Pod Insights Blank Check with Griffin & David You Were Never Really Here with Sean Clements About this episode In 2018, Lynne Ramsay released You Were Never Really Here, a film about a completely implausible scenario...a townhouse on the East side of Manhattan houses a sex trafficking operation that implicates high-level government officials in its web of depravity???? Could you even imagine?!! Hollywood Handbook's Sean Clements joins us to chat about this eerily relevant film, the literary career of Jonathan Ames, Joaquin Phoenix's screen persona, and Joseph Gordon Levitt's recently announced follow-up to Don Jon.
Listen to Hayes Davenport's (not a guest on this episode) episode of High & Mighty where he talks about newspaper comics. https://headgum.com/high-and-mighty/66-newspaper-comics-w-hayes-davenport
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Transcript 34,186 words · 8 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:02 Griffin Newman? David.
0:03 David Sims? Yep.
0:03 Griffin Newman? We did a live show.
0:04 David Sims? Yeah, remember?
0:05 Griffin Newman? Ranking Scorsese at the Bell House in Brooklyn. We did the definitive power ranking of Martin Scorsese things.
0:12 David Sims? Uh, it was so fun. Uh, it was very silly.
0:15 Griffin Newman? Ben and Marie were with us and they're with us right now.
0:18 David Sims? Yeah, hey.
0:18 Speaker 02 Hey, everyone, or should I say, oh?
0:20 David Sims? Oh.
0:22 Griffin Newman? And thanks to our friends at Dynasty Typewriter. It was livestreamed for the first time ever. But also, the replay is still up there, but only until October 30th.
0:31 David Sims? So just a few more days.
0:33 Griffin Newman? Yes.
0:33 David Sims? You can get it at dynasty.tv.
0:36 Griffin Newman? Dynasty.tv.
0:37 David Sims? It's $20. We had a blast and the Spreadmaster really got to work.
0:43 Griffin Newman? Oh, yeah. I was moving things around. Laptop was on.
0:46 Speaker 02 I don't know if I'd have seen you that happy.
0:48 Griffin Newman? You were thrilled. You were like a picky chick.
0:50 David Sims? I was locked in.
0:51 Griffin Newman? Yeah, very locked in and you were funny.
0:53 David Sims? Thank you. You were funny. You were also funny.
0:56 Griffin Newman? Oh, thank you.
0:57 David Sims? And if you want to see like, you know, Griffin's shine box on camera, it's the only way to see it.
1:02 Griffin Newman? You might see me shine Marie's shoes.
1:04 David Sims? Exactly.
1:05 Speaker 02 Yeah, if you're into that sort of content.
1:07 Griffin Newman? If that gets you off.
1:09 Speaker 02 Okay.
1:10 David Sims? So once again, that's at dynasty.tv.
1:39 Griffin Newman? Joe, wake up. It's a beautiful podcast.
1:43 David Sims? So this is.
1:44 Griffin Newman? It's the last line of the film.
1:45 David Sims? That is true, but this is a dialogue light movie.
1:48 Griffin Newman? It is.
1:49 David Sims? I was like, what's he, what's he gonna say? I guess that's true.
1:51 Griffin Newman? Lynn Ramsey testing me on the opening quotes.
1:54 David Sims? Was there a, um? A tagline? What if he said, "Get ready to meet Joe." Like, how do you, like, what's the, like, worst tagline you could?
2:02 Griffin Newman? Joe does things a little differently. There's a quote, there's a pull quote on the poster that is taxi driver for a new century, which is a way to attempt to sell this movie with the moodiest poster of all time. Just like Joaquin Phoenix looking tortured and a girl, like, drowning, superimposed inside his body.
2:21 David Sims? Right, that was, that was the, uh, that was the poster.
2:24 Griffin Newman? And like one car white lights. I think it's a great, uh, poster.
2:27 David Sims? It's a pretty, um, evocative poster.
2:29 Griffin Newman? It's a mood poster, like all of hers. Um, but I mean, there's like, there are more quotes here.
2:35 David Sims? Duck! And it's him, he's swinging a hammer.
2:39 David Sims? Just be funny if they, like, marketed this like Nobody 2.
2:41 Griffin Newman? It's hammer time.
2:42 Speaker 04 Joe is having a very bad day. And it's about to get even worse.
2:49 Griffin Newman? When Joe's on the clock, it's always hammer time. There are more quotes for this than there are, than there were for Morv and Cowler. And you look at them and you're like, well, isolated, these feel like quotes that could be out of Taken 2.
3:04 David Sims? Right.
3:04 Griffin Newman? Right? Like, McLeary said you were brutal. I can be. I want you to hurt them. There's a version of that that you see as like a tense fucking Europa corp thriller.
3:12 David Sims? That's like Russell Crowe being like, putting down his sandwich and being like, alright, okay.
3:17 Griffin Newman? Yeah.
3:18 David Sims? Sorry, I'm really bagging on Russell Crowe, please.
3:20 Griffin Newman? Do you know what paradise is? It's a lie, a fantasy we create about people and places as we'd like them to be. That, that's like, that could be a fucking Steven Seagal, like, stares off into the middle distance.
3:30 David Sims? It's making me realize, it's like when Watchmen, the movie Watchmen, X-Men's Watchmen, you know, would just, would just paraphrase dialogue and quotes and stuff from the comic. And it's like, man, you can't speak that aloud seriously.
3:44 Griffin Newman? Right.
3:45 David Sims? Like, it'll sound ridiculous. Now, in this, it's all mumbled or it's all like, you know.
3:49 Griffin Newman? That's the magic of it to me. It's like. They get away with it in there.
3:53 David Sims? They completely get away with it.
3:54 Griffin Newman? He always sounds embarrassed to be saying what he's saying, if he's saying anything.
3:58 David Sims? That's why it's one of his best performances, harnessing that, uh, that aspect of him as an actor that always feels a little embarrassed to be acting.
4:05 Griffin Newman? And you're divisive on him in general. You, you have oft referred to him as a ham sandwich.
4:09 David Sims? I mean, maybe introduce me before you start putting words in my mouth, but yes, I, I occasionally have called Joaquin Phoenix a ham sandwich.
4:16 Griffin Newman? But you agree with me. It is perhaps his best performance, and it's certainly in that conversation.
4:20 David Sims? Yeah, it's a good performance, and it's the mode I often like him in.
4:24 Speaker 04 Is it the last one before he went so hard into doing kind of the same thing all the time?
4:34 Griffin Newman? A little bit, well, because he, this premieres at Cannes in 2017.
4:38 David Sims? Sure.
4:39 Griffin Newman? It comes out in the States in 2018.
4:41 David Sims? Right.
4:41 Griffin Newman? And 2019 is Joker.
4:43 David Sims? Yeah, in 2018, so sort of in between him making this and Joker coming out. He's got some weird stuff. He has the Jesus movie nobody saw.
4:54 Griffin Newman? Doesn't exist.
4:55 David Sims? He has Don't Worry, He Won't Get Far on Foot, which is like buried, forgotten. The Gus Van Sant movie, I saw it too.
5:01 Griffin Newman? Mm-hmm.
5:02 David Sims? It's pretty bad. It was okay.
5:03 Speaker 04 It was, yeah, it had some charm, but.
5:06 David Sims? And he does Sisters Brothers, which I really like him in.
5:10 Griffin Newman? Have you ever seen that?
5:10 Speaker 04 Yeah.
5:11 Griffin Newman? Pretty fantastic movie.
5:12 David Sims? But obviously was sort of DOA, audience-wise. And then, yeah, I mean.
5:18 Griffin Newman? But that's like an interesting range year for him. When you think about this coming out in 2018, Sisters Brothers, Don't Worry, You Were Never Really Here is like, that's an interesting range of three different projects with three different really interesting directors in different modes, and he's not overdoing any of them.
5:35 Speaker 04 No, I mean, this one is so, you know, obviously, this one in particular that we're all saying we like is very, very understated.
5:42 Griffin Newman? Yeah.
5:42 Speaker 04 And I know, you know, it's light on dialogue. You read the book too, right?
5:47 Griffin Newman? Yeah.
5:47 Speaker 04 You do, I watched the movie first.
5:49 Griffin Newman? Yes.
5:50 Speaker 04 And then I read the book, and you're getting so much of his internal monologue and what, you know, what is going on for him. And it's amazing to me how much that is coming through without any of the words.
6:01 David Sims? Voiceover.
6:02 Griffin Newman? Yes.
6:03 David Sims? The same trick she pulls with Morphin Callier, which is another movie of hers that's based on a book that's all internal monologue.
6:09 Griffin Newman? You know what's a thought I had?
6:10 David Sims? There's none of it in the movie.
6:11 Griffin Newman? A thought I had while watching this and then reading the book, which I only read recently, finished it last night. And it's not long. It was released.
6:19 David Sims? A slim volume.
6:20 Griffin Newman? Not as like a Kindle single, but it was like an experimental ebook novella when that was a medium people were trying to test out. And then now, since the movie, it's been published as like a 97-page thing. But reading the book after seeing the movie, and I've been trying to do this with her other films as well. It's, it feels like the book is like the backstory an actor creates for their character. Right? Where like really prepped, kind of studious actors will be like, I'm gonna write this whole fucking thing. I don't need to communicate it in the movie. It helps me ground it and place it and know what I'm playing internally and hopefully not feel the need to like, actually communicate it in an overstated way.
7:01 Griffin Newman? And she somehow knows how to like reverse engineer that extrapolate from these books that are so much about the internal life. Pull out the plot of your elements.
7:09 Speaker 04 The thing I saw in, in a review of Die My Love 2, which I haven't seen yet, but was like, somehow, her camera movements make you feel the internal life of the character.
7:22 Griffin Newman? Yeah.
7:22 Speaker 04 And like the sort of, the way she chooses to like, show the violence or like even show moments of him at rest and how restless he is in those, in those spots is like, you know, the, the, way that it's shot just like really makes you feel what he's feeling. Uh, and he's great.
7:41 Griffin Newman? Yes, I will add on to that. The additional trick in this movie that feels unique in her filmography is so often her movies are like, you are a hundred percent in the head of the character.
7:50 Speaker 04 Mm-hmm.
7:51 Griffin Newman? You are seeing the whole movie from their point of view. You're placed in their inner life. And the film is like expressing that. This movie in its sort of handling of PTSD and a sort of disassociation, is going between being really close in on him and feeling really distant removed. And the violence is a fascinating part of that where this feels like a really brutal violent movie, where you almost never actually see the thing happen.
8:14 Speaker 04 They don't show the actual, which is also is obviously a very, a huge stylistic choice that is different from the book, which the book, graphically explains a lot of the brutality. But like when he goes through the like, you know, brothel or whatever, and you're just getting security camera footage and it's sometimes cutting to a different angle of like the bottom of the stairs. And then it cuts back and you just see like what he has done.
8:38 Griffin Newman? Incredible.
8:39 Speaker 04 But you don't see him do it. That sequence is fucking awesome.
8:42 Griffin Newman? It rules.
8:43 Speaker 04 It's not even in a like, you wanna, you wish you were seeing it. It's like, oh, I like, like, I have such a sense of what's going on and also like, How scary it would be.
8:53 Griffin Newman? Everything about it.
8:54 Speaker 04 Yeah.
8:55 Griffin Newman? This is a podcast called Blank Check with Griffin and David. I am Griffin.
8:58 David Sims? I'm David.
8:59 Griffin Newman? And we were never really here. It's a podcast about filmographies, directors who have massive success early on in their careers, and are given a series of blank checks to make whatever crazy passion projects they want. Sometimes those checks clear and sometimes they bounce. Baby? This is a mini-series on the films of Lynn Ramsey. It's called We Need to Pod About Cast Vin. And today, we're talking about my favorite film of hers, and one of my favorite movies of the last 10 years, You Were Never Really Here.
9:25 David Sims? Yeah, a film that I've seen twice and really like, and a film that I think for you is basically like sleepy time, happy, once a week, just like, "Ah, I need to unwind. It's time to meet the hobo assassin again."
9:39 Griffin Newman? It's not quite that often. I do have some strange comfort movies that are in a real steady rotation. This is one that's more selective when I want to feel a certain way.
9:50 David Sims? Yeah.
9:52 Griffin Newman? But I also, I just, I find the filmmaking in this movie astonishing. There are choices she makes that still, every time I watch it, and I've seen it many times. I think I saw it three times in theaters. You know, for a long time, it's an Amazon movie. They bought it, so it's just always streaming on the world's worst streaming service. And now I finally have a physical copy of it, thanks to Australian distributors outside of Amazon's reign. But there are scenes in it I'll watch, but even every time I watch it, I kind of, there are things that still surprise me in it, in what it does and what it doesn't do.
10:28 Speaker 04 Yeah, yeah.
10:29 David Sims? Who's our guest?
10:31 Speaker 04 Yeah, okay.
10:32 Griffin Newman? Our guest today shares with me, this is one of your favorite films in recent history as well, correct?
10:37 Speaker 04 I love it. I mean, you were the first people I texted when I watched it. I think it's a totally slept-on movie.
10:43 David Sims? It is a little bit.
10:44 Griffin Newman? It's an Amazon thing, but yeah.
10:46 Speaker 04 Everyone who would listen that I was doing this podcast, just grabbing people on the street, "I'm gonna be on Blank Check. Have you heard the news?"
10:52 Griffin Newman? In person, for the first time.
10:54 Speaker 04 And they said, "What movie are you doing?" And I'd say, "You Were Never Really Here," and they'd go, "Huh?"
10:58 Griffin Newman? What is that and who made that? Why are they talking about it?
11:00 Speaker 04 Even people who I think would love the movie.
11:01 Griffin Newman? Yeah.
11:02 Speaker 04 Where I'm just like, "You gotta watch it." But I also had kind of missed it.
11:06 Griffin Newman? Yeah.
11:08 Speaker 04 The poster, which I agree is cool, didn't-
11:14 Speaker 04 Sell me on it. Like, I was like, okay, this looks like a moody thing. Maybe I'll try it sometime. But I don't know why I threw it on on some streamer, but maybe like a half hour in, I was like, I gotta text Griffin and David.
11:27 Griffin Newman? Yes.
11:28 Speaker 04 This movie fucking rocks. Like, I was just like, holy shit. It's awesome. Like, Joaquin's unbelievable in it. The directing's incredible. And it's like, I mean, it's tight as a fucking drum. Like, it's like, there's no fat on it.
11:44 David Sims? Which I really appreciate.
11:45 Speaker 04 It's so, it flies.
11:47 David Sims? Cause you could sit in this misery, and that's a different decision. And I don't know if I would love that. And instead, it's like, no, no, no, no, no. Like, just kind of like little pokes in your eye.
11:57 Speaker 04 Big pokes.
11:58 David Sims? Yeah, exactly.
11:59 Speaker 04 I mean, if you just like counted up the scene, like, it's like so, so, so efficient, which I have so much respect for.
12:05 Griffin Newman? It's, it's, I think like eighty-one minutes before the credits roll.
12:08 David Sims? Yeah, yeah.
12:09 Griffin Newman? Basically.
12:09 David Sims? I think it's listed as like ninety minutes, but it's, it's really pretty much like an hour twenty.
12:15 Griffin Newman? Yeah, which is, which is great. It's, it, it also feels smart in the sort of, uh, we discussed when we covered Trainspotting on this podcast, that Danny Boyle's big rule going into that movie with all the key creatives is like, we gotta sign a blood pact. This movie has to be under ninety minutes. We are not gonna be able to sustain this. If we hit ninety-five, it's gonna become oppressive.
12:35 Speaker 04 Yeah.
12:36 Griffin Newman? Um, and I, I think she very smartly makes the same choice here. It, when it played at Cannes, it was an earlier cut that was longer, that has never been released in any form since then.
12:45 David Sims? It was never really released.
12:46 Griffin Newman? It was never really released. Our guest today.
12:48 David Sims? Yes.
12:49 Griffin Newman? From Hollywood Handbook, screenwriter of The Dink.
12:51 David Sims? That's right.
12:52 Griffin Newman? Which will be coming out.
12:54 David Sims? I think it has a release date, right?
12:55 Speaker 04 This, this summer on Apple.
12:56 Griffin Newman? Okay.
12:57 David Sims? Okay, yeah, okay.
12:58 Griffin Newman? Summer twenty twenty-six. Q two? Is it Q two release?
13:01 David Sims? Or Q three?
13:02 Speaker 04 Ah, what? I don't get my Qs mixed up.
13:05 David Sims? You only get your Ps and Qs, right?
13:07 Griffin Newman? That's the problem. You throw Ps in there.
13:08 David Sims? Probably more of a Q three if it's.
13:10 Speaker 04 I've been told a date. I don't know if I'm allowed to say it, but it's summertime.
13:14 David Sims? But it's coming out this year.
13:15 Griffin Newman? In the summertime.
13:16 David Sims? Apple.
13:16 Speaker 04 It's gonna be twenty twenty-six, uh, summer, big fun summer comedy. Uh, get ready to laugh again.
13:23 Griffin Newman? Warm laughs.
13:24 Speaker 04 Can we have fun?
13:25 Griffin Newman? Funny laughs.
13:25 Speaker 04 Am I allowed to have fun at all in this administration?
13:28 Griffin Newman? They told us that comedy was legal, and I'm not seeing a lot of evidence of that.
13:32 Speaker 04 Yeah, well, it's legal again, and I'm, I'm actually gonna be the first one to stand up and not get arrested for doing it.
13:39 Griffin Newman? Sean Clements.
13:41 Speaker 04 The Clam Dog. The Clam Dog.
13:42 David Sims? Here.
13:43 Speaker 04 Bow wow wow, woof woof.
13:44 David Sims? The Friends McMullin are reunited.
13:47 Griffin Newman? We had a group text for a while called the Cinematrix Club. Where we'd post our daily Cinematrix scores. The two of you weirdly have decided to spend more time raising your children and less time playing Cinematrix.
13:57 Speaker 04 It was pulling me away from my family in a very significant way. Especially because you guys are so good at it. And I was like, I can't be like totally humiliated every day. And I would like really like grind on this thing. And I was like, I'm not enjoying it.
14:10 David Sims? I was starting to not enjoy it. That was sort of my problem. And that's no offense to the good people who make the Cinematrix.
14:15 Griffin Newman? It was a daily ritual, which was nice. Cause it also gave us like an excuse to once a day check in and throw in some, some spare movie thoughts. And things like you texting, hey, I'm watching You Were Never Really Here for the first time. Do you guys fuck with this movie?
14:27 Speaker 04 I don't think it would have happened if we weren't Cinematrix friends who were, you know, in touch basically every day for a while.
14:32 Griffin Newman? If we weren't clubbing, which we were.
14:34 Speaker 04 Yeah.
14:34 Griffin Newman? And then, uh, the text thread has, has become more sporadic.
14:38 Speaker 04 Mm-hmm.
14:39 Griffin Newman? Uh, I saw the trailer for the Family McMullin. The finally Ed Burns 30 years later legacy sequel. And I texted to you and say, this feels like it's demanding a teaser freezer.
14:50 Speaker 04 Yeah.
14:51 Griffin Newman? And in honor of that, we have renamed the group text, The Friends McMullin.
14:54 Speaker 04 A teaser freezer is something we do on Hollywood Handbook.
14:57 Griffin Newman? Legendary segment.
14:58 Speaker 04 Where we will break down a movie trailer, um, and, and, and poke fun at the foibles. Um, but we, David had, I'm going to credit David with the, um, observation of, he said, is Ed Burns? The Irish American Tyler Perry?
15:17 Griffin Newman? Yes. An incredible line.
15:19 Speaker 04 Which was like.
15:19 Griffin Newman? A kill shot.
15:20 Speaker 04 Amazing quote.
15:22 Griffin Newman? Yeah.
15:23 Speaker 04 And it really stuck with me and so.
15:25 David Sims? I'm laughing at my own joke, but it is a good one.
15:28 Speaker 04 So funny.
15:29 David Sims? I forgot about that.
15:30 Speaker 04 Cause we were going through all his movie titles, which are all like the McGillicuddy brothers.
15:34 David Sims? It's staggering amounts of movies.
15:37 Griffin Newman? The Fitzgerald family Christmas.
15:39 David Sims? Just, I'll read, cause like the first, you know, Brothers McMullin, She's the One, people were watching these movies.
15:43 Griffin Newman? Well, first of all, this great party trick of, how many movies do you think Ed Burns has directed?
15:48 David Sims? Directions, directed and not anything else.
15:50 Griffin Newman? My girlfriend and I were watching The Chair Company on Max and it auto-played a Family McMullin trailer. Cause I guess it's about to go to Max.
15:58 David Sims? I'm sure.
15:59 Griffin Newman? And she was like, what? And I was like, Sean Simpson.
16:02 David Sims? This thing's going to max at like the speed of light.
16:04 Griffin Newman? About this for weeks. And then I paused it and I said, just a quick test. How many films do you think Ed Burns has directed? And she went, I'm gonna guess it's a lot, like six?
16:15 Speaker 04 Oh, sweetie.
16:16 David Sims? He's got 15. He's got 15 under his belt, uh, which is probably about six regular movies.
16:22 Griffin Newman? Right.
16:22 David Sims? If you kind of like average them out, you know, squeeze them together.
16:25 Griffin Newman? But I just love that you're like, well, three I've heard of. So I'm guessing there's three I haven't heard of. And you're like, no, there's 12 to 13 you haven't heard of.
16:33 David Sims? Nice guy Johnny.
16:35 Griffin Newman? Well, I met him.
16:36 David Sims? Or you've never attended the Fitzgerald family Christmas.
16:40 Griffin Newman? Call that one out.
16:40 David Sims? Which weirdly has Connie Britton in it as well, but is not McMullin.
16:44 Griffin Newman? Right.
16:44 David Sims? It's Fitzgerald.
16:45 Griffin Newman? But then there's another one with another Irish family name.
16:48 Speaker 04 Yeah.
16:49 Griffin Newman? The Millers in Love.
16:50 David Sims? Millers in Marriage. And that's another one where the poster is like 14 actors. You kind of know.
16:56 Griffin Newman? Yeah.
16:56 David Sims? That clearly Ed has their phone number and is like, do you have six days? I've rented a house.
17:02 Griffin Newman? Have a good time.
17:03 David Sims? In Marinerneck, like, or whatever, you know, like, we'll, we'll do it.
17:06 Griffin Newman? Well, you have no nonsense.
17:08 David Sims? Gretchen Mall, Juliana Margulies, Minnie Driver, Marina Bakar, and Benjamin Bratt, Patrick Wilson, Campbell Scott, Brian Darcy James.
17:16 Griffin Newman? It does.
17:17 David Sims? They're busy people.
17:17 Griffin Newman? It does feel like there's some Tyler Perry thing going on where you're like, I want someone to crack open the books of what the financing scheme is for these. You know, how is getting access to these sets?
17:28 David Sims? Right.
17:29 Griffin Newman? There's some complicated.
17:30 David Sims? Keys.
17:31 Griffin Newman? Right.
17:33 Speaker 04 Yeah. I mean, it was like the Brothers McMullin was such a famous story of like, he was like working for a production company. Yeah. Or he was, he was a PA and he was like stealing the cameras at night and like using their, you know, using their copy machines or whatever, whatever the thing was that, and it was like this real run and gun like, but now he's got a budget.
17:57 Griffin Newman? They're union productions with name actors.
18:00 David Sims? This is true, but I, there's gotta be something going on with how these things. I mean, my, my ultimate assumption, obviously, is that they, they are made very quickly.
18:10 Griffin Newman? Yeah.
18:11 David Sims? Cause they're all just like talky dramas, right?
18:13 Griffin Newman? Yes.
18:14 David Sims? And maybe I should just watch them all. I mean, maybe I should put my money where my mouth is and check in with Ed.
18:19 Griffin Newman? We also called out that he-
18:20 David Sims? He's also done like two TV shows.
18:21 Griffin Newman? Directed three complete seasons of television himself. Three seasons of two different shows where he directed every episode.
18:29 David Sims? Yeah, same.
18:30 Griffin Newman? The man keeps getting away with it. Hey, looks pretty good. He looks pretty good.
18:33 David Sims? That's alright.
18:34 Griffin Newman? He looks pretty good. We had really a lot of fun batting this around. Oh, God. What a nice text. And then I got to talk about it on my podcast. Here we are talking about it again.
18:42 David Sims? He has, he's McMullen. He hasn't acted-
18:45 Griffin Newman? We're the Friends McMullen.
18:46 David Sims? He has not acted in a movie that he, you know, didn't direct since Alex Cross.
18:52 Griffin Newman? Okay.
18:53 David Sims? The Rob Cohen, you know, sort of reboot.
18:56 Griffin Newman? Co-starring?
18:57 David Sims? Tyler Perry.
18:58 Griffin Newman? The non-Irish Tyler Perry.
19:02 Griffin Newman? Did he take some notes? Did Tyler Perry go-
19:04 David Sims? I wonder.
19:05 Griffin Newman? Come here.
19:06 David Sims? Where he is the third guy, this is crazy. He should be playing some kind of like detective sidekick. I don't know if Ed Burns can pull something like that on.
19:13 Griffin Newman? Seems like a murder or something going on here. I, I'm bringing all this up because the first ever teaser freezer, of course, in the first episode of Hollywood Handbook ever was Don John. Don John. A movie that you and Hayes Davenport came on to discuss on this podcast. Yes. I don't know if you saw the news. Oh, I did. New Joseph Gordon-Levitt movie in production. Might be time to run it back. Speeding train. Might be time to run it back. I think we gotta call the shot right now. We gotta, we gotta complete that series.
19:44 David Sims? Oh, I mean, we're, we're continuing the JGL mini. Is, what, what is this movie? Do we know what it's about?
19:49 Griffin Newman? It's Herman and Kendrick and it's a, is it about AI?
19:53 David Sims? I feel like-
19:54 Griffin Newman? Hit record, Joe.
19:56 David Sims? I feel like, maybe I'm gonna get in trouble for saying this, like, I'm feeling kind of warm to JGL of late. I feel like he's like-
20:03 Griffin Newman? You're gonna get in trouble for saying this?
20:04 David Sims? I don't know. People, I mean, you know, Lord knows he's, he's done something bad.
20:08 Griffin Newman? In trouble with who? Bane?
20:11 David Sims? Not bad, but something corny.
20:12 Speaker 04 You think Bane's thinking about you? Oh my god.
20:15 Griffin Newman? Wow. That's actually pretty self-involved, David. Bane's got so much on his plate right now.
20:21 David Sims? Isn't he, he's like always out there saying like, AI sucks, I don't like it or whatever.
20:26 Griffin Newman? His wife is like a scientist?
20:27 David Sims? Yeah, he seems like he's got a head in his shoulders.
20:30 Griffin Newman? And it feels like she is like, hey, uh, Joe, here are like 20 bad things that are about to happen in society. And he's like, cool, I'll use my like star power to communicate.
20:37 Speaker 04 Let me get my platform going, yeah.
20:38 Griffin Newman? And then I think his movie is about that, I wanna say.
20:41 David Sims? So like, that's kinda fun.
20:43 Griffin Newman? Yeah.
20:44 David Sims? Kinda like that. Am I crazy?
20:45 Griffin Newman? Joseph Gordon-Levitt, quote, "Not a punk rock thing to use artist's work to train AI for free."
20:50 David Sims? I mean, gee, he doesn't need to say the punk rock part, but sure, right?
20:54 Griffin Newman? It's Rachel McAdams and Joseph Gordon-Levitt.
20:56 David Sims? I love Rachel McAdams.
20:57 Griffin Newman? Uh, Brian Johnson, T Street. Is, uh, producing it, under wraps for the AI movie. It's an AI movie.
21:07 Griffin Newman? Interesting, wait a second. Shares story credit with Natasha Lyonne.
21:13 David Sims? Okay.
21:13 Speaker 04 Okay.
21:14 David Sims? And she, she's, she's been, she's been pretty normal.
21:17 Griffin Newman? Yeah.
21:17 David Sims? Yeah.
21:18 Griffin Newman? Uh, I just think not only is the JGL series an ongoing project that we are serious about, I almost think you and Hayes need to be locked in for every time he makes a new one.
21:27 Speaker 04 If he's gonna make a movie, man, we gotta come and talk about it. I mean, we may, we may have been too hard on Don John.
21:33 David Sims? I might be, maybe we need to.
21:33 Speaker 04 I've been watching the movies that have come out since.
21:35 Griffin Newman? Yeah.
21:37 David Sims? Have you seen everything in the last 15 years or so?
21:40 Griffin Newman? Don John might have been the last good movie.
21:42 Speaker 04 I think that we were so spoiled.
21:44 Griffin Newman? We were.
21:45 Speaker 04 We felt that we had permission to go in on Don John.
21:48 Griffin Newman? We were like.
21:49 Speaker 04 And we didn't know how good it was going.
21:51 Griffin Newman? This movie's, this movie's approach to like depicting masturbation habits is very strange. And now we live in a world where masturbation is rarely depicted on screen, which is a much worse way of handling it.
22:03 Speaker 04 It's missing.
22:04 Griffin Newman? It's missing.
22:05 Speaker 04 It's missing from my diet.
22:06 David Sims? Aren't we in a world where Gen Z is like, the only way I know how to masturbate is like, in like a VR cave or whatever? Isn't that like what gooning is or whatever?
22:14 Speaker 04 That's what's been going on, yeah.
22:15 David Sims? Yeah, and so now I'm like, Don John is like, that was a blue collar masturbator, you know? That guy just, he cracked open a Dell laptop.
22:23 Speaker 04 Fucking salt of the earth.
22:24 Griffin Newman? Just masturbating to human women thumbed on shitty cameras.
22:27 David Sims? He would type like boobs into Google or whatever, like whatever Don John did.
22:31 Griffin Newman? Fuck, boobs, fuck.
22:35 David Sims? And then like Scar Joe's kind of mean to him and he's like, oh, I like it.
22:38 Griffin Newman? He creams his jeans, good shit.
22:40 David Sims? It's such prosaic horniness, like compared to whatever the, you know, zoomers are doing.
22:45 Speaker 04 It was a simpler time.
22:46 Griffin Newman? It was a simpler time and, and we're part of the problem. We made times complicated.
22:50 Speaker 04 Well, we, yes, we shamed him.
22:52 Griffin Newman? We shamed him.
22:53 David Sims? I hope he doesn't know that.
22:54 Speaker 04 And, and that has now driven all of youth into a VR cave. It's the only way they can get on.
22:59 Griffin Newman? They're all stuck in a post on John VR cave.
23:03 Speaker 04 Yeah. Cause we made it, we made it embarrassing to be Don John and the, and where are the, you know, it was playing off this Jersey Shore aesthetic that like, also has like encapsulated this one moment in time for us that I feel like should be preserved.
23:17 David Sims? Right. That is just so quaint and old fashioned, the gym tan laundry kind of thing.
23:22 Griffin Newman? But also does Jersey Shore get revived in the time in between when we did the episode and now I can't even.
23:28 Speaker 04 Revived.
23:29 David Sims? Revived. I mean, come on. Like that didn't last. I know. I mean, we got Snooki's best friend over here.
23:34 Griffin Newman? Ben used to produce Snooki's podcast. I don't know if you know this.
23:36 Speaker 04 That's true. Jesus, Ben, I'm sorry, man. I didn't, oh, I feel like such a fucking asshole. Dude. Congratulations, man. That, that, that rocks.
23:47 Griffin Newman? Thank you.
23:50 Speaker 04 Snooki?
23:51 David Sims? Yeah.
23:52 Griffin Newman? Nicole.
23:53 Speaker 04 Not a lot of one name superstars coming out of reality TV these days.
23:58 Griffin Newman? No, especially in the podcast world. Who are the one named podcasters?
24:02 Speaker 04 Dax.
24:03 Griffin Newman? We had Seth Rogen on the show and it was, I, I kept falling into this problem where I'd go like, yeah, and we have Rogan doing Big Lebowski on the pod. And people would go, Joe? And I was like, oh, you can't, within the context of pod.
24:15 David Sims? Can't say Rogan.
24:16 Griffin Newman? You can't say Rogan. But that, he's a one name, but not the first name. I think if you say Joe.
24:22 David Sims? Probably.
24:24 Griffin Newman? But, but not definitely.
24:25 David Sims? All these terrible people.
24:26 Speaker 04 You say Joe, I'm thinking about Biden.
24:27 Griffin Newman? Same. And when's he gonna start his podcast? I love hearing that guy talk.
24:33 David Sims? I really would love it.
24:33 Griffin Newman? He's got a knack for it, at length.
24:36 David Sims? No, but he should do a fucking cereal style podcast about Corn Pop.
24:41 Griffin Newman? Yeah.
24:41 David Sims? Where he's like, I'm gonna prove to you that this guy, I'm gonna interview everyone who knew him. I'm gonna go deep, like, full investigation on whatever pool he used to hang out in Wilmington, or whatever it was. Or it could be called A Bad Dude. That took to the mean streets of Delaware. He's like walking around.
24:57 Griffin Newman? We should plant a bunch of hidden mics in Joe Biden's home.
25:01 David Sims? Right, not a crime.
25:02 Griffin Newman? And just record him puttering and murmuring and release those in one hour installments. I think his monologue out loud to himself on a daily basis is, would probably be the best podcast I'd listen to.
25:13 David Sims? What if he does the model where, like, Obama and Bruce paired up?
25:18 Griffin Newman? Sure.
25:18 David Sims? Who would Biden pair up with musician wise?
25:23 Griffin Newman? Well.
25:23 David Sims? Like, who's the musician of Biden's age?
25:26 Griffin Newman? The guy from Smash Mouth.
25:27 David Sims? Bryan Adams.
25:27 Griffin Newman? Bryan.
25:31 Griffin Newman? It's like Frankie Valli.
25:33 David Sims? Like, who is Joe Biden's favorite musician? I was trying to tee up, yeah, some kind of really old.
25:41 Griffin Newman? The problem is if we, if we asked Joe, who's the musician you wanna do a podcast with? He'd be like, that's a, Call of Duty, Jolson. What's he done recently?
25:51 David Sims? Uh.
25:52 Griffin Newman? Mammy.
25:56 David Sims? His favorite band.
25:57 Griffin Newman? What's his favorite band?
25:58 David Sims? It seems to be just like some kind of like Irish folk band or something. I'm trying to figure out, like.
26:02 Griffin Newman? Good.
26:03 David Sims? Yeah. I mean, it's just him and Michael Flatley.
26:06 Griffin Newman? Yeah.
26:06 David Sims? Is Michael Flatley still?
26:08 Griffin Newman? Pickin', absolutely.
26:10 David Sims? Yeah.
26:10 Griffin Newman? Yeah. He's still doing stuff.
26:12 David Sims? You know, the whole thing with him is that he broke off from Riverdance, right? You know, when I lived in England, Riverdance was like 40% of the, like, economy in that country. And like, so every five minutes when you watch TV, there would be ads for Riverdance or Michael Flatley's Lord of the Dance.
26:27 Griffin Newman? By the way.
26:27 David Sims? Which was his rival company.
26:29 Griffin Newman? Same deal in the United States in the 90s.
26:30 David Sims? I guess, I guess it was just a huge deal.
26:32 Griffin Newman? Where those two things were just playing alternately.
26:35 David Sims? Did any of you ever see Riverdance?
26:36 Griffin Newman? Absolutely not.
26:38 David Sims? No, but I feel like I did. It's kind of like Irish Rockettes. It's like, again, I'm, I'm making a lot of Irish stereotype sort of jokes on this podcast, which is a little, little rich for me. I'm not Irish. Hey.
26:52 Speaker 04 I'll give you a pass.
26:53 David Sims? Yeah, okay. He's pushing over a pass.
26:57 Griffin Newman? He's handing you a clover. It is one of those things, uh, for like 10 years, you could have
27:06 Griffin Newman? play and a character breaks into some sort of like step dance.
27:10 Speaker 04 That's punchline.
27:11 Griffin Newman? That was a punchline. That's all you need to do. And it would hit every single time. Any character breaking into Riverdance for five seconds would hit.
27:19 Speaker 04 This is, this is me to my dad, Riverdance.
27:21 David Sims? And now, right. Just say it. And now, if I like. Instant completed joke. If I told anyone about Riverdance, they would be like, no.
27:30 Griffin Newman? What is that?
27:30 David Sims? Nobody.
27:30 Speaker 04 That, that and the Chanting Monks, uh, CD that our parents got into at one point felt like just this moment where it was like,
27:38 David Sims? Completely agree.
27:39 Speaker 04 Maybe another culture? But just for a minute and just one thing they do.
27:43 Griffin Newman? Yeah.
27:44 David Sims? Well, it's, what is, is it Enigma who did the Chanting Monks song or? Right? You know, they're like. Pure moods. Yeah, the pure moods, uh, the mix that would come on, right? Yeah. Just like those guys, whoever was just like, what if we did a Monks song, right? And then they hit and then another guy's probably like, could I do a Monks song? It's like, nope. Like doors closed. Like there was one monk opportunity.
28:06 Griffin Newman? In 2018, Michael Flatley wrote, produced, directed and starred in an espionage action thriller.
28:16 Speaker 04 Sounds good.
28:16 Griffin Newman? Called Blackbird. Quote, "Michael Flatley, as you've never seen him before, with Eric Roberts." It's a Casablanca riff.
28:24 David Sims? Wait, they got Eric Roberts?
28:25 Griffin Newman? They got Eric Roberts and it didn't actually see release for four years. That's what he's up to.
28:33 Speaker 04 Well, the movie's made in the editing bay.
28:35 Griffin Newman? It is.
28:35 Speaker 04 And, and nobody knows that better than Flatley.
28:37 Griffin Newman? He claims to be in pre-production for Blackbird 2.
28:39 David Sims? And let me get us, I'll get us back on track with this. If you look at this poster,
28:43 Griffin Newman? Uh huh.
28:43 David Sims? Kind of a you were never really here vibe.
28:45 Griffin Newman? Bloody beaten.
28:46 David Sims? You know?
28:47 Griffin Newman? Yeah.
28:47 David Sims? It does look like Flatley is maybe, you know, someone who could wield a hammer.
28:51 Griffin Newman? Mm-hmm.
28:52 David Sims? Um, Michael Flatley is, you've never seen him before.
28:55 Speaker 04 Not dancing.
28:57 Griffin Newman? Feet planted.
28:59 David Sims? You were never really, really here. So I did see this film in theaters. I thought this is, this is that golden early age of Amazon pumping out a auteur content from guys who were sort of striking out at major studios. So like Spike Lee, Whit Stillman, this, uh, this Lynn Ramsey. Woody On. Um, who, who else? Was in that kind of early wave?
29:24 Griffin Newman? Todd Solons.
29:24 David Sims? Todd Solons.
29:25 Griffin Newman? Hal Hartley.
29:27 David Sims? That was crazy.
29:28 Griffin Newman? They did three with him, I feel like.
29:30 David Sims? I mean, cause he just, he's Ed Burns. He just needs eight looks.
29:33 Griffin Newman? But he, like, he had a fucking, a little mini second wind and like love and friendship.
29:38 David Sims? Ken, Ken Lonergan, obviously.
29:39 Griffin Newman? Lonergan, yeah.
29:40 David Sims? That was one of their biggest hits.
29:41 Griffin Newman? Yeah, that was an acquisition.
29:43 David Sims? But that, but nonetheless, it was like they were very-
29:45 Griffin Newman? The branding was consistent.
29:46 David Sims? Yeah, very savvy about this kind of like, let's buy up this kind of American art house stuff that used to be common.
29:52 Griffin Newman? These are the kings of Sundance of like 1980 to 2002, who have gotten pushed out of the studio system, the death of the mini major specialty arm. We gotta get these guys back. And this is one that they, they buy, cause it was independently financed. It was, uh, run in variety that 824 was gonna buy it.
30:12 David Sims? Which makes total sense.
30:13 Griffin Newman? Total sense. And then during production, Amazon sweeps in and outbids them and gets the rights. Swoops in. Swoops in. It's fine. It's whatever, but. I, thank you. I need these corrections.
30:24 David Sims? Uh, Mike Lee's-
30:24 Griffin Newman? Is it close to the vest or close to the chest?
30:27 David Sims? Mike Lee's Peter Lou.
30:28 Griffin Newman? Okay.
30:28 David Sims? Is another one. Mike Lee's Peter Lou. You know, like where they're kind of like, do you want a little bit more money? Or we'll acquire, or we'll like, you know, we'll sort of big foot someone at a film festival in this case.
30:39 Griffin Newman? And we've, we've talked about it, but it's the shit that like, uh, Netflix did when they started out, uh, although not as successfully. And, uh, Anna Perna was sort of based on of like, what's the thing that's gotten rejected everywhere else? Yeah. What's the thing that no one else will let you make? And we can build our reputation as seeming so artist friendly by supporting you.
30:59 Speaker 04 And they did.
31:00 Griffin Newman? They did.
31:01 Speaker 04 And they didn't make any money.
31:03 Griffin Newman? They made no dollars.
31:04 David Sims? They made oh dollars and oh cents.
31:06 Griffin Newman? And no cents. It's, Amazon was interesting because, like, they made Manchester work commercially.
31:12 David Sims? Yeah.
31:12 Griffin Newman? That movie made like fucking fifty, sixty million dollars.
31:15 David Sims? It's one of the last true arguments of like, you really can put, you know, these things in theaters and get them Oscar noms and they will grow and they'll like, you know, have a good run.
31:23 Griffin Newman? They got big sick to like fifty, sixty.
31:25 David Sims? They did, yeah.
31:25 Griffin Newman? Uh, Love and Friendship, they got to like twenty something. Like, they had quite a few that were working and it was sort of like, this is the model, why aren't the other streaming services doing this?
31:34 David Sims? Brittany ran that marathon.
31:36 Griffin Newman? Brittany ran the marathon.
31:37 David Sims? And she ran that shit right into the ground.
31:39 Griffin Newman? Look, uh, Jen Salke took over the company, made some decisions that affected me personally.
31:43 David Sims? I will.
31:44 Griffin Newman? But then also went to Sundance that year and spent, I think, a combined fifty million dollars on Late Night, Brittany Runs a Marathon, and, uh, The Report. That's Scott Z. Burns movie.
31:54 David Sims? It's a good movie.
31:55 Griffin Newman? And they tried to give all three wide releases and was astounded when public audiences didn't flock to those films en masse and the next year declared, "My takeaway is that movie-going is dead and people don't like movies."
32:08 David Sims? Have you seen Britain's Marathon?
32:10 Griffin Newman? Yep. It's a true story. You know that? You believe that?
32:13 Speaker 04 I'm, I'm starting to come around to that being possible.
32:17 David Sims? I will.
32:18 Speaker 04 I don't, I can't just accept that at face value. Like, people say that.
32:21 David Sims? Picture.
32:21 Griffin Newman? You know, Fargo says that. Fargo says that.
32:23 David Sims? That's true, and you can't, you can't trust.
32:24 Speaker 04 It's inspired by this kind of thing maybe that happened, but I've been tricked before, so.
32:28 David Sims? I just.
32:29 Speaker 04 I'm hanging, I'm hanging on to.
32:31 David Sims? We'll never forget being at Sundance, Brittany Runs a Marathon, the movie ends, the credits roll, then they give you the black and white photo of like, and here's the real Brittany running the, and someone behind me being like, "Who gives a shit?" Like, just truly the most frustrated junior exec being like, "Get the fuck out of here."
32:49 Griffin Newman? Yes.
32:51 David Sims? So what? She didn't like even become a state senator or anything, she just literally ran a marathon.
32:56 Speaker 04 It's a funny story to do a side-by-side photo with, like, the real Brit- because usually that's like some historical.
33:02 David Sims? Yeah, it's like frickin' Nelson Mandela or whatever. They're like, "Here's the real Brittany." I'm like, "Great, old lady." Guess what? I go to the marathon every year, I watch them go by. There's lots of people who do this.
33:12 Griffin Newman? Do you think if Jen Salke goes to the marathon, she's like, "This is a development dream"?
33:18 David Sims? Fifty million stories.
33:20 Griffin Newman? They're all here. We'll have discussed this recently on this feed, but Bradley Cooper's Is This Thing On? Is another movie that ends with a big, based on a true story, as if the audience is going, "God, I mean, that was unrealistic. Such a thing could never happen. I need the assurance."
33:37 Speaker 04 An adult man trying stand-up?
33:39 Griffin Newman? Impossible. Getting divorced?
33:44 Speaker 04 You're telling me this comedian was feeling a little bit adrift?
33:49 David Sims? Sorry. It doesn't track.
33:51 Griffin Newman? Sometimes comedy comes out of misery. It's a way to process our pain. But like, pretty like, comfortable white-collar pain.
34:08 Griffin Newman? David?
34:08 David Sims? Yes?
34:12 David Sims? Is that the Cineas Cow?
34:14 Griffin Newman? The Cineas Cow is back.
34:14 David Sims? Haven't heard from her in a while.
34:16 Griffin Newman? Yeah, she's reactivated because she's horny for chicken fingers.
34:21 David Sims? Okay.
34:22 Griffin Newman? And she's excited for the streaming debut of Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma.
34:26 David Sims? Wow.
34:27 Griffin Newman? The cow likes chicken.
34:29 David Sims? Remember cow and chicken? Let's look it up. While you tell the great listeners about the great stuff on Movie.
34:35 Griffin Newman? Well, Movie is a global film company bringing great cinema to the world and to you, curating and elevating visionary filmmaking, all handpicked, always. That's what Movie does. Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma, one of my favorite movies of the year.
34:49 David Sims? Absolutely.
34:50 Griffin Newman? You can feel the rush now at home. There's a hole at the bottom of the lake where the movies come from.
34:56 David Sims? That is a line in the movie.
34:57 Griffin Newman? In the new movie from Jane Schomburg, Past and Future Guest.
34:59 David Sims? Past and Future Guest, a great filmmaker, a great podcast guest, a great friend.
35:04 Griffin Newman? Yes.
35:05 David Sims? This movie rocks. It's got, of course, it stars Hannah Einbinder and Gillian Anderson.
35:10 Griffin Newman? Uh huh.
35:11 David Sims? Legends, and I tip my cap. But Zach Cherry?
35:13 Griffin Newman? Performances, friend of the show.
35:14 David Sims? Friend of the show, Zach Cherry.
35:16 Griffin Newman? Zach Cherry.
35:17 David Sims? Also in it.
35:18 Griffin Newman? This is true.
35:19 David Sims? Such a cool movie. Won the Queer Palmitcan. If you haven't heard about this movie, I don't know what's going on with you, but like, it obviously has, it was out in theaters this summer and now it's on Movie.
35:29 Griffin Newman? Hannah Einbinder plays a filmmaker attempting to reboot the Camp Miasma franchise, trying to track down the original final girl from the first movie to make some sort of legacy sequel, who's played by Gillian Anderson, who lives. At the summer camp.
35:43 David Sims? Yes. And you know, and then they hang out and it's regular.
35:48 Griffin Newman? What happened? It's, it's one of those Hollywood's out of ideas. No, it's very much a movie about Hollywood being out of ideas while being an example of there still being new stories to tell.
36:00 David Sims? It's now streaming exclusively on Mubi and you can try Mubi free for 30 days at Mubi.com slash Blank Check. That's M U B I dot com slash Blank Check for a whole month of great cinema for free.
36:12 Griffin Newman? They got so many great movies on there to watch, but worth it for 30 days for Miasma.
36:17 David Sims? Damn right.
36:23 Griffin Newman? David.
36:23 David Sims? Yes.
36:24 Griffin Newman? Shop.com is giving away $1 million in Shop Cash.
36:28 David Sims? Wow. Shop has all the stores you love and lets you track every order in one spot.
36:33 Griffin Newman? I love that. It's very convenient.
36:35 David Sims? And now 1,000 shoppers are each going to win $1,000 in Shop Cash just in time for the holidays.
36:42 Griffin Newman? You get gifts for everyone on your list or get yourself something a little merry and bright. Find exactly what you're looking for at shop.com.
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37:45 Griffin Newman? David.
37:46 David Sims? Hmm.
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37:54 David Sims? Lisa.
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38:03 David Sims? Yeah, I have a Lisa too. Uh, they've got a lineup of beautifully crafted mattresses tailored to how you sleep.
38:08 Griffin Newman? Mm hmm.
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39:11 David Sims? I am going to open the dossier because I do feel like this movie does have kind of a complicated.
39:16 Griffin Newman? It does.
39:16 David Sims? Or, or Lynn Ramsey has a complicated journey from, uh, her last movie, We Need to Talk About Kevin.
39:23 Griffin Newman? Yeah.
39:23 David Sims? To here.
39:24 Griffin Newman? Mm hmm.
39:24 David Sims? I feel like We Need to Talk About Kevin is her biggest hit.
39:27 Griffin Newman? Yeah, it was a little bit of a breakthrough. And especially for Asyloscope, which was a small distributor.
39:32 David Sims? Right.
39:32 Griffin Newman? I feel like that was very much their highest grossing film at the time.
39:35 Speaker 04 Are, are you guys gonna address the Lynn Ramsey backlash happening in the Blank Check community?
39:42 Speaker 04 Are we even gonna deal with that?
39:43 Griffin Newman? You been checking the Reddit?
39:45 Speaker 04 Yeah, great. I'm on there.
39:47 David Sims? What's, uh, what's the, what's the latest on the backlash?
39:50 Speaker 04 Just that it's basically the least blank check-worthy director you've ever done. Like, what's her blank check? Like, there literally is not a blank check. So like, so it's just like, there isn't one. So like, I guess it's your podcast to do whatever you want, but, uh...
40:02 Griffin Newman? Yes, yes, yes. We can address this. Look.
40:05 Speaker 05 And we also, just for the record, do their voice more like the Bug Man and Men in Black.
40:10 Griffin Newman? Yeah, Denofrio.
40:11 David Sims? I mean, she's never...
40:16 David Sims? Sugar and water. I think that thread, which always, always happens every single time we pick a female director.
40:23 Griffin Newman? It does happen every time.
40:24 David Sims? Uh, no offense to whoever started that thread. Cause that thread is obviously totally correct, or the, that discourse is totally correct in that, yes, Lynn Ramsey has never been handed anything remotely akin to a blank check to make a movie.
40:37 Griffin Newman? Absolutely.
40:37 David Sims? But Lynn Ramsey has been able to make the movies she's made.
40:43 Griffin Newman? Yes.
40:43 David Sims? Which are strikingly, uh, independent and dark and different movies. Uncommercial movies with major stars.
40:50 Griffin Newman? Increasingly bigger and bigger stars.
40:52 David Sims? Yes, yes. Right, right. To the, her latest effort, of course, being, uh, her, like, most expensive, I guess, especially if you include the sort of acquisition of it.
41:01 Griffin Newman? Yeah.
41:02 David Sims? And most star-laden, uh, without ever, seemingly ever really compromising what she wants to do. Now, she's always like, "Oh, this happened. I wish this could've happened." And there's always unrealized projects or whatever.
41:13 Griffin Newman? But that, that speaks to, in fact, her not compromising, right? I mean, like, we will have covered this in other episodes and we'll keep covering this, but there are so many movies she walks off of, you know? Or lets fall apart because she's just like, "This is going in the wrong direction." I'd rather not make a movie than make a movie I can't stand behind.
41:30 David Sims? Speaking about all that, let me tell you that after she made We Need to Talk About Kevin, she wanted to make...
41:34 Griffin Newman? Mobius Dick?
41:35 David Sims? Correct. I mean, it's got various titles over the years, Mobius being the most common one, but a sort of sci-fi Moby Dick epic.
41:43 Griffin Newman? Then, this is Lynn Ramsey's dream project, her ultimate blank check.
41:48 David Sims? It's like a spaceship movie, but they're chasing some kind of space whale.
41:53 Griffin Newman? It's a giant space whale. Uh, I mean, now probably, if she could get Pyicon attached, she could probably get financing, right?
41:59 David Sims? That's so true.
41:59 Griffin Newman? It helps that there's a bankable space whale. In this, in the kind of commercial ecosystem.
42:05 David Sims? That's lucky.
42:06 Griffin Newman? If Pyocron will do it for scale.
42:08 David Sims? I mean.
42:09 Griffin Newman? That's a good picture.
42:09 David Sims? She's never been out there being like, I need 90 million dollars to make my space movie. She's always said, I can make it a small budget. I assume it's sort of be like Claire Denise's High Life of like, yeah, this is mostly.
42:19 Griffin Newman? Yeah.
42:20 David Sims? Psychological, it's mostly set on a ship. It's like, you know, but you need some.
42:24 Griffin Newman? Is still like.
42:24 David Sims? Effects.
42:25 Griffin Newman? 15, probably, I'm guessing.
42:28 David Sims? I, who knows?
42:29 Griffin Newman? She has generally worked with small budgets and then the blank check is distributors keep overpaying for her movies.
42:36 David Sims? Sometimes that happens.
42:37 Griffin Newman? Being surprised when they're a little hard to sell.
42:40 David Sims? Nobody wants to see this movie. Jennifer Lawrence is hitting her head into every wall and mirror and window she can see.
42:46 Griffin Newman? Movies rubbing their hands and they're like, the memes we're gonna make off of this.
42:51 David Sims? So while she's planning that, she gets attached to a film called Jane Got a Gun, which I assume, Sean, you have maybe heard of this project.
42:59 Griffin Newman? This is the kind of infamous, she walks off, was it like a day before production started or the day after?
43:04 David Sims? We can talk about it, you know, so she says like Mobius, that's like her Stanley Kubrick's Napoleon, right? Um, like where it's like, that's the thing I vote, I'm always gonna want to do, but it might always be impossible. But Natalie Portman, who I think admires her, is like, I am developing this like girl western.
43:21 Griffin Newman? Mm-hmm.
43:21 David Sims? I'm gonna star, it's called Jane Got a Gun, it's got, based on a, is it based on a comic book or?
43:27 Griffin Newman? No, no, it's, it's a, it's a spec written by Brian Duffield.
43:30 David Sims? Right, right.
43:31 Griffin Newman? Uh, who now has made, um.
43:33 David Sims? He made like No One Will Save You and stuff like that.
43:35 Griffin Newman? Yes, and Spontaneous and Love and Monsters, I think he wrote as well. I mean, has a tremendous amount of credits as writer and director, uh, but it was a blacklist script in 2011. That Natalie Portman gets as a producer, kind of coming right off of her like black swan heat. It is a thing that like Natalie Portman has been called out for a little bit, that she never worked with female directors.
43:56 David Sims? Yeah, sure, sure, sure.
43:58 Griffin Newman? Talk about like the need for women to stick together in Hollywood and people would kind of side eye her being like. Yeah.
44:04 David Sims? Why don't you, then you do it. Just fucking do it.
44:07 Griffin Newman? And so like here she is.
44:08 David Sims? She's trying to develop this thing.
44:10 Griffin Newman? She buys a script with her own money, attaches Lynn Ramsey and Michael Fassbender.
44:13 David Sims? It's gonna be her, Michael Fassbender, Jude Law's gonna be the villain, it's gonna shoot in New Mexico on first day of shooting.
44:19 Griffin Newman? Mm-hmm.
44:20 David Sims? Natalie Portman shows up. Michael Fassbender has exited because he has to play Magneto again for like the third time or whatever.
44:28 Griffin Newman? Right.
44:29 David Sims? He's gonna be replaced with Joel Edgerton, Jude Law, and Lynn Ramsey both quit. Lynn Ramsey just does not arrive. It becomes this kind of disaster, variety story kind of thing of like, you know, producers being like, there's 150 crew members who are getting left in the lurch here, like, it's a whole legal battle and stuff.
44:51 Griffin Newman? The crazier thing also-
44:54 David Sims? She's accused of not delivering a shooting script. She's apparently, they said that her behavior had gotten kind of bizarre, like, whatever. I think she was clashing with producers. What do you, what do you?
45:05 Griffin Newman? No, Joel Edgerton was like attached and then replaced and then came back in a different role. There was like a lot of musical chairs with this movie.
45:13 David Sims? Ewan McGregor is the ultimate choice-
45:15 Griffin Newman? Yes.
45:15 David Sims? -to whatever, fill the third role. They sue her for like quarter, three quarters of a million dollars, which is her fee. It's settled out of court like three years later. Lynn Ramsey finally says, when she talks about it many years later, is like, at the 11th hour, it was just like, the guys financing this movie just do not want the movie I'm gonna make.
45:36 Griffin Newman? Right.
45:37 David Sims? And so she quit. I mean, I think that basically completely cements her relationship with someone who's very difficult to work with and just doesn't play like Hollywood games well, right?
45:50 Griffin Newman? Yeah, yes, yes. And I think the other part of it is, it was like catnip for Deadline. In my memory, it was like there would be three stories a day. Because it's like this movie is up and running and the director is gone and the lead actor is gone, every day there were like three new stories about, I mean, I'm even just reading here where it's like, on April 5th, it was announced that Bradley Cooper would replace Law in the role of John Bishop. On May 1st, it was announced that Cooper was withdrawing from the film.
46:21 David Sims? Yeah, Cooper was briefly-
46:22 Griffin Newman? You know, every day it was like a new actors in talks, a new actors dropped out, they're meeting with six new directors.
46:27 Speaker 04 I know, I know, we don't get like too inside baseball on the, on the business here, but-
46:34 Speaker 04 To make a feature film, and I, you know, I've only really been directly involved with one, but to make a feature film without, yeah, maybe Q3.
46:42 Griffin Newman? Okay.
46:43 Speaker 04 But to make a feature film without the director and star is like extremely challenging.
46:49 David Sims? That is generally seen as-
46:50 Speaker 04 It's a very bad set environment.
46:52 Griffin Newman? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Dysfunctional.
46:55 Speaker 04 Uh, yes. I mean, I don't, yeah, I mean, that's got a negative connotation.
46:59 Griffin Newman? Yeah.
46:59 Speaker 04 But I, I think that's fair.
47:01 Griffin Newman? You know what? Let me rephrase. Non-functional. I would say it's gonna be pretty tough to make a movie function with neither director nor star. No, no, movies have done it missing one or the other.
47:10 Speaker 04 Sure.
47:10 David Sims? The weird thing, the weird thing is-
47:13 Griffin Newman? Yeah.
47:13 David Sims? The movie was eventually made. Gavin O'Connor-
47:17 Griffin Newman? Yes.
47:17 David Sims? Directs the final version.
47:18 Griffin Newman? Uh huh.
47:18 David Sims? It came out, it made like $2.
47:21 Griffin Newman? Yes.
47:22 David Sims? Like, it was dumped so intensely by the Weinstein Company-
47:26 Griffin Newman? Yeah, and like-
47:26 David Sims? In 2015.
47:27 Griffin Newman? Right.
47:28 David Sims? I don't, I've never seen it.
47:29 Griffin Newman? Everyone was like, kind of shopping around. At one point, it had like Weinstein Relativity, CBS and Focus features all like hovering and then taking pieces and then dropping out and someone would replace it. Like, it was this movie with all this energy that they wouldn't let shut down, and they kind of like kept the corpse alive and got it finished and no one gave a shit.
47:48 Speaker 04 It's really surprising that all those people leaving doesn't just make it not get done.
47:52 Griffin Newman? Right.
47:53 Speaker 04 But an object in motion.
47:54 Griffin Newman? But it cost 25 million dollars.
47:58 David Sims? Right, could've cost 100, I guess, but yeah, it cost a lot of money.
48:01 Griffin Newman? I'm sure a lot of that was kind of the overruns of keeping people on hold and whatever, but if she had done this, this would have been her biggest budget thing. Now, to this, the complaint of the Reddit, right, or the questioning, it's like, you could say, well, how has, how can you define her as a Blank Check director when she's never had a budget over yada, yada, yada, right?
48:20 Speaker 04 Yeah, which I, by the way, I'm just telling you what Reddit's saying.
48:22 Griffin Newman? No, no, I know, I know. And at the end of the day, this is a podcast, despite my opening spiel, about what we wanna cover. That is, I would say, the number one thing this podcast is about. And she's one of my favorite filmmakers. And specifically, from the moment that I see You Were Never Really Here, I'm like, fuck. The next time she releases a movie, I want to do her on main feed. But I think she is interesting in how she has kind of refused the blank check that would come with a lot of strings attached. And even some people more strategically might be like, look, if I make Jane Got a Gun, and it's got four big stars, and it's a Western, and it's got more sellable elements, and I lose half the battles to the financiers,
49:03 Griffin Newman? but it gets released and becomes automatically my highest grossing film, doesn't that help me get Mobius Dick done? Isn't that worth it as a means to an end? And she seems, for better or worse, incapable of doing that.
49:16 David Sims? Certainly. So she does what we'd all do, which is moves to Santorini, which is, of course, a Greek island in the Aegean Sea, falls in love with a Belarusian chef because she has divorced her husband, Rory Stewart-Kneer, has a kid with him. And then Jacques Audiard's company, Why Not, sends her over a copy of You Were Never Really Here in 2013. Now, I've never read the book. It's written by the Board to Death guy.
49:45 Griffin Newman? Jonathan Ames.
49:45 David Sims? So I usually think of him, of course, writing about like, I don't know, I'm in Brooklyn, I need a coffee.
49:51 Speaker 04 Yeah, for, just to give a little bit of background, he was a sort of like a pervy, straight David Sedaris.
50:00 David Sims? That is actually a really good description of Jonathan Ames.
50:04 Griffin Newman? Dead on.
50:05 Speaker 04 Like, he would write about, and it was like, yeah, it was, you know, famous essay about like his late puberty, where he talked about like not having pubic hair for a long time, and then like, you know, whatever, having his first sexual experience with a prostitute. But it was all like naval, gazy, sort of rye, precious. Yes, like confessional work. And then... I haven't read many of his novels prior to this, but there's this, which I think is his first time dipping his toe into, because even Board to Death is sort of like, what if a neurotic writer was like solving crimes? And the character is named after him.
50:49 David Sims? It's super pesty. I mean, I enjoyed Board to Death back in the day. It was a fun time.
50:53 Griffin Newman? He was like a brilliant self promoter and that he made himself a figure, which helped him kind of cut through a bleak moment in the literary world.
51:00 David Sims? It's the Fran Lebowitz thing. It's like, if you are just funny and you live in New York and you can just like do panels and do chatty shit.
51:08 Griffin Newman? He'd do panels and he'd do readings where he would like, hire an opera singer to read his book out and he was like boxing on the side.
51:14 Speaker 04 Quirky, self-deprecating. You kind of feel good about yourself that you're like, this guy's got real problems.
51:19 Griffin Newman? Exactly.
51:20 Speaker 04 It's like, you're like, I can, but meanwhile, he's like a famous, you know, successful person, but it's not threatening to anyone.
51:26 Griffin Newman? This book does feel like a radical departure from everything he had done up until this point in time.
51:30 Speaker 04 It's so grim and brutal. There's nothing self-referential to his life at all. It's just the imaginings of like this, like, you know, this, this man who has this job rescuing like women who are like in like child sex trafficking situations. But then he, he breaks off into doing this series of like noir detective books, these doll books. They're like incredible, that feel very much sprung from this, like, like.
51:58 David Sims? Right, the Happy Dolls. He's got three of them.
52:01 Speaker 04 Yeah, A Man Named Doll, Karma Doll and The Wheel of Doll, the three books. And they're, they're fucking awesome.
52:07 David Sims? I have not read those. Those are good.
52:09 Speaker 04 I love them, but it's like, it's just very surprising that this guy who I was aware of and had this very specific voice just has this whole new chapter.
52:18 Griffin Newman? Well, he's reinvented himself.
52:19 David Sims? He said when he wrote this, you never really hear, he's like, this is sort of an homage to first the Richard Stark, the Donald.
52:26 Griffin Newman? Westlake.
52:27 David Sims? Wake, the Donald Westlake Parker series, Bill Sillik, Lee Child, Jack Reacher books and all that. So he knows he's.
52:37 David Sims? Sort of doing a, not a pastiche, but an homage to like-
52:40 Speaker 04 It's a genre he loves.
52:42 Griffin Newman? Yeah, the book, the book is fairly earnest. It is not tongue in cheek in any way, but there is something pastichey about it in that it is very much, the book reads as more of a noir riff than the movie does. And I think what the book is interested in is like, what is the kind of like really disturbing subtext under these stories that we skirt around? Right? Uh, not just like the intensity of the crimes, uh, but also like, what is the inner life of a guy who does this kind of shit?
53:12 Speaker 04 Yeah.
53:12 Griffin Newman? And like, what toll does this take on you? And what drives someone to that point versus being this kind of like cool, above it all vacant-
53:19 Speaker 04 Well, yeah, Jack Reacher character who's like so untouchable and it's like, he's, you know, they're complete loner drifters. And you just go like, cause they're too cool and there's no strings attached. They can leave whenever. And he's like, no, but internally this guy is like constant suicidal ideation, like just like the only thing keeping him going is that he has this like one purpose he's identified that he can do that he thinks helps people and that just like keeps pulling him back from the brink.
53:45 Griffin Newman? Yeah. I mean, you were never really here. The title comes from the repetition of the suicidal ideation. And the book, that's the thing he says to himself when he imagines killing himself to kind of alleviate the pressure of the idea of like-
53:58 David Sims? That's why he doesn't need to do it. Cause he was never really here anyway.
54:00 Griffin Newman? Right. Which is what this guy's struggling with. But he is also physically described in the book as being so much more of a traditional Jack Reacher type.
54:08 Speaker 04 Yeah.
54:08 Griffin Newman? Like here's this kind of like handsome, he's older than he looks. He's six foot two. He's a hundred and ninety pounds of pure muscle, you know? And he looks like an avenging hero. And then the contrast is inside this guy just wants to fucking die. There's a paragraph I just want to read quickly, uh, to your point, which is the big thing the movie doesn't over explain. He'd come to believe that he was the recurring element, the deciding element in all the tragedies experienced by the people he encountered. So if he could minimize his impact and his responsibility, then there was the chance, the slight chance that there would be no more suffering for others.
54:47 Griffin Newman? It was a negative, grandiose delusion, narcissism inverted into self hatred, a kind of autoimmune disorder of his psyche. But there was an undeniable element of truth to Joe's paranoid state. Where he went, pain and punishment followed. And it's like, that's the animating idea of like, a guy doing this would not really be able to live with himself. Even of what he's doing from the outside seems heroic. And what would drive someone to do the right thing in such extreme circumstances has to be a little bit warped. Because no sane person with any self protective instincts can kind of live in this and survive it.
55:25 Speaker 04 Yeah, he goes into the worst places where the worst people are doing bad things. And then he does bad things there. And then one good thing comes out of it, maybe.
55:32 Griffin Newman? Right, and we love these kind of fictions of like, the one guy who's willing to stand up to the bad in the world.
55:37 Speaker 04 Yeah.
55:38 Griffin Newman? And ask these questions when these things happen in real life of like, how did no one stop it? And you're like, because it's super fucking difficult to stop it. Not just in terms of like, breaking down these system and challenging these people. But also, you literally just have to go into the depths of hell to even confront these things. And most of the time, people don't come back out of that.
55:57 Speaker 04 And he's a guy who is living with so much from his background in the military and whatever else he's done.
56:06 Speaker 04 Pain and flashback and PTSD already, that it's sort of like, might as well get more. Like, there's no escaping it for him. So it just seems like he's just like, okay, well, I'm the person who can go and do this. Because like, it doesn't matter what I see, I've seen it all.
56:19 Griffin Newman? The book is really tough, but it makes sense as something that someone could read and go like, there's a halfway commercial movie in this? You know, there is a kind of like inverted arthouse taken in this. And it kind of makes him such a specific, striking character. But it is like, the book is more noir-y in terms of being in his head. It's not written first person, but it's describing what he's thinking and what he's doing. And it's very like, methodical and process based in how he goes about these missions. But also, it's like, explaining him putting the pieces together and solving the mystery. Which is a thing the movie doesn't.
56:57 Speaker 04 Does not do.
56:58 Griffin Newman? It doesn't have him like, on the case.
57:00 Speaker 04 Not at all.
57:01 Griffin Newman? You see him kind of fit the pieces together.
57:02 Speaker 04 And they simplify the case.
57:03 Griffin Newman? Yeah. Right, but.
57:04 Speaker 04 They, yeah.
57:05 Griffin Newman? Yes, but this has.
57:06 Speaker 04 Makes sense in terms of book versus.
57:08 Griffin Newman? There's more. A kind of like pulpy wicked web of intrigue and corruption.
57:12 David Sims? The way that Phoenix is playing this character also obviously it's not, this is not Batman, the world's greatest detective. This is not a deductive guy in that way.
57:22 Griffin Newman? No, no, no. You see him like put it together almost as just because he understands suffering.
57:28 Speaker 04 No, he's less, yeah, he's less savvy in the movie because like in the book, he's like being careful about, you know, certain like in the movie, it's like he calls the guy who's his contact right away, you know, like to be like, hey.
57:40 David Sims? So Lynn's like, I kind of want to do this. And people keep being like, what? This isn't the kind of thing you would do. And she's like, not only maybe want to do it more. Like I live, you know, I that energized me.
57:50 Griffin Newman? But so it is, sorry, it's um, Odiard who reaches out to her?
57:55 David Sims? Odiard's production company sent her the book.
57:57 Griffin Newman? Okay.
57:57 David Sims? Yeah. And uh, they didn't even have the rights, but she's like, I'm fucking sitting in Greece with no internet and like, there's nothing to do. And I just start writing the script.
58:05 Griffin Newman? Yeah.
58:06 David Sims? And then I just like get connected with Jonathan because we know, you know, people, mutual people. And we start chatting about it and I start basically saying, this is what I want to keep, you know, these, this is the bones of the character that I like. And he's all for it. And, you know, uh, she's got a baby. So I think like, it's like almost a sort of like, I remember not to name drop, like M. Night Shyamalan saying the same thing of like, when you have a baby, if you're trying to write something, it actually focuses you because you have like two hours to write.
58:37 Griffin Newman? Mm hmm.
58:37 David Sims? Because the responsibility is there versus the kind of like, eh, I've got all day. Let me sit at the desk and see what fires up.
58:44 Griffin Newman? Well, same with podcasting. Now you have the focus of knowing you only have four hours to discuss a movie.
58:50 Speaker 04 It does. I think it does.
58:51 Griffin Newman? David's smiling and he's giving me thumbs up and he's blowing kisses to me and saying, I love you. He's so.
58:56 David Sims? And David's definitely not having crazy acid flashbacks about the Reddit. Well, that's all being said. Yes. Yes.
59:01 Griffin Newman? He likes this. He likes this a lot.
59:02 Speaker 04 I agree that you um.
59:06 Speaker 04 You do end up using your time more efficiently.
59:08 David Sims? Right, you have to.
59:08 Speaker 04 You're just like, okay, I just, I only have this window. And I had a boss once who said, like, your creativity will expand to fit the container you give, you give it.
59:18 David Sims? Yeah, sure.
59:18 Speaker 04 It's like the natural brass theory or whatever, like.
59:21 Griffin Newman? It's, that's interesting and surprising because I have zero kids and I use my time horribly. I actually couldn't manage it worse. I almost have nothing but time and yet.
59:30 David Sims? And so what's the opposite of a container? Like, what are you in? You're in like Minecraft.
59:34 Griffin Newman? The ocean?
59:35 David Sims? Yeah, exactly.
59:39 Griffin Newman? I almost have negative children.
59:41 David Sims? You certainly can't say to a one-year-old, like, daddy's gotta write a screenplay.
59:46 Griffin Newman? Yeah, for sure.
59:47 David Sims? That diaper is just gonna have to go unchanged.
59:49 Griffin Newman? Yeah.
59:51 David Sims? So Kevin, obviously, which is her last adaptation, that's a big book, it's a pistol area, it's all these letters and stuff. Like, you know, that's a complicated thing. This, she's like, the book you could read in 90 minutes, like, the movie should be just as pulpy and like, fast, in a way.
1:00:06 Griffin Newman? Sure.
1:00:06 David Sims? But it's her version of that, I would say.
1:00:08 Griffin Newman? But she, she just, she makes the sparsest version of what is already a sparse text.
1:00:14 David Sims? Right. She's like, look, I'm trying to make it pulpy. It does turn into what I always do, which is a character study.
1:00:19 Griffin Newman? Right.
1:00:20 David Sims? Uh, I feel like this guy's head is full of broken glass. Uh, he's suicidal, he's sicking around, just, he's just because of his mom, sort of. He's like a ghost in his own life, basically. Uh, you know, she thinks about movies like La Samurai or whatever, about similarly kind of like, people who just don't have like a personal life, right? Like, these sort of like, uh, but this La Samurai is obviously about the coolest, most handsome motherfucker you've ever seen, who's so well dressed.
1:00:49 Speaker 04 And The American, too, which is.
1:00:51 David Sims? Which is an awesome movie.
1:00:52 Speaker 04 Same movie and.
1:00:53 Griffin Newman? Movie you love, right?
1:00:54 Speaker 04 Incredible, yeah.
1:00:55 Griffin Newman? But I feel like this is closer to, we've covered a few movies like this and I always, it is something that sticks with me. It is a type of narrative that I find very effective, which is a guy who, who passes his breaking point. You know, in a movie where even if the character's able to resolve the ostensible narrative. They're never coming back from this.
1:01:18 Speaker 04 Well, and yeah, and they do. I mean, it's explained in the book too, but he's a guy who's, he's a bad dude.
1:01:25 Griffin Newman? Yup.
1:01:25 Speaker 04 And he, but he kind of like does the job and then he goes home and he has this little life with his mom.
1:01:31 Griffin Newman? Right.
1:01:32 Speaker 04 Yes. And that is like-
1:01:33 Speaker 04 That is not related to what he does. And it's not pleasant. It's not like awesome. It's not like amazing, but it's like he has a purpose at home as well when he's not working.
1:01:43 Griffin Newman? Yes.
1:01:44 Speaker 04 To take care of his mother, who they both like suffered abuse, you know, at the hands of his dad. And so he's got this like, I am, I am like a value in the world, even when I'm not doing this thing. And then that gets taken away and you're just like, okay, so what?
1:01:59 Griffin Newman? Like, who am I?
1:02:00 Speaker 04 Now what is he? And he's just then gonna be like a fucking berserker.
1:02:04 Griffin Newman? Right. Yeah. Cause just to spell it out, and you start basically with the kind of his internal chaos. This guy whose head is full of glass is constantly like ideating on drowning and things like that. But also these constant flashbacks, which start with him being a child, his father physically abusing him, but also the feeling of being in the closet, hearing his mother being attacked and not being able to protect her. Which makes a ton of sense as like a motivating force that defines the next step of his life. Which is he goes into trying to ostensibly help protect through the professional like arms of the American government, right? And he ends up becoming a specialist. All this stuff is not like spelled out.
1:02:47 Griffin Newman? It is like pieced together really well in these like horrible traumatic flashbacks of just like glimpses of images and association. The, the things he can't get out of his brain.
1:02:56 Speaker 04 They keep playing him just that one line of him going, what the fuck are we doing?
1:03:00 Griffin Newman? Yeah.
1:03:00 Speaker 04 Like, what are we? And it's like, I've assumed a really great summation of like, if you work in a unit that recovers people from human trafficking, or if you're in the military in some special unit, that it's like- Wait a minute, what are we doing here? Like, it's just like, things are getting so fucked up.
1:03:18 Griffin Newman? This guy's like two main recurring images are being in a closet trying to suffocate himself with a dry cleaning bag. Basically just to stop the pain and to stop himself from screaming, which he now does like as a ritual almost every morning. And, and then the other recurring image is like the feeling of kicking down a door.
1:03:36 Speaker 04 Being minutes too late to recover like a pile of, uh, bodies.
1:03:41 Griffin Newman? Seeing like glassy eyed, uh, sort of like numbed young women, right? And you get the sense that it's been like, the times that he became a sort of task force specialist and trying to retrieve victims of sex trafficking.
1:03:57 Griffin Newman? Knocking down the door when it's too late, but also the feeling that when he was in the military, he probably was the one knocking down the door on innocent women. You know, invading homes and whatever towards some greater end, which then makes him go, what are we doing here? I need to be fighting for the right people, but then he's stuck in the darkness of that.
1:04:14 Speaker 04 Well, yeah, and who are the bad guys and who are the good guys? He's has the military flashbacks where they're, you know, like, whatever.
1:04:22 Speaker 04 It just feels like, yeah, he's very much lost in terms of like, how do I do good in a world that's so dark?
1:04:28 Griffin Newman? And it's broken me and the book is sort of getting at this feeling of, the only way I can actually do good is if I cut out all the middlemen. If there aren't rules around me, yeah.
1:04:38 David Sims? She's very anti flashback, but then she sort of has that approach of like, if it's like post traumatic stress, it's like trauma that he's reliving. It's a little different from like a full flashback.
1:04:47 Griffin Newman? Which I think this movie depicts like incredibly well.
1:04:51 Speaker 04 Yeah, so I'll, I, uh, I have a, I'll share a quick story, which is I was, I was in a car in, I think it was like 2003.
1:05:03 David Sims? This is a long time ago, right?
1:05:04 Speaker 04 This was 2003, I was driving in my mom's Nissan Quest minivan to my, the connect to massage therapy school as one does.
1:05:13 Griffin Newman? Wow.
1:05:14 David Sims? You were gonna become a masseuse?
1:05:16 Speaker 04 I was a licensed massage therapist for a few years while I was like first trying to be an actor.
1:05:20 David Sims? That rocks.
1:05:21 Griffin Newman? What would it take to get that license back up and running? How easy is it to get reactivated?
1:05:26 Speaker 04 You know, I haven't done my continuing education units. I haven't done my CEUs, so I'd probably have to do a little bit.
1:05:32 David Sims? I love a massage.
1:05:33 Speaker 04 Yeah, it was a school, I mean, just whatever, to take another detour.
1:05:37 Griffin Newman? Please.
1:05:37 Speaker 04 I think my mom had heard an interview with John Corbett saying that he was a hairstylist.
1:05:43 Griffin Newman? Okay.
1:05:43 Speaker 04 When he was a struggling actor.
1:05:44 Griffin Newman? Yeah.
1:05:44 Speaker 04 Because, once you got a client base, you like, didn't have to work 40 hours. You could kind of schedule them around your life, you could audition and stuff.
1:05:51 Griffin Newman? You're like, what's more interesting than being a caterer or a bartender or whatever?
1:05:54 Speaker 04 Yeah, it was like, maybe, maybe there's a job like that. And there was like, a very good school, this Connecticut Center for Massage Therapy was like, a good accredited school for it. That was really close to me, so I went and checked it out, I was like, okay. So I learned a lot about, you know, whatever, the body, I learned Reiki, I've done it all. And I worked in spas, and I worked on the Cirque du Soleil acrobats at one point.
1:06:14 Griffin Newman? Jesus.
1:06:14 Speaker 04 Like, as I was like, traveling, just doing like backstage work for different shows.
1:06:17 Griffin Newman? Yeah.
1:06:18 Speaker 04 So it was interesting, but anyway, I was driving to school.
1:06:22 Speaker 04 I, it had snowed recently, I'm in this old minivan that like, the dials on it don't really work.
1:06:28 Griffin Newman? Mm-hmm.
1:06:28 Speaker 04 And suddenly, the speed drops, like, I go from going 65 to going like, 35. I don't know what's going on. I hit the brakes to kind of like, pull over, the brakes don't work, so I'm just rolling down the highway. And then, the car starts to fill through the vents with like, the darkest, thickest, most foul smelling smoke.
1:06:51 Griffin Newman? Jesus.
1:06:51 Speaker 04 I've ever smelled in my life.
1:06:52 Griffin Newman? Yeah.
1:06:53 Speaker 04 And I rolled down the windows, and people are pulled up alongside of me, and they're waving at me, and this one's going, "Your car is on fire, your car is on fire." And I turn, I go, "I know, I can't stop." Now, luckily, it had sort of recently snowed.
1:07:09 Griffin Newman? Hey.
1:07:10 Speaker 04 So without really being able to see.
1:07:11 Griffin Newman? Yeah.
1:07:12 Speaker 04 I kind of am able to drive off to the side, up along a snowbank, and skid along the snow. It wasn't just the guardrail, there was like, a pile of snow. I skid along that until it slowed down enough, that I got out, jumped out, ran out of the car. Also not thinking, for some reason, leaned in, leaned back in and took- Turn the keys and turn the car off and took the keys out, which like You think Just felt very stupid later. You remember this now. I remember it now, but I just like, I, and that, but I like had gotten out and went back into it. And then I kind of jogged up the shoulder and the fire was going and the windshield exploded. I don't know the physics of it, you know, if it was cold or whatever, but the tires exploded.
1:07:57 Speaker 04 Right, right. But anyway, and then I went back to like, get my shit out of the car later and I see the driver's seat that I was sitting in. And that I'd also like leaned back into for no reason and it's covered in scorched like triangles, which I assume are just shards of molten glass that like shot into the seat that I was in. Yeah. And, you know, and, uh, blank check tie in, there's a waking life DVD on the ground that was. You don't, you don't want to lose that. That was, that was like all like melted and burned. And so I'm just like, oh, I almost died in like the most gruesome, like horrific way. Final destination death. Totally. Yes.
1:08:38 Speaker 04 And for months afterwards, I think this movie just depicts really well. Like I'd be in moments of total like peace and rest, like about to drift off to sleep. It would just be the smell and the heat and I'm back in the car. And like really classic, like flashback PTSD. And then the other thing that would happen that they also do well is when I was just hanging out, whatever, with, with friends, it suddenly would be like, I can't be standing where I'm standing right now. And things that we all know as like a panic attack now, but I at that time was just like, there's something wrong that I'm going to solve through some external, I'm going to move over here. I'm going to do this and nothing's going to solve it.
1:09:19 Speaker 04 Cause this guy, even when he's staking out and like waiting, watching the brothel door. There's a restlessness inside of him.
1:09:28 Griffin Newman? Yes.
1:09:28 Speaker 04 At rest, poking at his skin when he fucking punches the like guy who was late to give him his keys back.
1:09:35 Griffin Newman? Yeah.
1:09:35 Speaker 04 The parking attendant.
1:09:36 Griffin Newman? Yeah.
1:09:36 Speaker 04 And you're just like, there's just something exploding out of him that he can't control.
1:09:41 Griffin Newman? And he almost.
1:09:41 Speaker 04 And he doesn't understand.
1:09:42 Griffin Newman? He almost sounds like he's about to cry when he punches the guy. Which is, that's a sort of Phoenix special. I feel like he's really good at that.
1:09:49 Speaker 04 Yeah, don't make me wait.
1:09:50 Griffin Newman? Right.
1:09:50 Speaker 04 But it's like, he's like a little kid in that moment.
1:09:52 Griffin Newman? Yes, yes.
1:09:53 Speaker 04 He's like, you know, and he can fight back now and it's just, but I, whatever, I went through that like very classic kind of PTSD thing. And I do think like this movie really puts you inside the head of like that kind of experience in a way that's like very visceral.
1:10:10 Griffin Newman? I think a big part of it is. Do we know why the car exploded?
1:10:13 Speaker 04 So yeah, there was, there was apparently an oil leak inside the car. That had created a pool of oil on top of the catalytic converter.
1:10:22 Griffin Newman? Which you don't want.
1:10:23 Speaker 04 And the catalytic converter also was like running very, very hot.
1:10:27 Griffin Newman? Uh huh.
1:10:28 Speaker 04 And I guess enough oil built up on there and the converter was hot enough that it sparked a little fire inside the thing. And it's basically, it's a grease fire. It's like an oil fire inside and it just burned out like all the guts of like the hood of the car. So that's why then the brakes didn't work, et cetera, et cetera. But it was just, you know, kind of a fluke thing. And one more detail that I'll never forget is then I'm sitting in a cop car, like waiting to like, you know, for like my parents to come and get me or something. And I kind of try to make a light joke and I point at the car that's like, you know, exploded. And I go, huh, tough morning. And the, and the cop points at the line of traffic and he goes, well, thanks to you, it's a tough morning for a lot of people.
1:11:14 Griffin Newman? Jesus. It is weird that people just say shit like this to you all the time. I feel like this is a running theme in your life. Maybe it's just you have a sort of face that invites people to like be sarcastic at you.
1:11:30 Speaker 05 I don't know, man.
1:11:32 Griffin Newman? We, uh, Ben and I were in Austin, Texas for South by Southwest. And Ben is like, I'm gonna go out, there's like a 7-Eleven three blocks away. And get some like beer and some water and whatever, right? And I'm sitting on the couch with Ben's wife and Ben comes back like 10 minutes later on the phone talking like really effusively to someone, right? About like, and I just don't understand what motivates people. And I was just like, oh, someone very close to Ben in his life has called and is in a bad situation where something really bad happened to them interpersonally and Ben is being a good friend and talking them through it. And instead, what I find out that is the inverse, that Ben called a friend to check in while he was on this 7-Eleven run
1:12:16 Griffin Newman? and then a guy made like a mean joke to you, a bouncer outside a bar?
1:12:20 Speaker 05 Yeah, he talked shit. And he was like, also such a fucking lame motherfucker. He was wearing like-
1:12:26 Speaker 04 Well, those are the ones that'll do that.
1:12:27 Speaker 05 He was wearing, like, I'm trying to think of the dumb band t-shirt that he was wearing.
1:12:33 Griffin Newman? It wasn't Creed, but it was-
1:12:34 Speaker 05 No, it's like some SoCal shit-ass punk band, like fucking Pennywise or something.
1:12:39 Griffin Newman? It was Pennywise, it was Pennywise, it was Pennywise.
1:12:41 Speaker 05 And he was just like, he, I don't even remember exactly the comment, just like something, cause I guess I was, you know, dressed weird, even though again, I'm wearing the most normal clothes.
1:12:50 Griffin Newman? He said like, "Nice hat, bro," or something like that.
1:12:52 Speaker 05 Something like that. And I was just like, "What, man?" He was just like, "You're just a cool-looking dude," something like that. And just wanted to obviously start some shit and had some friends standing nearby.
1:13:03 Speaker 04 He wanted to ruin your night and you gave him just what he wanted.
1:13:05 Griffin Newman? Exactly. And then-
1:13:06 Speaker 05 Unfortunately, that is, I, I get a lot of people to just fuck with me, so I think you and I share that.
1:13:13 Speaker 04 I do have that. I do, for some reason, I have-
1:13:16 Speaker 05 Look at Mr. Guy with his shoes on, like you're just walking around, but people want to say this to you.
1:13:21 Griffin Newman? I also feel like your thing is that you make the self-deprecating joke and then someone very po-faced responds to you being like, "It's actually worse than you think." You are so thoroughly the problem.
1:13:32 Speaker 04 But I've invited it always.
1:13:33 Griffin Newman? And I need you to feel guilty.
1:13:34 Speaker 04 I've opened the door for like-
1:13:37 Griffin Newman? They're like-
1:13:38 Speaker 04 Anybody wanna shit on me? And people are like, absolutely, we've been dying-
1:13:42 Griffin Newman? I agree with you, plus a hundred, minus humor.
1:13:46 Speaker 04 Like, it would have been me walking by that guy going like, "Ugh, some hat I got on, huh." He'd be like, "It's not just the hat, man, it's your whole fucking thing."
1:13:53 David Sims? But, but actually, what is that?
1:13:55 Griffin Newman? I hate your gait.
1:13:56 David Sims? It's not even just what you're wearing, it's your personality and your fucking face.
1:14:00 Griffin Newman? Yeah, there's something really toxic just emanating from you.
1:14:03 Speaker 04 Yeah, I definitely invite a lot of people to interact with me in a very aggressive way.
1:14:09 Griffin Newman? Yeah, yeah, that's funny. I don't know, the two of you have that in common. I see it happen with Ben, and like, I'm always like, "Ben, why are you like, so hair triggered with this?" And that night, you were just like, "This has been happening my entire life."
1:14:21 Speaker 04 Right.
1:14:21 Griffin Newman? Just, guys just say shit to me.
1:14:23 David Sims? This does not happen to me at all, and I truly think it's because I'm tall. Not that you guys are short, like, or I'm like, tall and broad, or whatever. And people are just like, "Well, I don't know what that other guy will do." Like, that guy might do something weird.
1:14:34 Griffin Newman? See, when people do this to me, and it does piss me off, it's condescending.
1:14:37 David Sims? Right, like, "Hey, buster."
1:14:39 Griffin Newman? Right, it's that. Sport, how's it going?
1:14:43 Griffin Newman? My fucking dentist receptionist asking if they should send the bill to my mom. And then I'm like, "Brrrr."
1:14:50 David Sims? So, I just wanted to tell you that this film was picked up by Amazon for $3.5 million.
1:14:55 Speaker 05 I'm like, now mad again.
1:14:57 David Sims? They outbid A24, who had bid $2 million.
1:15:01 Griffin Newman? This is a point in time where A24-
1:15:03 David Sims? But A24 is very fledgling, obviously.
1:15:05 Griffin Newman? Is on the rise. I mean, this-
1:15:07 David Sims? 2016, so it's the year they're going to have Moonlight at the Oscars and all that. They're a thing, but they're smaller.
1:15:14 Griffin Newman? Because like, a year later, I feel like, regardless of what the financial offer is, they sell this movie to A24 because everyone knows A24 is the place that's gonna be able to sell this the best.
1:15:25 Speaker 04 Oh, yeah, they're the Joaquin movie factory.
1:15:28 David Sims? I think A24 would have been a better place for this movie, but obviously, again, you just sort of take the highest bidder. This is the year that Amazon has five movies it can. The Handmaiden, so speaking of some other, like- So, Parchim was Handmaiden, Patterson, Jim Jarmusch, another in that kind of like, established auteur that they're giving a check to. Gimme Danger, I don't really remember what that was.
1:15:49 Griffin Newman? I don't either.
1:15:49 David Sims? Uh, The Neon Demon, where the, um, Winding Refrain movie.
1:15:54 Griffin Newman? Yeah.
1:15:54 David Sims? And, uh, Cafes.
1:15:58 David Sims? Oh, Gimme Danger was the Jim Jarmusch documentary about the Stooges, which is like, very fun.
1:16:03 Griffin Newman? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
1:16:04 David Sims? Uh, and- Uh, so Lynn Ramsey, she, uh, just FYI, she wrote this with Phoenix in mind. She'd never met him, but she was just like, no brainer. It's just exactly who I imagined for this. Uh, Phoenix is, uh, probably unsurprisingly, very into it. I mean, I feel like he's usually drawn to these kinds of directors, and this just does feel like the kind of role that would, uh, vibe with him.
1:16:26 Griffin Newman? They have been talking about reteaming for a while. There were sort of false reports that they had already shot something, but it seems like it's kind of perpetually her next movie. Uh, "Dime I Love" got knocked up because of, uh, Lawrence being attached. This would be Polaris.
1:16:39 Speaker 04 Lawrence got knocked up, and that's sort of the story, huh?
1:16:41 Griffin Newman? Twice.
1:16:42 David Sims? That's a good point. You can read all about it.
1:16:44 Griffin Newman? You can read all about it. Um, but, uh, yes, she has said that she had such a good, uh, experience working with him, when he is notoriously a very difficult man who tries to quit productions and is very at odds with directors.
1:16:57 David Sims? But it's someone who quit a production, maybe the two of them just are like, "Hey!"
1:17:00 Griffin Newman? Exactly. I think he is a guy who thrives on tension and is fighting himself and is fighting the production and is questioning himself and is always trying to kind of like wiggle out. It feels, I think it's what he's relating to in this movie, not in the intensity of the work, but this guy who is like, "I kind of hate what I do."
1:17:17 David Sims? I mean, she sent him, uh, this is so funny, an audio file, not visual file, like not a video, of fireworks. Just like, and she was like, "This is what's in his head all the time." And Joaquin Phoenix was like, "Yeah, I get that." Like, rather than Joaquin Phoenix being like, "What?", like Joaquin Phoenix is like, "That really clicked for me."
1:17:37 Griffin Newman? They feel really simpatico. She just talked so glowingly of how little tension there was and how collaborative everything was. And then he like promoted this movie hard. It was a thing she called out where she was like, "I know he hates this shit, and he's loathe to do it, and usually he's doing interviews with a gun to his head." And he was like going to like Angelica screenings opening weekend and doing Q and As and shit, because he was like, "I'm proud of this and I want people to see it."
1:18:03 Speaker 04 He's incredible in it. To talk about, you mentioned that in the book, his physicality is described a little more, uh, like traditional, like action hero-y.
1:18:13 Griffin Newman? This is a thing that you and I talk about a lot.
1:18:15 Speaker 04 The, the way he uses his body in this movie, the like, first of all, he's got like a, he's got like a paunch?
1:18:25 Griffin Newman? Yeah.
1:18:25 David Sims? Yes.
1:18:25 Speaker 04 And like a very broad scarred back.
1:18:28 Griffin Newman? Mm-hmm.
1:18:28 Speaker 04 And I genuinely think if he had been like shredded...
1:18:33 Speaker 04 He wouldn't be nearly as scary or powerful looking as he is in this movie. The one thing I love in the book is when um he's describing his exercise routine. And he says that one thing he works on a lot is his grip strength.
1:18:47 Griffin Newman? Handball.
1:18:47 Speaker 04 Because his favorite thing, once he's in a fight, is to break someone's fingers. Cause he's like, even the toughest guy in the world, when they look down and see their finger facing the wrong direction, it really gives them pause, like.
1:18:58 Griffin Newman? Yeah, and he's like, fighting is like a dance and you need to hold hands with your partner. It always ends up happening. You always end up holding hands with your partner. But he's like, the only exercise he does is like squeezing like handballs.
1:19:10 Speaker 04 But I believe that from like the Joaquin version, it looks like that kind of powerful, you know?
1:19:15 Griffin Newman? This is what's interesting. It has that detail and then it says like, but in spite of that being the only exercise he does, he's 190 pounds, he's got zero body fat, you know, whatever. And like, you and I always go like, this is one of the smartest physical transformations an actor has ever done. Because it is counterintuitive and so often it feels gimmicky. It feels like actors needing a place to put their energy. But then also kind of wanting the laudits from like, look at how much I took on.
1:19:44 Speaker 04 Yeah.
1:19:44 Griffin Newman? And what I put myself through.
1:19:46 Speaker 04 Credit for like the preparation. It has to be visible to you how much I did to get ready.
1:19:50 Griffin Newman? And there's, there's a vanity to it, even when the vanity is, look at how much less attractive I made myself or whatever it is. And this is just like really fucking logical story stuff. In a movie where this guy's not gonna talk much and where you need to just build up a sense of like, who he is from every movement in a history, you're like, yeah, this, this is actually the scariest version of this guy. His strength isn't rippling muscles.
1:20:14 Speaker 04 No, he just, yeah, he's, he's just this solid mass of person.
1:20:20 David Sims? The way Ramsey puts it is like he shows up, cause they talk about it for the prep or whatever. And Joaquin is like, I do want him to feel big, but not like in this Hollywood body way and this like midlife way. And Ramsey's like, he looks like a maintenance worker. I was like so happy. I loved it. He wanted to keep the belly and like wanted her to show it. You know what I mean? Like he was like, can you show the belly as much as he can?
1:20:41 Griffin Newman? Yeah.
1:20:42 David Sims? Uh, Lynn calls it like body armor. She says he's kind of like Hunchback of Notre Dame. He's kind of like Harvey Keitel in the piano, this kind of like girthy guy, like who's just kind of like.
1:20:55 Speaker 05 Solid, as you guys are saying.
1:20:57 Griffin Newman? And he like, looks like a guy sleeping in a train station. You know, he looks like he's like, wearing.
1:21:03 David Sims? He is a, he's not quite a full, I'm crossing the street in New York.
1:21:07 Griffin Newman? Yeah.
1:21:07 David Sims? Guy, because there's a lot of guys in New York and you can kinda, but like, he's a, I might keep like, one eye on him if he was like.
1:21:14 Griffin Newman? Or, or not look at him.
1:21:15 David Sims? Or not look at him, yes.
1:21:17 Speaker 04 Okay, let me just not draw the attention of this person at all. We'll just, I don't need to cross the street, but we're just gonna hopefully not exist to one another.
1:21:24 Griffin Newman? And one of those guys where you're like, is the threat to me or to him? You know, is like, is this guy hair trigger in a way where he could like, within five seconds, turn and attack me? Or, am I about to watch someone have a mental breakdown?
1:21:37 Speaker 04 Yeah.
1:21:37 Speaker 05 There's something about how he walks that communicates danger.
1:21:41 Griffin Newman? Absolutely.
1:21:41 Speaker 05 And I don't, it's so subtle, I don't know how, but it is just a thing where we pick up on.
1:21:46 David Sims? This, this ain't right. This guy ain't walking happy.
1:21:49 Speaker 04 He's, no, he's, because he's walking with, he has a single purpose.
1:21:53 Griffin Newman? Yeah, yes.
1:21:54 Speaker 04 And he, and it's just communicated through every like, inch of the way he moves. And also, after he becomes injured in the movie.
1:22:03 Griffin Newman? Yeah.
1:22:03 Speaker 04 And his face is fucked up.
1:22:04 Griffin Newman? Yeah.
1:22:05 Speaker 04 And the way that he talks, and also the way he holds the pain in his gait. And in the way he moves through the other interactions of like, I am moving, I am wounded.
1:22:15 Griffin Newman? Yeah.
1:22:16 Speaker 04 But I am still driven.
1:22:17 Griffin Newman? Right.
1:22:17 Speaker 04 Is like, so fucking, again, like, uh, it's, it's perfect. Like, I feel it. I feel what he's feeling.
1:22:26 Griffin Newman? He's, he's an actor who can do a lot. I feel like that's where you sometimes bounce off him, David. When you feel like he's overly mannered and manic and just kind of being weird for the sake of weird, if he hasn't identified a realistic center? Is that, what is your hesitation with him?
1:22:41 David Sims? Yeah, let me, let me, let me talk if I'm gonna, yeah, you know, uh. Because I'm trying to think, like, when was I getting really sick of him when I was sort of throwing out my, my hand? It was sort of Immigrant.
1:22:53 Griffin Newman? I feel like you were.
1:22:53 David Sims? Inherent Vice. Sort of post Master.
1:22:56 Griffin Newman? Skeptical of the master performance as well.
1:22:59 David Sims? I mean, I really love that movie, obviously. It's, and I, I think his performance is good, but it is.
1:23:05 Speaker 04 I think about that one in juxtaposition to this one, where it's like, there, he, he looks pretty frail. He's sort of like crazy and also like violent, but he also feels like he's, could be a victim at, at any moment, too. Like, he's sort of in this, in this weird in-between space. And then this, he's a completely different physical human.
1:23:27 David Sims? He sure is. I mean, I don't like her. I don't think he's bad in that movie. I also have not seen that movie since 2013, so I don't have like a fresh take on it.
1:23:36 Griffin Newman? I don't love that film either, but I think he's good in it. But this is all the post-I'm still here shit.
1:23:41 David Sims? Well, yeah. Pre-I'm still here, I think my take on Joaquin was like, he's like, you know, he's like a sort of interesting star who puts a little English on it. Like, you know, like, and I like the Signs performance.
1:23:56 Griffin Newman? Yeah.
1:23:56 David Sims? I like the Village performance. Okay. I mean, that's those, that, that movie where the boys are kind of pretty heavily cooked.
1:24:02 Griffin Newman? Is it We on the Night? What's the one?
1:24:04 David Sims? Yeah, I, I really love We on the Night.
1:24:06 Speaker 04 That's the one where he also feels like that. He's like a sort of tough, big enforcer guy in that. He feels like so substantial. And then he can also feel.
1:24:14 David Sims? Wahlberg off the screen in that movie. Like Wahlberg's not like bad, but Wahlberg's pretty like, kind of doing a standard thing in it and Joaquin's pretty interesting.
1:24:20 Griffin Newman? James Gray, obviously, one of the other guys he is just like completely in sync with. They get each other. He's always.
1:24:27 David Sims? When's the last time they worked together? I guess it's been a while.
1:24:30 Griffin Newman? Uh, yeah.
1:24:32 David Sims? I mean, look, I mean, now he's become.
1:24:33 Griffin Newman? Since the immigrant, yeah.
1:24:36 David Sims? He really does. I know he's always been a handful, but he really does seem like he's become quite a handful. I really like him in Bo and Napoleon. I liked him a lot in Eddington.
1:24:47 David Sims? I can't really stand the Joker performances. They like.
1:24:49 Griffin Newman? No, I think the Joker performance is the bad version of what we're talking about. It's like just trying to get him to do the tricks.
1:24:56 David Sims? I didn't really like Come On, Come On, but that wasn't, I mean, he's fine. That felt like kind of dime store Phoenix to me where he's just like
1:25:05 David Sims? and I was just like, this is fine, but like, I'm not moved.
1:25:08 Speaker 04 I think it's all, it's all just Joker lashback that you're feeling.
1:25:12 David Sims? Well, I don't.
1:25:13 Speaker 04 That the Joker is so embraced and so beloved by some of the worst people and that what he is doing in that, as you said, is just like, just a bag of tricks without substance underneath it. And it is some of, some of his master physicality and some of his, you know, like, you were never really here damage. And it's just this like, you know, collection of parts that don't really work together.
1:25:36 Griffin Newman? Right, but it's a lot of acting. And I also think like it is very,
1:25:43 Griffin Newman? Todd Phillips is kind of exploiting him in that movie. Like it feels like he is pushing him to do things in scenes that do not dramatically make sense to show off the range of what he can do in a way that's just like, well, that's like an engaging three minutes of footage that makes this character make less sense than he did a scene ago.
1:26:02 Speaker 04 Would you feel differently if I told you that he didn't think the Joker was very good?
1:26:06 Griffin Newman? I have heard similar things. I have, I have heard quite a few stories.
1:26:12 David Sims? Go ahead.
1:26:13 Griffin Newman? About him seeing the first cut of the movie or, or rather, you know, the, the near final cut of the film before had been seen by people at large and being like, well, we fucked this one up. I guess that's like dead in the water and then it proceeds to win the gold lion and he wins best actor at the academy awards.
1:26:33 Speaker 04 Well, and it
1:26:34 David Sims? He was right the first time.
1:26:36 Speaker 04 There was a bunch of media controversy around it.
1:26:39 Griffin Newman? Yes.
1:26:39 Speaker 04 And I think he was like, oh, that narrative is what's going to drive people to see it more than what it is.
1:26:46 Griffin Newman? Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's fascinating. It's fascinating, but I this
1:26:50 Speaker 04 I don't know, but
1:26:51 Griffin Newman? Sure.
1:26:52 Speaker 04 I'm speculating.
1:26:52 Griffin Newman? We're just speculating. Uh, I, I do like, I'm inclined to say this is his single best performance and it is just
1:26:59 David Sims? Interesting.
1:26:59 Griffin Newman? She's, I think, really smart about knowing that he could do all of these things, but that the power comes from holding all of that back.
1:27:09 Speaker 04 Yeah.
1:27:20 Griffin Newman? David?
1:27:20 David Sims? Yeah.
1:27:21 Griffin Newman? This episode is brought to you by XYZ Films and the acclaimed new documentary Capturing Bigfoot.
1:27:26 David Sims? Hmm.
1:27:27 Griffin Newman? On October 20th, 1967, Roger Patterson captured 59 seconds of film showing a creature walking through the Northern California woods. I wonder if you can log that on Letterboxd?
1:27:38 David Sims? It is an iconic video.
1:27:39 Griffin Newman? Footage that became the most analyzed and debated in history. 59 years later, a reel of 16 millimeter film discovered in a safe changes everything. Capturing Bigfoot reveals the untold story behind the world's greatest mystery told for the first time by Patterson's own son and the people who were there. This is a story about family legacy, broken friendships, and how far people will go to protect a secret.
1:28:02 David Sims? Of course, you got the classic, what they call Patterson Gimlin film. Everyone knows a Bigfoot out in the woods, like the famous Bigfoot picture. This has other stuff shot by him that no one's ever seen. That's what makes this movie different.
1:28:13 Griffin Newman? But we're also talking brand new 4K scans of the original film taken from the Patterson family archives that some historians have called the best rendering of the footage ever seen.
1:28:22 David Sims? I feel like we've all seen that footage as like grainy.
1:28:25 Griffin Newman? Yes.
1:28:26 David Sims? You know, that you see, you know, whatever, you see it in a documentary for two seconds, but this is restoring it and making it look much more clear.
1:28:33 Griffin Newman? There's also a companion podcast, the Capturing Bigfoot podcast, which goes deeper into the legend and lore of Bigfoot and the Patterson Gimlin film, featuring weekly episodes with experts in cryptozoology, urban legends and filmmaking.
1:28:47 David Sims? I'm something of an expert in cryptozoology.
1:28:49 Griffin Newman? Well, of course, yes, but that's more of a hobby.
1:28:51 David Sims? Yeah, this podcast, Capturing Bigfoot Podcast is hosted by the director of the film, Mark Evans, and it's available for free on YouTube and Spotify with exclusive episodes and content available on Patreon to members of the Capturing Bigfoot Society.
1:29:07 Griffin Newman? Capturing Bigfoot is now available to rent or own on Amazon Prime Video. Learn more about Capturing Bigfoot at capturingbigfoot.com.
1:29:24 Griffin Newman? David?
1:29:24 David Sims? Yes?
1:29:25 Griffin Newman? People cut the cord. Means the death of the repeat, the rerun. But where, where do repeats still exist?
1:29:32 David Sims? In your closet.
1:29:33 David Sims? Ah, the sweater that goes with everything, Griffin. The tee you somehow always reach for first?
1:29:38 David Sims? It's, it's, we know the feeling.
1:29:40 David Sims? Those are the pieces that make getting dressed easy. That's what Quince does best.
1:29:44 Griffin Newman? Quince.
1:29:44 David Sims? This is true for me. I will say, I go to Quince, I buy a thing like a polo shirt, a sweater, whatever. And I'm like, oh, I like that. Guess I'll get a bunch more because now that's what I'm gonna put on.
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1:30:10 David Sims? Love it. They got those 100% Mongolian cashmere sweaters. Those start at just $60.
1:30:14 Griffin Newman? I love those.
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1:30:28 Griffin Newman? Yeah.
1:30:28 David Sims? Jacket, sweater, shirt.
1:30:30 Griffin Newman? David, you know what I love?
1:30:31 David Sims? What?
1:30:31 Griffin Newman? The ultimate commuter pants.
1:30:33 David Sims? Oh.
1:30:33 Griffin Newman? Cause I'm commuting constantly.
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1:30:36 Griffin Newman? Yep, that's me. David, I like these. They're just clean. They're comfortable. They got the right amount of pockets.
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1:31:10 Griffin Newman? David?
1:31:10 David Sims? Yes?
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1:32:44 Speaker 04 Should we talk about his choice to use a hammer? And is this one of the greatest hammer violence performances of all time? Obviously, we have to think about, you know. Old boy is in there. Old boy is where? Yes.
1:32:58 David Sims? Hmm?
1:32:58 Griffin Newman? True, sure, sure.
1:33:00 Speaker 04 Uh, the Raid Two.
1:33:02 Griffin Newman? Yeah.
1:33:03 Speaker 04 The Hammer Girl on the train.
1:33:05 Griffin Newman? Mm-hmm.
1:33:05 Speaker 04 Very impactful.
1:33:06 David Sims? I'm, now I'm trying to think, okay, like, what else? Cause like, this, you can't even Google this, really.
1:33:11 Griffin Newman? Hammer movies?
1:33:12 David Sims? Uh, because of course, uh, Hammer horror.
1:33:14 Griffin Newman? Right.
1:33:15 David Sims? Sort of dominates here. Okay, there's a, there's a what culture list?
1:33:19 Griffin Newman? Movies where characters use a hammer?
1:33:21 David Sims? All right, it's saying Anne Wilkes in Misery, but that's a sledgehammer, which feels very
1:33:25 Griffin Newman? Different, different.
1:33:26 David Sims? Cause to me, like, the fun is that it's a claw hammer, or a ball hammer, or whatever. Like, that it's just like a regular ass hammer.
1:33:33 Speaker 04 This is not a claw hammer in the movie.
1:33:35 David Sims? Right.
1:33:36 Speaker 04 I can't remember if it is in the book or not, but he does say he likes to use a hammer, cause it's sort of like a very normal, like, daily household object to have, but when you see it in someone's hand in the context.
1:33:50 Griffin Newman? Yes.
1:33:50 Speaker 04 Of a fight, all of a sudden, it really, people take a moment of pause, that it's like, different than like, holding out a knife or something.
1:33:58 Griffin Newman? Right.
1:33:58 Speaker 04 Where they're like, why the fuck do you have a hammer? And he's like, in that one second of hesitation, I can hit them with the hammer.
1:34:04 Griffin Newman? Right, there's this, there's this notion.
1:34:06 David Sims? A gun is totally different.
1:34:07 Griffin Newman? Yeah, I feel like it's expressed in the book.
1:34:09 David Sims? Uh, Drive has a big hammer sequence.
1:34:11 Speaker 04 Yeah, Drive, good one. That was, I knew there was another big one.
1:34:14 Griffin Newman? And another kind of close quarters hammer thing.
1:34:17 David Sims? And of course Thor.
1:34:18 Griffin Newman? Of course.
1:34:18 David Sims? I mean, Mjolnir itself.
1:34:20 Speaker 04 Does Harley Quinn count?
1:34:22 Griffin Newman? Sledgehammer, I feel like, once again, is a subcategory.
1:34:26 David Sims? Same with like, Ramona in Scott Pilgrim, when she pulls out the big hammer.
1:34:29 Griffin Newman? Right.
1:34:29 David Sims? Yeah, we don't, we don't, we're not talking about a buster.
1:34:31 Speaker 04 It shouldn't be comic book.
1:34:33 David Sims? Does Lax Action Hero have Hammer? I forgot about Hammer.
1:34:36 Speaker 04 MC Hammer.
1:34:36 Griffin Newman? MC Hammer is, it's one of his top, kind of talkies, and we're talking feature-length films.
1:34:41 David Sims? I mean, hammers are one of those objects that, yes, I have in my home, where I'm like, should I be allowed to have this? This is crazy.
1:34:47 Griffin Newman? It's crazy. I feel like, I'm like, holding one while we're doing this episode, and I feel a little dangerous, a little on edge.
1:34:53 David Sims? Like, anytime like, the Ikea instructions, like, all right, now hammer some nails in, I'm like, I shouldn't be doing that.
1:34:58 Griffin Newman? Right.
1:34:59 David Sims? Cause some sort of, like, PhD should do this.
1:35:01 Griffin Newman? Uh, Leo and Django, although he uses that more like a demonstration, a threat of violence than attacking someone with it.
1:35:08 Speaker 04 Yeah.
1:35:09 Griffin Newman? Uh, but yeah, no, he explains in the book, he it's, everything is just like logic with this guy, right? How do you get it done in the cleanest, simplest, most unshowy way?
1:35:18 Speaker 04 I love he keeps going to hardware stores and buying the same three items that like.
1:35:21 Griffin Newman? Right, yeah. And, and they call out basically that it's like a hammer hanging at a hardware store is gonna have that paper sleeve around it.
1:35:29 Speaker 04 Mm hmm.
1:35:29 Griffin Newman? That's used as the hanger tag that he can grab. So the fingerprints are only on that. Then he gets in a car, puts gloves on, takes that off, and it's a clean weapon. And he's like, in terms of like.
1:35:41 Speaker 04 And he gets a roll of duct tape, which he can use for multiple things, including like patching himself up when he gets hurt.
1:35:45 Griffin Newman? But like in terms of the work I do, an axe is maybe the most efficient in terms of getting shit done. Uh huh. But you can't hide an axe in a jacket, you know?
1:35:56 Speaker 04 Yep.
1:35:56 Griffin Newman? And that there is that transformative aspect of the hammer of like, you're not immediately looking askance if a guy has a hammer. Until he's holding it in that way, that close to you.
1:36:06 Speaker 04 And he styled himself as a sort of contractory, construction worker looking guy where he always has on like, you know, sort of like carhartt jacket, hood, low baseball cap.
1:36:15 Griffin Newman? It's one of my favorite moments in the movie is just that, uh, that extended shot of him, uh, uh, unloading from a plastic bag. Just all his supplies.
1:36:26 Speaker 04 Mm hmm.
1:36:27 Griffin Newman? You know, like the wet wipes, the hammer, the two cans of soda, which is such a bizarre kind of like Lyft driver, do you want a water?
1:36:34 Speaker 04 Yeah.
1:36:34 Griffin Newman? Kind of move.
1:36:36 Speaker 04 Yeah, he gets a, an orange soda and a grape soda.
1:36:39 Griffin Newman? Right.
1:36:39 Speaker 04 Because he's about to rescue a young girl. He's just like, I want to be able to offer her a soda.
1:36:44 Griffin Newman? Which you have to imagine is his routine. Like he's like, I need to earn their trust in some way in this moment after they've been victimized by so many men.
1:36:51 Speaker 04 Mm hmm.
1:36:52 Griffin Newman? To feel, let them feel a little bit safe. A soda would probably calm a kid down, but also the choice would help.
1:36:59 Speaker 04 Mm hmm.
1:37:00 Griffin Newman? That they feel like they have the agency of the flavor.
1:37:02 Speaker 04 Yeah.
1:37:03 Griffin Newman? It's like such a nice little detail and the banality of all of this, you know?
1:37:08 Speaker 04 Yeah.
1:37:08 Griffin Newman? Of just like, he's just got a shitty shopping bag and it's just a bunch of like three dollar products.
1:37:14 David Sims? Yeah, I mean, it's all you need if you feel comfortable running at someone and hitting him in the head with a hammer, I guess.
1:37:21 Griffin Newman? Totally.
1:37:21 David Sims? Almost anyone can be an assassin.
1:37:24 Griffin Newman? Yes.
1:37:24 David Sims? If you think about it. I mean, what's some fucking state senator in a, in an Epstein villa gonna do to you? He's just a naked asshole. It doesn't, you know, right? Like.
1:37:34 Griffin Newman? He's just a naked asshole. Yeah.
1:37:36 David Sims? I remember when this film came out. So the film is about a guy called Joe who, yes, rescues trafficked girls by, usually by hitting someone with a hammer.
1:37:44 Griffin Newman? He's an enforcer.
1:37:45 David Sims? And then getting them.
1:37:45 Griffin Newman? Right, that a middleman hires sort of as a go-between, uh, security form. I, I.
1:37:53 David Sims? It is very hard to, it is completely implausible. You just kind of have to roll with it. It doesn't matter. It's like.
1:37:57 Griffin Newman? Right.
1:37:58 Speaker 04 Well, it's like hiring a.
1:37:59 David Sims? There's no way a guy like this would exist.
1:38:00 Speaker 04 Hitman or something, but it's like, this is like a, a rescue guy.
1:38:03 David Sims? Right. But I mean, like, anyone like that who's like, yeah, I pick up trafficked girls. It's like, you would immediately be killed by a mafia. Trafficked girls, like, you're talking about people under the auspices of the scariest organized crime rings, like.
1:38:16 Griffin Newman? Yeah.
1:38:17 David Sims? So it'd be like, oh yeah, there's a guy with a hammer who gets the girls. They'd be like, how about you shoot him with a shotgun until there's a hole inside his body? Like, he'd be dead. Doesn't matter. Don't worry about it.
1:38:26 Griffin Newman? I also think the movie is smart about being like, these are like small webs, not like a huge, large interconnected web of everything. There are people in power, but they're creating smaller circles.
1:38:36 David Sims? So that's what I was gonna say. So I saw this film. I loved it. But at the time, I was the junior critic at The Atlantic. And I was, um, under Chris Orr, who was sort of an established veteran there who was in DC and wrote a lot about politics too. And I saw this movie and I loved it. And I was like, God, this fucking rocks. You know, I've been a can. And he saw it and he was like, this movie is so, you know, it's like feeding into all the like pizza gate shit. About Hillary and all this kind of conspiratorial thinking and all that. And I was like, huh, weird that I, I was kind of like, I didn't clock that at all. I mean, like, I guess I get what you mean, but like, I don't think that's what it's going for.
1:39:11 Griffin Newman? No.
1:39:11 David Sims? But I guess I could see that, especially if you had like a real politics brain, like a kind of a DC brain.
1:39:17 Griffin Newman? Yeah.
1:39:17 David Sims? You could look at this and be like, this is the last thing we should be depicting is this kind of, you know, nonsense about, oh, there's. Child kidnapping rings out there that all the politicians.
1:39:28 Griffin Newman? Right.
1:39:29 David Sims? Yeah. Now, it's 2025 or it's 2026 when this episode is coming out and it's basically like, yeah, well, that that shit's all true, right? Not pizza gate, to be clear.
1:39:37 Griffin Newman? No, but it is fascinating. Epstein list and all that stuff.
1:39:40 David Sims? There are webs of terrible conspiratorial things that people could very easily discuss now and.
1:39:45 Griffin Newman? Yeah, I mean, what the the Epstein arrest is 2008?
1:39:49 David Sims? The orig- sure, I'm not, I'm not, I am not someone who's.
1:39:52 Griffin Newman? I'm not, I'm not tying this well, I'm just, I'm, I want to create a tempest.
1:39:55 David Sims? But 2019 is of course when.
1:39:57 Griffin Newman? When these things become public conversations, right?
1:39:59 David Sims? Yeah.
1:39:59 Griffin Newman? Because like pizza gate basically rises with any force in 2016, which is the time they are shooting this movie.
1:40:07 David Sims? Right.
1:40:07 Griffin Newman? The Epstein thing, of course, the whole thing that was so insidious about it was it was like out there and not discussed.
1:40:12 David Sims? Yeah.
1:40:12 Griffin Newman? Not just that, oh, these people were letting it happen kind of way, but truly like people would report on it, but just not with a lot of force. And a lot of that, of course, is like institutions killing this story, you know, like networks of connections and power and whatever. Gawker was one of the only publications, one of the only outlets that was like really reporting on like, this guy is being reintegrated into polite society in New York City. This guy just served a sentence and is now back to like cocktail parties. And this constant kind of drumming of like, why is no one talking about this? And then there was the one New York Magazine piece that has the famous Trump quote. You know, Jeffrey enjoys his social life or whatever.
1:40:51 Griffin Newman? All this stuff is out there, but it wasn't really like metastasized into the same kind of Dan Brown conspiracy theory game.
1:40:59 David Sims? Yeah.
1:41:00 Griffin Newman? And is what I find so bizarre and like depressing and overwhelming about this cultural moment. It's something that it's been turned into like a political football, but it's been turned into this odd narrativized force to try to create some new, almost like religious system of pure evil and pure good existing in the world. This notion of is there a definitive like Santa Claus naughty list of everyone who is doing the worst of the worst things? And then we want to believe that there is a secret cabal of people who are just pure good trying to take this down.
1:41:31 David Sims? Well, and you, I mean, you can see that obviously immediately after you learn that Malcolm Gladwell is on the flight logs for the Epstein plane.
1:41:39 Griffin Newman? Right.
1:41:39 David Sims? That there's got to be shades of gray here.
1:41:41 Griffin Newman? Of course. Well, he was just trying to get his hours in. He has to know. Doesn't mean he's gonna do it. He's gotta know.
1:41:48 David Sims? You making some little editing points here, Benny?
1:41:50 Speaker 04 No, I'm giving a thumbs up.
1:41:52 Griffin Newman? Yeah.
1:41:52 David Sims? To Malcolm Gladwell, your favorite writer.
1:41:53 Griffin Newman? Yeah.
1:41:54 Speaker 04 Yeah, I love that guy.
1:41:55 David Sims? Do you remember?
1:41:55 Griffin Newman? Just spent 10,000 hours.
1:41:56 Speaker 04 No, he's my favorite podcaster.
1:41:59 David Sims? Right.
1:41:59 Griffin Newman? Yeah, important correct.
1:42:00 David Sims? Sean, have you and I ever discussed in person a thing I'm sure you've thought about, which is when Malcolm Gladwell went on the Simmons podcast, Bill Simmons's podcast, and talked about how like Nigerian players specifically were like, like the most important basketball players?
1:42:17 Speaker 04 He was making the like all African born player team. And I think he included Steve Nash.
1:42:26 David Sims? He, he said, he correct. He said, so I'm, I'm putting together a team that's team Nigeria. And Bill Simmons is like, uh, okay. And he's like, you know, so Hakim. And Bill's like, yeah, Hakim. Right. Absolutely. And he's like, caveat, Tim Duncan. Bill's like, well, isn't he from the Caribbean? He's like, yeah, but like, I, I've done some like racial math and he sort of descends from Nigeria.
1:42:49 Speaker 04 So all those island countries are actually direct descendants.
1:42:52 David Sims? And then he's like, Steve Nash. And Bill's like, isn't he Canadian? He's like, yeah, but he was like born in South Africa and that kind of counts too. And it is one of the rarest, like where Bill Simmons clearly is just at a loss for words. Does not know what to say. Kind of just lets him quote unquote, cook for a while.
1:43:09 Speaker 04 The king of going on like pretty stupid theoretical tangents related to basketball.
1:43:14 David Sims? Yeah, which are fun.
1:43:15 Speaker 04 It's just like, truly, I can't get there with you. Just go off and then we'll do the show when you're done.
1:43:20 Griffin Newman? In Malcolm Gladwell's defense, he was just trying to log his 10,000 hours towards being a fucking moron. He needed to keep saying dumb shit into microphones.
1:43:29 David Sims? Not important to this episode, obviously. And I'm not saying that all conspiracies are true. And certainly that maniac who went into a pizza place with a gun was not on the level and had been misled. But I am just sort of like.
1:43:43 Speaker 04 This movie only feels, you know, whatever. It continues to feel resonant.
1:43:47 Griffin Newman? Yes, and I think, I think the way unfortunately the culture has progressed since this movie has only made this movie better in this way to me. I was tempted, I couldn't fucking get myself to do it. I was tempted to watch Sound of Freedom and prep for this episode as a comparison point. And then I had the oh, Jesus moment as I was like cuing it up of like, am I really gonna fucking sit through?
1:44:08 Speaker 04 Especially because it's like, we don't really need to talk about that for more than a minute anyway. Like, you don't need to devote all that time to it.
1:44:14 Griffin Newman? No, but I just, like, I wasn't surprised that this movie didn't become a film that like church groups were sending to the theaters, right?
1:44:23 Speaker 04 Right.
1:44:24 Griffin Newman? But it was so weird to me when Sound of Freedom became this like weird, vaguely money laundering, box office phenomenon, based on like, finally someone is saying it, right?
1:44:34 Speaker 04 Yeah.
1:44:35 Griffin Newman? And even the guy that that movie is based on, who's been discredited in a bunch of fucking ways, and the director and everyone involved is like, yeah, like vague jumping off point, and then we created like, a revenge thriller, you know, that tried to have like a human heart at the center of it.
1:44:50 Speaker 04 Right.
1:44:50 Griffin Newman? But this is like a movie about Jesus going in and just fixing all the problems. And the great Bill Camp is, you know, Mr. Burns and going like, I love kids suffering!
1:45:00 Speaker 04 Right.
1:45:01 Griffin Newman? And this movie is just like, well, first of all, the guy who lives in this world is just, is gonna be broken.
1:45:09 Speaker 04 Mm-hmm.
1:45:09 Griffin Newman? And as in the excerpt I read from the book, like, even if he's coming from a pure place, there is something narcissistic about thinking that you need to do this, even if it is speaking to, no one else is doing this, or someone needs to do this. And why not me?
1:45:26 Speaker 04 Yeah, and I, I do, obviously it's all, you know, it's, it's fictional and it's a pretty easy, like, line to draw of like, well, the people doing this are people in positions of power. And like, so a senator and a governor and all, like, these people being involved, and that being tied into some kind of like weird organized crime thing, makes sense. But I also do wonder as we talk about, you know, Jonathan Ames and his history and his fascination in his early essays and stuff with like, Sex work and off the grid, like weird, like fetish personal ads and stuff like this.
1:46:04 Griffin Newman? Yes.
1:46:04 Speaker 04 If some of this is like, he has heard some element of this is how, this is how some of this world operates and then I'm making it into this like crime movie thing.
1:46:14 Griffin Newman? Right.
1:46:15 Speaker 04 Um, but that it's not, you know, it's not just plucked from thin air.
1:46:19 Griffin Newman? And once again, there is like a banality to it. I like, it's just a fucking like townhouse in East Midtown, you know? With five rooms and it does feel like this is a very tight web. Even if it's connected to some other tendrils and the core kind of drum of this is like basically between two guys. And what feels like some arm of some regional mafia in between them.
1:46:44 David Sims? As you said, it's a pretty simple story. Like Joe has this handler played by John Doeman, who's a great actor. I love him.
1:46:53 Griffin Newman? Right.
1:46:53 David Sims? From The Wire and a million other things.
1:46:55 Griffin Newman? He's got like an even in-between bodega guy who that guy talks through.
1:46:59 David Sims? Moises is right. It's kind of the go-between.
1:47:01 Griffin Newman? Whose son spots him and he freaks out and is just living in this constant state of paranoia. So he's now going straight to the guy who he's not really supposed to communicate to in person.
1:47:11 Speaker 04 It's just bad. It's very bad timing.
1:47:13 Griffin Newman? Yes.
1:47:13 Speaker 04 He's, he's entering his home through the back alleyway, which is the only way he goes into his house and he looks up and he sees this kid on a balcony. Who knows who he is and he says, now this person who knows who I am knows where I live.
1:47:24 Griffin Newman? Yeah.
1:47:24 Speaker 04 Which means someone could torture him and find out where I live.
1:47:28 Griffin Newman? Right. It's all vulnerability is how he runs through everything. The book, the John Doeman character is not sleazier, but more kind of sad sack. He is, you know, in a cramped office next to like injury lawyers. And is, you know, a perpetual bachelor and whatever.
1:47:44 Speaker 04 Right.
1:47:44 Griffin Newman? And this is like, there's the illusion. I mean, he's like referencing his dead daughter, right? He's got the picture on his mantle. This is a guy who's experienced some tragedy in his own life.
1:47:54 David Sims? Maybe he's directing himself this way.
1:47:56 Griffin Newman? That is motivating. I want to. But he's also in like a very nice office with a great view and a model of a yacht that he owns. And he's saying to like Joe, like, hey, and on the other side of this, I'm going to take you on the yacht. We're going to see the fireworks and eat nice steaks. Where he's almost like, even if we're driven by a good, the work we do is so bad that the other benefit of it is they have to pay us so much to do it. That shouldn't we enjoy that?
1:48:20 Speaker 04 Yeah, we have to have some kind of reward.
1:48:22 Griffin Newman? Totally.
1:48:23 Speaker 04 And that's in the. In the book as well, there's this very clear thing of like, this guy wants to be friends with Joe.
1:48:30 Griffin Newman? Right.
1:48:30 Speaker 04 Like, he's like, we are both in this sort of off the grid world.
1:48:33 Griffin Newman? We never hang out outside of work.
1:48:34 Speaker 04 And I just wish, you know, like, I just see you for this thing, but like, can we just have a fucking beer together, man? And Joe, in the movie, Joe's literally not listening.
1:48:44 Griffin Newman? Squeezing jelly.
1:48:45 David Sims? I was gonna say, right, he doesn't strike me as an eat steak kinda guy. I don't know, what does Joey eat?
1:48:51 Griffin Newman? Jelly beans, the green ones.
1:48:53 David Sims? Okay, but like, where's he getting his protein?
1:48:55 Griffin Newman? Junk food, yeah.
1:48:56 Speaker 04 Like chips and pretzels. Gas station food.
1:49:00 Griffin Newman? And as we said, he's got this, this house with his mom.
1:49:02 David Sims? 200 squeezes, and then the tummy hardens again, or whatever.
1:49:07 Griffin Newman? He lives with his mom in his childhood home.
1:49:10 David Sims? Yes.
1:49:10 Griffin Newman? She's in pretty advanced stages of dementia. She's kind of lashing out at him all the time and misremembering things.
1:49:15 David Sims? Judith Roberts?
1:49:16 Griffin Newman? Who's so good.
1:49:17 David Sims? Who's really good. I think of her, she's in Eraserhead.
1:49:20 Griffin Newman? She is in Eraserhead. She's the pretty woman down the hall.
1:49:22 David Sims? Right.
1:49:22 Griffin Newman? Yeah.
1:49:23 David Sims? She's in a bunch of other stuff, but she's really good.
1:49:25 Griffin Newman? Yeah. And he has this almost like, it, it, it almost feels like there's a, like an Abbot Costello comedy dynamic to them.
1:49:34 Speaker 04 They've got some like, old, yeah, like, songs that they used to do when they were kids, which by the way, I mean, as you said, she has dementia. So like, I think part of that is probably intentional. Like, I know my grandfather, who had Parkinson's and dementia, came to live with us for a while.
1:49:51 Griffin Newman? Yeah.
1:49:51 Speaker 04 And it was that thing that somebody told me, like, he won't know what he had for breakfast this morning.
1:49:57 Griffin Newman? Right.
1:49:57 Speaker 04 But if you ask him about something from 30 or 40 years ago.
1:50:00 Griffin Newman? Yeah.
1:50:01 Speaker 04 Their, their long-term memory's intact.
1:50:03 David Sims? That would still work, right?
1:50:04 Speaker 04 So it feels like they're doing, they're, they're engaging in these sort of playful conversational activities they did as, when he was a kid.
1:50:12 Griffin Newman? The routines.
1:50:12 Speaker 04 And that, that is still like, fresh for her, and she's able to like, stay with it, you know?
1:50:17 Griffin Newman? And even when she's like, when he's dealing with the exasperation of her having lapses of things, like running the bath and whatever. He's kind of like yelling at her in a comical way, you know? He's like, kind of like angry sitcom.
1:50:31 David Sims? There's right, the darkest little strain of comedy to it.
1:50:35 Griffin Newman? Yes.
1:50:36 David Sims? Even though you are, the whole time, you're like, oh, this is gonna end in some fucked up way, which it does.
1:50:40 Griffin Newman? But it is the driving.
1:50:41 Speaker 04 There's water all over the floor. What were you doing in here? Oh, forget it, you know?
1:50:45 Griffin Newman? This is a guy whose entire life was animated by not being able to protect his mother when he was young.
1:50:50 David Sims? Yes.
1:50:50 Griffin Newman? And now is like, she cannot take care of herself. The reason I need to stay alive is because she at least deserves this, right? And he's constantly just like suicidal ideation, but also like the little bits of him like holding the knife over his open mouth.
1:51:08 Speaker 04 That's played for comedy when he keeps, well, and when he keeps dropping the knife.
1:51:12 Griffin Newman? On his foot.
1:51:12 Speaker 04 On his foot, but just pulling his foot away just in time, which is like dual, like staying sharp because I'm always like in a situation where somebody might try to kill me and I also want to hurt myself.
1:51:22 Griffin Newman? Right. I would like the release from the pain. And she's asking him about his ex-girlfriend from 20 years ago and how she would have been a good mother. And you're like, that must've been the last relationship he ever had.
1:51:33 Speaker 04 I think Joe be a good dad. I think he should, yeah.
1:51:35 Griffin Newman? Well, the movie kind of gets there.
1:51:37 Speaker 04 Well, I don't think that's gonna work that way, but yes, I mean, you're right. You're right. You're right.
1:51:41 Griffin Newman? I don't think it's as cut and dry.
1:51:44 Speaker 04 I'll put it this way, I'm a parent, right?
1:51:45 Griffin Newman? You are. Congrats.
1:51:46 Speaker 04 And in my parenting strategy, definitely I have no time for garbage bag closet experience, you know, like.
1:51:53 Griffin Newman? He might be kicking that habit by the end of the movie.
1:51:55 Speaker 04 I can't, you know, be like, all right, hey, I need 20 minutes. I gotta put the plastic bag over my head and.
1:52:00 Griffin Newman? He might be kicking that habit.
1:52:01 Speaker 04 I hope he is.
1:52:01 Griffin Newman? The other thing is at, at the end, we'll get to the ending.
1:52:04 Speaker 04 Yeah.
1:52:04 Griffin Newman? Gets again, because I find the ending very emotionally powerful.
1:52:07 Speaker 04 It is. It's very powerful.
1:52:09 Griffin Newman? But yes, he gets drawn into this thing. There is a senator who is kind of being tapped as maybe a future power player.
1:52:18 Speaker 04 Mm hmm.
1:52:19 Griffin Newman? His wife committed suicide some years back.
1:52:22 Speaker 04 Right.
1:52:22 Griffin Newman? There's sort of this tragedy surrounding him and his young teenage daughter has gone missing.
1:52:27 Speaker 04 Yes.
1:52:28 Griffin Newman? The book gets much more into the web of the narrative of how it happened, how much that was false and whatever, but it really is just, she's been gone for a weekend. I need you to find her.
1:52:36 Speaker 04 Mm hmm.
1:52:38 Griffin Newman? And.
1:52:39 Speaker 04 And in the, in the movie, it's like, he has just gotten a text message from someone who says, she is at this address.
1:52:45 Griffin Newman? Right.
1:52:46 Speaker 04 In the book, it goes much more into like, the text message is clearly from someone he knows who has just gone to a brothel and asked for an underage girl and.
1:52:53 Griffin Newman? Right.
1:52:54 Speaker 04 You know, presumably slept with his daughter.
1:52:56 Griffin Newman? It's the scary part of it, right.
1:52:57 Speaker 04 So that's like much more, this is like, just kind of thrown away is like, he got a text message with an address, and there's no other details, and you gotta go to this address.
1:53:06 Griffin Newman? Yeah, and, and the book has this very sobering, disturbing passage about the kind of pragmatic reality of this type of thing existing. Of just like, there are, you know, 700,000 millionaires in New York City.
1:53:21 Speaker 04 Sure.
1:53:21 Griffin Newman? And then if you add other like, you know, hubs in the Northeast, it goes up to this. And if even 1% of the people with that level of money had a predilection towards this.
1:53:31 Speaker 04 Sure.
1:53:31 Griffin Newman? There's a lucrative business to be built around it, even if the business isn't a billion dollar empire.
1:53:36 David Sims? It does feel crazy that a politician's daughter would be kidnapped, though. Does the book explain this?
1:53:40 Speaker 04 Yeah.
1:53:41 David Sims? Like versus like some, again, some person trafficked from another country or whatever. Like, why would that be?
1:53:47 Speaker 04 So the, the book basically is, the backstory is that this guy, his father was a powerful politician, who was then disgraced for all these ties that he had to the mafia.
1:53:58 David Sims? Right.
1:53:59 Speaker 04 And like, arraigned, but he was still, the name was still beloved in the city. And so then, he's gonna run on his dad's name. He decides that he wants the power. He goes to the same like mafia group that, you know, helped put his dad in power and says like, "I want this." And they say to him, "You've gotta give us something." And basically like, "You can be the most powerful person in the state if we have your daughter."
1:54:24 David Sims? This is all right.
1:54:25 Speaker 04 And it's like, it's like this weird like-
1:54:26 David Sims? Sort of an old fashioned pulpiness thing.
1:54:27 Speaker 04 Yes, it's like a very like, he's so craven and hungry for power, and he's got this like, you know, this terrible relationship with his teenage daughter and just kind of goes like-
1:54:38 David Sims? Hands are over.
1:54:39 Speaker 04 He thinks, the book says, he thinks in the moment that they're trying to make sure that he really wants to go all the way with them, and that it's just a bluff on their part. And he goes, "Fine, I'll do it. Like, I'm in." And then when they actually take his daughter, he's like, "No, no, no, no, no. Like, I thought that was like gamesmanship."
1:54:56 David Sims? Right.
1:54:56 Speaker 04 And then he can't find her.
1:54:57 David Sims? Sure, so Joe's gotta find her.
1:54:59 Griffin Newman? Extreme Faustian bargain stuff.
1:55:00 David Sims? Again, that's not, all of that is just deep background, I feel like, in this movie.
1:55:04 Speaker 04 It's not even- Part of the story.
1:55:05 Griffin Newman? I was gonna say, my, my reading the movie is different. I think she's changed. I mean, there's like when Joe is having his version of putting the pieces together, there's the flash of the father sitting in the bed with the daughter with her back turned. And it feels like there's some implication that perhaps there was some like incest within the home, that this is connected to the wife committing suicide.
1:55:25 David Sims? Right. It's that, cause of course, the main evil pedophile is Alessandro Nivola, who's like the governor.
1:55:31 Griffin Newman? Yes.
1:55:32 David Sims? But you get the impression that the state senator, Givado.
1:55:35 Griffin Newman? Right.
1:55:36 Speaker 04 He's beholden to the governor.
1:55:37 David Sims? Was also in this world and right, it was.
1:55:41 Griffin Newman? What it feels to me like is at some point, he willingly gave his daughter to this man. And then, uh, in, in exchange for feeling that that was how to.
1:55:50 David Sims? That like to climb the ladder or whatever.
1:55:52 Griffin Newman? A secret is a wonderful thing to keep thing, but also that perhaps if there already wasn't a healthy relationship in that, and there was a sense that she was.
1:56:00 Speaker 04 Damage goods, you know, because he already had this like, you know, incestuous thing.
1:56:04 Griffin Newman? The book goes into the, the horrific value of the idea of a child that has successfully been Stockholm'd and how you kind of like neutralized them to be willing to.
1:56:14 David Sims? All right, all right.
1:56:15 Griffin Newman? Not willing, you know?
1:56:16 David Sims? Actually.
1:56:17 Griffin Newman? But I think that's sort of what's going on here is it's, he comes across this girl who you're from things like Taken and such, expecting to see be like a crying mess. And you're like, no, there is a numbness to the degree of trauma.
1:56:30 Speaker 04 She, yeah, she's, yeah, she's got this like countdown thing that she does to just like sort of exist through these moments.
1:56:36 Griffin Newman? The most heartbreaking moment in the movie is him coming across her and she just like can't even clock that someone is there to save her.
1:56:43 Speaker 04 Yeah.
1:56:43 Griffin Newman? Because she's just in countdown mode, which is how she passes the time as these things happen.
1:56:47 David Sims? But also every man is not to be trusted essentially.
1:56:51 Speaker 04 David, have you? Because you have to watch all these movies for your job. I find that like, as we're talking about like this Lynn Ramsey series, and I always had intended to watch, we need to talk about Kevin. And then once I became a parent, I said, I don't think I can watch it. I don't want to think about. You actually don't want to talk about Kevin. Yeah, do you?
1:57:10 David Sims? I just kind of have to suck it up. Yes, yes. And there's certain things where I'm like, oh, I don't want to watch that, but I know I have to for my job.
1:57:16 Speaker 04 We did Park Chan Wook when your daughter was like two and you were very open about that being a particularly tough one for you because that has a lot of.
1:57:24 David Sims? That is like, like, right, little kids screaming and being tortured and stuff. That's the most extreme thing.
1:57:29 Speaker 04 Yeah.
1:57:30 David Sims? I have, I'll confess, not watched our friend Alex's segment in VHS Halloween because I'm told that is like literally just all kid torture.
1:57:38 Speaker 04 Uh huh.
1:57:38 David Sims? Which I know he's, I appreciate what he's going for and all that, but so I'm just kind of like, not sure I want to do that right now. Um, but you know, I'll watch a movie like Hamnet because I love ham, I love net.
1:57:50 Speaker 04 Of course.
1:57:50 David Sims? And I know like this is about like, this is, this movie is like, the crux of this movie is a kid dying. And not just like dying off screen in some like, kind of poetic way, but like a kid like suffers and dies on screen. And I'm like, I'm just gonna have to kind of endure that. Like, I know I won't love that.
1:58:06 Speaker 04 It's glaring to me how much prestige, TV drama, et cetera, is all hinges on like, a kid's been killed.
1:58:13 David Sims? Yeah.
1:58:13 Speaker 04 And, and I don't think I saw it before.
1:58:16 David Sims? This is something me and my wife run into a lot.
1:58:18 Speaker 04 And how many movies that I enjoyed, and I do, obviously I like this movie. I think it's very good, but how many movies even in this genre that I enjoyed and used to think were cool? And Park Chan Wook stuff like, that I now am so uncomfortable with and can't watch. And I, you know, people are whatever about this. But I, I have a theory that I developed while I was watching this and thinking about, we need to talk about Kevin, which is, of course, there are movies where someone's wife gets killed or someone's, you know, like other loved ones disappear. But with adult relationships, both the character in the movie and whoever like your partner is in your life have such a distinct identity
1:58:59 Speaker 04 that I don't think it transfers the same way as kids are always used as just like a symbol where they don't really have a personality.
1:59:07 David Sims? Yeah.
1:59:07 Speaker 04 And your own kid is always like unformed in this way where it's like, even if it's totally different circumstances and like a totally different like, um, world than you're in. You cannot help but think about, what if this was my kid?
1:59:22 David Sims? Yeah.
1:59:22 Speaker 04 And you cannot do it.
1:59:24 David Sims? There's some side of you that's absolutely right.
1:59:26 Speaker 04 It's really, yeah.
1:59:27 David Sims? I do try to just like click on Critic Brain, and Critic Brain loves this movie. And this is not a movie that's as triggering for me, I guess, because it's so stylized and
1:59:36 Speaker 04 Well, and the part of the world is like-
1:59:38 David Sims? somewhat puffy and implausible.
1:59:39 Speaker 04 Even just the thing of like, the story is like, this guy was voluntarily involved in this thing. You know what I mean?
1:59:44 David Sims? Right, right.
1:59:45 Speaker 04 It's not like a normal person who something horrible happened to them.
1:59:48 Griffin Newman? This is a horrible situation of his own making of the most extreme Faustian bargain.
1:59:51 Speaker 04 Yeah, it's an evil person who was making really bad choices.
1:59:56 Griffin Newman? I also think it's like the power of this movie, which is, it's restraint in showing things and even saying things, is I think largely driven by, A, there's no way to depict these things realistically, emotionally, visually, what have you, without insane risk of being insensitive, glib, melodramatic, salacious, all of the above at once. You know? And even a movie like Taxi Driver, which this is like a little bit analogous to, is all about like, is this guy insane? Is this in his head? You know, the question of like, how much you connect to whoever's the protagonist of a film and all these sorts of things.
2:00:41 Griffin Newman? And yet it's a movie that was like misread horribly by the wrong people, you know?
2:00:45 David Sims? I'm not.
2:00:46 Griffin Newman? I'm not talking about cultural responsibility. But you know, you know what I'm saying, right?
2:00:50 David Sims? Unfair tag to throw in it.
2:00:53 Griffin Newman? And I think this movie in how it like pulls back from both the violence and the sex as the physical acts, and even like really talking around them and putting a name on it.
2:01:01 Speaker 04 There's nothing really super graphic in it for how violent and like-
2:01:06 Griffin Newman? No.
2:01:06 Speaker 04 And tawdry the story is.
2:01:08 David Sims? There's nothing graphic, super graphic sexually, it's all left to you, which is super, super upsetting.
2:01:12 Speaker 04 He pulls his tooth out, he pulls his own tooth out.
2:01:13 David Sims? Yeah, I mean, like, to me, the iconic image of this, there's many iconic images of this movie, but, you know, so- And in the plot of the movie, he rescues Nina from a hotel or whatever.
2:01:23 Speaker 04 Oh, and the piggyback ride.
2:01:25 David Sims? Right, but then like, is then like him opening the door to the guy who then gets shot onto him.
2:01:30 Griffin Newman? They've led someone to him.
2:01:31 David Sims? And just the globs that land on Phoenix's face.
2:01:35 Griffin Newman? That's right.
2:01:35 David Sims? Just the big old bloody globs.
2:01:37 Griffin Newman? The guy behind him.
2:01:38 Speaker 04 I take it back.
2:01:38 David Sims? I low key love, like, I love that kind of gore, unfortunately.
2:01:42 Griffin Newman? Sure.
2:01:43 David Sims? I don't know what's the matter with me on that, but I mean, I'm a movie fan and I enjoy, you know, movie violence in a way.
2:01:48 Griffin Newman? But like, I feel like.
2:01:50 David Sims? Obviously enjoy real violence.
2:01:51 Griffin Newman? Every other moment of violence in the movie is either fairly obscured, you know, like the security camera rotation, which I just love that it's like a fucking Five Nights at Freddy's thing where it's like, it's just gonna switch every three seconds and you might be on the action or you might not.
2:02:06 Speaker 04 Yeah.
2:02:06 Griffin Newman? Uh, or you're very often seeing the aftermath, like the glorious things are like him walking into the James Doeman's office and like seeing his destroyed hands, you know? And you're holding on.
2:02:18 David Sims? Those hands are tough.
2:02:19 Griffin Newman? gnarly prosthetic for a while, you know, Alessandro Novola's like slit throat, discovering his mother's body.
2:02:24 David Sims? The mom's eye, right.
2:02:26 Griffin Newman? But you don't see the violence being committed.
2:02:27 David Sims? But the corpses are nasty.
2:02:29 Griffin Newman? But it is a reframing of like, no, you have to like lie with the aftermath of these things versus these movies that often have this kind of like somewhat exciting expression of violence and then you cut away the second the bloody thing happens. What if instead it's like you start on the reveal of the bloody thing and then he's just lying on the floor next to this?
2:02:47 Speaker 04 He's piecing it back together. Can I, can I tell another very quick story? Did you guys hear the story about the big giant dog that we found, the Malamute that was running around the neighborhood? So we found this Malamute running around the neighborhood and my wife and I bring it home.
2:02:59 David Sims? That's like an Alaskan husky kind of thing.
2:03:01 Speaker 04 Yeah, it's like a ninety-five, hundred pound dog, like big giant husky. And we're trying to find the owner and we tracked down the owner finally, like, and it's this guy in the neighborhood, much older, like sort of frail older guy. And he comes to pick up the dog, it's this huge dog and we're like, how, what's going on? Like, how do you have this dog? Why was the dog loose? And he's like, my son just rescued, my dog died two years ago, my son just dropped this dog off at my dorm and was like, you have a dog now, dad? And then left. And my wife is like concerned about the man and the dog and, you know, can you take care of him? And she's like, so can you like control this dog? Like, are you able to walk it on a leash? Because I was getting dragged down the street by it and I'm famously strong.
2:03:42 Griffin Newman? Mm-hmm.
2:03:43 Speaker 04 And, uh. He, as he's answering, he's like, "Well, not really." And a cat runs by, and the dog lunges, and the guy falls. And he like, smashes against the ground, and he like, breaks his glasses, and he has a cut on his head, and he goes to push himself up to stand up. And both he and I see at the same time, that two of his fingers are pointed just 45-degree angles in opposite directions. And it's one of the most chilling, like gruesome things I've ever seen. But I think about it with both that guy tortured, like, and the like, uh, how he says like, breaking someone's fingers at a fight.
2:04:23 Speaker 04 I was like, "Something about this, it's not like, there's no bone sticking out, there's no blood, there's no anything." It was just like, the joints are facing the wrong way.
2:04:31 Griffin Newman? This is wrong.
2:04:32 Speaker 04 And it's like, and he looks at it, and I look at it, and we're just like, I was like, "That's, that's very bad." You know, and then we really tried to get him to like, go to the hospital.
2:04:44 Griffin Newman? And then he said, "Brother, it's so much worse than you think."
2:04:48 Speaker 04 Dude.
2:04:48 Griffin Newman? And you're the problem.
2:04:51 Speaker 04 I know. No, he was, he was just like, we, we called an ambulance for him, and he kept telling us not to. And then he insisted on driving himself, and the ambulance people were like, "There's, we can't force him." He said, "He said he's going to a hospital, he told us the address of the hospital, I guess he's gonna go."
2:05:08 Griffin Newman? That's another part of this, is these movies often have these, these kind of rigged prosthetics, right?
2:05:14 Speaker 04 Right, yeah.
2:05:15 Griffin Newman? That you see for an explosive, one second shot.
2:05:18 Speaker 04 As a movie fan, like, watching how those things work.
2:05:21 Griffin Newman? But you even think about like, you see half a second of fucking Emilio Estevez's head getting crushed in the elevator shaft in the first Mission Impossible. And I feel like that is a thing, people our age are like, "That's one of the fucking, that haunted me as a kid, right?" And it's crazy, and if you watch it frame by frame, it is crazy, but it's not that graphic or visceral, and you don't have to sit with the aftermath of it.
2:05:42 Speaker 04 No.
2:05:42 Griffin Newman? And by cutting to these things, either... Him discovering the bodies in these states or seeing the people after Joe has attacked them without seeing them attacked, you're left with the lingering image of what's gonna stay in his head. That's sort of what I think she's communicating so well. Like you're saying, you see a guy's fingers look like that, you're gonna have that image in your head for the rest of your fucking life.
2:06:04 Speaker 04 It's true.
2:06:04 Griffin Newman? And that's not something you did to this guy? And that's not something that was done to one of your ultimate loved ones? And this guy has to experience both of those things happening all the fucking time?
2:06:14 Speaker 04 Yeah, and it's something you saw and you're like, okay, that could happen. That could happen to me.
2:06:18 Griffin Newman? Could.
2:06:18 Speaker 04 I've seen it happen to someone.
2:06:20 Griffin Newman? Yeah.
2:06:21 Speaker 04 And you're just, yeah, you're just walking around with it for a while. Yeah, he has a million of them. The thing with his mom, like, and they have the scene where he like goes to like dispose of the body himself too.
2:06:31 Griffin Newman? Yes.
2:06:32 Speaker 04 In the book, that they don't explicitly say here, but that they, they put a pillow over her head before they shoot her.
2:06:40 Griffin Newman? You see a pillow with a bullet hole in it?
2:06:42 Speaker 04 Right, yeah. And that he, in the book, is like,
2:06:47 Speaker 04 basically is obviously very upset that they killed his mom, but is also like, they're cowards. Like, they couldn't look at what they were doing. They didn't wanna look at it, right.
2:06:55 Griffin Newman? Right, that's almost more offensive to him.
2:06:57 Speaker 04 Yeah.
2:06:58 Griffin Newman? Yeah. And then, right, you have this like, a moment I think only Lynn Ramsey would put in a film, where he like discovers the body, sees the pillow, takes it off, you know, blurry, deep background. You see him removing everything, her glasses that they clearly shot through, putting it on the mantle. You see her like bloody head in the background, but not too explicitly. And then he hears the creaking of footsteps. And he like has the gun, he goes downstairs. It's, did you do this or did the other guy do it? You know, he's immediately like, this would have taken two people.
2:07:30 Speaker 04 Yep.
2:07:31 Griffin Newman? Who's the other guy? Are you working for him? Is he working for you? He's sort of interrogating him. But then the intimacy of him like giving him the water to keep him alive so he can get more answers out of him, also is like, this is a man who was trained to do this.
2:07:44 Speaker 04 And then that guy, yeah, and the guy taking his hand as he's dying.
2:07:48 Griffin Newman? And then they just lie on the floor together and sing the songs on the radio.
2:07:52 Speaker 04 Yeah.
2:07:53 Griffin Newman? And it's like, this is, I, I live with the weight of taking people's lives in a way that you don't, because you wouldn't even look at her fucking face and you left her upstairs.
2:08:02 Speaker 04 Mm-hmm.
2:08:03 Griffin Newman? And I'm gonna lie here with you, because no matter what, I, I'm stuck with the image of you dying forever, for the rest of my fucking life.
2:08:11 Speaker 04 Yeah.
2:08:11 Griffin Newman? You know? And then he has this kind of like elegiac, uh, uh, funeral for his mother.
2:08:17 Speaker 04 Yeah.
2:08:18 Griffin Newman? Like, he puts on a suit, it's the only time he dresses nicely in the entire film, and like, brings her in the woods, into the water. Uh, Johnny Greenwood's score in this movie is fucking unbelievable.
2:08:27 David Sims? I used to listen to it a lot.
2:08:29 Griffin Newman? I listen to it a lot.
2:08:30 David Sims? I would sort of be like, hmm, this isn't the best, like, kind of just sitting at your desk music.
2:08:34 Griffin Newman? But there were the couple, there were the trees tracks.
2:08:37 David Sims? Yeah, yeah, yeah, those are really good.
2:08:38 Griffin Newman? What is it, like, tree synthesizer and tree acoustic and whatever, that are the more kind of like poetic sounding ones.
2:08:45 Speaker 04 Yeah, this beautiful, like, ephemeral sound, like, and then there's also like, that sort of like percussive thing, when he's like, walking down the hallway, like, out of the hotel, that's just like, oh, it's so fucking cool.
2:08:56 Griffin Newman? We should also call out, it's basically like, an hour of the movie is like, understanding this guy, watching him go through this case, retrieve her. He brings her to the hotel before the door gets knocked on, and he sees the guy get shot, and this like SWAT cosplay guy comes in and extracts her. Uh, they see on the news that her father committed suicide. And Joe's immediately like, this whole thing is kind of...
2:09:20 Speaker 04 This is bad. I'm in something bad.
2:09:22 Griffin Newman? I'm in something I don't understand.
2:09:24 Speaker 04 I'm in over my head. I did not just get hired by this guy to recover. He's in the middle of something much bigger than that.
2:09:29 David Sims? Right. I mean, the fact that the cops are involved.
2:09:32 Speaker 04 Yeah, they're not SWAT cosplay, right? They're, they're cops. They're crooked out.
2:09:35 David Sims? They're like cops in the paint of whoever.
2:09:37 Griffin Newman? No, you're right, you're right, you're right, you're right.
2:09:38 Speaker 04 That was like, he, cause in the, in the book, again, like, I, uh, uh, he goes to this thing of like... They didn't have time to hire professionals, like professional hitmen to come and kill him, but there's always some dirty cop in town that they can just like have come do the job.
2:09:53 Griffin Newman? Yeah, it's, by the way, a smart choice that in the book, I feel like the father is made a little more overtly nervous, defensive, on edge, sleazy. And here it's like a guy with a tremendous amount of contrition and concern. But as it unfolds, you're like, oh, a lot of this is guilt. It's not just worry.
2:10:15 Speaker 04 Yes.
2:10:15 Griffin Newman? It's both, right? But he's sort of like trying to console her in this moment as he's realized like, her entire life has just collapsed. I just hit the microphone with a hammer by accident.
2:10:26 Speaker 04 That was fucking scary, man. That really scared me.
2:10:29 Griffin Newman? The microphone needs to know the power structure of this podcast. I just need it to know what's going on.
2:10:32 David Sims? I don't know, let's not do that again.
2:10:34 Speaker 04 Very scary to me.
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2:11:22 Griffin Newman? He's like immediately clocking like there is no normal life for her to return to. And I don't know how to keep her safe. And then within like a minute, she is taken. And then he goes home and his mother is dead.
2:11:32 David Sims? Everything, right. Just a death wave is rolled across everyone he knows.
2:11:36 Griffin Newman? There's this complete collapse of like, I might basically by default be her primary caretaker. And also my entire life has collapsed. And they know everything about me and they know where I am.
2:11:46 David Sims? No offense to his life, but his life was shitty. I mean, it didn't take a lot of work to blow up his life.
2:11:51 Griffin Newman? In any other circumstance, if he had come home and... If he had come home and his mother-
2:11:56 David Sims? I have a Patreon. I can't be Judge and Joe the Assassin.
2:11:59 Griffin Newman? His Patreon numbers are really bad. If you look him up on Graph-
2:12:01 Speaker 04 That was, that was the saddest part to me, yeah, was seeing him go to check his-
2:12:05 David Sims? When he checks, checks his, yeah.
2:12:07 Griffin Newman? Double digits, low double digits.
2:12:09 Speaker 04 Yeah.
2:12:09 Griffin Newman? And the tiers are really vague where you're just like-
2:12:12 David Sims? Too many tiers.
2:12:13 Griffin Newman? Too many tiers and you're sort of like, if I come up with something fun, I might put this here.
2:12:18 Speaker 04 And they're redundant. Like, some of it is like, well, what is the reason for this tier existing? When you get like basically 90% of that and then, and the next tier's now like-
2:12:25 Griffin Newman? You always have that luxury tier that's like, for a hundred dollars, it's all the same things as the $50 tier, but you give me more money, wink, you know, kind of. Yeah.
2:12:35 David Sims? I just love it when there's nine tiers and you get to the ninth tier and it's like, everything in the last eight tiers. And I'm like, I have to go back and-
2:12:43 Griffin Newman? Yeah, right, right.
2:12:44 David Sims? Read every other tier?
2:12:45 Speaker 04 Yeah, give me the bullet points.
2:12:47 Griffin Newman? Come on, give me the bullet points.
2:12:49 Speaker 04 Come on, Joe.
2:12:49 Griffin Newman? You can tighten the language on each tier, but just remind me, speed run them. No, I think if he had come home and his mother had died in her sleep a day earlier, he would have just killed himself, right? But it's the double whammy of-
2:13:04 Speaker 04 There's a person out there that I'm responsible for. I'm the only one who knows this person is in danger. I could go and help. And they, they make that clear. Like, he has a flashback to her. He's like, okay, I guess I'm done. And then he's like, nah, fuck, I have a job still.
2:13:18 Griffin Newman? Here's a guy who's defined by the fact that no one was able to keep him safe, you know, in his childhood.
2:13:23 Speaker 04 Mm-hmm.
2:13:24 Griffin Newman? And he doesn't want that cycle to continue. As much as he's not like, maybe this is a chance to test being a dad. He does fall into this. I'm the only person who can solve this and I actually just feel enough of an attachment to her as a person that I can't just turn a blind eye to this. And then you have, what, in 99 out of 100 other movies, feels like the ramp up to, oh shit, the next 40 minutes, we're gonna get the most cathartic. He takes them all down.
2:13:53 Speaker 04 Yeah.
2:13:53 Griffin Newman? And he goes there and it's over.
2:13:55 Speaker 04 Well, yeah, it's like another kind of security cam thing, right? Like, you just see him take out the, like, guard on the way in, but you just, you kind of are just seeing like the, like, lawn footage of like, "Okay, that guy's down," and then goes in, and then the person who he came to have his big confrontation with that is gonna be so satisfying is already dead.
2:14:12 Griffin Newman? Alessandra Navola, who's like the only other recognizable major name actor in this movie, who you're like, "Oh shit, he's the big bad, we're gonna get some awesome fucking monologue, and then, like, Joaquin's gonna take him down," doesn't have a line in this film.
2:14:27 David Sims? He sure doesn't.
2:14:28 Griffin Newman? Like, doesn't speak. You need a guy who's that much of a that guy to have the sense of power he holds, and to have him stick in your brain, but then he gets there and there's no fucking resolution for him, right? She has just killed him in self-defense.
2:14:42 David Sims? It's all incredible to sort of piece together as your, as a viewer.
2:14:46 Speaker 04 Absolutely. It is, it's really, and it's disorienting in a great way. You're in his head, where it's like, "This guy's dead?" Like...
2:14:54 David Sims? I don't get to do, you know, my revenge, right?
2:14:57 Speaker 04 And then he goes downstairs, and then she's, her hands are all bloody, and she's just like finishing a dinner that was just on the table, like, eating. It's so grim.
2:15:06 Griffin Newman? And he's like taking his shirt off when he gets in there, he's Burt Kreischer mode. He's like, you're ready for, like, him to go like fucking warrior mode on these people.
2:15:14 Speaker 04 Yeah.
2:15:14 Griffin Newman? And then instead, it's just like, he's got this fucking swollen cheek, right? He's kind of just like stumbling around, and when he sees the body, there's the first like,
2:15:24 Griffin Newman? "Why was this taken away from me?" Immediately followed.
2:15:27 Speaker 04 Yeah, he's, he's like, I'm, he's like, cries for himself that he's not gonna get, like, the release, I think.
2:15:33 Griffin Newman? "I can't complete this arc for myself, give myself closure." And I think the additional thing is, he very quickly does the math of, "She did this in self-defense."
2:15:43 Speaker 04 And now she lives with having killed someone.
2:15:45 Griffin Newman? And I hate that.
2:15:45 Speaker 04 And I, I should have been the one to kill someone, so she wouldn't have to.
2:15:49 Griffin Newman? I hate that I couldn't stop her from doing this.
2:15:51 Speaker 04 Yeah.
2:15:51 Griffin Newman? And she's downstairs trying to just like be normal, eat dinner while covered in blood with a switchblade knife next to her, or like a shaving razor.
2:15:58 Speaker 04 Straight razor, yeah.
2:15:59 Griffin Newman? A straight razor, and she's shaking. It's like the first time in the movie where you see her having the physical effects of trauma, rather than just kind of going blank.
2:16:09 Speaker 04 Being numb, yeah.
2:16:10 Griffin Newman? And it is this like moment that ties the two of them together of like, oh, fuck. You know, it's almost like, oh, you got bitten by a vampire too.
2:16:20 Speaker 04 Yeah, no, yeah, yeah, you got, you got the, the same virus that I do.
2:16:24 Griffin Newman? Exactly. We're, we're living with the same thing.
2:16:26 David Sims? And then she says, it's okay, Joe, right?
2:16:29 Griffin Newman? In the diner.
2:16:30 Speaker 04 Oh, it's later in the diner.
2:16:31 David Sims? It's so they go to the diner, because I mean, who doesn't want to go to the diner after all this? Get some pancakes or whatever and he imagines.
2:16:38 Griffin Newman? 40s, 50s pop music playing.
2:16:40 David Sims? He imagined shooting himself, which just like instant Twitter meme.
2:16:44 Griffin Newman? Yeah.
2:16:45 David Sims? Uh, and, uh, but right, like, you know, that's become like this kind of like jokey, like way of people like, you know, the fucking Mets lose and someone just posts Joaquin suiciding in a diner.
2:16:56 Griffin Newman? But also it is like, in this way that Lynn Ramsey can take very literal things from books and express them like into a mood that doesn't turn it into a, a, a plot point or like, uh, an overt statement about the movie. It is like, this is the visualization of the line of thinking of you were never really here. That isn't even said in the film. You know, there's no internal monologue, there's no him whispering that to himself. Where his fantasy is, if I saved her, my mom is dead, can I just fucking shoot myself? And if I shot myself in the middle of this diner, would everyone act like I never even existed?
2:17:34 Speaker 04 Yeah, all the conversations continue at the same volume.
2:17:37 Griffin Newman? Right.
2:17:37 Speaker 04 No one has any reaction to the fact that he just shot himself. He doesn't matter.
2:17:41 Griffin Newman? The first time I saw this, I for a second thought it was real, right? And then you know it's a fantasy when the waitress is still serving and making small talk with blood spatter on her face.
2:17:50 David Sims? No one reacts.
2:17:51 Griffin Newman? That no one fucking reacts and then she comes back to the table and he's just resting his head on the table in the same position as if he had shot himself. And she says, it's okay, Joe, it's okay. And for the first time, you're like, she has grown up. Right? There was obviously like her, her childhood has completely been taken from her. But rather than like existing in a self punishing state, she is reaching out because she understands him for the first time. And even if it is not like an obvious father daughter relationship. They are two people who are maybe going to give each other a reason to like stay alive. Because they share a horrible language that can maybe help each other work through this.
2:18:30 Griffin Newman? And I think the moment of outreach, which is like the first and only time in this movie that you see anyone try to do anything to help him. Emotionally coming from her is, is like so profound and emotionally overwhelming to me.
2:18:44 Speaker 04 Yeah, well, and he's this guy who has, you know. Really wants to stop existing.
2:18:50 Griffin Newman? Yeah.
2:18:50 Speaker 04 But has this, this core inherent singular sense of duty. That he can't put to the side and then her coming to him and being like, wake up Joe, like is like.
2:19:02 David Sims? It's a beautiful day.
2:19:02 Speaker 04 You've got, yeah.
2:19:03 Griffin Newman? It's a beautiful day.
2:19:04 Speaker 04 You still have something.
2:19:06 Griffin Newman? The thing that he feels like he has to live for, or at least that he forces himself to live for, is a guilt and a burden and an obligation. And part of his mother being senile is that when he's trying to take care of her, she yells at him, right? And that everything's a fight, you know, that he can't even get the satisfaction of.
2:19:24 Speaker 04 The appreciation, yeah.
2:19:25 Griffin Newman? Of helping his mother in her old age and having some emotional closure on that. So everything is just like a fucking weight on him. And this is like the first time someone is just saying to him, kind of like, I see you, I know it's tough. It's another day, you know, you just have to.
2:19:41 Speaker 04 It's a beautiful day. That was the title it was released under in some countries.
2:19:44 David Sims? It is called that in some countries. It's true.
2:19:47 Griffin Newman? Yeah.
2:19:47 David Sims? Uh, yeah, sure. Just keep living. I very much support that. I don't support some of the actions in this film though.
2:19:52 Griffin Newman? Which ones?
2:19:53 David Sims? Well, I think he's a little hard on these guys. Maybe like, you know, marketplace of ideas first and foremost.
2:19:58 Griffin Newman? Just discuss, hear them out.
2:19:59 David Sims? Uh, no, it's, uh, it's.
2:20:03 Speaker 04 Well, it's a huge bummer of a movie. It is? I recommend the best.
2:20:07 David Sims? But like, okay, it is a huge bummer. It's about things that are incredibly sensitive and tough. So like, if anyone ever said to me like, I just don't want to watch that, I would be like,
2:20:15 Griffin Newman? I've never put that down.
2:20:16 David Sims? Yeah, for sure. Don't do it. At the same time, I find, and it's also light on plot, basically has very little dialogue and is a little inscrutable for a while. Like, it's not like a movie where you're like, oh, I totally get what's happening. I still think it's basically just like, kind of super watchable.
2:20:32 Griffin Newman? Yeah.
2:20:32 Speaker 04 Well, it is.
2:20:33 David Sims? I know that's crazy.
2:20:34 Griffin Newman? Yes, no, it is.
2:20:34 Speaker 04 It is a very pulpy, sort of like, classic story, but then because it is inscrutable, because it's, you know, intentionally disorienting in spots and you're piecing it together, it does feel like an elevated version of that kind of thing, and I love that kind of thing.
2:20:49 David Sims? There's no way, like, I'm not like, I mean, it made like nine or 10 million dollars worldwide. I think it made a little bit of money.
2:20:55 Griffin Newman? Yeah.
2:20:56 David Sims? It's not a movie where I'm like, I can't believe that wasn't discovered on a big scale. It's like, no, that's a, that's a 10 percenter.
2:21:02 Griffin Newman? It got a bunch of indie spirit nominations. It got British independent film nominations. Uh, it won screenplay and actor at Cannes, uh, even though it was then dramatically recut after that.
2:21:12 David Sims? But that's her, she always does that.
2:21:14 Griffin Newman? Yeah.
2:21:14 David Sims? Like, her movies debut at Cannes and then she's like, they ain't done, by the way.
2:21:18 Griffin Newman? Yeah, but it, but it got a rapturous response.
2:21:20 David Sims? Cannes is pretty friendly to her and he won best actor there, it's true, like, and he's, yeah, I mean, and I do think it's a major movie in his oeuvre, even if it's not much discussed now. Like, yeah, for sure.
2:21:32 Griffin Newman? In a weird way, it's, it's the totality of the 2018 and the range of it then like makes Joker, which is such an obvious dumb showpiece, have everyone go like, yeah, I guess it's time to just give him the fucking Oscar.
2:21:44 David Sims? He has Cannes and Venice, he doesn't have Berlin. I'm always interested to know, I need to like do a project on this sometime.
2:21:50 Griffin Newman? Who has the triple crown?
2:21:51 David Sims? Of like people who have gotten best, because you can do it with like who's won the, the top prize.
2:21:56 Griffin Newman? Venice gave him best actor for Joker?
2:21:57 David Sims? No, for The Master.
2:21:58 Griffin Newman? Oh.
2:21:59 David Sims? With Philip Seymour Hoffman.
2:22:00 Griffin Newman? Much better, they shared it, okay.
2:22:01 David Sims? Yeah, they gave Joker the Golden Lion, which was interesting, because it's a dogshit movie.
2:22:04 Griffin Newman? Yeah, it's quite bad.
2:22:05 David Sims? Um, but, uh... Like, uh, yeah, it's just like, you know, those kinds of rare actors who do a lot of movies that would get to festivals and then get, you know, it's just a rare thing.
2:22:14 Griffin Newman? Here's my other thing I want to say about this movie is that like, the thing I find gross about
2:22:19 Speaker 04 Here we go.
2:22:20 Griffin Newman? The politicizing and the narrow downwizing
2:22:21 Speaker 04 Here we goes.
2:22:22 Griffin Newman? Of the ideas
2:22:22 Speaker 04 Okay, go off, Griffin.
2:22:24 Griffin Newman? Of these types of things is that very often it is based in this like, I want to see like vengeance executed. I want to see all these guys taken down. I want someone to fucking call them out. And there's so little fucking discussion of the people who like suffer inside of these systems. And we're seeing it happen like right now. We're recording this months before it comes out, but I guarantee you whenever this episode comes out, the same fucking shit will be going on. And this is a movie that like makes you think of the people, right? In a real way that like
2:22:52 Speaker 04 It's the characters inside it, the characters who are suffering.
2:22:57 Griffin Newman? Is not fascistically obsessed with the powerful men doing the terrible thing, which I always think that
2:23:01 Speaker 04 No, you barely get to know them at all.
2:23:03 Griffin Newman? There is this like perverse kind of like morbid fascination with like, how can anyone be capable of something that evil? But spending more time thinking about them than the people who are on the receiving end of their actions is like part of a fucking giant cultural problem. And I also think you saying, David, like, I understand if I were to say to someone like, you should watch this, they go like, eh, I don't want to see movies about stuff like that. I couldn't push back on them. But you're also like, anyone who would say that has probably seen 20 generic action movies that are about this in a glib way, you know?
2:23:35 Speaker 04 Yeah, I mean, yeah, it's, it's very, it's very similar to Taken.
2:23:39 Griffin Newman? It's super similar to Taken.
2:23:40 David Sims? It really is.
2:23:41 Speaker 04 Extremely.
2:23:42 David Sims? It's just a completely different mold of it, but it is like, yes, a shadowy ring kidnaps a, you know, a dog, you know, yeah.
2:23:50 Griffin Newman? But it's, it's removing the distracting pleasures that give you an easy way to process these types of things. While also making you think about the harder things, not in a sort of torturous graphic way. And I think to that extent, it is kind of a movie about our relationships to these kinds of stories. And which parts of them we want to think about, which parts we don't. And that like makes it feel, remain very sticky to me.
2:24:18 Griffin Newman? Uh, even though I, I do feel like it has disappeared a little.
2:24:22 David Sims? A little bit. Ben, had you seen this movie? You'd seen this.
2:24:25 Speaker 05 Yeah, no, I went to see it in theaters because Griffin.
2:24:27 Griffin Newman? This was my favorite movie that.
2:24:28 David Sims? And I feel like the two of us were just like, I think you'll like it. This guy's a little shabby. This, this hobo guy.
2:24:34 Speaker 05 But I hadn't revisited it since.
2:24:36 Griffin Newman? No.
2:24:36 Speaker 05 It's, it really affected me. It's a weird way to kind of kick a day off.
2:24:40 Griffin Newman? It is, sure.
2:24:41 David Sims? And we haven't been doing much podcasting in the last two or three days, so it's like.
2:24:45 Griffin Newman? We've been in a real crunch. Look, Lynn Ramsey, one of my favorite filmmakers, people saying, is she worthy of having this series? There are other people hooting and hollering on the Reddit saying like, ready for five weeks of the bleakest shit in the world.
2:24:57 Speaker 04 Yeah, yeah, yeah. I've only seen Rat Catcher as like one of our other movies. Also.
2:25:01 David Sims? I think you're gonna dig.
2:25:02 Speaker 04 Pretty unpleasant, but.
2:25:04 David Sims? Yeah. I think you're gonna, I think you would dig some of the other ones. Yeah, for sure.
2:25:08 Griffin Newman? I think all of your movies are like this where they're not punishing and they're not chores to watch. I understand that like you might have triggers that make you just incapable of getting any enjoyment of watching a movie out of this. And I would never argue that with people. But like, I tend to exist at these extreme poles of my favorite movies. Either tend to be like incredibly functional, poppy, plotty storytelling entertainment.
2:25:34 Speaker 04 Yeah.
2:25:34 Griffin Newman? Or like vaguely plotless mood pieces about the worst things in fucking humanity. Uh, and I think I'm really like, my obsession with fucking baby movies is like, comes out of what I find fascinating about the mechanics of being able to convey in the ones that are good to me, a larger emotional idea that can speak to an inner life of a child in a way that is like so clearly communicated and clean and economic. And on the other side of that, it's like, can you tackle an idea that is so big? It's almost abstract and unspeakable.
2:26:13 Griffin Newman? And get that across without those kind of storytelling tools, you know? And construct your story in a different way. Those are like my two favorite types of movies. And there are other filmmakers that we've talked about who I feel like do this kind of thing. Like Robert Bresson, who's like one of my favorite directors ever. And years ago, I pushed on David the idea of doing it. And David just correctly responded with like, I want you to imagine doing 15 episodes.
2:26:37 David Sims? I love.
2:26:37 Griffin Newman? Robert Bresson.
2:26:38 David Sims? I love Bresson so much.
2:26:39 Griffin Newman? He's the goat.
2:26:40 David Sims? I would say the other problem with doing Bresson is it's like, that is a man who is so completely devoted to his like, you know, way of telling stories and making movies.
2:26:49 Griffin Newman? Yeah.
2:26:50 David Sims? There isn't much variance.
2:26:51 Griffin Newman? No, agree.
2:26:52 David Sims? If you're going through beyond the stories he's telling, but like, and what did he do with this? It was like, oh, he did the same shit he always does. You know, like, which is why he was good, like.
2:26:59 Griffin Newman? But like, to me, this is the perfect moment to cover Lynn Ramsey. Five is the exact right amount, you know? There's like enough of a body of work there across almost 30 years that is meaningful. And if it was six episodes in a row, it would maybe break us. I'm excited to be able to like follow up with her when she makes other films. Yeah, check back in the same way we're gonna do with the JGL. Yeah.
2:27:22 David Sims? And we are gonna do that.
2:27:24 Griffin Newman? They're equally important.
2:27:24 David Sims? And I hope Hayes knows that.
2:27:26 Griffin Newman? Yeah, I gotta tell him. Hayes, you gotta. We gotta book more flights. You gotta issue the bad news. It's like, it's like we're like process servers informing him.
2:27:37 David Sims? Just like post dating something where it's like 2027, like, you know, you're gonna be flying to New York.
2:27:44 Griffin Newman? It's the whispering in George W. Bush meme, ear meme.
2:27:49 David Sims? Right.
2:27:49 Griffin Newman? But it's a, sir, we have just received notice that a second Joseph Gordon Levitt film has gone into production.
2:27:55 David Sims? Um, so this film was at the Cannes Film Festival, as you mentioned, and it was the last film shown in competition, which pissed Ramsey off a lot. Although I think that's partly because the movie wasn't done and they were probably punishing her a little bit. But then it won two awards to her total surprise.
2:28:11 Griffin Newman? But often that's a little bit of a dumping spot because maybe the pics have already kind of calcified.
2:28:15 David Sims? This can is so political with this stuff. That's the weird can year. Uh, Pedro Almavar is the jury, the head of the jury. Will Smith was famously on the jury. And the somewhat scurrilous rumor was always that a lot of people, including Pedro, wanted BPM, the French movie about like gay politics in the eighties in France to win. And Will Smith resisted that. That may be completely made up. I have no idea. And I should take Pedro Aldermotovar's name out of my mouth so Will doesn't slap me.
2:28:46 Griffin Newman? That's true.
2:28:46 David Sims? They instead gave it to Ruben Oslens The Square, which is not a bad movie, but it was kind of like, eh, you know, felt compromising.
2:28:53 Griffin Newman? And then feels more absurd when they gave it to him again for making a very similar movie.
2:28:57 David Sims? I prefer this to that movie, certainly.
2:29:00 Griffin Newman? I do.
2:29:01 David Sims? I prefer this movie, I think, to pretty much anything in competition that year, but there's some good movies like Good Time, the Safdie movie is there. You know, The Beguiled, it's okay movie.
2:29:12 Griffin Newman? She won director?
2:29:13 David Sims? Killing of a Sacred Deer is there.
2:29:16 Griffin Newman? Is that right that Sofia won director for that?
2:29:18 David Sims? Let's find out. Official awards. Uh, yes, she won Best Director. BPM won the Grand Prix, which is second prize. This one, uh, Screenplay tied with Sacred Deer and Phoenix won Actor. And then, yeah, it came out and it made a couple million bucks, you know, in America. We're gonna do the box office game.
2:29:34 Griffin Newman? An Amazon release in April?
2:29:36 David Sims? April 6th, 2018. And that's, uh, on limited screens, obviously, but it opened kind of big. You know, 44,000 per screen average, very good.
2:29:47 Griffin Newman? Joaquin showing up for those Q and A's.
2:29:49 David Sims? Joaquin has the juice, you know, had the juice. Number one at the box office, though, is a, um, a franchise starter. It's a new movie. It's a huge hit.
2:30:00 Griffin Newman? It's not perfect, is it?
2:30:02 David Sims? No, it's a film, a franchise starter. So the start of the franchise.
2:30:05 Griffin Newman? I know, I was.
2:30:06 David Sims? It's perfect, it didn't start in 2018.
2:30:07 Griffin Newman? What is it, 2012?
2:30:09 David Sims? I don't know.
2:30:09 Griffin Newman? Okay, I'm sorry.
2:30:11 Speaker 04 Yeah, it is closer to either, I think, 2013, actually.
2:30:15 David Sims? That's perfect, kind of an Obama era movie. And this is more of a.
2:30:18 Speaker 04 I was on Workaholics at the time. And I remember Adam coming back from filming it, I think, in between seasons three and four of that show.
2:30:25 Griffin Newman? He had that bumper bump.
2:30:27 Speaker 04 Got the bumper bump, baby.
2:30:28 Griffin Newman? Yeah, that pep in his stuff.
2:30:29 Speaker 04 Bumper in Berlin.
2:30:31 David Sims? No, this is a film that I feel like that it hit big was not surprising because it had like a really robust, good advertising campaign, had a really hooky premise, but it did come out of nowhere a little bit.
2:30:42 Griffin Newman? It's not Kingsman. It's not the first Equalizer. It's a horror movie.
2:30:46 David Sims? But like epic horror, like big scale horror.
2:30:49 Griffin Newman? Epic horror, big scale, April. Is it based on anything?
2:30:54 David Sims? Well, I'll tell you this, it's not. I'll tell you this, that the, um, the, the, the word that it had opened to 50 million dollars in its first weekend was probably some good news for the director of this film.
2:31:05 Griffin Newman? Oh my gosh, it's A Quiet Place. There we go. That was an incredible clue.
2:31:10 David Sims? Thank you. Where is some good news, by the way? Is that, where were you?
2:31:14 Griffin Newman? Active development.
2:31:15 David Sims? CBS paid what 80 billion dollars in gold cougar hands for that thing?
2:31:19 Speaker 04 Hollywood Handbook recently did an episode about how we purchased the rights to it.
2:31:22 David Sims? Okay, good. Okay, some good news.
2:31:24 Griffin Newman? Uh, the problem was they greenlit it and then good news stopped happening. There was no material for the show.
2:31:29 David Sims? The well ran dry.
2:31:31 Griffin Newman? I'm just picturing, uh, John Krasinski sitting in front of a blackboard saying, news is all bad. How do we find good news?
2:31:39 David Sims? What do you guys think of A Quiet Place? It was one of those things where I saw the trailer and I was like, John Krasinski directed a no talking horror movie? And then you watch the trailer and you're like, it looks pretty good.
2:31:49 Griffin Newman? I'm somewhat loathe to give it to the guy, but I do think you kinda gotta give it to the guy on that movie.
2:31:53 Speaker 04 I thought it was pretty good. Yeah, I saw it in the theater.
2:31:55 David Sims? I had a great time seeing it in theater. Everyone was quiet. It was quiet.
2:31:59 Speaker 04 I saw it with, uh, Ben Rogers and he'll always have, he'll always have a funny reason that he hates something when you walk out and he was like, why is everybody, it's like, it's basically post-apocalyptic. They all look like they stepped out of a fucking J. Crew catalog. The fucking clothes are so nice. It's like, oh, I never for a second did it enter my mind, but I was just like, yeah, you're right.
2:32:24 Griffin Newman? There's, there's a little bit of man of the woods in the styling of that movie. Uh, but I, I think it's, it's, it's an effective film.
2:32:31 Speaker 04 I thought it was pretty good, yeah.
2:32:33 David Sims? Number two at the box office.
2:32:33 Griffin Newman? Has to be Rampage?
2:32:35 David Sims? Is not Rampage, and I'm not sure, that must've come out a little later. It's a film we covered on the podcast, though, a new release from one of the more famous directors, whoever lived. A solid hit, big genre movie. It's made about a hundred million dollars in two weeks.
2:32:50 Griffin Newman? It's Ready Player One.
2:32:51 David Sims? It's Steven Spielberg's Ready Player One.
2:32:53 Griffin Newman? I was gonna say, next week Rampage comes out.
2:32:56 David Sims? And kind of.
2:32:57 Griffin Newman? Dwayne has a bit of a meltdown about being beaten by the second weekend of Quiet Place. And was like, ha ha, gotta give it to my friends. Love Cras' dog and the Bluntmeister, or whatever.
2:33:10 Griffin Newman? And then like posted seven things about like, I made this movie because the conversation between an animal and a man is the most important thing that could happen. I remember my dad pointing to a gorilla in a cage.
2:33:20 David Sims? Number three at the box office
2:33:24 David Sims? is a new film as well that is a comedy. And I remember at the time, thinking this number was underwhelming. Now I look at it and I'm like, this is sensational. It's opening to 20 million dollars. That's awesome. No, no, not Tag. I would've told you it was based on a true story if it was Tag. I would've told you it's based on a true game.
2:33:43 Griffin Newman? You would've given me a Britney marathon.
2:33:45 David Sims? No, that's a great movie.
2:33:46 Griffin Newman? Right. Okay, but yes, this is this thing.
2:33:48 David Sims? But I remember, I think, I saw this at a screening and I was like, oh, that was so much fun. Like, that's gonna be a big hit. And then it was like, in my memory, kind of just an okay hit, but.
2:33:57 Speaker 04 The interesting thing about Tag, actually, is just to take a quick detour.
2:34:02 Griffin Newman? Please.
2:34:02 Speaker 04 People genuinely believe that we stop playing because we grow old. When in fact, and Tag proved this.
2:34:10 Griffin Newman? Yeah.
2:34:11 Speaker 04 We grow old because we stop playing.
2:34:12 Griffin Newman? Yes, and that's actually why the audience needed to know it was a true story. Because if they thought it was just from the pen of some Hollywood fabulous, they'd go, these are the lies they sell us to, you know, comfort our soul, but come on, let's get real. And you need to know, like, no, no, no, these guys walk the talk and they tag the tag.
2:34:31 David Sims? It's my, it's my favorite, it's my favorite comedy.
2:34:38 Speaker 04 Where a major set piece is a pregnant woman faking a miscarriage so her husband will win a game of tag.
2:34:44 David Sims? Wow, I have seen tag. I went there. I played the game. Did not remember that. I remember something with cancer.
2:34:51 Griffin Newman? Ed Helms dies, but yet the game doesn't end.
2:34:54 Speaker 04 He's actually sick.
2:34:56 David Sims? Because that's why he's like, guys, we gotta play tag one more time.
2:34:59 Griffin Newman? But that's like a twist that you find out at the end, oh, his urgency.
2:35:02 David Sims? It is the most telegraph twist of all time, I will say. I do not think I was bowled over by it.
2:35:07 Griffin Newman? I feel like it's like two hours and 20 minutes long and the last 40 minutes are drama.
2:35:11 David Sims? I think I felt that it was that long. It's listed as an hour 40. I remember it being Satan Tango like in pacing.
2:35:17 Griffin Newman? It definitely felt like it. Durational. I remember.
2:35:19 Speaker 04 I feel like they were all real friends.
2:35:20 Griffin Newman? Absolutely. Well, you can tell these are guys who are the same age.
2:35:24 David Sims? Oh, yeah.
2:35:25 Griffin Newman? Have the same vibe.
2:35:26 Speaker 04 Hannibal, Jon Hamm.
2:35:27 David Sims? When Jeremy Renner's in a film.
2:35:28 Speaker 04 My friend Jake Gyllenhaal, who's wonderful, great guy, good actor, and by the way, did a good job in tag.
2:35:34 David Sims? Yeah.
2:35:35 Griffin Newman? Yeah.
2:35:36 Speaker 04 Which is my favorite comedy I've ever seen.
2:35:39 David Sims? But.
2:35:40 Speaker 04 Where one of the biggest pivotal moments is a woman's husband is gonna get tagged and so she pretends to have lost the pregnancy.
2:35:50 David Sims? Who's the woman? Can you tell me? I do not remember.
2:35:52 Griffin Newman? All of their wives in that movie are overqualified. Like, I want to say Rashida Jones is in it, Leslie Bibb, Annabelle Wallace is the journalist who's covering them as a story.
2:36:03 David Sims? Now, you guys are what, playing tag?
2:36:05 Griffin Newman? Isla Fisher. Isla Fisher is one of them?
2:36:08 David Sims? Yeah, she's in there. She's on the coast.
2:36:10 Griffin Newman? I can't remember who the pregnant one is, though.
2:36:11 David Sims? Leslie Bibb's there. I don't know.
2:36:13 Speaker 04 Yeah.
2:36:14 Griffin Newman? Uh, I've told this anecdote before, but my ex-girlfriend and I were on a plane and we were like, let's like find a movie we can both watch together. Oh, we should watch tag. We like comedy movies.
2:36:24 Speaker 04 Fun.
2:36:25 Griffin Newman? And we put on tag and we're watching tag on our like parallel back of seat screens. And then like 35 minutes in, we both took the headphones off and turned to each other and we're like, I don't know if there's been a single joke in this movie so far. It's acting like a comedy.
2:36:39 David Sims? They have to stop the game!
2:36:40 Griffin Newman? But I kind of can't identify anything that would be classified as a joke.
2:36:44 David Sims? Love you, Jake Johnson. Come on the pod anytime.
2:36:45 Speaker 04 I think it is Leslie Bibb that does it.
2:36:47 Griffin Newman? It sounds right.
2:36:48 Speaker 04 Yeah.
2:36:49 David Sims? Um, number three, the box office. You guys have not guessed the 2018 comedy I'm talking about. Tag is a 2018 comedy.
2:36:56 Griffin Newman? Oh, oh, oh, oh, it's not Neighbors 2.
2:37:00 David Sims? No.
2:37:01 Griffin Newman? But you thought it was pretty good.
2:37:02 David Sims? I thought it was fun.
2:37:03 Griffin Newman? And you were a little surprised it didn't perform better.
2:37:05 David Sims? But then, but then I have the memory of not performing well, but I'm like, I don't know, 20 million opening, 60 million domestic, it's not bad.
2:37:11 Griffin Newman? Right, like by 2015, the narrative is the comedy movie has died and all these movies-
2:37:15 David Sims? They're not doing like hangover numbers, right?
2:37:17 Griffin Newman? We're opening to 20 and making 60, and now you were like, all the goodwill in the world got naked guned to like a 17 opening weekend.
2:37:24 David Sims? Right, right.
2:37:24 Griffin Newman? Um, okay, wait a second.
2:37:25 David Sims? Uh, it's a sex comedy.
2:37:27 Griffin Newman? It's a sex comedy.
2:37:28 David Sims? Starts a bunch of guys that we all like.
2:37:30 Griffin Newman? It starts a bunch of guys.
2:37:30 David Sims? Yeah, sure, guys and gals.
2:37:32 Griffin Newman? It's not, it's not that awkward moment.
2:37:34 David Sims? No, it's, it's, it's good.
2:37:36 Griffin Newman? It's good.
2:37:37 David Sims? I didn't come out of that awkward moment telling you, it's pretty good.
2:37:40 Griffin Newman? It stars a bunch of gals and girls that we like. Who's the distributor?
2:37:43 David Sims? Uh, Universal.
2:37:45 Griffin Newman? The fine folks at Universal.
2:37:46 David Sims? It premiered at South by, so it's got that classic sort of, South by March premiere into an April release, you know, built up some hype.
2:37:54 Griffin Newman? And people thought it was gonna hit.
2:37:55 David Sims? Um, yeah, you fully see Gary Cole's penis, does that help?
2:37:59 Griffin Newman? Oh, fuck, yes, what is this movie? I remember the penis.
2:38:02 David Sims? I figured that would get you.
2:38:03 Griffin Newman? And now I'm trying to zoom out for the context. You fully see Gary Cole's penis. It's a universal picture. It's a sex comedy with a bunch of gals and girls that we like. If you name the director, will it give it away for me?
2:38:16 David Sims? Kate Cannon.
2:38:17 Griffin Newman? Oh, yeah, it's Blockers.
2:38:19 David Sims? There you go. Not a bad movie.
2:38:21 Griffin Newman? Not a bad movie.
2:38:22 David Sims? Totally fun.
2:38:22 Griffin Newman? But yeah, you're right. John Cena is trying, yeah, he's trying to block him.
2:38:27 David Sims? Oh yeah, he's, John Cena's gotta do some blocking.
2:38:29 Griffin Newman? There were years of-
2:38:30 David Sims? He's good.
2:38:30 Griffin Newman? R-rated comedy.
2:38:31 David Sims? Yeah.
2:38:32 Griffin Newman? Plays at South by, blows the roof off, word of mouth translates into 40 million opening weekend, 100 million dollars, and that was the first one that was like-
2:38:39 David Sims? It did okay.
2:38:40 Griffin Newman? Okay.
2:38:41 David Sims? And then like Good Boys, I think was the next year.
2:38:43 Griffin Newman? That one did stupidly well.
2:38:44 David Sims? That one did pretty well.
2:38:45 Griffin Newman? Because children had never cursed before.
2:38:48 David Sims? That's true. Number four at the box office is one of the most successful films, I mean, I guess, ever made.
2:38:53 Griffin Newman? Really?
2:38:54 David Sims? Kind of.
2:38:55 Griffin Newman? Uh, it's not Avengers Infinity War.
2:38:57 David Sims? No, but it is a superhero film. I guess it's a, you know, it's maybe not quite at the top top tier.
2:39:01 Griffin Newman? Captain Marvel?
2:39:02 David Sims? No.
2:39:02 Griffin Newman? Okay, that did make a billion dollars.
2:39:04 David Sims? It did, and this made 1.3 billion dollars, which is a lot of money.
2:39:07 Griffin Newman? It's a superhero film.
2:39:08 David Sims? It is. It's very good.
2:39:10 Griffin Newman? You think it's very good?
2:39:11 David Sims? Arguably the best movie Marvel ever made.
2:39:14 Griffin Newman? It's-
2:39:14 David Sims? Or Ragnarok? No.
2:39:16 Griffin Newman? It's arguably the best movie Marvel ever-
2:39:18 David Sims? I might not argue that, but some would.
2:39:20 Griffin Newman? Some would.
2:39:21 David Sims? But I really like this movie, it's really good.
2:39:23 Griffin Newman? And it's not Avengers?
2:39:24 David Sims? No.
2:39:26 Griffin Newman? It's not, it's not a Thor, it's not a Guardians.
2:39:30 David Sims? No.
2:39:31 Griffin Newman? Uh, it's not Spider-Man.
2:39:33 Speaker 04 Black Panther.
2:39:33 David Sims? There you go.
2:39:34 Griffin Newman? Oh, sure. Oh, it's still in there. Jesus.
2:39:36 David Sims? There you go.
2:39:37 Griffin Newman? That's why I wasn't fucking thinking of it, because that's a February release.
2:39:40 David Sims? Been out for two months. It's made, you know, six hundred and seventy million dollars.
2:39:43 Griffin Newman? Yeah, quite a big hit.
2:39:44 David Sims? Um, number five. Now, what is this? This must be a Tyler Perry or something like it.
2:39:50 Griffin Newman? Faith-based?
2:39:51 David Sims? It's a Tyler Perry film, but not faith-based.
2:39:54 Griffin Newman? Okay.
2:39:54 David Sims? Uh, one of his more, you know, dark dramas.
2:39:58 Griffin Newman? Huh. It's not, uh...
2:40:01 David Sims? Kind of a sexy thriller, you know, like an erotic drama. I don't know.
2:40:04 Griffin Newman? No, No Good Deed isn't Tyler Perry, right? I just have that title match.
2:40:07 David Sims? I'm not sure, but this is not that.
2:40:09 Griffin Newman? Okay. Tyler Perry, the non-Irish Ed Burns.
2:40:13 David Sims? That's not Tyler Perry. But you know what? This movie shares a star with No Good Deed.
2:40:18 Griffin Newman? So it's a Taraji?
2:40:19 David Sims? Taraji P. Henson.
2:40:20 Griffin Newman? It's a Taraji, and it's not I Can Do Bad All By Myself. It's him going a little more thriller-y.
2:40:27 David Sims? Yep. Uh, I think it's, uh, the wife, she's a wife and she's, uh, stalking and killing her ex-husband because like...
2:40:34 Griffin Newman? Oh, fuck, yes.
2:40:35 David Sims? They get divorced and then he gets successful after, and she'd like supported him the whole time, so she's gonna kill him.
2:40:41 Griffin Newman? Is it like a one-word title with a colon and then a...
2:40:44 David Sims? It is just a one-word title.
2:40:46 Griffin Newman? It's, eh, because it's not Temptation: Confessions of a Marriage Counselor.
2:40:50 David Sims? It is not. No, no marriage counsel confessions have.
2:40:54 Griffin Newman? Yeah, it's a one-word title. It's not like Betrayal, is it?
2:40:57 David Sims? No, but you're closer.
2:40:58 Griffin Newman? I'm close.
2:40:59 Speaker 04 Is it like a divorce word? Like...
2:41:01 David Sims? Kind of, yeah. It's kind of a legal word.
2:41:03 Griffin Newman? Is it acrimony?
2:41:04 David Sims? Acrimony.
2:41:05 Griffin Newman? There we go. Okay.
2:41:06 Speaker 04 It's like, I was like, I wanna say alimony, but there's no way it's that.
2:41:09 David Sims? It's just one of those things where they're like, plop Taraji in a chair, she looks mad. It's called acrimony. People are like, yeah, fifty million dollars to this one.
2:41:18 Griffin Newman? When we talk about just like, uh, the box office still hasn't gotten back to where it was before the pandemic, part of that is Tyler Perry doesn't fucking put shit in theaters. He used to have three movies a year that would basically automatically open at fifteen or twenty and make sixty.
2:41:31 David Sims? Yep.
2:41:32 Griffin Newman? Would just do a quick blockers.
2:41:33 David Sims? Um, so number, uh, number six is a Christian movie called I Can Only Imagine.
2:41:39 Griffin Newman? Uh-huh.
2:41:39 David Sims? Based on the song by the group Mercy Me.
2:41:43 Griffin Newman? Of course.
2:41:44 David Sims? Uh, Dennis Quaid's in that one. I'm sure that movie's mega normal. Number seven is the kind of underrated, not bad, uh, political drama, Chappaquiddick. About how Ted Kennedy is a no good Nick.
2:41:56 Griffin Newman? It's not bad, but it's not very good either.
2:41:57 David Sims? It's okay.
2:41:58 Griffin Newman? Isn't that one also where like Byron Allen bought it for a ton of fucking money out of Tiff?
2:42:02 David Sims? I believe it was an Entertainment One release, yes.
2:42:06 Griffin Newman? And thought it was gonna be a big Oscar player.
2:42:08 David Sims? He brought, I mean, cause it's sort of got that sheen to it.
2:42:11 Speaker 04 He would have been, he should have spent that money on some leashes for some of these comics.
2:42:16 Griffin Newman? These comics.
2:42:17 Speaker 04 You know what I mean?
2:42:18 David Sims? Cause they're running out all over the place if they're on leash.
2:42:20 Speaker 04 They're going crazy on that show.
2:42:22 Griffin Newman? It's crazy that David the Dog's never been on this show, cause you know, we like to say sometimes that Sims is off the leash, bow wow wow.
2:42:27 Speaker 04 Okay, that's, yeah, loan that to Byron, because sometimes when I see this, I go, guys. We gotta get this under control.
2:42:36 Griffin Newman? Can I say, I do sometimes feel like Byron is asking for it though.
2:42:39 Speaker 04 A hundred percent Griffith, a hundred.
2:42:42 Griffin Newman? I'm like Byron, you were walking straight into this. If you don't want to know, then don't ask, hey, what do you think about airline food?
2:42:50 Speaker 04 Yeah.
2:42:50 Griffin Newman? You know?
2:42:51 Speaker 04 You've been, so you've been talking a lot about hockey and basketball?
2:42:56 Griffin Newman? Byron, you have taken the leash off with your words in that moment.
2:43:00 Speaker 04 Yeah, you might as well be unhitching the little thingy of the leash.
2:43:04 David Sims? The little thingy?
2:43:05 Griffin Newman? You might as well be unhitching the little thingy.
2:43:07 Speaker 04 I mean, with that question.
2:43:09 Griffin Newman? Yeah, yeah, you're asking for it.
2:43:11 David Sims? Ree Chapacquiddic, Jason Clarke plays Ted Kennedy.
2:43:13 Griffin Newman? Correct.
2:43:14 David Sims? Ted Kennedy, a famous cucker of people. He was always having affairs and such.
2:43:17 Griffin Newman? This is actually interesting.
2:43:18 David Sims? Is that why the film doesn't work?
2:43:19 Griffin Newman? Yeah, the public, they couldn't put their finger on it at the time, but it felt wrong.
2:43:23 David Sims? Clarke plays a Kennedy? He needs to be getting cheated on.
2:43:26 Griffin Newman? What are you trying to prove? And I'm not buying it.
2:43:28 David Sims? Number eight of the box office is Sherlock Gnomes.
2:43:32 Griffin Newman? Of course, the sequel to Gnomeo and Julia.
2:43:33 David Sims? Right, there you go. Number nine is Pacific Rim Uprising, which is a true, like, straight to memory hole sequel.
2:43:42 Griffin Newman? Yeah.
2:43:42 David Sims? Uh, number 10 is Isle of Dogs, Wes Anderson's Isle of Dogs, uh, which has expanded this week and is doing okay.
2:43:50 Griffin Newman? Mm-hmm.
2:43:50 David Sims? Yeah, that's the box office.
2:43:52 Griffin Newman? That's the box office.
2:43:52 David Sims? It's an April box office.
2:43:53 Griffin Newman? Yeah.
2:43:54 David Sims? Um, and this is a good movie and the Clem Dog was here with us today.
2:43:59 Griffin Newman? The best.
2:43:59 David Sims? Clem Dog. We talked about, you were never really here and it was awesome.
2:44:02 Griffin Newman? Best in the business. We should put a leash on you.
2:44:04 David Sims? Can't believe this worked out.
2:44:06 Griffin Newman? I know.
2:44:07 David Sims? Cause you were gonna come on no matter what. Like, but you're a busy guy. You're in LA. You have kids. Like, you don't travel to New York that much. And when you do, you're kinda like, hey, in New York for an evening. I assume that's not gonna work.
2:44:18 Speaker 04 I am here for like thirty-six hours every time I come. And that is the case again today.
2:44:22 Griffin Newman? You get called in as like a wet works comedy writer in like a crisis situation to rewrite a thing for like six hours.
2:44:29 Speaker 04 Mm-hmm.
2:44:29 Griffin Newman? And we've, we've had you on the schedule for a couple of things for the last eighteen months and we kept holding off being like, it'd be great to get it.
2:44:35 David Sims? Great.
2:44:35 Speaker 04 Well, I kept, yeah, I kept, I, it was, there was like twice that I had to come here, but then when I came, it was like, again, like this, where it was, I'm here for a day and a half. With which.
2:44:45 Griffin Newman? Loser was one that.
2:44:46 David Sims? Oh, yeah.
2:44:47 Griffin Newman? And there was another one. I feel like a couple of times you've been like.
2:44:50 Speaker 04 And, uh, the man who wasn't there, I think.
2:44:53 Griffin Newman? That would have actually been beneficial for us, but we can, uh, talk about that later.
2:44:57 Speaker 04 I did, uh.
2:44:58 Griffin Newman? Yes. But I also feel like we would show you the schedule and you'd be like, these five, I have an in on this. I have a funny story or experience with this. The second we committed to Ramsey, we were like, iron lock, no matter what you're doing this.
2:45:11 David Sims? Still love that movie.
2:45:12 Griffin Newman? Yeah.
2:45:12 Speaker 04 Yeah. It's, it's a great movie.
2:45:15 David Sims? It's just really funny. Like, yeah, a fucking Hammer pedo movie. That's you, buddy. Written in ink.
2:45:21 Speaker 04 That's me, man. If it's, whether it's a hundred twenty-seven hours, Don John, or the, or the Hammer.
2:45:28 Griffin Newman? The big three.
2:45:28 Speaker 04 Pedophile vengeance movie, you know that the Clem Dog is ready to rock.
2:45:32 Griffin Newman? It's your in-ego, super ego.
2:45:34 David Sims? Let's get you a really regular actor next time. I mean, those are all different kinds of sort of like oddball actors, but like.
2:45:40 Griffin Newman? That is a good point.
2:45:41 David Sims? It'd be funny if next time you were just like, let me just do like a George Clooney movie or something. Well, The American, your favorite.
2:45:46 Speaker 04 Yeah, I love The American.
2:45:47 David Sims? For our Anton Corbin?
2:45:49 Griffin Newman? Yeah.
2:45:49 David Sims? Mini-series.
2:45:50 Griffin Newman? I love Control.
2:45:51 David Sims? Yeah.
2:45:52 Griffin Newman? You were talking a little greasy about it and I fucking.
2:45:54 David Sims? I haven't seen it since two thousand and seven or whatever, right? Whenever it came out.
2:45:57 Speaker 04 Yeah, it's so good.
2:45:59 Griffin Newman? Yeah, Control's awesome. Just watch Control. Uh, Clem Dog, anything specific you wanna, uh, plug? Other than obviously start getting excited for the dink now?
2:46:09 Speaker 04 Yeah, get ready, get ready for the dink. Please do, um, uh, watch that movie when it comes out. Um, listen to Hollywood Handbook. We've got a Patreon two, the Flagrant Ones two, um, uh.
2:46:22 Speaker 04 Season three of Severance, you know, come out sometime in this decade and.
2:46:27 David Sims? Probably, probably.
2:46:28 Griffin Newman? Probably.
2:46:29 Speaker 04 It's gonna be here and so I've been working on that.
2:46:32 David Sims? I'm very excited to pick your brain about it.
2:46:34 Speaker 04 Yeah, cooking up some freaky stuff. I can't give away too much, but.
2:46:39 Griffin Newman? I watch the show and I go.
2:46:40 Speaker 04 There is no Severance.
2:46:42 David Sims? It doesn't exist and that was a joke the whole time.
2:46:46 Speaker 04 And we were making fun of you.
2:46:48 Griffin Newman? And I see a lot of pieces.
2:46:50 David Sims? And the numbers are just math. You add them together to make other numbers.
2:46:54 Speaker 04 They equal your birthday and it's a joke on you.
2:46:57 Griffin Newman? I see a lot of think pieces that are like, we analyze the mysteries of Severance, right? And people are going down the rabbit holes trying to solve it. And I only got one question when I'm watching Severance, which is, what are these writers smoking? And where can I get some?
2:47:12 Griffin Newman? But Sean, what do you guys smoke in the writers' room? And could you give me the contact information of the person you get it from?
2:47:18 Speaker 04 Yeah, so I will, I will get in touch with you, but we smoke dried banana peels.
2:47:24 Griffin Newman? There we go.
2:47:25 Speaker 04 That we read in high school on the internet could get you as high as weed. And so we put them in the oven and then we rolled them up and smoked them. And it just kinda made you feel like, pretty gross.
2:47:37 Griffin Newman? Is it crazy to think that when you're 15, you can buy into something like that?
2:47:41 Speaker 04 I was like, oh, I have bananas.
2:47:44 Griffin Newman? Right, you're like.
2:47:44 Speaker 04 It's so hard to get weed.
2:47:45 Griffin Newman? If this gets you higher than weed, then everyone would be smoking banana peels all the time. They're legal. There's no way.
2:47:51 Speaker 04 You had to dry them out in the oven first. Was like what, was what the article told us.
2:47:55 Speaker 05 I remember my friends, we found out about morning glory seeds. That you could take them and they would like, make you feel high.
2:48:04 Speaker 04 See you on the moon, brother.
2:48:06 Speaker 05 The thing that, you know, no one said in whatever book or fucking early internet site they read it on is that if you buy seeds, they come coated in like pesticides and fertilizers and stuff.
2:48:20 David Sims? They are flowers.
2:48:21 Speaker 05 We got all so sick.
2:48:23 Griffin Newman? Yeah, just puking.
2:48:24 Speaker 05 Just, just puking. And at first we're like, maybe it's working.
2:48:27 Griffin Newman? Yeah.
2:48:28 David Sims? This is good. Okay, I feel high because I can't stop throwing up.
2:48:31 Speaker 04 That's a weird thing about.
2:48:33 Speaker 05 Violently ill.
2:48:34 Speaker 04 Those experiments where you go like, well, I'm supposed to feel weird.
2:48:38 Speaker 05 So like maybe feeling horrible is actually good.
2:48:40 Griffin Newman? Yeah.
2:48:41 David Sims? This is the whole thing with-
2:48:42 Speaker 05 I like this, actually.
2:48:43 Griffin Newman? Yeah.
2:48:44 David Sims? Uh, every so often on Reddit Cooking, someone's like, "I poisoned my whole family 'cause I didn't cook the beans for very long." 'Cause like, if you get dried beans, you have to cook them.
2:48:56 Griffin Newman? Mm-hmm.
2:48:56 David Sims? You have to like soak them and then cook them for like some amount of time. And it was like, "Yeah, don't you know, like if you don't soak them, then like you'll just get like insane food poisoning and like you could die." And it's like, "Why is that on every can of fucking beans?"
2:49:08 Speaker 04 Go ahead and throw a sticker on there for me.
2:49:10 David Sims? Yeah, Jesus. Anyway.
2:49:11 Speaker 04 Give me a bean sticker.
2:49:12 David Sims? Just happens on Re- Once a month, someone's like, "Hey, I poisoned my family."
2:49:15 Griffin Newman? Yeah.
2:49:15 David Sims? Yeah. So that's what you did, I guess, version of that. I'm done. Jesus, we have to record ads.
2:49:20 Griffin Newman? Oh, right. Okay. Uh, thank you for being here, Clem Dog. If I can just throw in an additional plug, uh, your co-host, Hayes Davenport, did an episode of the, uh, since-ended podcast High and Mighty years ago about, uh, newspaper comics that I think is just really good and I revisit a lot.
2:49:34 Speaker 04 Long tail on that one.
2:49:35 Griffin Newman? Real long tail on that one.
2:49:36 Speaker 04 A lot of people still checking that one out. I, you know, won't quit. So, uh, yeah, please do go listen to that.
2:49:41 Griffin Newman? Yeah.
2:49:41 Speaker 05 We'll link it in the description.
2:49:43 Griffin Newman? Yeah, absolutely. If we can just use our platform as much as possible to boost that episode.
2:49:47 Speaker 05 Actually, let's just throw to the episode at the end.
2:49:49 Griffin Newman? Can we, can we do a feed drop? Can we maybe look into licensing that episode?
2:49:53 Speaker 04 I heard they ended High and Mighty because they just sort of looked back a couple of years and went like, "We're not topping this thing."
2:49:58 Griffin Newman? Right. Thank you for being here, Clem Dog.
2:49:59 Speaker 04 Thanks for having me.
2:50:00 Griffin Newman? Yeah.
2:50:01 Speaker 04 Great to see you.
2:50:02 Griffin Newman? Always great to see you. Uh, next week, tune in for Die My Love.
2:50:07 David Sims? I believe so, right?
2:50:08 Griffin Newman? Yeah.
2:50:08 David Sims? I mean, unless there's a-
2:50:09 Griffin Newman? Right? Is there, there's no new release in between?
2:50:11 David Sims? Nope.
2:50:12 Griffin Newman? Let's double check that.
2:50:12 David Sims? Nope. Next week is Die My Love.
2:50:14 Griffin Newman? Okay. Lynn Ramsey's, uh, newest release. Another very normal, very fun movie.
2:50:18 David Sims? Probably on Mubi by this point, I would assume.
2:50:20 Griffin Newman? I think almost definitely.
2:50:21 David Sims? Streaming on Mubi.
2:50:22 Griffin Newman? Yeah. Uh, so why not, uh, pull that up, give it a watch, uh, in time for next week's episode.
2:50:28 Speaker 05 Over on Patreon, coming up in a few days, we're doing our annual mailbag episode.
2:50:32 David Sims? That's the plan, I think. Yes.
2:50:34 Griffin Newman? I can't wait. I love the smell of an envelope, an open envelope, and we're gonna have it many times over.
2:50:40 David Sims? Yeah, if you're interested in that, you can subscribe at patreon.com slash Blank Check.
2:50:45 Speaker 04 I'd rather hear the female bag episode.
2:50:47 Griffin Newman? Hey, my brother?
2:50:48 Speaker 04 Hey, come on. Hey, I'm married, I ain't dead.
2:50:50 Griffin Newman? You're wrong about that. Uh, and as always, it's hammer time.
2:51:04 Speaker 02 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, Holly Moss, and Pat Reynolds. Our production assistant is Minnick. Special thanks to David Cho, Jordan Fish, and Nate Patterson for their production help. Head over to blankcheckpod.com for links to all of the real nerdy shit. Join our Patreon Blank Check Special Features
2:51:45 Speaker 02 for exclusive franchise commentaries and bonus episodes. Follow us on social @BlankCheckPod. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter, Checkbook, on Substack. This podcast is created and produced by Blank Check Productions.
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