O Brother, Where Art Thou? with Emily St. James

Those Soggy Bottom Boys really know how to carry a tune! Emily St. James joins us to talk about O Brother, Where Art Thou?, a wonderful film whose reputation was ultimately eclipsed by its octuple-Platinum soundtrack of “old timey” bops. When we’re on track, we’re talking peak Clooney, digital color correction, T. Bone Burnett, and the history of Southern politics. When we’re off track in this episode? Expect some discussion around Linkin Park’s Hybrid Theory and the Emmy-winning run of The Practice. “Blank Check Theme (Sirens version)” Performed by: Amy Irving https://open.spotify.com/artist/014ho5GT3tMz8pYEGwiHaD?si=cRwfoEt2TNOyC8ulUyX0cA Olivia Ellen Lloyd https://open.spotify.com/artist/0itd8fCSPL3NAu9CAhuHG0 Maggie Feldman https://open.spotify.com/artist/43ju5tbQmMbSCVpIGwGniE Recorded and Produced by Gabe Barreto Mixed by Alan Smithee Sign up for Check Book https://blankcheckpod.substack.com/welcome, the Blank Check newsletter featuring even more “real nerdy shit” to feed your pop culture obsession. Dossier excerpts, film biz AND burger reports, and even more exclusive content you won’t want to miss out on. Join our Patreon for franchise commentaries and bonus episodes. http://www.patreon.com/blankcheck Follow us @blankcheckpod on Twitter https://x.com/blankcheckpod?lang=en, Instagram https://www.instagram.com/blankcheckpod/?hl=en, Threads https://www.threads.net/@blankcheckpod?xmt=AQGzctAh4mbWTwYzCV1pzNT6AMV9o99EOfymi8TLR5mTde0 and Facebook https://www.facebook.com/blankcheckpodcast/! Buy some real nerdy merch https://kinshipgoods.com/blankcheck Connect with other Blankies on our Reddit https://www.reddit.com/r/blankies/s/gpcOkQr8Sv or Discord https://discord.gg/Q6YGSR3JrA For anything else, check out BlankCheckPod.com https://www.blankcheckpod.com/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

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

• 0:02Griffin Newman?

  David?

• 0:03David Sims?

  Yep.

• 0:03Griffin Newman?

  We did a live show.

• 0:04David Sims?

  Yeah, remember?

• 0:05Griffin Newman?

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

• 0:12David Sims?

  It was so fun. It was very silly.

• 0:15Griffin Newman?

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

• 0:18David Sims?

  Yeah, hey.

• 0:18Speaker 02

  Hey, everyone, or should I say, oh?

• 0:21David Sims?

  Oh.

• 0:22Griffin Newman?

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

• 0:31Speaker 03

  So just a few more days.

• 0:33David Sims?

  Yes.

• 0:33Speaker 03

  You can get it at dynasty.tv.

• 0:36David Sims?

  Dynasty.tv.

• 0:38Speaker 03

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

• 0:43David Sims?

  Oh, yeah. I was moving things around.

• 0:45Griffin Newman?

  Laptop was on.

• 0:46Speaker 02

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

• 0:48Griffin Newman?

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

• 0:50David Sims?

  I was locked in.

• 0:51Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, very locked in and you were funny.

• 0:53David Sims?

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

• 0:56Griffin Newman?

  Oh, thank you.

• 0:57David Sims?

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

• 1:02Griffin Newman?

  You might see me shine Marie's shoes.

• 1:04David Sims?

  Exactly.

• 1:05Speaker 02

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

• 1:07Griffin Newman?

  If that gets you off.

• 1:09Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 1:10Speaker 03

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

• 1:46Griffin Newman?

  I am the only podcast you got. I'm the damn Potter Familius.

• 1:51David Sims?

  But you ain't bona fide.

• 1:54Speaker 04

  Damn.

• 1:55Griffin Newman?

  Here's the thing I I found.

• 1:56David Sims?

  Potter familius.

• 1:57Griffin Newman?

  Potter familius, but I did podcast first and then Potter familius.

• 2:01David Sims?

  I don't want FOP, god damn it. I'm a podcast stand man, I don't know.

• 2:06Griffin Newman?

  Here's a thought I had while watching this movie last night.

• 2:08David Sims?

  I don't want FOP, god damn it. The way he says FOP is the best line reading of 1 million years of human history.

• 2:15Griffin Newman?

  This movie has.

• 2:16David Sims?

  I won't, I won't back down from this take.

• 2:18Griffin Newman?

  So many incredible lines of dialogue.

• 2:21David Sims?

  Yep.

• 2:21Griffin Newman?

  Perfectly delivered.

• 2:23David Sims?

  Yep.

• 2:23Griffin Newman?

  Transcendently delivered, right? People just fucking identifying the slightly off kilter way to throw it out without overselling the dialogue. And my big thought while watching this and all these lines coming up is, I am so happy that somehow this movie has not gotten into the Big Lebowski territory of, I have to hear these lines all the time.

• 2:46David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 2:47Griffin Newman?

  Every time I put it on, it's a pleasure to hear these lines again.

• 2:52David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 2:52Speaker 04

  I think I always like have a weird, when I start, I know I like this movie.

• 2:57Griffin Newman?

  Yep.

• 2:57Speaker 04

  But when I started, I'm like, this is gonna be the time when I get off it. It's just not gonna work for me anymore. And every time I'm like, oh, right, this hasn't been so thoroughly seeded into the culture that I like low-key resent it.

• 3:08Griffin Newman?

  It's nice. It's a really nice feeling. And I'm not saying it's something that like works against Big Lebowski, but it is pleasant that every time you revisit this movie is actually a revisit.

• 3:18David Sims?

  You candy buttered carth even so and so's, I curse your name, is one of my favorite undersung lines.

• 3:25Griffin Newman?

  There's so many good ones.

• 3:26David Sims?

  In Oh Brother, Where Art Thou, a film that I see, the thing is, I've seen this movie like 40 times, so I am not, like, it is not a new thing for every time I'm like, oh, yeah, right, right, I know every line of this movie. Like, I owned it on DVD, so I just watched it too much.

• 3:39Griffin Newman?

  Hey, same, but I'm just saying, you're not hearing it on the streets.

• 3:42Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 3:43Griffin Newman?

  It's not being mean to death.

• 3:45David Sims?

  Streets.

• 3:46Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 3:46Griffin Newman?

  You know?

• 3:47David Sims?

  I don't want FOP, god damn it.

• 3:49Speaker 04

  I mean, I was just in Sioux Falls, South Dakota.

• 3:51Griffin Newman?

  Okay.

• 3:51Speaker 04

  We're just shouting things at each other in this movie. It's, it's, uh, it's all your coastal elitism showing right now.

• 3:57Griffin Newman?

  It is, it is fascinating that the movie has still kind of retained that status and even perhaps like receded a little in the Coens canon, considering that its soundtrack was one of the most culturally impactful things of its decade. And beyond it being that big was also just like, one of the most bizarre things to ever happen in American pop culture.

• 4:19David Sims?

  We were talking about it.

• 4:20Speaker 04

  It defeated OutKast Stankonia for Album of the Year.

• 4:23David Sims?

  Maybe it was a wrong call.

• 4:25Speaker 03

  Really?

• 4:25Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 4:25Speaker 03

  Ben, that's crazy.

• 4:27David Sims?

  You want me to pull it up? I'm gonna pull up the, all the nominees that year.

• 4:30Griffin Newman?

  It cannot be overstated how big the soundtrack was, and I cannot think of another example of a soundtrack being that disproportionately bigger than the movie it spawned. I think there are cases of like...

• 4:41David Sims?

  Yeah, I think, cause things like Saturday Night Live, it's like the movie was huge. I mean, this movie was big, Fever, but also Live though.

• 4:48Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 4:48David Sims?

  Yeah. The movie was huge. Brightman? Remember? I'll tell you what was huge.

• 4:53Griffin Newman?

  That movie's kind of a comedic thriller.

• 4:55Speaker 03

  Let him finish.

• 4:56Griffin Newman?

  The villain.

• 4:56David Sims?

  Who's the enemy?

• 4:57Griffin Newman?

  The clock is our Darth Vader.

• 4:58Speaker 03

  Who else is huge?

• 5:00David Sims?

  Milton Berle's cock.

• 5:01Griffin Newman?

  There we go.

• 5:02David Sims?

  In that movie.

• 5:02Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 5:02David Sims?

  The, here are the five nominees for Album of the Year from the year 2002. So we're talking two full years after the movie came out.

• 5:10Griffin Newman?

  Cause the movie comes out, limited release, late 2000. Goes wide, beginning of 01, wins soundtrack of the year, like, March 02?

• 5:19David Sims?

  Mm-hmm. It's not soundtrack of the year. Album of the Year.

• 5:21Griffin Newman?

  Album of the Year. I'm sorry, but that's March.

• 5:23David Sims?

  Oh Brother, Where Art Thou soundtrack. Now, the other nominees.

• 5:26Griffin Newman?

  Okay, give them to me.

• 5:27David Sims?

  Stankonia by OutKast.

• 5:29Griffin Newman?

  A pretty big album.

• 5:31David Sims?

  Kind of their artistic peak.

• 5:32Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 5:33Speaker 03

  And still fucking holds up.

• 5:35David Sims?

  Yeah, I think Speaker Box, The Love Below is great, but it's two albums that are not really linked, so it's like...

• 5:41Griffin Newman?

  It's guys who are no longer, you know, how to collaborate. Stankonia is the last proper OutKast album.

• 5:46Speaker 04

  And when they won for Speaker Box Love Below, there was a real sense of, oh, this is for the other albums.

• 5:50David Sims?

  Right, exactly. This is, which I think the Grammys are constantly guilty of. No, Idlewild is actually, it doesn't matter.

• 5:57Griffin Newman?

  Idlewild, bad.

• 5:58David Sims?

  Not very good.

• 5:59Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 5:59David Sims?

  I mean, it's, there's some, there's, there's some...

• 6:01Speaker 03

  And what's their other, Aliens?

• 6:03David Sims?

  Atlians, that's before.

• 6:04Speaker 03

  But that one's also a banger.

• 6:06David Sims?

  Look, all their albums are good.

• 6:07Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 6:07Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 6:07David Sims?

  They're good.

• 6:08Griffin Newman?

  Well, but Stankonia was...

• 6:09David Sims?

  Strikes again. It is a hundred percent up there and it's their cultural, you know, Ms. Jackson is sort of like, that's when the most.

• 6:19Griffin Newman?

  Well, it's the weirdness of Heiab being so humongous, but also being like, these guys are breaking up.

• 6:23David Sims?

  Yeah, that's um.

• 6:24Griffin Newman?

  And this is an Andre song.

• 6:25David Sims?

  Right, right. Uh, not a big boy song. Um, Love and Theft by Bob Dylan, underrated.

• 6:30Speaker 04

  Good album.

• 6:31David Sims?

  Late Dylan album, you know, Tweedledee and Tweedledum.

• 6:35Griffin Newman?

  Sure.

• 6:35David Sims?

  Shall I go on?

• 6:36Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 6:37David Sims?

  Uh, an album that I bet Ben loves, U2's All That You Can't Leave Behind.

• 6:41Griffin Newman?

  Ben.

• 6:42David Sims?

  Which even I is.

• 6:44Speaker 04

  To get yourself together.

• 6:46David Sims?

  It's not a U2 album.

• 6:47Griffin Newman?

  I don't know why I'm singing it like Dave Matthews.

• 6:48David Sims?

  Look, I don't actually like that album that much.

• 6:51Speaker 04

  Every, that.

• 6:51David Sims?

  As a U2 fan.

• 6:52Speaker 04

  Everyone thought that was gonna win though, cause that was the post nine 11 Grammys.

• 6:56David Sims?

  It was a gigantic hit.

• 6:56Griffin Newman?

  Is that that perfect day in elevation?

• 6:57David Sims?

  Beautiful day.

• 6:58Griffin Newman?

  Beautiful day, I'm sorry. Beautiful day, elevation.

• 7:00Speaker 04

  And it has the one that everyone listened to after nine 11. Yeah.

• 7:04David Sims?

  Suckin' moment, can't get out of walk on those first four tracks.

• 7:07Griffin Newman?

  Does it have the Games of New York song?

• 7:09David Sims?

  Uh, no, it does not. Uh, that was not on an album, except for like a best of. It does have New York, which is one of U2's worst songs by a country mile. It is astonishing.

• 7:18Speaker 04

  Concrete jungles.

• 7:19David Sims?

  It, it, you got one, if you ever wanna have a chuckle, Google the lyrics to New York by U2. Um, but it was such a big, I think that must've been the front run because it was such a big album and it was kinda like U2's comeback.

• 7:31Speaker 04

  It was, Oh Brother winning was a huge upset because, yeah.

• 7:34David Sims?

  And then India Ari's Acoustic Soul was the fifth nominee.

• 7:38Griffin Newman?

  Which was a big deal at the time.

• 7:39David Sims?

  Absolutely, but it may probably not a front runner.

• 7:40Griffin Newman?

  Sure. But, but like, was Oh Brother the second best selling of that lineup?

• 7:47David Sims?

  Oh, I don't know.

• 7:49Griffin Newman?

  That's my question. I'm like, I would be fascinated to hear, see what the sales stats were for Stankonia, the U2 album and Oh Brother.

• 7:59Speaker 04

  A U2 album's definitely in the lead, but I like.

• 8:02Griffin Newman?

  I think so too, but I'm like, did Oh Brother outsell Stankonia?

• 8:05Speaker 04

  It may have.

• 8:07David Sims?

  Look, I'm gonna look it up. This is a little harder because you know. You know, it's like you're talking years and not like Grammy season.

• 8:16Griffin Newman?

  It was just so bizarre because the album clearly caught on in a way that was completely independent of the movie. Like, the movie came out, people liked it, it overperformed a little bit, but didn't like fully crossover, right?

• 8:28David Sims?

  Right.

• 8:29Griffin Newman?

  Then the album started selling well, and then the album became a thing.

• 8:32David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 8:32Griffin Newman?

  And then they do like concert tours with the album. There's the concert documentary, which I can't find anywhere anymore from called Down From The Mountain.

• 8:41Speaker 04

  And the thing is, it

• 8:42David Sims?

  I remember that, though. It was nice.

• 8:44Speaker 04

  It caught on, we were talking about this before we recorded, it caught on with like, young people. It was like twenty-somethings were banging bluegrass.

• 8:51Griffin Newman?

  And once again, the pitch is old-timey music.

• 8:54Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 8:55David Sims?

  I mean

• 8:56Griffin Newman?

  Like, that's within the context of the movie.

• 8:59Speaker 04

  I like was

• 9:00Griffin Newman?

  Said during the depression, they're like, you guys know any old-timey music?

• 9:03Speaker 04

  I was, I was watching A Complete Unknown, and Alan Lomax is a character in that. It's like, he's the fucking guy who's standing in Dylan's way. And I was like, why do I know Alan? It's because of this.

• 9:13Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 9:13Speaker 04

  There's a whole bunch of songs from his collection on this album.

• 9:15David Sims?

  So I have a brother split between 2001, 2002.

• 9:18Griffin Newman?

  Okay.

• 9:19David Sims?

  In 2001, it was the ninth-selling album of the year. It sold 3.4 million copies.

• 9:25Griffin Newman?

  Million, million.

• 9:25Speaker 03

  Did we all have it on CDs?

• 9:27Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 9:27David Sims?

  I had it on CDs.

• 9:28Griffin Newman?

  People buying physical discs, going to a store, no streams.

• 9:32Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 9:33Griffin Newman?

  I, I don't think iTunes existed yet. I don't think that launches

• 9:36David Sims?

  No, but I mean, Steven Root was spinning those discs a lot.

• 9:40Griffin Newman?

  And doing a lot of business.

• 9:41David Sims?

  Doing a lot.

• 9:42Griffin Newman?

  Yeah. I remember seeing this movie in theaters, and when that was happening, I turned to my mom and I went, is he having like a seizure? She was like, no, he just likes the song.

• 9:50David Sims?

  Um, and so certainly it is above any of the Grammy nominees I mentioned in both years. And in 2002, it sold another 2.7 million.

• 9:58Griffin Newman?

  Wow.

• 9:59David Sims?

  Uh, so, you know.

• 10:00Griffin Newman?

  So it sold like 6 million copies in its first 18 months of release.

• 10:04David Sims?

  I guess so.

• 10:04Speaker 04

  Yeah, Stan Conia has only been certified quadruple platinum, so it's only sold 4 million, so.

• 10:10David Sims?

  It's total, Oh Brother's total, it's a eight times platinum, it's sold 8.1 million copies in the United States as of October 2019. We haven't checked it in the last five years. Just above Oh Brother, just to complete this little, because I love, I love a list.

• 10:25Speaker 04

  We love lists.

• 10:26David Sims?

  Um, so you got at number eight, you've got Creed's Weathered.

• 10:30Griffin Newman?

  Oh, yeah.

• 10:31David Sims?

  I'm not up on Creed, I will admit. I only know them as kind of like-

• 10:34Griffin Newman?

  That has to be Arms Wide Open, right? That has to be the album.

• 10:38David Sims?

  It is, uh, come on.

• 10:43Speaker 04

  Creed's back?

• 10:43David Sims?

  It is not.

• 10:44Griffin Newman?

  It's not?

• 10:45David Sims?

  It is not.

• 10:45Griffin Newman?

  Is that the follow-up?

• 10:46Speaker 04

  I think it is, yeah.

• 10:47David Sims?

  I guess so.

• 10:49Griffin Newman?

  Is this, uh- This is how you remind me.

• 10:52David Sims?

  Yeah, with our- no, that's Nickelback.

• 10:55Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, okay.

• 10:55David Sims?

  Dummy.

• 10:56Speaker 03

  He must be so embarrassed right now.

• 10:58Griffin Newman?

  Right, so is it, uh- If I go crazy, then will you still call me Superman?

• 11:03David Sims?

  I don't even know what that is.

• 11:04Speaker 03

  That's Three Doors Down.

• 11:05Speaker 04

  Yeah, it's Three Doors Down.

• 11:06David Sims?

  The thing is, a lot of this music, not to pull this card, did not make it to Britain in the same way. Creed absolutely didn't.

• 11:13Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 11:13David Sims?

  Christian rock was not a thing in Britain.

• 11:15Griffin Newman?

  But Old Timey Mariah Carey album does make it to the UK?

• 11:18David Sims?

  Uh, maybe a little bit. I think this was pretty niche in Britain.

• 11:22Griffin Newman?

  Okay.

• 11:22David Sims?

  This, this whole thing was pretty- but anyway, above Creed, we've got Destiny's Child's Survivor. Okay, that's a great album. Alicia Keys' Songs in A Minor, her first album.

• 11:30Griffin Newman?

  Quite a major album, yeah.

• 11:31David Sims?

  Uh, Stains Break the Cycle, which is reprehensibly bad, so bad.

• 11:37Griffin Newman?

  What's the single off that?

• 11:38David Sims?

  Oh, You Know How You Remind Me. I know.

• 11:41David Sims?

  Fuck, what is it? You know, uh, "It's Been a While," you know, that was-

• 11:44Griffin Newman?

  Oh, yeah.

• 11:44David Sims?

  "It's Been a While." I just remember that Scott Akerman-

• 11:47Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 11:47David Sims?

  You know, his podcast, they, they do that joke anytime someone said, "Have you been talking about Emily?"

• 11:52Griffin Newman?

  Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

• 11:52David Sims?

  And then, so they, as a joke, they're like, "Let's actually, like, listen to the whole album," right? And they go track by track, and it's so tough to listen to.

• 11:58Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 11:59David Sims?

  That fucking nu metal stuff. Um, fourth, Enya, A Day Without Rain.

• 12:04Griffin Newman?

  Mm.

• 12:04David Sims?

  Now, this is later Enya.

• 12:06Griffin Newman?

  But I was gonna say-

• 12:07David Sims?

  This is sort of Lord of the Rings boosted Enya.

• 12:09Griffin Newman?

  I think she got a fellowship bump.

• 12:10Speaker 04

  It's another post 9/11 thing.

• 12:12Griffin Newman?

  Yup.

• 12:12Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 12:13David Sims?

  Yeah, I guess, even though it's released pre 9/11, I think the bump comes post.

• 12:17Speaker 04

  Yeah. Because, yeah, we're all looking for solace.

• 12:20Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 12:20David Sims?

  Uh, and then the top three are, of course, the best three albums of 2001. Number three, N'Sync's Celebrity, which is fine. Number two, Shaggy's Hot Shot.

• 12:28Griffin Newman?

  Hey.

• 12:29David Sims?

  Which is the "It Wasn't Me" comeback, right?

• 12:31Griffin Newman?

  Oh, it's the follow-up?

• 12:32David Sims?

  No, no, I'm saying like "It Wasn't Me" was Shaggy's comeback, right? Like, it was like Shaggy's returned. You thought Mr. Boombastic was a one-hit wonder.

• 12:39Speaker 03

  I didn't know he was gone.

• 12:40Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 12:41David Sims?

  You didn't know? You don't think Shaggy kind of slightly receded in the public memory?

• 12:45Griffin Newman?

  This is the "It Wasn't Me" album.

• 12:47Speaker 04

  For, for like two years, the person who didn't personally know me before I transitioned, who had misgendered me the last time was Shaggy.

• 12:55Griffin Newman?

  What?

• 12:56Speaker 04

  And then I got mis- I was at a press conference and he couldn't see me and he just was going off my voice. So he said, "Sir," and I was like, and I was not offended because it was Shaggy. I was like, "Well, that's a good last misgender."

• 13:07Griffin Newman?

  You accused him of misgendering you and he said "It Wasn't Me."

• 13:09Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 13:10Griffin Newman?

  He's got a kind of airtight alibi. This is the thing. By making himself the "It Wasn't Me" guy, he can slip out of any accusation.

• 13:17Speaker 04

  And then some lady at an airport did and I was like, "Well, that's it." It used to be Shaggy and the dream's dead.

• 13:22Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 13:23David Sims?

  I mean, Mr. Boombastic, he's so good.

• 13:25Griffin Newman?

  Shaggy?

• 13:25David Sims?

  Love him.

• 13:26Griffin Newman?

  You should sing more of his canon right now on mic.

• 13:28David Sims?

  "Angel," that was one?

• 13:29Speaker 04

  "Eh, my darling, you're mine."

• 13:32David Sims?

  Yeah, that sounds right. Number one, uh, "God Bless Him." And this, I think I've talked to Ben about this, Linkin Park's Hybrid Theory, their first album.

• 13:40Griffin Newman?

  Humongous.

• 13:40David Sims?

  Which at the time I was so dismissive of. I think about this now and I really think it was internalized homophobia, a little bit from me, a little bit from Simzy.

• 13:49Griffin Newman?

  Unpack this.

• 13:50David Sims?

  Even though I was a woke boy.

• 13:51Griffin Newman?

  Unpack this.

• 13:52David Sims?

  I think that music is so sincere. I listen to it now and I'm like, "This is special." Like, "This is interesting." It's not 100% my thing, but it's so emotional.

• 14:01Griffin Newman?

  Man in a tremendous amount of pain.

• 14:02David Sims?

  Exactly.

• 14:03Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 14:04David Sims?

  And I think at the time, I was a little too, like, too much, you know, not cool, not cool. You know, like, this is like too much emotion, too much feeling.

• 14:12Griffin Newman?

  But don't you think that was kind of-

• 14:13David Sims?

  He's about to break.

• 14:14Griffin Newman?

  I know.

• 14:15David Sims?

  Everything you say to him.

• 14:16Griffin Newman?

  But don't you think-

• 14:16David Sims?

  Takes him one step closer to the edge.

• 14:18Griffin Newman?

  Don't you think that was kind of-

• 14:19Speaker 03

  And he is crawling in his skin.

• 14:20Griffin Newman?

  He's crawling in his skin.

• 14:21David Sims?

  That song is pretty good.

• 14:22Griffin Newman?

  That song rules. Don't you think that that was kind of the magic that blew up the record charts?

• 14:28David Sims?

  100%, but that was all-

• 14:29Griffin Newman?

  That there was this combination of like externally, this guy's really tough and hardcore and his voice is so extreme and the songs are aggressive. And then there's like such a sensitivity in the center of them that that clash kind of was able to reach across the aisle.

• 14:42Speaker 04

  There's so many albums in that top 10 that are like boys being sincere over like electric guitars.

• 14:49David Sims?

  Yeah. That emerged right as I'm a teenager, like 15 years old and I'm like a little too cool. Even though I wasn't the coolest kid in school.

• 14:59David Sims?

  But I consider myself too cool.

• 15:00Speaker 04

  So much.

• 15:01David Sims?

  For essentially emo music.

• 15:02Speaker 04

  And so much for it, like Creed seems like it's sung by a church praise band. And you're like, it's actually just kind of Christian adjacent.

• 15:09Griffin Newman?

  And then it also feels like this is on the brink of splintering off into screamo, which is then like not even pretending to be hardcore is just like emotions first and foremost. Like there's a bifurcation that I think happens. Well, somebody.

• 15:23Speaker 03

  A lot of that is underground music.

• 15:25Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 15:25Speaker 03

  And I think a lot of people, that was the thing that they hated about Linkin Park.

• 15:29Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 15:30Speaker 03

  Is that they were this like homogenized.

• 15:34David Sims?

  Right.

• 15:34Speaker 03

  You know, really.

• 15:35David Sims?

  They're, they're bringing it mainstream. Right. But that always happens.

• 15:38Griffin Newman?

  And then the underground stuff becomes overground very quickly.

• 15:41Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 15:42Griffin Newman?

  It's like, we talk about how like Spider-Man two, the whole fucking album is screamo shit.

• 15:45Speaker 03

  Sure.

• 15:46Griffin Newman?

  And you're like, you can't get more mainstream than this. The list you just read off though, makes it all the more insane that the Oh Brother soundtrack exploded that hard.

• 15:53David Sims?

  Doesn't really fit into what I just read out.

• 15:56Griffin Newman?

  Into anything. It would be weird if that soundtrack went viral today.

• 16:02Speaker 04

  It's a, it does presage, uh, uh, screamo though. It's very, you know.

• 16:07Griffin Newman?

  The.

• 16:08Speaker 04

  Oh Brother's screamo.

• 16:09David Sims?

  Yodeling?

• 16:09Speaker 04

  All the way. Yeah. I am a man of constant sorrow.

• 16:12David Sims?

  Pretty emo.

• 16:13Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 16:14David Sims?

  If you say that, that's emo. I'm a man of constant sorrow.

• 16:18Griffin Newman?

  That was the profound point I was just making.

• 16:20David Sims?

  I have a couple of other threads I want to tie off. Okay. One. Griff wasn't here for this, but we were discussing Taylor Sheridan's Steakhouse, of course.

• 16:27Griffin Newman?

  Oh, sure.

• 16:27David Sims?

  I'm sure you're very aware of it. Four Sixes, which is in Las Vegas at the Wynn.

• 16:32Griffin Newman?

  Emily, your picture is framed on the wall?

• 16:33Speaker 04

  Yes, it is. Yeah. Yeah. Taylor and I. Yeah.

• 16:36Griffin Newman?

  Mm-hmm.

• 16:36David Sims?

  Looked up the old menu.

• 16:39Griffin Newman?

  Oh, sure.

• 16:40David Sims?

  Uh, you know, and they've got your regular steaks, porter houses, filet mignons.

• 16:44Griffin Newman?

  I would imagine.

• 16:44David Sims?

  Maybe you want a Cornish head if you're, you know, feeling saucy. But, and this is just to speak to Ben.

• 16:49Griffin Newman?

  Mm-hmm.

• 16:50David Sims?

  And his experience of expensive steaks, they do have a $1,000 steak.

• 16:55Speaker 03

  Now here's the thing.

• 16:56David Sims?

  No, no, I'm, I'm lying. It's 999 on the, on the nugget.

• 16:59Speaker 03

  Oh, good.

• 17:00David Sims?

  999 dollars.

• 17:01Griffin Newman?

  No, no cents?

• 17:03David Sims?

  No, no, no, 90 cents.

• 17:05Speaker 03

  What?

• 17:06David Sims?

  9999. I think it's like 6666, but.

• 17:09Griffin Newman?

  Okay, so you get to keep a nickel and four pennies.

• 17:11Speaker 03

  What I appreciate, and that is ridiculous. Who would buy that? I mean, I don't know. I'm sure there's people out there who just are real big steak heads. At least the price is listed.

• 17:21David Sims?

  That's true. It is listed right here. It's Japanese purebred Freedom Wagyu Tomahawk 48 ounce steak with beef tallow raclette cheese popover.

• 17:32Griffin Newman?

  Interesting. That does sound good.

• 17:34David Sims?

  That kind of sounds like the, in the, you know, if this is the bambino, which is an item we've discussed in the past. Is the popover like the check? Is it the long pour?

• 17:42Griffin Newman?

  You're stepping on my joke. I was gonna say that the steak also comes with a sign check by Babe Ruth, a long pour and a Victrola.

• 17:48David Sims?

  And a Bordelaise sauce, which is sort of like a winy sauce. Anyway, so.

• 17:53Griffin Newman?

  And also it's grilled by hand by Kevin Costner.

• 17:56David Sims?

  Yeah, they get him in there. That's the one thing he'll still do for Taylor Sheridan.

• 17:59Speaker 03

  I love steak.

• 18:00David Sims?

  It'd be so funny if Costner fucked it up just to mess with Sheridan, like he overcooks it.

• 18:05Speaker 04

  Did you watch the final season? Of course you didn't watch the final season. They kill Kevin Costner like seven times.

• 18:10Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 18:10Speaker 04

  It's just showing his death over and over.

• 18:12Griffin Newman?

  And then there are like six episodes devoted to how well Taylor Sheridan fucks.

• 18:16Speaker 04

  And how well he rides a horse and he dates Bella Hadid. Yeah.

• 18:19Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 18:19David Sims?

  Oh. You could tell me anything happened on Yellowstone and I'd be like, alright.

• 18:24Griffin Newman?

  That there's a character played by him who decides to buy the ranch after Costner dies. And every character is like, God, he's so much better than Kevin Costner.

• 18:33David Sims?

  Played by Taylor Sheridan.

• 18:34Griffin Newman?

  Played by Taylor Sheridan.

• 18:35David Sims?

  Who's an actor?

• 18:36Griffin Newman?

  And Bella Hadad is his girlfriend and constantly talks about how good he is in bed. Makes allusions to.

• 18:41Speaker 04

  Five minute sequences of him doing trick riding on a horse.

• 18:44Griffin Newman?

  I've seen these supercuts. But there's a, right, he's trick riding on a horse and then one of the other female characters goes like, man, he rides that horse well. And Bella Hadid goes like, you don't even know.

• 18:56David Sims?

  Um, I'm sorry, I'm looking up the.

• 18:59Griffin Newman?

  Okay, other loops to close. It's Ben's birthday.

• 19:01David Sims?

  It's Ben's birthday. Happy birthday, man.

• 19:02Speaker 04

  Thank you.

• 19:03Griffin Newman?

  25 years young.

• 19:04David Sims?

  Yep.

• 19:05Griffin Newman?

  Decade of dreams.

• 19:06David Sims?

  Oh, yeah. Uh, we, Griffin walks in here, Emily and I, and we haven't introduced Emily, of course.

• 19:10Griffin Newman?

  We haven't introduced the podcast.

• 19:12David Sims?

  No.

• 19:12Griffin Newman?

  We've talked about the music scene of 2000, 2001 a lot.

• 19:16David Sims?

  At least, at least that's somewhat relevant.

• 19:18Griffin Newman?

  Absolutely, deeply relevant.

• 19:19David Sims?

  Uh, we are discussing the film Transamerica and how the director of that film never made another movie again.

• 19:24Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, just a weird one.

• 19:25David Sims?

  Uh, and then, so you, of course, immediately summoned the specter of Mr. Quirky Romano.

• 19:30Griffin Newman?

  Rewatched Quirky Romano just this last weekend, looked up the man who directed it, Rob Pritt, who had zero credits on IMDb previous to this film in any position, and then since then, has only made two short films in 2012. And I said, who is this guy? Where did he come from?

• 19:44David Sims?

  And so I Googled him and I found a little interview with him, mostly works in advertising, which I guess is not too surprising.

• 19:50Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 19:50David Sims?

  Um, you know, and they're asking him questions like, oh, what was your first advertising project? Yada, yada, yada.

• 19:55Griffin Newman?

  Do you guys want some cookies?

• 19:56David Sims?

  Yes.

• 19:57Griffin Newman?

  That line reading killed.

• 19:59David Sims?

  If you were to change professions, what would you choose to do? Here's Rob Pritt's answer, Griffin.

• 20:03Griffin Newman?

  Okay.

• 20:03David Sims?

  Competition barbecue smoker.

• 20:07Griffin Newman?

  Oh, it's on.

• 20:07David Sims?

  I cook a killer 15-hour slow smoked pork shoulder that I think would do well in a cook-off.

• 20:13Griffin Newman?

  It is on.

• 20:14David Sims?

  So if you ever want to roll up your sleeves with the Pritster.

• 20:18Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 20:18David Sims?

  Enter the Pritt, not the pit.

• 20:20Griffin Newman?

  Nope, the Pritt master. He's the Pritt master. If you want to try his pork shoulder, you should head on over to Taylor Sheridan Steakhouse in Las Vegas. What if Pritt's working there?

• 20:31David Sims?

  Yeah, he's, he's behind the smoker.

• 20:32Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 20:33David Sims?

  And I heard, I heard this, that he tried to get a job on the pit, and they were like, your name's Pritt, it's too confusing.

• 20:39Griffin Newman?

  It's too confusing.

• 20:39David Sims?

  Yep. So I think that's all of the loops closed.

• 20:44Griffin Newman?

  Thank you all for listening. Remember to rate, review, and subscribe. No, this is Blank Check with Griffin and David. I'm Griffin.

• 20:50David Sims?

  I'm David.

• 20:50Griffin Newman?

  That's a classic gap. That's a classic throwback. David got distracted by something on his ear.

• 20:56David Sims?

  I sure did get distracted by a very, very annoying question.

• 20:59Griffin Newman?

  Vintage, vintage. Um, it's a podcast about filmography. It's 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. Nice cough. Sometimes those checks clear. Sometimes they bounce, baby, and sometimes their album goes quintuple platinum?

• 21:19David Sims?

  Yeah, no, eight, so octuple?

• 21:21Griffin Newman?

  Octuple. Octuple platinum.

• 21:23David Sims?

  Mm-hmm.

• 21:23Griffin Newman?

  This is a mini-series on the films of the Coen Brothers.

• 21:25David Sims?

  Mm-hmm.

• 21:26Griffin Newman?

  It is called.

• 21:29Griffin Newman?

  Pod Country for Old Cass?

• 21:30David Sims?

  Probably.

• 21:32Griffin Newman?

  I think that's right.

• 21:32David Sims?

  I couldn't tell you.

• 21:34Griffin Newman?

  It's really slipping out of my brain every time. Not just this, but most things. Today, we're talking about Oh Brother, Where Art Thou?, which is weirdly their comeback film from the failure of Big Lebowski at the time. What is perceived as an absolute wipeout, but also is more known as the film that spawned one of the biggest albums of the day.

• 21:54Speaker 04

  Do you think they get a cut of that soundtrack?

• 21:57Griffin Newman?

  Here's the thing I-

• 21:57David Sims?

  Oh, I'm sure, well, you know what?

• 21:59Griffin Newman?

  Here's the thing I know.

• 22:00David Sims?

  Let's find out.

• 22:00Griffin Newman?

  What I know is that it's still, George Clooney talks about this in interviews. Tim Blake Nelson made more on this movie than any other-

• 22:09David Sims?

  Cause he actually sings on it.

• 22:10Griffin Newman?

  He's the only one who sings.

• 22:11David Sims?

  Right. Only on the second song.

• 22:14Griffin Newman?

  Interesting.

• 22:14David Sims?

  He doesn't sing on Man of Constant Sorrow.

• 22:16Griffin Newman?

  But he also says, "In the jailhouse now."

• 22:18David Sims?

  That's when he sings. That's actually his voice.

• 22:21Griffin Newman?

  Is it not his voice doing backup on Oh Brother?

• 22:23David Sims?

  It is not.

• 22:23Griffin Newman?

  Or on Constant Sorrow?

• 22:25David Sims?

  It is not.

• 22:26Griffin Newman?

  Interesting.

• 22:26David Sims?

  Yes.

• 22:26Speaker 03

  I will also share that a lot of this music is not copyright.

• 22:31David Sims?

  Yeah, cause it's, you know, traditional-

• 22:33Speaker 03

  It's all traditional music. So I do think that there is definitely potential for like a unique kind of like financial share.

• 22:42Griffin Newman?

  Also, like, were they producers on this album?

• 22:45David Sims?

  I don't think they were. I don't see them, I don't see their name on there.

• 22:47Griffin Newman?

  That's another thing that makes this film bizarre is like, they work with Carter Burrow on every single movie. He is such a defining part of their film language. He gets some additional music credit on this, but this is really like T-Bone Burnett. And this movie makes T-Bone Burnett a household name.

• 23:03Speaker 04

  It's just, it's too bad that Joel Coen doesn't get like an envelope from the Spotify Corporation every month with like two dimes taped to an index card.

• 23:12Griffin Newman?

  You want to hear that somehow this was their like Star Wars deal?

• 23:17Speaker 04

  I'm surprised this hasn't become a Broadway musical. This feels like a natural-

• 23:21Griffin Newman?

  Emily-

• 23:21David Sims?

  It's a great call.

• 23:22Griffin Newman?

  This is why we bring you in.

• 23:23David Sims?

  But maybe, again, that's a Coens roadblock where they're like, "What? No, I don't want to do that shit."

• 23:27Griffin Newman?

  But on the other hand, they've always been like, "I don't know, go ahead, make your Fargo show, who gives a shit?"

• 23:32David Sims?

  That's true.

• 23:33Griffin Newman?

  Right? Like, Tatero's like, "I want to do a Jesus movie." And they're like, "Fine."

• 23:36David Sims?

  Well, that one, they're friends with the guy. With the Fargo show, they kind of, it seems like their reaction was more like, "Huh?" And it was like, well, we're gonna do it because we can.

• 23:43Griffin Newman?

  I think their attitude is very much like, we don't block stuff because it's not fucking changing the original movie.

• 23:48David Sims?

  Yeah, they're definitely, you're right.

• 23:49Speaker 04

  They had also sold off the Fargo TV adaptation rights a long time ago, and then they bounced around. So I wonder if they have more creative control over this, but they should make it a musical. They should do it.

• 23:59Griffin Newman?

  They should. No, that's really smart. And that's the kind of insight you only get from our returning for the seventh, eighth time guest, Emily St. James.

• 24:08David Sims?

  I'll look it up. I don't know. Uh, hello, Emily.

• 24:10Griffin Newman?

  From the podcast, podcast like it's the 2000s.

• 24:13Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 24:14Griffin Newman?

  From the new novel, would work. Writer on Yellowjacket.

• 24:18Speaker 04

  Mm-hmm.

• 24:19Griffin Newman?

  Emily St. James.

• 24:20Speaker 04

  Hello.

• 24:21David Sims?

  Munich.

• 24:21Griffin Newman?

  Boom.

• 24:22David Sims?

  Alice.

• 24:23Griffin Newman?

  Boom.

• 24:25David Sims?

  Lams.

• 24:25Griffin Newman?

  Which, look, you hold, if you want to view it as a distinction, that is always the default answer. I feel like David and I throw out a worst movie we've ever recorded on the podcast.

• 24:35Speaker 04

  I love, I, I don't listen to that episode because it's under my old name, but I love that episode because we ju, it's just tangents. It's just us trying not to talk about the futterwack.

• 24:43David Sims?

  Yeah, and it's not exactly the, the most, you know, it's not a fucking spun gold narrative over here.

• 24:50Griffin Newman?

  I think it's a good episode.

• 24:51David Sims?

  Yeah, great episode. Darn movie. Uh, Lams.

• 24:55Griffin Newman?

  Silence of, not Lions Four.

• 24:57David Sims?

  No, we have yet to do Lions for Lams. Carol. Not Todd.

• 25:02Griffin Newman?

  Christmas Carol. Yeah, you're, you're describing these titles in Weird Wars. Okay.

• 25:05David Sims?

  Thing.

• 25:06Griffin Newman?

  The.

• 25:07David Sims?

  Stoker.

• 25:08Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, six.

• 25:10David Sims?

  Postman.

• 25:11Griffin Newman?

  Seven.

• 25:11David Sims?

  The, so this is the eighth.

• 25:13Griffin Newman?

  Eighth.

• 25:14Speaker 04

  My first, my first time I did this. My first time I did this show, just to, to, because we're reminiscing.

• 25:20Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 25:21Speaker 04

  This year.

• 25:21Griffin Newman?

  A decade of dreams.

• 25:22Speaker 04

  Uh, I, uh, didn't know Ben existed, and I was just sitting there listening to you two talk, and this voice popped in.

• 25:29Griffin Newman?

  Oh, sure.

• 25:30Speaker 04

  And I was like, who is this man with long flowing blonde hair, like, and a beautiful, uh, Adonis voice?

• 25:37Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 25:37Speaker 04

  Yeah. It was like, who the, actually, I was like, who the fuck is that?

• 25:40Griffin Newman?

  Right, right. This was when our, uh, we recorded in a closet that was so small that if we had a guest, Ben couldn't be in the room and listened on headphones from the room next door.

• 25:49David Sims?

  The closet next door.

• 25:50Griffin Newman?

  The, the smaller closet.

• 25:52David Sims?

  Yes, yes.

• 25:53Griffin Newman?

  Uh, and now it's your birthday. Whoever thought?

• 25:56David Sims?

  Decade of dreams.

• 25:57Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 26:04Griffin Newman?

  David?

• 26:05David Sims?

  Yes?

• 26:05Griffin Newman?

  He lurks in shadow. He slips into dreams. He casts no reflection. Audible presents Bram Stoker's Dracula, a new full cast audio thriller starring Ella Purnell as Mina Harker, Jonathan Bailey as Dracula, and an A-list cast, including Maggie Gyllenhaal as Van Helsing, Amy Lou Wood as Lucy, David Johnson as Dr. Seward, and many more. That is an all-star cast.

• 26:26David Sims?

  Yeah, this new full cast thriller locks Mina Harker in a battle of minds with the Count. When Mina's fiance, Jonathan Harker, Louis Partridge, vanishes in Transylvania, Mina pieces together letters, diary entries, and chilling testimony to hunt the predator stalking those she loves, only to discover Dracula's already hunting her.

• 26:46Griffin Newman?

  Joined by the enigmatic Van Helsing, Mina and a small fearless band race against time to stop this ancient terror. Using her intellect, her resolve, and a gift for drawing the unseen lines between clues, Mina may just hold the key to bring down the Count if he hasn't already found his way inside her mind.

• 27:02David Sims?

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

• 27:36Griffin Newman?

  David?

• 27:37David Sims?

  Hmm?

• 27:38Griffin Newman?

  It's not cuffing season for me. It's hosi season for me. And this year, that meant finally upgrading my new mattress from Lisa.

• 27:45David Sims?

  Lisa!

• 27:46Griffin Newman?

  It's supportive, comfortable, and just what my body needs after a long day. It makes crawling into bed on a chilly fall night feel like luxury.

• 27:54David Sims?

  Yeah, I have a Lisa too. They've got a lineup of beautifully crafted mattresses tailored to how you sleep.

• 28:00Griffin Newman?

  Mm-hmm.

• 28:00David Sims?

  Each mattress is designed with specific sleep positions and feel preferences in mind. They've got eco-friendly materials.

• 28:07Griffin Newman?

  Maybe you hear eco-friendly and you go, "Oh, but I'm gonna sacrifice comfort."

• 28:10David Sims?

  No.

• 28:11Griffin Newman?

  Nope.

• 28:12David Sims?

  They've been awarded best hybrid and best memory foam mattresses by New York Times' Wirecutter. They're featured by West Elm as their go-to mattress partner, and they work with local nonprofits across the US to donate thousands of mattresses each year to families in need. Over 43,000 mattresses donated to date. Go to lisa.com for up to 30% off mattresses. Plus, get an extra $50 off with promo code BLANKCHECK. Exclusive for our listeners. That's L-E-E-S-A.com promo code BLANKCHECK for up to 30% off mattresses plus an extra $50 off. Let them know we sent you and the survey after checkout. Lisa.com promo code BLANKCHECK.

• 28:59Griffin Newman?

  David!

• 28:59David Sims?

  Yes?

• 29:00Griffin Newman?

  Shop.com is giving away $1 million in Shop Cash.

• 29:04David Sims?

  Wow. Shop has all the stores you love and lets you track every order in one spot.

• 29:09Griffin Newman?

  I love that. It's very convenient.

• 29:11David Sims?

  And now, 1,000 shoppers are each gonna win $1,000 in Shop Cash just in time for the holidays.

• 29:18Griffin 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.

• 29:27David Sims?

  Uh, best stocking stuffers, maybe. The sickest luxury items.

• 29:31Griffin Newman?

  Cookware to kicks, toys to high-tech, even tinsel and tree toppers. Type in what you're looking for to instantly search every shop at once. Okay? That's shop.com. You can just go click around, find brands you love, search across all the stores, track every order in one spot. From cult favorites to the world's biggest brands, score suite deals, and checkout fast, all at shop.com. Enter to win the $1 million Shop Cash giveaway from now until November 1st. Just go to shop.com. There are so many ways to win. That's shop.com. Shopping designed around you. No purchase necessary. Restrictions apply. Official rules available at shop.com.

• 30:20Griffin Newman?

  Oh, Brother, Where Art Thou? An adaptation of Homer's The Odyssey.

• 30:24David Sims?

  Yes.

• 30:24Griffin Newman?

  By two guys who claim that they have never read it.

• 30:27David Sims?

  Yes.

• 30:28Speaker 04

  I appreciate this.

• 30:29Griffin Newman?

  I do, too.

• 30:30Speaker 04

  I do this a lot. I adapt things and don't read them.

• 30:33Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 30:33Speaker 04

  And I'm just like, I know this from cultural osmosis. Like, I'm working on a book right now that is ostensibly a riff on Little Women. And I'm like, I didn't revisit Little Women. I have half memories of it. And I'm like surprised how much of it like got in there.

• 30:45Griffin Newman?

  I think their point was like, we have seen so many adaptations and riffs on this that we understand what the basic beats are. The actual text doesn't matter as much to us as the idea of, right, the beats, the structure.

• 31:00Speaker 04

  Yeah. It's a loose adaptation.

• 31:03Griffin Newman?

  Yes. Everything about this movie is odd. It's odd that Big Lebowski was seen as such a failure, that this needs to like dig them out of the hole.

• 31:12Speaker 04

  Mm-hmm.

• 31:13Griffin Newman?

  That it does that, but is much more of like a commercial play than like respected by awards bodies, or even feel like critics were a little like, yeah, it's cute.

• 31:22David Sims?

  I think critics were somewhat dismissive.

• 31:24Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 31:25David Sims?

  To the extent of a Coens movie where they, you know, they gave it a look.

• 31:29Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 31:30David Sims?

  But this was pretty quickly minor Coens, and then the cultural footprint arrived a little later.

• 31:37Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 31:37David Sims?

  In a way. Did it get an Oscar nom for screenplay, for adapted screenplay?

• 31:41Griffin Newman?

  Did it get cinematography?

• 31:43David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 31:43Speaker 04

  That was a tough year for adapted, so they like had, they were filling that category. It did get, yeah. I remember Ebert was very dismissive of it.

• 31:51David Sims?

  Ebert was down on this movie.

• 31:52Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 31:53David Sims?

  You know, he's probably just grumpy. I don't know.

• 31:56Griffin Newman?

  Now, David, you and I, I think-

• 31:57David Sims?

  There were no hot chicks in it. That's definitely Ebert's hot chicks era. God bless him. I love Roger Ebert, but once the 2000s start, if there's like a hot chick in a movie, he's like, really was into Angel Eyes? And I'm like, oh, were you, Roger?

• 32:09Griffin Newman?

  Yeah. The Lopez run is incredible. There's something about this movie.

• 32:14David Sims?

  Something about Lopez as a star that really is, I'm really, really interested by her as an actor.

• 32:18Griffin Newman?

  Two stars play this well with the camera behind them.

• 32:21Speaker 04

  I think he put The Cell in his top 10 movies in 2000 and was like, this movie just has an interesting look. And I'm like, it does, but also-

• 32:28David Sims?

  The thing is, right, he was sometimes ahead. You know, like The Cell is good and was dismissed, and it probably shouldn't have been.

• 32:35Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 32:35David Sims?

  But I wonder what Roger's real.

• 32:37Griffin Newman?

  That's why he liked the Garfield movies so much.

• 32:39David Sims?

  Oh, yeah?

• 32:40Griffin Newman?

  Yeah. Because the man was crazy for pussy. So, Oh Brother, Where Art Thou? Was dismissed at the time. David, we established on a previous episode, you and I-

• 32:49David Sims?

  Somewhat dismissed, I think, you know.

• 32:51Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, it was sort of like, okay.

• 32:53David Sims?

  It's not like a hood sucker where people are actively a little hostile.

• 32:56Griffin Newman?

  And once again, it was, it was like, it was an on-base hit.

• 32:58David Sims?

  It was a hit? Oh, made money, yeah.

• 33:00Griffin Newman?

  You and I both think this is the first one we saw.

• 33:03David Sims?

  Yeah, in theaters, yeah. I think without a question.

• 33:07Griffin Newman?

  I hadn't seen any of them. I, I don't think I would have seen any of them-

• 33:09David Sims?

  My question is, right, had I seen one of the earlier ones on, on, on video or something?

• 33:13Speaker 04

  I hit, this is absolutely the first one I saw in theaters. I think I saw Fargo on video, though.

• 33:18David Sims?

  I owned both Fargo and this on DVD in the early days of DVD, and I watched them a lot. And this was a good DVD. It had a lot of stuff. Because of the technical stuff.

• 33:27Griffin Newman?

  Which is also funny because the Blu-ray sucks.

• 33:30David Sims?

  Oh, does it?

• 33:31Griffin Newman?

  It's a bad transfer. They've clearly, like, never updated it, and it feels like it has less features.

• 33:36David Sims?

  A lot of bad discs.

• 33:37Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 33:37David Sims?

  Like, there's the handful of criterions where, like, they've done a good job, but it's like, as I was embarking on the, okay, what discs should I buy? I'm not like you where I, like, you know, will buy, like, a Dutch DVD of, you know, I will never be a world or whatever.

• 33:50Griffin Newman?

  I only do that if there's no other option.

• 33:51David Sims?

  Well, that's not me. No, then I'm like, I rented that on iTunes. I don't need to buy a disc. But with The Coens, a lot of the discs felt a little uninspiring.

• 33:59Griffin Newman?

  Uh, yeah, I'd agree with that. I think a lot of that is, a bunch of their films ended up at MGM, who for a long time really brought up the rear on, uh, uh, physical media releases in the high-def era. Uh, but this one just looks like it's the DVD transfer put on a Blu-ray. I think it was a pretty early Blu-ray release. I feel like it doesn't carry over all the special features. Um, it's a kind of like blocky and artifact-y, which is interesting for a movie that was so pioneering-

• 34:27David Sims?

  Yep.

• 34:28Griffin Newman?

  In its sort of, like, digital control of the image-

• 34:31David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 34:31Griffin Newman?

  That that has not been preserved well?

• 34:33Speaker 04

  Yeah, you watch, I, I watched it on Amazon Prime Video.

• 34:37Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 34:37Speaker 04

  And it was, uh, yeah, it, the, the, the, uh, real breakthrough of the images is not really clear anymore.

• 34:45Griffin Newman?

  It does, it doesn't look bad, but it is very clear that it is like a very old source being used on every streaming platform, on every digital retailer and on the disc. It is like very overdue for like, yeah, like a Criterion set with the fucking concert film on it and all this other shit.

• 35:01David Sims?

  Do they not want to do this stuff because it's kind of like then you're in true retirement mode? Like, are they resistant to like, okay, let's dig through the back catalog? I mean, or do they not want to talk to each other right now?

• 35:12Griffin Newman?

  I think like a lot of filmmakers of their era, weirdly, they kind of don't give a shit unless it's Criterion. It feels like if Criterion gives the call, they're like, we'll show up and we'll do this. And they like do features and they oversaw the fucking transfers and everything for Lewin Davis and Miller's Crossing. And, uh, Blood Simple.

• 35:33David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 35:34Griffin Newman?

  Uh, Fargo Shout Factory has now and put out a good disc, but like the first MGM Shout Factory disc, uh, uh, first MGM Fargo disc is so bad. They had to reissue like an apology disc two years later.

• 35:47David Sims?

  I remember the apology disc.

• 35:48Griffin Newman?

  And then the Shout version is much better.

• 35:50Speaker 04

  I feel like also if I'm the Coen Brothers, this is not at the top. I, I love this movie, but it's not at the top of my list to like.

• 35:56David Sims?

  Yeah, I wonder what they make of this one.

• 35:58Griffin Newman?

  But I'm also like, if I'm them and I'm in like semi elder statesman mode, I'm like, maybe let's get Criterion to put all of them out.

• 36:05David Sims?

  Well, sure. I mean, there's rights issues, I'm sure, but like Buster Scruggs is a movie that I watch where I'm like, oh, these are the guys who made Our Brother. Like, it's not gone.

• 36:14Griffin Newman?

  They're very linked movies and even down to, there's so much similar language. Obviously some of that's time period, but the use of like if in and the structure of the sentences and obviously Tim Blake Nelson.

• 36:26David Sims?

  Yep.

• 36:26Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 36:27Speaker 04

  This is a, a Coens mode. This is my favorite movie by them in a mode I don't always like, which I call effortful pastiche.

• 36:34David Sims?

  Yes.

• 36:35Speaker 04

  Uh, like Hudsucker, I just can't get on board with. I'm so sorry.

• 36:38David Sims?

  That is, that is certainly the Titanic example of that genre.

• 36:41Griffin Newman?

  It is my favorite film and yet as we like are looking forward to the idea of ranking their filmography at the end of the series, I'm like, I don't know if I can put that in the top 10.

• 36:49Speaker 04

  I love.

• 36:50Griffin Newman?

  Well, because they have so many masterpieces, but who knows?

• 36:53David Sims?

  Um, Lady Killers is that.

• 36:55Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 36:55David Sims?

  Which is bad.

• 36:56Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 36:57Griffin Newman?

  I think Lady Killers is good.

• 36:58David Sims?

  Well, but like, it's one of their weakest.

• 36:59Griffin Newman?

  It is their weakest, period.

• 37:01David Sims?

  Um, what else is an effortful?

• 37:03Speaker 04

  I do like, I like.

• 37:04David Sims?

  Does tolerable cruelty count?

• 37:05Speaker 04

  I like, I think, uh, tolerable cruelties and I, I like Buster Scruggs, but I think it's also kind of in that va- vein.

• 37:12David Sims?

  Parts of it certainly are.

• 37:14Griffin Newman?

  In tolerable cruelty is so fascinating to me because it's effortful pastiche, but set in present day, which is I think why everyone bumped on it so hard at the time.

• 37:22David Sims?

  Great movie.

• 37:22Griffin Newman?

  That it was like, this is them failing to make a modern studio rom-com.

• 37:26Speaker 04

  Mm-hmm.

• 37:26Griffin Newman?

  And then I didn't get it until I cracked into like, oh, they are doing Sturgis. It just happens to be 2004.

• 37:32Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 37:32Griffin Newman?

  But this is so structurally, culturally, a movie from.

• 37:36David Sims?

  2003.

• 37:39David Sims?

  Is that far?

• 37:41Speaker 04

  I, I think Hail Caesar's that. That's like, I like a lot of these movies, but I, you know, I, what puts them over the top for me is when they have that layer of craft and then they add in the Fargo thing, the Rowan Davis thing, the No Country thing of like, oh, this is about people, real people existing in, in a movie space.

• 38:00David Sims?

  Those are top.

• 38:01Griffin Newman?

  These are the movies that I think make certain critics like Ebert go like, what are they doing? Are these movies just like making fun of dumb people and showing us how good their tricks are? And they're just sort of obsessed with language.

• 38:14David Sims?

  Number one on that.

• 38:15Griffin Newman?

  That was his whole thing of just like, right, this is them like playing with toys. Uh, and not engaging seriously. Um, but my experience seeing this movie in theaters was just like, holy shit, why is everyone not acting like this is the greatest film ever made? Because I had just never seen their filmmaking style before.

• 38:33David Sims?

  You're getting a shot of Coens.

• 38:35Griffin Newman?

  Totally.

• 38:35David Sims?

  And you've been like a starving child in the wilderness and someone's giving you like, you know, a bottle of Gatorade.

• 38:41Griffin Newman?

  I was in rewatching this.

• 38:42David Sims?

  You're like, ah!

• 38:43Griffin Newman?

  I do think this was like a foundational building block, what I like in filmmaking movie for me. And the way I've talked about like Unbreakable being one of those and Rushmore being one of those. All fucking Touchstone releases. Like just weird to think.

• 38:56David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 38:57Griffin Newman?

  That Disney had an offshoot.

• 38:58David Sims?

  This is like a Touchstone, Universal co-production or something?

• 39:02Griffin Newman?

  Overseas, I think. Touchstone released it domestically.

• 39:04David Sims?

  Yeah, but the production companies are Touchstone and Universal. So like, I think Universal had more.

• 39:09Griffin Newman?

  Cause Universal had the working title first look. Um.

• 39:12David Sims?

  I love the Touchstone fanfare.

• 39:14Griffin Newman?

  Touchstone?

• 39:14David Sims?

  It's your favorite. You have, you always shout it out. Like, you know, you don't even know that you're doing, like you, you love that. It's good. It's just, there's something about it that feels almost comforting. Yeah.

• 39:24Griffin Newman?

  Touchstone's great. It is crazy to think that like Disney bought Miramax. Miramax was their specialty art house division. And yet Touchstone was releasing movies like Oh Brother and Rushmore that were like, we're letting interesting directors make quote unquote, studio comedies. And they're like, these are a little weird, but we're putting them in 2000 theaters.

• 39:43David Sims?

  Yeah. Well, I can tell you about that if I open the, um, dossier, but is there anything else we need to discuss before you do that?

• 39:49Griffin Newman?

  I had that feeling of like, this is the most impeccably made movie I have perhaps ever seen.

• 39:54David Sims?

  Wow.

• 39:54Griffin Newman?

  I am astounded by the craft and the performance and the language. Uh, and I was surrounded by grownups who were just sort of like, that's cute. And I was like, am I losing my fucking mind? How is this not winning best picture? And then I went back, started watching their earlier films and saw every movie they made after this in theaters. And I get it now, where when I watch this, I'm like, I understand how this could be dismissed. But it is kind of a perfect movie?

• 40:18David Sims?

  Mm-hmm. Yeah. It's kind of a, I think it runs out of, not that's too strong, but like, I think it sags slightly in the middle. I don't love, I feel so sorry to say this to this man, he's a nice man. Michael Bataluccio's performance enough.

• 40:35Griffin Newman?

  I like it a lot.

• 40:36David Sims?

  I like it, it's fine, but on re-watch, I was watching it, I was like, this is fine.

• 40:39Griffin Newman?

  It's maybe the weakest section.

• 40:40Speaker 04

  It is.

• 40:41David Sims?

  Uh, the baby face, the bankrupt.

• 40:44Griffin Newman?

  Um, excuse me, not baby face, his name is?

• 40:47David Sims?

  I don't remember.

• 40:48Speaker 04

  George.

• 40:48Griffin Newman?

  George Nelson.

• 40:49Speaker 04

  George Nelson, yeah. It is, uh, it is a pickeresque, and like many pickeresques, it has.

• 40:54David Sims?

  There's some segments.

• 40:55Speaker 04

  It has a gear that it gets in and never quite leaves, which is fun, like it is, it, they pick the exact right length for all of these episodes.

• 41:03David Sims?

  You're gonna be out of an episode quickly enough that if it's boring, you're kinda like, okay.

• 41:08Griffin Newman?

  It is the fascinating thing for me every time I re-watch it, is I remember segments being longer than they are. And I'm such a slut for pickeresque.

• 41:16David Sims?

  You was a toad. Do not seek the treasure. I think casting Totoro as like a southern, you know, yokel.

• 41:27Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 41:28David Sims?

  Is one of their boldest gambits.

• 41:30Griffin Newman?

  These three faces on the poster.

• 41:32David Sims?

  I mean, the faces are so good, and that's why they cast it, but like, Totoro, it's like, this is probably one of the first Totoro movies I see.

• 41:38Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 41:39David Sims?

  Right, and then like every later, I'm like, he's always playing like a racist pizza guy for either Spike Lee or Jokel.

• 41:45Speaker 04

  I can't believe I'm turning this into a thread in this episode, but John Totoro once seemed to have misgendered me, but he had actually misgendered Margaret Atwood.

• 41:52Griffin Newman?

  Wow.

• 41:53Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 41:54David Sims?

  He said, excuse me, sir, to Margaret Atwood?

• 41:56Speaker 04

  No, I was, I was in, I was interviewing him, and he was talking, it was like, uh, we'd plot against America. And I was, you know, I had recently transitioned, I was interviewing him, and he used he/him, and I thought he was talking about me, but he was trying to remember who wrote The Handmaid's Tale. And he was like, and he was like, he wrote The Handmaid's, no, she wrote The Handmaid's.

• 42:20Griffin Newman?

  But he called himself.

• 42:20Speaker 04

  Yeah, he was like, oh, right, Margaret Atwood, so apologies to Margaret Atwood.

• 42:24Griffin Newman?

  That is wild. Um, no, you're right, it is odd to cast Totoro in this way, despite how much the Coens love him.

• 42:30David Sims?

  They're smart.

• 42:31Griffin Newman?

  They're smart, and also, the third person above the title on the poster in this movie is Tim Blake Nelson, who was functionally unknown. Semi-retired from acting and they nailed this so hard. And he's talked so much about the casting process and being like, why the fuck are you offering me this? Straight that he basically off this one performance, never stops working again. There has been no Tim Blake Nelson fallow period where you're like, that guy just kind of disappeared from screens for five years.

• 42:58David Sims?

  I remember he's in Watchmen.

• 43:00Griffin Newman?

  He's in everything.

• 43:01David Sims?

  That is like, I'm like, that's kind of like his Oh Brother performance.

• 43:04Griffin Newman?

  Absolutely.

• 43:04David Sims?

  Such a different character.

• 43:06Griffin Newman?

  But to have this guy who's like one foot out the door in acting and they're like, you're on the poster next to Clooney.

• 43:11David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 43:12Griffin Newman?

  And they're just like, thank you for identifying a key element in the next 25 years of cinema and television. This guy has ultimate utility.

• 43:22David Sims?

  I think they also figured out a thing that can work about a movie like this that we've seen a lot more of now that movies are made on reduced budgets, which is you can have John Goodman come in for five days. And you can have Holly Hunter come in for five days and do a part.

• 43:34Griffin Newman?

  Part of the Peceras magic, but then it's also nice when one of those segments is someone you've never seen before. Like there's such a good balance of like really comfortable, sort of familiar stars. Great character actors who you're kind of discovering and then just like some people with great faces. Like the woman at the bank who calls him baby face is clearly just a woman they found in town.

• 43:57David Sims?

  Oh, she's such, such a good face.

• 43:58Griffin Newman?

  Incredible. The guy who says he can't keep the fucking soggy bottom boy albums on the shelves.

• 44:04David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 44:04Griffin Newman?

  Great face, just some guy.

• 44:06David Sims?

  I want to say something about Tim Blake Nelson.

• 44:08Griffin Newman?

  Say it.

• 44:08David Sims?

  I just feel like he's been operating in the shadows recently, you know, sort of pulling the strings.

• 44:13Griffin Newman?

  What is the joke here?

• 44:15David Sims?

  It's like he's got a little tablet, maybe he's in like a base, you know, and if he taps the tablet, like make anything happen in the entire world.

• 44:22Griffin Newman?

  You think that he's quietly the leader?

• 44:23David Sims?

  I think he's been pulling the strings recently. That's all I'll say.

• 44:26Griffin Newman?

  Three times they tried to cast him as a Marvel character.

• 44:29David Sims?

  Sure.

• 44:29Griffin Newman?

  I'm counting the two Hulks.

• 44:31David Sims?

  Sure.

• 44:31Griffin Newman?

  As separate times because they were so split up in such different characterizations, right?

• 44:36David Sims?

  Sure, right.

• 44:36Griffin Newman?

  And on paper, you're like, Tim Blake Nelson is the leader? Fuck. Tim Blake Nelson as Mole Man? Incredible. They're bringing Tim Blake Nelson back as the leader? He's really going to do it this time? All three times fucking just mangled it and it's not his fault.

• 44:49David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 44:50Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 44:50David Sims?

  So, Oh Brother, Where Art Thou? Uh, was a film that made by the Coen Brothers. And for the first decade of their career, according to JJ, they could basically just make whatever they wanted to make. Uh, Hot Circle Proxy took a little while. They have Suburbicon, which of course, they never make, but that's a script they had for a long time and then George Clooney perfected it.

• 45:11Griffin Newman?

  I was waiting for its ideal form.

• 45:14David Sims?

  Um, but essentially the Coens were saying, like in the nineties, like, we don't have any rejected scripts.

• 45:20Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 45:20David Sims?

  Like, we're not sitting on a ton of projects.

• 45:23Griffin Newman?

  For the first time, they now have stuff that's not getting off the ground.

• 45:27David Sims?

  As JJ would put it, their first case of the attaches happens after Big Lebowski. So To the White Sea, which of course our friends, Jordan and Ray have covered very extensively. They're prob- their most famous unrealized project.

• 45:41Griffin Newman?

  Great unmade project, yes.

• 45:42David Sims?

  Um, which is based on a James Dickey novel about, what, a guy on the beach or something? Who gives a shit?

• 45:46Griffin Newman?

  Hey!

• 45:47David Sims?

  I love being dismissive of this movie. Uh, it was gonna be a Brad Pitt vehicle.

• 45:52Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 45:52David Sims?

  Light on dialogue, brutal.

• 45:54Speaker 04

  I remember-

• 45:55David Sims?

  This was such a hyped thing.

• 45:57Speaker 04

  This is like the period when Ain't It Cool News is like the biggest and, and-

• 46:01David Sims?

  They were like-

• 46:01Speaker 04

  Like, yeah, Drew McQueen, he's like, this is the greatest screenplay I've ever read.

• 46:04Griffin Newman?

  This is my single best screenplay of all time. I mean, it reads unbelievably.

• 46:08David Sims?

  Right.

• 46:08Griffin Newman?

  And if you're reading it while thinking about the 10 Coen Brothers movies you've already seen at that point, you're like, how is this thing not a fucking-

• 46:15David Sims?

  Why didn't they make it? Cowards.

• 46:17Griffin Newman?

  I think, cause this is also-

• 46:18David Sims?

  Too white for them?

• 46:20Griffin Newman?

  Yeah. Yep. Oscar's too white. Um, they, I think it was another case where Pitt pulled it out at the last second. This is that big era for him of like the fountain and To the White Sea.

• 46:33Speaker 04

  They'd already had trouble finding someone to give them money to make it, cause it was gonna be expensive and like not an easy sell. So, yeah.

• 46:42Griffin Newman?

  It's a little, uh, 1917, not in that it's a one-shot, but that it's just sort of like one guy surviving in semi-real time. Uh, but without dialogue.

• 46:52Speaker 04

  And it's interesting they do this because this is the comedy version of To the White Sea in a very strange way.

• 46:59Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, yeah, in a certain way. But I think, yeah, I think Pitt either properly dropped out or was like, I took Troy, it's backburnered or whatever. I know Intolerable is the thing that they make right when they thought To the White Sea was about to go, but they're obviously trying to get it off the ground at this point.

• 47:15David Sims?

  Now, uh, some other stuff they get attached to, um, an adaptation of the Elmore Leonard novel Cuba Libre. Which is set in Cuba in the 1890s before the Spanish American War. That would probably have been like a big movie that doesn't happen. They also were interested in another Leonard novel called The Brava. About a Secret Service agent who gets mixed up with an aging movie star. Sounds kind of fun. Of course, famously, Ethan Cohen has a screenwriting credit on the film The Naked Man, the Michael Rappaport movie.

• 47:45Griffin Newman?

  J. Todd Anderson, their longtime collaborator, storyboard artist.

• 47:49David Sims?

  Yeah, have never seen. It's like he becomes like a wrestler who is naked.

• 47:54Griffin Newman?

  His wrestling costume is like an inside out body.

• 47:58Speaker 04

  It's the movie spin off of that Friends character that we never see, right?

• 48:02Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, the naked guy.

• 48:05David Sims?

  Rappaport, of course, was in Friends.

• 48:06Griffin Newman?

  Yep, Ray and Jordan stand for it, say it's like a fun. Extremely silly, unserious.

• 48:13David Sims?

  And Ethan is sort of like, look, that was J. Todd's thing, but I thought it was so like fun and silly and like I have no sense of ownership over it.

• 48:20Griffin Newman?

  It's the crime wave, driveway dolls in Ethan where sometimes if you go like, do you want to make something that has zero prestige to it? I think he has a really good time. Yeah.

• 48:31David Sims?

  Ethan also released a short story collection called Gates of Eden, which I have read.

• 48:35Griffin Newman?

  Wow.

• 48:36David Sims?

  I remember it being pretty good.

• 48:38Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 48:39David Sims?

  So they're doing stuff, but they start work on Oh Brother in 1997.

• 48:43Griffin Newman?

  I also just want to call out, I don't know the exact timeline of this, but this is certainly all bubbling at this time. Gambit, which they write but don't direct. And Talbot Cruelty and Ladykillers, they're hired to write and then end up directing. Like this is the period in time where they're starting to take assignment work, at least to pay the bills. Yeah.

• 49:02David Sims?

  They like period stuff, obviously, so Oh Brother sees them traveling to the 30s. They claim they did a little research and they didn't read the Odyssey. They're, you know, I find all of that hard to believe.

• 49:14Griffin Newman?

  I do too.

• 49:15David Sims?

  There's so much in this soup of this movie that is based on history of, you know, the history of the time and the politics and stuff, you know, whatever. I don't think they're just gonna like, eh, let's have a Klan rally.

• 49:24Griffin Newman?

  I think they did more research on the era than on the Odyssey, certainly.

• 49:30David Sims?

  They claimed that they started with like a three saps on the run movie and then after a while they're like, could this be like the Odyssey? You know, like it's like, you know, which I get that in terms of like, what's the ultimate Picaresque story, I guess, in a way.

• 49:43Speaker 04

  The degree to which it's riffing on southern politics of the time with some degree of accuracy suggests they like at least read the 1997 equivalent of the Wikipedia entry.

• 49:55David Sims?

  Right, exactly.

• 49:56Speaker 04

  The World Book Encyclopedia.

• 49:57Griffin Newman?

  And Papio Daniels is like very similar to a real guy. Isn't there a guy who's like name is 5% off of that?

• 50:02David Sims?

  Yes, and who had a flower-based radio hour. It's not like-

• 50:05Griffin Newman?

  And would sing "You Are My Sunshine."

• 50:06David Sims?

  These aren't like, no, that's a different guy.

• 50:08Griffin Newman?

  Oh, okay.

• 50:08David Sims?

  But that's a different southern populist governor. This is what I'm saying. Like, they are, yeah, they're not just like, eh, you know.

• 50:15Speaker 04

  Even the way the Klan is used in the downfall of Stokes is similar to the way that like the Klan would be a force and then someone would get outed as a member and people would be like, well, we don't talk about it.

• 50:25David Sims?

  Right, you're not allowed to actually be so publicly, you know.

• 50:28Griffin Newman?

  Can I say, what a good storytelling decision to just be like, in a Picaresque movie, tie up all your loose threads by being like, and by the way, everyone across the movie who was antagonistic to us is a Klan member. We can just knock them all out in one go.

• 50:42David Sims?

  They claim, everyone claims that the only person involved who actually wrote the Odyssey was Tim Blake Nelson, who has a degree in classics from Brown University.

• 50:49Griffin Newman?

  Yes. His WTF, he definitely talked about this, that they would come to him and be like, how does this go in the real story?

• 50:57David Sims?

  Obviously, the film is inspired by Sullivan's Travels, the Preston Sturgis masterpiece in that movie. Joel McCray is trying to make Oh Brother, Where Art Thou, which is this like parody of like a serious movie.

• 51:08Griffin Newman?

  Have you ever seen Sullivan's Travels, Ben?

• 51:10Speaker 03

  I have not.

• 51:11Griffin Newman?

  It's one of the greatest comedies of all time, but yes, it's about a successful Hollywood, uh, he's a screenwriter?

• 51:16David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 51:16Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, uh, who, uh, makes very successful comedies, but begs for the idea of prestige. And the idea that what he's making is frivolous and doesn't matter.

• 51:27David Sims?

  Right. And the most important scene in Sullivan's Travels is when a bunch of prisoners are shown cartoons. Like, and it's like about how the power of art is not, you know, in like fake seriousness. And the prison scene, watching the movies, you know, like there's so many obvious references to Sullivan's Travel.

• 51:43Griffin Newman?

  But it's what I find so fascinating is in that movie, the movie he says he wants to make, that's his big, serious issues movie is Oh Brother, Where Art Thou?, which is a story of the downtrodden man. And they tell him, you don't know how to relate to this, you can't write this. So then he pretends to be a hobo in order to gain the experience, but then he gets kind of caught and he can't get out of the life. And he's stuck in it and he ends up in prison. He watches these prisoners watch cartoons and he's like, oh, making people laugh has value. I don't need to make something that is self-serious. But this movie has the title of the fake self-serious movie and is having this very interesting kind of cake and eat it too thing where it's like, it's a comedy, but also it is actually engaged in the reality of the types of people in a silly way that he's attempting to make Oh

• 52:28Griffin Newman?

  Brother, Where Art Thou? about? If that makes sense?

• 52:30David Sims?

  It does, yeah.

• 52:31Speaker 04

  I think that part of the critical reaction to this movie was based in, oh, they're, they're showing you their hand throughout. They're like, they're showing you all the references they're making, they're letting you know what they're doing in a way that I think actively turns people off, maybe on a first watch sometimes.

• 52:47Griffin Newman?

  Don't you think that is also an interesting thing, though, of like the most film literate people, writing reviews dismissing, yeah, I get it, I know all the references.

• 52:57David Sims?

  Right.

• 52:57Griffin Newman?

  And you're like, you're holding it against them that you know the same stuff?

• 53:01David Sims?

  It's a, it's if I ever teach film criticism, don't think you're smarter or don't care that you're smarter than a movie.

• 53:07Griffin Newman?

  And also like not to be an asshole, but like fucking 90% of the people who are reading your reviews aren't gonna be like, oh, I get it.

• 53:13David Sims?

  George Clooney had made a little film, a little tiny film, as my daughter likes to say when she wants to watch One More Bluey, a little tiny one, she'll say, as if like that, you know. Um, had she, he made this little film called Batman Ampersand Robin. Have you heard of it?

• 53:29Griffin Newman?

  I have.

• 53:29David Sims?

  Have you seen it?

• 53:30Griffin Newman?

  And we covered it on our Patreon.

• 53:31David Sims?

  Well, that's right. Uh, and he'd been on ER for five years and he claims he went to his accountant and said like, how am I doing? The accountant was like, if you never work again, you will be fine. You've made money, sir. And George Clooney is one of those guys who I guess was not famous long enough that he's not like, I need endless money. Of course, then he does stumble into a tequila company and make a billion dollars.

• 53:51Griffin Newman?

  It is so funny, you always talk about when you interviewed him for Suburbicon.

• 53:55David Sims?

  Yep.

• 53:55Griffin Newman?

  And he was like, the great thing is that now I've. Struck oil.

• 53:59David Sims?

  I truly, if I am doing something, I'm doing it because I want to do it.

• 54:03Griffin Newman?

  Right, but was also like, the tequila company has freed me up where now I don't need to just work to pay the bills. And I'm like, I think you've kind of been past that point, but I understand you've entered a new strata of wealthy now.

• 54:13David Sims?

  The whole problem with that era of his, where you're like, oh, that's great. You don't need to make money to make the bills. And then the movies he makes, I'm like, I think you need the bills weighing down on you a little bit, buddy.

• 54:23Griffin Newman?

  It's a decade of lazy boy filmmaking where I'm like, you're too comfortable.

• 54:27David Sims?

  So, right after Batman and Robin, which is a critical and commercial failure. I don't know if you guys knew that. Do you like Batman and Robin?

• 54:34Speaker 04

  Uh, not as much as I feel like I should. I feel like it's the kind of movie I should be like, yeah.

• 54:40David Sims?

  Because now everyone is like, Batman and Robin, slay.

• 54:43Griffin Newman?

  Where do you stand on Forever, though?

• 54:45Speaker 04

  I like Forever.

• 54:46Griffin Newman?

  See, I bump on Forever and Robin I love, but that might just be which I saw.

• 54:49Speaker 04

  I just think Val Kilmer's hot. That's literally what it is.

• 54:51David Sims?

  He sure is.

• 54:52Griffin Newman?

  Was.

• 54:53David Sims?

  Sure was.

• 54:53Speaker 04

  Well, in that film, he's, yeah.

• 54:56David Sims?

  So his next three films after Batman and Robin are Three Kings, Out of Sight, and Oh Brother, Where Art Thou? Right? Now, there's some bad ones in there, but they're mostly like cameo. There's some other, look, those are his next three big projects. Soderbergh.

• 55:07Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 55:07David Sims?

  Damon O'Russell. But he was, you know, an exciting young filmmaker.

• 55:11Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 55:11David Sims?

  And it's a very good film. And Joel and Ethan Cohen.

• 55:14Griffin Newman?

  He talks about that in that era, like post fucking accountant conversation, he's like, I, if Batman and Robin is how to like do the conventional movie star thing and play to win, I like don't care about maintaining my quote. I'm gonna like cut my quote in half. He said like, I think I've been paid my full quote like four times in my entire career past Batman and Robin.

• 55:36David Sims?

  I wonder what those are, yeah.

• 55:37Griffin Newman?

  I think it's like Tomorrowland, probably Ocean's 13.

• 55:40David Sims?

  Yeah, come on, give him the quote.

• 55:42Griffin Newman?

  I think Perfect Storm was whatever the quote was at the time, but that he's like, I'd rather take less upfront and bet on the movie.

• 55:50Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 55:50Griffin Newman?

  And have like a higher stake in the backend and, and be able to work by not saddling a movie with a 10, 15 million, 20 million dollar salary on top of it, keeping the movie's costs lower so that the return on investment is higher and the film can be stranger.

• 56:06Speaker 04

  When, and when he leaves ER, which is around this time too, it feels like it's the one time that's a big star leaves a TV show and there's not like a lot of ranker. Everyone was just like, oh yeah, he's gonna leave.

• 56:16David Sims?

  It's time for him to look.

• 56:17Speaker 04

  And like, he came back in the final season, like he's.

• 56:20David Sims?

  Well, more importantly, he comes back in season six, in my opinion, the greatest cameo in a TV show ever, because nobody knew that was happening. That when Marg Lee leaves the show, spoiler alert for ER.

• 56:31Griffin Newman?

  Right. He comes in, she's delivering.

• 56:33David Sims?

  She just leaves, she's like, I'm out of here. She's pregnant with his child, but you're like, you know, they're not getting Clooney back, he's fucking, oh brother, we're art there now. And then he, she just goes to that dock and there he is fishing on the dock. Ah, it's so good. Everyone lost their minds.

• 56:47Griffin Newman?

  But there is this kind of interesting fulcrum point here, which is like, One Fine Day, Peacemaker, Batman and Robin is like, sort of the, the obvious studio playbook for how to build the movie star career, right? It feels like he hits a bit of a wall. Batman and Robin's like, the real crash. And then he resets and Out of Sight fucking rules and is beloved and was the coolest movie. And everyone's like, Clooney's done it, he's convinced us he's a movie star, but that movie doesn't do well.

• 57:15David Sims?

  No, it does like, fine at best.

• 57:18Griffin Newman?

  Three Kings does alright.

• 57:20David Sims?

  Yeah, yeah, but it's a challenging movie.

• 57:22Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, there was a feeling when this movie came out of like, has Clooney cracked it?

• 57:27David Sims?

  Well, you're forgetting, Perfect Storm was a huge hit.

• 57:30Griffin Newman?

  That's the other.

• 57:31David Sims?

  And that's a summer 2000 movie.

• 57:33Griffin Newman?

  But that almost feels like him playing it a little bit safe.

• 57:35David Sims?

  He's got the overalls on, he's got the big beard, but he is good. That movie is kind of underrated at this point. People forget about Perfect Storm. I love that the ILM doc gives it its due.

• 57:45Griffin Newman?

  I told you to watch that for that Perfect Storm show.

• 57:47David Sims?

  You know, Decade of Dreams, what the hell is?

• 57:50Griffin Newman?

  Light and Magic?

• 57:50David Sims?

  Light and Magic, yeah. Uh, about just like how fucking hard it was to make water, like in 2000.

• 57:57David Sims?

  And then, right, this is a brother where everyone's like, he's, I mean, he's so good in this.

• 58:00Griffin Newman?

  He's so good. He wins the Golden Globe and it felt like.

• 58:03David Sims?

  It's movie star shit.

• 58:04Griffin Newman?

  And his head is held high. He's not doing his usual tics. He's unlocking like new movie star moves.

• 58:10David Sims?

  And then next year is Ocean's Eleven, which is kind of everyone just being like, all right, you know,

• 58:14Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 58:15David Sims?

  You're never a TV.

• 58:16Griffin Newman?

  That's the full moment.

• 58:17David Sims?

  Turned movie star again. You are George Clooney. You're in the A-list. Yes.

• 58:20Griffin Newman?

  Right. You've, you've made yourself now part of the Mount Rushmore of Hollywood.

• 58:24David Sims?

  Also him like bazooking Brad Pitt off the screen. But God love Brad, but like everyone's coming out of that movie horny for George.

• 58:29Griffin Newman?

  That's what's incredible about that movie is that Brad Pitt's like unlocks his thing by being like, I don't have to shoulder the weight of being the guy at the center, which makes him interesting for the first time. Kind of helps him crack his movie star persona. And then Clooney is like, I'm so ready to be the guy at the center.

• 58:46Speaker 04

  The thing about this movie figures out about Clooney is that, and out of sight to some extent, is that his movie star persona increasingly is like, I'm one of the most handsome men who's ever lived, but also I can be like, whatever persona I'm playing.

• 59:00Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 59:00Speaker 04

  Like you would not expect me to be this handsome.

• 59:02Griffin Newman?

  And he can, he can subvert the wattage. Like what is incredible about this character and this performance is that he has the confidence of, I am George Clooney, I am Danny Ocean, and he's an idiot. Like you talking about how bizarre but brilliant it was to cast, uh, Totoro as this yokel.

• 59:22Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 59:23Griffin Newman?

  At some point late in the rewatch last night, I was like, is this movie their sort of sideways Three Stooges thing?

• 59:29Speaker 04

  Sure.

• 59:30Griffin Newman?

  But they're changing the power structure versus the, um, the, the characteristics. Because like, you know, the, the Three Stooges is like the intellectual, the angry emasculated leader and the idiot, right? And this is like Clooney is kind of the curly, but has taken on the leadership role. Totoro is the mo and is even angrier because he's not leading the group.

• 59:54David Sims?

  Almost styled like mo and yeah, for sure.

• 59:56Griffin Newman?

  And like, Totoro is so funny in this because anytime they cut to him, you're just like, he's so mad. He looks so furious all the time. And then like Tim Blake Nelson. Is a weird version of a Curly where he just looks agog. But Clooney nails so hard, playing this sort of confusion of he can't quite get his head around what's going on. But he's so committed to his idea of I got the brains. I'm leading this operation that he has to adjust on the fly really fast, which is always fun to watch him figure out.

• 1:00:27Speaker 04

  It's so, it's also so hard to play just smart enough to think you're smarter than you are and like actually be a little bit.

• 1:00:35David Sims?

  Right.

• 1:00:35Speaker 04

  Blank.

• 1:00:36David Sims?

  He's not stupid. He's kind of stupid. And the Coens used to talk about their idiot trilogy with this intolerable cruelty and I guess burn after reading, although hell Caesar was always right. Like their promised third entry.

• 1:00:49Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:51David Sims?

  But he's not totally stupid. He's got the gift of the gab. But anytime he uses the gift of the gab, I feel like everyone's just kind of waiting for him to stop talking. Like you never really see him charm that many people into what he wants.

• 1:01:03Griffin Newman?

  I still love that the character is overwritten, that he keeps using these hundred dollar words in a way where people actually don't understand what he's saying. His like, his speech is so circular and like flowery and bizarre that it's combined with the speed at which he's delivering it. He's not actually successfully connecting and communicating things to other people.

• 1:01:25Speaker 04

  Yeah, he's trying to like reconnect with his ex-wife and just like unable to be sincere for a second. He's just like trying to like establish his claim in a weird way, but like also in a charming way. It's fascinating.

• 1:01:39Griffin Newman?

  You can just see why he shows up on set and they just fucking fall in love with this guy and are like, we can write for him forever. This is our favorite type of character and no one is better at playing this than him.

• 1:01:51David Sims?

  My hair.

• 1:01:53David Sims?

  Every time he wakes up in the movie.

• 1:01:54Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:54David Sims?

  My hair. So funny. Can I say about his hotness?

• 1:01:59Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:00Speaker 03

  And how it stands out in a period piece. It made me have this thought of normally you see like an old Deguere type. Those fuckers are busted.

• 1:02:10David Sims?

  Yeah, and they've been, you know, for a Deguere, you have to sit there for an hour or whatever. It's probably hot.

• 1:02:14Speaker 03

  They just got out of the mines, you know? But it made me think like there were smoke shows walking around in those days.

• 1:02:22Griffin Newman?

  In a weird way, I almost think this is the hottest Clooney's ever been in a movie.

• 1:02:26Speaker 03

  Well, he looks so good.

• 1:02:28David Sims?

  It's this era. It's the out of sight, three kings, oh brother.

• 1:02:31Griffin Newman?

  He's peak prettiness, just, just actually in the biology of his life, yes. But he's also just so charming in this while also being kind of unsavory. Yeah.

• 1:02:43David Sims?

  It's a really well calibrated performance. He, as he said, he basically was just like, yes, you know, like he, he didn't even read the script. He was just like, I know what you guys do and I want to do it. He was born in Kentucky, as he will bring up a lot if you interview him. Lived in Ohio for some of his life, but he did go, uh, basically, you know, go back to Kentucky and went to Northern Kentucky University. He gave the script to his uncle Jack.

• 1:03:09Griffin Newman?

  It's the best story.

• 1:03:10David Sims?

  It's such a great story, who I guess is more of a died in the wool Kentuckian.

• 1:03:13Griffin Newman?

  Right. He was like, I want to get the dialect right.

• 1:03:15David Sims?

  I want to like.

• 1:03:15Griffin Newman?

  Send you the script and can you use a tape recorder and do all my dialogue so I can study your dialect?

• 1:03:20David Sims?

  Cause the Coens are like, look, the character's kind of a hick. We want you to have like a thick accent.

• 1:03:25Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:26David Sims?

  So Jack sends back the script written, you know, like read out into a tape recorder. Says, well, George, I don't think people talk like that. Like, which is fair. He's probably reading the script and like, what the fuck is this? And he threw the script away and was just using the tape recorder. And the Coens are like, why don't you say hell and damn when you're doing your lines? And he realized that his, his Baptist uncle Jack had excluded the hells and dams. When dictating the script into the tape recorder.

• 1:03:56Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:03:56David Sims?

  He rewrote the Coen brothers.

• 1:03:57Griffin Newman?

  That's, that's Clooney's favorite thing to say, but also that's what he meant by, I don't think us people talk like that.

• 1:04:03David Sims?

  Yes, I don't think.

• 1:04:03Griffin Newman?

  His editorialization was, we wouldn't take the Lord's name in vain.

• 1:04:07David Sims?

  There would be no oaths.

• 1:04:09Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 1:04:10David Sims?

  Tim Blake Nelson. I mean, he's definitely a guy, but I don't think he's ever been in like a big thing, like had a big role.

• 1:04:17Griffin Newman?

  No, he popped up in little things. I mean, he was in fucking This Is My Life is his first screening credit. He had done some comedy. He was on that fucking Fox sketch show with Jennifer Aniston.

• 1:04:27David Sims?

  All right.

• 1:04:27Griffin Newman?

  And Julie Brown. Was that called The Edge?

• 1:04:30David Sims?

  I think so, yeah.

• 1:04:31Speaker 04

  Sounds good.

• 1:04:31Griffin Newman?

  It was like a, you know, a Mad TV, In Living Color, also ran thing.

• 1:04:37David Sims?

  I think you're talking about The Unnaturals. Is that what it's called?

• 1:04:41Speaker 04

  No, it's not. That's the ABC one.

• 1:04:44Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:45David Sims?

  Okay.

• 1:04:45Griffin Newman?

  That was the Jeremy Renner show.

• 1:04:46Speaker 04

  Yeah. That's Noah Hawley of Fargo.

• 1:04:50David Sims?

  No, no, not that. That was way, no.

• 1:04:55Griffin Newman?

  I'm gonna find this.

• 1:04:56David Sims?

  Yeah, please.

• 1:04:56Griffin Newman?

  But he, um, yeah, he was, he was a fucking, uh, hmm, this is looking like it was The Unnaturals.

• 1:05:03David Sims?

  It's Siobhan Fallon.

• 1:05:04Griffin Newman?

  Paul Feig. Yeah. Okay, but then I think Jennifer Aniston shows The Edge and I was confusing them. Oh, he was also on, well, he's only on one episode of House of Buggin, which was Legazamo's answer to In Living Color. Um, but yeah, he's like, he's popping up in stuff. He's got a larger role in Heavy Weights, but he was a classics major who then went to Juilliard, but was also writing his own stuff. And at a certain point, I think he started to shift to like, I do character actor parts to pay the bills. What I really want to do is make my films. I'm a filmmaker first and foremost.

• 1:05:37David Sims?

  Right, because he makes Oh.

• 1:05:39Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:05:39David Sims?

  Of the Year After This.

• 1:05:40Griffin Newman?

  But the, but Remember had been shot much earlier and pushed back because of Columbine. I think Oh was in the can and supposed to come out 99 and then doesn't come out until two years later. He becomes, he and his wife become friends with Joel and Fran through mutual friends. And they have dinners together.

• 1:05:59David Sims?

  Right.

• 1:05:59Griffin Newman?

  And it's mostly like sharing notes as filmmakers. And his acting career has very much like throttled down in his own internal priority. And then as he puts it, Ethan, Joel at dinner one night was like, we wrote a part for you. Would you mind reading?

• 1:06:14David Sims?

  First send him the script being like, I need your advice on this. It's based on The Odyssey. And then they're like, we want you to play Delmar.

• 1:06:20Griffin Newman?

  It's a straight offer. They never auditioned him.

• 1:06:22David Sims?

  Nope.

• 1:06:22Griffin Newman?

  It's the third lead.

• 1:06:24David Sims?

  He starts six weeks after wrapping Oh.

• 1:06:27Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:27David Sims?

  Uh.

• 1:06:28Griffin Newman?

  And he at first is like, this is a mistake. You shouldn't have me do this.

• 1:06:31David Sims?

  He was doing post-production on set. They let him.

• 1:06:33Griffin Newman?

  Insane.

• 1:06:34David Sims?

  Yeah. Um, and, uh, you know, Tim Blake, no, he's great. He's so fucking funny in this movie.

• 1:06:41Griffin Newman?

  He's so fucking funny, but it like, it unlocks him in a way. It is that thing where he's like, he is so thoroughly trained as an actor. His WTF episode's incredible.

• 1:06:51David Sims?

  Sure.

• 1:06:52Griffin Newman?

  And you're just like, oh, it's easy to look at him. And I think they're seeing him as like the heir apparent to like fucking Snitz in the Buster Keaton movies, or the one guy I always forget the name of who's got the great face in the fucking Preston Sturgis, like this.

• 1:07:07David Sims?

  William Demarest?

• 1:07:08Griffin Newman?

  No, the one who's sort of like owl-like and kind of pencil-neck.

• 1:07:12David Sims?

  There's so many good faces in those movies. Look, what's important is.

• 1:07:15Griffin Newman?

  He just knows how to do all this. He's like perfect at dialect and physical comedy and singing and dancing and everything.

• 1:07:22David Sims?

  Uh, John Turturro, they told him, you gotta shave your head because they said when we do a movie with John, he always starts with the hair. So we figured we'd stitch him up on that one.

• 1:07:29Griffin Newman?

  That's fine.

• 1:07:30David Sims?

  And then they basically show him a bunch of pictures of guys with bad teeth and are like, you're gonna have bad teeth. So again, I think, offer, like no auditions for these parts.

• 1:07:38Griffin Newman?

  He's doing a lot of jaw work, too.

• 1:07:40David Sims?

  Yes. Uh, you know, who else did, oh, no, forget it.

• 1:07:43Griffin Newman?

  What were you gonna say?

• 1:07:44David Sims?

  I was gonna make a Jawa joke, but I couldn't really figure out the way in. I love those guys.

• 1:07:47Griffin Newman?

  They're great.

• 1:07:52Griffin Newman?

  David?

• 1:07:53David Sims?

  Yeah?

• 1:07:53Griffin Newman?

  This episode is brought to you by XYZ Films and the acclaimed new documentary Capturing Bigfoot. On October 20th, 1967, Roger Patterson captured 59 seconds of film showing a creature walking through the Northern California woods. I wonder if you can log that on Letterboxd?

• 1:08:10David Sims?

  It is an iconic video.

• 1:08:11Griffin Newman?

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

• 1:08:34David Sims?

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

• 1:08:46Griffin 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.

• 1:08:55David Sims?

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

• 1:08:57Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:08:58David Sims?

  You know, that you see, you know, whatever. You see it in a documentary for two seconds, but this is. Restoring it and making it look much more clear.

• 1:09:05Griffin Newman?

  There's also a companion podcast, the Capturing Bigfoot Podcast, which goes deeper into the legend and lore of Bigfoot and the Patterson Gimlin film, featuring weekly episodes with experts in cryptozoology, urban legends, and filmmaking.

• 1:09:19David Sims?

  I'm something of an expert in cryptozoology.

• 1:09:21Griffin Newman?

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

• 1:09:24David 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.

• 1:09:39Griffin Newman?

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

• 1:09:55Speaker 05

  Hey y'all, it's Tiffany Stratton from WWE SmackDown.

• 1:09:58Speaker 06

  And I'm Drew McIntyre. So Tiff, what's the Tiffany's Epiphany for the day?

• 1:10:02Speaker 05

  Chumba Casino is the perfect quick break between training, travel, and beating you at everything.

• 1:10:08Speaker 06

  Beating me? I'm here for the new Chumba Casino releases every week.

• 1:10:11Speaker 05

  Charm me on their social games any day.

• 1:10:13Speaker 06

  Nah, I get my Chumba fun, easy, and no stress.

• 1:10:16Speaker 05

  Yeah, when it's not Tiffy time, I'm on Chumba time.

• 1:10:19Speaker 06

  Let's Chumba.

• 1:10:20David Sims?

  No purchase necessary. VGW Group. Void where prohibited by law. CTs and Cs. 21+. Sponsored by Chumba Casino.

• 1:10:29David Sims?

  $26 million budget, highest budget ever for them, even above Hot Sucker.

• 1:10:34Griffin Newman?

  That's wild.

• 1:10:37David Sims?

  And they have Working Title, Studio Canal, Touchstone, and Universal all chipping in.

• 1:10:42Griffin Newman?

  Peaced together, yeah.

• 1:10:43David Sims?

  So I guess that's how they get the money.

• 1:10:46Speaker 04

  It also feels like, you know, George Clooney in an Odyssey adaptation feels sellable.

• 1:10:50David Sims?

  There's something.

• 1:10:51Speaker 04

  In a way, yeah.

• 1:10:52David Sims?

  Yes.

• 1:10:52Griffin Newman?

  Right, like it's, on paper, it's wild that they got $26 million to make this movie, but I still think all those places are like, 26 million for a George Clooney movie sounds like a value, even if it's a weird one.

• 1:11:04David Sims?

  I agree. Shot on location in Mississippi. Deacons is told, Roger Deacons is told, like, we want it to feel like very hot, very dry, very dusty. And Deacons is like, I've shot down there. He shot passion fish. That's like a bit, you know, he's like, it's gonna be green. It's gonna be like lush. You're shooting down there in this like verdant season. And Joel indeed reports that the Mississippi location was greener than Ireland. And that is why the digital coloring stuff comes in because they need to turn the movie sepia essentially.

• 1:11:35Griffin Newman?

  They try to do like a chemical process and it doesn't work. And Deacons is like, hear me out. I think we can try this. This gets credited as the first like complete DI.

• 1:11:45David Sims?

  You know what it just be, right?

• 1:11:46Griffin Newman?

  Chicken Run.

• 1:11:47Speaker 04

  The first complete movie that was digitally scanned, because I did an article on this for Vox, which everyone can read called Colors, Where Did They Go? And the first movie that's completely digitally scanned is Pleasantville. But they are doing that for visual effects purposes.

• 1:12:01David Sims?

  For the black and white stuff.

• 1:12:02Speaker 04

  So this is the first one where they tweak everything. They're just doing it to tweak the colors and it's revolutionary in a way that has kind of ruined.

• 1:12:13Griffin Newman?

  I would agree.

• 1:12:13Speaker 04

  Film making right now. It's beautiful here.

• 1:12:15David Sims?

  It gives you so much control over every like aspects of the frame. And I think, right, it can drive people mad.

• 1:12:21Griffin Newman?

  Every movie is basically manipulated this much now, but.

• 1:12:25Speaker 04

  Now it's manipulated in camera. You're like watching it on a monitor and seeing different color styles.

• 1:12:31David Sims?

  Right, being like, what do I want it to look like essentially?

• 1:12:32Speaker 04

  And at this time, like, they're filming it and Deacons is like, I think I can figure this out in post, which obviously he does. But like, yeah, they are still filming it in a conventional color scheme that he's manipulating.

• 1:12:43Griffin Newman?

  It is wild when you watch the behind the scenes footage and you're like, oh, those shirts were white. That grass was green. Like it's, I can't imagine how weird it must have felt to be the actors in this movie and like go to the fucking premiere. As extreme as like Star Wars, where you're like, wow, suddenly this doesn't look cheap. When you put in the sound effects and the special effects. Like, this movie just must have looked so different than their lived experience filming it.

• 1:13:08David Sims?

  Sure.

• 1:13:08Griffin Newman?

  And there was such a mood and a tone from the color palette, which is so controlled. But I do think now, beyond the ability to manipulate it at the time, Emily, I also think now, people shoot a lot of stuff as like, let's just get the most simple version of the image and we can fuck with it later.

• 1:13:23David Sims?

  Right.

• 1:13:24Griffin Newman?

  Without having the forethought of like, what are we capturing now and what are we gonna change it into later? And I think there's not the same kind of like, control and continuity of like, we have a clear vision for a palette for this movie. That we are using as a North Star.

• 1:13:40David Sims?

  What's funny to me is that the film is nominated for an Oscar for cinematography, like we acknowledge, but didn't win. Deakins, of course, doesn't end up winning an Oscar until Blade Runner 2049, right?

• 1:13:50Griffin Newman?

  Does Gladiator win? Traffic wins.

• 1:13:53David Sims?

  No, Crouching Tiger wins, which is a good-looking movie.

• 1:13:56Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:57David Sims?

  And yes, the other, Traffic was not even nominated. Traffic has the insane like color scheme thing that is, in my opinion, a little heavy.

• 1:14:05Griffin Newman?

  We were texting about that the other day, that you watch it now and you're like.

• 1:14:06David Sims?

  Oh, we're in blue land.

• 1:14:08Griffin Newman?

  I forgot it's literally like Jolly Rancher.

• 1:14:11David Sims?

  And it like invented the whole like tech, uh, Mexico is yellow thing that is like still a scourge.

• 1:14:16Speaker 04

  We rewatched that for a podcast like it's the 2000s last year and it invented modern prestige television.

• 1:14:22Griffin Newman?

  That's a really good call.

• 1:14:23David Sims?

  By mistake. Like, but in adapting prior press television.

• 1:14:27Griffin Newman?

  Funny about it, yeah.

• 1:14:29David Sims?

  It is not my favorite Soderbergh, not even close.

• 1:14:33Griffin Newman?

  No.

• 1:14:33David Sims?

  I really like the Cheadle plot, which is the least heralded of the three plots. I like the Del Toro stuff.

• 1:14:40Speaker 04

  At, at the time, it was like my favorite movie and I re, when I revisited it, I was like, I don't quite know.

• 1:14:45David Sims?

  Like shoots it out of a can, is so much better. And at the time, of course, that was not the thinking. No, Oh Brother Loses, Gladiator, The Patriot, which did have, it did have a touch of the D.

• 1:14:57Griffin Newman?

  It had a touch of the.

• 1:14:59David Sims?

  Television.

• 1:15:00Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:00David Sims?

  And then, of course, everyone's favorite movie, Malena.

• 1:15:03Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 1:15:03David Sims?

  Which I think there was one thing that people thought was very well lensed in that film.

• 1:15:07Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:15:07David Sims?

  I don't know if you guys have heard of Monica Bellucci.

• 1:15:10Griffin Newman?

  Roger Ebert giving that a very good review.

• 1:15:15Griffin Newman?

  He suggested that movie should win exactly two Golden Globes.

• 1:15:20David Sims?

  Two golden legs.

• 1:15:22Griffin Newman?

  We just did a screening of Matrix Revolutions at Nighthawk. We intro'd it. And Monica Bellucci on a big screen is quite a thing.

• 1:15:30David Sims?

  Well, especially now when she's wearing the insane red dress that's just sort of like pushing her boobs together in the most ridiculous way.

• 1:15:36Griffin Newman?

  I'm gonna just say it.

• 1:15:38David Sims?

  He'll die for love. He loves you. Mmm, this is so good.

• 1:15:42Griffin Newman?

  Seeing her one scene on the big screen, I was like, there's a real argument for her being the greatest cleavage actress of all time. I'm not saying she's the largest breasted woman ever to be in movies, but I think her work in the field of cleavage is kind of unparalleled.

• 1:15:56David Sims?

  Should we just let him keep going?

• 1:15:57Griffin Newman?

  I'm sorry, I was just quoting Roger Ebert there. Go on.

• 1:16:00David Sims?

  Deacon says, I think part of the reason I lost, and partly, I'm sure, you know, Crouching Tiger was a big thing, but is that a lot of cinematographers were like, oh, but, you know.

• 1:16:10Griffin Newman?

  Doesn't count.

• 1:16:10David Sims?

  He used a computer. It doesn't count. Like, and now, of course, everybody does that.

• 1:16:14Speaker 04

  And by like.

• 1:16:15David Sims?

  Avatar winning is kind of the big moment.

• 1:16:17Speaker 04

  And now it feels like everything is like Life of Pi, all these movies that are, yeah.

• 1:16:21Griffin Newman?

  Avatar winning is such a strange one and feels like it's wild that it took that long for a digital movie to win. And also it feels like that's the type of win that they don't usually do that early.

• 1:16:31Speaker 04

  But I remember the year before that, people were like, well, could Wally get nominated?

• 1:16:34Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:34Speaker 04

  Cause they like ran a serious campaign of like, no, we think about the cinematography in these movies.

• 1:16:39Griffin Newman?

  Yeah. And then they do the same thing with fucking How to Train Your Dragon. Right.

• 1:16:46David Sims?

  So the music in this film, of course, T. One Burnett, they had worked with him on Big Lebowski a little bit. And that's how they were introduced to him. Let me go back to that, Ossie.

• 1:16:55Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:56David Sims?

  But here, it's like they're working with him from the start of production. He's curating the music. He's finding all these major stars already, like Alison Krauss, David Lee Harris, Julian Welsh.

• 1:17:06Griffin Newman?

  Into the film so inherently. It's not something you can sort of just like choose in the edit.

• 1:17:10David Sims?

  Right. And most of the stuff,

• 1:17:16David Sims?

  like Big Rock Candy Mountain, the session recordings.

• 1:17:22David Sims?

  What is this quote? The stuff that was redone and produced by T-Bone is all featured essentially live. It's music you see performed in the music itself. Okay, that's interesting.

• 1:17:32David Sims?

  Obviously, like Clooney and the Soggy Bottom Boys are being dubbed. That is, I can tell you the names of the, Dan Timinsky, right, and Harley Allen.

• 1:17:43Griffin Newman?

  This movie, for my money, has some of the best lip sync acting ever.

• 1:17:47David Sims?

  It's very good.

• 1:17:48Griffin Newman?

  They oversell it in a way that makes it go down more smoothly, in my opinion, where it's like, it's clear that Clooney isn't singing, but he's making so many faces.

• 1:17:58David Sims?

  Now, he was singing live, right? Like, he sang it on set.

• 1:18:00Griffin Newman?

  That's not his voice, I should say.

• 1:18:01David Sims?

  No, I know, I know, but yeah, yeah.

• 1:18:03Griffin Newman?

  He did.

• 1:18:03David Sims?

  It is, he is shower singing. In like, such a like compelling way.

• 1:18:08Griffin Newman?

  Everyone, everyone who sings on screen, who isn't a musician by trade, is acting the role of singing too hard. In a way that creates a continuity for me that doesn't make me bump out of there. That's clearly not their voice.

• 1:18:25David Sims?

  He is playing a man who is pretending to be a musician who thinks this is what musicians are like. Like, he nails that.

• 1:18:32Griffin Newman?

  Yep, yep. They also make a really smart choice, which is mostly framing that sequence with his mouth obstructed behind this big fucking can.

• 1:18:39David Sims?

  Yes.

• 1:18:39Griffin Newman?

  And so he's doing all this neck and eye acting and shit, but you're not getting caught up on like, oh, the lips are a second off.

• 1:18:45David Sims?

  Right. Um, of course, Clooney loves to self-deprecate and is like, I know my aunt is this famous singer and I tried to sing, but I was so bad at it.

• 1:18:55David Sims?

  Did win Album of the Year, as we say. It's the fourth soundtrack to win that award.

• 1:19:00Griffin Newman?

  Saturday Night Fever won?

• 1:19:01David Sims?

  Correct, as did The Bodyguard. And the third is Henry Mancini's soundtrack for the television series Peter Gunn in 1959. I think we can discard that one.

• 1:19:09Griffin Newman?

  But the other two examples are massive hit movies with soundtracks that also became phenomenons and they're all.

• 1:19:15David Sims?

  You're right, that, right. Oh Brother's not a hit on the same level as those two other movies, but it is three examples of movies where the soundtrack is maybe more famous than the movie in a way.

• 1:19:24Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:24David Sims?

  Right? And they all went a zillion times platinum or whatever. Of course, the cow is digital.

• 1:19:31Griffin Newman?

  Um, I think this is a big movie for them, kind of under unlocking a sneaky amount of digital work. And obviously, the DI is the most apparent version of that.

• 1:19:43David Sims?

  Right.

• 1:19:44Griffin Newman?

  But all of their movies after this have more digital effects than you would imagine, which they're really good at doing invisibly. You know, a lot of it's fucking like landscape changing. Yeah.

• 1:19:53Speaker 04

  I'm glad they didn't shoot cows.

• 1:19:55David Sims?

  You are not even allowed to bring cows near a moving vehicle in a movie because it would startle them.

• 1:20:01Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 1:20:01David Sims?

  So of course it had to be, you know, a big cow. Uh, the frog, uh, Ethan notes that people really hate the frog squishing scene.

• 1:20:10Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, it's gross.

• 1:20:11David Sims?

  Uh, but, uh, he loves it. It's all right to do frogs, frog squishing, he says.

• 1:20:15Griffin Newman?

  It's funny that Goodman says these things give you warts and then squeezes it as hard as he can in his hand. I understand it's spiteful, but I'm like, man, you're like bruising for warts there.

• 1:20:26David Sims?

  So, uh, film premiered at, uh, the 2000 Cannes Film Festival. Normal and regular guy, uh, Luc Besson was the chair of that year's festival.

• 1:20:35Griffin Newman?

  Okay.

• 1:20:35Speaker 04

  What won the Palm?

• 1:20:36Griffin Newman?

  The Pandora was some girl he saw walking by?

• 1:20:40David Sims?

  I give the Pandora to 15 year olds.

• 1:20:44Griffin Newman?

  The idea.

• 1:20:45David Sims?

  No, the Palm went to Dancer in the Dark, uh, which is a highly controversial choice.

• 1:20:50Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:51David Sims?

  Uh, but is a fairly good choice.

• 1:20:53Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:54David Sims?

  In that that is an enduring movie and a special movie.

• 1:20:57Griffin Newman?

  Uh huh.

• 1:20:57David Sims?

  It's not my favorite. I find it to be a tad sad. Have you guys noticed this? Um, the film Yi Yi was in competition, which is basically the greatest movie ever made. It won best director.

• 1:21:11Griffin Newman?

  Okay.

• 1:21:12David Sims?

  Uh, best screenplay went to Nurse Betty. Remember Nurse Betty?

• 1:21:15Speaker 04

  I loved Nurse Betty. I've never revisited it. At the time I was like.

• 1:21:18David Sims?

  I have also never revisited. I have no idea how that holds up at all.

• 1:21:23Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:21:24Speaker 04

  So much of Neil LeButte's work has held up normally.

• 1:21:26David Sims?

  One day I will program, yes, a Metrograph series of Greg Kinnear, the villain, and that will be in there along with Mystery Men and Loser and like a million, someone like you.

• 1:21:36Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:36David Sims?

  Um. Best actress went to Bjork. Best actor went to some sort of rando called Tony Leung for some I've never heard of this movie, In the Mood for Love. I'm just saying, it was an insane

• 1:21:47Griffin Newman?

  Good year. Fuck, yeah.

• 1:21:49David Sims?

  Uh, and so Oh Brother Was Ignored, because I'm sure the cancer was like, well, he's American. I don't understand.

• 1:21:55Griffin Newman?

  It didn't even win most soggy bottomed boys, which is truly kind of insulting.

• 1:22:02David Sims?

  Um, Disney, I guess, is releasing it domestically. Uh, Joe Roth, uh, who is somewhat iconic 90s head of Disney, had just stepped down. People who were coming in are shown the movie and they're just silent, apparently. They're just like, what the fuck is this?

• 1:22:17Griffin Newman?

  Is this De Coker?

• 1:22:18David Sims?

  I guess so. I don't know. Uh, and, uh, so they was released limited.

• 1:22:23Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:24David Sims?

  Uh, in like Christmas time, which is not a, that doesn't make any sense.

• 1:22:28Griffin Newman?

  No.

• 1:22:28David Sims?

  But then the soundtrack starts to kick off, so it has a crazy run, like a really good multiplier. It makes 45 million domestic.

• 1:22:37Griffin Newman?

  And basically runs through the end of the spring.

• 1:22:38David Sims?

  Yeah, like it never made more than like $3 million in a weekend. It just chugged along.

• 1:22:44Speaker 04

  This is, this is a thing that Hollywood often finds out is you make a movie that's like set in like red state America and it takes a while, but it'll catch on and keep playing and keep going. Like, um.

• 1:22:54David Sims?

  Especially back then.

• 1:22:55Speaker 04

  This is a different thing, but like Breaking Bad stayed on the air because of that. It's like, oh, we're getting watched in these places that aren't watching anything else.

• 1:23:02Griffin Newman?

  So mind you, I mean, we'll get to it and I might be, get my numbers a little off here, but like True Grit opens like something to 36 and then ends up at like 170 domestic.

• 1:23:11David Sims?

  It's sort of like a.

• 1:23:12Speaker 04

  Similar thing.

• 1:23:13David Sims?

  A maximized version of this.

• 1:23:14Griffin Newman?

  Right. Like that was their biggest opening ever and then also their biggest multiplier ever.

• 1:23:18David Sims?

  Um, so Oh Brother, Art Thou, um, begins with, um, a chain gang singing Oh Lazarus.

• 1:23:27Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:23:28David Sims?

  An old sort of spiritual, uh, it's such a cool opening. I think, I love the opening of this movie before they're running with the, you know, like just the, like the sort of slow fade up in the atmosphere.

• 1:23:38Griffin Newman?

  And the title card.

• 1:23:39Speaker 04

  It's really just a prologue that kind of has.

• 1:23:41Griffin Newman?

  It is, right.

• 1:23:41Speaker 04

  Doesn't, it's just setting the mood in a way that is, uh, eerie. It's eerier than the film that follows.

• 1:23:47Griffin Newman?

  Take that.

• 1:23:48David Sims?

  There are parts of this movie that are very eerie.

• 1:23:50Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, for sure.

• 1:23:50David Sims?

  Like the sirens.

• 1:23:51Griffin Newman?

  I think this is what blew my mind as a child, where I was like, how can a movie be this funny? Look this good?

• 1:23:56David Sims?

  This like madcap.

• 1:23:57Griffin Newman?

  Have the craft of like a blockbuster action film and its precision. And also have scenes that are like genuinely sad, unsettling, like.

• 1:24:04David Sims?

  Spooky.

• 1:24:05Griffin Newman?

  The Ethan Coen tone management thing in this movie is so insane to me. And part of it is that it is picaresque, which I'm just kind of a slut for these sorts of structures.

• 1:24:16Griffin Newman?

  But I also think it handles the transition between these wildly different moods.

• 1:24:22David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:22Griffin Newman?

  And scenes incredibly well.

• 1:24:24David Sims?

  The, everything about Ulysses and Penelope is so funny, but also like you buy their relationship. And that he cares. It's like well done romantic screwball stuff. It's like, it all works on all those levels at the same time.

• 1:24:38Griffin Newman?

  But this absolutely feels like a drama opening. It does not feel like something that should be able to transition into like slapstick pratfall comedy within 30 seconds.

• 1:24:47David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:47Griffin Newman?

  Uh, which it does. I also, I can't quite crack this take. But there's something to me about the Chanyang at the beginning, mostly being African American men.

• 1:24:58David Sims?

  Sure.

• 1:24:58Griffin Newman?

  Singing like traditional songs before we transition to our white leads, who then become incredibly successful, singing old timey music.

• 1:25:07David Sims?

  Occasionally people think they are, you know, black.

• 1:25:10Griffin Newman?

  Mispresenting, mischaracterized.

• 1:25:12David Sims?

  Sort of by mistake.

• 1:25:13Griffin Newman?

  Right. And then this movie has this.

• 1:25:14David Sims?

  Of course, one of the soggy bottom boys is black. And I assume maybe the two, uh, fake members might be black too. We don't know.

• 1:25:21Speaker 03

  And his character is referencing Robert Johnson, of course, that famous legend mythology.

• 1:25:26David Sims?

  Soul to the devil.

• 1:25:27Griffin Newman?

  But he's like the fourth lead of this movie. I mean, he's like the, the most recurring character in this story.

• 1:25:33David Sims?

  King.

• 1:25:33Griffin Newman?

  He's so good.

• 1:25:34David Sims?

  A musician.

• 1:25:35Speaker 03

  I love his hair. His look is great.

• 1:25:37Griffin Newman?

  Incredible.

• 1:25:38Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:25:38Griffin Newman?

  The, the, obviously the importance of this film soundtrack, but also there's something in it I can't quite totally.

• 1:25:46David Sims?

  If you ask the Coens, I feel like they'd.

• 1:25:47Griffin Newman?

  They'd say nothing. I was like close to a thesis that I couldn't quite crack while watching this, about something about like this shift in Americana music of white Americans understanding. How to pull things and popularize them.

• 1:26:00Speaker 04

  I think.

• 1:26:00Griffin Newman?

  Which is a cycle that then repeats for the rest of time.

• 1:26:02Speaker 04

  I think there is this thing that when white people make a story set in this time period, especially in the South.

• 1:26:09Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:26:10Speaker 04

  They struggle with how to, about white characters.

• 1:26:12Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:26:13Speaker 04

  They struggle with how to acknowledge the systemic racism of the time, especially in like a comedy. And this movie, I think, finds, threads the needle pretty well for the most part.

• 1:26:25Griffin Newman?

  I agree with you and I, it is a thing they get dinged for a lot is how predominantly white their movies are.

• 1:26:30Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:26:32David Sims?

  Sure. Especially those in the era, I feel like where they got a lot of questions about it.

• 1:26:35Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, and even like, you know, like the Merlin Wayans character in Lady Killers is not the best. You know, it's like an example of being like, maybe they should only write white people if this is how they write black parts. But, but this movie I think comes close to doing it really well. There's something that they're not overstating.

• 1:26:52Speaker 04

  It is mostly using the black characters as set dressing outside of Tommy Johnson, but it also is talking about the ways that like, the white characters can get away with certain things.

• 1:27:05Griffin Newman?

  That's the thing for me. And I think that's what is interesting about the opening to me is that you're starting in this sort of like gallows tone, right? Of like men who feel like they have no way out, singing songs out of desperation. And then we're so quickly going to three funny guys.

• 1:27:20Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:27:21Griffin Newman?

  Who like can experience physical violence like Wile E. Coyote. Will always recover from it, right? Can like fall off the back of a moving train and get hit with like, like fucking logs and shit. And they can get out. They can get out. They can sort of like shake hands, win over the public.

• 1:27:41Griffin Newman?

  Turn these songs into something poppier and more fun and more upbeat, a song that is about sadness. And convert it into something that like, um, yeah, removes the, the, um.

• 1:27:55Griffin Newman?

  The trauma from which it was bred in a way that makes it more palatable and like then is weaponized by a fucking politician. Like, there's something there.

• 1:28:04Speaker 04

  Some of it is also coasting off the real history of country music, which is poor white people and poor black people came up with this form of music. And Everett is literally, I believe he's a lawyer, like, he's like someone who is, there's a class element too that really helps, I think.

• 1:28:21Griffin Newman?

  Yes, but he's a fake lawyer.

• 1:28:23Speaker 04

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:28:24Griffin Newman?

  Right. And like, his ability to sort of like, smooth talk people just enough.

• 1:28:28Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:28:29Griffin Newman?

  But, yeah, it's something about, and I think it's why the soundtrack for this clicked so much, because it's so in conversation with something. It is so aware of its own history in a weird way, where it's just like, all of American music comes out of, like, slave songs, prison songs, spirituals.

• 1:28:45Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:28:46Griffin Newman?

  You know, and everything descends from that.

• 1:28:47Speaker 04

  And I think some of that must be T-Bone Burnett's influence, because he knows this history in a way that...

• 1:28:53David Sims?

  I do just want to add as well that I think there also is influence from Irish and Scottish and English folk music.

• 1:29:02Griffin Newman?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:29:02David Sims?

  A lot of folks emigrated to Appalachia.

• 1:29:06Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:29:06David Sims?

  And also, I think, had a big impact as well, and country, blues, Americana music.

• 1:29:12Griffin Newman?

  Did you see Sinners, Ben?

• 1:29:14David Sims?

  I didn't, and it's a bummer.

• 1:29:15Griffin Newman?

  Sinners digs into that a lot in a way I think you'd find really interesting.

• 1:29:19Speaker 04

  I was gonna say, there's a lot of vampire music in this movie.

• 1:29:21Griffin Newman?

  But that's a very good point.

• 1:29:23David Sims?

  All I will say is that while watching this movie, I turned to my wife and I said, "Just FYI, when I'm sometime in my 40s, it's coming, I'm gonna have a year where I get way too interested in blues music and start buying records and reading books and shit."

• 1:29:38Griffin Newman?

  Your ass is gonna have a 78 fucking player.

• 1:29:40David Sims?

  Exactly. Like, I watch like a weird, boring documentary where people are like...

• 1:29:44Griffin Newman?

  Your daughter's gonna be 10 and so embarrassed by you.

• 1:29:46David Sims?

  Exactly. It was like, it just feels like something dads do where they're like, "There's nothing better than the blues," you know? I'm just, I'm tasting it already. Like, I watch anyone play the blues, and the Sinners has so much of it.

• 1:29:57Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 1:29:58David Sims?

  And you're just like, "This is the best shit." It's just a guy and his feelings and a guitar.

• 1:30:03Griffin Newman?

  Not only that, but you watch it and you're like, "Man, it'd be real..." Really cool to know a lot about this.

• 1:30:06David Sims?

  Exactly.

• 1:30:07Griffin Newman?

  It'd be really cool to be the person.

• 1:30:09David Sims?

  A not cool.

• 1:30:09Griffin Newman?

  That makes everyone roll their eyes.

• 1:30:11David Sims?

  Yes, exactly.

• 1:30:12Speaker 04

  When you listen to that, that sound, the crackling of old records, it sounds like you're listening to a fucking ghost.

• 1:30:18David Sims?

  That, it's also spooky and provocative. It's so cool. And there's guys where it's like, they were never recorded, but like people, you know, oral histories like, no one would ever better than Mr. B, B, B. And you're like, yeah, he must have sounded like a, you know, Frank Train or whatever. It's the best.

• 1:30:35Griffin Newman?

  Yeah. This movie also has a fascinating balance of like, right, very modern, clean, present day recordings of professional, modern singers doing these old standards. And then also like Big Rock Candy Mountain, sounding like it was a record pressed on a piece of paper.

• 1:30:53Speaker 04

  And when you talk about the tonal shifts, the music is key to that, which is I think why the soundtrack took off so much because you go from O' Lazarus to, uh, to Big Rock Candy Mountain and it's a, switches on a dime and you do have the credits helping because credits are always changing tone, but.

• 1:31:09Griffin Newman?

  You have this prologue, then you have the credits, which is like intercutting with the song, the title cards that are very old fashioned and then them sort of on the run. And you're very quickly getting into like physical hijinks, these guys being chained together, not being able to get out. And then they go to Delmar's, uh, brother's place.

• 1:31:29Speaker 04

  There's the great, there's the great gag on the train, which is always when I'm like, oh, I love this.

• 1:31:33David Sims?

  Clooney getting dragged out of the train is very funny. Uh, and then they, uh, right. They, then they go to the, the brother's house and then they get baptized. Brother's great. Love that guy.

• 1:31:43Griffin Newman?

  Uh, Frank Hollison.

• 1:31:44David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 1:31:45Griffin Newman?

  Who's in, uh, we've covered him a fair amount. He's in a bunch of Shyamalan movies.

• 1:31:48David Sims?

  Hogwollop.

• 1:31:50Griffin Newman?

  Uh, Twins on Twin Peaks.

• 1:31:52David Sims?

  Yes.

• 1:31:53Griffin Newman?

  Um, there's another director he works with a lot. I was trying to remember.

• 1:31:57David Sims?

  Great face.

• 1:31:58Griffin Newman?

  Yes. One of the great faces, but he's not his brother. He's his kin.

• 1:32:02Speaker 03

  I think he's cousin.

• 1:32:02Griffin Newman?

  I think he's a cousin.

• 1:32:03David Sims?

  Yeah, sorry. Yeah.

• 1:32:04Speaker 03

  And we gotta shout out the little rap scallywag.

• 1:32:06David Sims?

  I love that kid. It's, I curse your name.

• 1:32:09Griffin Newman?

  His wife has R U N O F T. A thing that the kid keeps misrepeating.

• 1:32:17David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 1:32:17Griffin Newman?

  Yeah. But he frees them from the shackles.

• 1:32:20Speaker 04

  That, this is the place where I'm always reminded that they are clearly just going off a memory of the Odyssey. Cause they're like, I think there's pigs in there.

• 1:32:28Griffin Newman?

  Right, right, right. Which I love that like, I think sometimes when these sort of like modernization adaptations get too schematic, the logic starts falling apart even faster. When you're worried too much about like, how do I translate every single element onto a comparable thing in a different place and a different time? It helps that they're kind of just like picking and choosing. And when you get to Goodman, you're like, oh, right. There was a cyclops. This is the cyclops.

• 1:32:57David Sims?

  Yes.

• 1:32:57Griffin Newman?

  I don't care about every single detail being transmuted.

• 1:33:02David Sims?

  No, it is not even remotely right, like at making that effort. And obviously, uh, Ulysses is not coming from Everett. It's not coming from a war. He's coming from prison.

• 1:33:14Speaker 03

  But there's just little stuff. There's little Easter eggs. They mentioned Babylon at some point.

• 1:33:18David Sims?

  The siren stuff, the, the, obviously the, he needs to get, his wife is gonna remarry and he's gotta get back before she does.

• 1:33:26Griffin Newman?

  But it takes us a while to know that. He's telling them he has a treasure of 1.2 million dollars that they have to go find.

• 1:33:32David Sims?

  That he knocked over a bank car or whatever.

• 1:33:34Griffin Newman?

  Yes. And that's why he was in jail.

• 1:33:35Speaker 04

  Happy's loosely the king, but also kind of Zeus. Like it's this thing of, oh, they have like, they kind of have a memory of this. And then also they probably just like looked up a character name list and dropped him in there.

• 1:33:48Griffin Newman?

  Right. There's a different Happy O'Daniel who had a different first name, but existed at the same time.

• 1:33:54Speaker 04

  Oh, the, isn't, his name in the movie like Menelaus, somebody's name Menelaus.

• 1:33:59David Sims?

  Yes, his name is Menelaus.

• 1:34:01Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:34:02David Sims?

  Uh, which, right, King of Troy, uh, right, who's, was that? Who does Brian Cox play in Troy? Gotta look it up. I just remember that movie, you know, obviously got Brad Pitt, you know, stunting on people.

• 1:34:13Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:34:13David Sims?

  But a lot of it is like Brian Cox, Brendan Gleeson, Sean Bean, all, you know, Peter O'Toole.

• 1:34:17Griffin Newman?

  It's got guys.

• 1:34:18David Sims?

  All these gravelly guys in togas with like beards going like.

• 1:34:22Griffin Newman?

  The cast of that movie is so bizarre.

• 1:34:24David Sims?

  Brian Cox is Agamemnon and Brendan Gleeson is Menelaus.

• 1:34:27Griffin Newman?

  Got it.

• 1:34:27David Sims?

  King of Sparta, not Troy.

• 1:34:29Griffin Newman?

  Uh, Charles, Charles Durning, one of my favorite actors of all time.

• 1:34:32Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:34:33Griffin Newman?

  This movie arguably.

• 1:34:34David Sims?

  This is peak Durning.

• 1:34:35Griffin Newman?

  I was gonna say, this movie arguably has like three of my 10 favorite screen actors.

• 1:34:40David Sims?

  So Holly Hunter and John Goodman?

• 1:34:43Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, I mean, Hunter and Durning are absolutely in my top 10. If Goodman isn't, he's very close.

• 1:34:50Griffin Newman?

  And Goodman is just like showing up, knowing exactly what to do, giving you just enough. Holly Hunter's just doing like this real fun, kind of like skill piece exercises. I bet you couldn't think someone could talk faster than Clooney. Durning is given like a fucking five course meal to play here.

• 1:35:04David Sims?

  He keeps coming back.

• 1:35:06Griffin Newman?

  I love that it's like a parallel narrative that is like 30% of the movie.

• 1:35:12Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:35:12Griffin Newman?

  He keeps sort of like overlapping with them and crossing with them, but never like too directly interacting with them until the end. But we spend time with him and his guys.

• 1:35:20Speaker 04

  This movie's like structured as a series of triangles that Clooney is appointing all of them.

• 1:35:25Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:35:25Speaker 04

  Which is a really fascinating choice to me.

• 1:35:27Griffin Newman?

  But you're almost watching it going like, why are they spending this much time on this guy and his like campaign struggles and whatever? But in the structure of it, they let Durning do everything he's good at doing. Like what I love about Charles Durning is that he is such a specific guy. He is not someone who can transform, right? He's not someone who can disappear. And yet there is like a bizarrely wide array of applications for him and specific skills he has. And usually people focus in on one. And this is like, they let him be charming, they let him be funny, they let him dance, they let him sing, they let him be scary. Like genuinely menacing. They let him be kind of like comedically gruff. It's so good.

• 1:36:09Speaker 04

  There is a non-zero chance though, that the Coens just heard there was a man named Pappy.

• 1:36:14Griffin Newman?

  Absolutely.

• 1:36:14Speaker 04

  Who had a flower based radio show and was like, that's, we gotta work with that.

• 1:36:18David Sims?

  That probably amused them quite a lot. Who's the, um?

• 1:36:22Griffin Newman?

  Satan.

• 1:36:23David Sims?

  No, that's Samuel L. Parkin. I know that. Love that guy.

• 1:36:27Griffin Newman?

  Oh, the rival? Homer Stokes?

• 1:36:29David Sims?

  No, him, that's, uh, his name is-

• 1:36:31Griffin Newman?

  Wayne DeVal.

• 1:36:31David Sims?

  Wayne DeVal.

• 1:36:32Griffin Newman?

  He's, uh, Robert DeVal's, uh, cousin?

• 1:36:35David Sims?

  He's good. He's, uh, he's one of those guys who's in like a bajillion things and, you know, little roles or whatever. Um, no, uh, Pappy's got the son, right? And then he's got the two kind of advisors.

• 1:36:45Griffin Newman?

  One of them is the not counting the mezzanine guy.

• 1:36:48David Sims?

  That, that's-

• 1:36:48Griffin Newman?

  Oh, no, I'm sorry. He's the eyebrows guy.

• 1:36:50David Sims?

  Yeah, what's his name? That guy?

• 1:36:52Griffin Newman?

  I'm gonna figure it out.

• 1:36:52David Sims?

  Okay.

• 1:36:53Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:36:53David Sims?

  Um, I was just trying to remember that guy's name, cause I love that guy's face.

• 1:36:56Griffin Newman?

  Yes, he's incredible.

• 1:36:57David Sims?

  I'll find out. But anyway, so, okay, what's going on in Oh Brother, Where Art Thou? They get baptized.

• 1:37:02Griffin Newman?

  Yes. You introduced Tommy pretty quickly.

• 1:37:05David Sims?

  It's like, but like, it's like, okay, so through the-

• 1:37:07Griffin Newman?

  Cause they're introduced to Tommy before the baptize, the baptism.

• 1:37:11David Sims?

  Uh, no, right after.

• 1:37:12Griffin Newman?

  Are you sure?

• 1:37:13David Sims?

  I'm not sure, but, uh, I can't remember.

• 1:37:16Griffin Newman?

  You also, you set up Daniel Van Bargen pretty quickly.

• 1:37:19Speaker 04

  Yeah, he's when they're in the barn.

• 1:37:20Griffin Newman?

  Cause you see him before, right.

• 1:37:22David Sims?

  Right, with, damn, we're in a tight spot. Damn, we're in a tight spot. Of course, I feel like it was so remarked on, but they break the rule of three. He says, damn, we're in a tight spot four times. The fourth time is so funny.

• 1:37:33Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:37:34David Sims?

  Um-

• 1:37:34Griffin Newman?

  There's a lot of-

• 1:37:35David Sims?

  Like them futzing with things like that.

• 1:37:37Speaker 03

  With his fucking hair, man.

• 1:37:38David Sims?

  Yes.

• 1:37:39Griffin Newman?

  But Daniel Van Bargen as the sheriff is playing the Poseidon role in The Odyssey, but he's also clearly Satan himself.

• 1:37:45David Sims?

  He is Satan himself. As much as, uh, Papio Daniels called him an alias, but he's clearly, uh, Zeus if you're going by The Odyssey.

• 1:37:52Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:37:52David Sims?

  In that he sort of comes and fixes stuff at the end.

• 1:37:54Griffin Newman?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:37:55David Sims?

  Um, but the, I feel like through the, the hogswallop, you're getting like the sense of like, okay, the depression is underway.

• 1:38:04Griffin Newman?

  Mm-hmm. Yes.

• 1:38:04David Sims?

  Through the baptism, you're like, right, this kind of like big tent revival shit is hap- you know, like this kind of new American Christianity stuff is happening.

• 1:38:14Griffin Newman?

  The irony of this movie being like, right, this is a bad time and at the end Clooney is so confident that this is the beginning of a bright future for the American South. You know, that like, this is gonna wash away all our problems and reset.

• 1:38:26Speaker 04

  And like, it's toward the end of the depression. So it is, you know, it is, and the, the, the, they're riffing on the Tennessee Valley Authority and things like, in terms of the, the history of it. So it is, he's not, not wrong, but also.

• 1:38:41Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:38:42David Sims?

  Um, they they've get that and then, yes, they pick up Tommy.

• 1:38:47Speaker 04

  The the baptism doesn't interesting technically that I think is probably a mix of the recording and then live singing, which is as you move past the people being baptized, you hear specific voices pull up in the soundtrack in a way that like, I'm not entirely sure how they did, but I I I was struck by that.

• 1:39:03Griffin Newman?

  I mean, once again, unsurprisingly, uh, Skip Lee say on fucking fire.

• 1:39:08David Sims?

  Yes, the big boy.

• 1:39:09Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:39:11David Sims?

  On those ones and zeros.

• 1:39:12Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:39:13David Sims?

  Um, so, uh, they need money. So, right. Once they have Tommy, that's when they go to the radio station to record as the soggy bottom boys. It's never really remarked on why they are so good at music.

• 1:39:27Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:39:27David Sims?

  Because they don't, they're not good at anything else ever.

• 1:39:31Griffin Newman?

  I mean.

• 1:39:31David Sims?

  But they have no other skill, but I guess the muse sings through them, right?

• 1:39:34Speaker 03

  Yeah, the muse just, it just channels through them.

• 1:39:37Griffin Newman?

  I think that's part of it, but isn't also the implication that's like, right, they were fucking incarcerated. They were in a chain gang. They were like, forced to sing all the time and study other people, you know, they like got it from osmosis a little bit.

• 1:39:48David Sims?

  Right.

• 1:39:49Speaker 03

  I have a question about the song and I I should know this, but was that written for the movie or is that a preexisting song?

• 1:39:56David Sims?

  It is a preexisting song.

• 1:39:57Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 1:39:57David Sims?

  Yeah. Right. Uh, do you know anything about it? I can look it up.

• 1:40:00Speaker 04

  I I don't. It it's, uh, but it is a very old, yeah, traditional.

• 1:40:04Griffin Newman?

  It, uh, rips.

• 1:40:05Speaker 03

  It really is pretty good.

• 1:40:07Griffin Newman?

  That, you know, the song is like highlighted in the trailer and I even remember seeing the trailer for this movie and being like, I gotta buy the soundtrack.

• 1:40:14David Sims?

  It, uh, uh, was titled farewell song in a songbook dated to around 1913. It got its current title in 1928. It's had many, you know, sort of, uh, versions. Bob Dylan's recorded version over the years, Joan Baez, um.

• 1:40:29Speaker 04

  A lot of versions are sad.

• 1:40:31Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 1:40:31Speaker 04

  And this one is.

• 1:40:32David Sims?

  This is more upbeat.

• 1:40:33Griffin Newman?

  This is sort of the pop version of it. Uh, I do.

• 1:40:36David Sims?

  So it supposedly maybe is from this guy, Dick Burnett, who is like a partially blind fiddle player and it might be about him, but the, you know, we're not sure.

• 1:40:44Griffin Newman?

  In this era where you basically had to buy an entire album if you wanted one song.

• 1:40:48David Sims?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:40:49Griffin Newman?

  Don't you think it was just like the fucking rocket? Power of this thing was like, like, I guess I need that soundtrack. Obviously, the music's great.

• 1:40:56David Sims?

  Yes, I think so, because the soundtrack does have a lot of, right? Not, it has the spirituals and it has these like weird creepy numbers that are awesome, but it's not, you know, put it on at a party.

• 1:41:07Griffin Newman?

  I think the surprise for people is that when they bought it for this song, that then they were like, this plays really well as an album.

• 1:41:13Speaker 04

  This feels like a classic, you're riding in a friend's car. And like, this album's on, you're like, what is this? And I, you know, like, it's impacting outsized beyond the movie feels like that.

• 1:41:23Griffin Newman?

  I think of this as being a blockbuster car album. It really feels like this was a thing that like, people were buying at Starbucks, right? Along with their Norah Jones album, propelled by that one song that's really fun and punchy. And then you're like, fuck, this is just kind of good music to live my life to.

• 1:41:39Speaker 03

  It's just crazy that we're like 17, listening to this.

• 1:41:42Speaker 04

  This is the era of Starbucks albums pulling off upsets at the Grammys too. They're just winning every year, like, yeah.

• 1:41:50Speaker 03

  And yeah, we just mentioned.

• 1:41:51Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:41:52David Sims?

  Love Enya. She lives in a castle.

• 1:41:55Speaker 03

  She does live in a castle.

• 1:41:56David Sims?

  Cool lady.

• 1:41:57Speaker 03

  That is so cool.

• 1:42:01Speaker 02

  Don't you wish everything was more rewarding? With Rakuten, almost everything is. You can earn cash back on those new shoes you've been wanting. You can save on the next trip you book. You can cash in on groceries. Just join, shop your favorite brands and save. Target, Instacart, Expedia, Macy's, Sephora, CVS, the list is long. Save online, in-store, and at over 22,000 restaurants. And when it's time to redeem those rewards, get your money exactly how you want it. Choose PayPal, check, built points, or cash out with gift cards. Eligible American Express card members can choose to earn Membership Rewards points instead of cash back. Terms and conditions apply.

• 1:42:44Speaker 02

  So go ahead, take a trip, fill a cart, order dessert. Rakuten is a world of rewards. Join today for free. Go to rakuten.com or get the app. That's R-A-K-U-T-E-N.

• 1:43:03David Sims?

  They do the song, great.

• 1:43:06Speaker 03

  They sing in a can.

• 1:43:08David Sims?

  They sing in the can.

• 1:43:09Griffin Newman?

  There's also, there's the pushcart man, the blind sort of seer who predicts everything that's gonna happen in the movie. And they immediately dismiss him. But that is like a haunting scene. That is like a weirdly eerie scene coming in between a chain gang and like physical nonsense.

• 1:43:24Speaker 04

  Yeah, and like Stephen Runz not like is a comical version of kind of a weird creepy guy, but he is definitely also playing that element of kind of a creepiness.

• 1:43:34David Sims?

  And it's the odyssey. They're always, everyone's always like blind or, you know, there's always something up with everybody that they've come across.

• 1:43:41Griffin Newman?

  Okay, so they're.

• 1:43:41David Sims?

  They're a pig.

• 1:43:44David Sims?

  That, after this is the babyface Nelson stuff. Stuff I remember hitting really hard at the time and, you know, Battaluccio was, should we have a Battaluccio corner? Is it time?

• 1:43:53Speaker 04

  This, he's the one of two actors to win an Emmy for The Practice. A forgotten.

• 1:43:58David Sims?

  Tyne Daly is the other?

• 1:43:59Speaker 04

  Uh, no, Cameron Manheim.

• 1:44:02David Sims?

  Tyne Daly wasn't on The Practice. I made that up.

• 1:44:04Speaker 04

  She's on Judging Amy. Yeah.

• 1:44:06David Sims?

  She was so good on Judging Amy.

• 1:44:07Griffin Newman?

  What are you talking about, Dave?

• 1:44:09David Sims?

  The fuck am I talking about? Right, Cameron Manheim, but that was the thing is like, that's the, Cameron Manheim and Michael Battaluccio were so hot on The Practice for like one year, two years.

• 1:44:20Speaker 04

  Battaluccio was an upset over Steve Harris, who everyone was like, he's gonna win. They were nominated in the same category, but yeah.

• 1:44:26David Sims?

  Right. And then I feel like The Practice, it like hit 1999 and everyone was like, we like the West Wing in The Sopranos now. Like The Practice feels,

• 1:44:35Speaker 04

  Famously, The Practice, The Practice beat season one of The Sopranos in drama, but then like all the actors from The Sopranos, like a couple of the actors from The Sopranos won.

• 1:44:44David Sims?

  I think, I think, well, you know what?

• 1:44:46Speaker 04

  What?

• 1:44:47David Sims?

  I think I can do this. I'm itching to do an Emmy sleep dive, but you guys have to see Eddington.

• 1:44:52Speaker 04

  I think I can do it off the top of my head.

• 1:44:53David Sims?

  I wanted to see if you could do it off the top of your head. The Practice win over The Sopranos is of course one of the most insane, like, what were they thinking? It had won the year before over not The Sopranos, you know, like, so it was season two of The Practice, I think. People don't remember The Practice, it was, it was Dark Ali McBeal. It was David E. Kelly had the hottest legal show. In both comedy and drama.

• 1:45:12Speaker 04

  The famous David E. Kelly thing of, I'm gonna do a show that's serious and real. And by season three, it's bonkers. And Michael Emerson's playing a serial killer who dresses as a nun. And you're like, oh, great. Yeah.

• 1:45:23Griffin Newman?

  Also, at that point in time, he was such a celebrity, like creator, showrunner in a way that wasn't really.

• 1:45:29David Sims?

  Not many like him.

• 1:45:30Griffin Newman?

  A thing. And I always fall into the trap of being like, yeah, and I guess he kind of receded, right? And you're like, man, works more than ever. He's just not the headline on the shows in the way he used to be.

• 1:45:39David Sims?

  He's still working for sure.

• 1:45:40Griffin Newman?

  He also, you know, married Michelle Pfeiffer, which at that peak of TV was just like, this guy also gets to, I feel like there was a Weekend Update joke about like, dude, you're married to Michelle Pfeiffer. Why are you working so much?

• 1:45:54David Sims?

  Fair question.

• 1:45:55Griffin Newman?

  Spend more time at home.

• 1:45:56David Sims?

  ED one actress.

• 1:45:57Speaker 04

  ED one actress, Dennis Franz wins actor.

• 1:46:00David Sims?

  Franz wins, I believe, his fourth and final Emmy.

• 1:46:03Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:46:04David Sims?

  Uh, for lead actor, correct?

• 1:46:05Speaker 04

  And Practice One series, I don't remember who won supporting, I've been trying to crack that.

• 1:46:09David Sims?

  In drama, do you want to know?

• 1:46:10Speaker 04

  I would love to know.

• 1:46:11David Sims?

  Okay, well, it's, oh, man, this is crazy, Badalut show and Holland Taylor for the Practice.

• 1:46:16Speaker 04

  There we go. So Mannheim must have won the year before. Yeah.

• 1:46:18David Sims?

  Or the year after or whatever. And again, that's like Holland Taylor in The Practice, who, I'm sorry, I love Holland Taylor, but please get the fuck out of here. Beats Nancy Marshand in The Sopranos.

• 1:46:28Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 1:46:29David Sims?

  Which is fucking crazy.

• 1:46:30Griffin Newman?

  Her final chance.

• 1:46:31David Sims?

  Yeah. I mean, I think she.

• 1:46:33Speaker 04

  She was nominated for season two.

• 1:46:34David Sims?

  Yeah. But season one is when she's like throwing fastballs.

• 1:46:38Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, they're also not gonna give her a fucking posthumous Emmy for the CGI episode.

• 1:46:42David Sims?

  Well, that's season three.

• 1:46:42Speaker 04

  They should. They should.

• 1:46:44Griffin Newman?

  Wow.

• 1:46:44David Sims?

  She's in one and two.

• 1:46:45Griffin Newman?

  Okay.

• 1:46:45David Sims?

  By two, I think they have a slightly less, they're not quite sure what to do with that character.

• 1:46:50Speaker 04

  By two, by two, they know she's dying. And they're like, we can't work with her as much.

• 1:46:54David Sims?

  Right. Yeah. And like in one, obviously the Tony, you know, and Olivia thing is like the engine of the show more. Yeah, God, what a weird era, because it's like The Practice, NYPD Blue, these kinds of like robust network dramas that were good, but were still like 22 episode, like episode, you know, like case of the week stuff. I don't know.

• 1:47:14Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:47:15David Sims?

  And then like, yeah, it all goes away. Guys, wanna talk about this more? Okay, fine. Oh, brother, where art thou? All right, what's going on in this? Yeah, the Battle Luchu stuff. I don't know. You like him? You like Battle Luchu?

• 1:47:26Speaker 03

  I do.

• 1:47:26David Sims?

  He's like a real guy. Baby says Nelson's a real guy.

• 1:47:28Griffin Newman?

  Who's got this inferiority complex about not being seen as a big tough guy.

• 1:47:31David Sims?

  And he looked like that. He had a little hat.

• 1:47:33Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:47:33Speaker 03

  It was so cool that there were bank robbers.

• 1:47:35David Sims?

  Well, okay, Ben. Yes, sure.

• 1:47:38Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:47:38David Sims?

  It was a great era.

• 1:47:39Griffin Newman?

  Ben raises a great point. I also love the bit of him pulling up and asking for directions. The police cars coming from a distance.

• 1:47:47David Sims?

  He's like, money, get in the car.

• 1:47:48Griffin Newman?

  Them being oblivious. And money is just flying out of the car. And Tim Blake Nelson is doing such good work of like, trying to catch the dollar bills as if it's like a miracle.

• 1:47:57David Sims?

  But he's such an innocent that he's like, gonna give it back.

• 1:48:00Griffin Newman?

  He's just a gog all the time at everything happening.

• 1:48:03David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 1:48:03Griffin Newman?

  I like that good scene where Tommy plays for them again after the recording by the fire. And they all talk about what they're gonna do with their money.

• 1:48:11David Sims?

  Yeah. Yeah, I like that scene too.

• 1:48:13Speaker 04

  Ben, I gotta know who your 1930's bank robber persona is.

• 1:48:17David Sims?

  Taturi's gonna open a restaurant and he's gonna wear a tuxedo every day.

• 1:48:20Speaker 03

  I mean, no matter what, I'm talking like this. Yeah.

• 1:48:22Griffin Newman?

  Good.

• 1:48:23Speaker 03

  For sure.

• 1:48:24Griffin Newman?

  Good.

• 1:48:25Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 1:48:27David Sims?

  But then, will anyone know what you want? You like walk into the bank and you're like, meh. And everyone's like, huh?

• 1:48:32Speaker 03

  I think that's enough because it's such an established thing that everyone knows, yep, this is a robbery.

• 1:48:38David Sims?

  Right.

• 1:48:38Speaker 03

  But my persona, I think I would be fucking dressed to the nines.

• 1:48:43Griffin Newman?

  Okay.

• 1:48:44Speaker 03

  You know, like just a really well-tellered suit, big old hat.

• 1:48:48Griffin Newman?

  Fancy Benny Hossley?

• 1:48:49Speaker 03

  Fancy Benny.

• 1:48:50Speaker 04

  Or Benny the suit.

• 1:48:51Griffin Newman?

  Benny the suit.

• 1:48:53Speaker 03

  Yes, yes.

• 1:48:53Griffin Newman?

  Gentleman Ben?

• 1:48:54Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:48:55Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:48:56Speaker 03

  Damn.

• 1:48:56Griffin Newman?

  This is good.

• 1:48:57David Sims?

  I wouldn't rob any banks, personally. Seems stressful. I might go more for the Taturi, I wanna open a big restaurant and wear a tuxedo every day vibe.

• 1:49:07David Sims?

  You're trying to find something.

• 1:49:08Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, I was just getting through. I, you know what I like about the Battle Luchu sequence?

• 1:49:12David Sims?

  Yes.

• 1:49:13Griffin Newman?

  They make it out and then he plays the deep core sadness at the fire afterwards.

• 1:49:18David Sims?

  The come down.

• 1:49:19Griffin Newman?

  It's hours later and they're sort of like, what's up with him?

• 1:49:22David Sims?

  Right.

• 1:49:22Griffin Newman?

  It's like this thing, it goes from being...

• 1:49:24David Sims?

  And Everett diagnoses him. He's like, when the highs are high.

• 1:49:27Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:49:27David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 1:49:28Griffin Newman?

  But also that they like clock that it's not just that like when he's responding in the bank, it's this sort of like impotent rage, right? It's just this sort of like knee jerk retaliation to the idea of not being taken seriously. And then like later at night, this guy's just sad. It's not like he's still fuming about like, they called me baby face. There's like a deep emptiness inside of him.

• 1:49:53David Sims?

  Uh, Brian Reddy is the name of the guy we were trying to.

• 1:49:55Griffin Newman?

  Hell, yeah.

• 1:49:55David Sims?

  Who's just one of those guys.

• 1:49:57Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:49:57David Sims?

  Two billion things. Including an episode of the practice.

• 1:50:00Griffin Newman?

  You get to, uh, the, the information that the soggy bottom boys were coming to hit.

• 1:50:06David Sims?

  Hmm.

• 1:50:07Griffin Newman?

  That Steven Root doesn't have any info on them.

• 1:50:09David Sims?

  Right.

• 1:50:09Speaker 03

  Right. Now they, is it that this part where the newspaper, they're eating the pie?

• 1:50:16Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:50:16Speaker 03

  Is that this section?

• 1:50:18Griffin Newman?

  It's, look, it's, all good comedies should have at least one instance of people stealing a hot pie.

• 1:50:25David Sims?

  A still pie?

• 1:50:26Speaker 03

  Absolutely.

• 1:50:27Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:50:27Speaker 03

  I, as a kid, watching Looney Tunes was convinced that adulthood, a big part of it was stealing pies off of windows.

• 1:50:34Griffin Newman?

  It's a thing you only get to do when you grow up.

• 1:50:36Speaker 03

  You make the pie and then there's that dangerous part where you're like, it has to go on the windows.

• 1:50:41Griffin Newman?

  It has to.

• 1:50:41Speaker 03

  And it's almost understood.

• 1:50:42David Sims?

  It can't cool elsewhere.

• 1:50:43Griffin Newman?

  Nowhere else.

• 1:50:44Speaker 03

  But it's understood that also you might lose a pie.

• 1:50:47David Sims?

  Thieving children roam the backyards of America.

• 1:50:50Griffin Newman?

  And tasty smell lines are going to reach all the way to the nearest rapscallions.

• 1:50:55Speaker 04

  We're living in a time when we're bringing back too much of the Great Depression era, but we do need to bring back pies cooling in window cells.

• 1:51:01Griffin Newman?

  This is the only part of Make America Great Again I agree with is we, we lost some key element of greatness in our cultural identity. The second we closed our windows and let pies cool indoors.

• 1:51:14Speaker 03

  Um.

• 1:51:15Griffin Newman?

  And that was a big part of Trump's campaign last year, right?

• 1:51:18Speaker 04

  It really was. He brought it up all the time, including.

• 1:51:20Speaker 03

  Put it back on the stove.

• 1:51:21Speaker 04

  That and, that and Paul, that and.

• 1:51:22Speaker 03

  Open the window.

• 1:51:23Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:51:25David Sims?

  Joey and I were doing a whole thing because you know, Maria Hill dies in Secret Invasion, Kobe Smulders, they just shot her, right? You know, like no one remembers this, obviously, because it's been like memory hole.

• 1:51:34Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:51:35David Sims?

  But there was some tweet that was like, she fucking died, like two, you know, two years ago. And, uh, Joey just started doing like Trump being like, wonderful woman, not too tough on the eyes, folks. Maria Hill, we lost a great one. Biden let scrolls into our country, you know, just like.

• 1:51:50Speaker 03

  Scrolls.

• 1:51:52David Sims?

  Trump talking about random shit that isn't real is still funny.

• 1:51:56Griffin Newman?

  The Trump comedy nerd account, which I loved so much.

• 1:51:58David Sims?

  Yep.

• 1:51:59Griffin Newman?

  And would tweet that kind of thing about like.

• 1:52:01David Sims?

  Treat like Seth Simon tweets.

• 1:52:02Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:52:03David Sims?

  Yes.

• 1:52:03Griffin Newman?

  But like experimenting Mitch Hurwitz tried to reinvent the wheel with season four and Netflix made him recut it chronologically like a dog.

• 1:52:14Griffin Newman?

  Like shit like that.

• 1:52:18Griffin Newman?

  Never not funny.

• 1:52:19David Sims?

  It's just unfortunate.

• 1:52:20Griffin Newman?

  I hate that he lives through a world.

• 1:52:22David Sims?

  Bad person.

• 1:52:23Griffin Newman?

  Bad person.

• 1:52:24David Sims?

  But it's funny to imagine talking about scrolls.

• 1:52:26Griffin Newman?

  It is. We hate the scrolls, folks.

• 1:52:29David Sims?

  I'm gonna get the scrolls out. I didn't let the scrolls in.

• 1:52:33Griffin Newman?

  They were fighting the Kree for a long time.

• 1:52:35David Sims?

  Border porous scrolls coming in. Um, they get, the siren sequence is next where they get turned into, uh, they think Pete gets turned into a frog.

• 1:52:43Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:52:44David Sims?

  A toad.

• 1:52:44Speaker 04

  A horny toad.

• 1:52:45Griffin Newman?

  They're tempted by the fornication.

• 1:52:46Speaker 03

  Another thing, when I was a kid, I was pretty sure that I would be regularly drinking out of a jug with three X's labeled on it. I've still never done that.

• 1:52:55David Sims?

  You would like go to the store and that would be on a high shelf.

• 1:52:57Griffin Newman?

  Mm hmm. Yeah. Yep. This whole movie is like Ben's Pinterest board.

• 1:53:02Speaker 04

  You mentioned.

• 1:53:02Griffin Newman?

  As a 10 year old.

• 1:53:03Speaker 04

  You mentioned your wife's got a surprise plan for you for your birthday. Maybe that's it.

• 1:53:07Speaker 03

  My god. Wow. That would be huge.

• 1:53:10Griffin Newman?

  Yeah. She's gonna take you to the finest windowsill in New York City.

• 1:53:13David Sims?

  What do you think? Why is Pete's, why are Pete's clothes laid out like that? What does happen there?

• 1:53:18Griffin Newman?

  I think he fornicates.

• 1:53:19David Sims?

  Fornicating.

• 1:53:20Speaker 04

  Yeah, they lead him off into the woods.

• 1:53:22Griffin Newman?

  And he's caught.

• 1:53:23Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:53:24Griffin Newman?

  Mid fornication?

• 1:53:25David Sims?

  Mid fornication.

• 1:53:26Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:53:27David Sims?

  Show us that, Coens.

• 1:53:28Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:53:29David Sims?

  Cowards.

• 1:53:29Griffin Newman?

  Cause Delmore's a virgin.

• 1:53:31David Sims?

  Uh, he hasn't, he doesn't have time to, he's gotta get the family farm back.

• 1:53:34Griffin Newman?

  Really.

• 1:53:35David Sims?

  Before he thinks about that guy. And Everett's like, and then Everett makes a baby seemingly every year with Holly Hunter, right?

• 1:53:41Griffin Newman?

  The math on the babies is like impossible. It's so funny when you see.

• 1:53:45David Sims?

  And then it's Holly Hunter who's like.

• 1:53:47Griffin Newman?

  I know.

• 1:53:47David Sims?

  The tiniest frame imaginable.

• 1:53:49Griffin Newman?

  But it's just so funny when you see the girls first. Okay, he's got three children, right? Then you go indoors, Holly Hunter's holding a new baby and has three additional children with her.

• 1:53:58Speaker 04

  You have to tie them all in a line.

• 1:54:01Griffin Newman?

  There's seven in total?

• 1:54:02Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:54:03David Sims?

  Yes. So they think Everett's a pizza toad, so they have a toad now.

• 1:54:08Griffin Newman?

  A horny toad.

• 1:54:09David Sims?

  A horny toad.

• 1:54:10Speaker 03

  I love this song too, the sirens sing.

• 1:54:11Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:54:12Speaker 03

  It's one of my, my faves.

• 1:54:13Griffin Newman?

  And it's a scene that is like funny. All of the reaction shots are funny, right? Like Tatura seemingly increasingly angered by the seduction, them smushing Tim Blake Nelson's face. And yet it's also a little creepy.

• 1:54:26Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:54:27David Sims?

  I think the sirens are also dubbed by Emily Harris, Alison Krauss and Gillian, Gillian Welsh.

• 1:54:33Speaker 04

  Gillian Welsh, yeah.

• 1:54:34Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:54:35David Sims?

  After this is, I guess, the, um, the Cyclops, the, um,

• 1:54:40Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:54:41David Sims?

  You know, the Bible cells, Big Dan.

• 1:54:44Griffin Newman?

  Our year of Goodman.

• 1:54:45David Sims?

  Right. Goodman in, in, uh, kind of Barton Fink, but just more cartoonish evil mode.

• 1:54:51Speaker 04

  He's also, he is also so clearly evil Everett. Like he's like a foil.

• 1:54:56David Sims?

  Big talker, but right. Yeah.

• 1:54:58Griffin Newman?

  But I like that he's playing the darkness at the forefront from the beginning.

• 1:55:02David Sims?

  Yes.

• 1:55:02Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:55:02Griffin Newman?

  There, there's sort of an obvious move to have him play more successfully charming and then disarm you with it.

• 1:55:07David Sims?

  Right. More sweet, more like sweet.

• 1:55:09Speaker 04

  I think this is where the Odyssey thing works in their favor because you're like, well, that's the fucking Cyclops.

• 1:55:13Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 1:55:13Speaker 04

  Like I know what the Cyclops does.

• 1:55:15David Sims?

  Yes, you're, you can't trust him.

• 1:55:16Griffin Newman?

  The reveal of him turning around, turning towards the camera and showing the, the eye patch.

• 1:55:22David Sims?

  Oh, sure. Yeah.

• 1:55:23Griffin Newman?

  But yeah, it's also just funny to watch fucking John Goodman swing a big, a big ass branch.

• 1:55:27Speaker 03

  Fucking snaps that branch.

• 1:55:29Griffin Newman?

  When he's, the fact that neither of them are putting it together as he's preparing to beat their ass. And then even after he hits Delmar. Yeah. So he's so calmly goes, uh, what are you doing there, Dan? And just keeps going like, Dan, I got a minute. I'm not sure I quite understand the lesson.

• 1:55:45David Sims?

  You said year of Goodman. Is this a specific year of Goodman you want to highlight?

• 1:55:49Griffin Newman?

  No, I'm saying 2025 for the Blank Check Podcast.

• 1:55:52David Sims?

  It is the year of Goodman for us.

• 1:55:53Griffin Newman?

  Always King Ralph and five Goodman and Cohens.

• 1:55:55David Sims?

  Many Cohens, exactly. But I will say in 2000, he was also in The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle.

• 1:56:01Griffin Newman?

  Of course. He's quite good as a southern sheriff.

• 1:56:04David Sims?

  It sounds like something he might've done. Uh, Coyote Ugly, where he's the dad who's like, I'm not sure if I want you going to work at Coyote Ugly.

• 1:56:10Griffin Newman?

  Might also be a southern sheriff.

• 1:56:12David Sims?

  Probably Emperor's New Groove, where he is a Peruvian farmer.

• 1:56:16Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:56:16David Sims?

  And.

• 1:56:17Griffin Newman?

  Just wants to keep his little hamlet on top of his mountain.

• 1:56:19Speaker 04

  Typecasting.

• 1:56:19David Sims?

  And what planet are you from? Which I haven't seen.

• 1:56:22Griffin Newman?

  Which I just watched for the first time and is, in my opinion, good. Have you ever seen it, Emily?

• 1:56:27Speaker 04

  Is, is that the Mike Nichols one?

• 1:56:28Griffin Newman?

  That's Mike Nichols, Gary Shandling.

• 1:56:30Speaker 04

  That I'm going to be watching it for 2000s because we're doing Mike Nichols later.

• 1:56:33Griffin Newman?

  It is the, the fucking Larry Sanders blank check. Can I transfer the heat to movies move? And he gets Nichols and this all-star cast and I'd always assumed it was terrible because it was a flop at the time and it has no reputation. I thought it was pretty solid.

• 1:56:48Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:56:49Griffin Newman?

  I watch it back to back with Town and Country, which is worse than people say.

• 1:56:53David Sims?

  Oh, wow. Town and Country didn't even deliver on the rock bottom expectations?

• 1:56:59Griffin Newman?

  It is astonishing. I want the FBI to release all the Town and Country papers. I have so many questions that will never be answered about how the fuck that movie ended up that way.

• 1:57:10David Sims?

  Um, I'll watch it.

• 1:57:11Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:57:11David Sims?

  I gotta watch, uh, Silverman, Town and Country. What, I've gotta watch all these like 2000 era, like

• 1:57:19Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:57:19David Sims?

  maligned comedies. Okay. Uh, then we get to the big reveal of Holly Hunter and all that. Ray McKinnon, who's such a funny faced man. We love Ray McKinnon.

• 1:57:28Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:57:28David Sims?

  Deadwood.

• 1:57:29Speaker 04

  Uh, Deadwood, he justify when, or just, just to, no, no, what's it called?

• 1:57:33David Sims?

  Rectify.

• 1:57:34Speaker 04

  Rectify.

• 1:57:34David Sims?

  We all forget Rectify.

• 1:57:36Speaker 04

  It's a brilliant show. He's like, he's the creator and director and it's, it's beautiful.

• 1:57:41Griffin Newman?

  Won an Oscar with fucking, um, Walton Goggins.

• 1:57:45David Sims?

  Yep. For The Accountant, a little short film.

• 1:57:47Griffin Newman?

  Which then they adapt into a feature film called Randy and the Mob.

• 1:57:50David Sims?

  That I haven't seen.

• 1:57:51Griffin Newman?

  That went nowhere. Uh, but he's great. He is revealed to be the campaign manager for Papio Dano.

• 1:57:56David Sims?

  I just love that he fucking, no, he's the campaign manager for the, for the reformer Homer. Uh, but he, uh, he lays out Everett like so thoroughly.

• 1:58:05Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:58:05David Sims?

  Clooney doesn't land a punch on that guy.

• 1:58:07Griffin Newman?

  Clooney is one of the best at like comedic punch reaction. It's when you talk about like David him saying like, I'm doing this. I'm in. I know what the Cohens are. I know what they want. He so understands the visual language of the Coens as filmmakers that he knows how to like, with his body, complete the shots that they want of like, the angle of the reaction to being hit, the spinning towards the camera, or clocking the, the neck back. Like he has seven or eight times in this movie where he has to react to a hit, that are all so fucking funny.

• 1:58:41Speaker 04

  This, this is a bit of a hot take, but George Clooney is not my favorite director. I don't, I don't love all his films.

• 1:58:47Griffin Newman?

  Midnight Sky guy?

• 1:58:49David Sims?

  There's eight movies I could have busted out there as a joke.

• 1:58:52Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, that all came out in 2021.

• 1:58:55David Sims?

  All on different streaming services?

• 1:58:57Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:58:57Speaker 04

  But even in his earliest film roles, you see him understanding the camera and how he's gonna fill in the frame and like.

• 1:59:03David Sims?

  He's not a bad director. The movies he makes that I don't like are not ineptly made.

• 1:59:09Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:59:09David Sims?

  It's more that the story tends to be very boring, like, or whatever, you know, like, he loses me elsewhere.

• 1:59:13Griffin Newman?

  But I agree with you that that.

• 1:59:14David Sims?

  He has crab, he works with clever people, you know?

• 1:59:17Griffin Newman?

  It's interesting because there are few movie stars who kind of feel more constantly aware of filmmaking than he does, without being self-conscious. He's so good at not just like knowing his angles, but knowing what will make a shot pop. And then that doesn't really translate over his directing.

• 1:59:35Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:59:36Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:59:36Speaker 04

  He's, he's, his, his visuals in his films are often.

• 1:59:39David Sims?

  You look at Midnight Sky, Tender Bar, Boys in the Boat.

• 1:59:42Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:59:42David Sims?

  And you're like, Jesus. And then you remember, he also did a Catch 22, like, mini-series on top of that.

• 1:59:48Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:59:49Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:59:49David Sims?

  All like, in like, five years.

• 1:59:51Griffin Newman?

  Four years. The four years where like, the world is shut down.

• 1:59:54David Sims?

  Yeah, and he's like, eh, I don't have to work much, I got all this tequila. Yes, right. And yet, I do think Confessions is a really strong debut that's fun.

• 2:00:05Speaker 04

  I love that movie.

• 2:00:06David Sims?

  And Good Night and Good Luck rocks, and only rocks more on rewatch.

• 2:00:10Griffin Newman?

  But then it's immediate drop off. Then it's like, I'd.

• 2:00:13David Sims?

  I've actually never seen Leatherheads.

• 2:00:16Griffin Newman?

  I've tried to get through it, I couldn't.

• 2:00:17David Sims?

  There's like two Leatherhead stands out there in the world.

• 2:00:20Griffin Newman?

  John Krasinski and George Clooney.

• 2:00:22David Sims?

  I guess so.

• 2:00:23Griffin Newman?

  Yeah. Ides of March sucks. Yeah, and that's it's just.

• 2:00:26David Sims?

  Monument's Men is just a big old sleeping pill.

• 2:00:29Griffin Newman?

  But is actually anger inducing where it's like, how is this not watchable?

• 2:00:32David Sims?

  Yeah, you have so much at your disposal here.

• 2:00:35Speaker 04

  Right. I feel like that's his entire career now. It's like, how is Boys in the Boat or whatever not? Yeah.

• 2:00:40David Sims?

  Uh, well, yeah, he's, I can't talk about it, but he's in a Noah Baumbach movie this year.

• 2:00:45Griffin Newman?

  Uh huh.

• 2:00:46David Sims?

  Which we like. We like that he's working with like other directors.

• 2:00:48Griffin Newman?

  I'm excited he's acting more again.

• 2:00:50David Sims?

  Yes.

• 2:00:50Griffin Newman?

  That was the most annoying part of him making shitty movies for so long is like, why aren't you being George Clooney?

• 2:00:55David Sims?

  And why are you your only director? You know, like if you're acting, it's because you're directing yourself.

• 2:01:00Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:01:01David Sims?

  Which he told me when I interviewed him for SuburbCon, he didn't like doing.

• 2:01:04Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:01:04David Sims?

  Which I guess it's Midnight Sky. He's not in Tender Bar or Boys in the Boat, I guess.

• 2:01:10Griffin Newman?

  No.

• 2:01:11David Sims?

  So good for him, I guess.

• 2:01:12Griffin Newman?

  But leading Monument's Men, lead, kind of lead Ides of March, although it's really Gosling.

• 2:01:16David Sims?

  Right.

• 2:01:16Griffin Newman?

  Leatherheads. Yeah. Um, but yeah, uh, um, Ray McKinnon's the campaign manager for the competition. Homer Stokes, we've been introduced to as the reform candidate who fights for the little man. He's got a little person on stage with him in a broom.

• 2:01:29Speaker 04

  That's such a good, like, it's such a good campaign gimmick.

• 2:01:33David Sims?

  All gimmicks from reality, like from history. There was a guy who did a broom thing.

• 2:01:38Griffin Newman?

  But it's playing on your expectations of like, here's Pappy O'Daniel who looks like fucking Colonel Sanders, who's angry Charles Dern and being like, why they wanna like this progressive guy, right? And you're like, oh, he's like the old southern, like stuck in the mud, institutional piece of shit. And here's this guy who actually cares about people. And he's leading this ground swell that like Pappy's not gonna be able to stop. Um, and then of course you realize that this guy is the grand wizard of Clucliff Clan Chapter.

• 2:02:06Speaker 04

  True.

• 2:02:06Griffin Newman?

  Uh, Pappy O'Daniel actually does care, but.

• 2:02:10David Sims?

  At least somewhat, and it certainly is less ideologically motivated. Uh, right. Yes.

• 2:02:16Griffin Newman?

  But also like, there's something to me in the moment where the crowd boos Homer for calling out that he thinks, uh, there's a misengagement going on, right?

• 2:02:29David Sims?

  Yes.

• 2:02:29Griffin Newman?

  Um.

• 2:02:30David Sims?

  Well, they just wanna listen. The music.

• 2:02:31Griffin Newman?

  Exactly. And like, there's the moment where Pappy goes like, oh, they don't care.

• 2:02:35David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 2:02:35Griffin Newman?

  And immediately he's like, actually, let's maybe be more progressive, right? It's like, he listens to the people in a way.

• 2:02:43Speaker 04

  People talk a lot about whether the Coens are conservative filmmakers, by which I mean, I don't think they voted for Donald Trump, but the sense that like, they have an inherently conservative view of the world. And like, I don't think that they do, but I think they have an overwhelming faith in Fargo's the best example of this. Just normal folk.

• 2:03:00Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 2:03:01Speaker 04

  Who are gonna like, realize like, the, the truth of the matter.

• 2:03:04Griffin Newman?

  There's a distrust of institutions and power. And there's a belief in the individual person.

• 2:03:09Speaker 04

  And I think that we live in a world that has sort of disproved that notion. But also, when everyone's excited that, uh, the soggy bottom boys are that good, that they don't care that they're an integrated group.

• 2:03:21Griffin Newman?

  Exactly. I also, I just think I've heard people make the argument that they're like neoliberal hacks. And that they're like libertarian, like fuck it all guys. And it is interesting that all three of those reads.

• 2:03:33Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:03:33Griffin Newman?

  Like persist in tandem, and yet none of them totally fit.

• 2:03:38Speaker 04

  Yeah. And it really depends on the project. They just are.

• 2:03:40Griffin Newman?

  Absolutely.

• 2:03:41Speaker 04

  They do not think that, uh, institutions have the best interests of everyone in mind, which I think is true.

• 2:03:47David Sims?

  It's all a little glossed though. And I do think some critics just bumped on that.

• 2:03:51Speaker 04

  I, I think, yeah, I think that the Klan element of this film, I think ultimately works, but it is simultaneously playing a silly vibe on something that is horrifying.

• 2:04:01David Sims?

  It is so chilling and yet, right, also a broad comic scene that shot like a Buzzbee Berkeley musical.

• 2:04:07Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:04:08David Sims?

  And it is, I mean, to me, it is kind of magic to try something that insane.

• 2:04:12Griffin Newman?

  I agree.

• 2:04:12David Sims?

  Like, I am kind of like bewildered by it, like, and in a good way.

• 2:04:16Griffin Newman?

  But you open.

• 2:04:16David Sims?

  But at the same time, it's so chilling to see the Klan on screen.

• 2:04:20Griffin Newman?

  The sequence opens with like silence, watching them form with the fiery cross, which is so upsetting.

• 2:04:26David Sims?

  And this on the oh death song.

• 2:04:27Griffin Newman?

  I was gonna say, it's like two seconds of, two seconds, two minutes of unaccompanied music.

• 2:04:32David Sims?

  Yes.

• 2:04:32Griffin Newman?

  That is presented in a very haunting way. And then it sort of gets back into comedy, like these like pivots the movie's able to make within a scene.

• 2:04:39David Sims?

  It's so silly that they're doing. Corio.

• 2:04:42Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:04:42David Sims?

  Like, I think that's like a funny element, but again, it's also so horrifying to see. The silliness is vital.

• 2:04:50Speaker 04

  At the same time, you're like, oh, they're gonna kill Tommy. Like, they are playing those two things simultaneously.

• 2:04:55Griffin Newman?

  But even like in when Homer is like taken out, right? When he's losing the crowd.

• 2:05:01Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:05:01Griffin Newman?

  And he goes like, look, I have it on good authority that these men interfered with the duties of a lynch mob. I am a member, a high up member of a secret society I need not even mention name. Like, you go into the scene thinking, oh, they're gonna out him some way and the crowd's gonna turn. He offers that information up himself and thinks that people will be like, oh, of course, we got your back.

• 2:05:25Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah. I think we also need to bring back riding people out of town on a rail.

• 2:05:29David Sims?

  Yeah, riding someone on a rail is good.

• 2:05:31Griffin Newman?

  We gotta bring it back.

• 2:05:33David Sims?

  Gotta bring it back, folks. We love the rails. The scrolls need to go on the rails.

• 2:05:37Speaker 04

  There's a book called A Fever in the Heartland, which is quite good, which is about this period in history when the Klan is like this huge organization. But also, if they're exposed, then people are like, well, we don't want to have anything to do with the Klan. And it's sort of about the downfall, the beginning of the downfall of the Klan, and this movie kind of captures it.

• 2:05:56David Sims?

  Is that book? I want to read the Timothy Egan.

• 2:05:58Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 2:05:59Griffin Newman?

  That's what I find fascinating about that moment, is he's like, I know I can't say it outright because we're not supposed to admit it anymore. But if I allude to it, I think everyone will quietly nod in agreement and go like, we all agree to not call out what you're saying. And he is surprised that the crowd turns on him.

• 2:06:16Speaker 04

  Yeah, and it is also like playing off the theme you mentioned of music being this integrating force, not as strongly as it should have been. But, you know, having this element of, oh, this is how African American culture moves up into the mainstream.

• 2:06:32Griffin Newman?

  Right, and with Pappy Clax isn't like, these people want progress. It's, they don't care. Right? And it's better to take the less cynical position of just like, just don't yuck anyone's yum. They're enjoying this song.

• 2:06:46Speaker 04

  That, Durning does say that. Don't yuck their yum.

• 2:06:48Griffin Newman?

  He does say that. Yeah.

• 2:06:50Speaker 03

  Pappy licks his finger and then sizzles his butt.

• 2:06:54David Sims?

  He does do that.

• 2:06:54Griffin Newman?

  This is the thing, Durning, classically trained dancer, knows how to soft shoot.

• 2:06:58David Sims?

  Hell, yeah.

• 2:06:58Griffin Newman?

  Right? He moves so well despite being built like the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man. He's so light on his feet.

• 2:07:04David Sims?

  You're right. And of course, the white clothes.

• 2:07:07Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 2:07:07David Sims?

  Makes him even more marshmallow-y in this movie. Uh, it was just a real era of him going like, like, you know, in everything he was in, I feel like.

• 2:07:17Griffin Newman?

  That bit of him that they hit like three times of him being so benevolent to the crowd, right? I love the soggy bottom boys. I'm giving them full pardons. And not only that, they're gonna be my brain trust. And then they keep cutting back to the same angle of him turning around his shoulder and going, isn't that right, boys? And he looks scarier than any human being has ever looked on film. He looks scarier than this movie's depiction of Satan.

• 2:07:40David Sims?

  Um, love Charles Durning. The same year he's in state in Maine as the mayor. I feel like it's a somewhat similar role, right? Yeah. And, uh, you know, never got his Oscar, but.

• 2:07:51Griffin Newman?

  Nominated twice.

• 2:07:52David Sims?

  Yes.

• 2:07:52Griffin Newman?

  And, and kind of weird nominations. I mean, he should have gotten the fucking Dog Day nomination.

• 2:07:57David Sims?

  I know, but that was like, everyone gets, right. Yeah, everyone's good at that.

• 2:08:01Griffin Newman?

  But I'm like, his fucking like top ballot for me of like Tootsie Muppet Movie, Dog Day.

• 2:08:07David Sims?

  I love the Muppet movies in there. I'm not mad.

• 2:08:09Griffin Newman?

  Doc Hopper is unbelievable. And his incredible version of what I'm saying is, how does he get away with making this villain actually upsetting in a Muppet movie?

• 2:08:17David Sims?

  When Griffin loves someone, you always, I always, I'm not good at that, at remembering that they may have been in a Muppet movie.

• 2:08:24Griffin Newman?

  He's, he is the human lead in the Muppet movie.

• 2:08:28Speaker 04

  Yeah, Doc Hopper is the other side of Pappy O'Daniel. They're like the same coin.

• 2:08:32Griffin Newman?

  I've truly seen. And basically dressed the same.

• 2:08:34David Sims?

  I think I've seen Muppets Take Manhattan a bunch of times because it must have been on TV or something. I think I've only ever seen, and I've seen Christmas Carol many times.

• 2:08:41Griffin Newman?

  Sure.

• 2:08:41David Sims?

  I love and respect it. And it has Charles Dickinson.

• 2:08:43Griffin Newman?

  But what excuse would you have to watch the other Muppet movies? You have zero children and you hate putting on things for them to watch.

• 2:08:49Speaker 04

  The fucking insane thing about The Muppets Take Manhattan is the Broadway show at the end of that. Like, I always imagine going to see, oh, and then the like, the like walls are singing.

• 2:08:59Griffin Newman?

  Right. And you're like, what?

• 2:09:00Speaker 04

  A pig and a frog got married?

• 2:09:01Griffin Newman?

  What's night two of this?

• 2:09:04Griffin Newman?

  Are you gonna replicate this again?

• 2:09:06David Sims?

  Do you think my daughter would like the Muppet movie? Like, is she ready?

• 2:09:10Griffin Newman?

  I say this here six times a year. Yes, she's ready.

• 2:09:12Speaker 04

  I, my kid, I watch random things on YouTube with them and their favorite is Frog Song, which is Rainbow Connection.

• 2:09:19David Sims?

  Right, right. Well, Rainbow Connect, it's just right, the more the, right, the whole narrative.

• 2:09:23Griffin Newman?

  I think put on some Muppet show first, because that's bite sized. It's little tiny.

• 2:09:27David Sims?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:09:28Griffin Newman?

  And it's all on Disney Plus.

• 2:09:29David Sims?

  She loves Sesame Street.

• 2:09:30Griffin Newman?

  Good callback.

• 2:09:30David Sims?

  Although, isn't it, is it leaving Disney? No, Disney that ain't going.

• 2:09:34Griffin Newman?

  No, that's fucking Zazlov and Looney Tunes. Muppets aren't going.

• 2:09:36David Sims?

  Right, right, right. Um, so we should be wrapping up soon, because you guys have to see anything, but, um.

• 2:09:41Griffin Newman?

  It feels like they're such a clean, like, oh, all, all the races were in one spot. Pappy won the election. He's like commuting their sentence. Everything's good. You think the movie's over.

• 2:09:51David Sims?

  Right.

• 2:09:51Griffin Newman?

  There's this bonus mini act of, okay, like, Holly Hunter will shift the wedding. The, the date and the venue are the same. The cast is gonna change, but she demands the ring.

• 2:10:02Speaker 04

  It's the Dana Carvey, you forgot about Satan moment. Yeah.

• 2:10:06Griffin Newman?

  Um, right. And so they have to go back to the family cabin to get the ring and the, and the royal top desk. But in fact, Satan is waiting there for them. He doesn't know that they've been pardoned because

• 2:10:18David Sims?

  He doesn't care about.

• 2:10:19Griffin Newman?

  We don't have radios.

• 2:10:20David Sims?

  Man's law. Yes, right.

• 2:10:22Griffin Newman?

  Uh, is trying to hang them and then nature intervenes. The gray flood happens.

• 2:10:25David Sims?

  Right. You see a cow on a roof.

• 2:10:27Griffin Newman?

  Yep.

• 2:10:28David Sims?

  As predicted.

• 2:10:28Griffin Newman?

  Uh huh.

• 2:10:29David Sims?

  Uh, Everett is still fighting with Penny, who's like, she's like, that's the wrong ring. But I feel like everyone's gonna get what they want.

• 2:10:37Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:10:37David Sims?

  Like, I think Pete will open his restaurant.

• 2:10:40Griffin Newman?

  I do too.

• 2:10:40David Sims?

  I sure hope that Delmar will get the family farm.

• 2:10:43Griffin Newman?

  Gonna be international pop stars.

• 2:10:45David Sims?

  And I guess they can, right, they can earn money that way.

• 2:10:47Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, Delmar's gonna be knee deep in strange. The Soggy Bottom Groupies? It is funny that they're called the Soggy Bottom Boys. Like, it's just like, the wet ass trio. It's a good name for a band.

• 2:11:00Speaker 03

  And, and it's funny because that is referencing the fact that they had been baptized.

• 2:11:06David Sims?

  Yes.

• 2:11:07Speaker 03

  Just previously. So they show up and they're kinda still a little wet.

• 2:11:10David Sims?

  Right.

• 2:11:11Speaker 04

  It is interesting that the movie raises this question of like, your eternal soul. And then it's like, those were the stakes we had established earlier. Remember in the last 10 minutes?

• 2:11:19Griffin Newman?

  Yes, yes.

• 2:11:21David Sims?

  So why does nature intervene and help?

• 2:11:24David Sims?

  What have they done to earn this?

• 2:11:27Griffin Newman?

  Nothing. Well, Clooney's argument is that it's just trying to reset the culture.

• 2:11:31Speaker 04

  Sure.

• 2:11:32Griffin Newman?

  That's not about them.

• 2:11:33Speaker 04

  Right.

• 2:11:34Griffin Newman?

  That it was fortuitous timing.

• 2:11:35Speaker 04

  Right.

• 2:11:36Griffin Newman?

  Cause he also doesn't want to believe that any sort of fate that was projected upon them by-

• 2:11:41David Sims?

  Right. He's the master of his own-

• 2:11:42Griffin Newman?

  The sightseer. But then seeing the cow on the roof is the thing that kind of knocks him out of it and wonders.

• 2:11:46Speaker 04

  They did accidentally take down a clan leader. Like, they didn't mean to do that, but they did.

• 2:11:50David Sims?

  You're right. So they've done good.

• 2:11:52Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:11:52David Sims?

  And then they brought music to the world.

• 2:11:54Griffin Newman?

  They did.

• 2:11:54Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:11:54David Sims?

  We love music.

• 2:11:55Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:11:55Speaker 04

  I think God thinks man of constant sorrow as a toe-tapper.

• 2:11:58Griffin Newman?

  It is.

• 2:11:58David Sims?

  And it's sure it is.

• 2:11:59Griffin Newman?

  Undenied.

• 2:12:00David Sims?

  And they, they, they, they helped Tommy with no compunction. You know, when they see Tommy's in trouble, there's no like, ah, we shouldn't, you know, we're gonna get into, like, they, they, they're all united on that.

• 2:12:10Griffin Newman?

  That's a big point.

• 2:12:10Speaker 04

  They help everybody they meet, even if it's to do bad.

• 2:12:13Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:12:13Speaker 04

  It's like an interesting view of karma.

• 2:12:15Griffin Newman?

  They're helpful people.

• 2:12:16Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:12:17David Sims?

  Uh.

• 2:12:17Griffin Newman?

  I think this film was quite good.

• 2:12:19David Sims?

  Yeah. See, I, to me, it's sort of in that hot circuit thing where I'm like, great movie.

• 2:12:23Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:12:24David Sims?

  Don't think it's in my Coens top 10, but that's a Coens thing, not No Brothers.

• 2:12:27Griffin Newman?

  That's 10 masterpieces. I, I have the opposite thing of you, Emily, just because it was the first one I saw where every time I watch it, I'm like, am I gonna have that buzzing of I've seen the greatest movie I've ever seen in my life again? And it's sort of the way that Edgar Wright talks about seeing Raising Arizona for the first time and being like, why aren't all movies like this?

• 2:12:44Speaker 04

  Oh, that's, the first one I saw was Raising Arizona. My, my uncle showed me that, was like, you're gonna love this. I was like 14. I was like, what the fuck is this?

• 2:12:51Griffin Newman?

  My parents tried to show me Raising Arizona when I was like six or seven, and it didn't take.

• 2:12:55Speaker 04

  I didn't know a movie could do that at the time.

• 2:12:57Griffin Newman?

  But I think I felt that way seeing this for the first time.

• 2:13:00Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:13:00Griffin Newman?

  And then I went back and watched Raising Arizona and finally got it.

• 2:13:03Speaker 04

  This is toward the bottom of my Coens top 10, but I think it's like nine. I think it's in there. Yeah.

• 2:13:07Griffin Newman?

  It's a fantastic film.

• 2:13:08David Sims?

  Currently at 11, but we'll see how this list shakes out, I will say.

• 2:13:11Griffin Newman?

  Box office game. Cause then I do have to go see Eddington.

• 2:13:14David Sims?

  You have to go see Eddington, and I don't want to do the opening weekend, which was like cast away. We've done that. It's Christmas 2000. I want to do its biggest weekend.

• 2:13:20Griffin Newman?

  Okay.

• 2:13:21David Sims?

  So that's February 2nd, 2001, Griffin.

• 2:13:23Griffin Newman?

  A robust 3.5?

• 2:13:25David Sims?

  Correct. 3.6. That is the most money it made in an individual weekend. It's number 11 at the box office.

• 2:13:30Griffin Newman?

  Okay.

• 2:13:31David Sims?

  Number one at the box office is a romantic comedy. Uh.

• 2:13:35Griffin Newman?

  February 2001.

• 2:13:36David Sims?

  Yes, one of these stars might have caught Roger Ebert's eye.

• 2:13:39Griffin Newman?

  Uh, it is called The Wedding Planner?

• 2:13:41David Sims?

  Yes. A really, really bad movie.

• 2:13:44Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, a film I feel you punch a lot.

• 2:13:47David Sims?

  I really hate the Eminem speech in it. It drives me crazy.

• 2:13:50Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:13:50David Sims?

  And I think it's McConaughey sapped of the most juice.

• 2:13:53Griffin Newman?

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:13:54David Sims?

  Like those slightly later McConaughey rom-coms where he's more of a like rascal.

• 2:13:58Griffin Newman?

  Well, 10 Days is the biggest hit. And then it's just like this cursed him into a cul-de-sac of success, of uninteresting success for eight years before he got his mojo back.

• 2:14:08David Sims?

  In Wedding Planner, he's just this like V-neck sweater loser mother. Have you seen Wedding Planner?

• 2:14:13Speaker 04

  I have, I have.

• 2:14:15David Sims?

  And you're a huge fan?

• 2:14:15Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:14:16Speaker 04

  Uh, I saw it at the time and I was like, this is, this should win Best Picture. Uh, gave it four stars in the Chicago Sun-Times.

• 2:14:21Griffin Newman?

  Of course.

• 2:14:22David Sims?

  Adam Shankman directed it.

• 2:14:24Griffin Newman?

  He of Disenchanted.

• 2:14:24David Sims?

  Your former collaborator?

• 2:14:26Griffin Newman?

  Yes. Uh, former boss.

• 2:14:27David Sims?

  Yeah, well, I think, I think he's considers himself a collaborator.

• 2:14:31Griffin Newman?

  Sure.

• 2:14:31David Sims?

  Number two at the box office, a horror film. Why is a horror film coming out at this time? Oh, could it be attached to a holiday?

• 2:14:38Griffin Newman?

  Oh, it's Valentine?

• 2:14:39Speaker 04

  Valentine.

• 2:14:40David Sims?

  That's Boreyana's, right? Boreyana's first build. Is that his only first billed film?

• 2:14:45Griffin Newman?

  Has to be.

• 2:14:46David Sims?

  Probably. Yeah. Before he's like, ah, you can catch me on the silver screen forever. I mean, the small screen, sorry. Like, you know, like, I'm going to Bones.

• 2:14:54Griffin Newman?

  The bronze screen.

• 2:14:54Speaker 04

  Just quietly the new Scott Bakula. Just like quietly, constantly working. Yeah.

• 2:15:00David Sims?

  You know, that's what was the thing he did after Bones?

• 2:15:02Griffin Newman?

  Like another fucking CBS show?

• 2:15:03David Sims?

  Like Navy SEALs or something?

• 2:15:05Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:15:06Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:15:07Griffin Newman?

  One of those guys, my dad will CNBC.

• 2:15:10David Sims?

  SEAL Team.

• 2:15:11Griffin Newman?

  Be like, God, he must have so much fucking money.

• 2:15:13Speaker 04

  That was true.

• 2:15:13Griffin Newman?

  There's certain people like that where they're not the biggest stars, but it's like you have been on a show for 25 consecutive years.

• 2:15:21David Sims?

  Those Bones guys, especially like the middle cast of Bones, right? Not traditional. Like, I just think about that all the time.

• 2:15:26Griffin Newman?

  But also there was the big Bones lawsuit that I will let people look up in their own time. They all got an additional big payday years later.

• 2:15:32Speaker 04

  Maybe SEAL Show with Boreyana's had a dog on it. And I was, was one of my last TCA press tours and we all wanted to interview the dog's handler and Boreyana's had to look like this is what's become of my career.

• 2:15:43Griffin Newman?

  It was, it was his. Kind of.

• 2:15:45David Sims?

  Out of the way, Boreanis. We don't care about you anymore.

• 2:15:47Griffin Newman?

  It was his Kelsey Grammer moose moment. Yeah.

• 2:15:50David Sims?

  Uh, number three, The Box Office is a film I mentioned already. We've covered on the podcast is a giant hit. It's in its seventh weekend. It's made $203 million. It's Oscar nominated. It's great. Uh, it's, I guess, a drama and adventure movie, I guess. Cast Away.

• 2:16:05Griffin Newman?

  It's Cast Away.

• 2:16:06David Sims?

  Uh, number four, great movie. We love Cast Away.

• 2:16:09Griffin Newman?

  We love Cast Away. It rules. It rocks them roles.

• 2:16:11David Sims?

  Number four at the box office is a teen.

• 2:16:13Griffin Newman?

  Okay.

• 2:16:14David Sims?

  Uh, film. I think there are teens in this one, right? It's a young people romance.

• 2:16:18Griffin Newman?

  Oh, A Walk to Remember? No, that's Shankman.

• 2:16:20David Sims?

  It is not A Walk to Remember. And I think, yeah, that might be like a year prior or after. Yeah.

• 2:16:26Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:16:26David Sims?

  Yeah. Um, it's a, it's a, it's got dancing in it.

• 2:16:31Griffin Newman?

  Is it center stage?

• 2:16:32David Sims?

  No. Save the Last Dance. It's Save the Last Dance.

• 2:16:36Griffin Newman?

  A big ass hit.

• 2:16:37David Sims?

  Styles, huge hit.

• 2:16:38Griffin Newman?

  A weird, like, out of nowhere, winter blockbuster.

• 2:16:41David Sims?

  The very cute Sean Patrick Thomas who never quite, like, you know, got his big star moment. Uh, and, uh, Juilliard movie, Rrrr, uh, directed by Thomas Carter.

• 2:16:52Griffin Newman?

  Who then later goes on to direct.

• 2:16:54David Sims?

  Coach Carter. And they were like, this movie's got your name all over it.

• 2:17:00David Sims?

  And then, of course, directed my favorite movie, the Cuba Gooding Jr. TV movie, Gifted Hands, The Ben Carson Story.

• 2:17:06Griffin Newman?

  You love that film. You voted for that film for president.

• 2:17:10David Sims?

  I wrote it in.

• 2:17:11Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:17:11David Sims?

  Uh, uh, and number five at the box office is a one best cinematography, Griffin, at the Oscars.

• 2:17:17Griffin Newman?

  Uh, Crushing Tiger, Hidden Dragon.

• 2:17:18David Sims?

  Good movie.

• 2:17:19Griffin Newman?

  What's it up to at this point?

• 2:17:20David Sims?

  Fifty-two. So it's got a ways to go.

• 2:17:22Griffin Newman?

  Yeah. Uh, a crazy run. Uh, Emily, we're.

• 2:17:25David Sims?

  Got Traffic.

• 2:17:26Griffin Newman?

  Uh huh.

• 2:17:26David Sims?

  Yeah. What's Head Over Heels?

• 2:17:28Griffin Newman?

  That was Freddie Prince and Monica Potter?

• 2:17:32David Sims?

  You're correct. Uh, yes, Monica Potter, Freddie Prince Jr. That seems to be about it.

• 2:17:37Griffin Newman?

  One of those.

• 2:17:38David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 2:17:39Griffin Newman?

  Emily, we're gonna end this episode abruptly because Ben and I-

• 2:17:41David Sims?

  Finding cars or snatching sugar lot.

• 2:17:42Griffin Newman?

  Have to get to an acting screening for reasons that are hopefully apparent-

• 2:17:46David Sims?

  Yes.

• 2:17:47Griffin Newman?

  Six episodes ago.

• 2:17:48David Sims?

  Sure.

• 2:17:49Speaker 04

  Uh, okay, great. I'm going to do the Emily St. James is available here in like, under a minute. I think I can do it.

• 2:17:55Griffin Newman?

  I'm gonna put my shoes on while you're doing this.

• 2:17:56Speaker 04

  Yeah, uh, so, uh, you can find my work, uh, everywhere online. I am at Emily St. James on most platforms, mostly Blue Sky and Lighterbox. Uh, I am a writer on the TV show Yellow Jackets, which you can find on Paramount Plus with Showtime, which is a very weird thing, way to say something.

• 2:18:11David Sims?

  We love it.

• 2:18:11Speaker 04

  Paramount Plus with Showtime. Uh, my novel, Woodworking, out in bookstores right now. Uh, apparently, uh, people are buying it and reading it and enjoying it, and, uh, I'm so glad of that. Uh, my podcast is Podcasts Like It's The 2000s, which I co-host with Phil Isco. When is this episode coming out?

• 2:18:26David Sims?

  Oh, great question, and I can definitely tell you that.

• 2:18:28Griffin Newman?

  October, September?

• 2:18:29Speaker 04

  We are either doing, uh, best direct-

• 2:18:31David Sims?

  Late August.

• 2:18:32Speaker 04

  We are, oh yeah, we're doing best director follow-ups. We're covering the movies that all the best director winners did as follow-ups, so we're probably talking about Ron Howard's The Missing.

• 2:18:39Griffin Newman?

  I love this.

• 2:18:40Speaker 04

  Uh, and, uh, yeah.

• 2:18:43Griffin Newman?

  Message you about what movies are available.

• 2:18:45Speaker 04

  Uh, it's just okay, it's okay. And then finally, you can find my newsletter at episodes.ghost.io. And you, if you just see me in the street, come up and say hi, I'll shake your hand.

• 2:18:53Griffin Newman?

  Uh, you're the best in the biz. You're such an important friend in the history of this show. It is always a pleasure to have you on, and it's always fun when an episode comes together. We've weirdly been struggling to find someone for this. You message us, we're like, late notice.

• 2:19:05Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:19:06Griffin Newman?

  I'm in town in a week.

• 2:19:07Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:19:07Griffin Newman?

  And we were like, oh, brother, and you went like, I wrote a whole fucking piece on the DI.

• 2:19:12Speaker 04

  Yeah, that piece you can find at Colors, Where Did They Go?, at fox.com, so, yeah.

• 2:19:16Speaker 03

  All of the links will be in the episode description.

• 2:19:19Speaker 04

  Thank you.

• 2:19:19Speaker 03

  Of course, I also just want to do a quick shout out. If anyone is interested in listening to any like, very old Appalachian music, like, all stuff on 78s, there was an WFM show called Old Cogger with Courtney T. Edison. It's not on anymore, but I'll put a link in the description. You can listen to those back episodes. Really good stuff.

• 2:19:40Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:19:41Speaker 03

  And then I also just want to shout out for anyone who may be interested in contemporary roots, Americana music, check out the music publication No Depression.

• 2:19:50Speaker 04

  Hey, and David?

• 2:19:52Griffin Newman?

  Blank Check Theme Parenthetical Sirens Edition, which you heard at the beginning of this episode, was recorded and produced Not that kind of silence. Was recorded and produced by our friend, Gabe Berettow, and performed by Maggie Feldman, Olivia Ellen Lloyd, and friend of the show, past and future guest, Academy Award nominee, Amy Irving. Their Spotify profiles are included in the episode description, and we thank them greatly for taking the time to do that very silly thing for us.

• 2:20:19David Sims?

  Yay.

• 2:20:20Griffin Newman?

  Thank you all for listening. Please remember to rate, review, and subscribe. Tune in next week for The Man Who Wasn't There, correct? Yeah, absolutely. And as always, I'm a dapper Dan man. What the fuck, goddammit?

• 2:20:38Speaker 03

  And we have to leave time too to, for everyone at the theater to sing me happy birthday.

• 2:20:42Griffin Newman?

  We do, that does have to happen.

• 2:20:43Speaker 03

  It's a really important request.

• 2:20:44Griffin Newman?

  I heard the whole cast is gonna come and sing you happy birthday.

• 2:20:47Speaker 03

  I mean, I'm fully expecting that.

• 2:20:48Speaker 04

  Do you want me to sing you happy birthday right now? I will.

• 2:20:51Speaker 03

  Um, you know what? Not right now, surprise me.

• 2:20:55Speaker 04

  All right, I will.

• 2:20:58Speaker 04

  I will.

• 2:20:59Speaker 03

  Now, Griff, are you gonna sing?

• 2:21:01Griffin Newman?

  No.

• 2:21:02Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 2:21:04Griffin Newman?

  This movie has so many good quotes.

• 2:21:05Speaker 04

  I think you should sing.

• 2:21:07Griffin Newman?

  I think, I think it's not a singer. I think, I'm definitely gonna sing.

• 2:21:11Speaker 03

  You could yodel.

• 2:21:12Griffin Newman?

  I think in, uh, Lewin Davis.

• 2:21:16Speaker 04

  Oh, sure.

• 2:21:16Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:21:17David Sims?

  Oh, yeah, Rachel will love that.

• 2:21:19Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, she will. She'll be like, damn, you're good.

• 2:21:24Speaker 03

  Blank Check with Griffin and David is hosted by Griffin Newman and David Sims. Our executive producer is me, Ben Hostly. Our creative producer is Marie Bardi Salinas, and our associate producer is A.J. McKeon. This show is mixed and edited by A.J. McKeon and Alan Smithy. Research by J.J. Birch. Our theme song is by 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 Minic. Special thanks to David Cho, Jordan Fish, and Nate Patterson for their production help. Head over to blankcheckpod.com for links to all of the real nerdy shit. Join our Patreon Blank Check Special Features for exclusive franchise commentaries and bonus episodes.

• 2:22:09Speaker 03

  Follow us on social at Blank Check Pod. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter, Checkbook, on Substack. This podcast is created and produced by Blank Check Productions.