Loser with Chandler Levack

The song. The hat. The…casual date rape?!!? In what should have been Amy Heckerling’s “blank check” after the success of Clueless, 2000’s Loser is a real LOSER. Filmmaker Chandler Levack joins us to chat about this technically-not-a-remake-of-The-Apartment “comedy” that gets college surprisingly wrong. Come for the Wheatus talk, stay for the in-depth power ranking of every American Pie cast member’s post-Pie career. 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.

• 0:03Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 0:03Griffin Newman?

  We did a live show.

• 0:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, remember?

• 0:05Griffin Newman?

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

• 0:12Speaker 01

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

• 0:15Griffin Newman?

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

• 0:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, hey.

• 0:18Speaker 02

  Hey, everyone, or should I say, oh?

• 0:20David Sims?

  Oh.

• 0:22Griffin Newman?

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

• 0:31Speaker 01

  So just a few more days.

• 0:33Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 0:33Speaker 01

  You can get it at dynasty.tv.

• 0:36Griffin Newman?

  Dynasty.tv.

• 0:37Speaker 01

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

• 0:43Griffin Newman?

  Oh, yeah. I was moving things around. Laptop was on.

• 0:46Speaker 02

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

• 0:48Griffin Newman?

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

• 0:50Speaker 01

  I was locked in.

• 0:51Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, very locked in and you were funny.

• 0:53Speaker 01

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

• 0:56Griffin Newman?

  Oh, thank you.

• 0:57Speaker 01

  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.

• 1:04Speaker 01

  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 01

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

• 1:39Speaker 04

  I got two tickets to Griffin and David, baby. Come with me Friday. Don't say maybe.

• 1:49Griffin Newman?

  Keep going.

• 1:50Speaker 04

  I'm just a, I'm just a teenager.

• 1:53Griffin Newman?

  Teenage Podcast Baby Like You. I got in over my head on that one.

• 1:59David Sims?

  Can you name the, um, what? The lead singer of Wheaties to me.

• 2:03Griffin Newman?

  Uh, no. Do you think there's anything I could have done to get people to turn off this episode faster? I was sort of stuck halfway between.

• 2:09David Sims?

  Brendan Brown is his name.

• 2:11Griffin Newman?

  Doing his voice and I feel like that's the one where they have like the female vocalist come in for that one part. Oh, yeah. Right?

• 2:18David Sims?

  Uh huh.

• 2:18Griffin Newman?

  Come with me Friday.

• 2:21David Sims?

  You're definitely.

• 2:22Griffin Newman?

  I'm off on both.

• 2:23David Sims?

  I was about to say like, and I'm not here to like defend Wheaties's honor, but I do think you're doing them.

• 2:29Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:30David Sims?

  It's not that bad.

• 2:31Griffin Newman?

  No, I'm making it terrible. Hey, look, I enjoy that song quite a bit.

• 2:35David Sims?

  You know, I, I had put it to bed.

• 2:39Griffin Newman?

  You had?

• 2:39David Sims?

  You know, it was, it was in the ground and so.

• 2:42Griffin Newman?

  You're very good at putting things to bed. You gotta put three kids to bed a night now.

• 2:45David Sims?

  I just did it.

• 2:46Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:47David Sims?

  Um, and I, I hear it right over the, the credits of this film.

• 2:52Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:54David Sims?

  And of course I'm like, and then I'm immediately saying to Forky, I'm watching this movie with my wife.

• 2:58Griffin Newman?

  Your wife Forky.

• 2:58David Sims?

  My poor wife.

• 3:00Griffin Newman?

  Your poor utensil wife.

• 3:01David Sims?

  We wanted to finish Andor, but no, no, no.

• 3:04Griffin Newman?

  Forky.

• 3:04David Sims?

  Loser has to, has to take precedence.

• 3:06Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 3:07David Sims?

  Um, and I'm like, right. You remember this song? This was, this song is from this movie. No one remembers that it's from this movie. This song was like 10 times more popular than this movie, but the video does have clips from this movie in it.

• 3:19Griffin Newman?

  Not only that, it has new footage. It has both. It has clips from the Amy Heckerling film Loser, and it has Jason Biggs and Mina Suvari acting out the plot of the song Teenage Dirtbag, which is quite different from the plot of Loser. It has a double dose of Biggs and Suvari.

• 3:37David Sims?

  And, yeah, right.

• 3:39Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 3:39David Sims?

  And, uh, and then I was just sort of like, so what, what's the deal with Wheaties? Cause were they new? This was like, it's not like Wheaties had been around. This was their debut album.

• 3:51Griffin Newman?

  Yeah. Is it the movie?

• 3:52Speaker 02

  That broke the band?

• 3:53Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 3:53Speaker 02

  Or is it the band that broke the movie?

• 3:55Griffin Newman?

  Well, the movie didn't break, so.

• 3:58David Sims?

  The movie broke nothing. So that's my whole question. It's like, how did this actually sort of surpass the movie?

• 4:05Griffin Newman?

  Well, just let me say this, okay? The reason I mangled that song is because to your point, I'm looking at this movie, I'm looking at the quotes page in IMDb, I'm like, huh. All of these quotes are very hostile. These are not fun things to recite.

• 4:21Speaker 02

  Are they? It's because they're all about rehypno?

• 4:23Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, is it because?

• 4:24Speaker 02

  Very different.

• 4:24David Sims?

  This is kind of like a rancid movie, like not in even like a quality way.

• 4:31Griffin Newman?

  Ben and I just watched this together and like 30 minutes and I turned to him and I went, is she trying to do salons?

• 4:37David Sims?

  Kind of?

• 4:38Griffin Newman?

  Kind of.

• 4:39Speaker 02

  Oh, that's interesting.

• 4:40Griffin Newman?

  Right?

• 4:40David Sims?

  I mean, like supposedly she's trying to do the apartment.

• 4:42Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 4:43Speaker 02

  Which I totally see, like.

• 4:44David Sims?

  Which like the sort of basic hook is there.

• 4:47Griffin Newman?

  By way of happiness.

• 4:49David Sims?

  But but it's with this 90s. I mean, my whole thing is like, at a certain point.

• 4:53Speaker 02

  It kind of has a bad Woody Allen movie quality to it.

• 4:56Griffin Newman?

  It's got a lot of different bad length qualities to it.

• 5:00Speaker 02

  Like as bad as anything else, the Woody Allen movie that Jason Biggs is in.

• 5:04Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 5:04David Sims?

  Oh, a very, I have not seen that movie since it came out. We'll talk about Biggs, but no, no, just around half hour in, I think, for me too. Me and my wife are yelling at each other and not in a way where we're angry at each other. We are both so thrown by the tone of this movie and the plot of this movie.

• 5:20Griffin Newman?

  But she's also Googling divorce on grounds of making me watch Loser.

• 5:24Speaker 02

  My husband is a loser.

• 5:28David Sims?

  We're just like, I don't understand. I don't, we're just both like, kind of like having a bit of a panicky like, why is it like this? And then we see that quote that's on the Wikipedia page from 20 years later where Heckling's like, well, they wanted, I wanted it to be an R rated movie.

• 5:41Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 5:42David Sims?

  And that sort of settled us down. Truly, we were like, okay, okay, maybe that helps us make some sense of this.

• 5:48Griffin Newman?

  Hecklerly has said since that it was written, designed, shot, greenlit as an R rated movie. And then at some point, the studio panicked and insisted it had to be PG 13. And she said, that is the one mistake. Mistake of that movie.

• 6:03David Sims?

  And it's not the only mistake, but certainly if you're like, oh, this is an R rated movie that they dialed down just enough to get a rating on it, but didn't lose the tone.

• 6:13Griffin Newman?

  I agree with this in the abstract. She said, audience can tell when a movie is not what it's trying to be. And that there was just like a rejection of some things broken in this. And yet I think even in an R rated cut, I would still probably have all the same larger.

• 6:30David Sims?

  Questions.

• 6:31Griffin Newman?

  Notes.

• 6:32David Sims?

  I have a lot of questions.

• 6:32Griffin Newman?

  On story and characterization.

• 6:34David Sims?

  Podcast right now.

• 6:35Griffin Newman?

  But, okay, quotes, I'm like, nothing here. What's the tagline for this movie?

• 6:38David Sims?

  Okay, we're back to Venus.

• 6:39Griffin Newman?

  Dare to be different, loser.

• 6:40Speaker 02

  That's terrible.

• 6:41Griffin Newman?

  This movie isn't remembered. The only thing it's remembered for is launching Teenage Dirtbag. So I might as well quote the song from the soundtrack poorly over anything that's actually

• 6:51David Sims?

  It's so funny.

• 6:52Griffin Newman?

  In the text of the movie itself.

• 6:53David Sims?

  That Teenage Dirtbag did like 10 times better than this movie. Teenage Dirtbag is absolutely just a one hit wonder and they dissolved after a year.

• 7:01Griffin Newman?

  I mean, this is, there are things to discuss in the culture around this movie and that is one of them. On this podcast called Blank Check with Griffin and David. I'm Griffin.

• 7:08David Sims?

  I'm David.

• 7:09Griffin Newman?

  It's a podcast about filmographies, directors who have massive success early on in their careers. You start out your fucking career with Fast Times at Richmond High.

• 7:18David Sims?

  Sure.

• 7:19Griffin Newman?

  And are given a series of blank checks, make whatever crazy passion products they want. Sometimes those checks clear, like Clueless. And sometimes they bounce like her direct follow up to Clueless.

• 7:30David Sims?

  Tough.

• 7:30Griffin Newman?

  Loser.

• 7:31David Sims?

  Tough.

• 7:32Griffin Newman?

  Our guest today, we were talking about this last night and was flummoxed when I told her that this is the direct follow.

• 7:39David Sims?

  Right, that there's nothing in between except the Clueless TV show.

• 7:42Speaker 02

  I must have had some kind of cultural amnesia.

• 7:44Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 7:44David Sims?

  We'll.

• 7:45Speaker 02

  I mean, there's the Clueless TV show.

• 7:47David Sims?

  There's the Clueless TV show.

• 7:48Griffin Newman?

  But I will say, and we were recording a little bit out of order.

• 7:52David Sims?

  Wow.

• 7:52Griffin Newman?

  Uh, so this is the last heckling we're recording, but there are obviously, uh, two more that will come out after this.

• 7:58David Sims?

  Two very normal movies.

• 7:59Griffin Newman?

  Two of the most normal movies we've ever covered on this show. And a fact that I got wrong.

• 8:04David Sims?

  Oh.

• 8:05Griffin Newman?

  That JJ has now corrected in the loser dossier is that she basically stepped back during the first season of Clueless. And by the time it jumps over UPN, she's basically out. So that.

• 8:18David Sims?

  I believe I said that.

• 8:19Griffin Newman?

  Makes even less sense of the gap.

• 8:21David Sims?

  We're gonna talk.

• 8:22Griffin Newman?

  But we're gonna talk about it.

• 8:24David Sims?

  Who's our guest?

• 8:24Griffin Newman?

  This is a mini-series on the films of Amy Heckerling.

• 8:26David Sims?

  Whatever.

• 8:27Griffin Newman?

  It's called Pod Times at Richmond Cast.

• 8:29David Sims?

  True.

• 8:29Griffin Newman?

  It's not called Cast Times at Richmond Pod, because that would break the cardinal rule of the show. Which is that pod has to go before cast.

• 8:36David Sims?

  Is that a cardinal rule?

• 8:37Griffin Newman?

  In my mind, yeah.

• 8:38David Sims?

  I don't think it's ever come up before.

• 8:40Griffin Newman?

  Run it by the cardinal.

• 8:42David Sims?

  They just had their conclave. Give them a break!

• 8:44Griffin Newman?

  Okay, so then-

• 8:45David Sims?

  I gotta get them all back together. They just picked the Lou Malnati guy. Fucking pizza pope.

• 8:51Griffin Newman?

  The deep dish pope. The beef sandwich pope.

• 8:54David Sims?

  It's so funny that everyone's like, "Hey, a Chicago pope!" And it's like, this serene man who lived in Peru for decades. He's like, "Hello, how are you?" And everyone's like, "Oh, white socks, baby!"

• 9:05Griffin Newman?

  Because it's announced and everyone's like, "God, the fact that we didn't get a Smigel sketch about this in 96, right? That Chris Farley couldn't have played Chicago Pope in like a Paramount picture."

• 9:15David Sims?

  Oh my god, duh, Pope.

• 9:16Griffin Newman?

  Right? Exactly.

• 9:17David Sims?

  Duh, Pope. It writes itself.

• 9:19Griffin Newman?

  And then you see the real guy and you're like, "This is the calmest American I have seen in decades. He has no over-the-top characteristics." I'm like, "This guy seems balanced as hell."

• 9:30David Sims?

  Well, like, we did like-

• 9:30Griffin Newman?

  Trans-Atlantic accent.

• 9:31David Sims?

  Ten years, like, they exercised the Chicago from him or whatever, right?

• 9:37Griffin Newman?

  Today, we were talking about Loser.

• 9:39David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 9:39Griffin Newman?

  Not Amy Heckerling's last film, but her last studio picture.

• 9:43David Sims?

  I guess that's right. Yeah, wow.

• 9:45Griffin Newman?

  It's the 25th anniversary of Loser. Everyone can't stop talking about it. And today, joining us for the first time on the show-

• 9:53David Sims?

  We have broken the cardinal rule! I had to check this. The cast of the Pod Heekins.

• 9:59Griffin Newman?

  Fuck! I was-

• 10:02David Sims?

  That might be it.

• 10:02Griffin Newman?

  Because listeners have been like, "Why the fuck wouldn't he do Cast Times when AST is right there in the title?"

• 10:08David Sims?

  That's a fair question.

• 10:09Griffin Newman?

  And I was like, "The rule must be upheld." But now, I'm realizing it was all for naught.

• 10:14David Sims?

  We've only-

• 10:14Griffin Newman?

  Cast and Pod Heekins, and that's the same thing. That was an AST. I had to- fuck!

• 10:20David Sims?

  Yeah, what can I tell you?

• 10:21Griffin Newman?

  A decade of nightmares.

• 10:26David Sims?

  Who's our guest, please?

• 10:27Griffin Newman?

  Our guest today is the great Chandler Levack, director of I Like Movies.

• 10:31David Sims?

  Say your name louder.

• 10:32Griffin Newman?

  I didn't, I didn't get the last name incorrect, did I?

• 10:35Speaker 02

  Oh, you did.

• 10:36David Sims?

  Fuck, I knew you were gonna get it wrong.

• 10:38Speaker 02

  It's okay, you brought the biggest loser of them all.

• 10:41Griffin Newman?

  Not true. Chandler Levack.

• 10:44Speaker 02

  Thank you, yes. Hard act, like the Kathy.

• 10:47Griffin Newman?

  Act, act, act.

• 10:47David Sims?

  Like act, right, Kathy, Mars Attacks.

• 10:50Griffin Newman?

  Yes. Director of I Like Movies, one of my favorite films last couple of years, which I've called, I've shouted out a lot.

• 10:56Speaker 02

  Oh, thanks, Griff, yeah. Thank you for the supporting actress nomination at the Blankies.

• 11:01Griffin Newman?

  Deserved, incredible performance. Another name I believe I mispronounced in that episode. Ramona Dugo?

• 11:08Speaker 02

  Dugo.

• 11:09Griffin Newman?

  Fuck.

• 11:09Speaker 02

  You're doing great.

• 11:10Griffin Newman?

  I'm not, I'm a mess. Actually, I'm a mess.

• 11:13David Sims?

  Nothing throws me more than Canadian names, apparently.

• 11:16Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 11:16David Sims?

  I don't know if Ramona's Canadian.

• 11:18Speaker 02

  She's.

• 11:18David Sims?

  There you go.

• 11:19Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, Dan, I'm checking my notes here. Akiroidi?

• 11:24David Sims?

  He is in this movie, I don't know if you noticed.

• 11:25Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, he's a very doting dad. Midwestern father.

• 11:29David Sims?

  He kind of brings the thunder for a couple scenes, I'm gonna say it. He's pretty good.

• 11:33Griffin Newman?

  I, we're gonna talk about it.

• 11:34Speaker 02

  Jimmy Simpson, though, that's my guy.

• 11:36David Sims?

  Well, there's, there's guys. And I am going to.

• 11:39Speaker 02

  And Zach Orth, who I love. Okay.

• 11:41David Sims?

  I love Zach Orth, there's a lot to talk.

• 11:43Griffin Newman?

  Tom Sadowski.

• 11:44David Sims?

  That's the one where I had a brain aneurysm. I was sent to the hospital for 50 weeks. And then I came out of it and I was like, you're sure that's Tom Sadowski?

• 11:52Griffin Newman?

  Right, I was like, this guy, I, I was certain. Tom Sadowski was born at the age of 37. Straight into the second stage rep company.

• 12:01David Sims?

  Again, my wife had to witness it when I was, you know, oh, Jimmy Simpson. And then, because I guess I wasn't paying attention during the credits. And then I see Sadowski and I'm like, who is that?

• 12:09Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 12:10David Sims?

  Like, she's gonna know. And I'm like, who, who is that?

• 12:13Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 12:14David Sims?

  And then when I find out it's him, I was like, he looks like this now. And my wife was like, okay. And I was like, you don't understand, this is so far from what this guy settled on.

• 12:22Griffin Newman?

  Right, one of the great, normal guy, quote unquote, character actors.

• 12:25David Sims?

  You know what I love Sadowski in?

• 12:27Griffin Newman?

  What?

• 12:27David Sims?

  Sadowski blocked me on Twitter, by the way.

• 12:29Griffin Newman?

  For what?

• 12:29David Sims?

  I have no idea.

• 12:31Griffin Newman?

  He knew someday you were gonna review loser. He heard the premise of the podcast and he's like, they'll get the heckerling within a decade.

• 12:37David Sims?

  I just remembered that he blocked me on Twitter. I love him and John Wick. He never goes back.

• 12:41Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 12:41David Sims?

  He just shows up for that one scene being like, hey, John, how you doing?

• 12:44Griffin Newman?

  Yeah. Uh, are Chandler, Ben, are you familiar with who? Tom Sodowsky? Do you know who we're talking about?

• 12:50David Sims?

  I don't. He's one of the three bad guys.

• 12:53Griffin Newman?

  He's the sort of gothy one with the painted nails.

• 12:55David Sims?

  Yes, possibly, possibly the most evil of the three. Yes.

• 12:59Griffin Newman?

  He's the most aggressively evil.

• 13:01David Sims?

  Yes. He's the most evil and then Zach Orth, who's the kind of bigger one, is kind of, he's evil and then Jimmy Simpson's sort of stupid.

• 13:09Griffin Newman?

  And he's become this great character actor who kind of plays like slightly offbeat, normal guy types.

• 13:14David Sims?

  Wow.

• 13:15Griffin Newman?

  And is the ultimate, just kind of looks like a dude. He was on the newsroom. He does a ton of theater.

• 13:19Speaker 01

  He was, uh, wasn't he in, um, Always Sunny as a recurring part?

• 13:24Griffin Newman?

  No.

• 13:24David Sims?

  That's Jimmy Simpson.

• 13:25Griffin Newman?

  Okay. Who's one of the McPoyle twins.

• 13:27David Sims?

  Right, right.

• 13:27Griffin Newman?

  This is the guy with the darker hair and he's like really a pretty boy and he's got the painted nails and the sort of stud bracelet, whatever.

• 13:34David Sims?

  He's the one who's fully nude, I think, in one scene.

• 13:37Speaker 01

  We were trying to parse what, like, if his dick was out or something?

• 13:40David Sims?

  I think, again, this is an R-rated thing. That's what Amy Heckerling wants. She gets to get her Fast Times Retribution. My, my, my, under, what I could sort of gauge.

• 13:48Griffin Newman?

  His shirt is open and his nips are out.

• 13:49David Sims?

  I think he's wearing essentially like a sort of G-string maybe or something. You know what I mean? Like.

• 13:55Griffin Newman?

  Think he's wearing a sort of G-string maybe.

• 13:59David Sims?

  The thing with Sodowsky.

• 14:00Griffin Newman?

  It was syllable for syllable perfect.

• 14:02David Sims?

  It was great.

• 14:03Griffin Newman?

  He worded it in a way, thing to the song perfectly.

• 14:06David Sims?

  It looks like this.

• 14:06Griffin Newman?

  I just couldn't sing it well.

• 14:07Speaker 01

  He looks normal.

• 14:08David Sims?

  He's the guy in the newsroom, though, who tells the pilot on the plane that they got Osama in one of those great gas leak scenes from the newsroom.

• 14:18Griffin Newman?

  The point is, he is, he is such an evil pretty boy in this that's very incongruous of who he turned out to be. But also he is married to Amanda Seyfried.

• 14:27David Sims?

  What?

• 14:28Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 14:28David Sims?

  Wow.

• 14:29Griffin Newman?

  They have two children together and live in upstate New York and she plays her fucking harpsichord.

• 14:33David Sims?

  Go off, she does.

• 14:34Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 14:34David Sims?

  Plays the harpsichord?

• 14:35Griffin Newman?

  She plays funky instruments. Oh yeah, I saw her Joni Mitchell.

• 14:40David Sims?

  Yes.

• 14:40Griffin Newman?

  Beautiful.

• 14:41David Sims?

  She plays the dulcimer.

• 14:42Griffin Newman?

  There we go. That's a nice line.

• 14:44David Sims?

  Here Amanda Seyfried play enchanting Joni Mitchell, Song of the Dulcimer. But like, what, on the Tonight Show? On the fucking Tonight Show? So like Fallon's just like, huh, this is great. While she's like working the dulcimer?

• 14:57Griffin Newman?

  Chandler, you are a writer-director. Yes. You are a Torontonian.

• 15:02David Sims?

  I'm sorry, this is a late night episode, so I'm a little jacked up.

• 15:05Griffin Newman?

  We should say this. So you are, we can't, we can't say what it is, but you are

• 15:08David Sims?

  Working on something.

• 15:09Griffin Newman?

  in the tri-state area, prepping a new movie. And because of the, the absolute opposite schedules of someone who is prepping a motion picture and a podcaster who has three children, the only time we could make this work was 8:00 PM on Memorial Day. That's right. This is our first evening record since like deepest, darkest lockdown.

• 15:29David Sims?

  Since pandemic, I think.

• 15:30Griffin Newman?

  Wow. There was a window where David Forky was pregnant.

• 15:34David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 15:34Griffin Newman?

  And there was construction in my building that would run every day.

• 15:38David Sims?

  We had to do it at night.

• 15:39Griffin Newman?

  From like eight until three. And then by the time the construction stopped, your wife was off from work.

• 15:43David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 15:44Griffin Newman?

  Zoomed, Zoom work. And you were like, I have to take care of her until she falls asleep. I can't start recording until she's asleep.

• 15:50David Sims?

  Nine o'clock. We started at nine.

• 15:51Griffin Newman?

  Four months of episodes that would start at nine PM every night.

• 15:55David Sims?

  A lot else going on in our lives.

• 15:57Griffin Newman?

  No, I would actually say it was quite a bad period of time.

• 16:01David Sims?

  What? You sure?

• 16:02Griffin Newman?

  But it does feel like the energy, this is an energy we haven't tapped into in a while.

• 16:06David Sims?

  I'm not drinking anything but lemonade.

• 16:09Griffin Newman?

  Soda pop. Oh, lemonade.

• 16:10David Sims?

  Um, but I am a little jacked up.

• 16:12Griffin Newman?

  You are, you are a filmmaker, you're a Torontonian, you're here prepping a movie.

• 16:16David Sims?

  The best city in the world.

• 16:17Griffin Newman?

  Experienced both filming in Toronto and now getting ready to film in the tri-state area. You told me last night that The Apartment is basically your favorite movie of all time. It is, yeah. And And I love Amy Heckerling.

• 16:30Speaker 02

  Like deeply.

• 16:31Griffin Newman?

  I heard you had gotten this job and you were gonna be in town and I reached out and it just felt like loser was a good fit. And you were like, isn't that one of the big Toronto pretending to be New York movies?

• 16:43Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 16:43Griffin Newman?

  I think I can weigh in on this very.

• 16:44David Sims?

  He's on the metro there, right?

• 16:46Speaker 02

  I can tell you every single location and what it actually is.

• 16:49David Sims?

  But like when he, it's so jarring because there is some New York location stuff.

• 16:53Speaker 02

  There is, yeah.

• 16:54David Sims?

  And then he'll be on a subway platform or there'll be an insert shot of a subway of a New York and then they'll cut to the Toronto metro.

• 17:01Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's a hundred percent the Toronto, well, it's Union Station masquerading as Grand Central Station.

• 17:06David Sims?

  Yes, right?

• 17:07Speaker 02

  And then I think.

• 17:08David Sims?

  Is one, no, but there's one scene that's in Grand Central. When she falls asleep, that's Grand Central.

• 17:13Griffin Newman?

  In the sort of information area.

• 17:15Speaker 02

  And then I think they're using like a sliver of Union Station as like an NYU classroom or library or something.

• 17:20David Sims?

  The library, when there's like big chairs.

• 17:23Speaker 02

  Yeah, with like the big bus of a heads and stuff.

• 17:25David Sims?

  Yes, absolutely.

• 17:26Griffin Newman?

  Location work on this movie is insane.

• 17:28Speaker 02

  They're in a Timothys one and you can see the Great Canadian Bagel sign, which was like a nineties Toronto chain. The movie store they go to is the review, it's an old movie theater on the. Yeah, it's an old movie, uh, video store that a lot of my friends worked at.

• 17:44Griffin Newman?

  Okay, so here's a question.

• 17:45David Sims?

  Did David Spade work there? Would you like pop out and be like, hey buddy?

• 17:48Speaker 02

  Hey buddy.

• 17:49Griffin Newman?

  Aren't you on Just Shoot Me Now?

• 17:52David Sims?

  Hang on, like, not going on. I can't do Spade.

• 17:54Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 17:55Speaker 02

  And they walk past Lee's Palace, which is a, you know, famous like rock venue.

• 17:59David Sims?

  Of course.

• 17:59Speaker 02

  They're shooting on the damn fourth.

• 18:01Griffin Newman?

  But they say it's Webster Hall. Like, that's the weird thing is they're picking very specific Canadian places, Toronto locations. And then just like doing 5% of effort to be like, no, it's actually this different, very specific New York.

• 18:13David Sims?

  I'm gonna give them credit. I think they do 10% of effort.

• 18:16Griffin Newman?

  Okay.

• 18:16David Sims?

  I was, I was, apart from the subway, which you kind of can't fake.

• 18:19Griffin Newman?

  It is just like.

• 18:20David Sims?

  If you're using a different subway, it's gonna look wrong.

• 18:22Griffin Newman?

  You're obviously a big, you have such a bullshit detector for this kind of thing. But when you're watching him on a subway car and you're like, there has never been an MTA car that looks like this.

• 18:32David Sims?

  I recognize the Toronto.

• 18:33Griffin Newman?

  Of course, but then they bother to put up the New York MTA map behind him. There's always that sort of like my brain. Short circuiting of like you're putting

• 18:42David Sims?

  I'm in a dream.

• 18:43Griffin Newman?

  One real detail on the fake thing.

• 18:46Speaker 02

  For sure.

• 18:47Griffin Newman?

  Um, that video story you said it's called?

• 18:49Speaker 02

  Uh, it's called Review Cinema.

• 18:51David Sims?

  Is it gone?

• 18:52Speaker 02

  It's sadly gone, yeah, but a lot of great Canadian filmmakers worked there, like Kazakh Redmonsky.

• 18:57Griffin Newman?

  Oh, cool.

• 18:58Speaker 02

  And, uh, my friend Simon Ennis.

• 19:00Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 19:00Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 19:01Griffin Newman?

  Um, did they do the, uh, uh, organized by director thing?

• 19:05Speaker 02

  They did. I think I heard they had to actually reorganize the cinema for Loser to make it more mainstream.

• 19:10Griffin Newman?

  Wild.

• 19:11Speaker 02

  Because it was too arthouse and they, they didn't. But he does try to rent the piano.

• 19:16Griffin Newman?

  Yes. He is between two blank check movies, The Piano and When Harry Met Sally.

• 19:20David Sims?

  That's true.

• 19:20Griffin Newman?

  And when David Spade is recommending Simon Birch to him, which Ben noticed is blurred out.

• 19:25David Sims?

  They blurred it out, yeah.

• 19:27Speaker 02

  They couldn't get the rights?

• 19:28Griffin Newman?

  If they blurred it out in post or they blurred out the prop.

• 19:31David Sims?

  I couldn't tell either, but no, I think it's an actual Simon Birch case.

• 19:36Griffin Newman?

  It just looks fuzzy.

• 19:37David Sims?

  But, but no, then I think probably someone was like, hey, we didn't clear that. Because there's another thing in this movie.

• 19:42Griffin Newman?

  This is a Columbia picture?

• 19:44David Sims?

  Yeah, sure. The, the coda, I can't believe you bought a deep Blu-ray for this thing.

• 19:48Griffin Newman?

  This is the hardest I have ever

• 19:50David Sims?

  So demented.

• 19:51Griffin Newman?

  Worked to track down a physical copy of a movie ever on this show.

• 19:55Speaker 02

  Oh, my God.

• 19:56Griffin Newman?

  It's an Australian only release. It doesn't have special features. It doesn't have subtitles. The menu has one button, which is just play. It doesn't even have scene selection.

• 20:08Griffin Newman?

  And it was like, I had to set up like so many fucking search alert, Google alert, eBay alerts, because these things never fucking go on sale. But I got it.

• 20:16Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 20:17David Sims?

  He got it. Uh, oh, what was it? Oh, um, the, you know, the, the, not to cut to the coda of this film, but this little post, uh, ending, you know, uh,

• 20:26Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 20:26David Sims?

  Infos on like what happened to everybody, right? There's two typos.

• 20:30Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 20:31David Sims?

  And I was just like, did nobody, or was the vibe just kind of like, whatever, man, just get the fucking movie out.

• 20:36Griffin Newman?

  The coda on this has big Mission Impossible, Final Reckoning energy where you're like, was this typed five minutes before I started watching the movie?

• 20:44David Sims?

  Anyway, uh, loser.

• 20:47Griffin Newman?

  Loser.

• 20:47David Sims?

  I didn't, I can't believe I didn't see this film in theaters, though.

• 20:49Griffin Newman?

  Hand of Sand?

• 20:50David Sims?

  Because like, I loved Amy Heckerling, I loved Clueless, and I went to see anything back in 2000.

• 20:57Speaker 02

  I remember being really excited for it.

• 20:59David Sims?

  I was excited too, and it got such horrible reviews.

• 21:02Speaker 02

  I think I was hooked into the Weetis, like, marketing. Like, I think Weetis actually...

• 21:06David Sims?

  Weetis got you!

• 21:07Speaker 02

  It really did. It got me through the door.

• 21:09Griffin Newman?

  Well, asking, like, why did the Weetis song pop when this movie didn't, right? I do think it is that thing of, like, having the double force of energy of, like, a record label that's trying to launch the Weetis album and Columbia Pictures also putting their muscle behind it to try to use the song to promote the movie. It felt like there were two forces pushing what is admittedly a very catchy song out there.

• 21:30David Sims?

  It has Dirtbag in the title.

• 21:32Griffin Newman?

  Totally.

• 21:34David Sims?

  It was guaranteed to be a hit. You get a good catchy melody, you fucking throw the word Dirtbag in there. But it's such a weird song. He starts going on about Iron Maiden.

• 21:45Griffin Newman?

  And her boyfriend brings a gun to school?

• 21:48David Sims?

  It's, it's him...

• 21:49Speaker 02

  She rings my bell.

• 21:50Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 21:50David Sims?

  It's him relating some story from his past.

• 21:54Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 21:55David Sims?

  But then, right, and then they just go, "But I'm just a..." And everyone's like, "Yeah, that's the part we like."

• 21:59Speaker 02

  But if you sing that in a karaoke bar today...

• 22:03David Sims?

  Everyone will pop off.

• 22:04Speaker 02

  It's like lighting in a bottle.

• 22:05David Sims?

  I mean, not, yeah, are they, I always bring this up.

• 22:08Griffin Newman?

  Uh huh.

• 22:09David Sims?

  Like, Semi-Sonic is the example I always think of. Are they a band that has to open and close with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles?

• 22:14Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 22:16David Sims?

  It's my favorite thing to think about.

• 22:17Speaker 02

  Absolutely.

• 22:18David Sims?

  People, they come out and people are like, "Fucking do it right now." They're like, "Okay, okay, okay." And at the end, they're like, "You better do it again. I'm not walking out of here without it again."

• 22:26Griffin Newman?

  It feels like the song popped...

• 22:27Speaker 02

  I saw Hanson recently.

• 22:28David Sims?

  Did they do "Um Bop Twice"?

• 22:29Speaker 02

  They did do "Um Bop Twice."

• 22:31David Sims?

  Damn right. And Hanson has at least a few other songs.

• 22:34Speaker 02

  Between seven Bill Withers covers, like, I was like, I'd come see, see Hanson do Bill Withers songs.

• 22:40David Sims?

  Hanson rocks. Good for you going to see Hanson.

• 22:42Griffin Newman?

  Redone their whole vibe, right? But they also know they can't do a show without playing...

• 22:47Speaker 02

  They're actually very depressing, and one of the, the brother, he drummed and ate a sandwich at the...

• 22:52David Sims?

  Fuck!

• 22:57Griffin Newman?

  That, that does, uh, rule. What's I misremembering? No, there isn't a Hanson song in this. The, this time around.

• 23:06Speaker 02

  There's like everything else.

• 23:07Griffin Newman?

  The later Hanson song. I heard in something the other day where it almost like knocked my socks off.

• 23:13David Sims?

  This, uh, soundtrack includes Pretty Five for a White Guy by The Offspring.

• 23:18Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 23:19David Sims?

  Blue by Ifull65. What's My Age Again by Blink 182.

• 23:23Griffin Newman?

  Bad Touch by the Bloodhound Gang.

• 23:24David Sims?

  Uh, two Bloodhound Gang songs.

• 23:26Griffin Newman?

  Wow.

• 23:27David Sims?

  Aurora by the Foo Fighters. Of course, a performance from Everclear for us.

• 23:31Speaker 02

  Oh, absolutely.

• 23:32Speaker 01

  Out of My Head, fastball, another one hit wonder.

• 23:35David Sims?

  Yes, and, and, and I don't remember this, but apparently the British boy band Five have a song.

• 23:40Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah. That's, that's in when he has the graduation party.

• 23:44David Sims?

  Okay, okay.

• 23:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, cause I was like, what is this like?

• 23:46David Sims?

  They kind of rocked Five.

• 23:47Speaker 02

  Fake NSYNC song, you know?

• 23:49Griffin Newman?

  Also like an SAT question.

• 23:50David Sims?

  Five were fake NSYNC to a T.

• 23:52Griffin Newman?

  Finish the pattern, of course. Two further songs on this soundtrack. Scarborough Fair by Simon and Garfunkel. And Sonata in C Major by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

• 24:03David Sims?

  I don't think those you made the, uh, the CD.

• 24:05Griffin Newman?

  Not the CD.

• 24:06Speaker 02

  We have to talk about the long graduate homage that happens.

• 24:09Griffin Newman?

  Look, there's a long graduate homage? You see a bit of Cabaret performed?

• 24:16David Sims?

  You see literally, like, right, it's an artifact. You're watching Cabaret as the original.

• 24:21Speaker 02

  The Sam Mendes.

• 24:22Griffin Newman?

  I turned to Ben, I'm like, I'm kinda glad they captured this.

• 24:25David Sims?

  It's wonderful.

• 24:26Speaker 02

  That's one of the best scenes in the movie.

• 24:27David Sims?

  It is, I think, without a doubt, the best scene in the movie. There's not even anything that comes close.

• 24:34Griffin Newman?

  Here's my favorite part of that scene. When the camera pans away from Jason Biggs and Mina Suvari and then just watches Alan Cumming tear up Cabaret.

• 24:42David Sims?

  And you're just, and then you're just like, fuck.

• 24:45Griffin Newman?

  Fuck, this rules.

• 24:45David Sims?

  I'd watch this.

• 24:46Speaker 02

  Like, I wish this was it.

• 24:48David Sims?

  The whole, the other thing, also thing with this movie is, again, I'm watching with my wife. Mina Suvari pops up. And I'm like, this is Mina Suvari, you know Mina Suvari? And she's like, no, I mean, no. And I'm like, right, I guess it was basically like a two year window. Like, Mina Suvari's fame was brief.

• 25:02Griffin Newman?

  It's so quick.

• 25:03Speaker 02

  She's in three movies, American Pie, American Beauty, American Virgin.

• 25:08Griffin Newman?

  That all come out within 18 months of each other.

• 25:11David Sims?

  Correct. I mean, American Virgin, of course, had Robert Loja and Bob Hoskins. Two guys you definitely want in a movie called American Virgin.

• 25:17Griffin Newman?

  But I was, I was digging in and she has like three further American titles later in her career.

• 25:24David Sims?

  She's got American Pie 2, let's not forget that.

• 25:26Griffin Newman?

  And American Reunion.

• 25:28David Sims?

  Is she in that one?

• 25:28Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, I think, she's not in Wedding, she's back for Reun- every, everyone's back for Reunion.

• 25:34David Sims?

  I forgot what Reunion was. I thought Reunion was Wedding.

• 25:37Griffin Newman?

  No.

• 25:37David Sims?

  I forgot that they did a four.

• 25:39Griffin Newman?

  No, no, no, like 60% of the cast is cut from Wedding.

• 25:42David Sims?

  Right.

• 25:42Griffin Newman?

  Everyone's brought back for Reunion at a bargain price. Yeah.

• 25:47David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 25:47Speaker 02

  What was she gonna be? Like when Mena Savar?

• 25:49Griffin Newman?

  It's a great question. I was thinking this while watching it because there was certainly a two-year period where we were all the right age to be like, I guess she's important? And you step back now and you're like, what was the, what was the roadmap people thought was gonna play out ahead of her?

• 26:07David Sims?

  I don't.

• 26:07Griffin Newman?

  For her career.

• 26:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, like who's, like best case scenario?

• 26:11Griffin Newman?

  There's not really a comp.

• 26:13David Sims?

  No.

• 26:14Griffin Newman?

  And it's also-

• 26:14David Sims?

  Not for, as a star.

• 26:15Griffin Newman?

  No, and I also think like, i-if you go like-

• 26:19Speaker 02

  Like Cybill Shepherd, maybe?

• 26:20David Sims?

  That's incredibly generous of you. I'm sorry.

• 26:24Speaker 02

  Well, I'm just thinking about like-

• 26:25David Sims?

  Cybill Shepherd's had a great career.

• 26:26Speaker 02

  That is true, but I'm thinking about like The Last Picture Show and kind of being this like breakout blonde.

• 26:31David Sims?

  Yeah, like a young, uh, ingenue, yeah, in like a coming of age movie.

• 26:35Griffin Newman?

  She's a much odder version of that in American Beauty. Like she's not the conventional, yeah.

• 26:40David Sims?

  When you watch American Beauty, it's not like she's bad in American Beauty. She's totally appropriate for the role, like she gets it. But she's like, the, she's not as good as Thorabirch or Wes Bentley anyway.

• 26:51Griffin Newman?

  No.

• 26:52Speaker 02

  No.

• 26:52David Sims?

  They're giving better performances. I mean, whatever you think about that movie, like-

• 26:56Speaker 02

  It's probably the, the least compelling performance in the movie.

• 26:59David Sims?

  It's, yeah, it is.

• 27:00Griffin Newman?

  Also, the movie rates her character very unintelligently. It is a very ungenerous characterization.

• 27:07David Sims?

  Yeah, but she plays the big scene in that movie really well, which is her like, you know, dropping the-

• 27:12Speaker 02

  When petals arrive on her, her boobs?

• 27:15David Sims?

  Yeah, when the pedals arrive on her. I guess, you know what, Griffin, that's what it was, though. It wasn't, it was American Beauty. She was the image of American Beauty. She's the tummy.

• 27:25Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 27:25David Sims?

  I know it's not actually her tummy. Uh, but, you know, but like, and she's the rose, yeah, garnered woman, whatever.

• 27:31Griffin Newman?

  But American Pie.

• 27:33David Sims?

  Weird time in America.

• 27:34Griffin Newman?

  American Pie comes out that same year.

• 27:35David Sims?

  Yes, but that's the worst, she's the worst part of that movie.

• 27:37Griffin Newman?

  I disagree with that.

• 27:39David Sims?

  Yeah, you defend the Chris, what the fuck is his name?

• 27:43Griffin Newman?

  Chris Klein.

• 27:43David Sims?

  Klein, Mena Suvari part of American Pie, which is.

• 27:46Speaker 02

  Oh, that's very sweet.

• 27:48David Sims?

  Ass.

• 27:48Speaker 02

  I like it.

• 27:49Griffin Newman?

  Thank you.

• 27:49David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 27:50Speaker 02

  I like when they sing all those show choir songs.

• 27:52David Sims?

  I like those scenes, just fine. I mean, they're fine.

• 27:55Griffin Newman?

  The worst part of the movie is inarguably Tara Reid and, uh.

• 27:59Speaker 02

  Thomas Ian Nicholas.

• 28:00David Sims?

  Completely disagreed. That part of the movie rocks because.

• 28:03Griffin Newman?

  They're so boring.

• 28:04David Sims?

  Well, they're not very.

• 28:05Speaker 02

  They're so boring.

• 28:06David Sims?

  No offense to the misperformance, but I agree that they're not top notch.

• 28:09Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 28:09David Sims?

  But I just love that their storyline resolves with they have sex and it's bad. It's so good. Even though. It's one of my favorite parts of the movie. They just are on top of each other awkwardly and they're like, yeah, that was okay. Everyone else obviously has like insane, you know, shit happened to them.

• 28:23Griffin Newman?

  Well, of course, Mena Suvari and Chris Klein don't have sex, which is what makes them a little different.

• 28:27David Sims?

  Yeah. Just fucking have sex.

• 28:29Griffin Newman?

  David's doing a Jeff Goff motion.

• 28:30David Sims?

  Right, it's like, you know, oh, uh, what's his pants bang Stifler's mom and Jason Biggs fucks a pie? And, you know, those two, it's just like, yeah, we had sex, it sucked. We're 18 years old, we don't know what we're doing.

• 28:41Griffin Newman?

  And dismissive about two most important things that ever happened in American cinema.

• 28:45David Sims?

  What was that? Oh, the pie and Stifler's mom.

• 28:47Griffin Newman?

  Fucking Stifler's mom and Jason Biggs fucking dessert pastry.

• 28:53Speaker 02

  It is weird to think about this movie getting financed off those two actors in that movie.

• 28:58David Sims?

  A hundred percent. Then it's like, okay, fucking American Pie, you got some American pies in it? Great, it's a movie, cool, you want some money?

• 29:04Griffin Newman?

  So we were talking about this a little bit.

• 29:05David Sims?

  Can we make Union Station look like NYU?

• 29:07Griffin Newman?

  Chandler and I hung out last night, we were talking about this a little bit.

• 29:09David Sims?

  What's the wig budget? One dollar, one beastly dollar.

• 29:13Griffin Newman?

  The Suvari conversation's interesting, right? And the Biggs conversation's interesting, but you zoom out and it's like, it's hard to actually think of an analog of what happened after American Pie, where that movie was such a big hit and it had such an ensemble cast.

• 29:26David Sims?

  Yes.

• 29:27Griffin Newman?

  Biggs kind of got framed as the default lead.

• 29:29David Sims?

  Of young, cute, uh, American actors, so do something with them.

• 29:33Griffin Newman?

  Graffiti sort of way.

• 29:34David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 29:35Griffin Newman?

  Right? And Hollywood was just like.

• 29:39Griffin Newman?

  Math would, would tell us that at least two of these people are gonna end up being major lasting movie stars, right? And no one could figure out who it was and none of them worked, long term.

• 29:50Speaker 02

  Yeah, we said, we decided that Natasha Lyonne is the only one.

• 29:53David Sims?

  She is the obvious survivor.

• 29:56Griffin Newman?

  26 years later, there is no question that Natasha Lyonne is, in present moment, the most successful American Pie alum.

• 30:01Speaker 02

  Aside from Jennifer Coolidge.

• 30:03David Sims?

  Number, let's leave Coolidge aside.

• 30:05Griffin Newman?

  Okay.

• 30:05David Sims?

  And let's not talk about the Shermanator.

• 30:08Griffin Newman?

  But I was gonna say, what we said last night was that the top three would be-

• 30:12David Sims?

  Hannigan is two.

• 30:14Griffin Newman?

  I think, number two is Joe.

• 30:16David Sims?

  No, Hannigan is two. We're talking about who's on the iconic poster of American Pie.

• 30:22Griffin Newman?

  Okay, so number two is Hannigan, but let's say-

• 30:24David Sims?

  We're not talking about bit parts.

• 30:25Griffin Newman?

  Hannigan is kind of semi-retired.

• 30:28David Sims?

  Nonetheless, Alison Hannigan is in two gigantic TV shows.

• 30:31Griffin Newman?

  Queen of fucking residuals. She also hosted like eight seasons of Penn and Teller's CW show. Where she show up like two days a year and probably get millions of dollars.

• 30:40David Sims?

  Ben is making the appropriate, who cares?

• 30:41Griffin Newman?

  Pants are full of us.

• 30:42David Sims?

  That's like a .1 W A R.

• 30:45Griffin Newman?

  Syndication, I'm saying she has three syndication series.

• 30:48David Sims?

  Lyonne?

• 30:49Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 30:49David Sims?

  Hannigan?

• 30:50Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 30:50David Sims?

  Number three is Sean William Scott, right? No question.

• 30:52Griffin Newman?

  But also a guy who slowed way down.

• 30:55David Sims?

  I don't know, what about just flutes? Flutes, they're back.

• 30:59Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 31:00David Sims?

  Pies. Okay, and pies, too. In fact, I know, let's keep this going.

• 31:04Griffin Newman?

  Okay.

• 31:05David Sims?

  I'm doing the whole poster.

• 31:06Griffin Newman?

  Do the whole poster.

• 31:06David Sims?

  Cause this is actually, cause like, I do think it's like, Lyonne, Hannigan, Sean William Scott is number three for sure. He's had a career, he's been above the title and things.

• 31:14Griffin Newman?

  I'm just saying, I'm just saying that Lyonne's the best right now, and Hannigan and Williams had the best careers after the movie.

• 31:20David Sims?

  Should I rank everyone like Natasha Lyonne?

• 31:23Griffin Newman?

  Lyonne had a bad period in between.

• 31:24David Sims?

  I had a bad period in between.

• 31:25Griffin Newman?

  And now she's doing great.

• 31:26David Sims?

  Did I get that Oscar nom for his three daughters?

• 31:30Griffin Newman?

  I'm just trying to explore storytelling opportunities in AI.

• 31:34David Sims?

  I think four is Biggs.

• 31:35Griffin Newman?

  That's sadly true.

• 31:36David Sims?

  Biggs is four.

• 31:37Griffin Newman?

  I think you're right.

• 31:38David Sims?

  I think Biggs is four.

• 31:39Griffin Newman?

  Which feels wrong, but I think you're right.

• 31:41Speaker 02

  He's a gentleman's four.

• 31:42Griffin Newman?

  He's around, he's a gentleman's four.

• 31:44David Sims?

  I think, now it's tough.

• 31:47Griffin Newman?

  It gets tough.

• 31:48David Sims?

  Now I'm between Klein and Suvari.

• 31:50Speaker 02

  I think Klein because he had the, um, the election bump.

• 31:54David Sims?

  I gotta go for Suvari. She's in a Best Picture winner.

• 31:57Speaker 02

  That's fair.

• 31:58David Sims?

  And she's in Loser, a film we're discussing today.

• 32:00Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 32:00Speaker 02

  We're not discussing the Chris Klein oeuvre right now.

• 32:03Griffin Newman?

  Which we have done before.

• 32:04David Sims?

  We have.

• 32:05Griffin Newman?

  We'll do again.

• 32:07David Sims?

  Do it again. Yeah, you're talking about Chris. Savary has got a ton of credits.

• 32:12Griffin Newman?

  She does.

• 32:12David Sims?

  She keeps working.

• 32:14Griffin Newman?

  But yet, I was looking at her Wikipedia and I was so ready to discover.

• 32:18David Sims?

  She played Jane Wyman in the Reagan movie last year.

• 32:21Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 32:21Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 32:22David Sims?

  She's working.

• 32:23Griffin Newman?

  She did some TV show in the last couple of years that also had American in the title.

• 32:28David Sims?

  Yeah, you're really hooked on the American thing.

• 32:30Griffin Newman?

  American women or American woman or whatever the fuck it's called. She is a perfect.

• 32:33David Sims?

  American woman, it was called.

• 32:34Griffin Newman?

  Example of, I'm pulling up her Wikipedia and I'm like, I'm about to find out that Mina Savary has quietly been on.

• 32:41David Sims?

  Sure, like a cop show.

• 32:42Griffin Newman?

  FBI Seattle.

• 32:44Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 32:45Griffin Newman?

  For nine seasons. Right? And she has.

• 32:48David Sims?

  FBI Spokane.

• 32:50Griffin Newman?

  She has worked consistently, but there is no thing like that.

• 32:54David Sims?

  No, but she has worked a lot.

• 32:56Griffin Newman?

  She's worked consistently, yeah.

• 32:57Speaker 02

  Do you think she works in this movie? You think she's miscast? Would it be better with Alison Hannigan?

• 33:02Griffin Newman?

  I kind of like her in this.

• 33:03David Sims?

  I think she works.

• 33:04Speaker 02

  Natasha Lyonne would be a much better.

• 33:06David Sims?

  Hey, I'd make a lot of sense.

• 33:07Speaker 02

  I would watch that movie.

• 33:08Griffin Newman?

  Well, yes, it kind of feels like it was built for Leon in a way.

• 33:11David Sims?

  I've kind of been, you know, hey, but I was kind of having a tough time then.

• 33:18Griffin Newman?

  David?

• 33:19David Sims?

  Yes.

• 33:19Griffin 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.

• 33:40David 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.

• 34:00Griffin 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.

• 34:16David Sims?

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

• 34:50Griffin Newman?

  David!

• 34:51David Sims?

  Yes?

• 34:51Griffin Newman?

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

• 34:55David Sims?

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

• 35:01Griffin Newman?

  I love that. It's very convenient.

• 35:02David Sims?

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

• 35:09Griffin 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.

• 35:19David Sims?

  Got stocking stuffers, maybe. The sickest luxury items.

• 35:22Griffin Newman?

  Cookware, to kicks, toys, to high tech, even tinsel and tree toppers.

• 35:28David Sims?

  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.

• 35:41Griffin Newman?

  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.

• 36:13Griffin Newman?

  David.

• 36:13David Sims?

  Hmm.

• 36:14Griffin 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.

• 36:21David Sims?

  Lisa.

• 36:22Griffin 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.

• 36:30David Sims?

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

• 36:36Griffin Newman?

  Mm hmm.

• 36:36David Sims?

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

• 36:43Griffin Newman?

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

• 36:46David Sims?

  No.

• 36:47Griffin Newman?

  Nope.

• 36:48David Sims?

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• 37:33David Sims?

  But I, I think she works in this movie. I think the character is written a little tough for pretty much anyone to totally. She's playing it. Look, my whole problem with this movie, which really, really kind of threw me for a loop.

• 37:47Griffin Newman?

  It was meant to be rated R and it's PG-13 instead. That's the only problem anyone could have with this movie. Laptop show.

• 37:53David Sims?

  Is like both Biggs and Suvari are quite saintly and good in this movie.

• 38:00Speaker 02

  Yes, that was my problem. At the beginning of the movie, he saves the cat like 16 times.

• 38:04David Sims?

  And they never really introduce flaws. So with Biggs, you're kind of like, bitch, you're clearly smart and nice. Like, just go meet some people. What the fuck is the matter with you? And cut your hair.

• 38:14Speaker 02

  The Suvari.

• 38:14David Sims?

  And then with Suvari, you're like, you are too smart.

• 38:17Griffin Newman?

  Sure.

• 38:18David Sims?

  Behaving this way, and I know people, you know, get in bad relationships and do toxic things and like, you know, but you're just kind of like, you're not written well enough for any of this to really make sense. She's kind of too level headed.

• 38:29Speaker 02

  No, and you have no context of who she is outside of Jason Biggs.

• 38:33David Sims?

  Who is she calling on the phone?

• 38:35Speaker 02

  Like her mother, her mother's just like, okay, get the train when you can.

• 38:39David Sims?

  I could not tell if that was her mom or like a grandma, the way she talked about her parents. The emancipation, there's so many questions I have about this movie. I'm really upset.

• 38:50Speaker 02

  A key point of The Apartment is when, um, like her, um, when Shirley MacLaine's like, what, you know, like, who is the brother in law, sister's husband?

• 38:58David Sims?

  I haven't seen it in 20 years.

• 39:00Speaker 02

  Comes in and like rescues her and you get like this really interesting snapshot into that character's life.

• 39:04David Sims?

  Into what's going on with her.

• 39:05Speaker 02

  But she just only exists like as a-

• 39:07David Sims?

  Is it tennis racket, the pasta?

• 39:08Griffin Newman?

  We should just directly say that this movie is an unofficial kind of retelling of The Apartment. It has too much in common to be accidental.

• 39:17David Sims?

  It's inspired by, but then it's got other stuff going on too.

• 39:21Griffin Newman?

  It's inspired by, it's not legally a remake of The Apartment. And yet there are things that are legally remakes of other movies that have less in common with the original film than this does with The Apartment.

• 39:31David Sims?

  Concert do they go to? In The Apartment, no, they go to an Everclear concert. No, it's the same band, same band.

• 39:35Griffin Newman?

  Big band Everclear.

• 39:36Speaker 02

  It's at Webster Hall too.

• 39:37David Sims?

  Yeah, yeah, right. Oh, fuck, I wish I could do Lemon saying like, hey, do you want to go see Everclear? Wish I could do Lemon, do Lemon.

• 39:44Speaker 02

  No, but that's a beat in The Apartment.

• 39:46Griffin Newman?

  You like AM radio?

• 39:47Speaker 02

  They're supposed to go to see the Broadway play.

• 39:49David Sims?

  Right, right, right.

• 39:51Speaker 02

  It's the same thing. They're supposed to see the Music Man.

• 39:53Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 39:54David Sims?

  But of course, in The Apartment, you're like, this is incredibly like risque and subversive for the time. And also it's about grownups, like, you know, and it's about guys cheating on their girlfriends and wives and stuff, right? Whereas in Loser, it's like, they're freshmen in college. What, why, this device doesn't make as much sense.

• 40:12Griffin Newman?

  So I just want to say, okay, Ben has never seen The Apartment. We're, we're watching this together. We come to the office, we watch Loser together. A couple of cool guys watching Loser.

• 40:19David Sims?

  Just jacking off.

• 40:20Speaker 02

  I'm so sad that you had to see Loser before you get to see The Apartment.

• 40:24Griffin Newman?

  It is quite sad.

• 40:25David Sims?

  Yeah, you'll watch The Apartment now and you're like, no loser. No, no ever clear, where's Alan Cumming? I don't see him.

• 40:31Griffin Newman?

  As I said, I brought over some pizza and some Mountain Dew. We had a chill in and watched Loser in the office. And I like, Ben was like, what is this plot? And I was like, well, it's The Apartment. And then he gave me a blank stare. And I was like, oh, have you never seen The Apartment? Here's the basic shape of The Apartment. A film that, by the way, won best.

• 40:49David Sims?

  And is a good movie.

• 40:50Griffin Newman?

  It is like.

• 40:51Speaker 02

  Masterpiece.

• 40:52Griffin Newman?

  It is kind of considered one of the like crown jewels of like Hollywood filmmaking.

• 40:57David Sims?

  But it wasn't just a best picture winner. It endures because it was, for the time, a very adult movie, like that was, you know, like, like ahead of its time.

• 41:07Griffin Newman?

  It is one of the only comedies to ever win best picture. So it's talked about a lot in that context of like how few have won. And one of the reasons it won, and I guess it was sourcing as a surprise, is that it is this movie that does this very deft balancing act of tones where it gets into some really dark and heavy shit and doesn't feel glib about it, but also feels like it gives it an appropriate amount of weight. The basic setup of that movie is that Jack Lemmon is, dare I say, a bit of a loser. C.C. Baxter, who's kind of like an underling at, at sort of just like a clock in, clock out desk job. And all the other guys at the firm are always kind of taken advantage of, much like this trio of truly sadistic dormates that Jason Biggs has, right?

• 41:52Griffin Newman?

  But this guy's thing he does to get in good with the other guys who don't like him is he offers up his apartment. He will give them the keys so they can use his apartment to sleep with their mistresses before they go home to their wives. And so everyone kind of uses this guy as a doormat and he thinks eventually this will be rewarded with people giving me the promotion, giving me respect, whatever it is. He has a massive crush on Shirley MacLaine, who's kind of like the original. I get it. Right. And it's like her in like pixie haircut. She's got a spunky attitude.

• 42:25Speaker 02

  She's an elevator.

• 42:26Griffin Newman?

  She's an elevator operator. He's in love with her. She's very sweet to him, but feels like, I don't know, he lacks the edge or whatever, right? And his boss says that he will like give him the promotion he wants if he lets him use the apartment as well. And he slowly puts together that the boss is using the apartment to sleep with Shirley MacLaine. Damn.

• 42:46David Sims?

  Um, just to speak to the apartment's best picture win, I realize this is a tangent. I mean, 1960 Oscars, um, it was the only choice. The other nominees are The Alamo, which is terrible, Elmer Gantry, Sons and Lovers, and The Sundowners, all of which are like, okay.

• 43:00Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 43:01David Sims?

  But none are movies that really endured.

• 43:03Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 43:03David Sims?

  But the movie that the Oscars didn't have the balls, I'm gonna say it.

• 43:09Griffin Newman?

  It's 1960 or 1961?

• 43:10David Sims?

  To nominate 1960 is Psycho, which gets a best director nomination out of kind of a like, huh, good job with that.

• 43:17Griffin Newman?

  And it gets both supportings?

• 43:19David Sims?

  Uh.

• 43:20Griffin Newman?

  Or did they not nominate Perkins?

• 43:21David Sims?

  No, they, they, no, they didn't nominate Perkins. They only nominated Janet Leigh for dying.

• 43:26Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, why?

• 43:26David Sims?

  Spoiler for Psycho.

• 43:28Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 43:29David Sims?

  She dies.

• 43:29Griffin Newman?

  She dies.

• 43:30David Sims?

  Um, but, uh, Psycho, I imagine, was the actual other big smash of the year, but it was a little too lurid for them.

• 43:37Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 43:38David Sims?

  Uh, but The Apartment's a masterpiece.

• 43:40Griffin Newman?

  It is. Now, like, something like Guess Who, right, is like, in terms of actual structure of contracts, an actual remake of Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, that like, does not mirror the plot at all, whereas this mirrors it in like, such weird ways, but then the ways in which it diverts are so much stranger.

• 43:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, I'm just thinking about Greg Kinnear's character and how he's supposed to be. Like the Fred Mc Murray, you know, but, you know, in The Apartment, that character is first, seems like an upstanding guy, like a really good principal guy.

• 44:12David Sims?

  Greg Kinnear is pure fucking evil in this movie, in this way that I think, I will say it, and I love Amy Heckerling.

• 44:20Griffin Newman?

  Uh huh.

• 44:20David Sims?

  I love a lot of her movies. I've criticized some of them on this podcast.

• 44:23Griffin Newman?

  Sure.

• 44:23David Sims?

  Horribly written, because like, the movie begins with him basically being like, I'm just such a slut for teen love. I love you. I'm your professor. Like, he's saying everything out loud.

• 44:34Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 44:34David Sims?

  He's just being disgusting at her, and you're just like, this guy's completely charmless. Like, no one would be interested in this guy.

• 44:40Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 44:40David Sims?

  The fact that Mina Savari is interested in him, Greg Kinnear as a smart English college professor, you can make that work for me.

• 44:48Griffin Newman?

  Totally.

• 44:48David Sims?

  Like, him playing a slimeball is a little obvious, and I'm sure Greg Kinnear kind of sighed when he got the script, like, because he was kind of getting these roles a lot by this point.

• 44:57Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 44:57Griffin Newman?

  But it's like, you want the slime.

• 44:59David Sims?

  Charmless. He's so nasty to her.

• 45:01Griffin Newman?

  From the get-go.

• 45:02Speaker 02

  It's the same.

• 45:02David Sims?

  First scene.

• 45:03Speaker 02

  It's the same role he plays in You've Got Mail.

• 45:05David Sims?

  But like, in You've Got Mail, I mean, he's pretty annoying, but you can kind of see it, and he's a good-looking guy. Again, you know, it's like Greg, that's what Greg Kinnear was good at. And he's awful in this, but I don't think it's his fault because the character is horrible.

• 45:18Griffin Newman?

  Well, like to Chandler's point, like in the apartment, right? The whole thing that makes the dynamic interesting is it's breaking his heart that he is letting his boss, who he is played by Fred McMurray, who was like a fucking Disney stock company actor.

• 45:34Speaker 02

  Yeah, he'd never done anything like, I think it was pre double indemnities. So it was like very subversive.

• 45:39Griffin Newman?

  A wonderful actor, a guy who kinda was like a little bit of a Greg Kinnear equivalent, where it's just like there's, it feels like something subversive about this guy who looks kinda like a Ken doll, revealing this kinda slime, right? But like, this guy is having this, like, is dying inside at the notion that he's letting his boss take advantage of the girl that he truly has feelings for in order to sort of like help his career, right? That he is sort of complicit in this.

• 46:07David Sims?

  We have to drop the apartment after this because comparing this movie to the apartment is just gonna make us crazy.

• 46:11Speaker 02

  That's so true.

• 46:12Griffin Newman?

  But I'm like, having never seen this movie before, I was like, huh. Doing college apartment isn't a terrible idea. Using a dorm room in that way, a teacher sleeping with a student where there's something that needs to be kept secret.

• 46:26David Sims?

  I guess, but teacher sleeping-

• 46:27Griffin Newman?

  Kinda makes sense in that casting.

• 46:29David Sims?

  Sure, like I just said he did. I mean, yes, he does, but teacher sleeping with student is a much bigger-

• 46:35Griffin Newman?

  Oh, yeah.

• 46:35David Sims?

  Violation. So you're already kinda like-

• 46:37Griffin Newman?

  Absolutely.

• 46:38David Sims?

  But again, it's more just that he just is mean to her and not mean in like a cute way.

• 46:43Griffin Newman?

  No.

• 46:44David Sims?

  And he seems boring, but they don't even do anything. Yeah, and they have no sexual chemistry. There's no sex in this movie.

• 46:49Griffin Newman?

  Excuse me, he lies next to her in bed, reading the New York Times book review. They do a lot of things together.

• 46:54Speaker 02

  He has that weird library. He's like, I think I'm my whole body. Just relax.

• 46:58David Sims?

  He's, it's fucking Daniel Bruhl getting asked to play a fifth Nazi. Kinnear's like, who am I? Oh, I'm another slimeball? Great. Yeah, that's great. I'll do it. Yeah, that's fine. Like, it's like, you've got mail.

• 47:10Griffin Newman?

  Uh huh.

• 47:10David Sims?

  Mystery Man.

• 47:11Griffin Newman?

  Yep.

• 47:12David Sims?

  Nurse Betty.

• 47:13Griffin Newman?

  Mystery Man, another film with the sort of loser status of All Star becomes a hit while the movie's-

• 47:18David Sims?

  Right, while the movie's forgotten.

• 47:19Speaker 02

  That was a great- Time.

• 47:20David Sims?

  But like, his role in Nurse Betty is exactly that too, right? He's a, he's a, look, everyone thinks he's cute, but he's an asshole.

• 47:25Griffin Newman?

  I feel like there's another one right around here.

• 47:28David Sims?

  Oh, yeah. Like, where it's just this, all he, Someone Like You, which is the next year, the Ashley Judd movie, where it's like, I guess I'll be with, you know, Greg Kinnear, who sucks. And Hugh Jackman's like, how you doing, Mike? I know he doesn't have that.

• 47:40Griffin Newman?

  All of his movies for a while were, I'm a nice guy, wink.

• 47:43David Sims?

  And then in like, 2002, he's like, give me an Oscar movie. And it's like, great, do you want to play Bob Crane? And he's like, isn't that guy who fucking jacked off with his friend? It's like, yeah, sorry.

• 47:52Speaker 02

  What about As Good As It Gets? At least he got, he got one.

• 47:55David Sims?

  Right.

• 47:55Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 47:56David Sims?

  And like, he's awesome in that movie.

• 47:57Speaker 02

  So good.

• 47:58David Sims?

  I think it's a wonderful performance.

• 47:59Griffin Newman?

  But that was the thing, that was his launch. Here's this guy who's like a talk show host, and it was like, no one's ever gonna take him seriously as an actor, because he's like a lightweight talk show host.

• 48:07David Sims?

  He's the fucking talk soup guy.

• 48:07Griffin Newman?

  He's the talk soup guy.

• 48:09David Sims?

  Right.

• 48:09Griffin Newman?

  And then they cast him in Sabrina. That flops, everyone's like, see, that's what you get for casting a talk show host.

• 48:14David Sims?

  No, Sabrina's bef, oh, oh, sure, right, Sabrina's before.

• 48:17Griffin Newman?

  And then As Good As It Gets is the moment of like, he proved everyone wrong. Greg Kinnear's got the goods. And then what you've just outlined is basically the post as good as it gets.

• 48:25David Sims?

  After, yes.

• 48:26Griffin Newman?

  Like, it felt like he had won the argument in theory of, you deserve to be in movies. We take you seriously. And then he got pigeonholed into this sort of thing.

• 48:36David Sims?

  Do you think anyone remembers that he's in Little Miss Sunshine?

• 48:40Griffin Newman?

  I think he's incredibly good.

• 48:41David Sims?

  He's totally good in it, but it's like, is that the most forgotten performance in that movie?

• 48:44Griffin Newman?

  Even weirdly more than Toni Collette, whose character actually was not written. Every live dialogue she has in the script just says TBD.

• 48:53David Sims?

  She's just kind of, she's good.

• 48:54Speaker 02

  She's like, you go, yeah, do it.

• 48:57Griffin Newman?

  The reason I'm bringing up the apartment thing, for Ben's perspective, and I know you don't want to harp on this, is just, it is fascinating to me that in the basic setup of this movie, it's not about him working out a deal with the fucking professor. It's about his, like, fucking dorm mates just hazing him for 90 minutes.

• 49:13David Sims?

  Again.

• 49:13Griffin Newman?

  And then like, date drugging the girl. And then him having to like, save her versus like, in the apartment where it's like, everything is a lot tighter.

• 49:23Speaker 02

  Yeah, they had the apartment right there.

• 49:25Griffin Newman?

  Right there.

• 49:25David Sims?

  We're gonna officially close this discussion with the verdict.

• 49:29Griffin Newman?

  You're gonna close the door?

• 49:30David Sims?

  The apartment is better than loser.

• 49:31Griffin Newman?

  Okay.

• 49:32Speaker 02

  Controversial, but I can accept it.

• 49:34David Sims?

  The thing about loser, here's what I knew about loser, apart from, I'm good.

• 49:38Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, you knew that her name is Noel.

• 49:40David Sims?

  Is it though?

• 49:41Griffin Newman?

  No, it's not.

• 49:43David Sims?

  I was like, okay, Jason Biggs plays a loser. He's got a silly hat.

• 49:48Griffin Newman?

  Tape of an L on his forehead.

• 49:49David Sims?

  He falls down the stairs.

• 49:51Griffin Newman?

  A lot.

• 49:52David Sims?

  A lot. But there's the big fall down the stairs, because that was in like the trailer.

• 49:55Griffin Newman?

  Right. And what does he say? He makes some joke about like Jerry Lewis, ladies and gentlemen.

• 50:00Speaker 02

  Oh yeah, that's what Greg Kinnear says.

• 50:01Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 50:01David Sims?

  He's got silly hair.

• 50:04Griffin Newman?

  Boy, does he.

• 50:05David Sims?

  Boy, does he. Another thing my wife was freaking out about, where she was just like, I don't understand the wig.

• 50:10Griffin Newman?

  Right. Watching this movie makes you want to take a pair of scissors and like try to cut through the TV screen.

• 50:16David Sims?

  Just stop.

• 50:18Speaker 02

  It's so insane.

• 50:19David Sims?

  No hair is so much better than this.

• 50:21Griffin Newman?

  His hair is finally cut in the last scene of the movie and is clearly just Jason Biggs' natural hair versus this insane wig of death they're giving him the whole time. And he shows up with the real hair and I turn to Ben and I go, I'm immediately 5% less annoyed with this movie. Why couldn't it have been this the whole time?

• 50:37Speaker 02

  There's a whole makeover montage and they don't cut the hair. It's actually unconscionable for like an audience to have to look at that hair for a whole.

• 50:46David Sims?

  I agree. It's a terrible wig.

• 50:48Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 50:49David Sims?

  And we'll talk about it, but all I knew going in was like, he's a loser. He goes to college. People are mean to him. He struggles to fit in. He figures it out, I assume.

• 50:56Griffin Newman?

  Sure.

• 50:57David Sims?

  Right? Like, that's all I knew. And instead it starts with like, right, he meets three Nazi war criminals that he has to live with.

• 51:04Griffin Newman?

  We've had cruelty in the heart of all men.

• 51:06Speaker 02

  Dressing in rage here.

• 51:08David Sims?

  At the start of the movie, they're like moving a speaker into his room and I'm like, right, he has annoying roommates. And then quickly you're like, oh, these are like irredeemable monsters.

• 51:15Griffin Newman?

  These are like Columbine killers.

• 51:16David Sims?

  Right. And then the joke gets elevated, escalated so insanely where it's like, not only that, like they dress like Zoolander's friends. Right? Like they're in these insane outfits and it's like, kind of funny, but the movie's almost too realistic for it to work.

• 51:33Griffin Newman?

  Chandler, you and I were talking last night about The Wedding Singer, which we both love.

• 51:36David Sims?

  Great movie.

• 51:37Griffin Newman?

  Right?

• 51:37Speaker 02

  Love it.

• 51:38Griffin Newman?

  And how good in particular the art direction is in The Wedding Singer?

• 51:41David Sims?

  Obviously it's a period film and it's taking advantage.

• 51:45Griffin Newman?

  The great Perry Blake, but that's what we were saying is like, at the time when they greenlit it, people were like, is it too soon to make an eighties movie?

• 51:52David Sims?

  Right.

• 51:52Griffin Newman?

  And they were correct in that, like, it feels like it has just been enough time. And Perry Blake like recreates the eighties in a way that it's just like a little accentuated, but it doesn't feel over the top and it feels like American Graffiti-esque evocation, whatever. I say to Ben, fifteen minutes into us watching this, this doesn't feel like we're watching a movie from the year 2000. It feels like we're watching a film from 2025 set in the year 2000.

• 52:16Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 52:17Griffin Newman?

  It feels like such a fake weird recreation, misremembering of the style of 2000.

• 52:22David Sims?

  There's moments that charm to me. Maybe it's just Alan coming.

• 52:25Griffin Newman?

  Completely against it.

• 52:26David Sims?

  Right.

• 52:26Griffin Newman?

  But there's something about in this moment where she is capturing that year, something is so over the top in, as you said, like, the dorm mates dressing like the Zoolander

• 52:37David Sims?

  Right.

• 52:38Griffin Newman?

  roommates and like the fucking soundtrack and all this stuff feels like this is like forced. And Ben said, well, what it is is someone still making movies about teenagers who is increasingly only getting older.

• 52:49David Sims?

  Yeah. And is kind of out of touch. But it's so weird because she's nails Clueless so hard.

• 52:55Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, Clueless is like, every element of Clueless is like pristine and like classic forever. And like, you watch that movie now and you want all the clothes in the movie.

• 53:04Griffin Newman?

  And Clueless is mega hyped.

• 53:05Speaker 02

  Even though it's so effective.

• 53:06Griffin Newman?

  Yes, but that's the difference is that Clueless, by her own admission, is sort of like, I'm gonna make up slang words that are even more insane than what the kids say.

• 53:14David Sims?

  Beyond the slang.

• 53:15Griffin Newman?

  I'm gonna accentuate the fact.

• 53:16David Sims?

  The way they dress. Right.

• 53:17Speaker 02

  It's the same costume designer and collaborators on this one, like Mona May and Twin Kaplan, her producer and...

• 53:24David Sims?

  And I do think Ben's right, that she has no grasp on actual like youth.

• 53:29Speaker 02

  Maybe she doesn't know men. Like, maybe that's part of it, because it's the world of men.

• 53:34David Sims?

  Women can't write men. You know, that's, that's my lesson I've learned from this. They should be ashamed of themselves to try to write men. No, I mean, maybe...

• 53:42Griffin Newman?

  The female gaze in this movie is insane. The way her camera leers over her bags.

• 53:49Speaker 02

  His, all, all of his bad toupee.

• 53:51Griffin Newman?

  His fucking...

• 53:52Speaker 02

  The track marks of his, his...

• 53:54David Sims?

  But I couldn't even... Get a handle on, and I don't think she ever had a handle on like, what is he? Like, what kind of bumpkin is he supposed to be?

• 54:02Griffin Newman?

  Especially with a title like Loser, you're like, you're gonna present to me a very specifically realized version of an outcast.

• 54:10David Sims?

  He's from the Midwest, he has a hat, I don't know, he's nice.

• 54:12Griffin Newman?

  I was getting like Pennsylvania yokel.

• 54:15Speaker 02

  Cause I, I think she loves, I think Amy Heckerling like really reveres classic Hollywood and kind of disrupt in that. So I bet, I feel like he's like a Frank Capra kind of character, like Mr. Deeds goes to Washington or something.

• 54:28David Sims?

  He's a step away from a character I think about too much, Norbit.

• 54:32Griffin Newman?

  We all think about Norbit.

• 54:33David Sims?

  From the film Norbit.

• 54:34Griffin Newman?

  Uh huh.

• 54:35David Sims?

  Who is an insane character in a movie filled with insane characters, who's just like, and he's a nice guy. Like, it's like Eddie Murphy kind of forgot to do Norbit when he was, he's like, he works on everything else, right? And he's like, oh, fuck, who's Norbit?

• 54:46Griffin Newman?

  But that movie's also almost about like biblical trials that will fall.

• 54:50David Sims?

  Exactly. So then at a certain point, you're like, can you just do something else? You're stressing me out, just kind of being like, alright, guys, like while this is happening to him.

• 54:59Griffin Newman?

  That's what's so weird though, is as you said, like, having it just be like, small town kid, moves to the city, right? Scholarship kid.

• 55:08David Sims?

  That's a premise.

• 55:09Griffin Newman?

  All these shitty rich kids, and he's just a little too pure, and they all dislike him for that reason. But this movie's also trying to be like, he's so bizarre and weird that they can't make sense of him.

• 55:20David Sims?

  This hat he wears.

• 55:21Griffin Newman?

  Right. Outside of him just sort of being like fresh off the bus.

• 55:25David Sims?

  This reminds me, I need to open the dossier. So let me open the dossier. 1997, MGM buys a spec script called Molly.

• 55:32Griffin Newman?

  Yep.

• 55:33David Sims?

  Amy Heckerling gets attached to direct and produce.

• 55:35Griffin Newman?

  I clocked this movie recently as her only producing credit on a film she didn't direct. And I was like, huh, what is this? And why'd she end up in this? And then watched this trailer, which is a nightmare.

• 55:45David Sims?

  Sure. It stars Elizabeth Shue, the, um, it does eventually get made, not by her, yes. It's a fact-based comedy about a man who has to take care of his sister when she's released from an institution. She's autistic and medical treatment has cured her and turned her into a genius?

• 55:59Griffin Newman?

  It's like a flowers for Algernon for hell. Yeah. It looks so fucking bad.

• 56:04David Sims?

  But she didn't make that.

• 56:05Griffin Newman?

  She didn't.

• 56:06David Sims?

  She made Loser instead.

• 56:07Griffin Newman?

  She made Loser.

• 56:08David Sims?

  She gets attached to, she and Twin Caplin are attached to produce a feature film adaptation of The Prometheus and Bob shorts.

• 56:15Griffin Newman?

  Now, would it surprise you to hear?

• 56:17David Sims?

  That you fucking loved that shit?

• 56:19Griffin Newman?

  And Ben, you got a rise out of Ben, right? You remember that?

• 56:22David Sims?

  Oh, of course. I also remember.

• 56:23Griffin Newman?

  Ben, you're about to lose your mind when you hear the other detail of what this movie is supposed to be.

• 56:27David Sims?

  For listeners who may not remember, Kablam.

• 56:29Griffin Newman?

  Kablam, the great Nickelodeon anthology show. It was broken up into different segments.

• 56:35Speaker 01

  Well, were some of the other recurring shorts?

• 56:37Griffin Newman?

  Well, of course, there was Action League Now.

• 56:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 56:42Griffin Newman?

  The Flash, Stinky Driver.

• 56:44David Sims?

  Melt Man, he has the power to melt.

• 56:46Griffin Newman?

  Justice.

• 56:47David Sims?

  This is good stuff. Thunder Girl, she flies like thunder. I always thought that was such a good show.

• 56:52Griffin Newman?

  It was so good. Henry and June hosted the show. It took place in between the pages of a comic book. I believe Angela Anaconda started on Kablam. Oh, my God, I love Angela Anaconda. Which then spun off into a very big Canadian show.

• 57:03David Sims?

  They also had, a few things came out of it.

• 57:05Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 57:06David Sims?

  But yeah, it was very fun.

• 57:07Griffin Newman?

  But Prometheus and Bob was a series.

• 57:09David Sims?

  Angela Anaconda was so weird.

• 57:11Speaker 01

  It was good as hell.

• 57:12David Sims?

  Yeah, it was pretty good.

• 57:13Griffin Newman?

  Yeah. Do you know that Noah Seigun was the voice of Henry on Kablam?

• 57:19David Sims?

  Let's keep going.

• 57:20Griffin Newman?

  Okay, so Prometheus and Bob was a series of claymation short films that were, in theory, the discovered tapes of UFOs' first encounters with human life. And it was like aliens landed on Earth in the prehistoric age. And this alien tries to teach a caveman how to do stuff. And they were really fucking funny.

• 57:40David Sims?

  They were funny. Molly, her daughter, got her into the shorts. So that was how she got interested.

• 57:45Griffin Newman?

  I loved these. I vividly remember my dad being like, I just read they're making a Prometheus and Bob movie. And being so excited.

• 57:51David Sims?

  And it was supposed to star Chris Farley and David Spade.

• 57:54Speaker 01

  Oh, my God.

• 57:55David Sims?

  Then Chris Farley died, unfortunately.

• 57:57Speaker 01

  That would have been incredible.

• 57:59David Sims?

  I know. But the project stayed in development. Now, the creator of Prometheus and Bob, Coates Zellers, did say that the first draft of the film, which was not written by him, was, quote, "the worst thing he ever read."

• 58:10Griffin Newman?

  Did they say who wrote the first draft?

• 58:11David Sims?

  No, I don't know.

• 58:12Griffin Newman?

  And then he tried to rewrite it and he said a lot of those ideas ended up getting re- Purpose for the Jack Black Gulliver's travels. I don't know what that means.

• 58:19David Sims?

  That is true. I don't know.

• 58:20Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 58:20David Sims?

  Uh, the writers were Nick Stoller and Joe Stillman.

• 58:23Griffin Newman?

  Well, they did Gulliver. Yeah.

• 58:24David Sims?

  Okay. Uh, so, um, what does Heckerling actually do rather than these things? She does, of course, work on the Clueless TV show briefly. The other thing she, uh, works on was A Night at the Roxbury, which she develops and produces. Now we address this more on the next episode, don't we?

• 58:40Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 58:42Speaker 02

  I won't speak of it.

• 58:44David Sims?

  Silence.

• 58:45Griffin Newman?

  I mean, it is just a thing, right? It, it, the, the whole, uh, accounting of the night, the Roxbury thing is very confusing. And there are a lot of like story pieces that don't fit together in all directions.

• 58:56David Sims?

  Who's in that film says that she made a pass at him and then Lauren said that he was supposed to have sex with her. You can read all of his.

• 59:05Griffin Newman?

  Supposed to direct the movie. She doesn't end up directing the movie, but does end up producing it. But I've also heard that she kind of did take over.

• 59:13David Sims?

  That makes sense.

• 59:13Griffin Newman?

  At some point in production and Chris Catan says that he was pressured to have an affair with her by Lorne Michaels.

• 59:19David Sims?

  Yes.

• 59:19Griffin Newman?

  In order to help secure her on the movie, but Chris Catan was sleeping with three different women in the movie at the same time.

• 59:26David Sims?

  He was. Uh, Amy Heckerling's response, and I believe we also talk about this next week was, ugh, he's a nut. Essentially like, I don't want to know what dumb shit he came up with. I have nothing to say about him or his idiot book.

• 59:38Griffin Newman?

  And Molly Israel's talked about it.

• 59:39David Sims?

  This was all when he, uh, was selling.

• 59:41Griffin Newman?

  Baby, don't hurt me.

• 59:44Griffin Newman?

  But, but yes, uh, another thing that takes up a year plus of her life and has only led to, uh, uh, drama and tragedy. Yeah. Certainly bad feelings. Yeah.

• 59:55David Sims?

  Heckerling, uh, so why did she make loser? JJ couldn't find out.

• 59:59Griffin Newman?

  Great. I mean, it does feel as simple as her being like, I love the apartment. I want to make something like the apartment.

• 1:00:05David Sims?

  I don't think that's quite, I don't know.

• 1:00:07Griffin Newman?

  That's it?

• 1:00:09David Sims?

  Well, this, here's a quote from her.

• 1:00:11Griffin Newman?

  What?

• 1:00:11David Sims?

  It's called Loser and it stars Jason Biggs, Mena Savari and Greg Kinnear. Jason plays a guy in college who's hardworking, decent and has a big heart. So naturally, people think he's a loser, wackiness ensues. There's a crazy twist ending and no one's allowed to leave the theater during the last 10 minutes.

• 1:00:25Speaker 02

  What's the crazy twist?

• 1:00:26David Sims?

  She may kind of be joking. Cause there's obviously.

• 1:00:31Griffin Newman?

  But also, Biggs having the haircut at the end of the movie, I'm like, was the ending a reshoot? The coda certainly feels like a last minute thing in response to audiences being like, we want to see these assholes get punished.

• 1:00:42David Sims?

  I want to see Greg Kinnear get fed into a wood chipper.

• 1:00:45Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 1:00:45David Sims?

  And they're just like, he went to prison. And I'm like, not good enough.

• 1:00:48Griffin Newman?

  There is an American Graffiti style.

• 1:00:50David Sims?

  Punisher to kill him.

• 1:00:51Griffin Newman?

  Text what happened to the four most evil characters after the movie ending? That truly feels like it's only to satisfy that thing of like, audiences needing to see blood.

• 1:01:01David Sims?

  So Heckling is asked, why, why are you always making films about young people? She says, I guess I'm always attracted to that age group because everything is so intense and new and that's dramatic. And appealing to me.

• 1:01:14Griffin Newman?

  As is the case with a lot of filmmakers.

• 1:01:15David Sims?

  From her where she's really kind of, you know, explaining why she made this movie.

• 1:01:19Griffin Newman?

  But I think also as the case with a lot of filmmakers we talk about, they get so stuck in the thing they've had the most success doing. That certainly JJ has dug up the project she sets up or gets attached to in between each of her films that mostly end up being films about teenagers.

• 1:01:33David Sims?

  Is something.

• 1:01:35Griffin Newman?

  Give it to me.

• 1:01:36David Sims?

  When she made Clueless, she was forthright that she was basing it on the novel Emma by Jane Austen. But when Variety in 2000 reached out to Heckling's reps for comment on whether she'd use the apartment while crafting Loser. CAA said she did not base Loser on the apartment. Any similarities are coincidental.

• 1:01:55Griffin Newman?

  Well, here's what I would say to that.

• 1:01:56Speaker 02

  Interesting.

• 1:01:57Griffin Newman?

  The novel Emma is public domain.

• 1:01:59David Sims?

  Yeah, no, I know.

• 1:02:00Griffin Newman?

  And the motion picture, The Apartment, is not.

• 1:02:03David Sims?

  So.

• 1:02:05David Sims?

  The studio wanted Chris Klein to be the star of this movie.

• 1:02:09Speaker 02

  Whoa.

• 1:02:09David Sims?

  So the studio is basically just like, we need some of these guys.

• 1:02:13Griffin Newman?

  Pick two pirate cast members and you got a green light. Any two. It could be Reed and Nichols.

• 1:02:19Speaker 02

  That's a very different movie and not, I don't think Chris Klein could play a loser.

• 1:02:24Griffin Newman?

  Well, no, but yet.

• 1:02:26David Sims?

  He could, he would be doing the election thing again.

• 1:02:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly.

• 1:02:29David Sims?

  Playing like lovelily stupid.

• 1:02:30Griffin Newman?

  Which it feels like is what this movie wants this character to be.

• 1:02:34David Sims?

  But he's smart. He went to, he got a scholarship.

• 1:02:37Griffin Newman?

  That's the problem though, right? Like their conception of why he's uncool.

• 1:02:40David Sims?

  I think Chandler's right that it's kind of a Frank Capra thing and he's just like, oh, I have to live at the vet? Guess I'll be really good at helping animals now too, right? He's just like kinda always good at shit.

• 1:02:49Griffin Newman?

  But I think that requires him to be a level of rube that goes against how smart this character is, right? Like, that's the problem.

• 1:02:56David Sims?

  It certainly doesn't make a ton of sense.

• 1:02:58Speaker 02

  That's why the scholarship, like, that's why bribing the professor or blackmailing, that you need to have something, you have to have something on the teacher to make the apartment arrangement, you know?

• 1:03:09Griffin Newman?

  Right, exactly. Yes. And but, and it also just feels like they're not leaning into the level of kind of like, gee shucks idealism that that kind of character needs.

• 1:03:22Speaker 02

  It also needed like more New York in it. Like, The Apartment is an incredible New York film.

• 1:03:26David Sims?

  I think that is very true. And I think it's a failing with the three villain boys. None of them are very New York. I mean, they're rich kids, sure.

• 1:03:34Griffin Newman?

  But this movie is like set on Mars, like in the way where you're like, what are these fashions?

• 1:03:38David Sims?

  But then they go see Cabaret. Welcome to the end, when they think it's going to be a stupid.

• 1:03:44Griffin Newman?

  The movie's called Loser. The big thing it's asking us to buy is like pointing over at Jason Biggs and be like, this guy cannot fit in, right? He obviously does not look cool in this movie and yet everyone in this movie looks insane. So I'm like, well, his hair is crazy and his hat's crazy.

• 1:03:58David Sims?

  Everyone looks crazy.

• 1:03:59Griffin Newman?

  But I don't get everyone pointing at him and being like, what's up with this guy?

• 1:04:02David Sims?

  And I get that it's a joke, like it's heightened, but you're right. Like, they don't make sense.

• 1:04:07Griffin Newman?

  Cause he doesn't look like any stereotype of nerd I have ever seen.

• 1:04:13David Sims?

  Like, really? No. I don't know. That hat that he trades up to is so bad.

• 1:04:18Speaker 02

  Well, when she makes him wear the fedora from the movie.

• 1:04:21David Sims?

  Yeah, when he starts dressing like evil Spider-Man.

• 1:04:23Griffin Newman?

  This is truly one of those movies very few people have seen, right? But if you were trying to describe it to people and you say Amy Hackett's Loser. They most likely respond with, oh, the Teenage Dirtbag movie. And number two would be the movie with the hat.

• 1:04:36David Sims?

  Right.

• 1:04:36Griffin Newman?

  Cause the poster is, his face is cut off below the eyeballs. It's eyeballs, L on forehead, hat, loser. As if this movie was like, this summer, get ready to love this hat.

• 1:04:48Speaker 02

  Wait, so do you think when?

• 1:04:50Griffin Newman?

  The hat was the hook.

• 1:04:52Speaker 02

  Did Weetis add the line in the shape? No, wait, sorry, I'm getting confused with Smash Mouth.

• 1:04:56Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:56Speaker 02

  Shape of the L on her forehead, Smash Mouth, not Weetis. But it feels like it could be part of Teenage Dirtbag.

• 1:05:01David Sims?

  Smash Mouth should have done a pass on Loser.

• 1:05:03Griffin Newman?

  They should.

• 1:05:04David Sims?

  On the soundtrack.

• 1:05:05Griffin Newman?

  Oh, on the soundtrack.

• 1:05:05David Sims?

  On the movie too. Um, anyone should have done a pass on the movie.

• 1:05:08Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:08David Sims?

  Uh, anyway, um.

• 1:05:10Griffin Newman?

  This movie starts out, oh, sorry.

• 1:05:12David Sims?

  Resists Klein. She wants Biggs. When she meets Biggs, she clicks with him.

• 1:05:16Speaker 02

  She's like, of all the American Pie cast members.

• 1:05:19David Sims?

  Biggs loves Fast Times at Ridgemont High. He says it's his favorite teen movie. He's very excited to be the lead of a movie too, rather than American Pie.

• 1:05:28Griffin Newman?

  He's.

• 1:05:28David Sims?

  Uh, which is more of an ensemble.

• 1:05:30Griffin Newman?

  Shooting, Boys and Girls, warning, sex ruins everything concurrent with this movie.

• 1:05:36David Sims?

  Never seen that one. Yes, well, that is insane.

• 1:05:38Griffin Newman?

  That's a terrible movie.

• 1:05:39Speaker 02

  And he has his own hair in that movie. So he had to wear the wig for Loser.

• 1:05:44David Sims?

  Uh, every time Biggs left Loser to go film Boys and Girls, he had to have his hair extensions burned off.

• 1:05:51Speaker 02

  Oh, my God.

• 1:05:52Griffin Newman?

  It's insane. Why?

• 1:05:54Speaker 02

  Wait, so it's not even a full wig, it's hair extensions?

• 1:05:57Griffin Newman?

  Why wouldn't they just give him a fucking wig?

• 1:06:00David Sims?

  Make a wig.

• 1:06:00Griffin Newman?

  Or let him have his normal hair. I say this out of complete respect, right? Jason Biggs shows up with his real hair. No one's going, God, that guy looks too cool to buy as a loser. Right? Like, this is Jason Biggs, that's his stock in trade.

• 1:06:19David Sims?

  I mean, it just looks like he has Chris Klein hair.

• 1:06:21Griffin Newman?

  He's got goofball face.

• 1:06:23David Sims?

  Do you know what I mean though? That middle part, it's like the exact haircut.

• 1:06:26Griffin Newman?

  He's got the curtains.

• 1:06:27David Sims?

  So. Just, we'll talk about the rest of the plot of Loser in a second, but just to wrap on-

• 1:06:32Speaker 01

  Did you have that haircut? Did anyone, did anyone have a middle part here in this room?

• 1:06:36David Sims?

  No, I have an insane cowlick side part. I cannot middle part my hair at all. I have crazy hair.

• 1:06:42Griffin Newman?

  And I wanted cool guy Lars Ulrich, Tom Cruise, Mission Impossible 2 sweatback hair. And I didn't realize that my hair was curly and thought that at some point it would just start looking that way.

• 1:06:52David Sims?

  Smash Mouth should have maybe done a pass on your hair too.

• 1:06:54Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, also on my brain.

• 1:06:56David Sims?

  Yeah, right. So Heckling and her agent Ken Stovitz claimed the movie was ruined in post. It was really, according to Ken Stovitz, the movie was really good.

• 1:07:05Griffin Newman?

  Okay.

• 1:07:05David Sims?

  Until the studio said, no, you have to make a PG 13 and it ruined the movie. Of course, now only R rated comedy, the irony being, ah, but R rated comedies became king shit. And it's like, well, they already had.

• 1:07:16Griffin Newman?

  That's my fucking-

• 1:07:17Speaker 02

  I want to know what the R rated things were because there's the roofies. There's a pretty blue language in Loser already.

• 1:07:24Griffin Newman?

  Already really dark and I can't imagine like they're being-

• 1:07:27Speaker 02

  Is there more nudity or something?

• 1:07:28Griffin Newman?

  Right, like cum drinking, like fucking set pieces.

• 1:07:30David Sims?

  I'm about to tell you something completely bananas that certainly doesn't make Loser sound like it was really good in the R rated version.

• 1:07:37Griffin Newman?

  Share it with me.

• 1:07:38David Sims?

  Uh, in the version in theaters, Biggs is three noxious, called roommates, tricks Mina Sivare's character into drinking, they roofie her.

• 1:07:45Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:46David Sims?

  What audiences won't see is a subsequent shot of Dora awaking on an operating table as the three men use veterinary equipment to remove her clothing.

• 1:07:55Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 1:07:58Griffin Newman?

  God, if only that scene had been in the movie.

• 1:08:01David Sims?

  Biggs, the comedy comes from the perspective of the three guys who think slipping a roofie into the young girl's drink is humorous. But then you have me and Mina counteracting that by taking it all very seriously. I don't think we approach in a light manner at all.

• 1:08:12Griffin Newman?

  Ben says-

• 1:08:13David Sims?

  It's just one of these things where I'm like, okay, well, I don't think that made or ruined the movie.

• 1:08:17Speaker 02

  This is why I want more context about Loser because what female director wants to do that scene?

• 1:08:22Griffin Newman?

  Here's what's odd about it.

• 1:08:24David Sims?

  Amy says, I didn't want to deal with it in a preachy way. Look, I'm the mom of a teenage girl. The fact is, this is something that's going on and I wanted to make these characters as vile as possible. So you know the disgusting guys. By the time they're roofieing her, you already hate the three guys.

• 1:08:38Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:38David Sims?

  The roofie scene is just insane because the movie kinda skates by it.

• 1:08:42Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:08:43David Sims?

  Not for any other reason.

• 1:08:44Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 1:08:44David Sims?

  It happening, you're like, whoa, what the fuck? But then also then they're just kinda like, get, they get, I mean, I guess.

• 1:08:49Griffin Newman?

  It's a plot function for him to have to take care of her for four days.

• 1:08:51David Sims?

  He swaps out, and he swaps out their medis, the pills.

• 1:08:54Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah. And another, like, save the cat kind of moment.

• 1:08:57David Sims?

  Right.

• 1:08:58Griffin Newman?

  I mean, this guy literally saves so many cats in a way where I'm like, I fucking get it.

• 1:09:02Speaker 02

  Yeah, like when the grandpa gives him the money and then he like puts it back in his pants.

• 1:09:07Griffin Newman?

  David, grant me this, just a quick reprieve. And spoiler alert, but in the apartment, in the fallout of being devastated by the boss not wanting to have a serious relationship with her and leave his wife, she attempts suicide. And you have this same thing of the last act of the movie, Lemon kind of nursing her back to health and this sort of vulnerability and whatever. And it's so weird that this is the choice she makes of how to put the Savari character in the same position,

• 1:09:35David Sims?

  Right.

• 1:09:35Griffin Newman?

  sleeping on his couch, basically.

• 1:09:37Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:09:38Griffin Newman?

  She is drugged and like assaulted.

• 1:09:40David Sims?

  So just to, just to pull back. And yet she wakes up and is like, oh, how, how long have I been asleep? Two days? Oh, okay, cool.

• 1:09:47Griffin Newman?

  Is unrelated from the fucking Kinnear thing. Like, the Kinnear factor is just like a whole other part of the movie.

• 1:09:54David Sims?

  This is not a part of the movie. It just happens and then is basically not addressed and then, you know, right, we just sort of move on.

• 1:10:00Griffin Newman?

  And there are so many, like, bad teen sex comedies where there are, like, boys will be boys behavior that you now look at and you're like, fuck, this is revolting, right? This movie knows that these guys are evil and yet, as Ben said while watching it, they are so horrible, I cannot laugh.

• 1:10:17Speaker 02

  Well, I just wanna say, like, I think it's weird because it doesn't feel like this is necessarily like a feminist movie when I'm watching it. It's not like it's like a commentary on these guys and there's some, like, Pluus is so smart.

• 1:10:30David Sims?

  Yes.

• 1:10:30Speaker 02

  And it like understands, like, like, the scene where, you know, Cher, like, when Elton is trying to basically assault Cher. Like, that's a very interesting, fascinating scene.

• 1:10:41David Sims?

  It is because that actually feels real.

• 1:10:45Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:10:45David Sims?

  Where it's like, he's being aggressive, he's an asshole. It's not comical and it's like she handles it and it's not great, but it's also not like kind of this pure evil shit either.

• 1:10:57Speaker 02

  And like, I mean, obviously the ceiling shot in Fast Times at Ridgeway is like one of the greatest, like most interesting interpretations of like what it's like to have sex and lose your virginity. Like she's like in a very incredible like feminist filmmaker when it comes to sexuality especially. And then in this movie, it's just like these horrible like cartoon, they're not really redeemed, except like these actions, they don't really face any consequences, except in the Chiron.

• 1:11:21David Sims?

  Right, except in the post credits, right.

• 1:11:23Speaker 02

  And like, I just don't understand is she's so much smarter and more clever and more interesting as a director and a writer than this movie is. So is that a result of like kind of getting boxed out after Clueless?

• 1:11:37Griffin Newman?

  I don't fucking know.

• 1:11:39David Sims?

  She should have some leeway. She made Clueless. It was a big hit. She wrote and directed this film. She based it on a famous movie. Oh, I'm saying your CIA says that didn't happen, but.

• 1:11:51Griffin Newman?

  Uh huh.

• 1:11:51Speaker 02

  She has movie stars.

• 1:11:53David Sims?

  She is, yeah, stars. She has actors. I, she doesn't have a lot of places to hide on this.

• 1:11:59Griffin Newman?

  No, that's, I was gonna say, I think it is why the failure of this movie stuck to her so hard for a movie that was not incredibly expensive and is largely forgotten, but it does feel like Hollywood went like, thanks, you're done, right? Like after this, and a lot of it is that I think they were like, we let you do what you wanted and this is what you fucking made?

• 1:12:17Speaker 02

  But I don't know if, it doesn't seem like the product of someone who got to do what they wanted either.

• 1:12:21David Sims?

  It doesn't.

• 1:12:22Speaker 02

  Cause like, why do you have to film in Toronto for like 20 of your 25 day shoot?

• 1:12:26David Sims?

  And why, why did it have to be, you know, why did they change the rating thing on?

• 1:12:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, like if you make Clueless, God, that's like one of the greatest films of all time and it made so much money.

• 1:12:38Griffin Newman?

  And culturally sizable.

• 1:12:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, like why do you have to make loser if you make Clueless? I'm mad.

• 1:12:44David Sims?

  If someone says to her, hey, no, this can't be R rated, she can't be like, the American Pie guys are in it.

• 1:12:51Griffin Newman?

  You told me I have to hire two American Pie people, basically.

• 1:12:55David Sims?

  Like what are you talking about?

• 1:12:56Griffin Newman?

  And just like point back there. Like it just doesn't make sense.

• 1:12:59David Sims?

  She should have been making. Winner.

• 1:13:02Griffin Newman?

  Okay, Ben, go on.

• 1:13:03David Sims?

  All right, okay. And would that be about the popular bakery in Park Slope that has multiple, uh, place called Winner?

• 1:13:12Griffin Newman?

  Ben.

• 1:13:12David Sims?

  Like Winner, Winner Chicken Dinner?

• 1:13:14Griffin Newman?

  This is, oh, this is why he's not setting up studio pictures. Give me your pitch on Winner.

• 1:13:19Speaker 01

  Okay, my pitch is.

• 1:13:21Speaker 02

  Who in American Pie is in it?

• 1:13:22Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, you gotta pick two.

• 1:13:23Speaker 01

  Oh, God.

• 1:13:25Speaker 01

  Uh, Stifler's mom.

• 1:13:27Griffin Newman?

  Coolidge. She's hot. No, she's hot right now. She's hot right now. She's got the juice.

• 1:13:31David Sims?

  Right, Emmy winner.

• 1:13:32Speaker 01

  And she goes back to school and everyone loves her.

• 1:13:35David Sims?

  So far, this is just Rodney Day trick of back to school with Jennifer Coolidge.

• 1:13:38Speaker 01

  But it's kind of a new take. It's a new perspective.

• 1:13:40Speaker 02

  I'm in, I'm in.

• 1:13:41Griffin Newman?

  Melissa McCarthy's Life of the Party, but with Jennifer Coolidge.

• 1:13:44Speaker 02

  Which is a better film?

• 1:13:46Griffin Newman?

  Than which?

• 1:13:48Speaker 02

  Than Life of the Party, like.

• 1:13:50David Sims?

  Better than Life of the Party, probably worse than Back to School.

• 1:13:52Griffin Newman?

  Yes, yes.

• 1:13:52Speaker 01

  And then, uh, her roommates are also awful, but they eventually get their comeuppance.

• 1:13:58Griffin Newman?

  She has them sent to Guantanamo.

• 1:14:00Speaker 01

  Exactly. Yes, and they're waterboarded and you see it and it's an extended scene.

• 1:14:03David Sims?

  It's like 28 minutes.

• 1:14:04Griffin Newman?

  This is like the ultimate example of a movie that needs to end with these three guys being hit by a truck. Right? In order for audiences to walk out not feeling.

• 1:14:13David Sims?

  They need some final destination logs.

• 1:14:17Speaker 02

  It just, it just makes me.

• 1:14:18David Sims?

  Sweep across the screen.

• 1:14:19Speaker 02

  It makes me so sad to think of Amy Heckerling in her, like, Upper West Side apartment, like, writing dialogue for these guys at, like, four in the morning, like, handwriting it. Like, why would she even spend her time doing this?

• 1:14:31David Sims?

  The two films she makes after Loser, I Could Never Be Your Woman and Vamps, are both very messy. They're, they're better than this film, in my opinion.

• 1:14:39Griffin Newman?

  You put this dead last?

• 1:14:40David Sims?

  No, I put this above two other movies that she made.

• 1:14:43Griffin Newman?

  I put this above I Could Never Be Your Woman.

• 1:14:46David Sims?

  Really? I find I Could Never Be Your Woman more interesting and it has Saoirse Ronan in it.

• 1:14:52Griffin Newman?

  It does.

• 1:14:52David Sims?

  And Paul Rudd and Michelle Pfeiffer.

• 1:14:55Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:55David Sims?

  This movie has Minnie Suvari and Greg Kinnear. Sorry to the, sorry to that man.

• 1:15:00Griffin Newman?

  I'll say this, like, my three favorite actors in the movie are probably the three demons, like Zach Orth.

• 1:15:06David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:06Griffin Newman?

  Sodowsky and Jimmy Simpson I always love and they actually do. Do what they're asked to do in this very well.

• 1:15:13Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:15:13Griffin Newman?

  What they're asked to do is just sort of like following Hitler's orders.

• 1:15:17David Sims?

  I liked Colleen Camp as the hobo who answers the phone.

• 1:15:20Griffin Newman?

  Ben does turn to me and go, why was that the best performance I've seen in the first 20 minutes of this movie?

• 1:15:26David Sims?

  Like, the only thing that's popped so far.

• 1:15:28Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 1:15:28David Sims?

  Funny. Steven Wright asking for pantyhose, that worked for me.

• 1:15:31Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, he's.

• 1:15:32David Sims?

  Taylor Negron.

• 1:15:33Griffin Newman?

  Spade.

• 1:15:34David Sims?

  There he is, Spade. Brian Backer's back again.

• 1:15:36Griffin Newman?

  Backer's back again, yeah.

• 1:15:38Speaker 02

  Andrea Martin having like one line of dialogue.

• 1:15:41David Sims?

  That kind of felt rude to Andrea Martin. The others, I was sort of like, this is part of her ensemble. I mean, Andrea Martin's busy.

• 1:15:46Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:46David Sims?

  They didn't show up for this.

• 1:15:52Griffin Newman?

  David?

• 1:15:53David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:53Griffin Newman?

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

• 1:15:59David Sims?

  Hmm.

• 1:15:59Griffin Newman?

  On October 20th, 1967, Roger Patterson captured 59 seconds of film showing a creature walking through the northern California woods. I wonder if you can log that on Letterboxd.

• 1:16:10David Sims?

  It is an iconic video.

• 1:16:11Griffin 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.

• 1:16:34David 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.

• 1:16:46Griffin 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.

• 1:16:55David Sims?

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

• 1:16:57Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:16:58David 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.

• 1:17:05Griffin 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.

• 1:17:19David Sims?

  I'm something of an expert in cryptozoology.

• 1:17:21Griffin Newman?

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

• 1:17:23David 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.

• 1:17:39Griffin Newman?

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

• 1:17:54Griffin Newman?

  I could never be your woman, has this energy, we will talk about next week, but there are elements of that movie, which is so clearly autobiographical in so many ways. There are elements of the movie that feel so ax-grandy of specific grudges that she has that it feels uncomfortable to watch and also isn't funny. And I like, I have the same question of like, why design this movie to put like, elements that are this fucking unpleasant in it?

• 1:18:21Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:18:21Griffin Newman?

  In a way that is like, not just, oh, a scene that's rough to like, balance out the comedy with some heaviness or whatever, but like, a consistent streak of like, moral morass in this film where the only logic I can apply to it is her being like, you know, there are a lot of teen sex comedies where like, boys do horrible things and it's treated as a joke. Do I want to try to show these people for what they really are? But then that also feels like a spiteful way to make a movie? Do you know what I'm saying? And like, to your point, I'm like, why invest this much energy doing it? I'm not saying you can't put bad people in a movie, but you cannot overstate how much like, 40% of

• 1:19:02Griffin Newman?

  the runtime of this movie is these guys fucking with people in a way that actually feels like satanic.

• 1:19:10Speaker 02

  Yeah, and for, for someone who just proved that, you know, like, young female characters can make like, a shitload of money at the box office.

• 1:19:18Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:19Speaker 02

  And that like, people are willing to, like, people, all kinds of people are willing to like, show up and, and, you know, like, Cher Horwitz became a cultural icon.

• 1:19:27Griffin Newman?

  She also talks about this, like, there's this battle.

• 1:19:31David Sims?

  You don't think the loser became a cultural?

• 1:19:33Griffin Newman?

  Hey.

• 1:19:33David Sims?

  Mr. Loser.

• 1:19:34Griffin Newman?

  The forehead. We all see the hat.

• 1:19:35David Sims?

  What's his name? What's his name?

• 1:19:36Griffin Newman?

  Paul something.

• 1:19:37David Sims?

  Fuck.

• 1:19:38Speaker 02

  I don't even know.

• 1:19:38David Sims?

  I'm amazed you got Paul.

• 1:19:39Griffin Newman?

  The only reason I remember, A, I finished it an hour ago. B, I remember that there's a part, because Kinnear's character's named Peter, and they go, Peter? Paul? And I'm like, that's weird of her.

• 1:19:52David Sims?

  No, his name's Edward, so I don't know.

• 1:19:53Griffin Newman?

  Really?

• 1:19:54Speaker 02

  It kind of.

• 1:19:54Griffin Newman?

  Oh, then I think the joke is that he can't remember what his name is.

• 1:19:57David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:57Griffin Newman?

  Okay, that's the only reason I remember.

• 1:19:58David Sims?

  Great joke from Kinnear.

• 1:19:59Speaker 02

  Kind of reminds me of like that You Must Remember This, um, series on Polly Platt.

• 1:20:03Griffin Newman?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:20:04Speaker 02

  And how, like, in some ways, The Heckerling Story is, like, very sad, and the more I hear about it from this podcast, the more I'm like, she had a secret baby with Harold Ramis?

• 1:20:12David Sims?

  No, it's true.

• 1:20:13Speaker 02

  She had to make Loser?

• 1:20:15David Sims?

  Karina, honestly, dig in, because I feel like Amy will talk, right? She's, she's in a sort of retrospective phase of her career anyway.

• 1:20:21Speaker 02

  But it's like, in so many ways, I feel like film, female filmmakers, like, they're always kind of set up to fail.

• 1:20:27David Sims?

  Yes.

• 1:20:27Speaker 02

  And even when you have a huge success, like Clueless, it almost, you get double penalized or something. Like, you're a victim of your own success.

• 1:20:34Griffin Newman?

  Absolutely.

• 1:20:35Speaker 02

  You, um, even when you build a franchise, like Look Who's Talking, you know, that just makes it so that the cards are stacked more for the next thing you do to be kind of more invalidated.

• 1:20:46Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, I mean, it's just like, uh, Hillary Weston, Criterion, uh, did a great interview with Heckerling. There's the Ringer interview we referenced recently. There was a New York Times profile in 2019. Like, she's done a couple of these sit downs, and it's not like she, like, minces words. And yet, I'm like, in, in all the very good research that JJ's done, he does keep admitting to us, like, it's, it's hard to pull out stuff on a lot of these.

• 1:21:09David Sims?

  Because nobody cares about this movie. So it's like, no one's ever really done the, like, okay, can you explain to me what went on with Loser?

• 1:21:15Griffin Newman?

  Totally.

• 1:21:16David Sims?

  Apart from, like, her agent being like, "Hey, they fucked us."

• 1:21:18Griffin Newman?

  I don't know how much of it is like.

• 1:21:20David Sims?

  The vet scene.

• 1:21:21Griffin Newman?

  Self-protection, self-protection, right? And like, survival, and how much of it is shit, like, the weird lawsuits around Look Who's Talking and things you can't talk about. But it does feel like, even with us, like, spending months, like, you know, uh, uh, studying her in this. Way. It's like, there are just kind of like narrative jumps that are inexplicable to me. Of just like, how does she lose the heat that severely? Where like the Look Who's Talking movies were so fucking big, right? The first one is ginormous. And yet it was like such an uphill battle for her to get Clueless made. And off of Clueless, it should have been like, you know what? Who are we to fucking question this woman, right?

• 1:22:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's the literal concept of your podcast.

• 1:22:06Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 1:22:06Speaker 02

  Open up your.

• 1:22:07David Sims?

  Yes.

• 1:22:08Speaker 02

  Picky things.

• 1:22:08David Sims?

  This should be the blank check and she got 20 whole million dollars to make it, which is not nothing.

• 1:22:14Griffin Newman?

  But, but also.

• 1:22:14Speaker 02

  She didn't even get to make it in the city that it's set in.

• 1:22:16Griffin Newman?

  And, and the failure of this movie hit her as if it was town and country.

• 1:22:21David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:21Griffin Newman?

  And if she had lost a hundred million dollars.

• 1:22:23David Sims?

  But at the same time.

• 1:22:25Griffin Newman?

  The movie's kind of repelling.

• 1:22:26David Sims?

  This movie's not very good and it is, again, it is, it's her movie.

• 1:22:29Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:22:30David Sims?

  Like she wrote and directed it. Like, I mean, there's only, like I said, there's just not a lot of places for her to hide. And with I Could Never Be Your Woman, which is the next movie, like you say.

• 1:22:38Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:22:39David Sims?

  It is kind of weird and personal and ax grindy in an indie movie way. It's not a commercial film.

• 1:22:45Griffin Newman?

  I, no, I get it.

• 1:22:46David Sims?

  And like, it has movie stars in it, so it, you know, people were fooled. If we'll talk about the production of that film into putting up money for a movie they thought could be releasable.

• 1:22:55Griffin Newman?

  But loser.

• 1:22:56David Sims?

  Turned out it wasn't.

• 1:22:56Griffin Newman?

  Feels like one strike that was processed by the industry as three strikes.

• 1:23:02David Sims?

  I guess so.

• 1:23:02Griffin Newman?

  Right? Where they were like, well, you're on a cold streak. And it was like, you made one bad movie.

• 1:23:07David Sims?

  She should have made more movies. I think the other thing with Heckerling is she is more an auteur.

• 1:23:12Griffin Newman?

  Uh huh.

• 1:23:13David Sims?

  So like, like she, there's probably like boring projects she could have done that she didn't want to do.

• 1:23:18Griffin Newman?

  Oh, she talks about that. Yeah. Right. And I think, and I think a lot of the things she really wanted to do, they wouldn't greenlight because they'd say, that doesn't sound like an Amy Heckerling movie.

• 1:23:26David Sims?

  Yes. And right. She was always a little boxed in by that.

• 1:23:28Speaker 02

  She kind of reminds me of Amy Sherman Palladino.

• 1:23:31Griffin Newman?

  Interesting.

• 1:23:32David Sims?

  Amy Sherman Palladino.

• 1:23:33Speaker 02

  Kind of like brassy New Yorkers that are in love with like old timey Hollywood.

• 1:23:37Griffin Newman?

  Well, yeah.

• 1:23:37Speaker 02

  Things. And they've like managed to funnel that into kind of like personal art that's a little bit off center, but like beautiful and dizzy.

• 1:23:46David Sims?

  I am someone who is obsessed with Amy Sherman Palladino.

• 1:23:49Griffin Newman?

  Okay.

• 1:23:49David Sims?

  I cannot deny. Because Kill More Girls is obviously the most important TV show of my life or whatever.

• 1:23:54Griffin Newman?

  And are you sashaying? What's that show called?

• 1:23:57David Sims?

  Etwa.

• 1:23:57Griffin Newman?

  Etwa?

• 1:23:58David Sims?

  Etwa.

• 1:23:59Griffin Newman?

  Etwa?

• 1:24:00David Sims?

  The whole thing that's so weird about her is she worked on Roseanne, which makes total sense that like she like vibed on Roseanne, right? That's where she meets Daniel Palladino. I'm sorry to do an Amy Sherman Palladino, fucking, I have to do it.

• 1:24:11Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:12David Sims?

  And then, you know, she works on other sitcoms and she gets Gilmore Girls. It's a WB show, but obviously she's like an insane auteur.

• 1:24:19Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:24:20David Sims?

  And you can tell from any interview and every commentary she's ever done, you listen to those commentaries, there's not very many. She's, she's a tough customer. She is intense and like she must have been, you know, you always hear stories about just how intense she was. And she's writing these like 120 page scripts, Gilmore Girls with all the dialogue, right? And the studios are like, this show is so, so insane to make considering that it's a small town comedy. Like what the fuck? You know, and they, they fire her off her own show and the seventh season of Gilmore Girls is insane because she's not writing it. And it's one of the most, it's like Dan Harmon.

• 1:24:53Griffin Newman?

  I was gonna say, it's the exact same thing.

• 1:24:54David Sims?

  Wow, everything is off.

• 1:24:56Griffin Newman?

  We have to fire her because the show can't run with her and then they kick her off and then it's like, it runs even less now. It doesn't work without the crazy person at the center.

• 1:25:04David Sims?

  But then what's so weird about her is like, so her whole career, she's kind of, you know, churning to stay afloat. And then she makes a fucking show about like a Jewish housewife becoming a comedian in the sixties, wins Emmys. And Amazon's like, whatever you want to do for life. It doesn't, I don't care how niche it is.

• 1:25:20Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:25:21David Sims?

  The budget is yours.

• 1:25:22Griffin Newman?

  You and your top hat have a blank check forever.

• 1:25:25David Sims?

  Exactly. Like now she's living in luxury. Like, I mean, whatever.

• 1:25:29Speaker 02

  Yeah. And that's what Amy Heckerling should have had.

• 1:25:32David Sims?

  Amy Heckerling should have, maybe she's just a little young for prestige TV. Like maybe she should have gotten that.

• 1:25:37Griffin Newman?

  I mean, she's obviously, she, she's done a lot of TV directing in the time, but post loser, right?

• 1:25:42David Sims?

  And she's done some, like she worked on Red Oaks.

• 1:25:44Griffin Newman?

  She directed a lot of Red Oaks.

• 1:25:46David Sims?

  Like she's done like genuine prestige TV stuff.

• 1:25:49Griffin Newman?

  I remember when I was working on The Tick and I would talk to the Amazon people about the shows they were working on and they were like in Red Oaks. We're going to our fourth season, third season, whatever the fuck it was, right?

• 1:25:56David Sims?

  Sure.

• 1:25:57Griffin Newman?

  And someone said to me like, you know, people don't know this, but like Amy Sher- Amy Sherman Palladino. They were like, Amy Heckerling like quietly has been directing most of Red Oak. She's like kind of taken over it. It kind of rules. And I'm just like, you guys know this is cool. Why are you not then saying, hey, Amy, do you have a show you want to pitch us?

• 1:26:15Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:26:15Griffin Newman?

  Like, maybe they did, but I'm like, shouldn't that have led to being like?

• 1:26:18David Sims?

  Did you ever watch Red Oaks?

• 1:26:19Griffin Newman?

  No.

• 1:26:20David Sims?

  I never watched Red Oaks. They want to, it's like, it's Heckerling, Hal Hartley.

• 1:26:24Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:26:25David Sims?

  And.

• 1:26:25Griffin Newman?

  It was created by Greg Jacobs.

• 1:26:27David Sims?

  David Gordon Green.

• 1:26:28Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:26:29Griffin Newman?

  And Soderbergh, I think, also maybe had a producer.

• 1:26:30David Sims?

  Soderbergh produced it.

• 1:26:31Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:26:31David Sims?

  It's like three kind of unbelievable directors, two of whom, like Hal Hartley and Heckerling are like these like comedy otters.

• 1:26:38Griffin Newman?

  And the dude from Submarine, who's now become a director in his own right, who did the fucking Phantom of the Open, or whatever it's called? Do you know that the kid from Submarine directed the fucking? David, don't give me that look.

• 1:26:49David Sims?

  Yeah, I do know that.

• 1:26:50Griffin Newman?

  You do know that. You know that. You know that. Deep in your heart, you know that.

• 1:26:53David Sims?

  His name is Craig Roberts.

• 1:26:55Griffin Newman?

  And he directed Phantom of the Open with Mark Rylance, which won your putters and murmurs award. And you know that and you can't deny that.

• 1:27:01David Sims?

  I don't, did it? I haven't seen that movie.

• 1:27:03Griffin Newman?

  Really?

• 1:27:04David Sims?

  I probably just shouted it out. It's like a movie Mark Rylance was in.

• 1:27:07Griffin Newman?

  You gave putters and murmurs to Rylance and something.

• 1:27:09David Sims?

  He does, he probably putts in that movie, right?

• 1:27:11Speaker 02

  Was it like Bones and All or something?

• 1:27:13Griffin Newman?

  Well, I gave it for Bones and All.

• 1:27:14David Sims?

  He's definitely puttering.

• 1:27:15Griffin Newman?

  And you were against that performance, so you picked a different Rylance from that first, that same year, but what would it have been?

• 1:27:21David Sims?

  I don't know. It's late. Look, we have to talk about loser.

• 1:27:24Speaker 02

  It was probably the, um, that horrible movie that about the disaster that the guy who made Anchorman did.

• 1:27:29Griffin Newman?

  It wasn't that one, but he does putter and murmur in that, where he plays like.

• 1:27:34Speaker 02

  Don't look up.

• 1:27:34Griffin Newman?

  Weird Bezos. Yeah.

• 1:27:36David Sims?

  Yeah, he was kind of funny in Don't Look Up, I guess.

• 1:27:39Griffin Newman?

  Here's, here's some Heckerling, like some larger thoughts I've been having, trying to get my head around her career, right? One is, the miracle of Look Who's Talking For Me is that she figured out such a commercial hook to be able to basically smuggle a personal story into, right?

• 1:27:54David Sims?

  We talked about that extensively.

• 1:27:56Griffin Newman?

  Right. And like, that was a thing she kind of didn't figure out how to do again.

• 1:28:02David Sims?

  I think Ben is right. I think this is Ockham's, she's getting too old for this shit. And then she does it, she does a personal story with, I could never be your woman, but. It's harder to relate to the plight of a TV showrunner.

• 1:28:15Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:28:16Griffin Newman?

  Yes. Well, well, no, but this is.

• 1:28:17Speaker 02

  And also, I think people didn't, didn't studios tell her that Michelle Pfeiffer, like, was too old to be interesting as a viable character?

• 1:28:25David Sims?

  The film was not released, which was an issue.

• 1:28:28Griffin Newman?

  Right, but yes.

• 1:28:28David Sims?

  That really hampered that movie's commercial prospects.

• 1:28:32Griffin Newman?

  No one wants to make a movie about a woman. Yes. No, my, my point here is, right?

• 1:28:38David Sims?

  What is, what is it?

• 1:28:39Griffin Newman?

  That Look Who's Talking was her not making way about a teenager, was her making a movie about a woman ostensibly the same age as her.

• 1:28:44David Sims?

  Sure.

• 1:28:45Griffin Newman?

  And being able to, like, chart what's going on in her life at her moment, but couple it with this fucking high-concept hook. I Could Ever Be Your Woman, the hook is, here's how I felt making the TV show of Clueless. And studios were like, why would audiences want to go see this?

• 1:28:58David Sims?

  Well, and studios are also like, it's 2007.

• 1:29:01Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 1:29:02David Sims?

  But anyway.

• 1:29:02Griffin Newman?

  But you know, there's like, no thing she figured out how to package the story within that made it more, like, palatable to people?

• 1:29:09Speaker 02

  But I guess loser is her trying to do that, right?

• 1:29:11Griffin Newman?

  I guess.

• 1:29:11Speaker 02

  Jason Biggs is like her Trojan horse. He's like a likable white male that has no flaws.

• 1:29:16David Sims?

  And he's a new star, much like Alicia Silverstone was.

• 1:29:20Griffin Newman?

  But also, based on her, what we've read about her experience at NYU and AFI and her coming up with, like, Stuart Blumberg and...

• 1:29:28David Sims?

  I don't think this is based on her life in any way.

• 1:29:30Griffin Newman?

  I don't think it's based on her life in Insane. I think it's based on The Apartment. But I do feel like the Mina Savari character is kind of based on her.

• 1:29:38Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's a good point.

• 1:29:40Griffin Newman?

  As, as a personality.

• 1:29:41David Sims?

  Me? What? Really? As a personality? Mina Savari doesn't really have a personality in this movie.

• 1:29:47Griffin Newman?

  I think, well, I think Mina Savari's character at least has more detail than the Biggs' character does, which is such a blank slate nice guy.

• 1:29:56David Sims?

  Mina Savari's character, we haven't talked about this, right? She's like a cocktail waitress, bottle service waitress at like a strip joint or like a...

• 1:30:03Griffin Newman?

  It's a strip joint where no one takes their clothes off.

• 1:30:05David Sims?

  Yeah, it's like a fancy, trashy club.

• 1:30:07Griffin Newman?

  Run by Bobby Slaton.

• 1:30:08Speaker 02

  With Twink Caplan as her mentor.

• 1:30:10Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:30:11David Sims?

  Who is kind of, kind of serving. Twink hot.

• 1:30:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, she's hot.

• 1:30:15Griffin Newman?

  I did realize at some point in this movie...

• 1:30:17David Sims?

  I mean, it's not news to me that Twink Caplan's hot, but like, she's banging in this movie.

• 1:30:19Griffin Newman?

  I did, I guess.

• 1:30:20Speaker 02

  Misguised no more.

• 1:30:21David Sims?

  Exactly.

• 1:30:22Griffin Newman?

  But I also put together, like, Twink and Mina Savari kind of look similar.

• 1:30:26David Sims?

  Twink Caplan, Mina Savari's mom?

• 1:30:28Griffin Newman?

  They got a similar vibe, right?

• 1:30:31Speaker 02

  I, I, you're right.

• 1:30:31David Sims?

  Sure, um, but...

• 1:30:34David Sims?

  The, the hook of the character, although things are sort of missing, or context is missing.

• 1:30:40Griffin Newman?

  The two main characters of the film are both struggling to survive at a very expensive university, surrounded by privileged kids.

• 1:30:48David Sims?

  So she's trying to pay her bills. She's commuting home because her mom doesn't approve of her living in sin, essentially, right? It's not, her mom certainly doesn't know that she's a cocktail waitress. But the implication is her mom doesn't even know that, like, she would, like, be partying, right? Because that's what the scene with the hobo is.

• 1:31:08Griffin Newman?

  But I think money is also part of the equation.

• 1:31:11David Sims?

  But the mom calls being like, would any men come into this women's boarding house? It's like, the mom is acting like it's 1963.

• 1:31:18Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:31:19David Sims?

  Okay, right, so she's commuting home, so she's lying about that. So then she decides to get emancipated, which makes no sense because she is an adult.

• 1:31:29Speaker 02

  Oh yeah, I forgot about that.

• 1:31:30David Sims?

  She's over 18 years old.

• 1:31:32Griffin Newman?

  That's what confused me is I was like, is this character supposed to be like a 15 year old who went to college early? In which case, Kinnear's criminality has gone through the roof?

• 1:31:41David Sims?

  I think it's trying to sort of say, like, she's, she wants to be, like, financially emancipated from her parents so that she can be, like, legally poor and then get financial aid, I guess?

• 1:31:52Speaker 02

  And Andy Dick is like-

• 1:31:54David Sims?

  Andy Dick shows up for a scene where he's kind of doing Jamie Lee Curtis and everything everywhere all at once.

• 1:31:58Griffin Newman?

  And he also won an Oscar for this.

• 1:32:00David Sims?

  You're gonna need some forms, you know?

• 1:32:02Griffin Newman?

  He, like, spits on her or some shit.

• 1:32:04David Sims?

  He spits a prune on her. It's, and it's one of those things where I'm like, this is too complicated. I don't know what this is.

• 1:32:11Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 1:32:12David Sims?

  And she's, then she's gotta quit the waitress job. So like, all of those things are sort of interesting. At the same time, she's trying to shack up with Greg Kinnear because she's like, I need somewhere to sleep.

• 1:32:20Griffin Newman?

  Right, they are, they have been in a relationship for a while, but he refuses to put labels on-

• 1:32:25David Sims?

  I don't wanna do that because I'm a fucking weird little creep, you know?

• 1:32:26Griffin Newman?

  Right, I don't wanna get comfortable.

• 1:32:28David Sims?

  Right.

• 1:32:28Griffin Newman?

  Right, I don't wanna get domestic.

• 1:32:30David Sims?

  All of these are- Concepts of a character.

• 1:32:33Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:32:33David Sims?

  These are things that would motivate a character.

• 1:32:35Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:32:36David Sims?

  I don't see it motivating the actual character on screen much. Who's basically just kind of like a nice person who's like, I don't know.

• 1:32:42Griffin Newman?

  She's just so.

• 1:32:43Speaker 02

  She just has eyes and fishnets.

• 1:32:45David Sims?

  She's got big eyes.

• 1:32:46Griffin Newman?

  She's got big ass eyes.

• 1:32:47David Sims?

  She does have fishnets.

• 1:32:49Griffin Newman?

  She's got fun teeth.

• 1:32:49David Sims?

  She, Kinnear cannot, she can't breathe, Kinnear being like, and by the way, you're dressed like a crazy Goth.

• 1:32:55Speaker 02

  Yeah, everything she says. He's like, and you're stupid and you're, I'd never want to be with you, seriously.

• 1:33:02David Sims?

  He's so horrible.

• 1:33:03Griffin Newman?

  And she says something to the effect of, I know that's what he says, but you know, guys don't know what's best for them. And Biggs has the line where he's like, sometimes when people are trying to tell, or sometimes when people tell you something, they're actually trying to tell you something.

• 1:33:18Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:33:19David Sims?

  Like sort of like. Which is sort of a good heckling line.

• 1:33:22Griffin Newman?

  Hiding that he doesn't have respect for you. And she's just like, I'm gonna break him down eventually.

• 1:33:27Speaker 02

  That was actually a good scene.

• 1:33:29David Sims?

  That scene's, that scene's okay. Cause he's kind of, when he's, okay, this is the big question I have to throw to you guys.

• 1:33:35Griffin Newman?

  Please.

• 1:33:36David Sims?

  Is Jason Biggs any good?

• 1:33:38Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 1:33:38David Sims?

  In this movie and in general?

• 1:33:41Griffin Newman?

  I, in general, I think.

• 1:33:42Speaker 02

  Great question.

• 1:33:43Griffin Newman?

  I, I do like him.

• 1:33:45Speaker 02

  Is American Pie his best part?

• 1:33:48David Sims?

  That's a.

• 1:33:48Griffin Newman?

  It has.

• 1:33:49David Sims?

  I'd lob that question out too.

• 1:33:51Griffin Newman?

  It like has to be.

• 1:33:52Speaker 02

  I think that's his best performance.

• 1:33:53David Sims?

  Well, it's sort of like, where do you fall on American, uh, sorry, anything else, right? Which is such a weird movie.

• 1:34:01Griffin Newman?

  Sure.

• 1:34:01David Sims?

  But I feel like Richie is sort of like the big part in that movie, right? He's just kind of being Woody Allen.

• 1:34:06Griffin Newman?

  Another in that run of just like, this guy seems like an obvious Woody Allen analog. And you're like, getting that assignment is almost always a, it's like a death note.

• 1:34:14Speaker 02

  For a while, he had kind of like a zany sidekick run, like in like Saving Silverman and Boys and Girls.

• 1:34:20David Sims?

  But those are bad movies.

• 1:34:22Griffin Newman?

  No, Saving Silverman is good.

• 1:34:23Speaker 02

  They're really bad.

• 1:34:24David Sims?

  Wait, Saving Silverman is good?

• 1:34:26Griffin Newman?

  Saving Silverman is good.

• 1:34:27David Sims?

  Are you sure?

• 1:34:29Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:34:29David Sims?

  I remember it being pretty bad.

• 1:34:31Speaker 02

  Did you get roofied?

• 1:34:32Griffin Newman?

  I.

• 1:34:33David Sims?

  I have not seen it since 2001.

• 1:34:36Griffin Newman?

  I may need to re-watch it to see if I can back up this statement, but I think it is, it is Dennis Dugan.

• 1:34:43David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 1:34:43Griffin Newman?

  It is sort of his blank check for making so many successful Sandler movies.

• 1:34:48David Sims?

  It's tough when your blank check is Saving Silverman.

• 1:34:50Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, but it is kind of a movie that is just like unbridled chaos.

• 1:34:54David Sims?

  Right, it's kind of crazy. I remember Amanda Peet is really insane in it.

• 1:34:59Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:35:00David Sims?

  Is what?

• 1:35:01Speaker 02

  Is Jenna Elfman in that?

• 1:35:02Griffin Newman?

  It's Amanda Peet is in the role that you probably imagine Jenna Elfman playing.

• 1:35:05David Sims?

  Elfman was circled.

• 1:35:06Griffin Newman?

  Yes, but Zon and Black are really good in it. Arlie Armey, I believe, shits in a mailbox, maybe, or he shits on a lawn.

• 1:35:12David Sims?

  He's in it.

• 1:35:13Griffin Newman?

  Neil Diamond's in it.

• 1:35:15David Sims?

  He's listed.

• 1:35:17Speaker 02

  I think you're right. I think Biggs had like two modes. He could either be like zany sidekick or like Woody Allen surrogate.

• 1:35:24Griffin Newman?

  Well, Saving Silverman's-

• 1:35:25Speaker 02

  And he didn't really fit in either of those.

• 1:35:26Griffin Newman?

  See, Saving Silverman's a weird one because he is ostensibly the lead and is the romantic lead of that movie, but that is a movie that basically is like, and we don't care about this guy, it's really about the zany sidekicks. So Zon and Black, who are the zany sidekicks, kind of just run the movie.

• 1:35:42Speaker 02

  Do you, do you think that Jason Biggs can carry a movie?

• 1:35:46Griffin Newman?

  I, you know, I watched all four American movies at some point in lockdown.

• 1:35:52David Sims?

  You were doing great.

• 1:35:53Griffin Newman?

  I was doing horrible. I couldn't have been doing worse. And I do think he's got a pretty steady hand on those things. I think the sequels do not work, and I think like the only thing that kind of works is that he is kind of fairly sensitively showing the stages of this guy's life as a real person. Like, he's trying so hard to keep it grounded in some level of like relatable human behavior as like the set pieces of those movies become so convoluted and sweaty.

• 1:36:23David Sims?

  First one, he fucks up. Second one, he gets hand stuck to dick with glue.

• 1:36:26Griffin Newman?

  That's one of the things.

• 1:36:27David Sims?

  Oh, does he do other things? I don't remember.

• 1:36:29Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, but that's the big one.

• 1:36:30David Sims?

  That's the big one that happens to him.

• 1:36:31Griffin Newman?

  He jerks off with crazy glue.

• 1:36:32David Sims?

  Remember that.

• 1:36:33Griffin Newman?

  Right. In the third one, he, um-

• 1:36:37David Sims?

  He does the craziest thing of all. He gets married.

• 1:36:39Speaker 02

  Whoa.

• 1:36:40Griffin Newman?

  The ultimate gross out gag.

• 1:36:43David Sims?

  I don't, I think I've seen that one.

• 1:36:44Griffin Newman?

  He shaves his pubes and he throws the pubes shavings out the window and they land on the wedding cake.

• 1:36:49Speaker 02

  Oh, yes, I have seen that.

• 1:36:50Griffin Newman?

  That's, that's-

• 1:36:51David Sims?

  That really seems like a, they don't have anything.

• 1:36:54Griffin Newman?

  Oh, correct.

• 1:36:55David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 1:36:55Griffin Newman?

  Right, because-

• 1:36:56Speaker 02

  Like, what haven't we done?

• 1:36:57Griffin Newman?

  Because Stifler drinks the cum beer in the first one.

• 1:37:00David Sims?

  Of course.

• 1:37:00Griffin Newman?

  Stifler also fucks Jim's grandma in the third one.

• 1:37:04Speaker 02

  Oh, my god.

• 1:37:09Griffin Newman?

  They start to become like saw traps.

• 1:37:13Griffin Newman?

  What is the weirdest way that a thing could end up in a place it shouldn't be? Right, right.

• 1:37:19David Sims?

  What happens in American Reunion?

• 1:37:21Griffin Newman?

  American Reunion is trying to like-

• 1:37:24David Sims?

  It's just kinda like the big chill. They're all just like sitting around.

• 1:37:26Griffin Newman?

  That's the weird thing. American Reunion is trying to be like, we're trying to get back to the original movie, which was a lot like smaller and more like sensitively drawn than people remember.

• 1:37:35David Sims?

  Sure.

• 1:37:35Griffin Newman?

  But it doesn't quite get there. There's, there's a whole thing with a young babysitter where he is, she, he keeps looking like he's taking advantage of her, but he's not. That's kind of the runner in that movie, which is not super fun. He keeps getting caught in compromising situations that are actually a perception issue. I already barely remember this movie I watched in the last three or four years.

• 1:37:59David Sims?

  Yeah. Well, anyway, I do think we've decided that I guess American Pie has to be his best performance. Or is it Loser?

• 1:38:07Griffin Newman?

  Or is it Saving Silverman? No, I think he is miscast in this. I think he is trying his hardest. I don't think he's bad. I think he's miscast and I think the character is just like not drawn.

• 1:38:15David Sims?

  Who's the person you cast? I don't think, I don't think it's Chris Klein.

• 1:38:18Griffin Newman?

  In the year 2000.

• 1:38:19David Sims?

  It doesn't have to be someone in American Pie.

• 1:38:21Griffin Newman?

  But I will say this. I think Eddie K. Thomas would have done this better than Jason Biggs would.

• 1:38:26David Sims?

  Rookie of the Year himself.

• 1:38:27Griffin Newman?

  No, you're thinking of Thomas Ian Nichols. Eddie K. Thomas as Finch, who I always thought was the secret MVP of the franchise.

• 1:38:34David Sims?

  He's very funny in, in American Pie.

• 1:38:36Griffin Newman?

  I think he would kind of work.

• 1:38:38David Sims?

  I remember him in the other ones. I remember the first one.

• 1:38:39Griffin Newman?

  Who are you gonna say Chandler?

• 1:38:40Speaker 02

  Well, okay. Does it have to be someone from then?

• 1:38:43David Sims?

  And I always confuse those.

• 1:38:43Speaker 02

  Or can it be like anybody?

• 1:38:45David Sims?

  No, it can be anybody. Anybody.

• 1:38:45Speaker 02

  Cause my initial thought was Jason Schwartzman.

• 1:38:49David Sims?

  So Rushmore is just two years early. So Jason Schwartzman is basically like a, a thousand dollar Jason Biggs, right? Like it's like similar vibe, but way back in door.

• 1:38:58Speaker 02

  Or do you want like a Jesse Eisenberg? Like is it someone who needs to be more like-

• 1:39:01David Sims?

  So Roger Dodger is two years later. It's maybe a little early for Eisenberg.

• 1:39:05Griffin Newman?

  But Schwartzman's interesting to me cause I'm like sliding door. What if Schwartzman is in Loser rather than Slackers?

• 1:39:12David Sims?

  Sure, that's it. And Slackers is tough.

• 1:39:14Griffin Newman?

  And Slackers is similarly like being like, we're ready to feed this guy into the studio comedy system.

• 1:39:18Speaker 02

  Oh, or Joseph Gordon Levitt. That would have been good.

• 1:39:21Griffin Newman?

  Levitt wouldn't have been better.

• 1:39:22David Sims?

  He was kinda doing that thing.

• 1:39:24Griffin Newman?

  Levitt wouldn't have been better. Schwartzman does feel like the best option.

• 1:39:27David Sims?

  Schwartzman's interesting.

• 1:39:28Griffin Newman?

  The question is, would they have greenlit it with him?

• 1:39:30Speaker 02

  No.

• 1:39:30David Sims?

  I'm trying to think like who, who's like a TV star, like a Topher Grace, but not Topher Grace.

• 1:39:37Speaker 02

  Well, Levitt's good, cause you got the Third Rock from the Sun, and you got the heat up.

• 1:39:41David Sims?

  That's true.

• 1:39:41Speaker 02

  Ten Things I Hate About You.

• 1:39:42David Sims?

  That Ten Things Heat.

• 1:39:43Griffin Newman?

  But Topher, Topher would have been better than Biggs too.

• 1:39:46David Sims?

  Topher would have been better than Biggs.

• 1:39:47Griffin Newman?

  Topher had made the jump to movies.

• 1:39:49David Sims?

  Biggs unfortunately is, is taking a beating here, cause I think pretty much anyone is maybe better than Biggs. But he's not like horrible.

• 1:39:56Speaker 02

  I don't know, he's better than Chris Clyde though.

• 1:39:58David Sims?

  He's better than Chris Clyde.

• 1:40:00Speaker 02

  Of the American Pie people, he's probably the best.

• 1:40:03Griffin Newman?

  I'm gonna, I'm gonna put forward Eddie K. Thomas.

• 1:40:05Speaker 02

  Mmm.

• 1:40:05David Sims?

  I, I, what did Eddie K. Thomas end up doing with himself?

• 1:40:08Griffin Newman?

  This is what we were talking about last night.

• 1:40:10Speaker 02

  We don't know.

• 1:40:10Griffin Newman?

  Is that Thomas Ian Nichols had a bigger child career before American Pie.

• 1:40:14David Sims?

  There's a lot of people here!

• 1:40:15Griffin Newman?

  Right. He was probably the most established going into that movie, and he talks about how that movie was designed to be him as the lead.

• 1:40:22Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 1:40:23Griffin Newman?

  And everyone else started popping that in the edits.

• 1:40:25David Sims?

  Right.

• 1:40:25Griffin Newman?

  It got miscalibrated, which is why those characters are boring, cause they're meant to just be like the center characters.

• 1:40:31Speaker 02

  Ah, yeah.

• 1:40:32Griffin Newman?

  Who don't really have that much conflict. Um.

• 1:40:35Speaker 02

  He does get to get that book out of the library that teaches him how to have oral sex.

• 1:40:39Griffin Newman?

  That's the whole point though. It's like, he gets the book, cause he's supposed to be the guy.

• 1:40:42Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:40:43Griffin Newman?

  He gets the book of love. Uh, Eddie K. Thomas did a TV show.

• 1:40:47David Sims?

  He's doing a lot of stuff. I mean, he was on Scorpion. Remember Scorpion?

• 1:40:50Griffin Newman?

  Of course, we all remember Scorpion.

• 1:40:52David Sims?

  He was the third lead.

• 1:40:53Griffin Newman?

  Don't get stung.

• 1:40:55Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 1:40:55David Sims?

  Is that something you say?

• 1:40:56Speaker 02

  What about Ethan Embry?

• 1:40:58Griffin Newman?

  Embry?

• 1:40:58David Sims?

  I, I love Ethan Embry. Yeah, maybe.

• 1:41:02Speaker 02

  Too hunky?

• 1:41:02Griffin Newman?

  No, I don't think.

• 1:41:03David Sims?

  No, he's kinda dorky.

• 1:41:05Griffin Newman?

  But I think any of these also require her taking another pass at the script. Like casting the right person and then tailoring the part a little more to that guy. I also think, here's my bigger question, why is this movie not? Basically told from her perspective.

• 1:41:22David Sims?

  She's certainly a more dynamic character.

• 1:41:24Griffin Newman?

  In this character, period. And if you're gonna retell The Apartment, many would argue a perfect movie, right? Isn't like part of the reason to try to do a riff on it?

• 1:41:33David Sims?

  Do a gender flip or something.

• 1:41:34Speaker 02

  That's really interesting. Cause that's a much more interesting movie, like a girl that like can't, has to commute, can't afford to be at school.

• 1:41:42Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:41:42Speaker 02

  Is like sleeping with the guy so she doesn't have to like, sleep at the train station, basically. He's horrible.

• 1:41:48Griffin Newman?

  This big's character-

• 1:41:49David Sims?

  All of this feels more like an indie movie, though.

• 1:41:51Speaker 02

  Give a nice guy a chance for once.

• 1:41:53David Sims?

  Right, give the nice guy a chance. He's got the hat.

• 1:41:56Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:41:56Speaker 02

  You'll fix it with a different hat, soon enough.

• 1:41:59Griffin Newman?

  But we said this, that the next movie she makes are indie movies, and they both clearly have the problem of her only knowing how to make things in a studio mode.

• 1:42:07David Sims?

  They don't, like, you feel like she didn't have enough time.

• 1:42:10Griffin Newman?

  Of a studio movie. Like, she didn't know how to throttle into a different kind of-

• 1:42:16Speaker 02

  I think she's like, cause she, she sort of caught between two places, like, you know, they, she sort of is on the mode to becoming like, she, she kind of could have the career of Penny Marshall.

• 1:42:27Griffin Newman?

  Sure.

• 1:42:27Speaker 02

  But she has the sensibility of like Elaine May. So she like, doesn't fit in this studio filmmaker box. Cause she's gonna like, fight and make her own choices that are weird.

• 1:42:38Griffin Newman?

  And Elaine May was so antagonistic towards the studio and was like, fuck them, I don't care. Right? If they don't want me making things my way, then I won't make movies.

• 1:42:45David Sims?

  But she could also get, you know, Warren Beatty.

• 1:42:48Griffin Newman?

  The biggest stars in Hollywood. Heckerling wanted to play ball more. I think Heckerling liked trying to figure out, how do I concede just enough? For example, perhaps, I never shoot in a city where my movie is set. Almost every film I've made is shot in a fake place outside of her two California high school movies.

• 1:43:06David Sims?

  And, uh, European Vacation.

• 1:43:07Griffin Newman?

  Oh, you're right.

• 1:43:08David Sims?

  Shot in, uh, Europe.

• 1:43:09Griffin Newman?

  Sure. Um, but like, what's the balance, right? I wanna try to get these big things, these things made at these big companies.

• 1:43:16David Sims?

  Yeah, make something commercial that people watch.

• 1:43:19Griffin Newman?

  Um, I also think there is this thing, and all these like quotes we read of her, of her talking about her like innate status as a pessimist, and someone who has this very cynical outlook on the world. And that she likes when she gets to make movies about positive characters. And she feels like she can find this kind of balance in a Spicoli or a Cher Horowitz or whatever it is. And probably her creating those characters, coming from a cynical person, helps prevent them from feeling too silly. She finds some grounding for them. But I feel like this, I Could Never Be Your Woman and European Vacation, all have the same thing where it's like, it feels like the darkness took over. And they are movies that are all just sort of like, I hate everybody. I think everyone is stupid and insincere and a piece of shit, right?

• 1:44:04Griffin Newman?

  Like, these movies all have this very, like, defensive worldview.

• 1:44:10David Sims?

  And then when you hear things like the, oh yeah, we took out this like further degradation scene.

• 1:44:14Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 1:44:14David Sims?

  You're like, we already got that the characters are bad, but that she's like, I want to hammer that home, doesn't suggest to me a nuanced outlook.

• 1:44:24Griffin Newman?

  No, but it's odd. She like needs to find that tension in her subject.

• 1:44:29David Sims?

  He's too nice. He's gotta do one mean thing.

• 1:44:32Griffin Newman?

  The loser?

• 1:44:33David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 1:44:33Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:44:34Speaker 02

  He changes their medication for Ginkgo pills.

• 1:44:37David Sims?

  But that's like incredibly nice.

• 1:44:38Speaker 02

  I know, I'm just kidding.

• 1:44:39David Sims?

  He forges a note from Kinnear's character.

• 1:44:42Griffin Newman?

  Right. He like does Kinnear's character favors, basically. I know he's doing it to make her feel better.

• 1:44:47David Sims?

  He likes the girl.

• 1:44:48Griffin Newman?

  But he's also helping this guy.

• 1:44:50David Sims?

  And then when Kinnear's like, I'll give you an A on the paper, he won't take the A, which is in character for him. He wouldn't want to.

• 1:44:57Griffin Newman?

  Sure.

• 1:44:58David Sims?

  Uh, but even then you're just like, Jesus, this guy is so fucking holy.

• 1:45:02Griffin Newman?

  Can we say that Ackroyd I do think is very good in this movie?

• 1:45:04David Sims?

  I said that, he brings the heat.

• 1:45:06Griffin Newman?

  He's in the very beginning and I was like, I'm so excited for this movie to check in with Ackroyd every 20 minutes.

• 1:45:11David Sims?

  It checks in with him once.

• 1:45:12Griffin Newman?

  Phone call at the end, that she overhears.

• 1:45:15David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 1:45:15Griffin Newman?

  But I just.

• 1:45:16David Sims?

  Kind of a crucial moment for, I guess, for her realizing Big's ain't so bad.

• 1:45:19Griffin Newman?

  It just made me remember how much I always kind of love character actor Ackroyd.

• 1:45:25David Sims?

  Yeah. No, this was a good era for Ackroyd because this is the gross point playing era. Where, yeah, he's, he's a very reliable two, three scenes.

• 1:45:35Griffin Newman?

  I also, I take a lot of hot shots at him because it's very easy to make fun of Dan Aykroyd.

• 1:45:40David Sims?

  It's easy.

• 1:45:41Griffin Newman?

  And then I've seen listeners be like, why does Griffin hate Dan Aykroyd so much? And I'm like, I love Dan Aykroyd. Dan Aykroyd means so much to me. It is so easy to make fun of all of the various weird things about him.

• 1:45:52David Sims?

  I don't think Dan Aykroyd would even be, like, he knows he's silly.

• 1:45:56Griffin Newman?

  When we did our Ghostbusters commentary, people were like, getting defensive at Aykroyd as if I was like, not giving him enough credit. But even like, you and I talked about it when we saw Frozen Empire. And you're like, there are like, a couple scenes in the middle of that where Aykroyd makes you feel like it's a real movie.

• 1:46:10David Sims?

  I like that movie.

• 1:46:12Griffin Newman?

  Just because you're like, this guy cares about Ghostbusters so fucking much.

• 1:46:16David Sims?

  It's a good movie. I like it. Do you like Ghostbusters Frozen Empire? Speak on this, you probably.

• 1:46:21Griffin Newman?

  Have you seen it?

• 1:46:22Speaker 02

  I haven't seen it.

• 1:46:23Griffin Newman?

  It's a kind of fun garbage.

• 1:46:24David Sims?

  It's kind of good.

• 1:46:25Speaker 02

  I like Carrie Coon, though. Glad she's in the Ghostbusters franchise.

• 1:46:28Griffin Newman?

  I will say this. I am glad she's in the Ghostbusters franchise.

• 1:46:30David Sims?

  She is on way going that first one.

• 1:46:31Griffin Newman?

  Yes. Here's what she does in Ghostbusters Frozen Empire. Folds laundry.

• 1:46:36David Sims?

  Yeah, she's kind of out of the action in that one.

• 1:46:38Griffin Newman?

  And goes, guys, come on.

• 1:46:40David Sims?

  Can I tell you that this film got one award nomination in total?

• 1:46:44Griffin Newman?

  Was it the Teen Choice Awards?

• 1:46:46David Sims?

  It was a Teen Choice Award nomination.

• 1:46:48Griffin Newman?

  Okay.

• 1:46:48David Sims?

  But what was it for?

• 1:46:49Speaker 02

  Best wig.

• 1:46:50Griffin Newman?

  Best song?

• 1:46:51David Sims?

  That, both. Best wig would be an outrage. Best song actually does make sense. No. It was nominated in one of my favorite categories, Wipeout Scene of the Summer. You got it on the Teen Choice Awards.

• 1:47:04Griffin Newman?

  Which scene?

• 1:47:05David Sims?

  Well, I'm assuming, it doesn't say, but I'm assuming it's in.

• 1:47:08Griffin Newman?

  Oh, oh, the literal wipeout.

• 1:47:10David Sims?

  Yeah, taking a header.

• 1:47:11Griffin Newman?

  Down the stairs.

• 1:47:11David Sims?

  Down the stairs or whatever.

• 1:47:13Speaker 01

  Did it win?

• 1:47:13David Sims?

  No, it did not.

• 1:47:15Griffin Newman?

  What, uh, what did it lose to in the year 2000?

• 1:47:16David Sims?

  Let me tell you the other nominees, and we're gonna just have to figure out what the wipeout scene might have been.

• 1:47:20Speaker 01

  Or wait, no, Griffin, do you want to guess?

• 1:47:21Griffin Newman?

  Well, I'm trying to think, because Blue Crush was 2001.

• 1:47:23David Sims?

  Not Blue Crush?

• 1:47:24Griffin Newman?

  Right. I'm saying it wouldn't have qualified.

• 1:47:26David Sims?

  Blue Crush is a film that is shouted out in Chandler's film, I believe.

• 1:47:28Griffin Newman?

  Oh, yeah. Yeah.

• 1:47:29David Sims?

  I remember.

• 1:47:30Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:47:30David Sims?

  Because Chandler's film really. It's like 2001, 2000, right? It's like you're right there.

• 1:47:36Speaker 02

  It's, yeah, Loser could have been one of the things.

• 1:47:38Griffin Newman?

  If you're, if you're a Blank Check listener and you haven't watched I Like Movies.

• 1:47:41David Sims?

  Uh, if you want to see a movie about Griffin Newman.

• 1:47:43Griffin Newman?

  Well, yeah, there's a reason I like this film a lot.

• 1:47:46David Sims?

  Yes.

• 1:47:46Griffin Newman?

  Uh, cause it indicts me in a way that all movies should.

• 1:47:49David Sims?

  Yes.

• 1:47:49Griffin Newman?

  But also, I'm just like, it's just filled with fucking catnip for people with our kinds of brains. Uh, and grew up in, in that era of film culture.

• 1:47:57Speaker 02

  That's very sweet.

• 1:47:58David Sims?

  The feeling of a video store at that time as well.

• 1:48:00Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:48:00David Sims?

  Anyway, but, um, not Blue Crush. One is a, another, there's another, I'm not gonna get to the winner.

• 1:48:06Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:48:07David Sims?

  There's another out and out big broad comedy that was a huge hit. I'm like Loser.

• 1:48:10Griffin Newman?

  In the year 2000, The Night Professor 2: The Clumps?

• 1:48:13David Sims?

  You're so close.

• 1:48:14Griffin Newman?

  I'm so close. Is it a two?

• 1:48:15David Sims?

  No, but it's a, a, uh,

• 1:48:17Griffin Newman?

  Is it a fast?

• 1:48:18David Sims?

  Popular black comedian dresses as a woman movie.

• 1:48:21Griffin Newman?

  Big Mama's House?

• 1:48:22Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 1:48:24David Sims?

  Uh, and the other is an action movie.

• 1:48:27Griffin Newman?

  A Night's Tale?

• 1:48:27David Sims?

  No, a full-on serious action movie.

• 1:48:31Griffin Newman?

  It's a full-on serious action movie from the year 2000. It's not The Perfect Storm. That's a pretty big wipeout.

• 1:48:36David Sims?

  That would be funny if they were like, beings falling down the stairs and then it's like Clooney being like, "This is it!" It's like a wave demolishes.

• 1:48:45Speaker 02

  Or like Pearl Harbor.

• 1:48:46David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 1:48:46Griffin Newman?

  Fits the definition.

• 1:48:47David Sims?

  It is not those two films. It is a film that, uh, the sequel is in the, in theaters right now.

• 1:48:52Griffin Newman?

  It's a film where the sequel is in theaters right?

• 1:48:55David Sims?

  I mean, the many parts later.

• 1:48:57Griffin Newman?

  Is it Mission Impossible 2?

• 1:48:58David Sims?

  Mission Impossible 2. I, I don't know what the wipeout is.

• 1:49:01Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:49:01David Sims?

  It's not telling me.

• 1:49:02Speaker 02

  These are kind of adult movies for the teen choice award.

• 1:49:05David Sims?

  Good point. Well, the winner is a-

• 1:49:06Speaker 02

  How many teens are watching Big Mama's House?

• 1:49:08David Sims?

  Speaking of R-rated comedies, the winner is an R-rated comedy that was not as big a hit as I think they wanted it to be. It was still a bigger hit than Loser.

• 1:49:15Griffin Newman?

  Okay. It's an R-rated comedy. It's a bigger hit than Loser.

• 1:49:20David Sims?

  Yep.

• 1:49:20Griffin Newman?

  Perhaps it's a little disappointing. Was it Me, Myself and Irene?

• 1:49:22David Sims?

  There you go.

• 1:49:23Griffin Newman?

  There we go.

• 1:49:23Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 1:49:23David Sims?

  I knew you'd get it right from that.

• 1:49:24Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:49:25David Sims?

  Now, again, I don't remember the wipeouts in that movie.

• 1:49:28Griffin Newman?

  I don't either. Uh, there's a part where he throws himself down a hill, which I have to, I'm out.

• 1:49:31David Sims?

  Sounds like something Carrie would do.

• 1:49:33Griffin Newman?

  That movie is not my cup of tea.

• 1:49:38David Sims?

  That movie is awful.

• 1:49:39Griffin Newman?

  I am, you know, I really try to be a Fairly Brothers apologist and there are a lot of them I can't even make up apologies for. That movie makes me like uncomfortable.

• 1:49:48David Sims?

  It does.

• 1:49:49Griffin Newman?

  It makes me physically like itchy.

• 1:49:52Speaker 01

  What's the premise again?

• 1:49:53David Sims?

  It's Jim Carrey is a cop, a nice guy.

• 1:49:57Griffin Newman?

  One of the most cucked men in America, basically. The premise is that this guy's been cucked so long and so hard and has suppressed all of his rage. And just goes like, oh, okay.

• 1:50:06David Sims?

  He has three giant black sons because his wife kept cheating on him.

• 1:50:10Griffin Newman?

  With Tony Cox.

• 1:50:11David Sims?

  Okay, so it's Anthony Anderson and I can't remember who else. I remember the Anthony Anderson.

• 1:50:15Griffin Newman?

  I think Omar Benson Miller might be one of the three.

• 1:50:17David Sims?

  There is a very funny scene, I remember, where he loves his kids, which I do like. Like he just, he's a very loving father to these giant boys.

• 1:50:24Griffin Newman?

  And the kids are good in it.

• 1:50:24David Sims?

  Where they're all watching Chris Rock and Jim Carrey goes, this is one funny motherfucker.

• 1:50:31Griffin Newman?

  But he says it like, this is one funny motherfucker. He's this really nice guy who everyone pushes over and he basically experiences psychotic break. And this split personality takes over who's his bad side.

• 1:50:43David Sims?

  Who's evil.

• 1:50:44Griffin Newman?

  Right, and he's got a.

• 1:50:46David Sims?

  He kind of switches between them.

• 1:50:47Griffin Newman?

  Renee Zellweger's a witness in a crime and he's, or she's out on bail or whatever.

• 1:50:51David Sims?

  Fuck, I'm sorry I asked.

• 1:50:53Griffin Newman?

  He's got to bring her back. It's a road trip movie and he's switching between the two guys.

• 1:50:57David Sims?

  But it's like a nasty R-rated movie. Like it's like them going for another There's Something About Mary. But it's very like acidic and mean.

• 1:51:05Griffin Newman?

  It's Gerard Mixon, who's weensy and old school.

• 1:51:08David Sims?

  Cool.

• 1:51:09Griffin Newman?

  That's who I was thinking of.

• 1:51:10David Sims?

  I just remember the only other scene is when he's staring at a boy drinking a milkshake. And he switches into the evil mode and he goes, what are you looking at, fucker? And the boy drops the milkshake. Seared in my brain.

• 1:51:21Griffin Newman?

  There's also a scene where he sees a woman nursing a baby and then Renee Zellweger like walks out and goes like, what? And then it cuts and he's there sucking on her breast. It's like, this is the, the movie is like really.

• 1:51:34David Sims?

  That's the kind of thing where I'm like, that can't have been in like a studio comedy, but yes, it was.

• 1:51:38Speaker 02

  But that's also the kind of demeanor that Hekkerling's trying to play in. Like she, she has to be part of this milieu.

• 1:51:45Griffin Newman?

  But that movie feels like, well, we're just talking about the American Pie sequel thing where the Farrelly brothers are just like, fuck, how do we top ourselves, right? Like, we just made something about Mary and we had the zipper and we had the hair gel and we had the dog. Like, we had these moments that people couldn't stop talking about. And there were these moments in that movie that are so overly conceived, but also like, aren't funny and make you feel sick. Yeah.

• 1:52:12Griffin Newman?

  Loser. I was gonna say, the reason I guessed it was a Teen Choice Award nominee is I feel like the Teen Choice Awards would often nominate movies that came out that same summer.

• 1:52:23David Sims?

  Yeah, it was arranged with the studios.

• 1:52:25Griffin Newman?

  But also clear that they were like nominating from the trailer and being like, we hope that by the time the ceremony happens, this movie will have been a hit.

• 1:52:32David Sims?

  And they're watching the trailer, like, I guess there's a choice wipeout, I don't know. I mean, choice wipeout must have been one of those things where they were like, we need categories.

• 1:52:40Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:52:41David Sims?

  Jennifer Love Hewitt has to introduce her new show. What can she present? Uh, get me some wipeouts.

• 1:52:46Griffin Newman?

  Time of my life.

• 1:52:47David Sims?

  Yes.

• 1:52:47Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:52:49David Sims?

  The film made eighteen, fifteen million dollars domestically.

• 1:52:52Griffin Newman?

  Not great.

• 1:52:53David Sims?

  Got negative reviews.

• 1:52:54Griffin Newman?

  Came out in July?

• 1:52:56David Sims?

  Yeah, it came out in late July, July 21st.

• 1:53:00Griffin Newman?

  Gave it a pretty prime.

• 1:53:01David Sims?

  Not a bad slot.

• 1:53:03Speaker 01

  Wait, are we, we're done talking about the movie?

• 1:53:05David Sims?

  No, not necessarily. What do you want to say about the movie?

• 1:53:09Speaker 01

  Well, I'm just, I'm checking in. I mean, I'm fine with it.

• 1:53:11Griffin Newman?

  Here's the thing I want to say.

• 1:53:12Speaker 01

  It just seemed like you were, you were like, you know, getting off the highway.

• 1:53:16Griffin Newman?

  There are a couple of things I want to say. Thank you for reminding me, Ben.

• 1:53:19David Sims?

  Jesus, Ben, we were almost off the highway.

• 1:53:25Speaker 01

  Rerouting.

• 1:53:26Griffin Newman?

  Any movie that has people being nice to animals, Ben loves, right?

• 1:53:30Speaker 02

  Oh, that's so nice.

• 1:53:32Griffin Newman?

  We're, we're watching this together. They set up this insane conceit, right?

• 1:53:35David Sims?

  It's insane.

• 1:53:36Griffin Newman?

  What you think is gonna be the apartment-esque thing of like, how does this guy have a room that has some value? It's like, these three guys fuck with him so hard and then they want him kicked out of their room. So they bring him to like, the dorm, like.

• 1:53:50David Sims?

  He gets like, the only room available, which is, I guess, I think it's supposed to be like. The room a vet student would get, I guess. It's in an animal hospital.

• 1:54:00Griffin Newman?

  I'm watching this knowing it's riffing on the apartment and I go, oh, this is a pretty smart way to justify why a character has a solo room.

• 1:54:06David Sims?

  Right.

• 1:54:07Griffin Newman?

  These guys fuck with him and he smartly goes like, I'll own it. I'll say that the things they're accusing me of doing are true so I can get out of here. And these guys can be gone from the movie.

• 1:54:17David Sims?

  Right.

• 1:54:18Griffin Newman?

  And I think he's just gonna get a small solo room that everyone's gonna take advantage of.

• 1:54:22David Sims?

  Right.

• 1:54:22Griffin Newman?

  Instead, they put him in a room in the back of a vet's office that is fully operational.

• 1:54:29David Sims?

  Not only operational, they're like, and you have to like, give the dogs medicine.

• 1:54:33Griffin Newman?

  There's fucking cages in his room.

• 1:54:35Speaker 02

  He becomes like a full veterinarian by the end of the movie. He knows how to like, remove a membrane from a newborn kid.

• 1:54:43David Sims?

  Right, that he like knows how, and he's like, no, that's like Sally, she needs her pills or you know, like there's like a snake or I don't know.

• 1:54:51Speaker 02

  There's not even any other vets working there by the end of the movie.

• 1:54:54David Sims?

  Doesn't make a lot of sense.

• 1:54:54Speaker 02

  He's operating the whole clinic by himself.

• 1:54:57Griffin Newman?

  When he first walks in there, it's like animal hospital and there's like a thousand things happening. And then every other time for the rest of the movie, the place is fucking empty. It's a ghost town.

• 1:55:04Speaker 02

  You got this, right? Just like 20 cats and dogs that live here.

• 1:55:07Griffin Newman?

  They're giving him the walkthrough and Ben goes, oh, what the fuck? And I go, what, what just happened, Ben? And he goes, they're just in the background of the shot, you see someone doing surgery on a hat.

• 1:55:18David Sims?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:55:18Griffin Newman?

  And their hands are all bloody.

• 1:55:20David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 1:55:20Griffin Newman?

  And Ben's like, like wriggling in his chair and he's like, I can't watch this.

• 1:55:24David Sims?

  Right. It's like he's watching like eye surgery or something. Like he's freaking out. Okay.

• 1:55:30Griffin Newman?

  And he's basically like, if this keeps happening and they don't justify it, it doesn't pay off in some way, I'm gonna be so against this movie.

• 1:55:36David Sims?

  Sure.

• 1:55:37Griffin Newman?

  And then I see him pick up the cat. I'm like, Ben, what if he adopts the cat? What if he becomes a nice cat dad? That would start to win you over. And Ben's sort of smiling. And you're like, what they decide instead is he becomes the best cat doula?

• 1:55:49David Sims?

  Yeah, he's right. He's good with animals, but he doesn't really adopt one.

• 1:55:54Griffin Newman?

  No.

• 1:55:54David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 1:55:55Speaker 02

  But I think it's a thing too that Mina Savari likes having all those kittens around.

• 1:56:00Griffin Newman?

  She does, but also she's not adopting them. She's just sort of like, how are they doing?

• 1:56:03Speaker 02

  She doesn't have a home, so she can't bring one to Greg Kinnear this already.

• 1:56:06David Sims?

  I just had this moment where I said to my wife, like, and I was like, where I was like, I hate that I have to say this out loud, but I don't think this would happen. But I just like, there was just a thought of me where I was like, I had to express like, this isn't a thing that would happen.

• 1:56:19Griffin Newman?

  No, and there's like a certain kind of like-

• 1:56:21David Sims?

  Probably such a spoilsport.

• 1:56:22Griffin Newman?

  Yes, there's a certain kind of like eighties New York, like, when I first moved here, I paid forty dollars a month and I slept in a cot in the back of a vet's office.

• 1:56:31David Sims?

  Right, I just had to sleep like a bat.

• 1:56:32Griffin Newman?

  I do not believe that NYU says, you know where we can put you?

• 1:56:38David Sims?

  Nineties NYU.

• 1:56:39Griffin Newman?

  Right, that just doesn't fucking happen. And what I believe even less is that the three demons come up behind him and they're like, hey, so-

• 1:56:48David Sims?

  Good point, yes.

• 1:56:49Griffin Newman?

  Run of luck, I don't know if you heard, but one guy died in our dorm of alcohol poisoning. He had a hemorrhage, I think they say?

• 1:56:59David Sims?

  They say he fell into a coma, but then there's a joke that he jumped out of a window and Jimmy Simpson's like, yeah, he fell into a coma, which I thought was kind of funny.

• 1:57:08Griffin Newman?

  Jimmy Simpson's good.

• 1:57:09David Sims?

  Jimmy Simpson's funny.

• 1:57:10Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, um, and so-

• 1:57:11David Sims?

  He's your guy, Chandler.

• 1:57:13Speaker 02

  I love, I love him.

• 1:57:14Griffin Newman?

  He rules.

• 1:57:14Speaker 02

  I love him in Zodiac.

• 1:57:16Griffin Newman?

  He's so good in Zodiac. Uh, Debs? He's good in Debs?

• 1:57:20David Sims?

  Yeah, Debs.

• 1:57:21Griffin Newman?

  Uh, we never talk about Debs.

• 1:57:23David Sims?

  Let's talk about it.

• 1:57:25Griffin Newman?

  But he, uh, these guys are like, we can't party in our dorm anymore because of this fucking inconvenient death.

• 1:57:33David Sims?

  Right.

• 1:57:34Griffin Newman?

  So they convince Jason Biggs to let them throw parties in an active vet's office.

• 1:57:41David Sims?

  It doesn't make any sense that they were- Would want to.

• 1:57:42Griffin Newman?

  A, I'm just like, he would never talk to these guys ever again. Sodowsky's like, whoa, we didn't tell you this was all, we were all in on this together. We thought you knew. This is so we could have more party space. By the way, we're hanging up lights. And you're like, you know, like fucking like animals have to be operated on here in a daily basis. And then he just has to clean all of it up. And then that's where Mina Savari starts living with him. It's so bizarre.

• 1:58:09David Sims?

  This movie is 95 minutes long.

• 1:58:11Griffin Newman?

  Just give him a room.

• 1:58:12David Sims?

  I realize that's describing it makes it sound like the sorrow and the pity like it's like, it's got a lot of stuff happening.

• 1:58:19Griffin Newman?

  It does.

• 1:58:19Speaker 02

  It does, and yet, does it?

• 1:58:21David Sims?

  It lacks connective tissue, so the stuff kind of just happens one after the other.

• 1:58:25Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:58:25David Sims?

  You let, and then, as we've referenced, it ends with like, and then Biggs and Savari got together and you're like, okay, what happened to everyone else? They're like, oh, Kinnear went to jail, the three guys, don't worry, they're all fucked up. You know, like it tries to like do jokey, legally blonde style, like post credits.

• 1:58:43Griffin Newman?

  The awful fates befell all of them.

• 1:58:44David Sims?

  Right.

• 1:58:45Griffin Newman?

  And then it has, it ends on a horrible joke about Mina Savari no longer needs to sell her eggs.

• 1:58:50Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:58:51Griffin Newman?

  She's saving them for Paul.

• 1:58:52David Sims?

  Right, he is dibs.

• 1:58:53Griffin Newman?

  They're all Paul's. Jesus.

• 1:58:55Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:58:56David Sims?

  Yeah, oh, Jesus, a little bit.

• 1:58:58Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:58:58David Sims?

  This is a little bit of an oh, Jesus.

• 1:59:02Griffin Newman?

  Chandler, we've, we've been talking about how it is a kind of a forgotten thing that the 90s and the early 2000s were quietly a better time for female directors in the studio system.

• 1:59:15Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:59:16Griffin Newman?

  Than now or basically any other era. It was not a great time, but there was this odd wave of like 10 female directors who would get to make comedies with A-list comedians and like launch careers and got healthy budgets. And you had like Tamara Davis and Betty Thomas and Amy Heckerling and.

• 1:59:39Speaker 02

  Nora Ephron.

• 1:59:40Griffin Newman?

  Ephron, Ephron and like Myers kicking off, but even like Martha Coolidge still doing shit. Like all these.

• 1:59:46Speaker 02

  Penny Marshall.

• 1:59:47Griffin Newman?

  Penny Marshall was, I mean, as you said, is the example of like, was able to level up. Was able to like have her high concept movie that got an Oscar nomination that let her make more serious films and everything.

• 1:59:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, like I think SNL, like especially there, that was like a great breeding ground for a lot of female filmmakers.

• 2:00:05Griffin Newman?

  Well, Tamara Davis basically made this thing, Penelope Spheer is obviously the other big one. But a lot of those like SNL comedy pipeline people, those movies were made by women. And Tamara Davis like had this thing where it's like, oh, she's known at helping comedians. Establish their movie star persona in the transition from TV to film. And she's making like CB4 and Billy Madison. And it's like, these are the people who like get to, you know, and in a lot of these cases. I feel like, what was it? Well, she makes Crossroads.

• 2:00:39David Sims?

  She made Crossroads, she made Half Baked, let's not forget.

• 2:00:41Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, she made Half Baked.

• 2:00:42Griffin Newman?

  It's also the same thing. It's them being like, can you figure out how to make your whole movie star?

• 2:00:46David Sims?

  Comedians who are kind of right, known. And made a masterpiece. I mean, it's pretty good.

• 2:00:51Griffin Newman?

  It did feel like what would often happen was when those people swung and were like, I want to make something a little more dramatic. They were like, your career is kind of over now, right? Like Betty Thomas makes 28 Days. And they're like, no one wanted to see your drunk Sandra Bullock movie. If you want to work again, you have to make The Squeaklul.

• 2:01:09Griffin Newman?

  Like all those people kind of just had their careers like taper off, but they did have like 15 year runs of getting to make.

• 2:01:16David Sims?

  Mimi Leader is the biggest example too.

• 2:01:18Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, of course.

• 2:01:19David Sims?

  Mimi Leader is like a hu- a huge enough filmmaker. Or TV person, right? That she gets the two big action movies. And they both do okay. But Deep Impact just underperforming, I guess compared to Armageddon.

• 2:01:33Griffin Newman?

  That was a big hit. Just Armageddon outgrossed it.

• 2:01:35David Sims?

  And then she makes Pay It Forward, which is the same thing of like, okay, I'm going to make a serious drama. Now, to be fair, Pay It Forward is bad. But then it is just kind of like, right, like you're saying, strike one, two and three, all just happened to you.

• 2:01:48Griffin Newman?

  It all happened. I, I do think if a female director makes a mistake, it is three strikes and one.

• 2:01:52David Sims?

  Karen Kusama is another one, obviously. I mean, we were talking.

• 2:01:54Griffin Newman?

  We were talking about like the, the sort of like last eight years, like the future of film is female. Look at these women making big movies again. Most of the examples are people who were actresses first. And their careers kind of like hit a wall after two.

• 2:02:09David Sims?

  You mean like?

• 2:02:10Speaker 02

  Like Elizabeth Banks.

• 2:02:11Griffin Newman?

  And Olivia Wilde.

• 2:02:13David Sims?

  Yeah, sure.

• 2:02:14Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, I mean Maggie Gyllenhaal is getting to make a big movie now, but already there's so much hand wringing of like, why did they give her money to make this?

• 2:02:21Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's also like those twenty million dollar studio comedies just do not exist anymore.

• 2:02:27David Sims?

  That's what it is. There were, there were more movies. There was, right, there was, there was more of a middle ground movie that you could make. And so, right, there was more space to make a comedy or a half baked.

• 2:02:37Griffin Newman?

  I also think there's like a really insipid thing going on, which is for a while, it was like, well, we don't make low or mid budget movies anymore. We're only making two hundred million dollar movies. We can't hire women to direct those because they don't have experience making movies like this. Then there started being pushback to that. They started hiring very selectively.

• 2:02:57David Sims?

  Sure.

• 2:02:57Griffin Newman?

  And infrequently, women to make those movies. And then when they wouldn't work, they'd be like, well, that's why you can't hire women to direct these things. And it's like, you set up this person to fail.

• 2:03:07Speaker 02

  Well, it's like, cause it's like the nomad land to, uh, whatever that, what was Eternals' pipeline? Where it's like, wow, she got to choose an actual sky. She's a realtor in the Marvel Universe. Natural light.

• 2:03:20Griffin Newman?

  On our Reddit recently called out, they were re-listening to our Wonder Woman nineteen eighty-four episode.

• 2:03:26David Sims?

  Good movie.

• 2:03:26Griffin Newman?

  And I said, like, there's something kind of encouraging about the fact that this movie is hated. And yet Patty Jenkins has three big movies set up and it feels like no one's holding it against her as like a career ruiners. And yet, we are now five years later, all three of those movies are dead. She has nothing new set up.

• 2:03:44David Sims?

  Right. I mean, she did make the mistake, of course, of trying to make a Star Wars movie, the hardest kind of movie to make now.

• 2:03:50Griffin Newman?

  Look, I'll say this, if you don't want to-

• 2:03:52David Sims?

  And the Cleopatra movie, which is also historically the hardest kind of movie to make.

• 2:03:56Speaker 02

  That movie's never getting made.

• 2:03:57Griffin Newman?

  If your goal is to never direct a film, I highly encourage you, yes. If directing a movie sounds like a nightmare, please go in and meet on Cleopatra and Untitled Star Wars Project.

• 2:04:08David Sims?

  What's the third thing she was attached to?

• 2:04:09Griffin Newman?

  Um, uh, Wonder Woman three.

• 2:04:12David Sims?

  It's coming, right? Very soon. I see it on the horizon.

• 2:04:16Griffin Newman?

  What were you gonna say Chandler?

• 2:04:17Speaker 02

  Oh, I was gonna ask about Netflix and like streaming services and if kind of like a loser, loser would now just be like a Netflix original or like straight to Tubi.

• 2:04:27David Sims?

  Twenty-eight days, like you're talking about.

• 2:04:29Griffin Newman?

  I do, I do think that is the majority of like a lot of YA movies or like sort of low budget streaming comedies.

• 2:04:39David Sims?

  Kieran and Shipka, America's most like working, hardest working actress, she's in everything. She had some age, I haven't watched it yet, what was it called? I'm looking it up. Sweethearts, that's like some rom-com, I haven't seen it yet, uh, where it's her and some guy.

• 2:04:55Speaker 02

  Niko Haraga.

• 2:04:56David Sims?

  There you go.

• 2:04:59Speaker 02

  That movie with Caitlin Deefer and.

• 2:05:02David Sims?

  Brooks Mart.

• 2:05:03Speaker 02

  There you go.

• 2:05:04Griffin Newman?

  Oh, there we go, okay.

• 2:05:04David Sims?

  And it was directed by a woman, written and directed by a woman.

• 2:05:07Griffin Newman?

  Okay.

• 2:05:07David Sims?

  I haven't seen it.

• 2:05:08Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:05:09David Sims?

  A couple of people sort of said to me like, hey, that movie was kind of fun. And I'm like, oh, well, when did it come out? They're like, straight to Max, you know, at Thanksgiving last year. They all just go straight to Max now, or straight to Hulu, or straight to, you know.

• 2:05:22Griffin Newman?

  And a lot of them get a little lost.

• 2:05:24David Sims?

  A little lost?

• 2:05:25Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:05:26Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's not like you're become like a tent pole studio comedy director and you work with like the comedians of like your generation.

• 2:05:34Griffin Newman?

  No.

• 2:05:35Speaker 02

  You kind of like, it's like fifth build on Stranger Things.

• 2:05:38Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 2:05:38David Sims?

  Who is the comedian of our generation?

• 2:05:41Griffin Newman?

  Who is the comedian of our generation?

• 2:05:43David Sims?

  Like who are the comedians who are not getting the half?

• 2:05:46Griffin Newman?

  We were talking about this the other day.

• 2:05:47David Sims?

  I guess Nate Bargatze's like making a movie now.

• 2:05:49Griffin Newman?

  Bargatze's got a fucking Sony movie set up with a good supporting cast and we're all sort of like,

• 2:05:53David Sims?

  Is that it?

• 2:05:54Griffin Newman?

  Can he fucking figure it out? And he did this interview where he's like, I might, like if I can make movies work, I might like wind down on stand-up and start moving over to movies.

• 2:06:04David Sims?

  Right, although he's also like, I'm gonna have a theme park.

• 2:06:06Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:06:08Speaker 02

  I guess Apatow was doing it.

• 2:06:09David Sims?

  He was doing it.

• 2:06:10Speaker 02

  He was like his own pipeline. He was like train wreck, king of Staten Island.

• 2:06:14Griffin Newman?

  But he basically, he had built the like Apatow industrial complex, which I talk about so much, basically was like a proto comedy version of the MCU thing where he would like test supporting actors out in movies to like see the idea of them being the lead in the next thing. Where you were like introducing in each movie.

• 2:06:34David Sims?

  Hey, did you enjoy Seth Rogen in Forty Year Old Roger?

• 2:06:36Griffin Newman?

  You're gonna be the next wave of people. And then he just like slowed way down, started doing more TV.

• 2:06:41Speaker 02

  But like zero, zero women in that universe, like in terms of directing, like it's like Paul Feig, Nick Stoller, you know, whatever other guys. I mean, he made girls.

• 2:06:51Griffin Newman?

  He did, but this is a good question. Did he ever produce a movie directed by a woman, period?

• 2:06:57David Sims?

  Prob- probably he produced somebody, maybe not though.

• 2:07:00Griffin Newman?

  Maybe not.

• 2:07:00David Sims?

  Maybe.

• 2:07:01Griffin Newman?

  Yes. Dunham was his big one, but it was on TV. Yeah.

• 2:07:06Speaker 02

  It's kind of at the behest of like a lot of criticism after like the fallout of Knocked Up, right?

• 2:07:11Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, yeah. And I mean, I think Bridesmaids was as well of just like, okay, note taken. Yeah. I'm just scanning through now to look at the.

• 2:07:20David Sims?

  It's a lot of movies, man.

• 2:07:21Griffin Newman?

  Apatow movies.

• 2:07:22David Sims?

  Some good.

• 2:07:24Griffin Newman?

  Quite a few I like quite a bit. Yeah.

• 2:07:27David Sims?

  Yeah, not all of them though.

• 2:07:28Griffin Newman?

  I don't, I don't think there's one feature film directed by a woman.

• 2:07:32Speaker 02

  Is that true? Oh my God.

• 2:07:34Griffin Newman?

  I'm just like double checking here.

• 2:07:35Speaker 02

  Right, cause Big Sick, that's.

• 2:07:37Griffin Newman?

  Showalter.

• 2:07:40David Sims?

  Look, what's important is.

• 2:07:42Speaker 02

  Jed Apatow, please, please hire me.

• 2:07:43David Sims?

  Yes, exactly.

• 2:07:44Griffin Newman?

  Yep, that's what's important. Yeah. What's important is that the bubble is a trenchant work about a difficult time in American history.

• 2:07:51David Sims?

  The bubble might be the most unwatchable like comedy ever made because of what it's about.

• 2:07:57Griffin Newman?

  Chandler asked me.

• 2:07:58David Sims?

  Also in not being very good.

• 2:07:59Griffin Newman?

  Chandler asked me, have you guys ever talked about doing Apatow? And I said, we talk about it all the time. We think it'd be fun. The problem is, I feel confident in saying that if we cover him, the bubble will be the worst movie we've ever talked about on this podcast.

• 2:08:10David Sims?

  It's down there. It's down there.

• 2:08:12Griffin Newman?

  It's way down in the pits of hell. And I would like to see him make.

• 2:08:15David Sims?

  I just, anything else.

• 2:08:16Griffin Newman?

  Any, literally anything.

• 2:08:17David Sims?

  Working on something, right?

• 2:08:18Speaker 02

  You get to end with all the nice scary shandling documentaries, though.

• 2:08:21David Sims?

  Well, that's

• 2:08:22Griffin Newman?

  How he cover his fucking eight hour. What was the thing he just announced? Cause they had announced he was gonna do the Coke versus Pepsi movie, but then there's

• 2:08:30Speaker 02

  What?

• 2:08:31Griffin Newman?

  Something else that superseded that that sounded a little more interesting, maybe?

• 2:08:35Speaker 02

  That sounds like the Pop Tarts movie.

• 2:08:36David Sims?

  What is interesting about Coke versus Pepsi? They both are fine. They make soda.

• 2:08:41Griffin Newman?

  Right, right.

• 2:08:42David Sims?

  Ben just woke up.

• 2:08:45Griffin Newman?

  The announcement was that he and Glenn Powell are working on something.

• 2:08:48David Sims?

  That's fun.

• 2:08:49Griffin Newman?

  That they are writing something together that Powell would star in and Appetite would direct.

• 2:08:53Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 2:08:53David Sims?

  What if Glenn Powell's in Loser? Hey, guys.

• 2:08:58David Sims?

  He's like a little, you know, country boy.

• 2:09:00Griffin Newman?

  Well, you'd also buy this kid is getting picked on so much if it were, what, 11 year old Glenn Powell?

• 2:09:05David Sims?

  I don't think he was.

• 2:09:08Griffin Newman?

  In the year 2000?

• 2:09:09David Sims?

  Glenn Powell would have been

• 2:09:10Griffin Newman?

  14?

• 2:09:10David Sims?

  Ah, he would have been 12.

• 2:09:12Griffin Newman?

  Okay.

• 2:09:12David Sims?

  Okay.

• 2:09:13Griffin Newman?

  Okay.

• 2:09:13Speaker 02

  Oh, so sweet.

• 2:09:14David Sims?

  Wow, Glenn Powell's like basically my age.

• 2:09:16Griffin Newman?

  I know.

• 2:09:17David Sims?

  It's one of those things where I look at him like, that's a grown man, not like me.

• 2:09:20Griffin Newman?

  God, I had one of those recently that flipped me out. I mean, I had the experience watching Old School where there's a scene where Luke Wilson is like, we can't start a fraternity? I'm 30 for God's sake. And I was like, oh, my fucking lord.

• 2:09:36David Sims?

  So much younger than me.

• 2:09:36Speaker 02

  Isn't that terrible? Like when I watch like old Sex and the City episodes and Carrie Bradshaw's like 34 and they're like, your life is over. And I'm like, oh.

• 2:09:44Griffin Newman?

  I know the math doesn't add up, but I watch Old School and I'm like, yeah, Vince Vaughn is 67 in this movie.

• 2:09:50David Sims?

  It is how I am. I mean, it's how I am with athletes too, where like, like a famous athlete, I'm still like, well, that person's older than me. And it's like, no, they're not. They're like 25.

• 2:09:58Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:09:59David Sims?

  They're, they're so much younger than me, but I'm like, yeah, no, but look at them succeed and achieve on a grand scale.

• 2:10:05Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 2:10:05David Sims?

  That's what grownups do, not me.

• 2:10:07Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 2:10:08David Sims?

  You know?

• 2:10:08Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 2:10:09David Sims?

  Loser came out on July 21st, in the year 2000. It was a pre 9/11 time.

• 2:10:15Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, 2000. I hit that note better than the fucking Teenage Dirtbag.

• 2:10:20David Sims?

  It opened at number eight, which I imagine was disappointing.

• 2:10:25Griffin Newman?

  Yeah. Now, you said we've done this weekend before.

• 2:10:28David Sims?

  We've done this one before.

• 2:10:29Griffin Newman?

  Main feed or Patreon?

• 2:10:29David Sims?

  Main feed. The number one at the box office, opening to $29 million, is a thriller with movie stars.

• 2:10:36Griffin Newman?

  Is it the movie we covered?

• 2:10:37David Sims?

  It is.

• 2:10:38Griffin Newman?

  It is called What Lies Beneath?

• 2:10:39David Sims?

  What Lies Beneath. You seen Robert Zemeckis's What Lies Beneath?

• 2:10:43Speaker 02

  I have.

• 2:10:44David Sims?

  And what do you think of it?

• 2:10:45Speaker 02

  I was, I was really scared when I watched it in the back room of Blockbuster.

• 2:10:50Griffin Newman?

  That's pretty scary.

• 2:10:51David Sims?

  Or it's intense.

• 2:10:52Griffin Newman?

  It's not a film.

• 2:10:53Speaker 02

  Good Harrison Ford performance.

• 2:10:55David Sims?

  Great, great to see Ford playing a grump.

• 2:10:58Griffin Newman?

  You were telling me, it's not quite the Cast Away thing, but you're like in the late stages of post-production on a movie you just shot.

• 2:11:08Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 2:11:08Griffin Newman?

  And active, last minute of pre-production.

• 2:11:11David Sims?

  So there's another movie.

• 2:11:12Griffin Newman?

  On a movie that is gonna start shooting in two weeks. You're in that kinda cool Zemeckis Spielberg.

• 2:11:17Speaker 02

  I'm in my Schindler's List Jurassic Park.

• 2:11:20David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 2:11:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, I do have a George Lucas that needs to help me finish my color correct tomorrow.

• 2:11:26Griffin Newman?

  You know who you should ask to do that? George Lucas.

• 2:11:28David Sims?

  It's fucking chilling out.

• 2:11:29Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:11:31David Sims?

  I'm, I'm in, I'm in such a Star Wars face.

• 2:11:35Griffin Newman?

  You've been back in love with Star Wars.

• 2:11:36David Sims?

  I'm back in love because of Andor. It's so good. And it so understands like what is good about Star Wars in a way that some recent Star Wars properties maybe have struggled to tap.

• 2:11:49David Sims?

  And so I'm just thinking about Star Wars all the time. And I'm, I'm just back to thinking about George Lucas being a crazy guy.

• 2:11:54Griffin Newman?

  You still haven't watched that new ILM doc season, right?

• 2:11:56David Sims?

  No, I gotta watch that.

• 2:11:57Griffin Newman?

  It's so good and Joe Johnston directed it. So he's the one doing all the interviews, right?

• 2:12:02David Sims?

  That rocks.

• 2:12:02Griffin Newman?

  It rules. And he got a lot of good time with George. And he has such a history with George and George clearly respects him.

• 2:12:08David Sims?

  He actually knows George, sure.

• 2:12:10Griffin Newman?

  So he's talking 25 years later about the response to Jar Jar, right? An episode that like has a lot of Ahmed Best and him talking about his suicide attempt and is like, the most- Bracing version of like trying to tackle the charge of response.

• 2:12:21David Sims?

  God bless him for running at that. Right. Yeah.

• 2:12:24Griffin Newman?

  Right? And Ahmed was sort of like, I didn't really feel like anyone knew how to protect or support me during that.

• 2:12:32David Sims?

  Right?

• 2:12:33Griffin Newman?

  And they cut to George and they're sort of like, didn't you try to help him at this time? And he was like, I just told him, you know, I mean, when the original film came out, everyone hated it and 25 years they'll all like it. And look, see, I was right. And Joe Johnson's like, but this was kind of different. And he, and George's response is when, when the original film came out, everyone felt the same way about C-3PO. And Joe Johnson, this is the value of him directing. Immediately pushes back from behind camera and goes, George, I don't think anyone reacted that way to C-3PO. And he goes, oh, really? Okay. Well, here's an example. And then he says the Ewoks teddy bear thing.

• 2:13:08David Sims?

  Which is closer.

• 2:13:09Griffin Newman?

  Sure.

• 2:13:10David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 2:13:10Griffin Newman?

  But the difference here is that Ahmed Best is like a guy who people kept shit talking. Like no one was attacking Warwick Davis on the same level. Anyway.

• 2:13:19David Sims?

  He was 11 years old, Warwick Davis.

• 2:13:21Griffin Newman?

  That thing's amazing.

• 2:13:21David Sims?

  You know who's good?

• 2:13:22Griffin Newman?

  Warwick Davis?

• 2:13:23David Sims?

  Wicket.

• 2:13:24Griffin Newman?

  Wicket's one of my best friends.

• 2:13:26David Sims?

  I think Wicket's great. And I'm gonna watch all the Star Wars movies again. I'm just telling you guys this. It's 10:15 at night or whatever.

• 2:13:33Griffin Newman?

  You gonna try it with your daughter?

• 2:13:34David Sims?

  I don't think so. I don't know. I think she's too young for it.

• 2:13:37Griffin Newman?

  I don't know.

• 2:13:38David Sims?

  Um, but I'm just gonna watch them all again.

• 2:13:39Griffin Newman?

  Okay.

• 2:13:40David Sims?

  Um, and I'm just excited to meet Wicket. I've just been thinking about Wicket.

• 2:13:43Griffin Newman?

  Yeah. You know who else I love?

• 2:13:44David Sims?

  Who?

• 2:13:44Griffin Newman?

  Chief Chirpa.

• 2:13:45David Sims?

  He's all right. I'm really focused on, Wicket's got this little butt.

• 2:13:48Griffin Newman?

  What about T-Bone?

• 2:13:49David Sims?

  Do you care about Star Wars?

• 2:13:51Speaker 02

  I like the Empire Strikes Back.

• 2:13:54David Sims?

  Good movie.

• 2:13:54Griffin Newman?

  Do you have a pitch on what your canceled Star Wars movie would be?

• 2:13:58David Sims?

  Would it be about Wicket's little butt?

• 2:13:59Speaker 02

  What do you, what do you mean? What's a canceled?

• 2:14:01Griffin Newman?

  Well, I'm saying now.

• 2:14:02David Sims?

  Everyone's got a Star Wars project.

• 2:14:03Griffin Newman?

  99 out of 100 announced Star Wars projects are guaranteed to never be made.

• 2:14:07David Sims?

  They like bring people out and they're like, Star, what are you making? They're like, I don't know. It's gonna have ships or lightsabers or something.

• 2:14:12Speaker 02

  You know who's a little, a little cutie? BB-8.

• 2:14:16David Sims?

  Bring him back?

• 2:14:16Griffin Newman?

  I honestly think.

• 2:14:17David Sims?

  Roll that fucker out.

• 2:14:19Griffin Newman?

  I think.

• 2:14:20Speaker 02

  Or Baby Yoda. Come on.

• 2:14:21David Sims?

  Well, he's, he's, that guy's working.

• 2:14:22Griffin Newman?

  He's got a movie coming.

• 2:14:23Speaker 02

  Didn't he go to Hawaii?

• 2:14:25Griffin Newman?

  He's got a three picture. Oh, Krogu goes Hawaiian.

• 2:14:28David Sims?

  Sounds great.

• 2:14:29Griffin Newman?

  Really good.

• 2:14:29David Sims?

  Krogu's got a little cocktail with a umbrella.

• 2:14:31Griffin Newman?

  I do feel like BB-8 is getting a little forgotten.

• 2:14:34David Sims?

  Yeah, bring him back up. Everything from those movies is getting forgotten.

• 2:14:38Griffin Newman?

  You know what? He kind of had a Mina Savari moment where everyone was like, this guy's gonna be working forever.

• 2:14:43David Sims?

  You like that we're still talking about this, right?

• 2:14:43Speaker 02

  Kevin Spacey loves him.

• 2:14:45Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:14:46David Sims?

  Yeah. Yeah. You know what people forget about? Uh, you gotta keep, fuck, what is it called? Uh, the coaxium?

• 2:14:54Griffin Newman?

  Coaxium cold.

• 2:14:55David Sims?

  People forget that. You need to keep it really cold.

• 2:14:57Griffin Newman?

  Are you gonna get that coaxium water bottle?

• 2:14:59David Sims?

  Sure.

• 2:15:00Griffin Newman?

  Put it in the freezer?

• 2:15:02David Sims?

  Oh, I was just asking. You know about coaxium? If you remember about keeping coaxium cold.

• 2:15:07Speaker 02

  No, I'm a woman, so.

• 2:15:09David Sims?

  Women, women don't, don't touch. Women don't pick up the check, they don't open doors, and they don't handle coaxium.

• 2:15:16Griffin Newman?

  Those are the rules.

• 2:15:18Speaker 02

  My gentleman callers can handle the coaxium.

• 2:15:20David Sims?

  Exactly.

• 2:15:21Griffin Newman?

  The MacGuffin in Solo, a Star Wars Story is a substance called coaxium that has to be kept very cold. And it was David's favorite bit for a while.

• 2:15:29David Sims?

  Because it's such a silly.

• 2:15:30Griffin Newman?

  The intensity of, you need to keep it cold, assuming that it was a thing that was gonna be forgotten by everyone else. And then they opened this, like, fucking 500 million dollar Millennium Falcon ride at Disney World, and the whole ride is based around coaxium.

• 2:15:43Speaker 02

  Really?

• 2:15:43Griffin Newman?

  The ride's a flop. They keep saying, "You gotta get the coaxium." And now they're making coaxium merchandise. Ben, there's literally a newly released coaxium water bottle, so you can keep your beverages cold like coaxium.

• 2:15:56David Sims?

  Brilliant. Keep it cold.

• 2:15:57Speaker 02

  That's dope.

• 2:15:58David Sims?

  Number two at the box office.

• 2:16:01Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:16:01David Sims?

  It's a film that I'm sure you saw in theaters. I sure did.

• 2:16:04Griffin Newman?

  Chicken Run?

• 2:16:05David Sims?

  No!

• 2:16:05Griffin Newman?

  Fuck.

• 2:16:06David Sims?

  That's number nine at the box office.

• 2:16:07Griffin Newman?

  Okay. Right, that was more of a June, maybe May release?

• 2:16:10David Sims?

  It is, uh, it's made 100 million dollars in two weeks.

• 2:16:14Griffin Newman?

  Was it the motion picture X-Men?

• 2:16:16David Sims?

  X-Men.

• 2:16:17Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, yeah. Not only did I see that in years.

• 2:16:20David Sims?

  Check that one out.

• 2:16:20Griffin Newman?

  That was my personality for the year leading up to and following its release.

• 2:16:25David Sims?

  You ever seen Bryan Singer's X-Men?

• 2:16:27Speaker 02

  Of course.

• 2:16:28Griffin Newman?

  Normal movie made by normal man.

• 2:16:30Speaker 02

  This is amazing to watch in person after hearing it for so long. The listeners, it's electrifying.

• 2:16:37Griffin Newman?

  People always say this, right, that I think people who have listened to the show assume, oh, they must be cutting parts out in between the clue and the guest.

• 2:16:46David Sims?

  No, no.

• 2:16:46Griffin Newman?

  You do just see my eyes roll back and then the answer comes out.

• 2:16:49David Sims?

  So, Mentat mode.

• 2:16:51Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:16:51Speaker 02

  It's like Leonard Maltin's movie, whatever. You know what I'm saying?

• 2:16:55Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 2:16:57David Sims?

  It's the whole, I meet with book people sometimes, like, what are you gonna write? And I'm like, I really just wanna write Leonard Maltin's movie guide. And they're like, there's no purpose for those books to exist anymore. And I'm like, I know.

• 2:17:06Griffin Newman?

  And let's maybe investigate what went wrong in our culture, when and how and why to make that the case.

• 2:17:12David Sims?

  Oh, stupid internet. Um, X-Men, doing great.

• 2:17:15Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:17:16David Sims?

  Um.

• 2:17:17Griffin Newman?

  It was a big hit?

• 2:17:18David Sims?

  It was a big hit. Bigger hits were to follow, of course.

• 2:17:21Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:17:21David Sims?

  Um, but it's a sort of something. Here's a question.

• 2:17:23Griffin Newman?

  In three years, the X-Men would unite.

• 2:17:25David Sims?

  They would.

• 2:17:25Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:17:26David Sims?

  Uh, in, is Greg Kinnear more evil than Magneto and/or Harrison Ford in What Lies Beneath? I would say yes.

• 2:17:33Speaker 02

  I would say yes.

• 2:17:34Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:17:34Speaker 02

  He's more pretentious and annoying.

• 2:17:36Griffin Newman?

  And yet, he's the fourth most evil character in the movie.

• 2:17:39David Sims?

  Right, exactly. He's not even right. He's probably below the fucking dweebs.

• 2:17:42Griffin Newman?

  Right. Like, he's maybe equivalent to Magneto, but the dweebs are equivalent to Apocalypse Mr. Sinister in Holocaust.

• 2:17:49David Sims?

  There you go. Remember Holocaust?

• 2:17:51Griffin Newman?

  I knew you were gonna be happy with the Holocaust.

• 2:17:53David Sims?

  What do they retell? Uh, they retell Nemesis, I think. They brought, they introduced a character in the mid 90s called Holocaust.

• 2:17:59Griffin Newman?

  And then they were like.

• 2:18:00David Sims?

  People were like, you can't fucking call a villain Holocaust. And they're like, alright, sorry.

• 2:18:04Griffin Newman?

  Dude, they just backtracked.

• 2:18:06David Sims?

  Um.

• 2:18:07Griffin Newman?

  His name's always been Nemesis.

• 2:18:08David Sims?

  Nemesis. Number three at the box office is another film. I was there. I was there opening weekend.

• 2:18:13Griffin Newman?

  In theaters.

• 2:18:14David Sims?

  I was buying a ticket for this film. It's a sequel.

• 2:18:16Griffin Newman?

  Was this the opening weekend?

• 2:18:18David Sims?

  It sure is. It's new this week. It's opening to 19.5 million dollars.

• 2:18:21Griffin Newman?

  Well, it's not Nutty Professor 2: The Clumps.

• 2:18:23David Sims?

  No, it's an animated film. It's a sequel.

• 2:18:25Griffin Newman?

  Animated sequel?

• 2:18:26David Sims?

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:18:27Griffin Newman?

  In the year 2000?

• 2:18:29David Sims?

  Yes, yes.

• 2:18:29Speaker 02

  In the year 2000.

• 2:18:30Griffin Newman?

  And it opened?

• 2:18:31David Sims?

  Then did it too.

• 2:18:32Griffin Newman?

  20.

• 2:18:34David Sims?

  Yep.

• 2:18:34Griffin Newman?

  Um, it's not a Disney picture.

• 2:18:36David Sims?

  No, no.

• 2:18:38Griffin Newman?

  Is it from the fine folks at Fox?

• 2:18:42David Sims?

  It's being distributed by Warner Brothers, but I think it was, uh, pay to play.

• 2:18:46Griffin Newman?

  This is a movie you definitely saw opening weekend?

• 2:18:49David Sims?

  Oh, yes.

• 2:18:49Griffin Newman?

  And I did not.

• 2:18:50David Sims?

  No.

• 2:18:50Griffin Newman?

  It is called Pokemon the Movie 2000?

• 2:18:52David Sims?

  That's correct. I believe the actual title is Pokemon: The Power of One, but, uh, for American audiences, they called it Pokemon the Movie 2000, in case you didn't know what year it was.

• 2:19:02Griffin Newman?

  So you were there opening weekend to get the trading card?

• 2:19:04David Sims?

  I certainly was for the first two. I didn't see Pokemon 3 in theaters.

• 2:19:09Griffin Newman?

  There was, uh, I think by three, they go to Miramax.

• 2:19:12David Sims?

  Sure.

• 2:19:12Griffin Newman?

  Maybe Warner Brothers only released the first two.

• 2:19:16Griffin Newman?

  They go to a meeting.

• 2:19:16David Sims?

  Pikachu attacks. Harvey Weinstein.

• 2:19:20Griffin Newman?

  Charizard.

• 2:19:21David Sims?

  Does thunderbolt.

• 2:19:22Griffin Newman?

  Flame broils Bob Weinstein's ass.

• 2:19:24David Sims?

  My daughter has a pair of Pokemon pajamas. I don't know where they even came from. I think they're hand-me-downs from someone. Maybe Asa, honestly.

• 2:19:31Griffin Newman?

  Okay.

• 2:19:32David Sims?

  Uh, and so now she will keep being like, who's this? And I'm like.

• 2:19:35Griffin Newman?

  There are multiple different.

• 2:19:37David Sims?

  There's six Pok- there's six Pokemon on her PJs.

• 2:19:39Griffin Newman?

  Name, name the big six.

• 2:19:40David Sims?

  Well, obviously the, the big three.

• 2:19:42Griffin Newman?

  Okay, Pikachu?

• 2:19:43David Sims?

  No, not Pikachu.

• 2:19:44Griffin Newman?

  Charmander, Bulbasaur.

• 2:19:45Speaker 02

  Squirtle?

• 2:19:46Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:19:47David Sims?

  And then Pikachu's there, obviously.

• 2:19:49Griffin Newman?

  Is Psyduck in the mix?

• 2:19:50David Sims?

  No, we've got Jigglypuff.

• 2:19:51Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:19:52David Sims?

  Who's very amusing, of course, to say. Uh, and.

• 2:19:56Griffin Newman?

  Her recent album is really good, too.

• 2:19:57David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 2:19:59Speaker 02

  It's a Cardi B collab.

• 2:20:00David Sims?

  Yeah, she's kind of filling that Lana Del Rey space. And, uh, Evie, uh, which, uh, who's a cutie pie.

• 2:20:08Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:20:08Speaker 02

  Wait, who's your favorite Pokemon?

• 2:20:10David Sims?

  Uh, my favorite Pokemon, big question, uh, it is, uh, my favorite classically is, is the Pollywag.

• 2:20:15Griffin Newman?

  Hmm.

• 2:20:16Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 2:20:17David Sims?

  I love Polly.

• 2:20:18Griffin Newman?

  Pollywhirl?

• 2:20:18David Sims?

  Pollywhirl and Polywrath.

• 2:20:20Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:20:20David Sims?

  I don't talk about Pollytoad. No, no, no. But I like a lot of Pokemon that I like.

• 2:20:25Speaker 01

  I like Mime.

• 2:20:26Speaker 02

  Mr. Mime.

• 2:20:27David Sims?

  Mm-hmm. Yeah, he's in that weird category of Pokemon where you're like, so this is a guy?

• 2:20:31Griffin Newman?

  No, no, no, no, no, no.

• 2:20:33David Sims?

  There's like four Pokemon that are humans, sort of? And you're like, what's that?

• 2:20:37Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:20:38David Sims?

  The rest are animals.

• 2:20:39Griffin Newman?

  You know what my favorite?

• 2:20:40David Sims?

  Who?

• 2:20:41Griffin Newman?

  Ditto.

• 2:20:42Speaker 02

  Ditto, wow.

• 2:20:43David Sims?

  That's pretty cool.

• 2:20:44Griffin Newman?

  I would just play Ditto non-stop. Cause I'd be like, who's gonna give me, who's gonna put up something I can't copy?

• 2:20:49David Sims?

  Oh, who's your favorite Pokemon, Shannon?

• 2:20:50Speaker 02

  It's my favorite word in the English language, Snorlax.

• 2:20:53David Sims?

  It's a great name.

• 2:20:54Griffin Newman?

  It's a great word.

• 2:20:55David Sims?

  It's a great name. Snorlax is good.

• 2:20:56Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:20:56David Sims?

  Raising a Snorlax is impressive, too. All right, number four at the box office is, uh, we'll do the Pokemon someday.

• 2:21:02Griffin Newman?

  Oh, really?

• 2:21:03David Sims?

  People have been pushing for us to do theatrical Pokemon.

• 2:21:07Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:21:07David Sims?

  Cause that compresses it by a lot. Then it's just like the first four and Detective Pikachu or something.

• 2:21:12Griffin Newman?

  Well, I want to say congrats to our listeners, cause apparently the show is gonna run 25 years if we're getting a theatrical Pokemon.

• 2:21:18David Sims?

  It'd be, it, it would be pretty funny to do Pokemon.

• 2:21:21Speaker 02

  Imagine you do theatrical Pokemon before Hal Hartley.

• 2:21:24David Sims?

  Well.

• 2:21:25Griffin Newman?

  We treat theatrical Pokemon as a director series.

• 2:21:27David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 2:21:29Griffin Newman?

  We do it on main feed.

• 2:21:30David Sims?

  I think it's, I think four was the, the final.

• 2:21:33Griffin Newman?

  That was four ever?

• 2:21:34David Sims?

  Correct. To make it to US theaters.

• 2:21:37Griffin Newman?

  I feel like five.

• 2:21:38David Sims?

  Five might have.

• 2:21:40Griffin Newman?

  I remember the.

• 2:21:40David Sims?

  Five might have gotten a Cinema Village release.

• 2:21:44Griffin Newman?

  I, I remember one of them making like tens of thousands of dollars in theaters. Being kind of astounding before they just started putting them all on DVD.

• 2:21:53David Sims?

  Right. Number four of the box office, a huge hit from this summer. It is a comedy, a spoof film.

• 2:21:59Griffin Newman?

  Oh, it's called Scary Movie.

• 2:22:00David Sims?

  That's right.

• 2:22:01Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 2:22:01Griffin Newman?

  It's humongous.

• 2:22:02David Sims?

  Uh, yep. Is it good?

• 2:22:04Griffin Newman?

  No.

• 2:22:04David Sims?

  No, I don't remember it being actually good.

• 2:22:06Griffin Newman?

  No.

• 2:22:07David Sims?

  But important in a weird sort of a way.

• 2:22:09Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:22:09Speaker 02

  I think it's getting a reclamation these days.

• 2:22:12David Sims?

  Makes sense.

• 2:22:13Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, it does. I just, I don't love it. And I like, I like some of the Wayans Brothers work a lot, but I'm not crazy about that movie. Yeah.

• 2:22:21David Sims?

  Number five of the box office.

• 2:22:22Griffin Newman?

  As much as I love Anna Faris.

• 2:22:25David Sims?

  Yeah, and she's funny.

• 2:22:26Griffin Newman?

  And Regina.

• 2:22:28David Sims?

  You, you can say her name slower.

• 2:22:30Griffin Newman?

  I love Anna and Regina.

• 2:22:34David Sims?

  There you go.

• 2:22:36Griffin Newman?

  I don't know who that guy is.

• 2:22:37David Sims?

  Yeah, I liked him.

• 2:22:38Griffin Newman?

  Okay, he might come back.

• 2:22:40David Sims?

  The lounge singer, Griffin's new character, lounge guy. Number five of the box office, a film we've invoked on this episode. It is a huge hit. It's based on a bestseller. It's got movie stars in it.

• 2:22:52Griffin Newman?

  Is it the General's Daughter?

• 2:22:53David Sims?

  Nope.

• 2:22:54Griffin Newman?

  We've booked in this episode.

• 2:22:55David Sims?

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:22:56Griffin Newman?

  Okay, it's a big hit.

• 2:22:57David Sims?

  Been out for a month. It's made a hundred and forty-five million dollars. A totally good movie, like a totally solid, like, true story movie where everyone's got a sweater on and they all get fucking killed by a wave.

• 2:23:10Griffin Newman?

  Sweater core.

• 2:23:11David Sims?

  Yep.

• 2:23:11Griffin Newman?

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:23:12David Sims?

  You seen The Perfect Storm?

• 2:23:13Speaker 02

  I believe I have.

• 2:23:14David Sims?

  Wolfgang Peterson film. Did you know that?

• 2:23:17Speaker 02

  Mark Wahlberg.

• 2:23:18David Sims?

  He's there.

• 2:23:18Speaker 02

  There's a big wave.

• 2:23:19David Sims?

  Clooney.

• 2:23:20Griffin Newman?

  John C. Rylan?

• 2:23:20Speaker 02

  Everyone's wet.

• 2:23:22Griffin Newman?

  It's, it's like Mary.

• 2:23:23David Sims?

  Mary Elizabeth Master Antonio and Diane Lane.

• 2:23:26Griffin Newman?

  Movie though, Mary Elizabeth Master.

• 2:23:27David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 2:23:27Griffin Newman?

  She kinda disappears after that.

• 2:23:29David Sims?

  Mary and Diane are both like, you know, like, this storm seems pretty bad, you know? And then the boat is Clooney, Wahlberg, Riley Fichtner and fucking, uh, like Bob Gunton, maybe like, it's a great, it's a great group of guys.

• 2:23:43Griffin Newman?

  Is, uh, is Master?

• 2:23:45David Sims?

  Oh, John Hawks too.

• 2:23:46Griffin Newman?

  There we go.

• 2:23:47Speaker 02

  John Hawks.

• 2:23:48Griffin Newman?

  Is Master Antonio like another, uh, on a different boat?

• 2:23:52David Sims?

  She's on a different boat.

• 2:23:53Griffin Newman?

  And Diane Lane is Clooney's wife?

• 2:23:55David Sims?

  Diane Lane is on shore and she's like, yeah, she's, um, no, she's Wahlberg's girlfriend. All right, Diane, get it?

• 2:24:03David Sims?

  Uh, that movie's great though, and it is just kinda like, I would like more movies like that.

• 2:24:07Griffin Newman?

  Sure.

• 2:24:08David Sims?

  Where they were like, there was a really weird, crazy storm.

• 2:24:11Speaker 02

  Bring him back.

• 2:24:12Griffin Newman?

  You know? Yeah, bring him back. Also talked about in the ILM doc, there's some really interesting intel on that one.

• 2:24:17David Sims?

  Uh, it is an incredible movie from a visual effects perspective.

• 2:24:20Griffin Newman?

  They were like, that was a real breakthrough movie.

• 2:24:22David Sims?

  I don't think like movies look better than that now in terms of like doing watershit. Like, it's like kinda still, you're.

• 2:24:29Griffin Newman?

  But it was like the one where they finally cracked the code on like physics sims and getting it right. Yeah.

• 2:24:34David Sims?

  Number six to the box office is, uh, The Kid, the Bruce Willis movie?

• 2:24:38Griffin Newman?

  I don't think that's the proper title. There we go. Disney was sued at the last second and they had to call it Disney's The Kid to differentiate it from the Charlie Chaplin movie.

• 2:24:48Speaker 02

  Oh, my God.

• 2:24:49Griffin Newman?

  That is true.

• 2:24:50David Sims?

  What is that about?

• 2:24:51Griffin Newman?

  It is about.

• 2:24:51David Sims?

  Spencer Breslin is like baby Bruce Willis who's like a vision?

• 2:24:55Griffin Newman?

  It's like a weird time travel thing where somehow.

• 2:24:58Speaker 02

  I've never heard of this film.

• 2:24:59Griffin Newman?

  Child version of Bruce Willis played by Spencer Breslin as a nerd is now in the present with cool businessman Bruce Willis. And he has to learn to love his younger self.

• 2:25:09David Sims?

  It's a turtle top.

• 2:25:10Griffin Newman?

  It is indeed.

• 2:25:11Speaker 02

  Is it a body switching?

• 2:25:12Griffin Newman?

  No, it's like he's an adult man in the present day and what is presumably like 1960s child version of him suddenly just like appears at his front door.

• 2:25:23David Sims?

  Sounds terrible.

• 2:25:24Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:25:24Speaker 02

  Oh, wow.

• 2:25:24Griffin Newman?

  I remember it not working.

• 2:25:26David Sims?

  Number seven of the box office is The Patriot.

• 2:25:30Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 2:25:30David Sims?

  Bad movie.

• 2:25:31Speaker 02

  With Hughes, uh, with Heath Ledger?

• 2:25:33David Sims?

  Yeah. Heath Ledger?

• 2:25:34Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:25:34David Sims?

  Heath Ledger? Yep. Uh, that's a.

• 2:25:38David Sims?

  Oh, what's his name, Randall Wallace movie, correct?

• 2:25:40Griffin Newman?

  Well, I think Randall Wallace wrote it, but it's a fucking, Roland Emmerich directed it.

• 2:25:44David Sims?

  Oh, that's right.

• 2:25:46Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:25:46David Sims?

  Yeah, a guy with a really good grasp on American history, as we also saw with Stonewall.

• 2:25:50Griffin Newman?

  The year 2000, Mel Gibson-

• 2:25:52David Sims?

  The year 2000, I guess.

• 2:25:54Griffin Newman?

  Had The Patriot, Chicken Run, and What Women Want, and it was the first time, I believe, a movie star had 300 million dollar grossers in one year. And not only that, Patriot had broken the record for the highest an actor had been paid upfront for a movie period.

• 2:26:07David Sims?

  He's the Patriot.

• 2:26:08Griffin Newman?

  Could not have been more dominant.

• 2:26:09David Sims?

  Yep. And then he has what, like right after that, he's got Signs and stuff like he's-

• 2:26:13Griffin Newman?

  Signs two years later, and then two years after that, oh, We Were Soldiers is the following year.

• 2:26:17David Sims?

  It is, okay.

• 2:26:18Griffin Newman?

  Signs is two years later, is humongous, or three years later, whatever it was. And then he basically suffered tires and makes a fucking Passion of the Crays.

• 2:26:26David Sims?

  Did that thing do okay?

• 2:26:28Griffin Newman?

  I think he took a bath on it. Damn.

• 2:26:30David Sims?

  Eight is loser, nine is Chicken Run, 10 is Me, Myself and Irene.

• 2:26:34Speaker 02

  Wow, what are your-

• 2:26:35David Sims?

  We already discussed.

• 2:26:36Speaker 02

  You're at the pictures.

• 2:26:36David Sims?

  Number 12 of the box office new this week is a film called The In Crowd.

• 2:26:41Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:26:43David Sims?

  What would you do to get in with The In Crowd?

• 2:26:48Speaker 02

  Oh, my God, that poster, I just had like a full Proustian memory.

• 2:26:51Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, who's the lineup in that one?

• 2:26:54David Sims?

  Blorp, Blue Bee, Blap, B, Blip, B, it's just made up people.

• 2:26:57Griffin Newman?

  But I'm saying like that-

• 2:26:58Speaker 02

  Is it like the people from like, like Brendan Fair or something, like Smallville actors or something?

• 2:27:03Griffin Newman?

  Like one of those movies that had a like Valentine, urban legend style poster with eight actors faces.

• 2:27:09David Sims?

  Eight faces, and it's like all of these people did get parts on Melrose Place, but for some reason, Susan Ward.

• 2:27:16Speaker 02

  Susan Ward, yes.

• 2:27:17David Sims?

  Uh, Laurie-

• 2:27:18Griffin Newman?

  You know Susan Ward?

• 2:27:19Speaker 02

  She's in, um, uh, I like 10 Things I Hate About You, or like Never Been Kissed, she's in one of those.

• 2:27:25David Sims?

  She's in Shallow Howl?

• 2:27:29Griffin Newman?

  Talk about Fairlies.

• 2:27:30David Sims?

  Uh, yeah, not a great career.

• 2:27:32Speaker 02

  She kinda has like a sad face.

• 2:27:35David Sims?

  Susan Ward, Susan Ward, Laurie Huring.

• 2:27:39David Sims?

  Uh, Matthew Saddle.

• 2:27:41Griffin Newman?

  This movie's directed by Mary Lambert?

• 2:27:43David Sims?

  Who I like.

• 2:27:44Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:27:44David Sims?

  Yes, it is.

• 2:27:45Speaker 02

  Wow. Wait, who did Pet Sematary?

• 2:27:46Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:27:47Speaker 02

  Crazy.

• 2:27:47David Sims?

  Yeah, kind of a legend.

• 2:27:49Speaker 02

  There you go.

• 2:27:49Griffin Newman?

  Wow.

• 2:27:50Speaker 02

  That's the Amy Heckerling trajectory.

• 2:27:53Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, but man, this thing was flopping hard.

• 2:27:56David Sims?

  Well, yeah, what the, Nathan Bexton, Tess Harper.

• 2:28:01Speaker 02

  Yeah, they sound like made up names.

• 2:28:02David Sims?

  And just, you know what I mean? And that's how I felt watching Final Destination Bloodlines, which I said to you, Greg.

• 2:28:08Griffin Newman?

  Yes, it's great.

• 2:28:09David Sims?

  Where I'm like, I don't know a single one of these motherfuckers.

• 2:28:11Griffin Newman?

  There's something kind of refreshing about it.

• 2:28:13David Sims?

  And then when they're gonna bring in the grandma, I'm like, okay, who'd they get for the grandma? And they're like, surprise, nobody.

• 2:28:19Griffin Newman?

  Some respectable, working actor? But here's the other thing.

• 2:28:22David Sims?

  They're all good.

• 2:28:23Griffin Newman?

  Everyone's good?

• 2:28:24David Sims?

  They're all totally good.

• 2:28:25Griffin Newman?

  Like, having just rewatched all the Final Destination movies?

• 2:28:28David Sims?

  I just did not know who they were.

• 2:28:29Griffin Newman?

  That is often the Achilles' heel of those movies, where there will be someone who is like the third lead, and you're like, did this guy win a contest? Like, he got guys shooting the lens?

• 2:28:39David Sims?

  That's also why-

• 2:28:39Griffin Newman?

  Tripping over cables?

• 2:28:41David Sims?

  Mary Elizabeth Winstead in three is so good in it that you're like, this is almost overwhelming the movie. She's actually too locked in.

• 2:28:47Griffin Newman?

  The lead woman in two is very good as well.

• 2:28:49David Sims?

  She's good, A.J. Carr. She's, she's, she's more, I would say, in the right zone.

• 2:28:52Griffin Newman?

  But Bloodlines, everyone is good.

• 2:28:54David Sims?

  Everyone's great.

• 2:28:55Griffin Newman?

  Have you seen that movie yet?

• 2:28:56Speaker 02

  No.

• 2:28:56Griffin Newman?

  Chandler, it rules.

• 2:28:58David Sims?

  It kinda rules.

• 2:28:59Speaker 02

  But, I, I love, I love the franchise, by this back.

• 2:29:02David Sims?

  If you love the franchise, you will like this movie.

• 2:29:04Griffin Newman?

  You will watch this one and you'll be like, oh, this is what all of these movies have been trying to be.

• 2:29:09Speaker 02

  Really?

• 2:29:09Griffin Newman?

  They have finally cracked it 100%.

• 2:29:11Speaker 02

  Is Devon Sawa in the first one?

• 2:29:14David Sims?

  Devon Sawa's in the first one.

• 2:29:15Speaker 02

  I just remember there's a thing about putting something in the microwave. And there was the Mentos in like Coke or whatever.

• 2:29:20Griffin Newman?

  Yep.

• 2:29:20David Sims?

  Um, and there's, um, you know, the tanning bed and, okay, look, we've had a lot of great kills over the years.

• 2:29:26Speaker 02

  That was the first movie I snuck into, like, that was art rated. Yeah.

• 2:29:30David Sims?

  How'd you get in?

• 2:29:31Speaker 02

  I think I like went to another movie and, and got in, yeah. Elicit.

• 2:29:35David Sims?

  Devious.

• 2:29:37David Sims?

  Loser, we discussed it.

• 2:29:38Griffin Newman?

  We discussed it.

• 2:29:39David Sims?

  Fucking Jesus Christ. Bedtime.

• 2:29:41Griffin Newman?

  We had to do it. Remember, remember like 45 minutes ago when David was like, so I think I'm ending this episode. We couldn't, no, no, that's not how things work.

• 2:29:50David Sims?

  You can't talk much more about the movie.

• 2:29:52Griffin Newman?

  We talked about a lot of really great stuff and I think this was a really important episode.

• 2:29:56Speaker 02

  I just want to say to Amy Akkering or any of the associates if they're listening, I love you and you're an incredible filmmaker and inspiration for many. And please put Clueless on the Criterion Collection.

• 2:30:09Griffin Newman?

  There is a 4K 30th anniversary coming out from Paramount.

• 2:30:13David Sims?

  Not of Loser, to be clear.

• 2:30:15Griffin Newman?

  Let me double check my notes here. Yes, it would be nice if it got that kind of respect on it, but it does. Everyone's sort of like crossing their fingers to see this new restoration because I think they're also putting it back in theaters this summer.

• 2:30:27Speaker 02

  Really?

• 2:30:28David Sims?

  I think it should.

• 2:30:28Speaker 02

  Oh, that's so cool.

• 2:30:29David Sims?

  Yeah. Look, I don't even hate this movie because it's so weird.

• 2:30:35Griffin Newman?

  I agree.

• 2:30:36David Sims?

  Like, it's one of those things where I'm like, I was kind of engaged by it.

• 2:30:39Griffin Newman?

  Your Letterboxd log was like, this movie is vile, but I'm not sure I'm saying that as a totally a bad thing.

• 2:30:45David Sims?

  It was, uh, let me find it. Letterboxd. Deeply bizarre and kinda evil. Brackets, somewhat complimentary.

• 2:30:51Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 2:30:52David Sims?

  Yes. Kind of an evil movie, though. It felt evil to me. There was an evil in this movie.

• 2:30:59Griffin Newman?

  There is.

• 2:30:59Speaker 02

  It taught me a lot about wigs and how you shouldn't make anybody wear them.

• 2:31:04Griffin Newman?

  Wigs and bigs.

• 2:31:05Speaker 02

  Wigs and bigs.

• 2:31:06David Sims?

  Never put a wig on Jason Biggs. Ever.

• 2:31:09Griffin Newman?

  Ever.

• 2:31:09Speaker 02

  Big can't wear wigs, yeah.

• 2:31:11David Sims?

  He only wears the hat for like five minutes.

• 2:31:13Speaker 02

  He's in that a lot.

• 2:31:15David Sims?

  Maybe he's in it more than I remember.

• 2:31:17Griffin Newman?

  But I'm like, if that's the wig, then he should never take that hat off.

• 2:31:22Griffin Newman?

  I was so relieved anytime the hat came back. And going in, I was like, I hope he doesn't wear this fucking hat too much.

• 2:31:27Speaker 02

  They must have done camera tests. Like, no one during the camera test was like, you know, it's kind of an unflattering haircut.

• 2:31:33Griffin Newman?

  Even beyond that, like, the lens didn't shatter when they fucking tried to point it at the wig?

• 2:31:40David Sims?

  Well, that's why the movie cost over $20 million. They kept breaking lenses. Yes.

• 2:31:45Speaker 02

  But her hair is bad, too. It's so spiky.

• 2:31:47Griffin Newman?

  Blue likes just catching on fire.

• 2:31:50Speaker 02

  Like, who is the hairstylist?

• 2:31:51Griffin Newman?

  I don't know.

• 2:31:53David Sims?

  Chandler, thank you for joining us.

• 2:31:55Griffin Newman?

  Chandler, I like movies is pretty thoroughly rentable by this point.

• 2:32:00Speaker 02

  Yeah, it played for six months in Japan.

• 2:32:03Griffin Newman?

  Hell, yeah.

• 2:32:04Speaker 02

  Had a very successful Japanese release.

• 2:32:06Griffin Newman?

  That rules.

• 2:32:07David Sims?

  See, I can understand, yeah.

• 2:32:09Speaker 02

  It seems like it spoke to people. Hideo Kojima loved the movie.

• 2:32:13Griffin Newman?

  Really? That fucking rules.

• 2:32:15David Sims?

  He tweeted about it, right? Yeah.

• 2:32:17Griffin Newman?

  Sarah Polley, that's how it got on my radar for the first time, was Sarah Polley kept waxing poetic about it after seeing it a tiff.

• 2:32:23Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's been unbelievable, considering it cost, you know, the price of Jason Biggs' wig.

• 2:32:29David Sims?

  So negative $1 million?

• 2:32:34Griffin Newman?

  For free, but be careful, it comes with a price.

• 2:32:39Speaker 02

  Is the price good?

• 2:32:40David Sims?

  Your movie will suck.

• 2:32:43Speaker 02

  It will ruin your career.

• 2:32:45David Sims?

  Oh, my god. Oh, man.

• 2:32:49Griffin Newman?

  But, yes, rentable, and then the film you're finishing now.

• 2:32:53Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's called Mile End Kicks. It's my indie sleaze movie.

• 2:32:57Griffin Newman?

  Hell, yeah.

• 2:32:58David Sims?

  Mile End Kicks?

• 2:32:59Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:33:00David Sims?

  Hell, yeah.

• 2:33:00Speaker 02

  Stars Barbie Ferrera from Euphoria.

• 2:33:02David Sims?

  Hell, yeah.

• 2:33:03Speaker 02

  And Jay Bearshell.

• 2:33:05David Sims?

  Hey, Canadian legend.

• 2:33:06Speaker 02

  And Devon Bostick.

• 2:33:07David Sims?

  Canadian legend.

• 2:33:08Griffin Newman?

  Roderick.

• 2:33:09Speaker 02

  And Stanley Simons from The Iron Claw.

• 2:33:11Griffin Newman?

  Hell, yeah.

• 2:33:11Speaker 02

  And Juliet Garrett-Peet from Red Rooms.

• 2:33:13Griffin Newman?

  This is, it's a great cast.

• 2:33:15David Sims?

  Red Rooms, which, by the way, I mean, that movie rocks.

• 2:33:19Speaker 02

  It's the best movie ever.

• 2:33:20David Sims?

  That movie is putting Canada on the map. It's a country of freaks.

• 2:33:25Speaker 02

  David Fincher movie he ever made, yeah.

• 2:33:26Griffin Newman?

  Not since Maple Syrup.

• 2:33:28David Sims?

  Ben, I think it would freak you out, but wow, it's a cool movie.

• 2:33:31Speaker 02

  It's such a masterpiece.

• 2:33:32David Sims?

  Red Rooms, it's called.

• 2:33:33Speaker 02

  And Juliet is incredible.

• 2:33:35David Sims?

  Oh, okay.

• 2:33:36Griffin Newman?

  Yeah. It's a movie about how the internet is good and normal.

• 2:33:39David Sims?

  Mm-hmm. An indie sleaze movie is such an exciting opportunity for a soundtrack.

• 2:33:44Speaker 02

  Oh, tell me about it.

• 2:33:45David Sims?

  And some hair. It must be like, it's almost intimidating, it feels like.

• 2:33:49Speaker 02

  It's a curse and a joy.

• 2:33:52David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 2:33:52Speaker 02

  Because it's very expensive and a lot of negotiating and stuff. But we do have a Peaches song.

• 2:33:58David Sims?

  Hell, yeah.

• 2:33:59Speaker 02

  Fuck the pain away.

• 2:34:00David Sims?

  You got it. Classic.

• 2:34:01Speaker 02

  For, oh, she's generous. I wrote her like a very loving letter and she gave us an amazing deal on it.

• 2:34:07David Sims?

  That's incredible.

• 2:34:08Griffin Newman?

  Um, can I make some soundtrack suggestions quickly?

• 2:34:10Speaker 02

  Of course.

• 2:34:10Griffin Newman?

  Uh, Teenage Dirtbag, Pretty Fly for a White Guy, Blue Dabba D, Get Down Tonight?

• 2:34:16Speaker 02

  How about She's So High?

• 2:34:17Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:34:18Speaker 02

  By Dal Bachman. That's in this movie.

• 2:34:20Griffin Newman?

  Oh, yeah. What's My Age Again? Um, thank you for being here, Chandler.

• 2:34:24Speaker 02

  Oh, my God. It's an honor and a privilege.

• 2:34:26Griffin Newman?

  A Rare Blank Check After Dark.

• 2:34:28David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 2:34:29Griffin Newman?

  Um, and thank you all for listening. Uh, please remember to rate, review, and subscribe. Tune in next week for one of the most normal movies we've ever covered. Uh, I, I Could Never Be Your Woman, uh, with the great Karen Chi, record, returning to the show.

• 2:34:43David Sims?

  Hush. That's not true. Next week.

• 2:34:46Griffin Newman?

  Is there a new release?

• 2:34:47David Sims?

  Twenty eight, uh, years later.

• 2:34:51Griffin Newman?

  That's what's happening. I forgot.

• 2:34:53David Sims?

  And then I could never be a woman with Karen Chi, which, which is great, obviously.

• 2:34:56Griffin Newman?

  Yes. Uh, I'm excited to see those zombies.

• 2:34:58David Sims?

  Me too. What do they have to?

• 2:35:00Griffin Newman?

  I don't know, but whatever they're doing, it's gonna be fast.

• 2:35:02David Sims?

  Visiting Miramax, maybe, much like, uh, the Pokemon.

• 2:35:06Griffin Newman?

  No, we wanna send all destructive forces to the Miramax offices. Uh, but tune in for that.

• 2:35:14David Sims?

  Yep.

• 2:35:14Griffin Newman?

  Yeah. Uh, and as always.

• 2:35:16David Sims?

  Goodbye.

• 2:35:17Griffin Newman?

  And as always, of the many things that got Ben's ire up while watching this film, I think nothing pissed him off more than seeing several rows of beautifully shiny gold plush velvet seats and saying, is that supposed to be Webster Hall?

• 2:35:44Speaker 01

  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 Minnick. Special thanks to David Cho, Jordan Fish, and Nate Patterson for their production help. Head over to BlankCheckPod.com for links to all of the real nerdy shit. Join our Patreon. Blank Check special features for exclusive franchise commentaries and bonus episodes.

• 2:36:29Speaker 01

  Follow us on social at Blank Check Pot. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter, Checkbook, on Substack. This podcast is created and produced by Blank Check Productions.