:45David Sims?

  It's the one time they kind of push back in terms of like, mm, sorry. And so they kind of compromise on this, like, she sort of says, maybe we'll get back, you know, like it's a little more ambiguous, right?

• 2:00:58Speaker 02

  They'll try.

• 2:00:59David Sims?

  It's a pretty good ending. I can't deny, you know.

• 2:01:02Speaker 02

  When you get the kiss in the diner and everyone's clapping and like you get the energy of that scene.

• 2:01:06Speaker 03

  Even leading up to that, when they're in the bathroom.

• 2:01:08Speaker 02

  Oh, God.

• 2:01:09Speaker 03

  She really breaks down.

• 2:01:10Griffin Newman?

  Diane Ladd.

• 2:01:11Speaker 03

  That is like, I think one of the best scenes.

• 2:01:13Speaker 02

  Yeah. And like, and that's more of the emphasis than the one with Christopherson almost. So I mean, that's Burson kind of getting what she wants is that friendship is so important.

• 2:01:20David Sims?

  The way she puts it is Chris improvises, okay, come on, I'll take you to Monterey. And like, it's not about staying on the ranch or, you know, like, it's more of a free exchange. The man is willing to support the woman in his, in, in her aspirations. Uh, he's making a sacrifice. Exactly. Uh, he's sort of releasing me from the bondage of the old way of thinking. Thank God for Chris. He was smart and aware, you know? So she's, she's like, she's pretty happy with how it goes. Scorsese still acknowledges like, yeah, it's a little pat that like she gets the handsome man at the end, but I think we do a good job suggesting like, it's still probably going to be kind of stormy. Like, it's not like Christopherson's like, I'll chill out.

• 2:02:01Griffin Newman?

  It does feel like this scene.

• 2:02:03David Sims?

  I know this vampire hunter. Let's go find him.

• 2:02:06Griffin Newman?

  Blade. Uh, it does feel like the, the other patrons applauding and getting roped up and him having to make the big apology in front of everybody feels like the scene that gives them the codex to be able to make a sitcom.

• 2:02:19Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:02:20Griffin Newman?

  It's the one scene where it's like the diner is acting like one organism.

• 2:02:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:02:25Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:02:26Speaker 02

  Well, Laura Dern in the background as the small child eating ice cream, according to Wikipedia.

• 2:02:29Griffin Newman?

  Did you see that?

• 2:02:30Speaker 02

  I think I spotted her. She's like right behind Ellen Burstyn, I think, in that scene.

• 2:02:33Griffin Newman?

  Of course, daughter of Diane Ladd. This is her first onscreen appearance.

• 2:02:36Speaker 02

  She's got huge glasses.

• 2:02:37Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 2:02:39David Sims?

  Oh, yeah. Wow.

• 2:02:40Speaker 02

  She's so cute.

• 2:02:42David Sims?

  Roger Ebert.

• 2:02:43Griffin Newman?

  Mm hmm.

• 2:02:44David Sims?

  Says, the movie's been both attacked.

• 2:02:45Speaker 02

  Wait, wait, we should talk about the actual ending of the movie.

• 2:02:47Griffin Newman?

  The actual ending, of course, is it's what saves the movie for me.

• 2:02:50David Sims?

  Yes.

• 2:02:50Griffin Newman?

  Is that if it ended on everyone applauding her and Christopherson kissing.

• 2:02:53Speaker 03

  That's too, that's too.

• 2:02:54Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 2:02:54Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:02:54Griffin Newman?

  But it goes back to the kid. It goes back to her relationship, uh, with her son.

• 2:02:59Speaker 03

  Yeah, I'm laughing because I'm watching the bathroom scene and they're cutting back to the other Vera.

• 2:03:04Speaker 02

  Oh, my God, it's so funny.

• 2:03:05Speaker 03

  And everyone's getting into a fight and there's so much chaos.

• 2:03:07Griffin Newman?

  And so funny.

• 2:03:08David Sims?

  Tommy saying, Mom, I can't breathe is also improvised and is very sweet.

• 2:03:11Griffin Newman?

  That's good.

• 2:03:12David Sims?

  You know, like that's because she truly was.

• 2:03:14Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 2:03:14David Sims?

  Ripping him to.

• 2:03:15Griffin Newman?

  Squeezing him to death.

• 2:03:15Speaker 02

  Yeah. But, and they're walking down that like kind of shitty street and there's the sign in front of them that says Monterey. Like that's the version of what they're heading toward, but they might have to.

• 2:03:23David Sims?

  I live there. They got all that, all that fish. Got a big aquarium.

• 2:03:27Speaker 02

  In Monterey?

• 2:03:28David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 2:03:28Speaker 02

  Oh, sure.

• 2:03:29Speaker 03

  Where is Monterey in California?

• 2:03:30Speaker 02

  It's like south of San Francisco. Like, isn't that where Big Little Lies is set?

• 2:03:34Griffin Newman?

  I think so.

• 2:03:34David Sims?

  Yes, yes.

• 2:03:35Griffin Newman?

  And everything went well for those guys, right?

• 2:03:37Speaker 02

  Yeah. If you're not that rich, it might turn out fine for you.

• 2:03:40David Sims?

  Remember Adam Scott's in that?

• 2:03:42Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:03:42Speaker 02

  Sure is.

• 2:03:43David Sims?

  It's like, you know, all this, you know, insane dramas hanging, happening. He's like, this sucks.

• 2:03:48Griffin Newman?

  Witherspoon's husband?

• 2:03:49Speaker 02

  Yeah, and he's like a tech guy.

• 2:03:51David Sims?

  And she's like, I'm going crazy about the school board. And he's like, okay.

• 2:03:54Griffin Newman?

  It's like, and this is a one and done, right? Limited series, no second season?

• 2:03:58Speaker 02

  Did he come back for the second season?

• 2:03:59David Sims?

  I think he does. I watched it. It's all kind of vanished from my brain, that show.

• 2:04:03Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:04:04Griffin Newman?

  Who is Dern's husband?

• 2:04:06Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 2:04:07Griffin Newman?

  Cause Skarsgard's obviously married to Nicole Kidman.

• 2:04:10Speaker 02

  And Shailene doesn't have a husband.

• 2:04:12David Sims?

  No, but she falls for somebody in the second season.

• 2:04:15Speaker 02

  But Dern definitely has a husband. She tells someone, I will not, not be rich, which we all.

• 2:04:18David Sims?

  Cause she's Renata. Uh, Jeffrey Nordling.

• 2:04:21Griffin Newman?

  Oh, of course.

• 2:04:22David Sims?

  The great.

• 2:04:23Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 2:04:24David Sims?

  The great Nordling.

• 2:04:25Griffin Newman?

  And then everyone's just kind of scared of Zoe Kravitz.

• 2:04:28David Sims?

  Yeah, well, she's fucking scared.

• 2:04:29Speaker 02

  Oh, I forgot about her.

• 2:04:30David Sims?

  But she's married to some guy too, you know, James Tupper.

• 2:04:33Speaker 02

  She's married to someone's ex.

• 2:04:34Griffin Newman?

  Exactly.

• 2:04:34Speaker 02

  She married to Reese's ex?

• 2:04:36David Sims?

  Yeah, it's, um, it's Reese's ex.

• 2:04:38Speaker 02

  Got it. Okay.

• 2:04:39David Sims?

  And you know, there's a, if you, if you really pay attention, there's a lie or two being told. A big one.

• 2:04:46Speaker 02

  Or are they little?

• 2:04:46Griffin Newman?

  They could be both and they could be both at the same time.

• 2:05:00David Sims?

  Roger Ebert.

• 2:05:00Griffin Newman?

  Mm hmm.

• 2:05:01David Sims?

  It's just interesting to hear this movie discussed at the time. This movie's been attacked and defended on feminist grounds.

• 2:05:06Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:05:07David Sims?

  It sounds like he's on film Twitter.

• 2:05:08Griffin Newman?

  I know.

• 2:05:09David Sims?

  You know what I mean? Like, he's like, I'll wade into the discourse.

• 2:05:11Speaker 02

  I mean, where?

• 2:05:12David Sims?

  When Alice doesn't live here anymore.

• 2:05:13Speaker 02

  Where are they doing all this fighting? Just in the Village Voice? Like, where is this happening?

• 2:05:17David Sims?

  Yeah, in reviews.

• 2:05:18Griffin Newman?

  Fascinating to consider the way there was discourse at a time where only 20 people had a platform of any size.

• 2:05:26Speaker 02

  So much more peaceful. I mean, still annoying, probably, but more peaceful.

• 2:05:30Griffin Newman?

  People would write letters into the newspaper and be like, I disagree with that review.

• 2:05:34Speaker 02

  Arguing outside Lincoln Center, probably.

• 2:05:36David Sims?

  This is pretty good, uh, Ebert here, though. I think it belongs somewhere outside ideology, maybe in the area of contemporary myth and romance. Uh, you know, the movie seems less about Alice than it does about the speculations and daydreams of a lot of women her age who identify with liberation of other women but are unsure on the subject of themselves.

• 2:05:53Griffin Newman?

  I think it's a great way of putting it.

• 2:05:54David Sims?

  Pauline Katey.

• 2:05:56Speaker 02

  Did she have an opinion on this?

• 2:05:58David Sims?

  She usually was just kind of like, oh, I don't know. It's all right. Three stars.

• 2:06:01Griffin Newman?

  Ben, when David said Pauline Katey, can we edit in like a thunderclap?

• 2:06:07David Sims?

  Someone playing the organ.

• 2:06:10David Sims?

  One of the rare films that genuinely deserves to be called controversial. Again, this is Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore. It's not fucking Cannibal Holocaust. I think people will really fight about it. It's a story of a woman who has a second chance thrust on her. She knows enough not to make the same mistake again, but she isn't sure of much else. Neither is the movie. Oh, Pauline in for the kill after setting up what seemed like a nice review. Oh, boy.

• 2:06:35Griffin Newman?

  People responded to this like it was Lady Ghostbusters where they're like, what are they trying to push on us?

• 2:06:40David Sims?

  She's basically like, the movie is totally enjoyable and funny and absorbing. I just don't think it has like a take on its big issue.

• 2:06:48Speaker 02

  So why does she think it deserves to be controversial?

• 2:06:50David Sims?

  I don't know. Molly Haskell, the great, uh, film critic and obviously is a, like a leading voice in feminist film criticism and all that, sort of has the same problem of like, they're making a women's picture.

• 2:07:02Griffin Newman?

  And subconsciously.

• 2:07:03David Sims?

  And I, and I think, right, he's sort of playing ironic tribute and it didn't quite feel authentic enough for me. That, that makes sense for like a critic at the time watching this movie and being, especially given the opening of it, being like, this is a little too cute for me. I think Marty, you know, doesn't quite know, you know, what he's playing with here or whatever. Now you watch this movie and you're like, my God, if only Hollywood made movies like this anymore. And like, what a refreshing thing that Scorsese made something like this early in his career with a studio, with a fucking movie star that won Oscars. Like, that's fantastic. At the time, they're basically just kind of like, I don't know, seems like a bunch of bullshit to me. Like, good for them.

• 2:07:42Griffin Newman?

  Commercial pablum.

• 2:07:43David Sims?

  They could fight about it back then.

• 2:07:44Griffin Newman?

  They could fight about it back then.

• 2:07:45David Sims?

  You know what? Now we're just kind of like, take me to the back rooms.

• 2:07:48Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:07:49Speaker 02

  We get so many of the people, the worst takes on Scorsese being like, he makes these movies that are about men. He has any understanding of it. And if you just sit someone down and be like, no, this guy made this with the exact amount of curiosity of everything else. Like, it's always been there.

• 2:08:02David Sims?

  I think it's a very good film. It is not like my favorite Martin Scorsese movie. I'm not sure I would put it in his top 10. I'm not sure where I put it though. Where do I have it? I probably have it in like his top, you know, 20. He's made a lot of good fucking movies.

• 2:08:12Speaker 02

  I think when I did my like Letterboxd ranking after watching all of them, I was like, 15 of them are five star masterpieces. Like, it's really hard to rank them in that. It's kind of a day by day thing.

• 2:08:21Speaker 03

  Could I share a quote from a film review in the Times?

• 2:08:24David Sims?

  The New York, who is it by?

• 2:08:26Speaker 03

  Vincent Canby.

• 2:08:27David Sims?

  Okay, all right.

• 2:08:28Speaker 03

  Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore has the distinct advantage over most films by growing on you, by getting better and better as it goes along, until at the end, you look back over it with some of the wonder and pleasure with which you might suddenly acknowledge an unexpected friendship.

• 2:08:41Griffin Newman?

  That's hilarious.

• 2:08:42Speaker 03

  I thought that was such a solid.

• 2:08:45David Sims?

  Yeah, that's really good.

• 2:08:46Speaker 03

  Summary.

• 2:08:46Speaker 02

  It's the Diane Ladd of movies.

• 2:08:48David Sims?

  And Camby was not in the Haskell Kale, like, you know, where he's like, like, he's a, he's a down the line movie critic of like, this is a good experience. Like, you're gonna have a good time watching this, but.

• 2:08:59Speaker 02

  Also, him making this between Mean Streets and Taxi Driver, which are just like sad and violent and intense is like exactly the.

• 2:09:06David Sims?

  Taxi Driver coming after this.

• 2:09:08Griffin Newman?

  Well, you also just have to think about, a lot of people have careers that start out with things like Taxi Driver and who's that knocking at my door, or, or, excuse me, Mean Streets and who's that knocking at my door? And then it's like, great, you made your little personal movie. You've shown us that you know how to make a movie on a technical level. Now you're in the studio system. You have to imagine that people could have assumed, is he just gonna be a guy who hops from genre to genre and isn't making deeply personal films anymore? And instead, after this, every movie he makes feels, almost every movie he makes feels very personal, even when it is a genre exercise.

• 2:09:44Speaker 02

  Are you calling Mean Streets the guarantor, or is this the guarantor that gets Taxi Driver to be?

• 2:09:48Griffin Newman?

  It's kind of a double. It's like the two pieces.

• 2:09:50David Sims?

  Helps. It helps to have made a movie that succeeded, have made money. Like, I don't think anyone's watching this being like, I think he's already working on Taxi Driver in some sense and like.

• 2:09:59Speaker 02

  Taxi Driver is the blank check. The first one, for sure.

• 2:10:02David Sims?

  Sure. Sure. They, I mean, yeah, I don't know.

• 2:10:04Griffin Newman?

  We were kind of, we were kind of arguing.

• 2:10:06David Sims?

  New York is the blank.

• 2:10:07Speaker 02

  Oh, sure. That's true.

• 2:10:08David Sims?

  Taxi Driver is more the guarantor. Like Taxi Driver is not an expensive movie.

• 2:10:11Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:10:11David Sims?

  And that's a movie where he's fighting every minute to get anything through.

• 2:10:14Speaker 02

  It's just such a crazy movie.

• 2:10:16David Sims?

  Yeah, it is. But New York, New York is more him being like, I want a lot of money to make something that is.

• 2:10:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 2:10:21Griffin Newman?

  And, and they're like, we, we think you can make that work.

• 2:10:24David Sims?

  Of course, while he's making it. He's like, I think everyone's gonna like this. Like, which is the crazy part.

• 2:10:28Speaker 02

  Was he doing any drugs at the time that would have clouded his judgment? Anything about that?

• 2:10:32David Sims?

  Of course, he's never messed around with that sort of stuff.

• 2:10:34Griffin Newman?

  And his marriage was going very well, right?

• 2:10:36Speaker 02

  You can see on screen, it has a great view of relationships.

• 2:10:38Griffin Newman?

  Absolutely. A fascinating movie. We almost had you do that.

• 2:10:41Speaker 02

  I know. And I got really excited about it. And it's, it's, it's a tough movie. I don't love it the way that I love Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore. I'm so glad I get to talk about this, but New York, New York is like such a rich text.

• 2:10:51Griffin Newman?

  I feel like I'm similar to you in that I really like wrestling with it. And the stuff in it that works, I think is like exceptional.

• 2:10:57David Sims?

  Oh, it's, it's a fascinating, like, it's what you guys are saying. It's a, I think if you're out here being like, that is one of his best movies, I think even Marty would kind of be like, are you sure about that? Like, that movie is, movie is flawed. But it's a fascinating.

• 2:11:10Speaker 02

  The soundstage opener of this leads you directly to New York, New York. He's like, give me more of those, you know, backdrops painted. I'm ready.

• 2:11:16David Sims?

  And, you know, there's a, there's a mean boyfriend or two in that film.

• 2:11:20Griffin Newman?

  There is in fact, one major mean boyfriend.

• 2:11:22David Sims?

  One in particular.

• 2:11:22Griffin Newman?

  Thinking of kind of worst boyfriend in the history of movies.

• 2:11:25Speaker 02

  I can't wait for you guys to, because you got your Scorsese rankings, but ranking like De Niro as the guy who will ruin your life, like at the end of Scorsese. I mean, you could throw Kaitlyn there too, if you want to. Between the two of them, they have a lot. Uh, just so much to choose from.

• 2:11:37Griffin Newman?

  This is a good question. Who is the, like, which De Niro is the, is the best dating option in the Scorsese canon?

• 2:11:45David Sims?

  Scorsese canon?

• 2:11:46Griffin Newman?

  I'm like, is it Irishman guy?

• 2:11:49David Sims?

  Well, I was gonna say, if I'm gonna fight anyone, I wanna fight that guy, cuz he can't even punch near you.

• 2:11:54Griffin Newman?

  He's got a hell of a kick.

• 2:11:56David Sims?

  Yeah, if you're air, if you're air, you're like, oh no!

• 2:12:01David Sims?

  He's kicking.

• 2:12:02Speaker 02

  I might go with Johnny Boy from Mean Streets.

• 2:12:04David Sims?

  Yeah, Johnny Boy is kind of a rascal. Yeah.

• 2:12:07Speaker 02

  He's, he's trying hard.

• 2:12:08Griffin Newman?

  You can only date him if you're in your early twenties.

• 2:12:11David Sims?

  Can I date him in Casino, like, and kind of just sneak on by?

• 2:12:15Griffin Newman?

  I want to coke like Sharon Stone does.

• 2:12:17Speaker 02

  You gotta get in and get out.

• 2:12:18David Sims?

  Like, you can't. You don't think so?

• 2:12:21Speaker 02

  You can't stay with him for too long.

• 2:12:23David Sims?

  Yeah, but I feel like if I'm with him in Casino, I'm just kind of like, I got a hotel room? Fine. I'll leave you alone. Like, whatever. I don't know. I'm not gonna.

• 2:12:30Griffin Newman?

  This is your version of Ben's, this movie would end with me owning an island.

• 2:12:34David Sims?

  You're running the casino. You're busy. You're stressed out. I gotta.

• 2:12:37Griffin Newman?

  I don't think it ends well.

• 2:12:38David Sims?

  I think bottom is Cape Fear. You gotta have Cape Fear at the bottom.

• 2:12:41Speaker 02

  I wanna throw up.

• 2:12:41David Sims?

  Taxi Driver, though.

• 2:12:42Speaker 02

  Do you think Max Cady like picks up some women who he doesn't, aren't reconnected to someone he wants to fuck with and like has a good time and then moves on?

• 2:12:48Griffin Newman?

  You're forgetting the Eliot.

• 2:12:50Speaker 02

  I know, I know, but she's like, she's part of the whole scheme though. Like, if she's like not connected to that, okay, all right.

• 2:12:56Griffin Newman?

  I think it's a bad sign. I think it's a real bad sign. It's possible, but I don't think you wanna play those odds.

• 2:13:01David Sims?

  It is just funny that Travis Bickle might not be bottom because of Max Cady.

• 2:13:05Griffin Newman?

  I think he has to not be bottom. Well, let's also say, like, Travis Bickle's more attractive than Rupert Pumpkin.

• 2:13:11David Sims?

  He's a looker.

• 2:13:11Griffin Newman?

  So you have to put him above Rupert. Rupert doesn't know how to fuck. Rupert does not know how to fuck.

• 2:13:16David Sims?

  He's not gonna shoot anyone, probably.

• 2:13:19Griffin Newman?

  Probably.

• 2:13:20David Sims?

  Why would Taxi Driver be fucking gonna shoot someone?

• 2:13:22Griffin Newman?

  He commits crimes. He has a gun.

• 2:13:25Speaker 02

  Are we throwing a killer to the flower moon? Like, that, that's not my top pick, but not the worst?

• 2:13:31Griffin Newman?

  This is what I'm saying. That guy ends up being like top three. And he commits genocide.

• 2:13:36David Sims?

  He does. But he's got a, he's got a, he's got a great car.

• 2:13:40Griffin Newman?

  Great car, great goggles, driving gloves. What more do you need in a man?

• 2:13:45David Sims?

  I think Irishman is near the top and Anna Paquin literally doesn't even wanna speak to him.

• 2:13:50Griffin Newman?

  I think by default, that's number one.

• 2:13:53Speaker 02

  What a body of work.

• 2:13:54David Sims?

  You know what? He's always probably like, you know, I killed Jimmy Hoffa. And it's like, sure, you killed him. You fucking care. So where's my clam?

• 2:14:00Speaker 02

  Jimmy Hoffa, on the other hand, take him home.

• 2:14:02Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, well.

• 2:14:03David Sims?

  He wouldn't dare.

• 2:14:06Griffin Newman?

  I cannot wait to do Irishman bits.

• 2:14:08David Sims?

  I swear to.

• 2:14:09Griffin Newman?

  He wouldn't dare.

• 2:14:11David Sims?

  That was my favorite thing, is like, on Twitter, I would post, they would, him saying they wouldn't dare. Anytime it was like Taika Waititi promises like a madcap satire for his name. I'm like, oh, he wouldn't dare. Taika, they wouldn't dare. Wouldn't let him do that.

• 2:14:26Griffin Newman?

  Whereas my response when I see a headline like that, it is what it is. It's one of those, it is what it is.

• 2:14:32David Sims?

  That movie rocks. That movie is the best.

• 2:14:34Griffin Newman?

  Is for cool kids. It's so good.

• 2:14:37Speaker 02

  I mean, this entire series is you guys being like, you know this movie? Like, very good.

• 2:14:41Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:14:41David Sims?

  Let's do the box office. This film came out in December 9th, 1974. A little Christmas treat for you.

• 2:14:47Griffin Newman?

  Ah, under the tree.

• 2:14:49David Sims?

  Uh, number one at the box office is a film that has been out for, I wanna say, conservatively, five months. And it's doing quite well at the box office, which is maybe speaking to some cultural issues in our country at the time. It's about a, it's about a guy who, something very bad happens to a member of his family.

• 2:15:05Griffin Newman?

  Death Wish?

• 2:15:06Speaker 02

  It's been out for five months?

• 2:15:07David Sims?

  Yeah, and it is a.

• 2:15:08Griffin Newman?

  A humongous sensation.

• 2:15:10Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 2:15:11David Sims?

  Uh, you know, and some people might be like, well, that was terrible and I need to process this emotion. And he's like, where's my piss?

• 2:15:17Griffin Newman?

  And he does it so well that other people come to him and they're like, can you solve my family shit?

• 2:15:21David Sims?

  Sure. Why not? Death Wish, Charles Bronson in the Michael Winner film.

• 2:15:29Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 2:15:29David Sims?

  Death Wish. Anyone ever seen it? I've seen it.

• 2:15:31Griffin Newman?

  I've never seen the Death Wishes.

• 2:15:32Speaker 02

  Seems like a bummer.

• 2:15:33David Sims?

  The first one is like a pretty effective movie. Like, you definitely get it. And it's even movies that are about how New York is like a fucking crime-soaked hellhole in the seventies. You watch them now and you're like, New York City, baby. It's great to see you on screen.

• 2:15:49Griffin Newman?

  The second one is the one that's like unbelievably nasty.

• 2:15:52David Sims?

  I believe the second one is where they're just kind of like, okay, so what worked about this is just like violence and racism, right?

• 2:15:59Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 2:16:00David Sims?

  I have not obviously seen like Death Wish 4, the crackdown, which, funny to think that by four, he's like, I think it's time to start cracking down. I've been taking it too easy.

• 2:16:09Griffin Newman?

  Time to expand outside of my problems.

• 2:16:13David Sims?

  What's the Simpsons joke? And now I'm going to Emmett's fix it to fix Emmett. And he's on like the Phil Silver show. All right. Uh, number two is a disaster movie.

• 2:16:23Speaker 02

  The side adventure?

• 2:16:24David Sims?

  Nope.

• 2:16:25Griffin Newman?

  Is Towering Inferno?

• 2:16:27David Sims?

  Keep going.

• 2:16:27Griffin Newman?

  Earthquake.

• 2:16:28David Sims?

  Earthquake!

• 2:16:29Griffin Newman?

  There we go.

• 2:16:30David Sims?

  And that's your 40x, right?

• 2:16:33Griffin Newman?

  It wasn't called Shake O Rama, but it was called something like that.

• 2:16:35David Sims?

  It was called Sense Round.

• 2:16:36Griffin Newman?

  Sense Round.

• 2:16:37David Sims?

  Then you're, there's an earthquake.

• 2:16:40Speaker 02

  Did you do the earthquake ride at Old School Universal Studios?

• 2:16:42David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 2:16:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, I loved it. I've never seen the movie.

• 2:16:44David Sims?

  The guy shaking your seat, goes from seat to seat.

• 2:16:47Griffin Newman?

  I can't remember if it's that they put motors under the seats or they put speakers under the seat. But they did put things under the seats.

• 2:16:54David Sims?

  I think they would like blast, like basically subwoofers to make your seat vibrate a little bit.

• 2:16:59Griffin Newman?

  A little like the Dolby theaters now.

• 2:17:01David Sims?

  Right. It was like a D-Box, sort of, like a proto D-Box.

• 2:17:05Griffin Newman?

  Dolby where you're like, the sound is so loud, the chair shakes, rather than the movie is synced up to shake in a specific way.

• 2:17:12David Sims?

  Yeah, and it's not like built on some gimbal that's like shaking the floor or anything like that. It's gimbal-less.

• 2:17:16Griffin Newman?

  It's gimbal-less. This is some gimbal-less bullshit.

• 2:17:18David Sims?

  Macy's. No gimbal.

• 2:17:20Griffin Newman?

  No gimbals.

• 2:17:20David Sims?

  Number three at the box office is a sequel to a sort of Death Wish-esque kind of like shock hit.

• 2:17:28Griffin Newman?

  It's not Billy Jack, is it?

• 2:17:29David Sims?

  Fucking is Billy Jack. Which one is it? The second.

• 2:17:32Griffin Newman?

  Goes to Washington?

• 2:17:34David Sims?

  No. He's yet to go to Washington. Billy Jack did eventually go to Washington.

• 2:17:38Speaker 02

  I didn't know that was a thing.

• 2:17:38David Sims?

  I bet he told them to clean up their act.

• 2:17:40Speaker 02

  Drain that swamp.

• 2:17:41Griffin Newman?

  The Return of Billy Jack?

• 2:17:42David Sims?

  It's called The Trial.

• 2:17:44Griffin Newman?

  Oh, The Trial, of course.

• 2:17:45David Sims?

  They put him on trial! Oh no, I'm so sorry. The second film is called Billy Jack, but I'm forgetting that the first film is called The Born Losers, and that actually introduces Billy.

• 2:17:56Griffin Newman?

  But he's not the main character.

• 2:17:57David Sims?

  No, and I think Billy Jack, the 1971 film, was the surprise, like, you know, essentially an indie film.

• 2:18:04Griffin Newman?

  And I think there isn't a Washington. I was thinking of the Trial of Billy Jack. That's what I was.

• 2:18:09David Sims?

  No, there definitely is.

• 2:18:10Griffin Newman?

  There is, is that the?

• 2:18:11David Sims?

  Billy Jack goes to Washington. That's the third one. Uh, fourth, yeah.

• 2:18:14Griffin Newman?

  He cleaned it up.

• 2:18:15David Sims?

  And then The Return of Billy Jack, which was not released.

• 2:18:18Griffin Newman?

  Hmm, yes, I know this.

• 2:18:20David Sims?

  In which he takes on child pornographers, and I guess they were kind of just like, let's, uh. Let's call it quits.

• 2:18:26Griffin Newman?

  Wasn't there also some death involved in that production?

• 2:18:28David Sims?

  Uh, maybe, let's see.

• 2:18:31Griffin Newman?

  I want to say it was like also not completed for some reason.

• 2:18:33David Sims?

  It was not completed. Seventeen minutes were filmed.

• 2:18:37Griffin Newman?

  Oh, good.

• 2:18:38David Sims?

  Uh, he suffered a head injury while making it and they ran out of money. Yeah. So no one died, but you know, uh, so that's number three of the box office. We've threatened to do the Billy Jackson Patreon.

• 2:18:50Griffin Newman?

  Let's do it. Let's jack it up.

• 2:18:51Speaker 02

  Dude, those and the death wishes all, all together.

• 2:18:54Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:18:54David Sims?

  That sounds like a bummer.

• 2:18:56Griffin Newman?

  Anti woke winter.

• 2:18:58David Sims?

  Number four is a sports film.

• 2:19:00Griffin Newman?

  Mm hmm.

• 2:19:01David Sims?

  Kind of one of the original sort of sports comedies, you know, as Bad News Bears is coming around the corner.

• 2:19:06Griffin Newman?

  It's not, uh, well, it's not Slapshot.

• 2:19:09David Sims?

  No.

• 2:19:10Griffin Newman?

  And.

• 2:19:10David Sims?

  Worse than Slapshot.

• 2:19:11Griffin Newman?

  It's not Longest Yard.

• 2:19:13David Sims?

  In fact, it is Burt Reynolds in the Longest Yard.

• 2:19:16Griffin Newman?

  It's a ruddy picture.

• 2:19:18David Sims?

  Um, Robert Aldrich is the longest yard. Have you seen it?

• 2:19:21Griffin Newman?

  No, but he wasn't the real artist behind it. The greatest film producer who ever lived, the bravest man.

• 2:19:27David Sims?

  S. Ruddy, as portrayed by Miles Teller.

• 2:19:30Speaker 03

  Hey, I got an idea for an offer.

• 2:19:33David Sims?

  In the Paramount.

• 2:19:34Griffin Newman?

  It is.

• 2:19:34Speaker 02

  Making the offer ever since in 2026, this is more.

• 2:19:37David Sims?

  Griffin will be making offer references on his death.

• 2:19:40Griffin Newman?

  It's the best TV show that's ever happened. It's also incredible and it's never been more relevant because Michael is the most offer coded movie that has ever existed.

• 2:19:48Speaker 02

  With Miles Teller in it.

• 2:19:49Griffin Newman?

  Miles Teller basically reprising his performance. Miles Teller as Al Ruddy as John Branca.

• 2:19:55David Sims?

  I just saw a movie that Miles Teller is good in, and it's one of those things where you're like, right? Like this, he just needs, well, you know, good director. He needs a character to work with here. Like he's not the fool that I take him for these days all the time.

• 2:20:10Griffin Newman?

  Well, cause like a businessman will develop a movie about how good of a businessman he was, and then hire Miles Teller and be like.

• 2:20:18David Sims?

  It's crazier than that. A businessman will make a movie about The Godfather.

• 2:20:22Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 2:20:22David Sims?

  And be like, and the person who should get the most credit is me, not Francis Ford Coppola, you know, Al Pacino.

• 2:20:30Griffin Newman?

  A much smaller part, but Michael has major tones of that of like, this story's going to continue. And Branca's going to save him.

• 2:20:37David Sims?

  Right.

• 2:20:38Griffin Newman?

  The offer of course, has the greatest, uh, screenwriting credit of all time, which is based on the experiences of Al Ruddy making The Godfather. It's not even based on a fucking book. It's based on a couple of conversations.

• 2:20:50Speaker 02

  He sat down and dictated it and that's all you need.

• 2:20:52Griffin Newman?

  I don't even know if he dictated it.

• 2:20:54David Sims?

  Number five of the box office is a film that I wish featured characters like Guile, John Lee.

• 2:21:03Griffin Newman?

  This, okay. Is this Lady Street Fighter or is this the original Street Fighter?

• 2:21:06David Sims?

  It is a film, simply a Japanese martial arts film called, sorry, The Great Sonny Chima?

• 2:21:10Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 2:21:10David Sims?

  Called The Street Fighter.

• 2:21:12Griffin Newman?

  I believe I recently bought the show factory box set of this.

• 2:21:14David Sims?

  Sounds like something you'll get to that one in 2029 or whatever.

• 2:21:17Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, sure.

• 2:21:19David Sims?

  It's just so funny with like the Radiance, you know, drop comes and it's like, this, this is a huge film and I'm like, I'll just get it. You don't even need to tell me. And I'm like, how many fucking Yakuza films do I have? I'd like, you know, waiting to be watched at this point. Addiction, Katie, you're not in a Blu-ray addiction.

• 2:21:35Speaker 02

  No, no.

• 2:21:36David Sims?

  Disc player?

• 2:21:37Speaker 02

  Yeah, I've got, I've gotten discs that I've collected over various times, like getting them through press stuff mostly. But no, you guys in your physical media thing, I don't.

• 2:21:45Speaker 03

  Don't include me in it.

• 2:21:46Speaker 02

  No, okay. I know. I wasn't looking at you. I'm just looking, I.

• 2:21:49David Sims?

  Ben's normal. He doesn't have any physical media problems.

• 2:21:52Speaker 03

  He hates it.

• 2:21:53Griffin Newman?

  Well, I do.

• 2:21:54David Sims?

  Yeah, there we go.

• 2:21:55Speaker 03

  But it's vinyl.

• 2:21:56David Sims?

  Yeah, you're the vinyl. You already did this with the vinyl. I feel like they're, yeah.

• 2:22:00Speaker 03

  The hands in the box.

• 2:22:01Griffin Newman?

  Okay.

• 2:22:02Speaker 03

  Unfortunately I am starting to get into art books, which are, you know.

• 2:22:06David Sims?

  Well, they're really small, right?

• 2:22:09Speaker 03

  Yeah, in lightweight.

• 2:22:09Griffin Newman?

  You just kind of throw one in your tote bag, you run around town.

• 2:22:13David Sims?

  Easy to store.

• 2:22:15Griffin Newman?

  You should get into like, uh, art novellas where it's just like two paintings.

• 2:22:20David Sims?

  Uh, number six at the box office is a film. I know you're very fond of Griffin, The Little Prince.

• 2:22:25Griffin Newman?

  It is a movie I love. Have you ever seen the Stanley Donan Little Prince?

• 2:22:28Speaker 02

  No, I've not.

• 2:22:28David Sims?

  With, of course, Bob Fosse.

• 2:22:29Griffin Newman?

  It's one of the wildest movies ever made and Bob Fosse plays the snake in it and he, uh, creates Michael Jackson's persona.

• 2:22:37Speaker 02

  Oh, I mean, he did that in so many of the other dance movies. Yeah.

• 2:22:40Griffin Newman?

  This, he's dressed like head to toe black with like a jazzy glove.

• 2:22:44David Sims?

  He's got the hat.

• 2:22:44Griffin Newman?

  And the white socks.

• 2:22:45Speaker 02

  I think I've seen clips of this.

• 2:22:47Griffin Newman?

  He like moonwalks.

• 2:22:48Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:22:48David Sims?

  Yeah, it's a famous, like his dancing in it is, is remember.

• 2:22:51Speaker 02

  I think I have seen that.

• 2:22:53Griffin Newman?

  Gene Wilder plays the fox. He would make my best supporting actor ballot this year. He's unfucking believable in that movie.

• 2:22:58Speaker 02

  I love how long Stanley Donan's career was. That guy was making movies for decades.

• 2:23:02Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, sure. Yeah.

• 2:23:03Speaker 02

  Do Donan one of these days. Come on, guys. That's a lot of movies.

• 2:23:07David Sims?

  There's, maybe there's a way to sort of hack it to, I don't know. Number, uh, seven is one of my favorite films of all time, The Taking of Pelham 123.

• 2:23:14Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:23:15Speaker 02

  Taking it to New York.

• 2:23:16David Sims?

  Number eight is, uh, Airport 1975, uh, which is, what is that? The second one?

• 2:23:24Speaker 02

  Wait, so it came out in 74, but it's called Airport 1975.

• 2:23:28David Sims?

  For the excitement of tomorrow.

• 2:23:30Speaker 02

  Like new, new car models.

• 2:23:31Griffin Newman?

  Blues Brothers 2000 came out in 1998.

• 2:23:34Speaker 02

  Obviously the comp.

• 2:23:35David Sims?

  Yeah, obviously. Uh, which is Charlton Heston, Karen Black, George Kennedy, whatever. I don't know. A million people are in that. Number nine, a reissue, Cabaret.

• 2:23:45Griffin Newman?

  Hmm.

• 2:23:46David Sims?

  We love it.

• 2:23:47Speaker 02

  So they re.

• 2:23:48David Sims?

  Seventy two film.

• 2:23:48Speaker 02

  That's what, like two years after?

• 2:23:49David Sims?

  But you know, there's no fucking DVDs back then.

• 2:23:52Griffin Newman?

  If a movie was a hit at that scale, they would re-release it every year.

• 2:23:55Speaker 02

  You know, I would love to see in theaters, write the second Cabaret. Sounds great.

• 2:23:58Griffin Newman?

  Mm hmm.

• 2:23:59David Sims?

  Uh, number five, number 10 is a movie called Law and Disorder. I have to look it up. I don't know this.

• 2:24:04Speaker 02

  There's so many like vigilantes.

• 2:24:06David Sims?

  Carol O'Connor, Ernest Borgnine, oh, and you're telling me there's law and disorder in this one?

• 2:24:11Griffin Newman?

  And you're telling me their shirts are tucked in properly, right? Nothing rumpled, sleeves all the way down.

• 2:24:18David Sims?

  Oh.

• 2:24:18Griffin Newman?

  Nary a belly in sight.

• 2:24:20David Sims?

  Feeling a little anxious about this one. Let me run the plot here by you. In the crime infested New York city of the seventies, two residents and friends played by Carol O'Connor and Ernest Borgnine. So, you know, grumpy, uh, barrel shaped white guys. Decide to join the auxiliary wing of the New York City Police Department to help take back their neighborhood from criminals.

• 2:24:43David Sims?

  Do you think they do that in a responsible way?

• 2:24:45Griffin Newman?

  Vincent can be called it a gentle.

• 2:24:48David Sims?

  Oh, okay, okay.

• 2:24:49Griffin Newman?

  Sometimes disruptively funny movie.

• 2:24:52Speaker 02

  Wow. This is all important practice for Taxi Driver. You guys need to watch all of these before doing that episode.

• 2:24:58David Sims?

  Maybe this is more of just a straightforward comedy.

• 2:25:00Griffin Newman?

  Maybe. Albert Finney is an uncredited producer on it? What the fuck is this movie?

• 2:25:05David Sims?

  Sure, I'll produce it for you.

• 2:25:07Speaker 02

  I didn't know uncredited producers was a thing.

• 2:25:09David Sims?

  Cause when Finney produced, he would talk like his character, Nere Brockovich.

• 2:25:12Griffin Newman?

  It's one of.

• 2:25:13David Sims?

  Aaron.

• 2:25:14Griffin Newman?

  It's one of Angelo Badalamenti's first credits, but he did it under the name Andy Badale.

• 2:25:19David Sims?

  There you go. He was trying to pass.

• 2:25:22Griffin Newman?

  Or maybe Andy Badale.

• 2:25:23David Sims?

  And then they tried to give him some espresso and he went, shit. And they were like, oh, fuck, this guy's Italian.

• 2:25:30Griffin Newman?

  He's Italian.

• 2:25:32David Sims?

  It's just crazy that one of the Simpsons writers went in the fucking submersible before it blew up.

• 2:25:37Griffin Newman?

  Yes. Yes, it is. That's all.

• 2:25:40Speaker 02

  Would you ever go in a submersible?

• 2:25:42David Sims?

  Uh, uh, no.

• 2:25:45Speaker 02

  Nor I, not moving ranges.

• 2:25:47David Sims?

  For you on that one and it is no. All right. Uh, Ben is sending us ad copy and I gotta go pick up my daughter. So I think we should bring.

• 2:25:55Griffin Newman?

  Ben and I have to go see Toy Story five again.

• 2:25:57Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 2:25:58David Sims?

  Ben smiling.

• 2:25:59Speaker 03

  I signed up for it.

• 2:26:00David Sims?

  Okay.

• 2:26:00Speaker 03

  I liked it a lot.

• 2:26:01David Sims?

  No, I liked it too.

• 2:26:02Griffin Newman?

  What Ben said to me was, I really want to see that again before we work.

• 2:26:05David Sims?

  Wow.

• 2:26:06Speaker 03

  I'm there for me.

• 2:26:07David Sims?

  I will be seeing it again with my daughter on Sunday.

• 2:26:10Speaker 02

  I will be seeing it with my children, probably on Sunday as well. But they are, I don't think I've told you this, Griffin, that like, they didn't think they were into it. Cause like, they don't have a lot of Toy Story knowledge. It's not like one of our movies. And then we saw the trailer for Hoppers or something like that. And they're both like, oh yeah, absolutely. That trailer nailed it for them.

• 2:26:26David Sims?

  I truly wonder what my daughter's going to make of it.

• 2:26:28Griffin Newman?

  But she's more a fan of the other films. Anecdotally, I mean.

• 2:26:31David Sims?

  She loves the other films and she loves Jesse. I think that'll, yeah, that'll be great for her.

• 2:26:35Speaker 02

  Movie, right?

• 2:26:35David Sims?

  It is, but I just, I truly wonder if the message will resonate with her at all. Cause it's a little over her head at this age, I would say.

• 2:26:42Griffin Newman?

  Anecdotally, I've witnessed a couple of examples of kids who do not previously like Toy Story being interested in this one and or loving this one.

• 2:26:50David Sims?

  It certainly looks like it's going to make a lot of money.

• 2:26:52Griffin Newman?

  The pump feels very primed.

• 2:26:53Speaker 02

  I was so surprised that it, cause like, you know, Charlie, again, like he's 10, like he's, we saw Disclosure Day, like he's writing for the Odyssey, but like Toy Story, it's, you know, it works.

• 2:27:01Griffin Newman?

  My, my 10 year old little cousin, who always loves to say that he hates the Toy Story movies, a thing that's really challenging me, testing me. The foulest mouth I've ever seen.

• 2:27:11Speaker 02

  He's rebelling against you. I'm so sorry.

• 2:27:13Griffin Newman?

  He did say to me, when does Toy Story five come out? I can't wait to see that.

• 2:27:16Speaker 02

  Hmm. We gotta take George and Charlie to the movies together someday. That's the dream.

• 2:27:19Griffin Newman?

  That's interesting.

• 2:27:20Speaker 02

  Mm hmm.

• 2:27:21Griffin Newman?

  They might, they might get along. Okay.

• 2:27:23Speaker 02

  All right. We're going to make it happen.

• 2:27:24Griffin Newman?

  Someday we're going to make it happen.

• 2:27:25Speaker 02

  Ready.

• 2:27:26Griffin Newman?

  Katie, thank you so much for being here.

• 2:27:27Speaker 02

  Thank you guys.

• 2:27:27David Sims?

  Katie, you're always welcome on. I check with Griffin and David.

• 2:27:30Speaker 02

  Find my way back in whenever you'll have me.

• 2:27:32Griffin Newman?

  Auntie of Blankies? Was that the nickname we gave you last time?

• 2:27:34Speaker 02

  I think so. Yeah. Cause Emily is the mother and I think I get to be the auntie. So I will gladly take that role.

• 2:27:40Griffin Newman?

  Uh, Prestige Junkie.

• 2:27:41Speaker 02

  Yeah. Prestige Junkie at the Ankler, uh, me and Chris Rosen talking about award stuff and I have guests on, including you guys, uh, whenever the time comes and.

• 2:27:48Griffin Newman?

  I did an avatar episode that people were really normal about.

• 2:27:52Speaker 02

  That was one of those social clips that like, I was like, why am I still getting notifications about this?

• 2:27:56Griffin Newman?

  Five months later.

• 2:27:58Speaker 02

  It was so crazy.

• 2:27:59Griffin Newman?

  It was insane.

• 2:28:01Speaker 02

  Please get your next hottest take ready and come on back on.

• 2:28:04Griffin Newman?

  I will. Well, Big Jim's got to announce another Avatar movie, but I'll think of something else.

• 2:28:09Speaker 02

  Oh, and I have to say fighting in the war room because David never mentions it.

• 2:28:12Griffin Newman?

  No.

• 2:28:13Speaker 02

  Someone's got to do it.

• 2:28:14Griffin Newman?

  We tried to make him do it.

• 2:28:15Speaker 02

  Ben Hosley a guest not that long ago. We never have guests.

• 2:28:17Griffin Newman?

  That was so fun.

• 2:28:18Speaker 02

  It's like you and John Ratzenberger are like the only two guests who've ever come on that.

• 2:28:21Griffin Newman?

  John Ratzenberger.

• 2:28:21Speaker 02

  That was like 15 years ago.

• 2:28:23David Sims?

  I have guested on Fighting in the War Room many times.

• 2:28:26Speaker 02

  I don't know about many. Like, it's usually too lazy for it, but yeah, Ben came on and talked about Slow Christmas. It was a great time. Yeah, you came on one time and talked about the tick, I think.

• 2:28:34David Sims?

  I'm also, I'm also on the iconic episode, I think Griffin is too, where David is getting married and we're all together.

• 2:28:40Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:28:41Griffin Newman?

  Oh, oh, on the porch. That was a porch, that was a porch record.

• 2:28:44Speaker 02

  A porch record, you're right.

• 2:28:45Griffin Newman?

  A relic's wedding.

• 2:28:46Speaker 02

  I have a picture of you guys recording that. I'm gonna, I'm gonna find it.

• 2:28:49Griffin Newman?

  That's a good picture.

• 2:28:50Speaker 02

  Yeah, we did a lot of like wedding episodes because we were getting married.

• 2:28:52Griffin Newman?

  Because they just had their 10th anniversary, right?

• 2:28:55Speaker 02

  No, it'll be, it'll be next year because Charlie was a baby. I had just left New York and I drove back up for that wedding. So it's, it's in.

• 2:29:02Griffin Newman?

  You're right, you're right.

• 2:29:02Speaker 02

  It'll be in 27.

• 2:29:04Griffin Newman?

  No, no, 17, 17.

• 2:29:05David Sims?

  Their anniversary is my wife's birthday and she was turning 29.

• 2:29:09Speaker 02

  I'm finding this picture of you two sitting on the porch and yakking.

• 2:29:14Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:29:14Speaker 02

  That was what, that was what we did back then.

• 2:29:16Griffin Newman?

  That's what we did back then. And it's very different from what we're doing right now. Yakking in a room indoors with a porch.

• 2:29:23Speaker 02

  Oh my God, you guys are so cute. I'm sending this picture.

• 2:29:25Griffin Newman?

  I don't want to see this. I'm gonna have a fucking existential crisis looking at this picture.

• 2:29:29Speaker 02

  Try having a 10 year old where you're like, you were just a baby, weren't you? Now all the listeners can share in it. Anyone who's listened to Titanic episode recently.

• 2:29:36Griffin Newman?

  A decade of dreams, a decade of dreams of Charlie.

• 2:29:41David Sims?

  You'll be back?

• 2:29:42Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:29:42David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 2:29:43Speaker 02

  I'm on back in. You can't get rid of me.

• 2:29:45David Sims?

  Charlie will be back.

• 2:29:46Speaker 02

  Oh my God, I would love, especially because you're not doing video. He does not want to be like on video anything, but coming and talking to a microphone, I think he could do it.

• 2:29:53Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:29:54Speaker 02

  He's got to come back to his birthplace.

• 2:29:55Griffin Newman?

  Do a family trip. Yeah, he's got to do it.

• 2:29:56Speaker 02

  We're coming.

• 2:29:57Griffin Newman?

  New York City zone.

• 2:30:00Speaker 02

  He's native.

• 2:30:01Griffin Newman?

  Thank you all for listening. Please remember to rate, review and subscribe. Tune in next week for Taxi Driver with Tracy Letts. We apologize in advance. The episode's a little short. We were facing a couple hard outs.

• 2:30:11Speaker 03

  It's the longest episode we've ever done.

• 2:30:13Griffin Newman?

  Unfortunately, by.

• 2:30:14Speaker 02

  Four hours?

• 2:30:14Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:30:15David Sims?

  Luckily, I murder everyone in the room when it's done, so.

• 2:30:18Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, it's admissible in court, this episode.

• 2:30:20David Sims?

  Just kidding. It's in my memory, as long as it was, a very good episode.

• 2:30:25Griffin Newman?

  Yes, I think so.

• 2:30:26David Sims?

  Yeah, we were, we were pretty locked in with all Tracy. That's part of why it's stressful. It's like, we're really trying to like be, you know, present and effective with Mr. Tracy Letts.

• 2:30:34Speaker 03

  But he also is like, I'm going for it.

• 2:30:36David Sims?

  Yeah, he's like, how long, how long is the record? And I was like, don't, nobody tell him.

• 2:30:40Speaker 02

  Well, I feel like when you have your friends come in and try to break the record, you can be like, no, shut up, you're not doing it. But when it's Tracy Letts, even though he is your friend, he's Tracy Letts, you kind of have to let the man cook.

• 2:30:48Griffin Newman?

  He threw the pulitzer down on the table and he started cooking.

• 2:30:52Speaker 03

  Over on the Patreon, recently we just put out Resident Evil Apocalypse.

• 2:30:58Griffin Newman?

  It's, it's the end of the Resident Evil franchise. I don't know, wait, no, there are four more. God, this photo, Jesus Christ.

• 2:31:04Speaker 02

  Look at these babies talking on the porch.

• 2:31:06David Sims?

  I look better now.

• 2:31:08Speaker 03

  You can sign up for that as well as other bonus content over at patreon.com/blankcheck.

• 2:31:14Griffin Newman?

  Do I look better now? I'm gonna say yes.

• 2:31:16David Sims?

  I think you actually might, yes.

• 2:31:18Griffin Newman?

  I think I might.

• 2:31:19Speaker 02

  I'm looking at a picture of me taking that weekend. I looked pretty good.

• 2:31:22Griffin Newman?

  I need to tell myself this. Yeah. And as always, kiss my grits.

• 2:31:30Griffin Newman?

  What was I gonna say about Marshall Lucas stained glass? I don't know.

• 2:31:34David Sims?

  Who knows? Something funny.

• 2:31:35Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, it would have been really good. Imagine the funniest thing.

• 2:31:39Speaker 03

  Blank Check with Griffin and David is hosted by Griffin Newman and David Sims. Our executive producer is me, Ben Hosley. Our creative producer is Marie Bardi Salinas and our associate producer is AJ McKeon. This show is mixed and edited by AJ McKeon and Alan Smithy. Research by JJ Birch. Our theme song is by Lain Montgomery and The Great American Novel, with additional music by Alex Mitchell. Artwork by Joe Bowen, Ollie 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. Follow us on social at Blank Check Pod. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter, Checkbook, on Substack.

• 2:32:25Speaker 03

  This podcast is created and produced by Blank Check Productions.