Barton Fink with Chris Weitz

Is John Goodman the devil? Is the studio system good, actually? Is it better to be the director of a bomb than it is to be the director of a film that doesn’t exist? Filmmaker (and part of a DGA-sanctioned directing duo) Chris Weitz joins us to talk about Barton Fink, possibly the greatest film ever made about the “art vs. commerce” divide inherent to the movie business. It’s not easy to make a picture, folks. 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?

• 0:20Speaker 03

  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.

• 1:39Griffin Newman?

  Look, but bearing a preference, we're gonna put you on a movie podcast, Blank Check. I say this because they tell me you know the poetry of the street. So that would rule out westerns, pirate podcasts, screwball, Bible room. Look, I'm not one of those guys who thinks poetic has got to be fruity. We're together on that, aren't we? I mean, I'm from New York myself. Well, Minsk, if you want to go all the way back, which we won't, but if you don't mind, I ain't asking. Now, these people are gonna say to you, Blank Check Movies, it's a B podcast. You tell them bullshit. We do not make B podcasts here at Blank Check Productions. Let's put a stop to that rumor right now. I.

• 2:14David Sims?

  You didn't hit it, which is fine because you're, you're reading the long chunk here. But the way he says, I mean, I'm from New York myself. Well, Minsk, if you want to go all the way back, which we won't, if you don't mind, and I ain't asking. Oh, he's suddenly like, you know, he's in his own track and he's like, but I don't want to talk about that, even though I just brought it up. That to me is the epitome of beautiful monologuing, right? Where it's like, now this guy is in a tunnel. Like, he's no longer even thinking about the guy.

• 2:42Griffin Newman?

  It is a thing that I feel like the Coen Brothers, it is where you feel the strongest influence, even in their dramas of like, like, um, Preston Sturgis and like Lubitch and Wilder kind of stuff. Where you're like, these brief moments where a character starts to hint at a whole deeper life and within themselves.

• 3:01David Sims?

  It is a screwball comedy going on in life, basically.

• 3:04Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, yes. It's what I like about the city is that it makes me feel unimportant in a way that I think is valuable.

• 3:10David Sims?

  Oh, by the way, have you guys seen The Clock, the Christian Barclay?

• 3:13Speaker 05

  Yes, I mean, not, not all 24 hours of it, but I popped in.

• 3:19Griffin Newman?

  Some fair weather friend you are.

• 3:22David Sims?

  They closed the museum.

• 3:23Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 3:23David Sims?

  And I've always wondered, like, how do you see the nighttime clock?

• 3:27Speaker 05

  They will occasionally schedule a 24 hour session.

• 3:30Griffin Newman?

  Or you gotta go Ben Stiller mode. Work a night at the museum.

• 3:34David Sims?

  Except it's a night at MoMA, so it's like,

• 3:36Speaker 05

  The movie's come alive.

• 3:37David Sims?

  Some abstract artist like going around. Yeah, exactly.

• 3:40Speaker 05

  I gotta say, I, I, I went with my wife Mercedes there yesterday and, um, and it was a redemptive, it was a redeeming experience. It was really amazing and I recommend, I think it's going on May 21st. It's leaving MoMA, but you're around, you get a chance.

• 3:56David Sims?

  It's leaving MoMA, well, I mean, this episode's coming out in whatever, like a long time from now, so.

• 4:01Griffin Newman?

  But your message is being received by the three of us.

• 4:04David Sims?

  It'll, I mean, I've gone to this iteration of MoMA, but it'll return. Like, it travels around the world, right? Like, that's sort of the thing with it.

• 4:11Griffin Newman?

  Well, look, David, you say that, and yet the last thing we were talking about just before we started.

• 4:15David Sims?

  Regrets, I've had a few!

• 4:17Griffin Newman?

  Is that you were offered a chance to moderate a Q and A with the Coen Brothers when they were promoting Buster Scruggs and you were like, ugh, what a schlep. And now here we are, and you're like, as of, this moment's still their final film together. We keep hearing they're gonna get back together, but you just. Wait, where was the schlep too?

• 4:34Speaker 05

  Unknown schlep.

• 4:35David Sims?

  Okay, well, so the schlep would have been uptown, like to the Upper West Side. That's not why I turned it down, really.

• 4:41Griffin Newman?

  Okay.

• 4:42David Sims?

  It's, no, it's like, well, and it would have been late at night. No, neither of those are the reasons. I just was like, they're, as I was saying to Griffin, they are, and we're, right, this isn't our first, this is our first Coens that we're recording, but we'll have probably talked about this a little bit already. But they're notoriously the worst interviews, right? Like, so, so tough to get talking. And the whole thing with those post-screening Q and As is you don't want to be talking because people don't want to hear from, like, "Hi!" the moderator. They want to hear from these directors who are popping in. But like, they're known for kind of just like not giving you anything, right?

• 5:14Griffin Newman?

  And I was saying even beyond that, that he-

• 5:16David Sims?

  And like mumbling, like they mumble all the fucking time.

• 5:18Griffin Newman?

  It feels like they play dumb. Like, it's, what's going to be fascinating about this series is that these movies are so deep and rich as tax. And yet, like, JJ's job seems more difficult than ever. Even coming off of, like, some movies that were hard for him to research because there's not that much information out there. I'm cracking open the Barton Fink dossier and I'm like, this thing's gonna be 150 pages. And then I read it and I'm like, oh, right, there's just like, every interview they gave is just like, I don't know.

• 5:47Speaker 05

  They're not on the record.

• 5:48Griffin Newman?

  Right. They'll, they'll talk about it, but they're just really cagey about it. And they kind of play dumb and go like, "We just did that because we thought it was funny." It doesn't mean anything. It's not a metaphor.

• 5:57David Sims?

  Right. And possibly they're hostile, or possibly they just don't want to talk to you about it or whatever. So I was just kind of like, and like, I liked Buster Scruggs. Like, I liked that movie a lot and I've only actually grown to like it more.

• 6:08Griffin Newman?

  Same.

• 6:08David Sims?

  But it wasn't a thing where I was like, "I fucking want to dig in on Buster Scruggs with these guys so bad." And I just was like, I, what if I have like a really disappointing experience, right? You know, like a truly like, "They don't like me," or "I do a bad job," and then I'm like, "Ugh."

• 6:24Speaker 05

  Well, you might have taken the blame for their not saying much, right?

• 6:28David Sims?

  Exactly.

• 6:28Speaker 05

  Because people, I, I remember doing a-

• 6:30David Sims?

  It felt a little no-win. Like, the, the win, the opportunity for a true win of like, "Wow, I had a really meaningful half hour with the Coen brothers." Felt, it felt like a slim ass win.

• 6:40Griffin Newman?

  People might have blamed them splitting up on you, just being like, "Look, there's not a definite one-to-one, but Sims moderated a Q and A and now they're apparently going separate ways." What were you gonna say? That's the other thing, right? I broke them up. They were like, you know, we can't deal with this anymore. Shit like this?

• 6:55Speaker 05

  The clock, by the way, is a 24 hour movie, because I feel like I just referred to it without saying what it was. It's a 24 hour movie, which is assembled just from references to time or actual shots of clocks within world cinema. And it is absolutely compelling. You want, you think you're gonna sit there for like 15 minutes and you end up thinking like, I could go for 24 hours.

• 7:15Speaker 01

  It's just unbelievable to think even how someone would curate and find all the footage. Cause the way it lines up, even to the minute, it's crazy. And it, and it's a thing too, where as you're sitting through, you'll like check and it will line up.

• 7:30Speaker 05

  It's the time in which you are watching it. Yeah, that is also the amazing thing.

• 7:34Griffin Newman?

  And even like with modern like internet databases and such.

• 7:37Speaker 05

  Still hard.

• 7:38Griffin Newman?

  It doesn't feel like you can just Google like movie that features 6:13 a.m.

• 7:43Speaker 05

  Nope.

• 7:43Griffin Newman?

  No. You know, like that's just like manual like grunt work in terms of like scrubbing thousands of films to probably pull up all those numbers. Yeah.

• 7:51Speaker 05

  Friend of the show, Caroline Framke, went recently.

• 7:54Griffin Newman?

  Past and future guests.

• 7:54Speaker 05

  Yes. And she went in the morning, I think they had like an early moment, did like an early morning thing. So it was like 9 a.m. And she says like, uh, it's all alarm clocks and shit. Like when you're, like, it's like so much wake up stuff.

• 8:10Griffin Newman?

  See, that sounds triggering to me.

• 8:12Speaker 05

  Right. And she's like, it's a little overwhelming, but also kind of intense.

• 8:14Speaker 01

  I was so annoyed. I wanted to go at 4:20 and it just didn't work out.

• 8:19Griffin Newman?

  Hell yeah, brother.

• 8:20Speaker 01

  But I felt like that footage would have been pretty dank.

• 8:23Griffin Newman?

  Hey, look, what is this?

• 8:24Speaker 05

  All the, all the French doobie movies.

• 8:26Griffin Newman?

  The French.

• 8:27Speaker 05

  The French Chichincha equivalent.

• 8:32Griffin Newman?

  Jacques and Jean?

• 8:34Speaker 01

  Jacques and Jean. Jacques and Jean.

• 8:38Speaker 01

  Fumé.

• 8:41Griffin Newman?

  Folks, who are we? Where are we? What is this? What are we doing? This is Blank Check with Griffin and David. I'm Griffin.

• 8:47David Sims?

  I'm David.

• 8:49Griffin Newman?

  He was priding himself for so long.

• 8:50David Sims?

  I was looking at the moment. I was kinda like, now you were making me think I was like, should I? Should I? One, one last sweep into the clock and like, what time should I? I was just sort of thinking about it.

• 9:00Griffin Newman?

  I gotta go do it. Look, this is a podcast about filmographies. Not 24 hour movies about clocks, but perhaps someday. Maybe that's a series.

• 9:11Griffin Newman?

  Directors who have massive success early on in their careers are given a series of blank checks to make whatever crazy passion projects they want. Sometimes those checks clear and sometimes they bounce, baby. This is a mini series on the films of Joel and Ethan Cohen. We are calling it Pod Country for Old Casts.

• 9:28David Sims?

  We sure are.

• 9:29Griffin Newman?

  We sure are. There was a little bit of debate right before we recorded, but we've settled on that. And today we're talking Barton Fink, which is bizarrely their first guarantor.

• 9:40David Sims?

  Uh, it didn't, did it win, did it win the?

• 9:43Griffin Newman?

  It won the Palm Tour. I'm putting this forward as a thought because they go from this to Joel Silver saying, I'm going to bring you into Warner Brothers and give you a big budget and major movie stars. And try to get you to level up. And to some degree, I think that was Joel Silver having the aspirations of wanting to make a, a higher class picture and viewing them as a vehicle to that.

• 10:03Speaker 05

  I mean, they must've felt like they were living in a simulation.

• 10:06Griffin Newman?

  Totally. But you're like, this is a thing that absolutely does not happen anymore, which is like a prestige guarantor. This movie loses money in theaters. It does not translate to the number of Oscar nominations as like, its critical reception would belie or its can reception or anything. It does okay, right? But yet it's so undeniable.

• 10:28David Sims?

  I wouldn't say this movie did okay. It didn't really make much money.

• 10:31Griffin Newman?

  No, it lost money.

• 10:32David Sims?

  Right. Yeah. Yeah.

• 10:32Speaker 05

  But it didn't, it didn't have the like, the mommy dearest effect, right? Where it was like quietly, they were blackballed from.

• 10:39David Sims?

  No, the opposite.

• 10:39Griffin Newman?

  You don't think Raising Arizona was their first guarantor? I think

• 10:44David Sims?

  Racing Arizona was their first

• 10:45Griffin Newman?

  But Racing Arizona is not as much of a hit as you think it is.

• 10:47David Sims?

  No, it's not.

• 10:48Griffin Newman?

  We'll have talked about it.

• 10:48David Sims?

  I mean, it's, but it's not, I mean, that movie did pretty good considering, you know, its stature and their stature.

• 10:55Griffin Newman?

  I just think

• 10:55David Sims?

  And like, I feel like Miller's Crossing is a bit of a first blank check. You know, like getting to do a sort of a costume thing.

• 11:01Griffin Newman?

  A little bit. I mean, look, their career is interesting because it has a lot of like alternation between like missteps and hits that then get them the next one and then they have to recover and like make comebacks from like the swinging public reception to their films at the time. Now, almost all of them vaged well, but it's gonna be interesting to go back through these and see which ones were not well received at the time. I just think like this film has such an insane, critical reception.

• 11:28David Sims?

  Sure.

• 11:28Griffin Newman?

  And the Cannes thing that is historic.

• 11:30David Sims?

  The Cannes thing is a big deal.

• 11:32Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 11:32David Sims?

  Uh, to the extent that Cannes has to change its rules.

• 11:34Griffin Newman?

  To a degree where it's like, these guys are such

• 11:37David Sims?

  What was that? I didn't know that. Uh, Cannes changed it so you can only give two awards to one movie.

• 11:41Griffin Newman?

  This film won Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Actor at Cannes.

• 11:45David Sims?

  And it won Picture unanimously.

• 11:47Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 11:47David Sims?

  And they, I mean, it sort of makes sense. Like, they kind of were like, don't give the Palme d'Or and Best Director to the same thing. Why not spread the wealth? Which has become the thing to do at Cannes.

• 11:58Griffin Newman?

  The following year, they applied the rule, the Barton Fink rule, basically of one movie can only get two awards.

• 12:03David Sims?

  Right. Got it.

• 12:04Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 12:05David Sims?

  And then they give the Palme d'Or to the best intentions from the worst Palme winners of all time. But anyway, that's not important.

• 12:10Griffin Newman?

  It just translates into Joel Silver swinging in and giving them the biggest budget they will have until True Grit?

• 12:17David Sims?

  Uh, Hud Sucker is their biggest budget. So it's 25 mil. Big Lebowski costs less. Yeah, that's one where I was kind of like, is that movie sort of

• 12:28Griffin Newman?

  And Lebowski is kind of

• 12:29David Sims?

  Oh Brother costs 26. Now, with inflation, but you know, like, it's like

• 12:34Speaker 05

  They become these guys, kind of pretty much post this, but you know, maybe even starting a little bit with Mother's Crossing, where it's like, they can get a pretty good budget.

• 12:44Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 12:45Speaker 05

  For a, an elaborate-ish movie, like a period film or something like that.

• 12:50Griffin Newman?

  They work pretty responsibly.

• 12:51Speaker 05

  Because they're really, really well-known for going, like, working on time and under budget.

• 12:55Griffin Newman?

  And the other thing is, they get an all-star cast of people who will work for below their quote. Like, it's just, they always can get a sort of like-

• 13:03Speaker 05

  Get good actors.

• 13:03Griffin Newman?

  A cast that makes sense for foreign financing. Um, but I, very often, I think in their career, you have this, like, these duo relationships between movies of like, far goes the guarantor for Big Lebowski, which then bounces, so then they need to make a comeback from Lebowski, you know? Like, this constant back and forth.

• 13:22Speaker 05

  It's interesting how much the, like, the Big Lebowski's bouncing just doesn't matter anymore, right?

• 13:26Griffin Newman?

  It doesn't matter.

• 13:27Speaker 05

  Yeah. But it was a thing.

• 13:28Griffin Newman?

  At the time, it was seen as like-

• 13:30Speaker 05

  It was a thing. It was seen as-

• 13:31Griffin Newman?

  We just took these guys seriously and now they're fucking off?

• 13:33Speaker 05

  Right.

• 13:34Griffin Newman?

  And making like, a joke movie?

• 13:36Speaker 05

  Right.

• 13:37Griffin Newman?

  They had just won their first Oscar, and it was like, "We've anointed you guys, and then what the fuck is this?"

• 13:43Speaker 05

  Right. I'm kind of interested in like, what your guys' perception is of where they stand in the kind of the pantheon, because to me, I, like, they're the greatest living filmmakers. Because, because of their sheer range, you can argue about any-

• 13:54Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 13:54Speaker 05

  -number of other things.

• 13:55Griffin Newman?

  I'm kind of inclined to agree with you. I, I, I do not dislike a one of their films, and I don't know who else I can say that for who has made this many films, or even close to this many films, certainly living today, let alone in history. I also will say, our guest today is Chris Weitz.

• 14:11Speaker 05

  Here he is. Hello.

• 14:13Griffin Newman?

  A renowned director and writer, producer, in his own rights.

• 14:16Speaker 05

  Renowned?

• 14:17Griffin Newman?

  Previously, and now, once again, part of a brother team of filmmaking.

• 14:23Speaker 05

  Yes, we're back together, me and my brother Paul. Um-

• 14:26Griffin Newman?

  But, uh, you've been Oscar nominated.

• 14:29Speaker 05

  Yes, that's true.

• 14:31Griffin Newman?

  You've had your hits, you've had your bounces.

• 14:32Speaker 05

  They can't take that away from me. I've had, I've been pretty bouncy. Actually, this is why, this is why-

• 14:37Griffin Newman?

  You've been in a Tigger mode.

• 14:38Speaker 05

  Of late, I've been bouncing as much as-

• 14:40Griffin Newman?

  You've been Tiggering a little bit.

• 14:41Speaker 05

  As Tigger. And actually, that's part of why the Barton Fink of it all really appealed to me, because today, hey, first of all, I'm back.

• 14:48Griffin Newman?

  You're back.

• 14:49Speaker 05

  Three years, three years away, three years-

• 14:50Griffin Newman?

  Sorry, four.

• 14:51Speaker 05

  -in the desert.

• 14:52Griffin Newman?

  That's what's crazy.

• 14:53Speaker 05

  Three, three.

• 14:54Griffin Newman?

  Four. Are you sure about this?

• 14:55Speaker 05

  Yes. I looked it up just now. He was last on our show for Dark Man in April 2022.

• 15:03Griffin Newman?

  Okay.

• 15:04Speaker 05

  And it is now, it's April 2025.

• 15:07Griffin Newman?

  When we're recording this. But it will be about three and a half years between releases. Yeah.

• 15:11Speaker 05

  Yeah, I was heading towards what I like to call the Yoshida line, where it's like 10, 10 episodes.

• 15:17Griffin Newman?

  Uh huh. Yeah.

• 15:19Speaker 05

  And then I, then I kind of fell, fell off the, fell off the face of the earth. And I don't think it's, it's not you guys. It's like.

• 15:25Griffin Newman?

  No, you know, someone on the Reddit called it out and said, how has it been three years since Whites was on the podcast last, last? And I think we texted you and we're like, that doesn't sound right.

• 15:37Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 15:37Griffin Newman?

  Like, once we checked it, we were like, fuck, it has been three years. You have not been on since we recorded in Ben's living room.

• 15:43Speaker 05

  That's right.

• 15:44Griffin Newman?

  In the living room era.

• 15:44Speaker 05

  It was very post, just post pandemic or still, like, I remember I took a, a, a COVID test on the way there.

• 15:51Griffin Newman?

  Absolutely.

• 15:52Speaker 05

  Out of, you know, common courtesy back then.

• 15:54Griffin Newman?

  But it definitely, it did not feel like that much time had elapsed. We still talk to you fairly well.

• 16:00Speaker 05

  Oh, no, listen, I, I hear you guys all the time.

• 16:02Griffin Newman?

  Right. And you've done us some mitzvahs. You've, you've, you submitted a question for our, like, live mail bag and stuff.

• 16:10Speaker 05

  I think the question was, why are you guys so great?

• 16:12Griffin Newman?

  Well, it was very sweet. But, but here's the bigger thing. It feels like you have been in a sort of, a, a, a real, kind of.

• 16:22Speaker 05

  A Barton funk.

• 16:23Griffin Newman?

  A Barton funk.

• 16:25Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 16:25Griffin Newman?

  And you have sent a lot of, like, Dark Knight of the Soul texts, David and I, not to be alarmist, but a real, like, what is the point of doing this, pursuing this kind of career? This industry? What is my life amounting to? Where David and I, late at night, are like, Chris.

• 16:38Speaker 05

  Is he okay?

• 16:39Griffin Newman?

  You're good.

• 16:39Speaker 05

  We had to get him back.

• 16:40Griffin Newman?

  You're good, Chris.

• 16:42Speaker 05

  Well, so, yeah, but this is like, I, I've been thinking about this episode for, for weeks, if not months, of like, I'm going to go there in terms of like, inside baseball. And also, I'm telling you guys to stop me when it gets, like, too up my own.

• 16:55Griffin Newman?

  Never.

• 16:55Speaker 05

  But in terms of like, you know, this, this is sort of what's happening in, in my career, and this is, these are my reflections on it, my somewhat acid reflections on, on working in a studio, sort of, world, basically.

• 17:08Griffin Newman?

  But here's what I think is interesting, important for the listeners to know. Maybe a little under a year ago, when your last movie, Afraid, Afraid.

• 17:18Speaker 05

  Afraid.

• 17:20Griffin Newman?

  Afraid.

• 17:20Speaker 05

  Okay, by the way.

• 17:21David Sims?

  Which was originally called They Listen, correct?

• 17:23Speaker 05

  Even before that, actually, the real name of this movie was Home, and we couldn't use it. And then it went through a number of-

• 17:29David Sims?

  Because there have been a lot of other movies called Home?

• 17:31Speaker 05

  Yeah, I think that's why.

• 17:34Speaker 05

  And then it got changed by various marketing departments and the studio to things where I was like, fine, whatever. You know, well, sorry, you were saying-

• 17:44Griffin Newman?

  I was saying, that movie came out, we'll get more into it, but you had a long, exhausting journey with that movie that really came out the other end of it being like, what am I even doing here?

• 17:54Speaker 05

  Came out the other end, like, like, the rectum of the studio system.

• 18:00Griffin Newman?

  A couple of weeks after it was not really released, but escaped into theaters, you text us and were like, guys, I think it's time for me to come back on the podcast. And most specifically, the insight I want to provide is I am now someone who has made a movie that doesn't exist.

• 18:14Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 18:14Griffin Newman?

  And I would like to do a movie that doesn't exist that you guys are covering and talk about the, like, road paved with good intentions that lead to these sort of weird non-movies.

• 18:23Speaker 05

  Yeah, and then, actually, and then I started to think, well, okay, what is the taxonomy of flop, bomb, movie that doesn't exist? Because our-

• 18:32David Sims?

  Yeah, because Afraid is not a bomb or whatever. It's more-

• 18:35Speaker 05

  No offense.

• 18:36David Sims?

  It's a more movie that doesn't exist.

• 18:37Speaker 05

  It needs to be big enough to be a bomb.

• 18:38David Sims?

  That's the thing. Bombs are noticeable, like, hence bomb.

• 18:42Speaker 05

  But I feel like a movie needs to have existed for you to think that it doesn't exist.

• 18:47Griffin Newman?

  I disagree with that. Here's why I think it passes the movie that doesn't exist test.

• 18:51Speaker 05

  Right.

• 18:51Griffin Newman?

  Because if you say to someone, hey, do you remember Afraid? The John Cho, Catherine Waterston, Chris Weitz's directed Blumhouse AI horror film?

• 19:01Speaker 05

  Right.

• 19:02Griffin Newman?

  They'd go like, when's that coming out?

• 19:04Speaker 05

  Friends of mine-

• 19:05Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 19:06Speaker 05

  Would ask me.

• 19:07Griffin Newman?

  That's the movie that doesn't exist test, which is if you describe it to someone, they'd go, I would remember if that came out.

• 19:14Speaker 05

  It's a Mandela effect, kind of thing.

• 19:16Griffin Newman?

  Right, you're describing elements that would have made some impact. That's the movie that doesn't exist effect. So we were like, okay, let's keep our eyes open for the next right movie that doesn't exist.

• 19:28Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 19:28Griffin Newman?

  You're texting us during March Madness about who you're excited about, you know, potential ideas. What are the movies that don't exist in those filmographies? Then the Coens win and David and I just immediately go, we gotta have Chris do Barton Fink.

• 19:39Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 19:39Griffin Newman?

  I know it's the opposite of what he said he wanted to do, but it is kind of the movie about how movies that don't exist come into being in a certain way.

• 19:48Speaker 05

  Yeah, I mean, it's a very, it's, it's like maybe their most astringent film, right? There is, there is less joy in this movie, although there is like, there's virtuosity, but I'd say like than so many other of their films.

• 20:01Griffin Newman?

  I think this is one of the most sickly looking films I have ever seen. It is like disgusting to look at and it is the first Deakins movie. He's perhaps the greatest living cinematographer and this is the beginning of his like miracle run with them. And yet the success of the lensing of this movie is that it makes me want to vomit at all times. And that look is a reflection of like the soul of the characters and the tone and the sound design.

• 20:26Speaker 05

  Right.

• 20:27Griffin Newman?

  And yet, getting back to our original point, when you ask the Coen brothers about it, they're like, we've actually had like a really lucky run in Hollywood.

• 20:34Speaker 05

  Right.

• 20:34Griffin Newman?

  None of this is like based on our own experiences. We just thought this was like a funny structure to make jokes.

• 20:38Speaker 05

  That is the interesting thing, which that it wasn't based on the experiment of being ticked over by the studio because they hadn't really, they hadn't become studio creatures. No, did they ever really? They, they like, they're, they're.

• 20:47Griffin Newman?

  No, not really. I mean, back to our point, they sort of have always figured out the exact right size to stay at where their movies seem like a bargain for the people writing the checks. And they're like, if you can keep it there and you can put these 10 actors in it, then like, yeah, do whatever you want.

• 21:01Speaker 05

  Yeah. It was more fun, I'm sorry, it was more, uh, not fun. It was more making fun of that the classic art versus commerce.

• 21:11Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 21:11Speaker 05

  You know, sort of struggle of the golden age of Hollywood.

• 21:15Griffin Newman?

  I, I feel like this movie is more than anything them reckoning with their own internal battle in their minds of who they want to be as filmmakers as their reputation is starting to get built.

• 21:25Speaker 05

  The, you know, it is the writer's block movie. Like there's, I mean, it's about other things too, but like no bet, no movie better like tackles the experience of not being able to write.

• 21:36Griffin Newman?

  But a quote that blew my mind in the dossier that JJ pulled up is they were like, we have never, we have no unproduced screenplays in our drawer. Like at this point in time, now they do. And they have over time, let other people direct unproduced screenplays of theirs eventually. But they were like, at this point in time, everything we've written has gotten made. We have not gone through this wringer. We have not done writing for assignment.

• 22:02David Sims?

  What a run.

• 22:03Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, it's wild. I feel like there was some original point I was gonna make when I

• 22:07David Sims?

  Barton Fink.

• 22:08Griffin Newman?

  Said you're an esteemed filmmaker and I'll get back to it.

• 22:11David Sims?

  Chris Weitz is an esteemed filmmaker.

• 22:13Griffin Newman?

  He's an esteemed filmmaker. We have to admit it.

• 22:15David Sims?

  He has worked in Hollywood for 25 years? What are we talking about here? Like, I guess, was Ants your first Hollywood experience?

• 22:25Speaker 05

  Credited screenplay, but my brother and I had been working for seven years before that. So I got, I found out that I got my first gig on my 21st birthday. So as long as I have been able to drink legally, I have been within the system.

• 22:42Griffin Newman?

  Did you have celebratory drinks that night?

• 22:45Speaker 05

  That night and every night.

• 22:48Speaker 05

  Well, interestingly, what it did probably was contribute to the sense that I had early in my career that, that like, I was a golden child, right? Like, oh, here's your birthday present. You get to be in this industry.

• 22:59Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 23:00Speaker 05

  And, you know, so I'm gonna start, begin the career story, like, so, so get to work on

• 23:05Griffin Newman?

  There's that Chris Weitz feeling.

• 23:06Speaker 05

  On Ants before Elwood Allen is canceled. So that was kind of a big deal. People love that.

• 23:11Griffin Newman?

  I say it all the time. Fantastic screenplay.

• 23:13Speaker 05

  Thanks, man.

• 23:14Griffin Newman?

  Ants is very well-written.

• 23:16Speaker 05

  People, people really liked that. And then, so we had the studio meeting at Universal and there's this, this movie that was eventually gonna become American Pie. We didn't have any directing experience, my brother and I, and they offered it us to, to direct. And, and like, I didn't know anything. I'd never been to prom. Like, like David, I grew up in England, right? I went to, to sixth form there. They didn't have prom. And I was like, I don't really like teen sex comedies. But I was like, okay, let's do this. Let's try to make it kind of interesting. It was like

• 23:46Griffin Newman?

  No response from David for any of this. We just have to call his ass out.

• 23:49Speaker 05

  Retired, it's retired.

• 23:51Griffin Newman?

  Astounding.

• 23:53Speaker 05

  It, you know, it was this kind of unlikely hit, incredibly profitable. And I was like, there had not, like, there's no, is there anything in the water when American Pie is a big hit? Where it's like, ah, we didn't see the teen sex comedy revival coming. You know what I mean?

• 24:11David Sims?

  Like, because with Scream, it's like, ah, slashers are back.

• 24:14Griffin Newman?

  Can I throw out my, my take on it?

• 24:17Speaker 05

  Please.

• 24:17Griffin Newman?

  She's All That's 98.

• 24:19Speaker 05

  Yeah, there you go.

• 24:20Griffin Newman?

  I feel like that sort of gets credit for being like the start of the new wave of our teen movies back.

• 24:25Speaker 05

  Right.

• 24:26Griffin Newman?

  98 is also something about Mary.

• 24:29Speaker 05

  Yeah, there you go. Right. And that's like the saucy comedy.

• 24:32Griffin Newman?

  American Pie is sort of you guys synthesizing those two things together.

• 24:36Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 24:37David Sims?

  Which had both.

• 24:38Speaker 05

  Kind of by mistake.

• 24:38Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 24:39Speaker 05

  Yeah, I mean.

• 24:40Griffin Newman?

  But they had both started the year before and you're like at the right place at the right time to have the movie that capitalizes on both things that were coming back.

• 24:48Speaker 05

  Yeah, in retrospect, it was just happenstance, but like that, you know, and it was like, okay. And then we were offered every single teen sex comedy for like a year. Like, I never want to do this again. Yeah, I was like, this wasn't my thing, man.

• 25:02Griffin Newman?

  You don't do the sequels, right?

• 25:03Speaker 05

  Yeah, I, I, I had never really seen many teen sex comedies. Obviously, the required, like, viewing, if you're my age of like Porky's and whatever, blah, blah, blah. But, um, so then we were like, oh, we gotta not do this. We gotta do something different. My brother and I, so we did a movie with Chris Rock.

• 25:17Griffin Newman?

  Right, Down to Earth's the second one?

• 25:18Speaker 05

  Down to Earth and then.

• 25:19Griffin Newman?

  Beyond that, you remake Heaven Can Wait.

• 25:21Speaker 05

  Remake Heaven Can Wait.

• 25:22Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 25:23Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 25:24Griffin Newman?

  Calling it a Chris Rock movie is like underselling. That's like a, that's a big swing.

• 25:29Speaker 05

  It was a big swing. I, at the moment, you know what? I, I thought, I had a fantastic time working with Chris Rock and, and a good time working on that movie. I was like, I don't know that that's like exactly what I was wanting to do either. But then finally, like, A Badda Boy, so.

• 25:42David Sims?

  It does make sense as a sort of like. A fairly large scale comedy, like it's a level up from American Pie, but it's not like you're like, hey, can I make a movie with space aliens? Like it's really, they're like, we can trust you to make a comedy like that.

• 25:55Griffin Newman?

  It's a different tone and Chris Rock was in that state where people were like, can anyone crack how to make him a movie star? Right?

• 26:02David Sims?

  Yeah. Yeah. No, I mean, and it was like, I can remember, this is like a very Bart and Fink moment. Like my, my, our agent saying, this is a go picture, right?

• 26:09Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 26:09David Sims?

  And I was like, I don't know. Okay.

• 26:12Griffin Newman?

  I liked that film quite a bit as well.

• 26:13David Sims?

  You also made it fast, I feel like.

• 26:15Speaker 05

  We did. We, we, we were like, it also was younger then. So you don't think like, oh, this is going to take up years of my life.

• 26:19Griffin Newman?

  Is that 2000?

• 26:21David Sims?

  It's early 2000s, Valentine's Day 2001. So, you know, like 18 months later, whatever.

• 26:26Speaker 05

  Right. Um, then about a boy, which is like, was like the sweet spot for, for, for me and Paul. We go, we, we go away to, to London and we make this movie and, um, uh, nominated for an Oscar. I was like, oh, great. This is like, okay, this is, this is me from now.

• 26:42Griffin Newman?

  And not to blow smoke up your ass, but I truly think a perfect movie, like a movie where everything is, is right. And one of my ultimate comfort movies, I said this to you, but like day two of lockdown, I was like, what, what should I watch?

• 26:56Speaker 05

  That's good.

• 26:56Griffin Newman?

  And I like jumped to a battle boy immediately. I was just like, this is what I need to calm me down.

• 27:01Speaker 05

  Um, that makes me very happy. I'm, I'm glad. Um, yeah. And that, that was like, okay, here we go. Uh, this is, uh, you know, I'm just going to keep on, you know, getting nominated for Oscars until I win one. And then, you know, we're going to.

• 27:14Griffin Newman?

  To you guys at that point in time, you must've been like, we've cracked it. This is what we want to be as filmmakers. This is the tone. This is the final product. This is how we want to be seen and perceived.

• 27:25Speaker 05

  Yep.

• 27:25Griffin Newman?

  Yeah. Okay.

• 27:26Speaker 05

  And then I read, while we're shooting, uh, a battle boy, I read, uh, the golden compass in England is called Northern Lights. And I was like, oh, this is fantastic. I love this book. I love this author. Um, I want to live in this book for, for a while. And so I get. The gig of doing Golden Compass.

• 27:43David Sims?

  First writing or no, it was like you were gonna direct, then you.

• 27:46Speaker 05

  It was to direct and then I dropped out because I had, I really got the willies. I was like, holy shit. This is gonna be a huge movie and I'm not sure that I can handle the entire logistical load of this. And so I don't know.

• 27:58Griffin Newman?

  I think a lot about a thing you said to me previously, which was the best decision I ever made in my life was quitting the Golden Compass as director. And the worst decision I ever made was deciding to go back.

• 28:08Speaker 05

  Kind of because, yeah, because look, it was, it was a huge movie. It was the most expensive movie that had ever been made at the time. We, we had to work to get it down to 190 million dollar budget. So I'm going from like.

• 28:22Speaker 05

  And so like, I mean, so, so there was this gigantic kind of CGI element, huge production design element.

• 28:30Griffin Newman?

  And are you basically like prepping that, I mean, working, developing that while you're making in good company?

• 28:36Speaker 05

  No, my brother was making in good company. So we, we kind of, we went our separate ways because.

• 28:41Griffin Newman?

  So About a Boy's the last one.

• 28:43Speaker 05

  About a Boy's the last one.

• 28:44David Sims?

  Why did you like just kind of consciously go like, I want to do this. I want to do this. These are very different things. We're gonna do different things.

• 28:51Speaker 05

  Yeah, we were sort of presented with the possibility that one of us would have to force the other not to do the thing that they want to do. And we're like, we don't want to do that.

• 28:59David Sims?

  Now, this Reed Coens, and then we can return to your career.

• 29:02Speaker 05

  Of course. No, let's go.

• 29:03David Sims?

  American Pie is directed by, is credited as being directed by Paul White.

• 29:06Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 29:07David Sims?

  You are a producer on it. Down to Earth is credited to both of you, right? Yeah. So did you get DJA approval as a team at that point?

• 29:15Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 29:15David Sims?

  Famously, the Coens do not get that until I think the Ladykillers, it's like somewhere in the mid 2000s, the DJA is finally like, we acknowledge that you are essentially a two-headed director.

• 29:26Griffin Newman?

  Right. They didn't like to grant that to anybody. I think the Coens helped break it down a little bit.

• 29:33David Sims?

  There are brother, it's usually sibling teams.

• 29:35Griffin Newman?

  That's the thing.

• 29:35David Sims?

  There's the occasional like Jonathan Dayton, Valerie.

• 29:38Griffin Newman?

  I was gonna say, married couple is the other one.

• 29:41David Sims?

  Right.

• 29:41Griffin Newman?

  Like it's easier.

• 29:42David Sims?

  Is Annabot and Ryan Fleck, they're married, right?

• 29:44Griffin Newman?

  They're not.

• 29:45David Sims?

  Weren't they a couple?

• 29:46Griffin Newman?

  They were a couple, but they are now both married to other people. They haven't been together romantically. In over a decade.

• 29:51Speaker 05

  But they are obviously, there's the, um, the American Splendor team, Pulcini and Bergman.

• 29:57Griffin Newman?

  But this is right. I think part of it is if you are bonded by blood or by law, it is easier to make your case to the DGA because they're like, well, you have a bond.

• 30:08Speaker 05

  Yep.

• 30:08Griffin Newman?

  That is established in another realm.

• 30:11Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 30:12Griffin Newman?

  That helps bias.

• 30:13Speaker 05

  You literally need to make your case. You go into a conference room and there is a, a council of elders sitting there. And you have to explain to them why you should be a, a team and they, they ask you questions trying to poke a hole in your argument.

• 30:24Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 30:25Speaker 05

  And I remember one of them.

• 30:26Griffin Newman?

  Why do they, like, in a way you're splitting money.

• 30:29Speaker 05

  I've thought about this a lot.

• 30:31Griffin Newman?

  Uh huh.

• 30:31Speaker 05

  Okay. It's because, eventually it's because of the auteur theory. It is because of the DGA's sort of position, which I appreciate of course, um, because it's my union of like, you know, this is a very special role and the film is made by the director. You cannot split it up into various parts so that you don't have some like producer.

• 30:50David Sims?

  Right. Everyone will be trying to get a director credit.

• 30:52Speaker 05

  So, but it's quasi-religious because it leads you into situations where things obviously don't really make sense.

• 30:58Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 30:59Speaker 05

  Um, so like my brother and I can't be a director team again officially.

• 31:04David Sims?

  But you cannot.

• 31:05Speaker 05

  We cannot.

• 31:05David Sims?

  Because you split up.

• 31:06Speaker 05

  They said when, I remember, and I had forgotten it.

• 31:09David Sims?

  This is in fucking Jedi Council shit.

• 31:11Griffin Newman?

  You were saying this to us right before we started recording. I was like, pin this, save this, because you're, you have, your show has just come out on Apple Plus at the time this episode's come out, Murder Bot, which is the first thing you guys have fully worked on together since.

• 31:24Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 31:24Griffin Newman?

  About a Boy.

• 31:25Speaker 05

  Exactly.

• 31:25Griffin Newman?

  Although you've like produced things together and like helped each other. This is like.

• 31:29Speaker 05

  This is.

• 31:29Griffin Newman?

  But you couldn't get fucking credited for directing the episodes together.

• 31:32Speaker 05

  No, because apparently 20 years ago, when we got the, um, the license to do it.

• 31:38David Sims?

  About a Boy also directed by the pair of you.

• 31:39Speaker 05

  That's right. Yeah. Uh, they, they said, uh, Would you ever split up again if, if, if you found things that you were interested in doing separately? And we said, of course not, because I don't know, the time didn't make sense, but, but they've, they've held us to that. Wow. We have, yeah, we, we are, we have been cast out of the garden as a, as a team. Yeah.

• 32:00Griffin Newman?

  What, what a lot of teams do if they can't get the, the guild recognition is what the Coens did for years, which is like, how do we divide and conquer? And it's like, we co-wrote the screenplay. One of us is credit as producer, one of us is credit as director, we edit under a pseudonym, right? And like, try to create a sort of like weird, how do we even out the positions and the power?

• 32:23Speaker 05

  A conceptual like intermeshing so that everyone really understands what's happening.

• 32:27Griffin Newman?

  Right, but then it's always the thing of just like, well, they obviously just do the whole thing together, right? They're called the Coen Brothers, everyone refers to them that way, they don't talk about like Joel Coen.

• 32:37Speaker 05

  And even so, it took 15 plus years, almost 20 years for the DGA to finally go like, okay.

• 32:44Griffin Newman?

  Cause does Joel get a solo director nom for Fargo?

• 32:48Speaker 05

  Yes, absolutely.

• 32:49Griffin Newman?

  Right, which is so weird to consider.

• 32:51Speaker 05

  I don't know, totally.

• 32:52Griffin Newman?

  And then obviously like if they like won Best Picture, that would have been Ethan's.

• 32:56Speaker 05

  Correct.

• 32:56Griffin Newman?

  And not Joel's.

• 32:57Speaker 05

  No, Fargo is not, cause Fargo is the only time this comes up because the next time they get a best pick nom is for No Country For Old Men. But yes, like nominated, Best Picture, Ethan Coen, nominated, Best Director, Joel Coen. Like that's, you know, that's.

• 33:12Griffin Newman?

  Cause the No Country year, they.

• 33:13Speaker 05

  They are united by.

• 33:14Griffin Newman?

  They share three Oscar wins together.

• 33:16Speaker 05

  Correct.

• 33:17Griffin Newman?

  The movie wins Picture, Director, Screenplay, and both of them have credits in both positions. But that's, once again, as you said, a thing that had only finally happened.

• 33:25Speaker 05

  I think it's one movie before that they'd finally gotten the. So that's interesting, but now if you do work together again, you're saying you will have to do a sort of like. Well, yeah. We did, we had to split it up. And by the way, I think, I hope I don't get in trouble for saying this, but I think DGA doesn't say that like there, there are certain things on the set that only a director can do. Oh my God, maybe there are, shit, maybe I'm in trouble. But like, they don't really care if a producer talks to an actor or they act like a director per se.

• 33:51Griffin Newman?

  Well, there's also the other thing of like, there are things that a director can't do.

• 33:56Speaker 05

  This, well, this is, the myth is that they can't talk to extras. And I'm not sure that that is actually true.

• 34:06Griffin Newman?

  Because first ADs almost always end up directing background actors.

• 34:12Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 34:12Griffin Newman?

  And I had always assumed that was because of some weird guild guideline.

• 34:18Speaker 05

  This may be true. In Canada, that is not the case. Maybe it is in America.

• 34:21Griffin Newman?

  Fascinating.

• 34:22Speaker 05

  And I think that there was like something where like if the director talks to an extra, they become, first of all, they get bumped up instantly and they're like. Oh, you can't talk to them because, oh, sure, sure.

• 34:32Griffin Newman?

  Right. The second the director is shaping their performance.

• 34:36Speaker 05

  Yep.

• 34:36Griffin Newman?

  Versus like the first AD talking to a crowd.

• 34:40Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 34:40Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 34:41Speaker 05

  And the moment that an extra says a word that can actually be distinguished also, which, you know, the game is always that extras are occasionally trying to say things or to elicit a line.

• 34:52Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 34:52Speaker 05

  So that, because then I think you get into sort of SAG stuff.

• 34:55Griffin Newman?

  Right, then you can, right, you become eligible. Yeah.

• 34:57Speaker 05

  Right. So ADs are always saying like, you know, you can sort of say the kind of thing that a crowd says like, you know, they can't say words that people would actually say.

• 35:06Griffin Newman?

  Like distinct enough to make out. Yeah.

• 35:13Griffin Newman?

  David!

• 35:13David Sims?

  Yes?

• 35:14Griffin Newman?

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

• 35:18David Sims?

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

• 35:23Griffin Newman?

  I love that. It's very convenient.

• 35:25David Sims?

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

• 35:32Griffin 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.

• 35:41David Sims?

  Uh, best stocking stuffers, maybe. The sickest luxury items. Cookware to kicks, toys to high-tech, even tinsel and tree toppers. Type in what you're looking for to instantly search every shop. At once. Okay, that's shop.com. You can just go click around, find brands you love, search across all the stores, track every order in one spot.

• 36:04Griffin Newman?

  From cult favorites to the world's biggest brands, score suite deals and check out 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.

• 36:34Griffin Newman?

  David?

• 36:35David Sims?

  Yes?

• 36:35Griffin 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.

• 36:56David Sims?

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

• 37:16Griffin 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.

• 37:32David 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.

• 38:06Griffin Newman?

  David!

• 38:07Speaker 03

  Hmm.

• 38:07Griffin Newman?

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• 38:15Speaker 03

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• 38:16Griffin Newman?

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• 38:23Speaker 03

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• 38:29Griffin Newman?

  Mm hmm.

• 38:30Speaker 03

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• 38:36Griffin Newman?

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• 38:40Speaker 03

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• 38:41Griffin Newman?

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• 38:41Speaker 03

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• 39:27Griffin Newman?

  Okay, wait, so Golden Compass?

• 39:29Speaker 05

  Golden Compass, okay. People just want to hear about the Coen Brothers, and I'm sorry, but I'm just gonna go there. Like, so, okay, I now have a theory that there was an original sin on the Golden Compass, which is that I knew that the stuff about the Catholic Church was gonna be too toxic for New Line to want to deal with.

• 39:47Griffin Newman?

  Sure.

• 39:48Speaker 05

  And they told me that, and I was like, it's gonna be fine, no problem. And then I sort of sneakily infused my cut and my film with all these things. And then in post-production, everything went totally wrong, where they freaked out about this whole thing, wanted to change the ending, blah, blah, blah, blah. I was eventually kicked out of the editing room. But, and I would like to say, like, it's the typical thing of being hard done by a studio, but I should have known better. And when I think about my Latest movie too, I think there's an original sin there as well. Um, but by the way, I, I want to say before I complain about, uh, studios. I love Blumhouse and I love all the people there. They're fantastic. They, they're great. So none, none of the things I say actually apply to these guys. They're, they're the producers on this.

• 40:30Griffin Newman?

  But, and look.

• 40:30David Sims?

  I mean, the people who screwed you on the golden compass no longer exist. I mean, I'm sure the people exist, but New Line, the entity that you dealt with then had ceased to exist.

• 40:40Speaker 05

  I basically bought down a studio.

• 40:41David Sims?

  It's partly your fault. It's that movie's fault.

• 40:44Griffin Newman?

  But also like the, the trailer for that movie, I remember so distinctly is the ring from the Lord of the Rings.

• 40:52Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 40:52Griffin Newman?

  Rotating in slow motion and then turning into a golden compass.

• 40:55Speaker 05

  That was, that was like an early promoting thing. And you know, but I, wait, wait, wait, wait.

• 41:00David Sims?

  Oh, sorry.

• 41:00Speaker 05

  That was my fault.

• 41:02Griffin Newman?

  Really?

• 41:02Speaker 05

  My fault. It was my fault. I was, I was, I was kind of, at the time, like, things were really stressful with the studio. And I was like, fuck it. I know what they want.

• 41:11David Sims?

  In 2001, new line cinema opened the door.

• 41:14Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 41:15David Sims?

  Uh, and you see a ring. Yeah. Wow.

• 41:17Speaker 05

  Yeah. I mean, to Middle Earth. I mean, it's a little, I'm just gonna say it's a little on the nose. It's a little.

• 41:24David Sims?

  It is totally truckling. And I think it was at a moment where I was like back on my heels. They were, they're like, uh, kind of making.

• 41:30Griffin Newman?

  How do I win back favor?

• 41:32Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 41:32Griffin Newman?

  Right. Making them feel I'm a team player.

• 41:34Speaker 05

  Yep.

• 41:34Griffin Newman?

  But then that also of course, like fucks you and putting even more pressure on the movie where now like, you're saying the quiet part out loud.

• 41:40Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 41:41Griffin Newman?

  That was always the design of this movie is the Lord of the Rings trilogy has ended.

• 41:45Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 41:45Griffin Newman?

  We don't have the rights to The Hobbit.

• 41:46Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 41:47Griffin Newman?

  How do we find our next Lord of the Rings?

• 41:48Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 41:49Griffin Newman?

  And now you're like telling them to market the movie being like, we promise you, this is the new Lord of the Rings.

• 41:55Speaker 05

  Pressure was always gonna be there because they spent so much money.

• 41:57Griffin Newman?

  No, it's not. You didn't create that narrative, but now you're underlining it.

• 42:00Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 42:00Griffin Newman?

  And, and delivering it to the public.

• 42:03Speaker 05

  No, this is, this is like, uh, so a, a big movie like that where everyone is freaking out constantly messes with your, your head. And so you end up like, kind of going slightly punch drunk and doing crazy things.

• 42:15Griffin Newman?

  Yeah. Yeah, no, I get it. I'm also like. I mean, to your, your point of the original sin thing, right? Like, you're in this sort of catch 22 where it's like, okay, they go, we'll give you a green light, but.

• 42:29David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 42:29Griffin Newman?

  And the condition they throw out to you is like anathema to successfully adapting this thing.

• 42:34David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 42:35Griffin Newman?

  So you're like, what's your choice here?

• 42:37David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 42:37Griffin Newman?

  Do what they want, and then you're making what fundamentally is a broken version of the movie in your eyes. And that's correct. It would be broken.

• 42:44David Sims?

  Well.

• 42:44Griffin Newman?

  Or you try to smuggle it in.

• 42:46David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 42:47Griffin Newman?

  And get it past them. But of course, they then have the right to go, you fucking tricked us and be angry about it.

• 42:53David Sims?

  Yeah. They fucked up. Look, I mean, the whole thing with the northern, with the northern lights of the book is that it's, it's plainly in the text and it's less in the first book, right? Like the church stuff is way less in the first.

• 43:07Griffin Newman?

  But you have to sow the seeds.

• 43:08David Sims?

  By the third book, they are truly, literally, spoiler alert for his dark material, killing God. Yeah. Like they kill him. It's hard to soft pedal that one. Right. But so by that point, I think the whole trilogy had come out, you know, the books had all been. So it's like, we know where that alethiometer is pointing.

• 43:25Griffin Newman?

  The whole pressure is you need to be able to make the sequels to this. We want this to complete the book series, so you're gonna have to get there. Yeah. Here's a question for you.

• 43:34David Sims?

  Hmm.

• 43:35Griffin Newman?

  So getting to the moment of About a Boy where it's like, this is it. This is the movie that represents what I'd like to be as a writer, director, how I'd like to be seen in the industry. That's my question. Like, you had not made a film like Golden Compass to some degree as New Line, like, oh, we want that Chris Weitz's feeling. Is there like an X factor you can bring to this, much like Jackson not seeming like the obvious choice to do Lord of the Rings at that time? Like, is there a sensitivity? Is there emotionality?

• 44:02David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 44:03Griffin Newman?

  Was there a thing they were quantifying or that you were trying to weaponize as like, here's my feeling.

• 44:08David Sims?

  This is the Chris Weitz's touch. I think I had a Barton Finky feel, but there was a Barton Fink feeling at the time. Definitely. Like you, you definitely have pixie dust, right? Um, like. You've made About a Boy, right? Made About a Boy and also like, oh, he made this like small movie or he and his brother made the small movie that made like 10 times as much as its budget, like.

• 44:28Speaker 05

  Let's like, let's do it.

• 44:30Griffin Newman?

  I feel like you also told me, I think it was maybe when you very briefly appeared on one of the in Terminable George Lucas pandemic live streams. And Connor and I only wanted to ask you questions about the clumps.

• 44:41Speaker 05

  I, I've never been on the, on the George Lucas.

• 44:45Griffin Newman?

  You have, it was really brief. It was like early lockdown and we were raising money for charity and watching all the Star Wars movies. And we had you zoom in during Rogue One. And then I think like five minutes into you being on, something happened with one of your kids. Not too dramatic, but you were like, I'm so sorry, I have to go. And Connor for years was like, did I piss him off?

• 45:07Speaker 05

  Not at all.

• 45:08Griffin Newman?

  Because we had you zoom in while we're watching Rogue One. And then we were like, the funny bit is let's only ask him questions about Nutty Professor Two, the clumps.

• 45:16Speaker 05

  Which you are credited as writer on, along with various other people. There's a, there's a great moment at a Q and A, cause you go on these Q and As when you get nominated for, for the Oscar. And, and, and people ask you questions and they list your credits. And it's like, you know, also nominated as blah, blah, blah, Chris Weitz's, uh, this and that. And Nutty Professor Two, the clumps. And I was like, oh God.

• 45:37Griffin Newman?

  Connor and I were very united on this bit. And then you were like, I, gentlemen, I'm so sorry, but I do have to go right now. And Connor was like, he's irate. And I was, I really don't think that's Chris's vibe.

• 45:48Speaker 05

  You don't.

• 45:49Griffin Newman?

  But you said to us.

• 45:49Speaker 05

  Right. It seems like it'd be hard to really piss you off.

• 45:52Griffin Newman?

  How, how did you end up being accredited writer on the clumps? And you said something to the effect of, at that point in time, my brother and I had a reputation for like, we could take comedies and put a little more genuine feeling in them. Without being saccharine, that, that was the White's feeling was a core of a sweetness and emotion that feels earned.

• 46:13Speaker 05

  In theory, that is, that is what I still can do. I still have a heart.

• 46:20Speaker 05

  It's in there somewhere, folks. If you pay enough, you get it. Okay. So there's an original sin on my last movie, A Far Aid, which is like, this movie was a psychological, was a paranoid thriller, like the Parallax View. And, um, and the studio, which shall remain nameless, um, wanted it to be a horror movie so much that there's a number of decisions that, that you know. To make it sort of jumpier and a little more like. More horror. The film, which I've seen, has anyone else seen A Far Aid? No.

• 46:52David Sims?

  Griffin?

• 46:54Griffin Newman?

  I admittedly have not, out of respect to the fact that I know-

• 46:57David Sims?

  Listen-

• 46:57Griffin Newman?

  The final film that was released was not reflective-

• 46:59David Sims?

  I am very ambivalent as to whether I, whether I want people to see it or not.

• 47:02Griffin Newman?

  Exactly.

• 47:03David Sims?

  They would need like a long kind of pamphlet for me about like what-

• 47:06Griffin Newman?

  I've been curious to watch it, but I haven't seen it for that exact reason.

• 47:09David Sims?

  I watched-

• 47:09Griffin Newman?

  You had relayed that ambivalence to me.

• 47:11David Sims?

  I watched it knowing that you had had a bit of a tough time making it, but not really knowing any detail at all. And right as it started, I was like, oh, I can see what Chris, I can see Chris here right away in the family. And in how the movie is kicking off and stuff. But then, yes, it does have that sort of the first Purge movie, not the movie, the first Purge, but the, uh, The Purge, the first of The Purge movies, where they're like, let's do our concept as a home invasion movie because that's cheap. And that's like a way to sort of suggest something bigger, but still have like the sort of reliable horror of a home invasion movie.

• 47:45Griffin Newman?

  Yep. We can, we can cut this out if I'm saying anything that I shouldn't say.

• 47:49David Sims?

  No, let's go.

• 47:50Griffin Newman?

  I remember getting lunch with you. I was visiting LA. And it was maybe only a month or two after you had wrapped the movie. And Megan had just come out, Mithreagan.

• 48:00David Sims?

  Mithreagan, of course.

• 48:01Griffin Newman?

  And they had announced that your movie was being pushed back a year.

• 48:04David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 48:04Griffin Newman?

  And I was like, what's going on with this? How do you feel about this? And it was just sort of like, I'm told it's a good thing. They want more time.

• 48:11David Sims?

  Sure.

• 48:12Griffin Newman?

  They might want to try some things, but there was already this sense of like, is Mithreagan being a hit creating some expectation of-

• 48:19David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 48:19Griffin Newman?

  What this movie needs to be or not be in relation to that?

• 48:23David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 48:23Griffin Newman?

  And I also remember you just talking about how pleasant a time you had in the initial production of the film.

• 48:29David Sims?

  Yep.

• 48:29Griffin Newman?

  And being like, I have been so burned out on the industry. It frustrated and heartbroken by these different things. The idea of finding like a very personal story, me telling an emotional movie about the way I feel about my family and keeping children safe, you know, in a world that's a little bit terrifying.

• 48:45David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 48:46Griffin Newman?

  And I can- Disguise it in just enough horror movie trappings to get it through in a low budget way, unencumbered, and then like a year and a half later, everything had gone upside down, right?

• 48:59Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 48:59Griffin Newman?

  But you were sort of like, I think I've cracked the code. If it's this small and I have two marketable elements and it's this and that, the stakes are low enough that maybe they let me make my thing my way and get it out.

• 49:09Speaker 05

  See, I thought I was clever. I, I, I thought I was smarter than this, than, than the system.

• 49:13Griffin Newman?

  But it is a playback that has been working.

• 49:16Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 49:16Griffin Newman?

  That has been like the most consistent way to get kind of emotionally psychologically complex movies out there.

• 49:23Speaker 05

  I think, I think it really helps if you, if you love the, the kind of product that they want in the end as opposed to thinking, I'm going to sort of sugar it with, sugar this pill. And like, so the, the movie started when like I, I was talking to my friend, Hani Abu Assad, wonderful filmmaker, and he was like, I was like, I don't know what to do next. And he was like, well, what's on your mind like right now, as I talk to you right now? And I was like, well, I guess you know, my kids are like spending time on the screen and a kind of like a worry because you can, you can sort of try to take care of them as much as you like, but like our home is like, it's next door to the internet, which is a really, really bad neighborhood, no matter what. There's no way to protect people. And that's what the whole movie about is like, you cannot protect your children from, from the world.

• 50:04Speaker 05

  Um, and then, you know, it becomes like a movie about a killer AI. And by, by the way, the year in which it was delayed, uh, um, it was, was, um, a, a year for AI to develop to such a shocking extent.

• 50:18Griffin Newman?

  Sure.

• 50:19Speaker 05

  That anything timely that it had to say about AI was like, already like, yeah, we know.

• 50:23Griffin Newman?

  But like, you're not getting hired to develop a Walter Berry AI thriller. You're looking in the mirror, you're talking to your friend, you're saying-

• 50:31Speaker 05

  I'm gonna take this computer down.

• 50:33Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 50:33Speaker 05

  Walter Berry.

• 50:34Griffin Newman?

  Like it wasn't you-

• 50:35Speaker 05

  Walter Berry's a real guy, Ben. Like Walter Berry was like a classic burly thirties star, B picture kind of star.

• 50:41Griffin Newman?

  Probably exactly what you mean.

• 50:42Speaker 05

  With the name Wallace Berry.

• 50:43Griffin Newman?

  Wallace Berry, yeah.

• 50:44Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 50:45Griffin Newman?

  I'm sorry, Wallace Berry, Wally Berry.

• 50:47Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 50:48Griffin Newman?

  Um, I just, it might sound like an unimportant distinction.

• 50:52Speaker 05

  Oh, wow. Look at that guy.

• 50:54Griffin Newman?

  But the difference between you, like, getting hired to make an AI thriller and then going, what's the personal story I can smuggle inside of this versus going, what am I feeling right now and what is the way I can dramatize that into an idea that is sellable?

• 51:09Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 51:10Griffin Newman?

  It's a big difference.

• 51:11Speaker 05

  As it, as it goes through the like, the, the process of, um, you know, uh, uh, of the, of the way that studios put out movies, it, it just gets twisted, twisted along the way. And this is like, uh, no shit, but, but like, you know, you, you go to like marketing screenings and one of the first questions they will ask of an audience is, um, was there anything that you found confusing?

• 51:30Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 51:30Speaker 05

  Right? And, and of course that, that is priming the pump because the moment like, an audience actually has a right to be confused and, and to not feel as though everything is resolved and explained. But, but like inherent to the system, when this much money is spent is like, uh, a sort of deracinating of, of the original intent.

• 51:46Griffin Newman?

  I have gone to, uh, like friends and family screenings, the roughest cuts, right? Of, uh, folks just being like, I just, before we have to go to like, blind test screening.

• 51:58Speaker 05

  Sure. I want someone I sort of know.

• 51:59Griffin Newman?

  I want like 15 people who also work in the industry or friends of mine or whatever, are cold audiences, but a warm audience, you know, at the same time. And the lights will come up and I've seen people make this mistake several times where they go like, so what do you guys think? Anything like jump out to you immediately that you bumped on or that you had questions about?

• 52:19Speaker 05

  Bumped on, yeah.

• 52:20Griffin Newman?

  And people are sort of like, no, basically, you know, this or that. Or they might call out one thing of like, I missed that line or whatever it is. The second a leading question is thrown out, the filmmaker expresses their anxiety about something they weren't sure would work. And go, hey, was anyone confused by this thing? Then suddenly every single person in the room goes, now that you mention, I do actually think.

• 52:44Speaker 05

  You're fucked.

• 52:45Griffin Newman?

  And then starts offering their notes on what it should be instead.

• 52:48Speaker 05

  Yep. Yep. You're, you're totally straight.

• 52:50Griffin Newman?

  You can't ask people that.

• 52:51Speaker 05

  No. So Barton Fink, then, his, uh, uh,

• 52:55David Sims?

  I think it's, it's, it's in a way. Coen Brothers movie. It looks at the studio, right? In a negative fashion, but also Barton, it is very scathing about Barton Fink himself.

• 53:07Griffin Newman?

  It is, I think.

• 53:08David Sims?

  Conceit. Absolutely. His blasphemy is conceit.

• 53:11Griffin Newman?

  Is like, this guy is a fool and he's like arrogant.

• 53:15David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 53:15Griffin Newman?

  He's unpleasant.

• 53:17David Sims?

  So this is my favorite Coen Brothers film.

• 53:20Griffin Newman?

  Interesting.

• 53:21David Sims?

  I think kind of without a doubt.

• 53:22Griffin Newman?

  I know this for many.

• 53:24David Sims?

  Sure. I love a lot of the great Coen Brothers movies, like Fargo and Serious Man and like, you know, Raising Arizona and whatever, oh, No Country, you know, all the whatever. Um, and you could kind of talk me into a lot of Coen Brothers movie and ranking movies is a little silly anyway, but this movie profoundly affected me when I saw it when I was like 19, I want to say, like I was in college and I was sort of, I think like, well, I've loved the Coen Brothers since I discovered them as a teenager, but like now it's time for me to watch every Coen Brothers movie I've never seen.

• 53:56Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 53:56David Sims?

  Uh, and I've only probably seen this movie like four or five times because it's not, Barton Fink is not a movie you're just all the time like, you know, hey, Barton Fink's on cable, right? You know? It's like the Simpsons, uh. Barton Fink, we have to, of course, acknowledge that moment in The Simpsons, which is amazing.

• 54:13Griffin Newman?

  That entire run of like the stealth runner of Simpsons jokes that are the kids getting excited in the wrong direction for 90s art house movies.

• 54:24David Sims?

  Always funny.

• 54:25Griffin Newman?

  The Naked Lunch, I can think of two problems I have with that title.

• 54:28David Sims?

  Very funny.

• 54:30David Sims?

  Um, I am familiar with the works of Pablo Neruda, slightly different version of it, but, but anyway, I watched this movie a couple of days ago to prepare for this podcast and I was like, I don't think I've seen Barton Fink in years. I put it on and I was like, I could close my eyes right now and I'd be fine. Like I know this movie so well. It is so impressed on me. It is one of the most influential movies for me in terms of just like mood and tone and the way its story works. I don't know how to describe this.

• 54:57Griffin Newman?

  It's also an incredible film analysis movie. Like it is a movie that is basically. It isn't consciously designed to be studied, but it's like a fucking playground. If you're someone who has a mind where you wanna fucking break apart movies and try to figure out how to read them. You know, and like even, I, this was my second time watching it. I watched it last night. I saw it probably around the same age as you, David.

• 55:22David Sims?

  Sure, sure, sure.

• 55:23Griffin Newman?

  There was, uh, I guess 2008, 2009. MoMA, uh, did a comprehensive Coen retrospective of all the movies. They made up until that point and Barton Fink and Hudsucker were maybe my only two blind spots at that point. They were playing on the same day. I saw Hudsucker in the morning.

• 55:45David Sims?

  Where?

• 55:45Griffin Newman?

  I got lunch at MoMA.

• 55:46David Sims?

  Oh, both of them.

• 55:47Griffin Newman?

  And then I saw Barton Fink. Hudsucker is my favorite Coen Brothers movie. That has to do so much with just my taste and my sensibilities. I do not think it is one of their five best films. It is a movie I've watched endlessly and it means so much to me.

• 56:02Griffin Newman?

  And I was just like, holy shit, that's Hudsucker? That's the one that people don't like?

• 56:07David Sims?

  Obviously, I know, and we'll talk about how dearly you love Hudsucker, which I also dearly love. But Hudsucker has your manic.

• 56:14Griffin Newman?

  It's, it's my vibe.

• 56:15David Sims?

  Have you seen Hudsucker?

• 56:17Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 56:17David Sims?

  When you, I mean, like, it's got Griffin energy up the wazoo.

• 56:21Griffin Newman?

  Definitely.

• 56:22David Sims?

  The haunted hotel or the trapped in a hotel thing is my favorite thing in the world.

• 56:27Griffin Newman?

  We're gonna talk about this at length.

• 56:29David Sims?

  And of course, there are other versions of that.

• 56:31Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 56:32David Sims?

  What are other versions of that?

• 56:33Griffin Newman?

  Shining, of course.

• 56:34David Sims?

  Shining, that's a great example, of course. Uh, yes, duh, Jesus, David, what a genius I am.

• 56:41Griffin Newman?

  I thought you were just giving me an easy one.

• 56:45Griffin Newman?

  No, just that I was not disappointed by Barton Fink, but I was riding on such a high by how much I loved Hudsucker and how much it surprised me.

• 56:52David Sims?

  Right.

• 56:53Griffin Newman?

  That in my mind, Hudsucker, the Hudsucker for the first time experience always eclipses Barton Fink.

• 56:58David Sims?

  Sure, uh, yeah, you, you, by putting them up the same day.

• 57:01Griffin Newman?

  I've seen Hudsucker upwards of 10 times since then, but I got to see both movies for the first time on a big screen with a proper crowd, on a beautiful print, had not watched Barton Fink again until last night. And yet I had the exact same experience as you where I'm like, yeah, I basically remember every single element of this. It's pretty spare. I mean. Yeah.

• 57:23Speaker 05

  Right, it's not.

• 57:24Griffin Newman?

  It's very primal in its own weird, egghead-y way.

• 57:29Speaker 05

  Well, I was thinking about David Lynch a lot when watching this. And I feel like it's a little bit in conversation with some of the aesthetic. Like, there's a shot which feels David Lynch, like when just going down the drain.

• 57:41Griffin Newman?

  Absolutely.

• 57:42Speaker 05

  Right? And there's the hairdo, there's Barton Fink's hairdo, which feels Eraserhead-adjacent.

• 57:47Griffin Newman?

  For sure. And just that sort of feeling of like, everything is just a little wrong. This is so immaculately made, it is so tightly controlled. You get the clear sense from the first frame to the last, there's not a single decision in this movie that isn't intentional. And yet, some of it feels deeply inscrutable. And all of it conjures some feeling within you.

• 58:09Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 58:10Griffin Newman?

  Not that Barton Fink feeling, but this sort of like, what's wrong?

• 58:14Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 58:14Griffin Newman?

  What is this movie doing and why?

• 58:17Speaker 05

  Yeah, I think that may be what won it, the Palme d'Or, right? Because I remember when they won, it was kind of like, "American boys bring home gold." I kind of had that feeling, right?

• 58:28Griffin Newman?

  It was, weirdly, the third film in a three-year streak of American Palme d'Or winners, which was like, an unusual swing.

• 58:36Speaker 05

  So Sex Lies is the year before.

• 58:38Griffin Newman?

  And then Wild at Heart.

• 58:39Speaker 05

  Wild at... And then... Oh, no, it's, sorry, it's Wild at Heart and then Sex Lies.

• 58:42Griffin Newman?

  Then that, okay.

• 58:43Speaker 05

  Okay. Um, and it is, of course, an incredibly exciting time for

• 58:49Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 58:49Speaker 05

  American independent cinema and, you know, whatever.

• 58:54Griffin Newman?

  By the second half of the 90s, the joke that Billy Crystal keeps making is that like, the studios can't get a movie nominated for Best Picture anymore. You know, like, this is the start of the wave that by the end of the 90s is just like, "The American independent cinema is exciting, is thrilling. There's something happening here, and audiences are engaged, and then that dream sort of starts to die."

• 59:16Speaker 05

  Yeah. But, um, Haunted Hotels, Grif, I mean, what else?

• 59:21David Sims?

  I'm very dorky of me, but the

• 59:22Griffin Newman?

  1408.

• 59:24David Sims?

  Well, of course, 1408. Do not go in there.

• 59:26Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 59:27David Sims?

  Um, I think it's, I told you not to go in there.

• 59:29Griffin Newman?

  Uh huh.

• 59:29David Sims?

  Me and my brother. I told you. Me and my brother would always fixate on that moment in the trailer.

• 59:34Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 59:34David Sims?

  Samuel L. Jackson shows up while some shit is happening, being like, I told you not to go.

• 59:37Griffin Newman?

  It's also like, look, it's not like they're ruining anything by putting that in the trailer, but you're like, I don't need to see this scene. I can guess that Sam Jack's gonna come back at the end and say, I told you so.

• 59:45David Sims?

  Wait, which I see. The 1408 is a mid-sized horror movie from the late 2000s.

• 59:51Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 59:51David Sims?

  Uh, directed by, I want to say Mikhail Holstrom.

• 59:54Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 59:54David Sims?

  Uh, that is based on, you know, something Stephen King coughed onto a wall once or whatever.

• 59:59Griffin Newman?

  But it is kind of like.

• 1:00:00David Sims?

  It's a short story.

• 1:00:01Griffin Newman?

  Right. The pulpier, trashier midpoint between The Shining and Barton Fink in a certain way.

• 1:00:07David Sims?

  For sure. It's a good, it's a good movie.

• 1:00:09Griffin Newman?

  Text into a hotel to write a book.

• 1:00:10David Sims?

  No, it's a guy, no, it's a guy who's like, I'm checking into a famously haunted hotel room because I'm tough and scary and I know that's all nonsense. And then.

• 1:00:19Griffin Newman?

  The room's really.

• 1:00:20David Sims?

  I'm gonna take on the really, I love the, uh, Next Generation episode of the Royale.

• 1:00:25Griffin Newman?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:00:26David Sims?

  For anyone out there listening from season two, which is about a, uh, like, uh, they arrive on a weird planet that is just a hotel that they cannot leave, which is very, like, uh, Barton Fink stuff. Mike, I honestly may have been directly inspired by Barton Fink because it's just like a couple of years later.

• 1:00:41Griffin Newman?

  You're forgetting four really big ones.

• 1:00:43David Sims?

  And is it, is it a space hotel or is this a hotel that seems like an old fashioned hotel? To find out. But it looks like a, it looks like an American hotel from the 30s, but there's old true, yes. I'm forgetting, of course.

• 1:00:53Griffin Newman?

  Hotel Transylvania.

• 1:00:54David Sims?

  But everyone at the Hotel Transylvania has a good time.

• 1:00:57Griffin Newman?

  Vacation. Yeah, but it is, it is fundamentally a haunted hotel. You cannot deny that. I'm not saying the movies are spooky.

• 1:01:02David Sims?

  So.

• 1:01:03Griffin Newman?

  It is a haunted hotel.

• 1:01:04David Sims?

  Hotel haunted?

• 1:01:05Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, by humans, by Johnny.

• 1:01:07David Sims?

  That's true. What about Hostel? Or is that just? I mean, Hostel's sort of there, but I mean, Hostel, uh, it's, it's obviously quite naked, uh, what's going on there, right?

• 1:01:15Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:15David Sims?

  Like, do people don't really get to the hostel and they're like, this place seems like really comforting and inviting.

• 1:01:20Griffin Newman?

  There's almost like a richer history of like comedies kind of ripping on the, the, the trope, you know, the like Abbott and Costello.

• 1:01:28David Sims?

  Right.

• 1:01:29Griffin Newman?

  Right. I guess those are more like you have to spend a night in a spooky castle. Kind of shit. That gets more to Shining Haunted Hill.

• 1:01:35Speaker 05

  I love that too.

• 1:01:36Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 1:01:37Speaker 05

  I guess I'm basically always pro this.

• 1:01:39Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:39Speaker 05

  What is the difference between a haunted house and a haunted hotel?

• 1:01:41Griffin Newman?

  Great question.

• 1:01:42Speaker 05

  Right?

• 1:01:44Speaker 05

  In terms of a taxonomy of scary places.

• 1:01:46David Sims?

  It's the liminal space thing, which has become this, you know, internet sort of world, right? Where people are obsessed with what they call liminal spaces, these kind of like bland anonymous sort of environments, like long corridors. Samey kind of, right? Do you know what I'm talking about, Ben?

• 1:02:00Speaker 05

  I'm not familiar with this.

• 1:02:01Griffin Newman?

  I think something about the promise of the hospitality, you know, being like, you are here and you're being taken care of and yet something feels wrong. Versus like, I've just walked into a castle with a candelabra, maybe I shouldn't be here in the first place.

• 1:02:13David Sims?

  You know, there's some warning signs here, but it's like a hotel, it's like the idea of like, I'm on a floor with 50 identical rooms. And it's one of 15 floors.

• 1:02:22Speaker 05

  Right.

• 1:02:22David Sims?

  Your head starts to spin a little bit. Another great example recently, The Eternal Daughter, the joint hog movie, one of my favorite movies of that year. Which is also like, she and her mom are at a hotel that no one else is seemingly there, but everyone's kind of behaving like it's normal and it gets weirder and ghostier. Very good movie if you've never seen it.

• 1:02:38Griffin Newman?

  It's not, I mean, it's not quite the same and it's only an aspect of the movie, but Neon Demon has a lot of like, what the fuck's going on in this motel?

• 1:02:46David Sims?

  Weird motel shit. There's a tiger or something, right?

• 1:02:49Griffin Newman?

  Keanu, yeah.

• 1:02:50David Sims?

  And there's a Keanu.

• 1:02:50Griffin Newman?

  But yes, I always find this very affecting.

• 1:02:54David Sims?

  But this is the best version.

• 1:02:55Griffin Newman?

  I agree.

• 1:02:56David Sims?

  I mean, The Shining is its own thing.

• 1:02:58Speaker 05

  Barton Fink could have stayed at a different hotel. The studio wanted to put him up in a nicer place. So that was interesting because I remember like thinking he's getting, you know, $2,000 a week, King's ransom.

• 1:03:08David Sims?

  Right, but he wants to be with the people.

• 1:03:10Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:03:10David Sims?

  Hotel Earl.

• 1:03:11Griffin Newman?

  But this speaks to the movie having this sort of like, get a load of this fucking guy. Like, he thinks this makes him a greater artist.

• 1:03:19David Sims?

  I think it's starting with the hair, like you mentioned, where it's like, he has that hair, yes, it's to code him as Jewish, which he is, like in this way that, you know, like the Coens like to, you know, explore that kind of like, what is it to be like kind of loudly Jewish in these kinds of worlds or societies? But also like, he thinks he can get away with looking like this because he's different and he's artistic.

• 1:03:41Griffin Newman?

  Right, he's not the only Jewish character. In the movie and there are other people who are maybe trying to assimilate more, but it does feel like to your point. He's like accentuating the Jewishness almost as an act of provocation.

• 1:03:53Speaker 05

  Right.

• 1:03:53Griffin Newman?

  Right, like this guy is taking a stance on I'm trying to make you uncomfortable.

• 1:03:57David Sims?

  Is provocative in this sort of like, I'm not like you, I'm not superficial and I'm not an intellectual and I'm not a Hollywood type.

• 1:04:04Griffin Newman?

  Right, he has this attitude.

• 1:04:06David Sims?

  He is an intellectual.

• 1:04:07Griffin Newman?

  To every single person he's talking to.

• 1:04:10David Sims?

  Yes.

• 1:04:10Griffin Newman?

  A quiet, I'm not like you and it doesn't matter if the person is higher or lower status.

• 1:04:14David Sims?

  Except for Mahoney, like is that, that's the one guy that he briefly does seem to be quite entranced by, although.

• 1:04:20Griffin Newman?

  Well, yeah, we'll get. You're right, he wants Mahoney to say, you are the same as I am.

• 1:04:24David Sims?

  Exactly, right, I mean, or at least like, I too know your work and I, you know, whatever, like admire you.

• 1:04:30Speaker 05

  There's a, there's actually like, oh, I just said it, there's the use of the word actually is really interesting in, in this movie. Cause there's when, when, when John Goodman, when Charlie asks him what he does, he says, I'm a writer actually.

• 1:04:42Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:43Speaker 05

  Right, and I'm like, the actually is doing a lot of work, cause it's like, just say you're a fucking writer.

• 1:04:47Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 1:04:47Speaker 05

  But instead he's like, well, you're probably gonna be amazed by this, but I'm a writer actually.

• 1:04:52Griffin Newman?

  Like, isn't this charming?

• 1:04:53Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:04:53Griffin Newman?

  David, we both would give Goodman best supporting actor this year, right?

• 1:04:58David Sims?

  Question, uh, let me take a look, I do think it's one of the most incredible performances, but I'm always forgetting, you know, what could its competition be, so 1991.

• 1:05:05Griffin Newman?

  I looked at the field and I certainly would give him the win over the five nominees, yeah.

• 1:05:09David Sims?

  My five nominees, if you want them, if you want them.

• 1:05:12Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:05:13David Sims?

  For 1991 for best supporting actor, are you interested in this at all?

• 1:05:16Griffin Newman?

  I would love this, please, David, please.

• 1:05:19David Sims?

  John Goodman, my winner for Barton Fink, Keanu Reeves for, uh, speaking of, Neon Deven, Keanu Reeves for My Own Private Idaho, Performance at Door. Robert Patrick for Terminator 2.

• 1:05:28Griffin Newman?

  Waving my finger.

• 1:05:29David Sims?

  Larry Fishburne for Boys in the Hood and Samuel L. Jackson for Jungle Fever.

• 1:05:32Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:33David Sims?

  Those are my five nominees, great five.

• 1:05:34Griffin Newman?

  They're five.

• 1:05:35David Sims?

  1991 is an incredible year for cinema because this film came out and The Silence of the Lambs came out and these are two totemic movies for me. There's a lot of other great movies I love.

• 1:05:43Griffin Newman?

  Where they'll get nominations in other categories, but you look at the things that didn't make the best picture cut and it's kind of bananas. Like you have Singleton nominated for director but not picture. You have this nominated for supporting actor. Two craft words, kind of insane it didn't even get a screenplay nom.

• 1:06:00Speaker 05

  Inside Baseball.

• 1:06:01David Sims?

  Yeah, I think this movie was too niche, like for, for whatever, the Oscars. I mean, I can look at the nominees that year.

• 1:06:09Speaker 05

  This argues in favor of there being upwards of 10 best picture nominees.

• 1:06:12Griffin Newman?

  It would have made the 10.

• 1:06:13Speaker 05

  I was at a discussion in the director's branch of the Academy in our sort of conference room in which.

• 1:06:22David Sims?

  I might slot Barton Fink over Grand Canyon or Bugsy.

• 1:06:26Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:26David Sims?

  I'll just, I mean, no offense to those movies. A huge offense to those movies.

• 1:06:30Speaker 05

  You're right, I think.

• 1:06:31David Sims?

  Oh, you were in a discussion, sorry.

• 1:06:32Speaker 05

  We were discussing, we were discussing whether to expand the, the director's nomination thing to 10.

• 1:06:38David Sims?

  For Oscar?

• 1:06:39Griffin Newman?

  For DGA.

• 1:06:40Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 1:06:40David Sims?

  Oh, for DGA.

• 1:06:41Speaker 05

  And.

• 1:06:42Griffin Newman?

  Wait, for the DJ or for the director category at the Oscars?

• 1:06:44Speaker 05

  For the director category of the Oscars. I'm probably gonna get kicked out of the Academy now, but, and Steven Spielberg says, no, I don't think so. I don't even think there should be, you know, more than five.

• 1:06:54David Sims?

  Pick nominees.

• 1:06:55Speaker 05

  Pick nominees.

• 1:06:55David Sims?

  But that battle has been lost.

• 1:06:56Griffin Newman?

  He wanted to roll it back.

• 1:06:57Speaker 05

  And I said, as someone who has not won best picture, I'm in favor of there being as many as possible, which obviously shows a lot of balls on my part, like I should be so lucky.

• 1:07:07David Sims?

  Was Spielberg amused by your little bummo?

• 1:07:09Speaker 05

  He's a, no, I wasn't joking. I mean, I was trying to dress it up.

• 1:07:14David Sims?

  Was he amused by your?

• 1:07:15Speaker 05

  He didn't seem overly amused, but he didn't seem to want to sanction me either. He was very nice.

• 1:07:20Griffin Newman?

  I mean, there's also, at the time, it was framed as like, the Oscars need to do this because they seem out of touch and things have trended too indie and they're ignoring blockbusters. And maybe the 10 will make things a little more open. I think there's the other thing, which is just like, it's good for the fucking industry.

• 1:07:35Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:07:36Griffin Newman?

  In a time where it's harder and harder to get serious movies made, to let 10 movies brag about being best picture nominees?

• 1:07:42David Sims?

  I also, I think the 10 thing has been an ambiguous success.

• 1:07:45Griffin Newman?

  I agree.

• 1:07:45David Sims?

  And I think the minute they moved it to, you know, it's between five and 10 was less good. Putting it back at 10 has been better. There's rarely a true kind of like, ah, how the fuck did that get a nomination? You know, like even the stuff I don't really like or whatever, I'm sort of like, yeah, I can see, you know. Where this thing's support came from and all that. I think expanding director to 10 would kind of ruin that.

• 1:08:07Griffin Newman?

  I do.

• 1:08:08Speaker 05

  Well, but there's a problem in amongst.

• 1:08:09David Sims?

  And then, of course, everyone's gonna start expanding everything to 10. You know, I mean, there is a snowball.

• 1:08:13Speaker 05

  That could happen, but in my branch, the problem was for the directors. Well, are there movies without directors? Like, are you saying that there's gonna be somebody who's?

• 1:08:22Griffin Newman?

  But that's always gonna be the case.

• 1:08:24David Sims?

  That's how it goes.

• 1:08:25Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:08:25David Sims?

  Cause there are always Best Picture nominees without a directing nomination.

• 1:08:27Griffin Newman?

  If you have 10 and 10, it's still not gonna line up most of the time. Like, you're gonna have the weird, like, is it ruder?

• 1:08:33Speaker 05

  That would be especially harsh.

• 1:08:35David Sims?

  The true fix that is so clear, and I'm weirded out that the Oscars have never done it, is that a director should get a nomination for Best Picture, no matter what.

• 1:08:43Griffin Newman?

  They should be listed.

• 1:08:44David Sims?

  They should be included in those nominees.

• 1:08:46Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:08:46David Sims?

  Like, it's so obvious, and it's like, I don't know why the producers insist on like, I mean, I don't know what that discussion has ever been, but like.

• 1:08:54Griffin Newman?

  Take it up with Yellow Hawk and Bloom.

• 1:08:56David Sims?

  Like, nominate the producers too, but tack on the director. That's what they do for documentaries, that's what they do for, you know, like, the other feature film categories. So, that's my take.

• 1:09:05Speaker 05

  The thing about, okay, the Academy and the problem with.

• 1:09:08David Sims?

  Hear that, Oscar?

• 1:09:09Speaker 05

  The problem with independent films, you know, kind of dominating nomination, and the Academy thinking like, oh, we're not gonna be relevant if like, the number one box office film is nominated, blah, blah, blah. Okay, we're in a country in which there is no public funding for film.

• 1:09:21Griffin Newman?

  This is the big thing.

• 1:09:22Speaker 05

  Right? And this is a big thing which Barton Fink has to deal with as well.

• 1:09:25Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:25Speaker 05

  And that why it's different in France, where the government will considers film an actual art form that deserves support. Most other countries, and here it is.

• 1:09:34David Sims?

  Like that, yeah.

• 1:09:35Speaker 05

  So here we are, in this kind of capitalist setup, and I like, I actually kind of realized, like, I sort of can't direct studio films anymore because it is impossible to skin the cat so that, I mean, this is, unashamedly, it is making movies for money, right? I get it. But, but then there's, art sort of is inherently crated out, right?

• 1:09:57Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, yeah. It's tough, it's, I mean.

• 1:10:01Griffin Newman?

  I saw Seth Rogen was on Stern, talking about the studio. A show that I'm unsurprisingly loving, that feels like it was made for me. And when people had described it to me like a year ago, when it was being made, I was like, holy shit. I can't believe they're giving them the money to make that. That sounds like so scathing. I will find this cathartic to watch, assuming it was gonna be as acidic as like The Player, which is clearly a big influence on that show down to it, like sharing a character name, right? And my surprise in watching the show is that it's like trying to hold the things that are great and the things that are terrible about the industry simultaneously and very close together.

• 1:10:44David Sims?

  It's quite a loving show.

• 1:10:46Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:10:46David Sims?

  Like, and it does more, I would say nibble at the hand that feeds that like outright chomp. Like, it's about, it's sort of about how people in that industry want to make good movies.

• 1:10:58Griffin Newman?

  Well, he's, the Rogen character is kind of a Barton Fink figure, who's like, I've done it. I beat the system. I've somehow become a very young studio head. And what I'm gonna do is somehow sneak important movies back in. This guy thinks he can be Robert Evans.

• 1:11:12David Sims?

  Bit of a buffoon.

• 1:11:13Speaker 05

  Original sin.

• 1:11:14Griffin Newman?

  Right. And like, it represents his quest as good. Like, this is coming from the right place. And yet you just watch this guy fuck it up and you're like, dude, this is never gonna work. And he was giving this interview on Stern. And he said, like, the thing that's great about the industry is there will be one movie that changes everything forever, in many ways. You basically get like one of these movies a year at least, where you go like Barbie changed everything forever.

• 1:11:46David Sims?

  Right. At least for a long time, that's now what people are chasing.

• 1:11:50Griffin Newman?

  It's change upon change upon change.

• 1:11:51David Sims?

  What was it this year, though? What would you say? Was it Anora? I mean, I, I, I love Anora.

• 1:11:54Speaker 05

  You mean last year.

• 1:11:55David Sims?

  I mean, last year.

• 1:11:56Griffin Newman?

  I mean, here's the thing. You could like, a month ago, I would have said like Minecraft is the movie that's like changed everything. And now Sinners has already replaced it. And by the time this episode comes out, but you're like, Sinners is a movie that is going to change the way people have discussions in fucking boardrooms.

• 1:12:10David Sims?

  One hopes Sinners is the one changing things and not a Minecraft.

• 1:12:13Griffin Newman?

  You don't know. But the point is, these things can happen, right?

• 1:12:16David Sims?

  Multiple things can happen.

• 1:12:17Griffin Newman?

  And he's, the thing he said that I thought was really profound is that like, it's great timing for David as I'm getting to the big.

• 1:12:24Speaker 05

  Just leave the door open.

• 1:12:26Griffin Newman?

  It takes this insane kind of hubris to think like, I can do it. I can beat the system. I can sneak the thing through and make it work and be lauded as a genius and change things culturally for the better.

• 1:12:38Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:12:39Griffin Newman?

  And that's so insane and hubristic to think, and yet people do it. They do it all the time. And if you're not chasing that kind of glory of like, kind of slipping one past people.

• 1:12:49Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:12:49Griffin Newman?

  And somehow like changing the landscape for the better, then why even bother trying?

• 1:12:54Speaker 05

  I think there are some filmmakers who have the wind at their back, who are stubborn enough, um, uh, who are talented enough to like, you know, actually sort of, sort of do that. And then you give in period. I think there are like five filmmakers who can work within the studio system and, um, you know, they are going to be able to have a really good shot at getting, getting what they want done.

• 1:13:14Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:13:16Speaker 05

  You know, Scorsese, I like still.

• 1:13:18Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:19Speaker 05

  Christopher Nolan, you know, there, there's a few of them.

• 1:13:21Griffin Newman?

  But people, people lose it all the time. People win it back. People have it for a moment. I mean, it's like, it's the whole fucking framing of this show.

• 1:13:30Speaker 05

  Yep.

• 1:13:30Griffin Newman?

  That like, it's not always an, a lifetime status. And also sometimes the movies that change everything aren't good. You know, they're not net positive, but they do break a certain line of thinking in the way that like Barbie, you're like Barbie is a triumph. And it has felt like the last two years you're watching with every deadline announcement, all of the executives take all of the wrong lessons from it.

• 1:13:53Speaker 05

  People are trying to get that.

• 1:13:54Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 1:13:54Speaker 05

  Barbie feeling.

• 1:13:55Griffin Newman?

  And Barton Fink is right. This guy who like, does not want to work in the movies is almost disgusted when it's proposed to him. They have to sort of like launder the pitch in this sort of credibility of like, you know, this is like what all the other serious novelists and playwrights do. There's nothing like loathes them about this. And he's justifying it as like, this will help me build the theater of the people. And it's that contempt with which he comes to the thing. Combined with his arrogance of, "I'm such a good writer, I should be able to crack this and do it better than the swill that they're settling for."

• 1:14:28David Sims?

  Right, and of course, it's 1941, movies are not exactly new, but it is a, a, a younger industry.

• 1:14:35Griffin Newman?

  But the industry has like-

• 1:14:36David Sims?

  It's a nascent art form. The industry is formed-

• 1:14:38Griffin Newman?

  It is settled into a machine.

• 1:14:40David Sims?

  Cinema is art.

• 1:14:41Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:14:41David Sims?

  Obviously, it's not like nobody talked about cinema as art before the 60s or whatever, but I do think it's the 60s is when people, or the late 50s, start to form proper-

• 1:14:51Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:14:51David Sims?

  Sort of theories and academic, like, sort of notions of what film is-

• 1:14:56Griffin Newman?

  Film analysis as we know it today.

• 1:14:57David Sims?

  Um, so yeah, the 40s, it was still kinda like, "Yeah, well, this is, you know, this ain't, this ain't the theater. This is, this is swill for, you know, the, the working man."

• 1:15:05Speaker 05

  Right, the possibilities. Um, it's the studio system, so you're, you're, you're signing up to a system in which you're gonna be assigned pictures.

• 1:15:14David Sims?

  Yes, you're on contract for one studio and, right, and you do what they want.

• 1:15:18Speaker 05

  I mean, it's interesting because Burton, so his agent says, you know, "This is gonna be great and everything." But, but Burton, I think, is kind of, he doesn't really appear with any, seemingly any kind of energy to, to wanna do this.

• 1:15:28Griffin Newman?

  No.

• 1:15:28Speaker 05

  He's, he's just kind of spaced out throughout a lot of the-

• 1:15:32Griffin Newman?

  The media-

• 1:15:32Speaker 05

  This entire movie is-

• 1:15:34Griffin Newman?

  Doesn't seem appealing to him, and he doesn't even seem excited by the idea of what he could leverage the success into, really.

• 1:15:39David Sims?

  He is in a fugue for pretty much most of the movie.

• 1:15:42Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:42David Sims?

  Like a weird kind of dreamy, the movie exists in a dreamy state, the latter half of this movie, you know, could be called essentially a dream. Like, it's not like this is a movie where someone wakes up being like, "Wow, that was crazy."

• 1:15:53Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:54David Sims?

  But, um, and, uh, you're, he always feels like, like he's passive in a scene.

• 1:16:00Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:16:00David Sims?

  You know, like, even though he's the center of the scene.

• 1:16:02Speaker 05

  Yeah, which is like, so not Sid Field, uh-

• 1:16:05Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 1:16:06Speaker 05

  Three-act structure kind of thing.

• 1:16:08David Sims?

  This is such a watchable movie for a movie where not much happens and, like, you know, it's, much of its, uh, plot is inexplicable, or like, much of what's going on is sort of, like, it's like not- That's what the Coens are so good at, like, it's kind of a perfect screenplay, even though you would never, you'd be bananas to teach this screenplay-

• 1:16:27Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:27David Sims?

  As an example of anything to, you know, structure your movie as, like, it's so watchable and, like, every scene is kind, you're kinda like leaning forward, like, what's this now?

• 1:16:36Griffin Newman?

  I went to McNally Jackson the other day and I saw that they had one copy of this, which is Ethan and Joel Coen collected screenplays one. So it's Blood Simple, Raising Arizona, Miller's Crossing, Barton Fink. It does not seem like they maybe ever published volume two or on. That this is just the same one that, I mean, at least in compilation, they would do like separate.

• 1:16:56Speaker 05

  Pet peeve, I hate when, I love that Faber and Faber publishes these things, but I hate that they're not in this, in the format of a screenplay. That is to say that it's not a page per minute, which is like the general guide, like when you're gonna be.

• 1:17:06Griffin Newman?

  They reformat it. Yes.

• 1:17:08Speaker 05

  Um, I'd be really interested in what the, what this, the, the descriptions are in Barton Fink.

• 1:17:12Griffin Newman?

  This is the thing, and I had heard this from people. And I guess I've read excerpts when people post like a page or two of some of their scripts. But I saw this and I was like, I want to have this so I can fucking leaf through this, especially with these first four movies. They are so sparse. They really are just like the absolute least amount of information that needs to be conveyed to the reader.

• 1:17:34Speaker 05

  Interesting. So like, I, cause I was thinking, the, the, the reason it's watchable to me, even when like it's a kind of a punishing film in the way that this film I think kind of is.

• 1:17:43David Sims?

  Yes, a little bit.

• 1:17:43Speaker 05

  You never know when some funny shit is going to happen. So you're sort of always on your toes, right?

• 1:17:48David Sims?

  Or some scary shit.

• 1:17:49Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:17:49David Sims?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:17:50Speaker 05

  Yeah. And, and or there's gonna be a great sight gag, um, you know, and I think that they're really clever, you know, in that way. Like they, they will resort to, to comedy in order to like, sort of keep the artistic kind of arc of things going.

• 1:18:05Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:18:06David Sims?

  Barton Fink, I'm opening the dossier, cause you know, uh, we should look at it. Famous story of its genesis that like a lot of Coen, because, because the Coen brothers are discussed, but also just because they do, they do set their legend quite firmly, I feel like. With little anecdotes because they don't give a lot of info out.

• 1:18:24Griffin Newman?

  A lot of Coen masterpieces come while making other plans.

• 1:18:26David Sims?

  Right. They're trying to, uh, script, uh, Miller's Crossing, which is their third film, the film they made before this. And they get admitted in past because that's like a complex film about. Rival gangster, you know, mobs and there's a lot of-

• 1:18:38Griffin Newman?

  The prettiest movie they had made up until that point.

• 1:18:40David Sims?

  Right. And I think they find it a little boring. They say like they were not blocked exactly, but their rhythm was sort of fucked up and they weren't having fun.

• 1:18:47Griffin Newman?

  But that's a movie that has to be more concerned with mechanics where even if you're not like stuck in writer's block, you're doing math and I think these guys, they talk so much about that like when they have an idea for a movie, they talk back and forth about it and work it out in their heads. And then once they start writing, they write pretty quickly. And I assume it must've been really frustrating for them for the first time to be like stopping and going like-

• 1:19:10David Sims?

  That doesn't make sense because he knows that guy.

• 1:19:12Speaker 05

  Right. So you have to go to the index cards.

• 1:19:14David Sims?

  Uh, so they get out of their problems with that story by thinking about another one. They take a vacation and the vacation is Barton Fink, uh, has two primary points of origin. One, they wanted to work with John Turturro, who is in Miller's Crossing, but obviously they haven't made that yet.

• 1:19:28Griffin Newman?

  Right. But he's a guy on their radar.

• 1:19:30David Sims?

  They know him. He's obviously someone up and coming. He's worked with Spike Lee and stuff. Um, but they also love this idea of the hotel. More for, before Hollywood, they have the hotel. Like our setting is a neglected hotel.

• 1:19:42Griffin Newman?

  Blood simple, right? They said they saw a hotel that was the worst hotel they'd ever seen.

• 1:19:46David Sims?

  In Austin. And they were kind of like, it's like hell motel hell. What if you could never leave?

• 1:19:51Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 1:19:51David Sims?

  Uh, they also had worked with John Goodman on Raising Arizona.

• 1:19:54Griffin Newman?

  More like John Greitman.

• 1:19:55David Sims?

  It's very, very true. More like John the Bestman. And, uh, come on, that was funny.

• 1:20:00Griffin Newman?

  We have made a really-

• 1:20:01David Sims?

  10 comedy points. Wait, am I allowed to give it?

• 1:20:04Griffin Newman?

  You're allowed.

• 1:20:05David Sims?

  Um, and, uh, they certainly write, uh, this role for him as well.

• 1:20:10Griffin Newman?

  The most fascinating thing, uh, I, I mean, it speaks to, the other day you were, we were singing the praises of John Goodman. Things have gone well in Blank Check Scheduling in 2025 and that we have a lot of Goodman to discuss.

• 1:20:22David Sims?

  True. We discussed it before.

• 1:20:24Griffin Newman?

  That we had our live show and now we have a lot of Goodman in the Coen series. And you were talking about how he is an actual undersung genius in his execution of characters.

• 1:20:34Speaker 05

  Oh God, I think I, I feel like I talked about this on the, on the podcast before, but like that moment in the, in the Flintstones trailer where his, his foot is, um, is torn.

• 1:20:44Griffin Newman?

  Oh, sure.

• 1:20:45Speaker 05

  It's so upsetting.

• 1:20:46Griffin Newman?

  Yeah. Yeah.

• 1:20:47Speaker 05

  Sorry, I just had to talk about that for a second.

• 1:20:49Griffin Newman?

  He's a genius.

• 1:20:50David Sims?

  Always. I'm trying to think of, uh, Goodman's we've discussed before. Obviously we've done Raising Arizona at this point. Flight.

• 1:20:57Griffin Newman?

  Princess and the Frog.

• 1:20:59David Sims?

  Sure.

• 1:20:59Griffin Newman?

  Uh huh.

• 1:21:00David Sims?

  Sure. I mean, we must ignore, uh, Speed Racer, of course.

• 1:21:02Griffin Newman?

  Speed Racer, he is Pops' racer.

• 1:21:04David Sims?

  And he's wonderful in that.

• 1:21:05Griffin Newman?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:21:06David Sims?

  Is that it?

• 1:21:08Griffin Newman?

  Possibly. We're about to double that if that's the whole.

• 1:21:10David Sims?

  We're gonna obviously do a bunch more, but is there, cause he's been in so many movies.

• 1:21:14Griffin Newman?

  Something else I'm forgetting.

• 1:21:15David Sims?

  It does there? Have to?

• 1:21:17Griffin Newman?

  Feels like it.

• 1:21:18David Sims?

  Uh, not sure that there is. No, no?

• 1:21:23Griffin Newman?

  At this point, they have worked with him and he has now been on Roseanne, right? And he is starting to be accepted as one of America's most lovable people.

• 1:21:31David Sims?

  Right, and they like.

• 1:21:32Griffin Newman?

  John Goodman.

• 1:21:33David Sims?

  They like that, but then they like, uh, his more menacing side.

• 1:21:37Griffin Newman?

  What I love is that they were like, oh, you know what'd be fun is to weaponize that and use how much the public is just naturally endeared to John Goodman.

• 1:21:46David Sims?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:21:46Griffin Newman?

  And pulled a rug out from under them. And they said the second they started filming, they were like, this guy is so proficient and nuanced and thorough in his work. That he's finding ways to color in the menace even in the earliest scenes. That we thought of this as a very like one to one.

• 1:22:04David Sims?

  Comes later.

• 1:22:05Griffin Newman?

  Starts out sweet and adorable and then it's a surprise this guy turns out evil. But instead he's playing this weird balance of like unease and pity and arrogance and scariness.

• 1:22:16David Sims?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:22:17Griffin Newman?

  And like pathetic, it's, it's, and, and Totoro in the same way was like, guys, I like the way you wrote this character. I understand you've made him sort of an annoying pill. Will you trust me to try to put a little more humanity into him? I would like to try to put a little more realistic feeling into this guy. So he's not just kind of a setup for a punchline.

• 1:22:38David Sims?

  Yes, right.

• 1:22:39Griffin Newman?

  And he says that they gave him a degree of ownership of letting him deepen it, not by like changing the text, but changing the characterization a little bit.

• 1:22:46David Sims?

  Yeah. Wrote the script in three weeks, as they say, they tend to work quickly. So the film was, the film was ready, the script was ready. And so then when they go back to Miller's Crossing and then make Miller's Crossing, when it's like, okay, what do you want to do next? They were like, here's Barton Fink. It's ready. It's done. We're, we want to do it.

• 1:23:00Griffin Newman?

  Same financiers and everything.

• 1:23:02David Sims?

  They decide to set it in Hollywood's golden age, um, but obviously, as you pointed out, they are not basing this on their own experiences, which had largely been pleasant. Like their, their movies are produced by Circle Films, uh, this indie company, you know, their first few movies. So like. Where, which is basically they'll be like, hey, here's this weird script and Circle Films will be like, great, we can make, give you this budget. And they'll be like, great, well, we'll use that to make the movie.

• 1:23:23Griffin Newman?

  And their trajectory up until this point was just boop. It just was straight up. Like, these guys are with each film proving that they're the real deal.

• 1:23:30David Sims?

  Yep.

• 1:23:30Griffin Newman?

  I think you're kind of right that my framing was a little glib in that it really is Miller's Crossing and Barton Fink coming out within a year of each other. That is like a combined guarantor. After, I think people thinking that Raising Arizona was a little silly and being like, okay, so these guys are really good stylists, but do they have anything to say? Is this all like genre riff lark stuff? And then Miller's Crossing and Barton were seen as like, oh, these guys have thoughts.

• 1:23:55David Sims?

  But also, yeah, well, and, and since when did that mean that you get to make a big movie?

• 1:23:59Griffin Newman?

  That's what's crazy. Like, that's the thing that doesn't happen anymore is like two movies that are so good, that even though they weren't hits, the industry is like, fuck, I guess we gotta see what these guys did with a bigger budget.

• 1:24:12David Sims?

  So, um, right, the, the 1941 setting is most important to them. They want it to be right as the war's about to begin. So then that informs the Hollywood thing, if that makes sense. They wanted this kind of the verge of madness. And this idea of during that time when like suddenly this, the country empties out of normal people. Like in terms of like sort of fit, you know, like 30, 20, 30 something men. Like now it's like, the, the country has a strange emptiness to it. Uh, classically, as the Coens always say, like, ah, we didn't do any research or anything like that. They always say stuff like that. And like when they're adapting a book, they're like, yeah, we read the book. And you're just sort of like, I just don't know whether or not I should take them seriously.

• 1:24:54Griffin Newman?

  You know what's the other part of it too, that JJ dug up, is that they were like, no, we didn't really do any research for it. We had over the previous 10 years, read these 20 books.

• 1:25:03David Sims?

  That's the thing. I guess they have books in their bloodstream already. There's a book called, um, City of Nets.

• 1:25:09Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:25:09David Sims?

  Which is about German expatriates in LA in the 40s. They have the book called Faulkner in Hollywood. It's about William Faulkner's, uh, experience, uh, working as a screenwriter where he never, uh, drank tax.

• 1:25:20Griffin Newman?

  I feel like they are just constantly digesting things and retaining it. And it feels like anytime they develop a new project, they're like, oh yeah, we have this filed away in our brain. All this accidental research we were doing.

• 1:25:32David Sims?

  Yeah. And then, yes, there's this very superficial sort of resemblance to Clifford Odette's, who is one of the great playwrights of the sort of red 30s, you know, like this great left wing playwright who then goes to Hollywood and is not like Barton Fink in that he has success and also drinks himself like crazy. But the character's look is modeled on George S. Kaufman from the Marx Brothers movies and stuff. Who looked like that.

• 1:25:58Griffin Newman?

  Right. People were like, oh, they're taking Odette's and exaggerating it. And they're like, no, we're just like doing Kaufman directly.

• 1:26:05David Sims?

  Right. And they, you know, they're like Barton's is shit, but we do love our characters, which I think is just generally always true of the Coens. Like they love their characters even when their characters are unsympathetic or annoying.

• 1:26:17Griffin Newman?

  I think now, like, going back to your earlier point, I think they've basically been accepted as undeniable now. It is funny to read the criticism of the first 15 years of their work, where so many critics were kind of folding their arms and being like, not so fast. This sort of like, we shouldn't be so quick to like anoint a potential false god and treating these guys as serious filmmakers. And there were a couple of different like strikes that would be thrown against them. And one of them was they're so condescending. You see this repeated, they just have such contempt for all their characters, their movies are just mocking all these people all the time. Isn't this exhausting?

• 1:26:57David Sims?

  It can seem glib and condescending, but I actually, I do think they love their characters. I think they take great pleasure in them, right?

• 1:27:04Griffin Newman?

  Yes, I think that's always been a misread on their work.

• 1:27:06David Sims?

  It's the same thing with Mike Lee. It's the same thing. People really struggle with people who write and create direct, quite unsympathetic characters. But they're often sort of misreading it for. They're making fun, or they're, you know, whatever, casting.

• 1:27:17Griffin Newman?

  They also love making movies about idiots, but I think their magic is that they, they dramatize idiots with compassion.

• 1:27:25David Sims?

  Absolutely.

• 1:27:25Griffin Newman?

  While also understanding what's fun about having a stupid character driving your story.

• 1:27:30David Sims?

  Now, Blood Simple's, JJ's pointing this out, and he's right. Like, Blood Simple is a neo-noir film. Very obvious. Raising Arizona is a cartoon comedy film. Like, it's a little, uh, like, more outside of genre, like, in terms of, like, you're like, wow, I haven't seen something like this in a while, but it's a cartoon movie, right?

• 1:27:46Griffin Newman?

  It's Chuck Jones' chase picture, basically.

• 1:27:47David Sims?

  Miller's Crossing is a gangster movie. Like, you know, like, with, with all the sort of fucking trappings and fittings and all that. Barton Fink, I do not know how to describe this movie to anybody. Like, it's not really a horror movie, but it's got sort of a horror stuff to it. It's not really a comedy. It's like a very black, sort of strange comedy.

• 1:28:07Griffin Newman?

  They always said their single biggest inspiration was the, like, Polanski, one person going crazy.

• 1:28:12David Sims?

  Obvious, like, cul-de-sac and repulsion, like, that makes sense.

• 1:28:15Griffin Newman?

  Beyond the sort of haunted hotel thing you were talking about, there are few things I am more just kind of innately in the bag for than person in some sort of weird state of isolation slowly losing their mind.

• 1:28:26David Sims?

  And then other people are like-

• 1:28:27Griffin Newman?

  It is a thing I relate to way too hard, and it just almost always works for me as a set up for a film.

• 1:28:31David Sims?

  And then, so people raise their hands and are like, the movie reminds me of Kafka, right? Very, very obviously. And they're like, huh, huh. I mean, I guess we read Kafka in college, but like, weren't thinking about him.

• 1:28:40Griffin Newman?

  But it doesn't just feel like they're sponges and they retain everything, that like, they have a fucking library in their brains. I also love that they, whenever they talk about books they've read, it sounds like they're reading in tandem. They always talk about, like, you know, we were just reading No Country, and then at some point went, like, maybe this would make a good movie. And I'm like, so how's this breaking down? Are the two of you-

• 1:29:00David Sims?

  They sit together.

• 1:29:01Griffin Newman?

  They both go to the library together.

• 1:29:02David Sims?

  Sleeping in a bed. Holding hands.

• 1:29:03Griffin Newman?

  Right. Are you holding the same book? Do you have parallel books? Are you like Burton or-

• 1:29:08David Sims?

  They get their own books. Brothers get their own copies. Um-

• 1:29:13David Sims?

  Obviously, John Mahoney is cast because he looks so much like William Faulkner. It's crazy. They don't have to do much to make him look like Faulkner. Faulkner was someone who occasionally enjoyed a drink. I cannot deny this. He had more success in Hollywood.

• 1:29:28Griffin Newman?

  He was not self-destructive.

• 1:29:31David Sims?

  They're just adjusting the dials, obviously, right?

• 1:29:33Griffin Newman?

  Mahoney, one of the greatest secret Brits.

• 1:29:36David Sims?

  Unbelievable in this way.

• 1:29:37Griffin Newman?

  But no one knows he's fucking British because he trained the accent out of him.

• 1:29:40David Sims?

  Yes, right. He's kind of fake British, right? Because he was British, but then he came to America as a like 18 year old. Because his mother, I think, was a war bride. And, right, and that was enough to kind of like, yeah, to move him off.

• 1:29:53Griffin Newman?

  And, of course, we've lost him, but he would always say like, "I trained it on my system and yet when I hear myself perform, I still feel like I hear the inflections and drives me crazy."

• 1:30:03David Sims?

  Michael Lerner, to me, obviously, looks like Louis B. Mayer.

• 1:30:07Griffin Newman?

  Sure.

• 1:30:07David Sims?

  But it's kind of based on, I feel like, a lot of Jack Warner, like, a lot of those.

• 1:30:11Griffin Newman?

  And had already played both Jack Warner and Louis B. Mayer in other projects?

• 1:30:14David Sims?

  He played Jack Warner and Harry Cone, two different studio guys in TV movies. I mean.

• 1:30:20Griffin Newman?

  He's a mashup.

• 1:30:21David Sims?

  He is, but, I mean, Michael Lerner is just, he's outrageously good in this movie. He gets its only Oscar nomination, which is only acting nomination, which is kind of crazy. Not that he's bad, but it's just crazy that that was the one that snuck in.

• 1:30:34Griffin Newman?

  Also, if you look at the precursors that year, it felt a little out of left field.

• 1:30:37David Sims?

  He gets LaFka only. Like, that was the one, like, the Los Angeles critics gave him Best Supporting Actor, and that was it.

• 1:30:42Griffin Newman?

  The spread is really weird because, like, Goodman gets Supporting Globe nomination. It gets no other nominations from the Globes. Right. I think it does get a Writers Guild nomination. I can look.

• 1:30:52David Sims?

  This is interesting that, you know, that the Oscar, because I was talking earlier about Mommy Dearest, right? And how that movie, which savaged, you know, Hollywood legend and Hollywood in general, turned its back on Faye Dunaway, you know.

• 1:31:06Griffin Newman?

  Right, right. It was radioactive and then had to be reclaimed decades later.

• 1:31:12David Sims?

  But in this case, it's.

• 1:31:14Speaker 05

  No offense, bad.

• 1:31:15David Sims?

  It's not a good movie. Right. It's very watchable and insane, but it's not like, you're like, ah, a gem. You're like, wow, I can't.

• 1:31:21Griffin Newman?

  No, it's, it's me. You're right. Not only do people hate it, but they were sort of like, Faye Dunaway, how dare you attack your own?

• 1:31:27Speaker 05

  You are toxic, right. But, and, but, but with Barton Fink, you know, uh, the guy who plays the like monster, I mean, maybe because he's a fun character as well, or maybe it's like saying, well, we better own this. I like, I'm, I'm trying to think of what, what the Oscar voter is thinking in that point. They're not saying like, you son of a bitch.

• 1:31:43Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:31:44Speaker 05

  Could you, uh, despoil the memory?

• 1:31:46David Sims?

  Funny that, right, that they're like, yeah, yeah, great job playing an evil studio exec. But I did, it's, he is also just a guy.

• 1:31:53Griffin Newman?

  He is.

• 1:31:54David Sims?

  Where they're probably also just kind of like, you know what? You're never bad. And like every scene you're in in that movie is funny and the, his final scene is hysterical where he's in the, uh, the fake military outfit.

• 1:32:04Griffin Newman?

  Sure. But in terms of like Goodman being a rising star and like America's favorite and whatever, it seems like an obvious Oscar play. And yet I think it speaks to people not totally, I think.

• 1:32:15Speaker 05

  Maybe that's the chief.

• 1:32:15Griffin Newman?

  Let me say this. It speaks to maybe the most successful people in Hollywood, i.e. the people who are members of the academy, especially at this point in time where it's a more selective group, being less receptive to this movie.

• 1:32:27David Sims?

  You know, he made one other movie that year in 1991.

• 1:32:30Griffin Newman?

  Goodman?

• 1:32:31David Sims?

  Yeah. You know what it was?

• 1:32:32Speaker 05

  The Babe?

• 1:32:33David Sims?

  King Ralph.

• 1:32:34Speaker 05

  Ralph.

• 1:32:35Griffin Newman?

  Hell, yeah.

• 1:32:35David Sims?

  So do you, was King Ralph his Norbit? Was he having a good year?

• 1:32:38Speaker 05

  We were thinking of giving you an Oscar number, that King Ralph movie. No, I, I don't.

• 1:32:41Griffin Newman?

  I think they, I think this.

• 1:32:43Speaker 05

  Maybe it split the vote, you know? Like, that's why he didn't get it.

• 1:32:47Griffin Newman?

  I think this movie, even if they didn't find it offensive, probably made successful Hollywood people a little uncomfortable.

• 1:32:54David Sims?

  Yeah. I would say, I think Goodman didn't get a nomination because he's creepy and scary.

• 1:32:57Griffin Newman?

  And I think Michael Lerner is like, not to be reductive, but there's also just an aspect of like, it's a skill piece performance. He's got three monologues where he talks nonstop for eight minutes.

• 1:33:06David Sims?

  I mean, it's, it's a worthy nom.

• 1:33:08Griffin Newman?

  Undeniably what this guy just did is like complicated and difficult to achieve on a technical level. And the Coens are so deliberate in their coverage that you're watching him do it with minimal cuts.

• 1:33:19David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 1:33:19Griffin Newman?

  I think it was just kind of like, well, yeah, obviously. Look at that guy. He's acting.

• 1:33:22David Sims?

  Right. Uh, film cost $10 million to make, uh, was shot for 45 days. Um. And they filmed it at a hotel, Dennis Gassner, you know, the great Dennis Gassner.

• 1:33:34Speaker 05

  I love Dennis Gassner.

• 1:33:34David Sims?

  Have you worked with Dennis Gassner?

• 1:33:35Speaker 05

  I've worked with Dennis Gassner on, um, on the Golden Compass. He was nominated for, for the Oscar for that.

• 1:33:41David Sims?

  Obviously, you're a tier, you know, production designer.

• 1:33:45Griffin Newman?

  This got art direction and costume, right?

• 1:33:48Speaker 05

  Uh, yes. He's a member of my camp at Burning Man, I have to say. Shout out to Shashank Galactica.

• 1:33:52Griffin Newman?

  Is he really?

• 1:33:53Speaker 05

  He is. I invited him to, I invited him to join my camp at Burning Man. Go on, sorry, sorry, sorry.

• 1:33:57David Sims?

  Oh, no, please, shout out.

• 1:33:59Griffin Newman?

  And his camp is all like peeling wallpaper.

• 1:34:02David Sims?

  A little bit. So they're right, they find this weird art deco place that's falling apart. Um, they use a lot of green and yellow, as we sort of mentioned in the color of the movie, to suggest putrefaction, you know, like just kind of like everything is very fleshy.

• 1:34:19Griffin Newman?

  Not to be hyperbolic, but it is just one of the most viscerally rendered and realized locations in the history of movies.

• 1:34:26David Sims?

  It is incredible. Obviously Barry Sonnenfeld has heard the snap, snap of the Addams Family.

• 1:34:33Griffin Newman?

  His fingers are running very quickly along the floor.

• 1:34:35David Sims?

  Right.

• 1:34:36Griffin Newman?

  Attached to nothing but the rest of a hand.

• 1:34:38David Sims?

  Uh, so they lose their iconic director of photography and they turn to Roger Deakins, who obviously then works for them for, you know, 30 years, basically.

• 1:34:48Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:34:48David Sims?

  Who I don't think at that point was much of a major name.

• 1:34:51Griffin Newman?

  Had done Sid and Nancy was the biggest crossover.

• 1:34:54David Sims?

  Right. I mean, another not so secret Brit. Um, and yeah, I mean, like his biggest credit before then is right, either Sid and Nancy, or if you want like a bigger budget thing like Air America, but like not a.

• 1:35:05Griffin Newman?

  That was kind of his only studio.

• 1:35:07David Sims?

  Right. Like, uh, and they liked, uh, his work on a movie called Stormy Monday. Obviously they'd also seen Sid and Nancy.

• 1:35:14Speaker 05

  Mm hmm. Stormy Monday. Uh, yes, I actually saw that movie in the theaters.

• 1:35:18Griffin Newman?

  Do you remember how it looked?

• 1:35:20David Sims?

  It looked fantastic. Actually, I love that Roger Deegan shot Air America, because in every great cinematographer's resume, there are movies where you're like, what?

• 1:35:29Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 1:35:29David Sims?

  You know, it's like, what's the Vanilla Ice movie that was shot by Janusz Kaminski?

• 1:35:34Griffin Newman?

  Yes, Cool as Ice.

• 1:35:35David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 1:35:36Griffin Newman?

  Which also, just because basically from Barton Fink on, there is no movie you would be surprised to hear was shot by Roger Deegan's, right? Like, Air America is maybe the last time where you're like, huh?

• 1:35:46David Sims?

  Yeah, right. No, I'm with you on that.

• 1:35:48Griffin Newman?

  For every movie on from that point, he is like an authorial voice in the film.

• 1:35:53David Sims?

  Yeah, you know what? He shot The Siege. That's surprising for me to learn. Ed Zwick's The Siege. He did a lot of Ed Zwick movies, though. He did Courage Under Fire.

• 1:36:02Griffin Newman?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:36:03David Sims?

  Um, yeah, I don't know, man. Mostly, it becomes like, yeah, he shoots, you know, the kind of movies you'd think he'd shoot.

• 1:36:10Griffin Newman?

  Yeah. The shot of the drain.

• 1:36:13David Sims?

  He's stuck in the mend this verse. Gets out of there. The only shot he had trouble with was the plug hole shot that you referenced.

• 1:36:20Griffin Newman?

  Sure, yes.

• 1:36:20David Sims?

  Which Joel and Ethan say he made fun of them for, and then every time.

• 1:36:24Griffin Newman?

  Still makes fun to this day.

• 1:36:26David Sims?

  Exactly. They're like, okay, so here's something we want to do with this weird shot. He's like, as long as you're not making me track down a plug hole.

• 1:36:31Griffin Newman?

  For three decades, it better not be a plug hole shot. Like, that's still.

• 1:36:35Speaker 05

  I feel like the boys were a little on the nail there, going down the drain.

• 1:36:38David Sims?

  It's early in their career, you still want to try stuff.

• 1:36:41Griffin Newman?

  Too. It's just like the grossest version of that joke.

• 1:36:50Griffin Newman?

  David?

• 1:36:50Speaker 05

  Yeah?

• 1:36:51Griffin Newman?

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

• 1:37:08Speaker 05

  It is an iconic video.

• 1:37:09Griffin 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. How far people will go to protect a secret.

• 1:37:32David 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.

• 1:37:43Griffin 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.

• 1:37:52David Sims?

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

• 1:37:55Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:37:55David 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.

• 1:38:02Griffin 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.

• 1:38:16David Sims?

  I'm something of an expert in cryptozoology.

• 1:38:18Griffin Newman?

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

• 1:38:21David 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.

• 1:38:36Griffin Newman?

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

• 1:38:54Speaker 06

  Welcome to 215 Maple Drive. We just put this property on the market. Love the crown molding. Oh, wait until you see the walk-in closets and the bathroom tile. Does it have Verizon FiOS? You know, 100% fiber internet. No FiOS, but it looks like it's got cable. Let's check out the kitchen. No FiOS? Yeah, no, thank you. Don't you want to see the rest? Okay, bye bye.

• 1:39:18Speaker 01

  Get Verizon FiOS because when you're moving, it's 100% or nothing.

• 1:39:27David Sims?

  So let's talk about the plot of Barton Fink.

• 1:39:29Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:39:29David Sims?

  It's 1941. We begin with Barton having great success on the Broadway, say or off, whatever. Like it's Broadway.

• 1:39:35Griffin Newman?

  Standing at the wings, clutching his script.

• 1:39:38David Sims?

  Yes, you know, I'm sorry, play for the people.

• 1:39:40Griffin Newman?

  He just looks so fucking weasely.

• 1:39:42David Sims?

  So satisfied.

• 1:39:44Griffin Newman?

  He's like, right.

• 1:39:45Speaker 05

  The expression on his face, which he maintains for the entire movie, is the most unflattering, kind of gormless.

• 1:39:52David Sims?

  You know.

• 1:39:52Griffin Newman?

  This pathetic, like focus, this pathetic concentration.

• 1:39:56David Sims?

  There are few guys who would have that, like, sort of, you know, whatever, risk, like, you know, John Turturro is so happy to play that. Miller's Crossing is like that. Quiz show is like that. Where in Quiz show, most actors would be like, I want to make him a little more, like, sort of straightforwardly likeable. But Turturro is like, no, no, no, I can do this. Like, I could be the most annoying guy in the world.

• 1:40:15Griffin Newman?

  Quiz show is a movie where the premise is a real, true life story that a network.

• 1:40:20David Sims?

  It's just like, he's so fucking annoying.

• 1:40:22Griffin Newman?

  This guy's so annoying, we have to figure out a way to get him off this fucking show. The entire scandal is a byproduct of, like, people hate watching this guy on TV.

• 1:40:33Speaker 05

  So funny. He's so, so good in this movie.

• 1:40:35Griffin Newman?

  He's so good at, yeah, that's kind of like gormless shit, but you're just right. It's amazing how much he conveys wordlessly in these first couple of shots of just like this guy's sort of like self obsession with his own work. His sort of like absolute on edge. None of this actually makes him happy, even when it's going well.

• 1:40:56Speaker 05

  That's right. He, he doesn't do the thing where you see him subtly mouthing the lines, right? Which you almost have a screen memory.

• 1:41:03David Sims?

  He does, he does.

• 1:41:04Speaker 05

  He does do at the start of the, yeah.

• 1:41:05Griffin Newman?

  He's doing it very faintly.

• 1:41:07Speaker 05

  When it goes fresh fish, is that like that?

• 1:41:08Griffin Newman?

  Yes, right. But he's doing it in a way where it feels like he's on edge, worried they're about to fuck it up.

• 1:41:15David Sims?

  Right.

• 1:41:16Griffin Newman?

  You know, like, I've seen directors do it where it's really charming because it feels like they're living their movie. Right. It's so deeply in them, they're not even aware they're doing that. And he's doing this, like, in this very clenched way.

• 1:41:31David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 1:41:31Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:41:32David Sims?

  Um, and so, pretty, pretty much right away, we're.

• 1:41:35Speaker 05

  At Capital Pictures, right? Like, it's like, he does the play and then he's meeting with Michael Lerner. Michael, and there's the great Michael Lerner.

• 1:41:41Griffin Newman?

  He's being wined and dined by these, like, rich patrons of the arts who he's immediately like, "You don't get it. I'm like, trying to do a service for the people. The people's theater. It's a movement." Like, this guy just can't even accept a fucking compliment.

• 1:41:53Speaker 05

  He's a prick. Yeah, he gets talked into it. He, yeah, he gets talked into this, this, uh, uh, contract by his agent. I presume it's his agent.

• 1:42:02Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:42:02Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:42:02David Sims?

  Uh, obviously, it's so much more money, uh, I guess, was what lured everyone west, right? It's like, you're not gonna actually make any money writing plays on Broadway, even if they're sort of well-received.

• 1:42:14Griffin Newman?

  No, and it was like, for the first time, right, the Hollywood machine has been built up properly. The sound picture is an established thing. People want language in their movies.

• 1:42:24Speaker 05

  Right, the transition actually-

• 1:42:26Griffin Newman?

  It was the beginning of this era of like, if you're successful, if you're a respected novelist or playwright, that's nice and all, but what you really do is you leverage that to go out to Hollywood to make some money.

• 1:42:36Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:42:36Griffin Newman?

  Keep doing your own shit.

• 1:42:37Speaker 05

  Right, exactly. You have the money to keep doing your own shit there. Right, the actual dissolve is, or fade, or, you know, is to the beach, the rock, the waves up against the rock, and then to the hotel. This recurring motif of the beach, of like, what does it mean? You guys can, you know, throw your theories in.

• 1:42:56David Sims?

  Dude, that's, that's another very Lynch-y.

• 1:42:59Speaker 05

  It's a Lynch-y thing about this movie to me. Or maybe-

• 1:43:01Griffin Newman?

  Escape from purgatory. Yes, go ahead.

• 1:43:02Speaker 05

  Maybe it's the other way around, because it does seem like, that's a very Lynch-y shot, right?

• 1:43:05Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, sure.

• 1:43:06Speaker 05

  Um, and like, it feels like it's, sorry to interrupt, David, but it's like, in conversation with Lynch in some way, um, who is, who is first to certain kind of textures and feels? Because, because the hotel's very, very Lynchian, I think.

• 1:43:21David Sims?

  Yes, I mean, anything with Chet, a tiny role for Steve Buscemi, where he's the bellhop. I love that, like, there is a wall of keys behind him, like, it's like fucking, you know, 10 stories high, with so many keys in it, where you're like, are there other, you never see anyone else there except for Goodman.

• 1:43:37Griffin Newman?

  Right, correct.

• 1:43:38David Sims?

  Like, and that's my favorite thing about any haunted hotel. Like, the implication's like, "Yeah, there's other people here. You just don't see them."

• 1:43:43Griffin Newman?

  But there's shoes outside of the door.

• 1:43:46David Sims?

  So it's showing that there are people, but you never see.

• 1:43:49Griffin Newman?

  Correct, which is a really smart choice on their part, which is like a really clean visual language to let you know these other rooms are occupied.

• 1:43:56Speaker 05

  Oh, by the way, $2,000.

• 1:43:58Griffin Newman?

  You're hearing the voices, you're seeing the shoes, you're not ever seeing anyone else's face.

• 1:44:01Speaker 05

  $2,000 in 1941 is the equivalent of $41,510. So that's per week.

• 1:44:06Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:44:06Speaker 05

  That's per week, so he's, he's getting paid shit tons.

• 1:44:09Griffin Newman?

  Can we unpack this for a second?

• 1:44:11David Sims?

  That is bananas.

• 1:44:12Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:44:12David Sims?

  And it's like, but what's the implication that he'll be doing this for a month, for a year?

• 1:44:17Griffin Newman?

  I wanna, I wanna pack this, cause I feel like this goes into a point you started to, to set up a little while ago, right? The uniqueness of America not having any investment in funding its own arts, right? Like an investment in cultural enrichment. I was talking to a friend of the podcast, Sam Clements, uh, who works for the Picture House chain in, uh, the UK. And we were talking about the difference in financing and funding and films and how things feel weird in the UK and the things like the film lottery have started getting gutted and it's harder to get the things made. And I was like, I, I think when I talk to my friends working in the American film industry, we're so envious of there being any program like that. And he was like, isn't the Sundance Lab kind of like that?

• 1:45:01Griffin Newman?

  And I'm like, the Sundance Lab is that having to be created.

• 1:45:04David Sims?

  Right, it's like a prize you win.

• 1:45:05Griffin Newman?

  Right, as, like, being created by not a government, but a successful artist being like, this kind of thing should exist, leveraging his entire career to make that.

• 1:45:14Speaker 05

  It's like charities filling the gap.

• 1:45:16Griffin Newman?

  And then even then I was like, here's what it is. It's like, you submit, you get accepted, you get this beautiful sort of like sojourn, staying with other artists, working with them, having actors at your disposal to workshop the scenes, getting all these mentors, and then you do a presentation. And at the end of it, they're like, well, we hope that one of the people who saw this presentation wants to give you money to make this movie. They do not help you make the film. And then the hope is if you find money for it, you maybe stand a better chance of getting into the Sundance Festival, which would maybe then lead to distribution. But all of it is still like, you're having to piece it together so thoroughly. Really, right? And in this country, we just decided that we don't give a shit about this.

• 1:46:00Griffin Newman?

  But the way the movie industry used to be run, the studio system, which was dissolved for a number of reasons. And it was seen as a bit of a victory that now the power has gone back to the artists. They control their own careers. I think long term, I've been thinking about this a lot. I think was maybe a fatal mistake that has fucked the industry forever in terms of eradicating the middle class artist.

• 1:46:21David Sims?

  Yeah. Well, wait a second. I don't know how I feel about any of that, but okay. I mean.

• 1:46:27Griffin Newman?

  The studio system was largely eradicated because the biggest stars didn't like the lack of freedom and the biggest directors, the biggest writers, the people who had some level of clout. Didn't have a time.

• 1:46:38David Sims?

  But there was not much auturism or anything, really. The studio directed all art.

• 1:46:43Griffin Newman?

  They were.

• 1:46:43David Sims?

  And they controlled the theaters.

• 1:46:45Griffin Newman?

  They did not feel like they had agency and the other.

• 1:46:47David Sims?

  They didn't have agency. They literally didn't.

• 1:46:49Griffin Newman?

  Correct, correct, correct.

• 1:46:51David Sims?

  It's not a feeling thing.

• 1:46:52Griffin Newman?

  No, correct.

• 1:46:52David Sims?

  They were bound to do what the studio told them to do.

• 1:46:55Griffin Newman?

  Correct, but there was a model that sort of made sense. Let me unpack this.

• 1:47:00David Sims?

  We're moving on.

• 1:47:01Griffin Newman?

  We're not moving on. This is a Barton Fink episode.

• 1:47:03David Sims?

  There was steady employment. But I don't think Barton Fink is moving about how the studio system was good.

• 1:47:08Griffin Newman?

  No, let me unpack this. You have to let me finish my point. You can't cut me off and then say you're wrong.

• 1:47:13David Sims?

  Okay, finish your point. Finish your point.

• 1:47:16Griffin Newman?

  There was this holistic system of like, we own the real estate, we own the machinery, we own the equipment, right?

• 1:47:21David Sims?

  It's called a monopoly, but yes, go on.

• 1:47:23Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:47:24David Sims?

  You went to to eat with all the other writers and directors and actors.

• 1:47:28Griffin Newman?

  There was a sense of community.

• 1:47:29David Sims?

  The mess hall, yeah. Kind of thing is kind of cool.

• 1:47:31Griffin Newman?

  But it was also like, they're sort of controlled costs because we own the the means of production, right? We own you, we control you, you're under our salary, right? I mean, this is a little bit what Hail Caesar's about. It's a lot what Hail Caesar's about. We'll get there.

• 1:47:45David Sims?

  Certainly much to discuss about this in Hail Caesar, which is more about the machinery of the studio system.

• 1:47:49Griffin Newman?

  And if you're a star or writer director who's like proving yourself and you're like, why am I still like subject to the whims of these people owning me? You start to want to destroy this system. What ended up happening long term is. Basically, everything collapsed and now it's like Warner Brothers loans out their sound stages to other production companies, which like becomes both a form of money laundering and a way of intensifying cause across everything. Same to their post-production facilities, all these things. But also, no one in this industry has any fucking job security anymore, right?

• 1:48:20David Sims?

  That's true.

• 1:48:20Griffin Newman?

  There used to be this impetus on the studios in exchange for them owning you, which was basically they'd go to someone like a Barton Fink and say, "We're gonna pay you $2,000."

• 1:48:29David Sims?

  $40,000 a week.

• 1:48:30Griffin Newman?

  And we have a reason to keep throwing work at you because we're paying for you.

• 1:48:34David Sims?

  Preston Sturgis was the highest salaried individual in America when he was at his height. And actually, he did have a certain degree of control because once you were compelling as a figure in and of itself. Right, but he's one of the only ones who-

• 1:48:47Griffin Newman?

  He figured out how to make himself a little more of a celebrity and a brand name.

• 1:48:50David Sims?

  Earliest writer-directors and obviously, most of these guys did not even get written, like, credit.

• 1:48:55Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 1:48:55David Sims?

  Yeah, like their names are not on the movies.

• 1:48:57Griffin Newman?

  There'd be fucking drama school showcases and a guy would get up and do a monologue.

• 1:49:01David Sims?

  The whole point of Mank, the great film Mank, is Mankiewicz being like, "I think I actually want credit on this movie. I think it's good."

• 1:49:06Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:49:07David Sims?

  And Wells being like, "That's not how this fucking works, ever."

• 1:49:09Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 1:49:10David Sims?

  I am, you know, and like, and Mank's like, "I want it. Sorry. Like, please, for the first time ever, I'll actually make that fight."

• 1:49:16Griffin Newman?

  You'd have like a drama school showcase and someone would do a good monologue and Paramount would be like, "Fuck, why don't we get that guy under contract?" And now the impetus is on them to figure out how to make this guy's career work.

• 1:49:26David Sims?

  And 10, 10 movies.

• 1:49:27Griffin Newman?

  Because we're paying for him. And so we just need to throw him at the wall and see what fits.

• 1:49:30David Sims?

  But then they could just cut you loose.

• 1:49:32Griffin Newman?

  They could. Look-

• 1:49:33David Sims?

  And you had no, nothing to point to.

• 1:49:35Griffin Newman?

  It was not a perfect system.

• 1:49:36David Sims?

  No, it was a horrible system. What are you talking about? No, we're not.

• 1:49:40Griffin Newman?

  Yes, we are.

• 1:49:41David Sims?

  The problem-

• 1:49:42Griffin Newman?

  I remind you, you don't work in this system. That is broken.

• 1:49:45David Sims?

  Griffin, Griffin, we are not. No. People should be able to, like, have agency in their careers.

• 1:49:50Griffin Newman?

  What happens now is that people don't work.

• 1:49:52David Sims?

  It is, I would say the big problem is that it is really fucking expensive. It's the most expensive art form in the world. And this is like, ah.

• 1:49:59Speaker 05

  Christ, what, you know, it is so hard.

• 1:50:00David Sims?

  The problem is that there are less studios. There used to be like, like there were the majors, the mid majors, then there was, you know, what do you call it? Poverty Row and all that. There was so much competition. Movies were desired by the public.

• 1:50:13Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 1:50:14David Sims?

  The reason there are less jobs now is movies are not desired by the public anymore. Now, we can argue like, oh, they, no, they are, and see how these movies do well, but it's like, no, they release most movies. People go to the theaters less. There's way more competition for things that you watch. Back then, there was nothing else you could watch. People lined the streets to go see movies. They would sit in movie theaters all day. Watching, you know, some good movies and a lot of garbage because it was like, what else are you gonna do?

• 1:50:39Griffin Newman?

  Well, they also, they gutted their own business model in a way that reduced the value of any single project into a product that was part of a library to bolster.

• 1:50:47David Sims?

  They did that, but like, it's also television got invented and video games got invented and phones got invented.

• 1:50:51Griffin Newman?

  I also think there is.

• 1:50:52David Sims?

  Just a zillion other things competing for attention.

• 1:50:53Griffin Newman?

  There was a monopoly of fewer people controlling a greater majority of jobs that has to do with a lot of removal of stigma of what is beneath you or above you. And just certain people grinding so fucking hard and like, just being like, I'll just do everything. When people have a hot streak, they just like run the fucking table and block other people out. I also.

• 1:51:16David Sims?

  But it's just, right, but there's less demand.

• 1:51:18Griffin Newman?

  But, but I think to this other point, it's like, it is, it is so expensive to do this work, right? In any sort of way, especially the work to prove that you're worthy of being paid to do this work. It is a pay to play industry, which is why.

• 1:51:32David Sims?

  There's another reason it's more expensive. People are paid fairly because of unions that were created after this.

• 1:51:38Griffin Newman?

  But now the studios like are doing anything they can to circumvent unions.

• 1:51:41David Sims?

  But back then, there were no unions. People were treated like garbage and were paid poorly.

• 1:51:44Speaker 05

  No, but I mean, I'm just saying like, as, as compared to like poetry or painting.

• 1:51:49Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:51:49Speaker 05

  You get some paints, you, you, you know, some ink and paper.

• 1:51:51Griffin Newman?

  The capital is very different.

• 1:51:53Speaker 05

  Yeah, it is really fucking hard to do. It is really expensive.

• 1:51:55Griffin Newman?

  In exchange for signing over your freedom to a studio, the other thing they would do was fucking invest in your career and be like, we need to spend the money.

• 1:52:04David Sims?

  Right.

• 1:52:04Griffin Newman?

  To control your publicity and your fashion, your style and all this sort of stuff. Increasingly, when you read like fucking Sydney Sweeney complaining that she can't pay her mortgage. And people are like, how is that possible? You're like, in order to be Sydney Sweeney, you have to pay like 40 people out of pocket to do the things that the productions used to do for you.

• 1:52:23Speaker 05

  Right.

• 1:52:24Griffin Newman?

  And that's the most successful level of person. She said that like two years ago.

• 1:52:29David Sims?

  Well, I Googled Sydney Sweeney mortgage. She recently paid off her mom's mortgage. Hey, so Sydney Sweeney's doing all right now. Oh, that's good. I think that she escaped the euphoria of hers.

• 1:52:39Griffin Newman?

  Sure.

• 1:52:39David Sims?

  Um, but, well, she didn't escape it, but she has more things going on.

• 1:52:43Griffin Newman?

  But it is another thing that is depicted in Mank when he, uh, or when his nephew arrives and you got this bullpen of like 40 writers who sit around all day.

• 1:52:52David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 1:52:53Griffin Newman?

  And are just waiting for basically like the lottery ticket to come and be like, you gotta sign something, do a pass on this.

• 1:52:58David Sims?

  Right.

• 1:52:58Griffin Newman?

  Do a treatment on this, you know?

• 1:53:00David Sims?

  But Mank is also about a man in that system who realizes that system is poison that is destroying America.

• 1:53:07Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:53:07David Sims?

  That he works for capitalist pigs who will, you know, make art that prevents people from having political thought.

• 1:53:17Griffin Newman?

  I think we replaced-

• 1:53:18David Sims?

  I mean, Mank is not a movie that's like, you know what?

• 1:53:19Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:53:20David Sims?

  Hollywood is working, you know, like that's a movie about a guy that ends with him barfing on the floor.

• 1:53:24Griffin Newman?

  I think we replaced one broken system with a different broken system and the system right now functions less.

• 1:53:30David Sims?

  What you are talking about is late capitalism, which is what we live in. And it is true of most industries now.

• 1:53:36Griffin Newman?

  And that-

• 1:53:36David Sims?

  The industry I work into, media, where it's like, people come to me and they're like, how do I?

• 1:53:42Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:53:42David Sims?

  Climb this ladder? How do, what's the path? And I'm like, there isn't one. Like, I mean, you can do X and Y and you can hope for the best.

• 1:53:50Griffin Newman?

  But it, luck is like more than ever a humongous-

• 1:53:53David Sims?

  It's who you know. And it's that maybe it's, you know, oh, something opens up right when you're lucky. Or maybe the, you know, sort of some stupid guy.

• 1:54:02Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:54:02David Sims?

  And this is true in movies too, is like, eh, you know, like devote a bunch of money to something. And then after a while, he's like, eh, well, that money's gone and didn't work, so I give up. Like-

• 1:54:11Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:54:11David Sims?

  You know, you'll have little booms like that, which is sort of what like the tech companies are right now.

• 1:54:16Griffin Newman?

  Which are good, but I also-

• 1:54:17David Sims?

  Yeah, but it's sort of Apple being like, oh, let's do it. And it's like, it doesn't hurt them to do it, but there may come a day where they're like, eh, we're ready to do that.

• 1:54:23Griffin Newman?

  When they lose interest, it's a fucking nightmare.

• 1:54:25David Sims?

  Right.

• 1:54:25Griffin Newman?

  But it's, it goes back to-

• 1:54:27David Sims?

  That will never happen on my watch. No, of course not, of course not.

• 1:54:29Griffin Newman?

  Cinema being an emerging art form, right? That America is able to sort of corner right at the beginning and decide this is how these things are made, but from the get-go, we're deciding this is capitalist structure. This is machinery-

• 1:54:42David Sims?

  In America.

• 1:54:43Griffin Newman?

  In America, that's what I'm saying.

• 1:54:44David Sims?

  Do you suppose that there will be a patriotic film fund, right? Because it was announced that, who's it, Mel Gibson and I don't know, Kevin Sorbo and something were gonna be ambassadors to-

• 1:54:55Griffin Newman?

  But I don't think the government wants to do that. They like the idea of like people being able to set up something like Angel Studios and make money off of doing it.

• 1:55:04David Sims?

  I think the only time America's ever been really interested in that is

• 1:55:07Griffin Newman?

  Like FDR.

• 1:55:08David Sims?

  The war.

• 1:55:08Griffin Newman?

  Right, right.

• 1:55:09David Sims?

  Obviously, every other country does it, but that's because forever, or many other countries. But then it's also sort of like, we are producing something that speaks to our country, that makes it interesting for people around the world.

• 1:55:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:55:21David Sims?

  Like, and America doesn't need to do that because they, you know, the American brand is loud.

• 1:55:27Griffin Newman?

  But also, a depressing majority of our population would have absolute ire and disgust at the idea of their tax going to art.

• 1:55:36David Sims?

  Which, of course, happens in Britain, where they're like, I can't believe my tax dollars paid for that crappy movie, you know?

• 1:55:41Griffin Newman?

  Right, people complaining.

• 1:55:43David Sims?

  Come on, Ben, swing in.

• 1:55:44Speaker 01

  I kinda want to see the patriotic movie.

• 1:55:47David Sims?

  Like, just like, could it be called The Patriotic Movie?

• 1:55:50Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 1:55:50David Sims?

  Like, T P M?

• 1:55:52Speaker 01

  Another patriotic movie.

• 1:55:53Griffin Newman?

  I'm gonna say.

• 1:55:54Speaker 01

  That'd be the sequel.

• 1:55:54Griffin Newman?

  I'm in favor of seeing it as long as Trump writes and directs it himself.

• 1:55:58Speaker 01

  Well, that's what I'm saying, because I love the idea.

• 1:56:00David Sims?

  He's so busy, let's have him write it. He doesn't need to direct.

• 1:56:03Griffin Newman?

  I, I think it'd be good if we got him out of the office for a little bit, got him on a set, got him really hyper fixated on a project.

• 1:56:10Speaker 01

  But I love the idea, I mean, we are in a culture war, so it would be a wartime movie.

• 1:56:15David Sims?

  It would be. Apparently, we're being invaded. First, there was the war on terrorism, and now there's the war on culture, or whatever, right?

• 1:56:21Speaker 01

  But there's, it's like, all the people you just listed off who would be involved, like, everyone potentially who would sign up for that kind of project.

• 1:56:28David Sims?

  They're smart.

• 1:56:28Speaker 01

  It would be terrible. It would be absolute garbage.

• 1:56:32David Sims?

  Cognitive function, top.

• 1:56:35Speaker 01

  And it would be exciting to then see that get released, and then just have all the people who would champion the, the film, the project, the ideas of the film, then just be like, "Oh, this sucks."

• 1:56:46Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:56:47Speaker 01

  Fuck.

• 1:56:49Speaker 01

  Or try to like maneuver around.

• 1:56:51David Sims?

  But I feel like.

• 1:56:52Speaker 01

  Actually, it's good if you really think about it.

• 1:56:54David Sims?

  I feel like every time.

• 1:56:55Griffin Newman?

  I didn't like it the first five times, but now I think I get it.

• 1:56:58David Sims?

  One of those movies gets made, like the Christmas movie, what was it called?

• 1:57:01Griffin Newman?

  War on Christmas, Kirk Cameron saving Christmas.

• 1:57:03David Sims?

  Oh, yeah. The one where it's like Michael Moore has a Christmas Carol happen. An American Carol. It's sort of like, and it comes out and everyone's like, this is bad. Then it's just like, well, let's never speak of this again. Right? Like, it's not like one of those things where people do try to be like, no, I'm, I'm gonna watch it. I liked it. Like, you know, it's just kind of like.

• 1:57:18Griffin Newman?

  Well, this is the fallacy every time. Right? But, but.

• 1:57:22David Sims?

  People actually want to see Sinners. Like, everyone wants to see it.

• 1:57:25Griffin Newman?

  Correct.

• 1:57:25David Sims?

  You know what I mean?

• 1:57:26Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 1:57:26David Sims?

  And they not because of politics or any other reason. They're just like, I don't know, I heard it was good.

• 1:57:30Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, I mean.

• 1:57:31David Sims?

  Then go see it.

• 1:57:31Griffin Newman?

  Right. There's so much of the, uh, the media landscape has been dominated by this idea of like, D I initiatives are being rolled back. And like, the identity politics era of Hollywood is over and things are now gonna go back towards like, catering towards the conservative, you know, jake tradition audience. And then you look at the box office and you're like, three of the top six movies of the year so far have predominantly black casts.

• 1:57:57David Sims?

  I mean.

• 1:57:57Griffin Newman?

  Like exponentially more successful than the movies that in theory are targeting Trump's America.

• 1:58:04David Sims?

  You can make a Korean animated movie about Jesus that's told by a, an animated Chris, Charles Dickens.

• 1:58:10Griffin Newman?

  Do you know there's another animated Jesus movie coming out this year?

• 1:58:13David Sims?

  I made it.

• 1:58:13Griffin Newman?

  Okay.

• 1:58:14David Sims?

  It's called Another Animated Jesus Movie.

• 1:58:18David Sims?

  Um, no, you can do that.

• 1:58:19Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:58:20David Sims?

  And that might hit because people are like, well, the Nativity story is a pretty big one.

• 1:58:24Griffin Newman?

  And if you release it Easter weekend, it's kind of a gimmick.

• 1:58:26David Sims?

  But sometimes then there are those more sort of like niche faith movies where they're like, you know, it's about the triumph of the human spirit. And people are kind of like, pass.

• 1:58:34Griffin Newman?

  But like.

• 1:58:35David Sims?

  I mean, when the Thunderballs are in town.

• 1:58:37Griffin Newman?

  C G I Jesus movie is just barely.

• 1:58:39David Sims?

  A movie?

• 1:58:40Griffin Newman?

  Sure, but barely passing one of them days. A movie whose success remains under discussed.

• 1:58:46David Sims?

  Good movie.

• 1:58:47Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:58:48David Sims?

  It was a comedy with SZA and Kiki Palmer.

• 1:58:50Griffin Newman?

  Written by John Singleton's daughter, Soraya Singleton. It's a really, really good movie.

• 1:58:54David Sims?

  And it's just the kind of movie they used to make more of, which is a smaller budget, but studio comedy that's very, you know, kind of lo-fi and funny and good.

• 1:59:02Griffin Newman?

  But to your point, David.

• 1:59:04David Sims?

  My point.

• 1:59:05Griffin Newman?

  This is an era where the machinery of Hollywood is working so beautifully in the public cannot get enough movies.

• 1:59:13David Sims?

  It's all they got.

• 1:59:13Griffin Newman?

  And the idea of like.

• 1:59:15David Sims?

  What are they gonna do, listen on the wireless?

• 1:59:16Griffin Newman?

  Right. We can afford to just have a room full of drunk writers.

• 1:59:20David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 1:59:21Griffin Newman?

  Who are just each pitching in a sentence or two, and they present it to him as just like, this isn't fucking rocket science. This is one of two wrestling movies we have to make every year.

• 1:59:30David Sims?

  They assign him a picture. This is like, you know, it's like worth remarking on.

• 1:59:34Griffin Newman?

  Do you want a dame or a kid? Like, there's a formula here and you decide like the, the binary choose your own adventure path.

• 1:59:41David Sims?

  My, my screenwriter mind, when they said, is it about a dame or is there a dame or is a kid? And, and my mind went both? And then Barton Fink goes both and they look appalled at the end.

• 1:59:49Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:59:50David Sims?

  Um, right. You need a movie to fit a certain formula because people are like, yeah, I want to go see a, you know, like a movie about this.

• 1:59:58Griffin Newman?

  This will actually work.

• 1:59:59David Sims?

  Right. And you want, it's beyond elevator pitch. It's just, right. It's a wrestling picture. Great. I love wrestling pictures. I like to watch wrestling on the big screen.

• 2:00:08Griffin Newman?

  And the thing you get so much from Lerner's performance, what I think he captures really well is you're just like, this guy is overselling it so hard.

• 2:00:17David Sims?

  Yeah, he's laying on the mustard.

• 2:00:18Griffin Newman?

  He's laying it on way too thick of how much he respects artists, right? In a way, you know, it's bullshit.

• 2:00:23David Sims?

  Writers first.

• 2:00:24Griffin Newman?

  And you're just waiting for the shoe to drop. And in reality, what he really wants is like how a lot of our biggest budget franchise movies work right now, which is like, we're going to hire someone with a little personality so they can just hopefully put 2% personality on our formula. But by and large, let's just stick to the formula.

• 2:00:42David Sims?

  But it's also the implication I have from Barton Fink is he gets to do this. You're gonna be treated well, put up in a hotel, paid a lot of money. Then he produces the first script. We don't see the rest of the movie, but the reaction to the first script is like, no, this is not what we want. This is way too arty farty. You need to learn how to make movies the Capitol Pictures way. And you get the sense that he will quickly be bumped down the ladder, right? Like it'll be a little more like-

• 2:01:08Griffin Newman?

  He doesn't know how to play the game.

• 2:01:09David Sims?

  You need to go with the pigs, you know, in the slop and like, learn your trade.

• 2:01:13Speaker 05

  Well, it's even like, you will never be, you're never gonna work on anything again. We just own you. You're gonna, you're gonna keep on drawing a salary, but nothing that you produce. I mean, this is by the end of it, right? Nothing that you produce is, is ever gonna be used.

• 2:01:26Griffin Newman?

  Right, which McConaughey character is kind of stuck in that sort of-

• 2:01:28David Sims?

  Which is why he, like, his everyday is that he vomits, one assumes, black bile, and then is like, "Okay, time to drink all day." Like, that's how he's dealing with life.

• 2:01:38Griffin Newman?

  And they like, pay him with contempt to keep ownership of him. And you get the sense of this guy probably for the last five years has had one good idea a year. Like, every year he gives them one dialogue exchange, or one notion of how to fix a scene.

• 2:01:56Speaker 05

  But yeah, they're, they're being paid to keep their field fallow, right? Is basically the, the deal.

• 2:02:01David Sims?

  I mean, he didn't, Faulkner didn't write, all of his most famous novels had already happened.

• 2:02:07Griffin Newman?

  Sure.

• 2:02:07David Sims?

  And famously, he got to Hollywood and was like, "Can I write Mickey Mouse? I like Mickey Mouse." And MGM was like, "That's Disney." And he was like, "I don't understand."

• 2:02:18David Sims?

  He didn't really get that idea. And instead, he did, you know, a bunch of movies, like, he wrote like 50 movies or whatever, accredited or uncredited, that no one remembers.

• 2:02:28Griffin Newman?

  Here's what I wanna say, just going back to the plot a little bit, or not the plot, but the, the flow of the movie.

• 2:02:33David Sims?

  He famously, Faulkner just wanna say that he has a credit on The Big Sleep, which is one of the most incomprehensible screenplays ever written. Yes, it's a great movie.

• 2:02:41Griffin Newman?

  But also is constantly cited as like- This script doesn't even make sense in the movie script.

• 2:02:46Speaker 05

  Right, and that's sort of when we start to think about the Ojart theory and Bogie and Bacall and all that.

• 2:02:50Griffin Newman?

  But there's a little bit of like, nobody knows anything.

• 2:02:53Speaker 05

  And I do not know what the answer to the mystery is.

• 2:02:56Griffin Newman?

  Yes, no one knows.

• 2:02:58Speaker 05

  I think you can be told, and even if you're told, you're kind of like, I don't understand.

• 2:03:02Griffin Newman?

  If you say so.

• 2:03:03Speaker 05

  Yeah, you got it, it's tried it out.

• 2:03:06Griffin Newman?

  Casting Buscemi, having Buscemi play it as cheery as possible, and not a fake cheeriness, right? He's not going over cranked, but it's like speaks to the Coens already at this point being so smart about how to use actors and their energies. Of just like, just have Buscemi go straight down the middle, put no creep on it, and that will be unsettling. There's something about Buscemi just being kind of like, quiet and kind, that feels a little off. And also just his introduction, back to the shoes, Ben, his introduction as Barton Fink walks in this fucking lobby that's empty. And then like, a trap door opens from the floor.

• 2:03:42Speaker 05

  Comes from beneath.

• 2:03:44Griffin Newman?

  Basement with shoes, and you're just like, what the fuck is going on underneath this hotel? A thing that is never even touched on again, like a mystery that is just sort of like quietly seated at the beginning, and then so much else happens. And you're like, is there a whole world of drama going on underground? The implication of the shoes outside the door is that these, the residents or the transients are leaving their shoes out every night to be

• 2:04:07Speaker 05

  Shined.

• 2:04:08Griffin Newman?

  Shined and polished. And that he's going down there, but you're like, are there other people down there? Does Buscemi spend every night shining a hundred pairs of shoes?

• 2:04:17Speaker 05

  Yeah, it's fairy tale.

• 2:04:19Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 2:04:19Speaker 05

  Logic.

• 2:04:20Griffin Newman?

  And then he gets up to this room and immediately it's just unsettling.

• 2:04:24Speaker 05

  He is, so he's a schmuck because he's being paid forty thousand dollars a year.

• 2:04:28Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 2:04:29Speaker 05

  I mean, a week, a week.

• 2:04:30Griffin Newman?

  A week.

• 2:04:31Speaker 05

  And he chooses to stay at a shitty hotel.

• 2:04:33Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 2:04:34Speaker 05

  But you don't feel as though he's scrimping and saving in order to start, he's not like making phone calls about how he's finally gonna rent a theater back in New York.

• 2:04:41Griffin Newman?

  He doesn't know what to do with money.

• 2:04:42Speaker 05

  It's not like Barton Fink's like, I'm about to go on a shopping spree, like Barton Fink's. I want to see him in Redo try. Would be fun. And he gets turned away by the mean shop girls, and later he goes back and asks them if they're, they sell on concession.

• 2:04:54Griffin Newman?

  Big mistake.

• 2:04:55Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:04:57Griffin Newman?

  Thank you. Uh, huge. Uh, it feels like, A, this idea he has of like, I need to be amongst the common people. Michael Lerner's offering, you know, with Polito, get him a fucking mansion, put him up at the nicer hotel, put him in my guest room. He won't allow any of that stuff to happen.

• 2:05:14David Sims?

  John Polito, of course, we love to see him.

• 2:05:16Griffin Newman?

  The great John Polito.

• 2:05:17David Sims?

  I mean, just the roly-poly-est little man.

• 2:05:19Griffin Newman?

  We'll have talked about him a lot last week.

• 2:05:20David Sims?

  I mean, right, because Miller's Crossing is his, I think his biggest Coen's showcase, right? Like, obviously, he made a lot of movies with them.

• 2:05:27Griffin Newman?

  But I promise, we won't give him the high hat, Matt, up here.

• 2:05:30David Sims?

  But Polito has been kind of edged out of the Louis B. Marier role here, right? Because normally, he'd be the guy be playing the Louis B. Marier part. So there's actually something really, there's like real pathos to the fact that he's meek in this one.

• 2:05:41Griffin Newman?

  It almost...

• 2:05:42David Sims?

  The late John Polito, right?

• 2:05:43Griffin Newman?

  Unfortunately, yeah. It gives Lerner's character a little more power, where you're like, if I've seen the first three Coen Brothers movies, to see Polito be like, simping to this guy.

• 2:05:56David Sims?

  Right.

• 2:05:57Griffin Newman?

  It's just like, how fucking hot can this guy run? But the other, the other part of it with the, the hotel thing, uh, beyond just whatever he thinks his like artistic philosophical principle is of needing to be in a real place with real people, it's also, to my mind, the recurring imagery of the beach is just like, this guy wouldn't know how to fucking function on a beach.

• 2:06:18David Sims?

  Well, and he doesn't when he gets there.

• 2:06:20Griffin Newman?

  You put him on a mansion, he's gonna...

• 2:06:21David Sims?

  He's in a fucking three-piece suit.

• 2:06:22Griffin Newman?

  He's gonna be miserable.

• 2:06:24David Sims?

  His usual shoes.

• 2:06:25Griffin Newman?

  So there's this idea of like...

• 2:06:26David Sims?

  The Barton Fink action figure doesn't have other clothes.

• 2:06:28Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 2:06:29David Sims?

  He's got the one thing.

• 2:06:30Griffin Newman?

  The idea of looking at a picture of a beautiful woman on the beach isn't like, that's the escape, that's the fantasy. It's sort of like, that's the idea of that being my idea of a fantasy. That a well-adjusted person would look to an image like that as an idea of a serene thing to strive for. And for him, he would never be able to enjoy it.

• 2:06:48David Sims?

  It's also a hilarious mocking thing to have on the wall of that dingy room.

• 2:06:53Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 2:06:54David Sims?

  Where they're like, but for a little color, you know, we'll hang that one picture. And it's just such a, I mean, it's what the Coens are so good at in their entire career. The more you look at it, it's like saying a word a thousand times.

• 2:07:05Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 2:07:05David Sims?

  The more you read strange things into that weird, cryptic... Anonymous image of the back of a woman on a beach.

• 2:07:12Speaker 05

  Well, this and then it is like the fulfilled prophecy thing. This is like the David Lynch thing again to return to where it's like, if you want to try to read into this, like, what is the, it's not a time loop, obviously, you don't want to like read like too much into it, but, but, but the, the, the girl at the end purposely adopts the, the pose.

• 2:07:29Griffin Newman?

  Exactly. Yeah, it's right. You're mirroring everything. I mean, it, when I saw this movie for the first time, uh, I, I guess well over 15 years ago, I, and, and until rewatching it last night, had held on to my interpretation so strongly of, oh, he is in hell and John Goodman's character is Satan.

• 2:07:51Speaker 05

  Or he's in purgatory or whatever. Yes.

• 2:07:54Griffin Newman?

  But I remember like feeling so strongly, John Goodman's character is the devil or some equivalent. And watching it last night, I did not feel that way at all.

• 2:08:05Speaker 05

  Not at all.

• 2:08:06Griffin Newman?

  And I told you, in fact.

• 2:08:07Speaker 05

  I love this guy.

• 2:08:08Griffin Newman?

  I don't think I was, yeah, this guy is maybe God.

• 2:08:10David Sims?

  I think interpreting him as a sort of demonic figure is perfectly acceptable.

• 2:08:15Griffin Newman?

  Sure. I wasn't like, what an idiot, what a misread I had, but it speaks to sort of the weird sphinx-like quality of this movie, that you can watch it one time and go, you know what? It's a hundred percent this. It's this and this, and this is how these other elements support it.

• 2:08:28Speaker 05

  The Coens do not make movies that way. I feel, right.

• 2:08:31Speaker 01

  And they're full of misleads, you know.

• 2:08:33Speaker 05

  They're not like, oh, you missed the point. They would be like, yeah, do what you want.

• 2:08:36Griffin Newman?

  But it's so much a reflection of what you're bringing to the movie as well.

• 2:08:42Speaker 05

  Ben, what do you want to say?

• 2:08:43Speaker 01

  Well, what I wanted to share with change for me is that the first time I watched this, I was so aligned with him.

• 2:08:49Speaker 05

  You were the frustrated artist, right?

• 2:08:51Speaker 01

  Like perspective.

• 2:08:52Griffin Newman?

  No, new school poetry.

• 2:08:55Speaker 01

  Yes. Yeah. Yeah. I, I majored in creative writing at the New School. Watching it this time around, what really struck me is he's saying he's this like voice of the people.

• 2:09:07Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 2:09:07Speaker 01

  And yet. Is is not actually comfortable interacting or being in the space with these type of people.

• 2:09:15David Sims?

  He seems to hate people.

• 2:09:17Griffin Newman?

  With anybody. He cannot handle talking to anybody.

• 2:09:20Speaker 01

  And then is incapable of writing a piece of work that is for those people.

• 2:09:26Griffin Newman?

  Correct.

• 2:09:26Speaker 01

  He's he's so above writing the wrestling movie.

• 2:09:31Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 2:09:31Speaker 01

  And yet is saying the whole time that he is like, you know, has the the audience who would want to interact with that work in mind.

• 2:09:40Griffin Newman?

  His goal is to write what he thinks the people need rather than what they want.

• 2:09:43David Sims?

  A polemical kind of dick, you know.

• 2:09:45Speaker 05

  Well, this is the Preston Sturgis thing. This is like, this is Sullivan's Travels, right?

• 2:09:49David Sims?

  It's the best moment in film history, but certainly in Sullivan's Travels. It's when they, right, when they interact with simple quote unquote art and it moves them beyond anything, you know.

• 2:10:00Griffin Newman?

  And Preston Sturgis is like one of the single biggest influences throughout the entire Coen Brothers filmography, down to Oh Brother, Where Art Thou?

• 2:10:06Speaker 05

  The movie within the movie.

• 2:10:10David Sims?

  But no, but did you?

• 2:10:11Speaker 05

  That's it. That's all I wanted to do.

• 2:10:12David Sims?

  Okay, then shut up and get out of here.

• 2:10:14Speaker 01

  Hey, hey, hey, come on.

• 2:10:16Speaker 05

  A palate cleanser, actually. No, I want to tell you, because this is getting pretty heavy. Did I ever tell you my story about meeting Brad Pitt the first time?

• 2:10:23David Sims?

  Brad Pitt.

• 2:10:24Griffin Newman?

  Bradley Pitt.

• 2:10:25David Sims?

  Who you've never directed in a film.

• 2:10:27Speaker 05

  Never directed in a film. Okay, so my girlfriend at the time.

• 2:10:30David Sims?

  You didn't direct Sinbad Lich in the 70s?

• 2:10:31Speaker 05

  I wish.

• 2:10:32David Sims?

  Okay, carry on.

• 2:10:34Griffin Newman?

  Seven Seas in that picture.

• 2:10:35Speaker 05

  My girlfriend at the time was was cast as the one of the neighbors in Mr. And Mrs. Smith.

• 2:10:42David Sims?

  Okay, sure.

• 2:10:43Speaker 05

  A film with many a neighbor.

• 2:10:45Griffin Newman?

  You were in that film as an actor.

• 2:10:46Speaker 05

  I'm in that film as an actor, and here's how that happened. The the casting agent thought, oh, it would be funny if Chris, this is my girlfriend Heather at the time, who's going out with Heather, played her husband. And then she, Heather took, was like, I don't think I want to be like playing second fiddle to the Angelina Jolie person. I'm out of here. She dropped out, right? And I was like.

• 2:11:09David Sims?

  Who replaces her?

• 2:11:10Speaker 05

  Um, I forget her name. Lovely, lovely actor.

• 2:11:14David Sims?

  Rachel Huntley.

• 2:11:15Speaker 05

  What are you?

• 2:11:16David Sims?

  Not a name I know.

• 2:11:17Griffin Newman?

  But you still end up playing the next door neighbor.

• 2:11:19Speaker 05

  I'm not leaving.

• 2:11:20David Sims?

  Yeah, I would be Brad Pitt as Angelina.

• 2:11:23Speaker 05

  Come on, man. Yeah. So then.

• 2:11:26David Sims?

  Wow, this is the only movie that actor was ever in. Weird.

• 2:11:28Speaker 05

  Oh, really?

• 2:11:29David Sims?

  Oh, wow.

• 2:11:29Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:11:30David Sims?

  Yeah, do you credit?

• 2:11:31Speaker 05

  So, so then, so there I am, right? On this set. And there's Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie. And I, I, I, I'm playing their neighbor. So I have a couple of scenes with Brad, which is pretty fricking funny.

• 2:11:43David Sims?

  Man, I need to re-watch this movie because I didn't know. I haven't seen it since it came out.

• 2:11:46Speaker 05

  It's really funny.

• 2:11:47Griffin Newman?

  It speaks to how much I have always been me, that I remember seeing that movie opening weekend and going, oh, weird, that's Chris Weitz's.

• 2:11:54Speaker 05

  That is really.

• 2:11:55Griffin Newman?

  I immediately clocked, oh, wow, that's the writer and director of About a Boy.

• 2:11:59David Sims?

  Well, I would have known. I did see Chuck and Buck, not to bring up all your actor credits, which you are a major role.

• 2:12:05Speaker 05

  That is, you've now covered all my actor credits.

• 2:12:06Griffin Newman?

  A titular character.

• 2:12:07Speaker 05

  I was.

• 2:12:08David Sims?

  Okay, all right. So you're in a, you're a couple of scenes with Brad Pitt.

• 2:12:10Speaker 05

  So, so I'm, we're starting this scene, I was starting to shoot this scene with Brad. And of course, it's like, it's fucking surreal, right? And I want to make it clear to him that I'm not going to be very good in this scene because I'm not an actor, I'm a director.

• 2:12:24David Sims?

  Temper your expectations, Brad.

• 2:12:25Speaker 05

  Yeah, so, so I, I, I go to Brad. You know, we were just shaking hands and I said, look, I just want you to know, I'm not actually an actor, I'm actually a director. And I can see him take it the wrong way. And what, the way that he is taking it is, oh, my God, this guy is some kind of fricking lunatic who wants to give me his script, right?

• 2:12:45David Sims?

  Right, right, right. You're like, really what I want to do is direct. Not like, I am an established director with credits to my name.

• 2:12:53Speaker 05

  So, and I see his soul retreat into the back of his head, like, like it's clearly something that he has done before.

• 2:13:00Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:13:00Speaker 05

  And I realize that I have like, lost this moment with, with Brad Pitt completely. I am now just a lunatic to him. And then we do our scenes, he shakes my hand and ever, actually, I see him one more time. I see him one more time, which is the, um, the year that Demian Beshear is nominated for Best Actor for a Better Life. And he should have won, but, um, uh, and, and he's, he's saying, he's, he's like telling me what a great time he has. It's like, oh, I'm hanging out with George and, and Brad.

• 2:13:27Griffin Newman?

  Is that the descendant moneyball artist here?

• 2:13:30Speaker 05

  Correct.

• 2:13:30David Sims?

  Okay.

• 2:13:30Speaker 05

  That is, yeah.

• 2:13:31David Sims?

  Both George and Brad were nominated for Best Actor that year. But of course, we had to make room for Jean Du Jardin.

• 2:13:36Speaker 05

  Yeah, I'm, and, and.

• 2:13:37Griffin Newman?

  Heath Plage.

• 2:13:38Speaker 05

  His big leading man career since then has proven that he deserved it. Um, and.

• 2:13:44Speaker 05

  And so he, so Demian, we're at the SAG Awards and Demian brings, brings Brad by and like introduces us. And I see it, I see the penny drop with Brad Pitt. He's like, oh, okay, okay.

• 2:13:58David Sims?

  Six years later, he's like, oh, that guy wasn't full of shit.

• 2:14:02Speaker 05

  Yeah, no, to his credit, he was like somehow remembered and he was like, oh, yes, we've worked before. And I was like, oh, God, thank God.

• 2:14:08Griffin Newman?

  What's so funny too is that your like function, Mr. and Mrs. Smith is basically to be like, look how poorly these guys fit in with normal suburban couples.

• 2:14:17Speaker 05

  Right.

• 2:14:18Griffin Newman?

  And my memory is that you're sort of like talking at him, trying to make like neighborhood small talk.

• 2:14:23Speaker 05

  Yeah, we're talking about golf.

• 2:14:24Griffin Newman?

  Right. And he's just like not really locking in.

• 2:14:28Speaker 05

  All right, that, that was the palate cleanser.

• 2:14:30David Sims?

  That's fascinating. Your co-star kind of has a Christina Applegate sort of styling and look to her. But I guess is not Christina Applegate.

• 2:14:38Speaker 05

  No, but I think that's, that, that was, they're going to that trope of like suburban.

• 2:14:42David Sims?

  Married with children.

• 2:14:43Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:14:44David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 2:14:44Speaker 05

  Interesting.

• 2:14:45David Sims?

  Oofballs.

• 2:14:46Speaker 05

  Um, yeah, let's pick up back with the plot though.

• 2:14:49Griffin Newman?

  Right. He's been instructed.

• 2:14:50Speaker 05

  He goes to the producer.

• 2:14:52Griffin Newman?

  Lerner basically just fucking monologues to him, says so much, he's like walks out of there reeling, doesn't even know really what to do. It's not really until Shalhoub.

• 2:15:02Speaker 05

  Yeah, right. Yes, that he'd even knows what to do. But then we go to, I've got the movie running. Uh, go to the hotel, him struggling to write. He just has the, uh, the ambient sound of traffic intro to his screenplay, right? The sort of the streets of New York.

• 2:15:16David Sims?

  He's also writing the same thing he just wrote.

• 2:15:18Speaker 05

  The sound of the streets. But here's the interesting thing. Uh, there's a really bad trans light in the, in the back of this set. Right? It's not believable. And there is no, uh, there, there is no traffic noise.

• 2:15:27Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:15:28Speaker 05

  Right? So it's like, that, that's another weird thing about like horror-ish thing about, about, uh, the movie is that the, the hotel itself isn't, isn't set in any proper atmosphere.

• 2:15:37David Sims?

  When you, when you say trans light, just for our listeners, that's a translucent light.

• 2:15:41Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:15:41David Sims?

  Backlight.

• 2:15:42Speaker 05

  A backing and as that, that is semi translucent so that you feel as though like light is, is hitting it properly.

• 2:15:48Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:15:49Speaker 05

  But it's like, it's, it's, it's a purposely bad one, I think.

• 2:15:51David Sims?

  Odd, right?

• 2:15:52Speaker 05

  Yeah. Uh, and then Goodman appears and.

• 2:15:54Griffin Newman?

  So Goodman appears for the first time after the Lerner meeting?

• 2:15:57Speaker 05

  Yes. And it's almost like, uh, you know, it almost could be like Planes, Trains and Automobiles or whatever. Where it's this kind of like garrulous.

• 2:16:05Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 2:16:05Speaker 05

  Working guy. He's an insurance salesman. And he's got that kind of like, oh, a writer like, oh, you know, I wouldn't know about that. Right. Like, you know, and Barton thinks of himself as like, oh, I'm here to, you know, stir your soul and to understand you.

• 2:16:20Griffin Newman?

  Doing this for you. And then it's just perfect characterization of just immediately he's not listening to this guy.

• 2:16:26Speaker 05

  No.

• 2:16:26Griffin Newman?

  He's explaining to this guy why he cares about him while ignoring everything he's actually trying to say.

• 2:16:32Speaker 05

  And he's talking about how hard his job is.

• 2:16:34Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 2:16:34Speaker 05

  And then Goodman starts talking about.

• 2:16:36David Sims?

  How painful the life of the mind is.

• 2:16:38Speaker 05

  Right.

• 2:16:38Griffin Newman?

  He calls him a working stiff.

• 2:16:40Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:16:40Griffin Newman?

  That's so fucking rude. Right. And he thinks he's saying it with respect as I see you. Don't think it goes ignored that you live a life of misery.

• 2:16:48Speaker 05

  The common man.

• 2:16:49Griffin Newman?

  Condescension to everything he does. And yeah, like not to jump ahead, but there's such a good detail for me in him extending to Goodman, if you're ever in New York City, reach out to my parents. They'll give you a meal.

• 2:17:02Speaker 05

  Right.

• 2:17:03Griffin Newman?

  Which is basically his one act of unambiguous kindness to this guy.

• 2:17:08Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 2:17:08Griffin Newman?

  Even if it's a little self-serving of like, uh, I want to be the kind of guy who offers this up. And once again, I'm not offering hospitality. I'm extending my parents to you for hospitality. But I do feel like it's like.

• 2:17:21Speaker 05

  It's like you'll have, you'll have some kind of a welcome in New York.

• 2:17:24David Sims?

  I think it's also him being like, I have cred. I have like working class parents that you can.

• 2:17:29Griffin Newman?

  But that also feels like him saying that in that one moment is maybe the thing that stops Goodman from murdering him.

• 2:17:35Speaker 05

  Well, but it, but, but he may have murdered the parents by the end of which is kind of interesting, right? Which, which to me like the tie links up with No Country For, For Old Men, right?

• 2:17:44Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:17:45Speaker 05

  Which is that, um, you know, Anton Chigurh goes and, and, um, and kills the, the wife of, uh, of the protagonist. Yeah.

• 2:17:53Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:17:54Speaker 05

  Is that all real though? Well, we can talk about it.

• 2:17:56Griffin Newman?

  We could talk about it. It's the roller coaster of Goodman's performance where he's just vacillating so quickly between like charm and sadness and menace and like.

• 2:18:07Griffin Newman?

  You know, emptiness and gregariousness and all this sort of shit. But I do think the way he plays that moment of Barton Fink extending that to him. Like Goodman really slows down for an instant. You see him really process that and it's like he clocks it like, I have to remember he's one of the good ones. Obviously, he's gonna turn on him by the end of it. But I think so much the way Goodman plays this is this kind of like, son of Sam. This is a guy who is like answering to higher voices he is hearing, right? Of what he feels like he needs to do. And there are sort of these like moral tests he's imposing on people, which you hear about from these sorts of like serial killers. Where they're sort of like, this is the moment that made me realize I had to kill this person.

• 2:18:50Griffin Newman?

  Versus this is the moment that made me realize I couldn't do it.

• 2:18:53David Sims?

  Of course, my favorite serial killer is Hannibal Lecter.

• 2:18:55Griffin Newman?

  Well, we love him.

• 2:18:57David Sims?

  The late great, as Mr. President Trump would call him.

• 2:19:00Griffin Newman?

  The late great, but you know what? Very kindly, many other countries are sending all of their Hannibal Lecters to us.

• 2:19:05David Sims?

  But what I love about Hannibal Lecter is that it is canonical. And as the movie, the books go on more and more clear, they're like, he kills people if he thinks they're rude. Yeah, the free range rude. Right, he's just kinda like, you're fucking rude. I'm gonna serve you up for dinner, bitch.

• 2:19:20Griffin Newman?

  You do hear, when you dig down like fucking serial killer rabbit holes, there's a lot of that of like.

• 2:19:26David Sims?

  I don't like to do that.

• 2:19:26Griffin Newman?

  They're looking for the excuse of someone doing something that they perceive as a social faux pas or rudeness. And then saying, like, now I have permission to kill you.

• 2:19:36David Sims?

  But I don't think he's a serial killer. I think that's all fantasy or whatever, we can talk about it. Um, a crucial image after Goodman leaves is the wallpaper peeling, the weird red, kind of like flesh like wall beneath it, right? Behind it.

• 2:19:49Griffin Newman?

  Like membrane and, and, and the like, the thick sort of like.

• 2:19:54David Sims?

  Right, everything's too gooey and thick, like the hotel's alive, which rocks. The next thing is Shalhoub, um, who is the producer type guy. My favorite thing about Shalhoub, apart from everything, because he's so funny, is that when they have lunch, he's got whiskey and milk and he keeps forgetting which one to drink from first at the time.

• 2:20:13Griffin Newman?

  It speaks to how like on fire this movie is. This era of like.

• 2:20:18David Sims?

  Right, that Shalhoub's like the seventh best performance.

• 2:20:20Griffin Newman?

  I was gonna say.

• 2:20:21David Sims?

  He's rocks.

• 2:20:21Griffin Newman?

  And it's almost undeniably, and Shalhoub's one of my favorite actors in the world. And this is one of his best performances. And yet, every time, I'm like, right, fuck.

• 2:20:30David Sims?

  Oh, yeah, he's in this movie, yeah.

• 2:20:32Griffin Newman?

  And he's great. But it, there's, I feel like this era of like, PTA was doing this and the Coens were doing this. Where there was like, a wave of filmmakers who all recognized, like, holy shit, there is an incredible class of character actors.

• 2:20:45David Sims?

  Sure.

• 2:20:45Griffin Newman?

  Who have been doing good, like, supporting work in studio films. And what if you just start building entire movies out of just these guys?

• 2:20:52David Sims?

  Right, right, not just use one of them, right? Have Mahoney, Shalhoub, Buscemi, you know, Judy Day, well Judy Day was a little, Michael Lerner, even Goodman. Uh, yeah, hundred percent. The next scene is the, uh, bathroom where he meets Mahoney. Uh, who is a William Faulkner, whatever type, a sort of a feat southern, not a feat, but a sort of like genteel southern man with the bow tie and the handkerchief and all that.

• 2:21:16Griffin Newman?

  He's like puking in like writhing pain.

• 2:21:18David Sims?

  But the worst puking noises, maybe in cinema history, amazing puking noises.

• 2:21:23Griffin Newman?

  Set up like the chaos of the sounds of the people on other sides of his room in the hotel, the constant like, speaking of the haunted hotel thing, but just that weird thing. And you can feel this in apartment buildings as well, where you're just like, I'm hearing noises that are both too specific and too abstract.

• 2:21:40David Sims?

  The line that gets me, right, first is that he's puking into the toilet and then you see him pick up the handkerchief from the floor.

• 2:21:47Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:21:47David Sims?

  But it's not that he says sorry about the noise, but he says sorry about the odor.

• 2:21:50Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 2:21:51David Sims?

  And you're just like, what the fuck came out of him?

• 2:21:53Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:21:55David Sims?

  So bad. But then, of course, right, Barton recognizes him as this esteemed novelist.

• 2:22:00Speaker 05

  I'm always very distressed when people vomit in, in the movies and then speak closely to someone else.

• 2:22:06David Sims?

  I feel like vomiting in the movies is one of the hardest things to get right. It happens all the time. And there's the classic kind of, you know, tube.

• 2:22:14Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:22:14David Sims?

  Next in the mouth, which has become almost like. It's like, we accept that fake feeling as real.

• 2:22:21Griffin Newman?

  I've had.

• 2:22:21David Sims?

  Because you can't do it real.

• 2:22:23Griffin Newman?

  I've had to do it multiple times, and it is.

• 2:22:25David Sims?

  Have you always done the tube, or have you also done the thing where it's like something's in your mouth? And you kind of get it out?

• 2:22:29Griffin Newman?

  I've done it three different ways. I have had three different big vomit scenes. I've had like, fully rigged up. I've had, we're gonna comp this in later with CGI.

• 2:22:39David Sims?

  Oh.

• 2:22:39Griffin Newman?

  And I've had your holding stuff in your mouth, and you have to expel it.

• 2:22:42Speaker 01

  Which I would imagine, holding stuff in the mouth is the best.

• 2:22:44David Sims?

  But you can't get much out then. And whenever that, whenever you see that version of it, you're like, yeah, he had like.

• 2:22:50Griffin Newman?

  And here's the thing, it's the easiest to play, releasing the thing. It is the hardest to play everything leading up to that. Which to me is almost more important. Of like, how do you play the build? I don't know why people always ask me to fucking puke on screen.

• 2:23:05David Sims?

  Blank, well, you look sickly. You look like you're on the.

• 2:23:08Griffin Newman?

  You know what? You're right, that's the answer.

• 2:23:09David Sims?

  I'll call you out, you have vomited on Blankjet.

• 2:23:12Griffin Newman?

  This is true.

• 2:23:13David Sims?

  As has Ben, I have yet to do it, but decade of dreams.

• 2:23:17Griffin Newman?

  Decade of dreams.

• 2:23:18David Sims?

  Like, who knows what the next 10 years hold?

• 2:23:20Speaker 01

  During, during a national recording, or you made it to?

• 2:23:22David Sims?

  In the Patreon, uh, car ride episode.

• 2:23:25Griffin Newman?

  Ben did it on mic in a car.

• 2:23:26David Sims?

  No, I think Ben actually did.

• 2:23:27Speaker 01

  I turned the recorder off.

• 2:23:29David Sims?

  Right before it happened.

• 2:23:30Griffin Newman?

  The only reason it wasn't on mic was because Ben was fucking fixing it from the inside. I went to the bathroom, I didn't.

• 2:23:36David Sims?

  Yes, Griffin exited and then returned with, I just barfed.

• 2:23:38Griffin Newman?

  You know what, in fact?

• 2:23:39Speaker 01

  I threw up in Alex Ross Perry's car.

• 2:23:41David Sims?

  Yes.

• 2:23:42Griffin Newman?

  Decade of dreams, the episode I vomited on.

• 2:23:44David Sims?

  In the car, but sorry, uh, is that, sorry, was it, was it cleaned up? Like, this thing's father made.

• 2:23:49Speaker 01

  I was able to find, uh, like a loose shopping.

• 2:23:52Griffin Newman?

  Ben, no, no, no, no. We had gotten Dunkin' Donuts.

• 2:23:56David Sims?

  I was not in this car.

• 2:23:57Griffin Newman?

  You finished your iced coffee, then you removed the lid and puked into the cup, and then put the lid back on, and acted like you were gonna get away with it, none of us would notice, and I called you out.

• 2:24:06David Sims?

  Even though there were like, four to five of you in the car, right?

• 2:24:09Speaker 01

  No, I was, I was, I was definitely, I was resourceful, and I was not gonna be like, doop doop doop doop doo. I was gonna be like, we need to pull over.

• 2:24:18Griffin Newman?

  You, Ben?

• 2:24:20Speaker 01

  Griffin.

• 2:24:20Griffin Newman?

  You puked entirely in the cup, your aim was good.

• 2:24:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:24:24Griffin Newman?

  You made no other mess.

• 2:24:25Speaker 01

  Was it like a venti? I mean, like, whatever Dunkin' Donuts equivalent is. Big Dunkin' Donuts.

• 2:24:30Griffin Newman?

  And then I saw you kind of go like this, and turned the recorders back on, and I immediately said, Ben, I need to acknowledge what just happened. I called it out before.

• 2:24:38Speaker 05

  We need to address.

• 2:24:39David Sims?

  You know what? Ben just, he knew.

• 2:24:40Griffin Newman?

  You know.

• 2:24:41David Sims?

  Had to be on, Mike. He knew what, you know.

• 2:24:43Speaker 05

  Exactly.

• 2:24:43Griffin Newman?

  I just want to connect a dot here.

• 2:24:45David Sims?

  Uh, everything is copy.

• 2:24:46Griffin Newman?

  The episode where I puked, I said, hold on, I'm gonna go to the bathroom. I got up, I went to the bathroom. I came back and I went, I just vomited.

• 2:24:53David Sims?

  You did.

• 2:24:54Griffin Newman?

  That was our Starship Troopers episode.

• 2:24:55David Sims?

  True.

• 2:24:56Griffin Newman?

  And that was the episode.

• 2:24:57David Sims?

  Which was the episode, which, after which we met.

• 2:25:00Griffin Newman?

  Exactly.

• 2:25:00David Sims?

  Because I, I love that episode so much.

• 2:25:02Griffin Newman?

  Tweeted about it and said, this is a great episode about a great movie. And we were like, holy shit, Chris Weitz's listens to this podcast. And we messaged you. If I hadn't puked in that episode, we never would have met.

• 2:25:10Speaker 05

  That's beautiful.

• 2:25:11David Sims?

  Um.

• 2:25:12Speaker 05

  Full circle.

• 2:25:12David Sims?

  After that, he meets Trudy Davis, um, who was kind of, I, I feel like sort of her peak acclaim, like this is when she's just becoming such, like she's not an actor people talk enough about anymore.

• 2:25:24Griffin Newman?

  No.

• 2:25:25David Sims?

  Because her peak was the sort of early nineties.

• 2:25:27Griffin Newman?

  I also think she had a notoriously big ego. And there was a little bit of a.

• 2:25:31David Sims?

  So do I.

• 2:25:32Griffin Newman?

  You know, the great anecdote about her.

• 2:25:34David Sims?

  No, what is it?

• 2:25:34Griffin Newman?

  It's one of my favorite Hollywood stories of all time, that she's working on Passage to India.

• 2:25:39David Sims?

  Right, early in her career.

• 2:25:40Griffin Newman?

  Maybe her first film, certainly her first major.

• 2:25:42David Sims?

  But her first big movie.

• 2:25:43Griffin Newman?

  Right. And David Lean's comeback after 20 years on the bench.

• 2:25:46David Sims?

  Yep.

• 2:25:46Griffin Newman?

  And they're having an argument over the way to play a scene.

• 2:25:49David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 2:25:49Griffin Newman?

  And she said, why should I listen to you? What have you done?

• 2:25:52David Sims?

  Wow.

• 2:25:52Griffin Newman?

  And he said, Lawrence of Arabia. And her response was, I mean, what have you done lately?

• 2:25:57David Sims?

  Well, she had him there.

• 2:25:59Griffin Newman?

  It's one of the greatest burns of all.

• 2:26:02David Sims?

  I love that she didn't take that lying down. She was like, I'm coming right back at it. Brief encounters, old. Don't care.

• 2:26:11Speaker 05

  One of, one of the worst lines, uh, I've ever heard in a movie is from Sex and the City two.

• 2:26:17Griffin Newman?

  Hmm.

• 2:26:17David Sims?

  Great movie.

• 2:26:17Speaker 05

  Lawrence, I know what you're about to say. Please, go ahead. When, uh, I forget which character it was.

• 2:26:23Griffin Newman?

  Samantha.

• 2:26:24Speaker 05

  When Samantha sees a hot guy. And says Lawrence of Mylabia.

• 2:26:29David Sims?

  Yeah, but you thought Carrie said that one?

• 2:26:31Speaker 05

  No.

• 2:26:32David Sims?

  Thought Charlotte busted out Lawrence of Mylabia?

• 2:26:34Speaker 05

  Fair enough.

• 2:26:34David Sims?

  The thing about Sex and the City 2.

• 2:26:36Griffin Newman?

  Ben, can you just do a quick note, just for the edit? Uh, Christmas spoke, he said, uh, one of the worst lines I've ever heard. I think he meant to say one of the best lines I've ever heard.

• 2:26:43David Sims?

  The thing about Sex and the City 2 is, you wanna just toss me what the runtime on that movie is?

• 2:26:48Griffin Newman?

  I believe that one is a tight, uh...

• 2:26:50David Sims?

  12 years.

• 2:26:51Griffin Newman?

  145 minutes?

• 2:26:54David Sims?

  You were off by one minute.

• 2:26:55Griffin Newman?

  Okay.

• 2:26:56David Sims?

  It's 146, baby!

• 2:26:57Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:26:58David Sims?

  Because Michael Patrick King was like, "No, they need another minute." Not 225, 226.

• 2:27:03Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:27:03David Sims?

  Uh, one of the worst movies I've had to like sit through in a theater is Sex and the City.

• 2:27:07Speaker 05

  Sex and the City 1 is... Brutalizing experience.

• 2:27:09David Sims?

  Right. Sex and the City 1 is not a particularly good movie, but like, you're kinda like, "Yeah, you know, there's some stuff here for everybody, whatever, we're all having, we're all drinking cocktails." Sex and the City 2 is, is a little bit of a sort of like, like, yeah, slow cinema, like, arthouse punishing.

• 2:27:23Speaker 05

  I feel like that movie is...

• 2:27:23David Sims?

  Bella Tars.

• 2:27:24Speaker 05

  Right. Pushed me into a depression, actually, watching that movie.

• 2:27:27David Sims?

  Fair, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 2:27:29Speaker 05

  That's a thought.

• 2:27:29David Sims?

  And you haven't exited.

• 2:27:30Speaker 05

  Oh.

• 2:27:31David Sims?

  Have you seen Sex and the City 2?

• 2:27:32Griffin Newman?

  I never have.

• 2:27:33David Sims?

  Yeah, it's not very good.

• 2:27:34Griffin Newman?

  I've only seen two episodes of Sex and the City ever.

• 2:27:36David Sims?

  Well, then I think you shouldn't start with Sex and the City 2 if you wanna return to the franchise.

• 2:27:40Griffin Newman?

  No, I'm gonna start with two and I'm gonna go backwards.

• 2:27:42David Sims?

  You should know, you should start with, uh, "And just like that," and then keep...

• 2:27:45Griffin Newman?

  Oh, you're right, that's what I should do.

• 2:27:46David Sims?

  The latest episode.

• 2:27:47Griffin Newman?

  I'm gonna wait for it, and just like that to end.

• 2:27:49David Sims?

  And then weed backwards against the curtain.

• 2:27:50Griffin Newman?

  And then I'm gonna go Memento style.

• 2:27:56Speaker 06

  Welcome to 215 Maple Drive. We just put this property on the market. Love the crown molding. Oh, wait until you see the walk-in closets and the bathroom tile. Does it have Verizon FiOS? You know, 100% fiber internet? No FiOS, but it looks like it's got cable. Let's check out the kitchen. No FiOS? Yeah, no thank you. Don't you wanna see the rest? Okay, bye-bye.

• 2:28:21Speaker 01

  Get Verizon FiOS, because when you're moving, it's 100% or nothing.

• 2:28:29David Sims?

  Um, so, uh, yeah, it meets Judy Davis, uh, who's his sort of-

• 2:28:34Griffin Newman?

  She's phenomenal.

• 2:28:35David Sims?

  Incredible in this movie.

• 2:28:36Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, just to be clear, I think she basically never misses as an actor.

• 2:28:39David Sims?

  She kinda didn't miss, but it's this era, it's like Georgia, Alice, Barton Fink, Naked Lunch, Husbands and Wives, like, that's the ref she's amazing in.

• 2:28:48Griffin Newman?

  Husbands and Wives, people kinda thought she was gonna win the Oscar and it is-

• 2:28:51David Sims?

  And then, ooh, some stuff happened.

• 2:28:53Griffin Newman?

  It is one of the most transparent, on-camera, and actress clearly is just miserable that she's lost. Watching Judy Davis's reaction in the telecast is amazing.

• 2:29:04David Sims?

  But, um- The worst performance. I think, like, the ref is kind of the end of Hollywood, taking her very seriously, which maybe it's because she was tough to work with and-

• 2:29:12Griffin Newman?

  But then she'll show up in like two scenes in the breakup and be incredible, where you're like, this is a nothing part and she's somehow making a full character?

• 2:29:19David Sims?

  She's in, uh, Mary Antoinette.

• 2:29:21Griffin Newman?

  Oh, sure.

• 2:29:21David Sims?

  You know, like occasionally she'll still pop up.

• 2:29:23Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:29:23David Sims?

  She's great in this, um, and, uh, she's the, you know, uh, Mahoney's wife, or partner, or whatever.

• 2:29:31Griffin Newman?

  Mistress. Assistant, who's also his mistress.

• 2:29:34David Sims?

  But he's eventually revealed to be kind of his muse slash, she's kind of the wife from, uh, the movie The Wife.

• 2:29:40Griffin Newman?

  What if there was?

• 2:29:41David Sims?

  Exactly, where she's kinda writing some of the stuff for him.

• 2:29:44Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 2:29:44David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 2:29:44Griffin Newman?

  Um, I, I think part of what makes this performance so effective to me is the way the movie is set up, you're like, oh, here's the third lead, right? She's entered.

• 2:29:53David Sims?

  Yes.

• 2:29:54Griffin Newman?

  And I assume the rest of the movie is gonna be him ping-ponging between these two other characters.

• 2:30:00David Sims?

  Right, uh, will play out there.

• 2:30:01Griffin Newman?

  Right, and then she dies so much more abruptly than you're expecting, but she somehow, within only like three scenes, gives a full enough performance-

• 2:30:11David Sims?

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:30:12Griffin Newman?

  -that you feel like she's wedged in your mind as like an important character, where it's that jarring when she's gone.

• 2:30:17David Sims?

  Right, her role is mostly her going like, uh, Mr., uh, what's his name in the movie? Uh, Mr. Mayhew. Mr. Mayhew is indisposed while he's like, ahh! Like he is the drunkest man ever alive?

• 2:30:29Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, number one.

• 2:30:30David Sims?

  I mean, I scream for, for honey when I'm drunk.

• 2:30:37David Sims?

  Uh, at one point he's singing, you know, the, the one where he goes and pees, uh, is he singing the song, what's, you know, uh, Old Black Joe, which is like a, you know, a folk song that's about being a slave. And like the joke is that he, that's how he sees himself, right? Is that like, that's, that's the sort of insane mental prison he's constructed. He's like, I'm enslaved to Hollywood. I can't escape.

• 2:31:00Griffin Newman?

  Shlub yelling about him being a louse and Barton continuing to say like, he's one of our finest writers. One of our finest louses. It's the kind of Coen dialogue.

• 2:31:09David Sims?

  It's kind of like a Judy Davis, David Lean situation. He won't drop it.

• 2:31:12Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:31:13David Sims?

  And by the way, yeah, I mean, these guys are like complaining about being enslaved to the system and everything. Like, I, I, as I complain about studio filmmaking, I'm also conscious of the fact like, I should be so fucking.

• 2:31:22Griffin Newman?

  Of course.

• 2:31:23David Sims?

  Okay. We've had great success.

• 2:31:24Griffin Newman?

  I guess, right. Not to turn it into a binary thing, but this is what I was trying to get at with the studio system thing of like, it made perfect sense why it needed to be eradicated in the moment. And now you look back and you're like, fuck, was that better off? I understand everything that was broken about it.

• 2:31:40Griffin Newman?

  But it's right, this striving for like, what would I give up in order to try to eke out a win in this world?

• 2:31:46David Sims?

  What I am trying to say to you is that what you are really missing is an era where film was unchallenged as a visual medium.

• 2:31:53Griffin Newman?

  That was a huge part of it.

• 2:31:54David Sims?

  Yes, a huge part of it. It's not because the studios controlled everything. It's because there was no competition for movies. None.

• 2:32:00Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 2:32:01David Sims?

  None for 50 years. There's no competition in the visual arts.

• 2:32:05Griffin Newman?

  Here's the thing that like.

• 2:32:06David Sims?

  Apart from a painting.

• 2:32:07Griffin Newman?

  Well, I've heard, I've seen some good ones in my.

• 2:32:09David Sims?

  It's not moving at all. Yeah, exactly. They don't move unless you kind of Mona Lisa style, kind of, she looking at me?

• 2:32:16Griffin Newman?

  Or if you carve out the holes, like Scooby Doo style and make the eyes move.

• 2:32:19David Sims?

  Move, of course, peep.

• 2:32:21Griffin Newman?

  It is probably Pollyanna-ish of me.

• 2:32:25David Sims?

  Right, to be like, the great, the golden age of Hollywood was a truly golden age.

• 2:32:28Griffin Newman?

  No, where I'm like, specifically a thing I wish that fucking happened, I'm not even saying this for me, right, is that Netflix would be like, we're gonna sign fucking like 40 character actors to yearly contracts and just slot them into our projects into these small roles.

• 2:32:45David Sims?

  But then she would be stuck in making, no offense Netflix, maybe Chris wants to work in Netflix one day, Swill, no one watches.

• 2:32:53Speaker 05

  David, how dare you.

• 2:32:54David Sims?

  Big Swill.

• 2:32:55Speaker 05

  I've never worked for Netflix, but I personally, I take offense at that.

• 2:32:58David Sims?

  I did watch Frayid on Netflix. I just keep inserting over Swill, like, beautiful masterpiece. Great films, that's experienced on your phone, or a smaller device, pocket size, your watch?

• 2:33:12Griffin Newman?

  What you were saying is correct, Sims, but the reality is that people are begging to be cast in Swill.

• 2:33:17David Sims?

  Of course.

• 2:33:18Griffin Newman?

  Because they're like, fuck, there's no other jobs.

• 2:33:20David Sims?

  I understand.

• 2:33:20Griffin Newman?

  So if the system's based around Swill, at least make a system that like benefits the people.

• 2:33:25David Sims?

  The other thing, yeah. Spread the Swill. I must point out about the golden age of Hollywood is that people who were not white were not allowed to make movies, basically, at all. And a movie that I like a lot is Babylon, which is a louder and more obnoxious movie than Barton Fink. Yeah, you didn't, you didn't notice that it had a bit of a sort of heightened yelly tone, Babylon, Chris?

• 2:33:45Griffin Newman?

  I thought it was a silent picture.

• 2:33:45David Sims?

  High energy, and that explores some of the interesting ways that Hollywood would try to make movies for black audiences back then, but there was so much racism in the, you know, the way it was presented and the way they treated people and all that. And that is a movie about, sort of what you're talking about of like, man, it kind of rocked back then and we were all kind of in it, you know, like, making these fucking movies, but also, it was a poison rotting away, you know, our souls and all that.

• 2:34:11Griffin Newman?

  Right, right, him watching Avatar at the end of the movie and being like, fuck, that terrible shit didn't rule.

• 2:34:17David Sims?

  But the industry, you know, some notes, mezzo, mezzo.

• 2:34:20Griffin Newman?

  I think that hits me a little bit.

• 2:34:22Speaker 05

  Does Barton Fink watch Avatar at the end of this movie?

• 2:34:24Griffin Newman?

  No, but it, what's his name, Calva watches it at the end of Babylon. Barton Fink should watch Avatar, Barton Fink would love Avatar. The light for the mind.

• 2:34:34Speaker 01

  I have a question, because we're talking about work and you alluded to it earlier in the episode. I'd love to hear about how this portrays writer's block, the writing process. I feel like we haven't heard about that.

• 2:34:49Speaker 05

  And I mean, I think everybody's writer's block is different. It probably portrays it pretty realistically as sort of a form of torture. And all the stuff about the life of the mind is like, yeah, yeah, that's kind of the deal, but I wouldn't talk about it in that way.

• 2:35:04Griffin Newman?

  You have also had a very interesting balance in your career of like getting to make personal things that are driven by your desire to tell this specific story and like doing assignment work. And I feel like when I talk to you, as much as you sometimes have frustrations of, I took this assignment job, but tried to do the best version of it and I'm unhappy with the final product. You do understand the difference in your relationship to the ownership and the emotional investment versus when it's your thing versus I did a job and then it was out of my hands.

• 2:35:33Speaker 05

  Well, I think when it's for another director, like I do feel like I can disengage to the degree that I feel like I owe it to that director as a director's medium. And so what they want kind of goes. That being said, I did have a modest proposal that like, that I wanted to air on this podcast, which is that there's a little like QR code on the poster of every movie. And if you, if you, if you click on it, you get a PDF of the original script of the fucking movie that you just saw.

• 2:36:00Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:36:00Speaker 05

  So that you know what has happened in the interim, not like anyone would ever.

• 2:36:04Griffin Newman?

  You, you a couple of times have sent that to us.

• 2:36:07Speaker 05

  Yes. I want to send it to the world.

• 2:36:10Griffin Newman?

  And, and it is, it is very illuminating.

• 2:36:12Speaker 05

  I want to force their eyes open with toothpicks.

• 2:36:14Griffin Newman?

  I just want you guys to know, this was the last thing that I handed in.

• 2:36:19Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:36:19Griffin Newman?

  When my job was done, this is how it looked versus what you've seen.

• 2:36:24Speaker 05

  But this is like, so that it's perennial, right?

• 2:36:26Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 2:36:26Speaker 05

  This is the same crap that, that, that like is, is that Barton Fink feeling?

• 2:36:31Speaker 01

  It's part of why the movie resonates so beautifully.

• 2:36:33Griffin Newman?

  Well, also part of the beautiful pain of the shit is like, fuck. This movie sucks and it's not what I wanted it to be. And I have no ownership of it and my name is attached to it forever. And now people will hold me somewhat responsible for the sins of this film. On the other hand, what's worse, not getting the credit?

• 2:36:50David Sims?

  Exactly. To move us through the plot a little bit. You know, there's another meeting with Goodman, there's another meeting with Shalhoub where he's like, still, I have no idea. Shalhoub has the hilarious idea of like, go watch some dailies from a wrestling picture that's getting made right now. So Barton Fink just watches like endless takes of a guy going like, ah, like running around a wrestling.

• 2:37:10Griffin Newman?

  Shalhoub's innate hostility, immediate hostility to Barton Fink, which is like, it's a similar pitch to Michael Lerner, but it's coming from the exact opposite direction, which is, I'm so fucking angry this guy's taken a liking to you. My job is to like chew guys like you out.

• 2:37:27David Sims?

  Right.

• 2:37:27Griffin Newman?

  And for some reason, he's gotten fixated on you.

• 2:37:29David Sims?

  Right. You're allowed to be bulletproof for a minute. Yes.

• 2:37:32Griffin Newman?

  And you seem even worse as a starting point than most of the guys that get handed to me.

• 2:37:36Speaker 01

  I love that they're also at a New York themed restaurant.

• 2:37:39Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 2:37:40David Sims?

  Yes, right. They're at a faux diner.

• 2:37:41Speaker 01

  These little things where it's like, he's like losing his mind. And it's just, I love like, obviously he's feeling homesick, feeling out of sorts and that, and now he's at this like, really pretend looking version of, of home.

• 2:37:54Griffin Newman?

  Right. And he thinks the Mahoney character is going to help give him guidance to sort of understanding, here's how someone else has balanced these two things. And what he realizes is this man is.

• 2:38:03David Sims?

  He's in hell.

• 2:38:04Griffin Newman?

  He's in hell. He's not functional. He's not producing good work. His life is in shambles. Everyone surrounding him views him with resentment. And perhaps he's not even really writing most of the work that Barton Fink attributes to him.

• 2:38:17Speaker 01

  Mm hmm. He looks like shit too. He really, they, they captured like, he really is going downhill.

• 2:38:24Griffin Newman?

  But it's just what you're saying of like, right, it's a system that only allows a certain type of person to work on movies at all. Here's Judy Davis, whose life is like cleaning up this guy's fucking vomit. And not getting paid properly to write all of his work? You know, like she has to basically like puppeteer this guy Weekend at Bernie's style into getting anything published or produced. Um, and then when Barton Fink realizes that and puts it together, he's angry at her. It's such a good choice from Turturro that he's like yelling at her in the hotel.

• 2:38:55David Sims?

  He's self righteous about it too.

• 2:38:56Griffin Newman?

  Right, that he's calling her up to think that she can help him, but also because he's clearly got a bit of a crush on her, right? And here's the scene where he needs something from her and wants something from her. And the second he starts to put together that maybe she's the mind behind his last 10 to 15 years of work, his response is, wait a minute, you wrote all of it. Like accusatory, as if she committed a crime.

• 2:39:20David Sims?

  Right, as if she's stolen something from him or whatever.

• 2:39:22Griffin Newman?

  But then he's also like, why aren't you taking credit? Like he's angry at her for not having pride in it.

• 2:39:27David Sims?

  Well, he's not understanding not wanting the credit, I guess.

• 2:39:30Griffin Newman?

  And also not understanding the system.

• 2:39:32David Sims?

  Um, right. And not long after that is when she comes to his hotel.

• 2:39:36Griffin Newman?

  That is the scene. He yells at her in the hotel.

• 2:39:39David Sims?

  Right, it's all part of the same scene.

• 2:39:40Griffin Newman?

  It's right before they sleep.

• 2:39:41David Sims?

  And then they make love. Uh, and the camera does go into the drain and Chris thought that was a little maybe over the top. Down the drain?

• 2:39:49Griffin Newman?

  His life is going down.

• 2:39:51David Sims?

  In a nightmarish moment wakes up, and this is sort of where you can start to think about the movie entering a more surreal zone.

• 2:39:58Griffin Newman?

  He calls her and begs her to come over. She says she can't because she has to do work with him. He falls asleep and then he wakes up to her knocking on the door and she's there. I think if you want to believe that the second half of the movie didn't happen, it's in that moment that the transition happens.

• 2:40:12David Sims?

  I would say, just to talk about the whole of Barton Fink, the moment you can really point to is when the walls catch on fire and yet the hotel is not consumed, where you can start to be like, me thinks reality is blurring in Barton Fink a bit, you know, like, uh, but.

• 2:40:26Griffin Newman?

  But I argue it's a, it's a build from there.

• 2:40:28David Sims?

  Yes, it is. No, no, this is where it begins.

• 2:40:30Griffin Newman?

  Shows up, helps him, fucks him, dies.

• 2:40:32David Sims?

  Dies and then Goodman.

• 2:40:35David Sims?

  You know, he gets Goodman to come in and get rid of the body and Goodman is alarmed, but also just does it.

• 2:40:42Griffin Newman?

  Yeah. And here's a great like-

• 2:40:43Speaker 05

  Another big puke.

• 2:40:44David Sims?

  Another off camera puke.

• 2:40:45Griffin Newman?

  Yeah. Here's another great detail of like weird snapshots of different eras of Hollywood culture. He says to Barton something to the effect of, this is bad. Even if they eventually clear you in the court, you'll be ruined forever.

• 2:41:01David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 2:41:01Griffin Newman?

  Which is clearly an analog to Fatty Arbuckle.

• 2:41:03David Sims?

  Right.

• 2:41:04Griffin Newman?

  In this era, this is like the earliest days of Hollywood scandals where if you were accused of something, even if you won the case and cleared yourself in the court of law, the public wouldn't touch you ever again. You were forever soiled. And now I think it's just an interesting counterpoint. We're in this sort of like-

• 2:41:20David Sims?

  It's an anti candle culture movie.

• 2:41:22Griffin Newman?

  Yes. And basically anytime anyone, there is like released documentation of their crimes, you immediately see 8,000 people in the comments go, well, what happened to innocent until proven guilty? I'll wait until I hear all the evidence. Like you can, someone could be found guilty and they're still like, well, but we all know the legal system gets things wrong. Whereas in that day, there was this puritanical nature of like, we don't want to know too much of our stars. The veil cannot be pierced. And especially if any idea is implanted in our head of them doing that something untoward, even if we find it's not the case, we're not getting that image out of our head. It's over.

• 2:42:00David Sims?

  There is this moment again, when we're talking about dreams, that whereby Barton opens the Bible to Daniel two.

• 2:42:07Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 2:42:08David Sims?

  Where he reads a passage about Nebuchadnezzar's dream. Uh, you know, like it's not like as much as the Coens are like, I don't know, maybe. Like, you know, it's like, obviously there's a lot of allusions to things. The camera zooms in on a passage in the Bible about dreaming.

• 2:42:24Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:42:25Speaker 05

  Yeah. And then the first verse is his-

• 2:42:28David Sims?

  The joke becomes like, he goes to the top of Daniel two and it's faded on a tenement building, you know, like it's his stupid fucking intro that he can't lose.

• 2:42:36Griffin Newman?

  I think the Coens are as good with sound as anyone in the history of movies.

• 2:42:42David Sims?

  Without a doubt.

• 2:42:42Griffin Newman?

  It is like-

• 2:42:43David Sims?

  I mean, we did just cover, of course, David Lynch, another master of that, you know, more loud.

• 2:42:48Griffin Newman?

  But I think part of their magic is they always know how to like really put a focus on Foley work that is just 10% over cranked. It's just a little overstated and a little overly crisp, but every single movement and texture needs to have a specific sound associated with it, which is so powerful in terms of evoking like specific feelings in you in a way that I think a lot of filmmakers undervalue. In terms of going for realism or saying like, we don't need to hear every creak of the readjustment or whatever it is. But then they'll also, as you were saying, Chris, make these decisions of like not hearing sound outside the window of the hotel.

• 2:43:24David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 2:43:24Griffin Newman?

  Where then, when there is silence or an absence of something in a Cohen's movie, it's that much more unsettling. Of like, why is it this quiet?

• 2:43:32David Sims?

  Yeah, everything has been thought through. Nothing is by default.

• 2:43:34Griffin Newman?

  Right. Versus being able to hear the wallpaper.

• 2:43:38David Sims?

  This is also where Goodman's character leaves him a head in a box. Sorry, just a box with nothing. You just hold on to that box for me? And then not long after, the two cops appear, a classic kind of Hollywood 30s, you know, like guys in hats and jackets, you know, right? Like who are like, uh, that guy's not who he says he is. He's a serial killer called Madman Munt.

• 2:43:59Speaker 01

  I also, I think we should even say though, that John Goodman basically does all of the hard work.

• 2:44:06Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 2:44:06Speaker 01

  Which is removes the body.

• 2:44:08David Sims?

  He does all of the like manual work especially, like, right? Like he gets rid of the body.

• 2:44:13Speaker 01

  And Barton Fink is not even really that like thankful about it.

• 2:44:17David Sims?

  I feel like you don't like this guy. I feel like you got a problem with Barton Fink.

• 2:44:20Griffin Newman?

  But also Ben.

• 2:44:21David Sims?

  He's the voice of the people.

• 2:44:23Speaker 01

  He is not.

• 2:44:24David Sims?

  I think he's trying.

• 2:44:26Speaker 05

  It's bad manners not to thank the person who's disposed of the corpse that you found in your bed.

• 2:44:31Speaker 01

  You should at least say thank you.

• 2:44:32David Sims?

  Thanks. If not a tip, like a crisp 20, you know, in a handshake.

• 2:44:36Griffin Newman?

  But also this is a key question of like, is he the one who murdered her? And is his helping of Barton Fink helping to set him up?

• 2:44:44David Sims?

  By the end, I got that. If you're gonna take it.

• 2:44:47Speaker 01

  That's the most straightforward kind of like.

• 2:44:49Griffin Newman?

  He's basically making a trap for him to incriminate him, part of him, part of which is him being that helpful.

• 2:44:55David Sims?

  The way I sort of take Barton Fink, not again, to be like, sort of like, this is what the movie means is I'm like, no, I mean, like, Charlie slash Carl is in his imagination.

• 2:45:07David Sims?

  And it's like initially, it's this patronizing vision of sort of like, yes, this is the kind of guy I'm writing for. The guy who's like, oh, well, I, you know, I'm an honest Joe and I'm an honest buck.

• 2:45:17Griffin Newman?

  Sort of folksy idioms. I'll curl your hair.

• 2:45:19David Sims?

  And then as he starts to curdle in madness and get, you know, hate that he's writing this movie.

• 2:45:24Griffin Newman?

  He starts to hate.

• 2:45:25David Sims?

  He's like, those people are sick. Exactly. Like, they're just, like, they're just monsters.

• 2:45:29Griffin Newman?

  And not only that, like, he's disgusting. He can't stop sweating.

• 2:45:32David Sims?

  Right, exactly.

• 2:45:33Griffin Newman?

  Before he literally becomes a serial killer and an embodiment of hell.

• 2:45:36David Sims?

  And then, right, first it's the serial killer thing, and then he's, right, he's a demon. Like, he's a demon.

• 2:45:40Speaker 05

  I'm gonna try and sort of kind of the film thing, which is like, he's imagining an audience or a potential audience, like, there's a subject and an audience, right? And like, when you go to these marketing screenings, part of the reason I think that, that, obviously, they're asking the questions that they're asking of, of the audience in order to try to maximize the profit that you make of it. But if you look at the questions, basically, they're treating the audience like a bunch of fucking morons.

• 2:46:04David Sims?

  Right.

• 2:46:04Speaker 05

  Right? And, and, and they don't say it, but it's like, how can we get money out of these fucking morons?

• 2:46:09Griffin Newman?

  Yes, yes. It is, it is kind of astonishing. I mean, it's, the joke I-

• 2:46:14David Sims?

  Couple times I've done it. Those questions, basically, they're like, did you get this?

• 2:46:17Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 2:46:18David Sims?

  Does this make sense? Did you track that this was happening in the end?

• 2:46:22Speaker 05

  Do you have a sense of cause and effect?

• 2:46:23Griffin Newman?

  My experience in TV was almost always having these conversations with executives where they'd say, like, you try to argue for why you thought the integrity of a thing you wanted to convey a certain way, how you wanted to execute it, what you were trying to say. And then their response is always, almost verbatim, something to the effect of, uh, no, no, no, no, no, we get it. We love it. I'm just worried about them.

• 2:46:52David Sims?

  I have been shown movies by studios early, like, well before the screening for press, in these screenings where they're essentially like, can you tell us if the people will get this?

• 2:47:01Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 2:47:02David Sims?

  Like, and we're not gonna take your, on fact here, but like, we're, we're trying to see, we think people are not gonna get this. And they will usually show me a broadly appealing film that is not that hard to get. It's not like they're showing me something really weird.

• 2:47:14Griffin Newman?

  The thing I find fascinating about the, no, no, no, of course, we get it.

• 2:47:17David Sims?

  And they always have, like, and we know what she's going for, or we know what that guy wants, but like, does it make sense?

• 2:47:22Griffin Newman?

  And my experience with modern TV executives, while you're inside the belly of the beast, right, is like, either it is-

• 2:47:30Griffin Newman?

  Very clear that they assume everyone in the audience is an idiot and they're a genius.

• 2:47:34David Sims?

  The assumption, right.

• 2:47:35Griffin Newman?

  Right. And they can't be making things at their own level because their level of intellect does not reflect the target audience of the product. Or they clearly don't get it. Like, they literally just don't understand. You get into these arguments sometimes where you're like, oh, you actually just didn't get that's the same character.

• 2:47:52David Sims?

  Yeah, I mean, that's only happened to me once, but there was a movie, I don't know if I should say it, I probably will just say it, which is The Little Stranger, a good movie.

• 2:47:59Griffin Newman?

  Oh, yes.

• 2:48:00David Sims?

  Where I had a conversation with someone who worked for some, I forget if, I honestly forget if it was a studio or for a publicity house.

• 2:48:06Griffin Newman?

  But I remember you being like-

• 2:48:07David Sims?

  Where they were like, I had to explain the ending to them. Not no Patreon, I was like, no, but the ending was this. And they were like, ah. Ah. And I was like, oh, you don't know that that's, because the ending's kind of the whole movie.

• 2:48:17Griffin Newman?

  That movie got totally dumped for someone who had just directed a Best Picture nominee. And I remember you saying to me that like, you had had that conversation with them and were like, I think it's good. And they were like, really? It's good?

• 2:48:28David Sims?

  They were truly like, no, it's not.

• 2:48:29Griffin Newman?

  They were accused. This is news to me.

• 2:48:32David Sims?

  After the disposal of the body and all that, there's a scene, I think, first Barton writes the script. He puts plugs in his ears and he writes a script, right?

• 2:48:41Griffin Newman?

  He goes into a Coen's S flow state and just vomits it out.

• 2:48:43David Sims?

  And then he, a scene that's kind of pivotal is that he goes to celebrate by dancing. And he had, gets in this fight with these guys who are about to ship out to the war. Right?

• 2:48:53Speaker 05

  An impossibly square jawed man.

• 2:48:55David Sims?

  Yes.

• 2:48:56Speaker 05

  A hilarious, like, action figure boy.

• 2:48:58David Sims?

  Great casting, yeah.

• 2:48:59Griffin Newman?

  And so much of the movie at this point-

• 2:49:00David Sims?

  It's a scene where Barton is clearly like, I hate these fucking, you know, jocks. And you're like, the guy says like, hey, can I dance with her? I'm shipping out tomorrow. Like, you're like, oh, he's actually, he's sympathetic.

• 2:49:11Griffin Newman?

  The guy isn't a big dog in here at all.

• 2:49:12David Sims?

  Right.

• 2:49:12Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:49:13David Sims?

  Uh, but then he starts to get in a fight with them.

• 2:49:15Speaker 05

  And he's like, I am a writer, right? It's contempt for the audience.

• 2:49:17David Sims?

  And then that's where he's like, I serve the common man. And they all start beating him up.

• 2:49:20Speaker 05

  I'm a creative!

• 2:49:22Griffin Newman?

  It's like the worst, worst thing to say. The other part of it is, like, throughout the movie, there have been a bunch of, like, uh, antisemitic slurs thrown at Barton Fink almost always by other Jewish characters, right? It's like the self-loathing Jewish heart of- The entertainment industry that is sort of like, we are trash. And we need to have contempt for ourselves as we make art that reflects the goyam, what we want to be. Right? Uh, and yet, when these guys attack him, the slur, as it were, that they are throwing at him is 4A.

• 2:49:58David Sims?

  Yes.

• 2:49:59Griffin Newman?

  Right?

• 2:49:59David Sims?

  No, 4F.

• 2:50:00Griffin Newman?

  4F, I'm sorry. That they're constantly mocking like you're, as you were saying.

• 2:50:04David Sims?

  You're not good enough to go to war.

• 2:50:06Griffin Newman?

  This feeling that all the capable men are about to leave the culture.

• 2:50:10David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 2:50:10Griffin Newman?

  And we're gonna be left like with fucking self-loathing weasels like this guy.

• 2:50:15David Sims?

  Uh, and then, then the movie ends, uh, with its final, you know, long sequence of he returns to the hotel. The cops are there, they've read the script, one of them kinda likes it, one of them doesn't.

• 2:50:25Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:50:25David Sims?

  Uh, and then Goodman reappears, the, uh, walls catch fire. Uh, Goodman shoots the cops and then monologues at Barton.

• 2:50:36Griffin Newman?

  Can you pull up in the dossier, JJ had a good section about how they execute the hallway gag?

• 2:50:41David Sims?

  I can bring that up, but I'm.

• 2:50:42Speaker 05

  That was a dangerous.

• 2:50:44David Sims?

  It was probably a bit of shooting.

• 2:50:45Speaker 05

  Pain in the ass.

• 2:50:46Griffin Newman?

  They, in 1991, were like, well, obviously we'll have to do this with CGI, which I can't imagine how bad it would have looked at the time. But they were just like, I don't know how we could safely execute this.

• 2:50:56David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 2:50:57Griffin Newman?

  And it's why I want you to pull this up because it's just like astounding that they got it. It looks as good as it did and that no one died.

• 2:51:03Speaker 05

  Trying to find this, uh, is it, it's in the dossier?

• 2:51:05Griffin Newman?

  Yep.

• 2:51:05Speaker 05

  So while you're looking at, uh, he says, look upon me, right, this, I was, I'm thinking about like the bits that have been sort of, uh, taken magpie fashion by other movies. It's felt like witness me a bit, look upon me and I'll show you the life of the mind.

• 2:51:17Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:51:18Speaker 05

  And then there's this weird moment where, where John Goodman's character says Heil Hitler, right before he, he shoots the second guy. But I do not think that this is, uh, the key to unlocks anything, actually.

• 2:51:28David Sims?

  No, but it's like, that's what's happening in the moment is this monstrousness is creeping, you know, around the edges of the world. Um, uh, he also brings up the thing of the, from their first meeting, which is that Barton complained about the noise.

• 2:51:43Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:51:43David Sims?

  Yeah. And like, he's like, saying like that he's still wounded by this. Now, he did just shoot a bunch of people. His sympathies might be, you know, but like, that he's like, and you just complained about me making noise, like I'm, you know, right? Like he, he starts to speak aloud and castigate Barton, like Goodman, you know?

• 2:51:59Speaker 05

  And he says, you don't listen. That, that, that's kind of cool.

• 2:52:02Griffin Newman?

  And Goodman's a character who's like, ears are literally like causing him pain.

• 2:52:07Speaker 01

  Why am I not finding this? There's like goo leaking out of his ears.

• 2:52:11Griffin Newman?

  And he's going to doctors, he's trying to get this fucking thing figured out and yet like, he's still trying to listen to Barton. I mean, it's, it's real like acting is reacting shit. Where the shifts between Goodman doing his sort of like for both Coens runs. And then when he sort of pulls back and you can just fucking watch Goodman process whatever flowery shit Barton think is going on. There's such a universe of reaction within him.

• 2:52:38David Sims?

  It's a fricking amazing performance. We said that at the beginning.

• 2:52:41Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:52:41David Sims?

  Why can't I find this?

• 2:52:42Griffin Newman?

  Okay.

• 2:52:43David Sims?

  Where is it?

• 2:52:43Griffin Newman?

  Let me look it up.

• 2:52:44David Sims?

  Yeah. Maybe, I think you must have found it somewhere else. I think it's not in the dossier. No offense to JJ.

• 2:52:49Griffin Newman?

  Maybe it's on America's most trusted news source, Wikipedia?

• 2:52:53David Sims?

  Um, possibly.

• 2:52:54Speaker 01

  We skipped over the poolside scene.

• 2:52:56David Sims?

  Oh, yeah, the second Lerner scene where he's in the bathrobe.

• 2:52:59Speaker 01

  And I wanted to shout out John Polito.

• 2:53:01David Sims?

  We love him.

• 2:53:02Speaker 01

  He's, he's like, has that guy ever had hair?

• 2:53:06David Sims?

  He was born with a comb over and just kept.

• 2:53:08Griffin Newman?

  Here's the great thing. And so pin not to talk about this in the Miller's Crossing episode, but we'll just do it here because you asked the question.

• 2:53:14David Sims?

  He's in six Coen movies.

• 2:53:16Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 2:53:16David Sims?

  John Polito. We're gonna have a lot of wonderful time with Mr. Polito.

• 2:53:19Griffin Newman?

  Uh, he did, I believe, a random roles with the AV club about 10 years ago before his untimely passing.

• 2:53:25David Sims?

  Our perfect.

• 2:53:26Griffin Newman?

  Built for. Subject for that. And he said that he had known the Coens when he was younger. Maybe they had gone to see him in a play.

• 2:53:33David Sims?

  Okay.

• 2:53:34Griffin Newman?

  And he read the Miller's Crossing script and was like, I gotta play this guy. And have you seen Miller's Crossing before?

• 2:53:39Speaker 01

  No.

• 2:53:40David Sims?

  That's sort of his biggest role.

• 2:53:41Griffin Newman?

  You will have seen it last week, but he's playing more the Lerner type in that movie, right?

• 2:53:45Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 2:53:46Griffin Newman?

  And he reads it and is like, I gotta play this fucking part and has his agents submit him. And the Coens respond like, oh, he's not the right type. That's not what we're looking for. And to, as Polito tells it, in five years, he had gained a lot of weight and lost all of his hair. And he was like, the last time they had saw me was, I was a pretty boy. And they thought of me as this like Italian hunk.

• 2:54:09David Sims?

  Oh damn, he kinda was.

• 2:54:11Griffin Newman?

  And he was just like, I have so comfortably transformed into this different type of performer that I'm owning and loving. And I have to sell the Coen Brothers that I've become the perfect Coen Brothers character actor.

• 2:54:23David Sims?

  Which he sure had.

• 2:54:25Griffin Newman?

  But they were, they had him in their mind as like a pretty boy. So he did have that era, but yet the second he started looking like John Polito, that's when he really started working and never stopped.

• 2:54:34David Sims?

  It is from Wikipedia Griffin, but I'm, I'm sure this is true. They, they built an alternate hallway in a airplane hangar, putting gas jets behind the walls, obviously.

• 2:54:44Griffin Newman?

  And sort of incrementally with each passing step following him.

• 2:54:47David Sims?

  Correct. As Goodman's walking through the hall running through, someone on a catwalk is opening all the jets.

• 2:54:53Griffin Newman?

  I mean, just like precision timing shit.

• 2:54:55David Sims?

  Every take, they had to rebuild everything. They had a second hallway ready for pickups.

• 2:55:00Speaker 05

  Yeah. That is expensive. I was, I was thinking about like the production.

• 2:55:03David Sims?

  But my guess is like largely this production was not that expensive.

• 2:55:06Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 2:55:07David Sims?

  Beyond like costuming, like they're doing a lot of location stuff. The hotel is real.

• 2:55:10Speaker 05

  They chose their targets. I'm sure Dennis.

• 2:55:12David Sims?

  The room is not real.

• 2:55:13Griffin Newman?

  I think he just made the argument like it's worth spending the money on this. This is where to put the money.

• 2:55:19David Sims?

  And it sure is, cause it's burned into my memory.

• 2:55:22Griffin Newman?

  If this had 91 CGI flames, the movie would fall apart in the sequence.

• 2:55:27David Sims?

  It would be a bit of a bummer.

• 2:55:28Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 2:55:29David Sims?

  And so, or whatever post-production kind of like optic, I don't know what you would do.

• 2:55:33Griffin Newman?

  And it's not just that the imagery is so powerful, but it's also like watching Goodman crank his performance all the way up to the maximum volume while surrounded by real fire.

• 2:55:44David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 2:55:44Griffin Newman?

  It feels so real because you're like, he's actually having to do this surrounded by this level of heat.

• 2:55:51Speaker 05

  I'm sure it would have been a scary, it would have been, there would have been a long fucking safety meeting beforehand. Um, nobody would be quite sure if things were going to blow up or not. Is, is the set going to catch on fire? You'd be pretty, pretty amped.

• 2:56:04Griffin Newman?

  But like miracle of movies that they got it.

• 2:56:06Speaker 05

  After Goodman's incredible monologue, he does something that I think is really cool, which is he pulls the bed spring apart, you know, the bed frame apart and the camera zooms in on his face.

• 2:56:17David Sims?

  In what's become sort of a meme, almost, right?

• 2:56:21Griffin Newman?

  Sweaty, red-faced good man.

• 2:56:22David Sims?

  Training, yes, that particular image of him.

• 2:56:24Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, you're right.

• 2:56:25David Sims?

  Um, and then he does say, right, he visited the family in New York, and the package isn't his, and he goes like this. And that's the end of him.

• 2:56:36Griffin Newman?

  What's his last line? Isn't it Hal Hitler? Or it's right before that?

• 2:56:39David Sims?

  No, he says Hal Hitler before he shoots the guy.

• 2:56:41Griffin Newman?

  Oh, you're right, the second part.

• 2:56:42David Sims?

  His last thing is, uh, the package I gave you lied, it isn't mine. And then he just goes like this.

• 2:56:46Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:56:47David Sims?

  Uh, rocks, he should have won an Oscar, but I think he's too scary. I, that's my assumption, is that the Oscars were like, I don't know what to make of this. It's too weird.

• 2:56:55Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, yeah, I do, I do just think the movie was a little too heady for them at the time.

• 2:57:01David Sims?

  It is weird.

• 2:57:02Griffin Newman?

  It just feels like this guy was like, we, we talked about how quickly, like, Roseanne, season one, springboards to always springboards to the Flintstones. Like, uh, America just immediately was like, we're buying anything.

• 2:57:16David Sims?

  Yes.

• 2:57:17Griffin Newman?

  With this guy. He was clearly so beloved within the industry. It, it still is, but was right out of the gate.

• 2:57:24David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 2:57:24Griffin Newman?

  It just feels like an obvious, like, kind of.

• 2:57:27David Sims?

  But he only makes one movie next year, which is The Babe. Um, but then I feel like by a couple of years later, and obviously he's making Roseanne, uh, his sort of like, he's in a lot of stuff, career start, right? Where it's like Goodman's a pretty reliable, like, two, three, four movies a year guy.

• 2:57:42Griffin Newman?

  This is the era where they were like, I guess he has to be a leading man, right? I guess we have to construct vehicles around him. What's the right source material? What's the right projects? And then he, I think, like, transitions to an area of flexibility of like, I'll just do anything. I'm happy to play the lead. I'm happy to be in one scene. I'm happy to be the second guy.

• 2:58:04David Sims?

  And the Coens always use him.

• 2:58:04Griffin Newman?

  I'll do comedy and indie and drama and action. And yeah, he's just, he's fucking.

• 2:58:10Griffin Newman?

  Not only is he, you know, the classic Sims, when's he bad?

• 2:58:14David Sims?

  When is he bad?

• 2:58:15Griffin Newman?

  I was watching it last night and I was like, has this guy ever had a moment that is less than great?

• 2:58:20David Sims?

  You know, I

• 2:58:20Griffin Newman?

  Genuinely.

• 2:58:21David Sims?

  I saw him on Broadway in the front page.

• 2:58:25Griffin Newman?

  Uh huh.

• 2:58:25David Sims?

  Which was this sort of all star cast thing, uh, where it was like fucking Nathan Lane and, uh, John Slattery and Goodman. Where you're like, Jesus, any of these guys could headline a Broadway play.

• 2:58:38Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 2:58:38David Sims?

  You know, like what the fuck is going on? And it was that weird sort of phase in his life where he suddenly lost a lot of weight.

• 2:58:44Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 2:58:44David Sims?

  And his energy changed a lot.

• 2:58:46Griffin Newman?

  And seemed kind of rueful.

• 2:58:48David Sims?

  And it's not like he was bad in it, but you were, I was a member being let down by like, he was a little muted. And it was sort of like, that's weird in a play that's mostly people like screaming at the top of their heads.

• 2:58:56Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 2:58:57David Sims?

  Uh, or top of their lungs, sorry.

• 2:58:59Griffin Newman?

  I just, I

• 2:59:00David Sims?

  But I never, I have certainly never thought he was bad.

• 2:59:02Griffin Newman?

  I have never, I've not seen every single thing he's done, but I have not in my mind consciously witnessed a false moment from him.

• 2:59:11David Sims?

  Uh, what about Blue Brothers 2000?

• 2:59:13Griffin Newman?

  I think he is good in it. I rewatched it recently.

• 2:59:16David Sims?

  I believe you.

• 2:59:17Speaker 05

  You guys see everything.

• 2:59:18Griffin Newman?

  Um, well, I

• 2:59:20David Sims?

  I want to say this.

• 2:59:21Griffin Newman?

  Twice in theaters.

• 2:59:21David Sims?

  I've not seen Blue Brothers 2000.

• 2:59:23Griffin Newman?

  And I watched it like six months ago. I was like, I, it's time to reassess.

• 2:59:27Speaker 05

  Well, to an extent, David, it's your, it's your job, right? So I'm, I'm always, you always seem to see everything.

• 2:59:32David Sims?

  Right now it is my job.

• 2:59:33Griffin Newman?

  Right. I'm just sick.

• 2:59:35David Sims?

  Yeah, you're doing great.

• 2:59:36Speaker 05

  But it's hard, it is hard to, to, to keep up with movies with children and, and I sympathize, David.

• 2:59:40David Sims?

  Well, that's true, but you just have to, in my opinion, when you're a parent, you can't, you do have space for a kind of like one extracurricular thing, basically. It's kind of what it is that you pick, right? I don't know. Um, the final two scenes, coda scenes are so, so good. Michael Lerner in his like Mussolini costume where he's like had a general costume rigged up for him.

• 2:59:59Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 3:00:00David Sims?

  And he's, that's when he's turned on Fink where he's like, this is too arty farty.

• 3:00:04Speaker 05

  Good side gag when he turns around because you think he's in a, a tan suit and then suddenly he's covered in metal.

• 3:00:08David Sims?

  It's so funny.

• 3:00:10Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 3:00:10David Sims?

  And in a days after being chewed out for his whatever terrible script, uh, he goes to the beach. He sees the lady from the painting. Uh, he's got the box. And she goes like this, you know, and that's it.

• 3:00:25Speaker 05

  Anyway, he says, you're very beautiful. Are you in the pictures? And she says, don't be silly.

• 3:00:31Speaker 05

  And I had a screw, I had a false memory that what she says is, don't be silly. Nothing good comes of the pictures.

• 3:00:37David Sims?

  That would be way too obvious.

• 3:00:39Speaker 05

  Yeah, it's like, but I wrote, that's what I took away, actually, was like.

• 3:00:42Griffin Newman?

  It is the takeaway.

• 3:00:43Speaker 05

  Yeah, sure. No, I think this movie is about how writing is fun and easy and pictures are easy breezy and right? It's good.

• 3:00:51Griffin Newman?

  Hollywood. I mean, they.

• 3:00:53Speaker 05

  It's no business like show business.

• 3:00:54Griffin Newman?

  There's no business like show business. They talk about it. A lot of the quotes that JJ pulled up in the dossier is they're just like, a lot of the stuff just comes out of us organically. Like, it does feel like so much of their incubation process is they start to hone in on a couple of things they find interesting. And it's like, huh, that's an interesting historical moment. This is an interesting place. What about a character like this? What if we wrote for this guy? And then they get to a point where they have like eight elements they find compelling. And then they're just like, let's just see where it goes. And there's an episode of, of course, my favorite web series, The Russo Brothers Pizza Film School.

• 3:01:30Speaker 05

  Sure.

• 3:01:30Griffin Newman?

  In which they have Josh Brolin on. This is, the Russo Brothers have a show where they interview people who worked on movies and break down storytelling and screenplays. And they are guys who think about storytelling in a pretty formulaic way.

• 3:01:40Speaker 05

  Sure.

• 3:01:41Griffin Newman?

  They, they are proud of how much they feel like they have figured out the scheme of how to make stories.

• 3:01:45David Sims?

  But the first movie they ever made, Welcome to Colin Wood, is a, you know, very, very straightforward Coen Brothers-y kind of movie.

• 3:01:51Griffin Newman?

  Big Deal on Madonna Street. It's very Coen-y, right? And they're talking to, they didn't, unsurprisingly, the Coen Brothers did not want to go on Pizza Film School, but Josh Brolin did. And they did a No Country episode with them. And they were trying to apply their screenplay logic math, right? And being like, look, it doesn't seem like it, but if you actually break apart the script and you stopwatch it, there is this very deliberate construction. And Josh Brolin was just like, look, I've worked with them a couple of times. I've talked to them a lot. They do not think that way.

• 3:02:21Speaker 05

  Right, right.

• 3:02:21Griffin Newman?

  They, they just like, they start on page one and they get to the end and they write what's interesting to them. And they are not thinking about. What it would take to keep the audience invested, or how you're swinging their alliances, or any of these sorts of things. I think so much of their magic is just they know how to make every single scene interesting.

• 3:02:41David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 3:02:41Griffin Newman?

  Even with these movies that are oddly shaped.

• 3:02:43David Sims?

  Does not feel like a fatty movie.

• 3:02:44Griffin Newman?

  That are hard to identify. They're able to just always isolate and circle what is the inherent drama and comedy of this scene in a way that is really playable, that is surrounded by them working with the best crafts people in the world. Where you're just on board, leading in, trying to figure out what the fuck is going on.

• 3:03:05David Sims?

  Yeah, I agree. I think they're organically and multifariously excellent.

• 3:03:10Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 3:03:11David Sims?

  Film was at 91Can. Big competition there, I would say, is Kieslowski's Double Life of Veronica, Lars von Trier's Europa.

• 3:03:20Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 3:03:21David Sims?

  Is Homicide, the mammoth movie, which is really good, Jungle Fever, Bill Duke's Rage in Harlem. There's good movies. There's not movies.

• 3:03:29Griffin Newman?

  Boys in the Hood played out of competition, I want to say.

• 3:03:31David Sims?

  There's other stuff like that, but it was in certain regard.

• 3:03:33Griffin Newman?

  Thelma and Louise was the closing film.

• 3:03:35David Sims?

  Right.

• 3:03:35Griffin Newman?

  It was a good year.

• 3:03:36David Sims?

  But it's not a lineup where you're like, oh damn. Like, it's a lineup where you're looking at it, you're like, well, Barton Fink is the best movie of these.

• 3:03:42Griffin Newman?

  No, we should acknowledge that Polanski was the head of the jury.

• 3:03:45David Sims?

  He was?

• 3:03:45Griffin Newman?

  And this is a very Polanski-inspired film, and I think it's part of why there was this backlash, unsurprisingly.

• 3:03:50David Sims?

  But it was a unanimous jury victory.

• 3:03:51Griffin Newman?

  Yes, it was.

• 3:03:51David Sims?

  And Lars von Trier. Lars von Trier made, said, "Thanks very much to the midget and to the rest of the jury," insulting Polanski.

• 3:03:59Griffin Newman?

  That's weird. That guy never says off-the-cuff stuff at Cannes Film Festival.

• 3:04:04David Sims?

  Film got, made $6 million in America, released by Fox, which means, of course, Barton Fink will be in Avengers: Doomsday.

• 3:04:13David Sims?

  He's joining the cast.

• 3:04:15Griffin Newman?

  He's gonna be one of the Spider-Man villains. You hear the strains of Tarder Burwell's score as the camera pans over to the chair.

• 3:04:22David Sims?

  It got very good reviews and three Oscar nominations, but certainly was most. More polarizing, I would say.

• 3:04:29Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, I mean, this is the rude era of Totoro kind of being snubbed for this. And then Quiz Show really is what should have been his, like, makeup nomination. And in both cases of these movies, there's kind of like the surprise, oh, they nominated this other guy instead. They nominated Michael Lerner instead of John Goodman. They nominated Paul Schofield instead of Totoro.

• 3:04:53David Sims?

  Rosenbaum and Hobermann, who are the great critics of their era, both hated it.

• 3:04:57Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 3:04:58David Sims?

  And sort of Hobermann sort of is, they both have this kind of like, what if this is Coens self-hating Jew shit? You know, they're both like picking at that very early on, which to me, again, I'm like, get over it. And to be clear, I deeply respect those men and they inspired me to the work that I do. But like, I think they're looking at it the wrong way.

• 3:05:17Griffin Newman?

  The thing that always happens with sort of prodigiously talented filmmakers, which is like, oh, we get it. You know how to make a movie. The craft is impeccable.

• 3:05:26David Sims?

  Right.

• 3:05:26Griffin Newman?

  But is that all this is? Some like whiz-bang contraption? Some like construction to impress us with your like knowledge of the medium? And I just, it still happens to this day. It always happens when people come out of the gate hot. And they have a couple of successes in a row and there starts to be a dialogue of like, are these people starting to make the case for entering the pantheon? There is always a percentage of the critical community, even more so now that it's just open to the fucking internet and social media.

• 3:05:54David Sims?

  Their arms.

• 3:05:54Griffin Newman?

  Who just go like, I need to take this guy down. We cannot put this new person on the same tier as like established masters.

• 3:06:02David Sims?

  A lot this year.

• 3:06:03Griffin Newman?

  And yet, to your point, when you're like, I feel like they are the greatest living filmmakers. Not you, because you have always been so open with us. But like increasingly, over the last four or five years, we will hear about filmmakers we admire who listen to the podcast. And we're like, holy shit, that person listens? That is crazy. And then we get in touch with them and the way we get in touch with you, part of it's the show's gotten bigger. They're more worried about there being more ears on it. But people will say like, I kind of feel uncomfortable coming on and talking about someone else's work.

• 3:06:35David Sims?

  Sure.

• 3:06:36Griffin Newman?

  I don't want to shit on stuff. And the flip side is. I don't want to like call dibs on a big movie because I'm expecting your guests want to hear an Alex Ross Perry style 20-page horror syllabus. And if I don't know the whole movie backwards and forward, should I come on?

• 3:06:53Speaker 05

  Right.

• 3:06:54Griffin Newman?

  It has been interesting and who knows, this is early in the series and things can change. But we've like circled back to filmmakers who have been weary for the last couple of years. And a lot of them are like, oh, I'll do the Coens.

• 3:07:04Speaker 05

  They want to jump in.

• 3:07:05Griffin Newman?

  There is.

• 3:07:05Speaker 05

  Because they're unimpeachably great.

• 3:07:07David Sims?

  Right, it's really.

• 3:07:08Speaker 05

  Yeah, you can't say like, I'm looking down on this movie.

• 3:07:12Griffin Newman?

  They are endlessly talkable movies.

• 3:07:13Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 3:07:14Griffin Newman?

  Open to like endless interpretations. And it also feels like even though they are still alive and still working, whether separately or together, they are on a different tier.

• 3:07:23Speaker 05

  Mm-hmm.

• 3:07:23Griffin Newman?

  It feels like they're basically accepted as like living masters now.

• 3:07:26Speaker 05

  They're in the pantheon, for sure.

• 3:07:28Griffin Newman?

  Right, not contemporaries in a way.

• 3:07:30David Sims?

  Before we play the box office game, we must acknowledge that jokingly or not, the Coens did to Josh Horowitz bring up the idea of Old Fink.

• 3:07:37Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 3:07:38David Sims?

  A sort of semi-jokey sequel where they were kind of like, he's in his, it's the 60s, he's, you know, he's.

• 3:07:45Griffin Newman?

  He's teaching at a liberal arts college.

• 3:07:47David Sims?

  Teaching at Berkeley and he ratted on everyone to Huac.

• 3:07:52Griffin Newman?

  It's his post-Huac shame.

• 3:07:54David Sims?

  And he like, Totoro has said like, I'm down, right, we have talked about it, at least jokingly.

• 3:08:02Griffin Newman?

  About 15 years ago, both parties said, we can't make it until he's a little older.

• 3:08:07David Sims?

  Right, now Totoro is having, not that Totoro is never not having a moment, but he is having a bit of a moment from Severance.

• 3:08:13Griffin Newman?

  Mm-hmm.

• 3:08:14David Sims?

  The Coens, it's time to get back together.

• 3:08:17Griffin Newman?

  It would be.

• 3:08:17David Sims?

  There's multiple things where they've been like, let's make a sequel, but they're kidding.

• 3:08:22Griffin Newman?

  But this is the only one I'd actually want to see. Like Totoro, of course, made his own weird Big Lebowski sidequel.

• 3:08:28David Sims?

  Yes.

• 3:08:29Griffin Newman?

  That no one was asking for.

• 3:08:30David Sims?

  Well, but that also was one of those projects that they would kind of joke about.

• 3:08:35Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 3:08:35David Sims?

  And the answer was, eh, we weren't really asking for this.

• 3:08:38Griffin Newman?

  Right, Old Fink feels like a real movie. That doesn't feel like a dumb pitch. I think it's, it's why everyone goes like, are they just fucking with us because they have a tendency to fuck with. The public in that way.

• 3:08:49David Sims?

  Right. Uh, yeah.

• 3:08:51Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 3:08:51David Sims?

  So anyway, that's out there.

• 3:08:53Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 3:08:54David Sims?

  Who knows?

• 3:08:54Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 3:08:55David Sims?

  But like I'm saying, Tudor is hot right now. Irv, we're all obsessed with Irv.

• 3:08:59Speaker 05

  I mean, they are very perverse, right? That's another thing I love about them.

• 3:09:02Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 3:09:03David Sims?

  Don't anything come. They got sex stuff going on? I remember. Minnesota brains of theirs.

• 3:09:08Speaker 05

  I remember before I really knew their work that well, like reading a foreword to, maybe it was that screenplay, but written by their editor. And I didn't know that they, they worked together under an assumed name.

• 3:09:19Griffin Newman?

  Roderick James.

• 3:09:20Speaker 05

  Yeah, Roderick James. And Roderick James was kind of dumping on like damning with faint praise.

• 3:09:25Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 3:09:25Speaker 05

  And being a bit anti Semitic about it.

• 3:09:28Griffin Newman?

  Right, they created this fake character. Don't, one of their movies, there's a commentary track where they hired an actor to play Roderick James, I think.

• 3:09:34Speaker 05

  And I think they, yeah, it was, I think it was the, the.

• 3:09:38Griffin Newman?

  Blood Simple.

• 3:09:39Speaker 05

  The director's cut of Blood Simple.

• 3:09:41Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 3:09:41Speaker 05

  And, and James talks about how it's better because there's less boring stuff in it.

• 3:09:45Griffin Newman?

  Right. That's the rare director's cut that is shorter because they went back to their first film and were like, we were fucking idiots. We know how to make this better now.

• 3:09:52David Sims?

  They famously, who knows if it's true or not, uh, when they got nominated as Roderick James for Fargo, we might bring this up on the Fargo episode, they were like, what do we do?

• 3:10:01Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 3:10:02David Sims?

  Like Roderick James has been nominated for an Oscar and they wanted to dress up Albert Finney in like a weird costume and have him be Roderick James, but then they didn't go through with it.

• 3:10:10Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 3:10:11David Sims?

  Uh, but anyway, the box office.

• 3:10:12Griffin Newman?

  Do you remember when adaptation was nominated and they were presenting the nominees and they actually showed two Charlie Kaufmans on the screen? They created a graphic.

• 3:10:19David Sims?

  God bless.

• 3:10:20Griffin Newman?

  For true.

• 3:10:20Speaker 05

  Oh wait, that was my year. Yeah.

• 3:10:21Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 3:10:22David Sims?

  Yeah, you were nominated. Who'd you guys lose to?

• 3:10:25Speaker 05

  The piano.

• 3:10:26David Sims?

  The pianist.

• 3:10:27Speaker 05

  The pianist, sorry, the pianist, not the piano. Yes, the pianist.

• 3:10:29David Sims?

  Somewhat of a surprising win.

• 3:10:31Griffin Newman?

  Funny to imagine though, in the same category, there is like Chris and Paul White showing two real brothers and then Charlie and Donald Kaufman showing a fake brother.

• 3:10:40David Sims?

  It's funny because, right, that, that. People thought the hours or Chicago would win.

• 3:10:45Speaker 05

  They definitely thought the hours. I tell you who thought the hours was gonna win was David Hare. Because he won everything up until that point.

• 3:10:50Griffin Newman?

  He had a Judy Davis moment.

• 3:10:52David Sims?

  Right. And, uh, right. Adaptation and About a Boy, the two best nominees in that category were probably kind of a pleasure to be nominated or whatever.

• 3:11:00Speaker 05

  That's true. Well, absolutely.

• 3:11:02David Sims?

  And, uh, and then The Pianist won, and that was the first sign of like, oh, this is, oh shit. You know, and then it won two other big Oscars.

• 3:11:09Griffin Newman?

  There was a wild energy to that night where for like three minutes you were like, the pianist is winning Best Picture. And it was shocking almost that it swung back to the presumed frontrunner.

• 3:11:19David Sims?

  And the guy gets up there and he's like, hey, Chicago. And you're like, I mean, Chicago's a B plus. All right. I guess let's go home.

• 3:11:25Speaker 05

  Bunch of people gyrating in lingerie.

• 3:11:27David Sims?

  How dare you. Chicago is pretty good.

• 3:11:30Speaker 05

  I think Adaptation should have won that year.

• 3:11:32David Sims?

  Well, it wasn't nominated, so that was the biggest.

• 3:11:34Griffin Newman?

  For screenplay, you're saying?

• 3:11:35David Sims?

  Oh, for screenplay. It would be an amazing, obviously, but for best adapted screenplay, Adaptation winning would have been pretty cool. They've given it a.

• 3:11:42Speaker 05

  It's about, it's freaking great.

• 3:11:44David Sims?

  Uh, he wins two years later for Eternal Sunshine, another good movie.

• 3:11:47Speaker 05

  Also very good.

• 3:11:48David Sims?

  Uh, no, that's also the year that Almodovar wins original screenplay, which was also surprising and also rocked.

• 3:11:54Griffin Newman?

  Didn't give him, Spain didn't nominate his movie?

• 3:11:58David Sims?

  Had not submitted him for foreign film because Spain gets in weird fights with him.

• 3:12:02Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 3:12:02David Sims?

  Uh, and, but then he got the surprise writing and directing. It was an incredible movie. One of his best movies. But then him winning was still shocking.

• 3:12:09Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 3:12:10David Sims?

  He did beat out Todd Haynes, which was a little sad because that was probably Haynes's shot.

• 3:12:14Griffin Newman?

  Yeah. Who are the other three?

• 3:12:15David Sims?

  Uh, Gangs of New York, which was probably not gonna win. Cox, Zalean, and Mullenergan.

• 3:12:19Griffin Newman?

  Most adaptation.

• 3:12:20David Sims?

  Yeah. Uh, Itumama Tambien, which was like a great nom, right?

• 3:12:24Griffin Newman?

  I guess that was, Gangs was a original?

• 3:12:26David Sims?

  This is original. This is what I'm saying, right? Gangs was classified as original because the book it's based on is a big fact book.

• 3:12:32Griffin Newman?

  And I guess they pulled so much from different areas.

• 3:12:35Speaker 05

  They made a lot of shit. I've read that book.

• 3:12:36David Sims?

  Uh, My Big Fact Requiting, Nia Vardala. So I think there was some thought of like, will that, will that get a win to acknowledge the like triumph of this movie? But then I think everyone was like, let's not be crazy. Like, come on, take it easy.

• 3:12:49Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 3:12:49David Sims?

  Not that big. This film came out August 23rd, 1991.

• 3:12:55David Sims?

  Seasonally appropriate.

• 3:12:56Griffin Newman?

  I was gonna say.

• 3:12:57David Sims?

  You want it to be muggy.

• 3:12:58Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 3:12:59David Sims?

  But not really when you want to release this movie. I don't know when you release this movie, but it's, these days would probably be more of a fall awards contender.

• 3:13:06Griffin Newman?

  They were just fucking hot off the cans heat. They were like, let's strike while the iron's muggy.

• 3:13:10David Sims?

  Uh, but it's opening, limited release, obviously, so it's not in our top 10. Number one at the box office, I'm sure Ben's seen it. I'm sure Griffin's seen it. Perhaps Chris has seen it. It's a satirical film.

• 3:13:21Griffin Newman?

  But you jumped to Ben first. You think this is in the Hosley canon.

• 3:13:25David Sims?

  Maybe.

• 3:13:26Griffin Newman?

  Satirical. 1991.

• 3:13:29David Sims?

  A spoof of, of, you know, famous Hollywood movies of the time.

• 3:13:34Griffin Newman?

  Is it Hot Shots Part Deux?

• 3:13:36David Sims?

  It's Hot Shots.

• 3:13:38Griffin Newman?

  Oh, the first one.

• 3:13:39David Sims?

  I've never seen the first one. That doesn't surprise me either, that, much like Under Siege and, uh, you know, whatever. Like, where like you got the sequel a lot because it was on TV more.

• 3:13:49Griffin Newman?

  I definitely watched Part Deux many, many times. And then I was like, I, if this is Part Deux, I can't imagine how good the first one is.

• 3:13:54David Sims?

  It's gonna be one half is good.

• 3:13:56Griffin Newman?

  I had not seen Top Gun.

• 3:13:58David Sims?

  Sure.

• 3:13:58Griffin Newman?

  And Hot Shots Part Deux is pulling in like 80 things. It's making fun of everything.

• 3:14:03David Sims?

  Hot Shots One is just a Top Gun.

• 3:14:04Griffin Newman?

  And I was like, I don't get any of this.

• 3:14:06David Sims?

  Oh, sure. Hot Shots, it's pretty funny.

• 3:14:09Griffin Newman?

  I watched, I watched the first one recently. It's funny, but two is better.

• 3:14:12David Sims?

  Yeah, well, two is a little more like, let's just be ridiculous, I feel like.

• 3:14:16Griffin Newman?

  It's a garbage plate.

• 3:14:16David Sims?

  Right.

• 3:14:17Griffin Newman?

  In a good way.

• 3:14:18David Sims?

  Number two at the box office. So, Chris, you don't care about Hot Shots? I haven't seen it. I didn't see it. Um, number two is a rom com, uh, movie star, I guess, rom com, uh, it's like, it's not a bad movie. It's all right.

• 3:14:33Griffin Newman?

  It's a movie star rom com, it's not a bad movie. It's 1991, it's a classic formula.

• 3:14:37David Sims?

  You know, uh, very, it's, it's got a bit of a TV vibe to it.

• 3:14:41Griffin Newman?

  It's not, it could, it could happen to you.

• 3:14:42David Sims?

  No, but, which is kind of an interesting movie.

• 3:14:45Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, it is kind of an interesting movie.

• 3:14:47David Sims?

  No, uh, you know, it's a, what if a big shot kind of got taken down a peg? You know, big city, small town movie.

• 3:14:55Griffin Newman?

  Oh, it's not Doc Hollywood?

• 3:14:56David Sims?

  It's Michael J. Fox and Doc Hollywood.

• 3:14:57Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 3:14:58David Sims?

  Doc Hollywood? Fun movie. It's just the classic, like, what if a big shot's car broke down in a small town?

• 3:15:06Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 3:15:06David Sims?

  That's like you can do it with anything.

• 3:15:09Griffin Newman?

  Well, this is the thing.

• 3:15:10David Sims?

  This time it's big shot doctor.

• 3:15:11Griffin Newman?

  10 years later.

• 3:15:12David Sims?

  And he's got to become like the community doctor to like earn his way out of.

• 3:15:16Griffin Newman?

  10 years later, they cracked the code and they said, wait a second.

• 3:15:18David Sims?

  Walk. I don't know. It doesn't. There's a, it makes sense. Don't worry. It's like Cars is Doc Hollywood.

• 3:15:24Griffin Newman?

  You're fucking stepping on.

• 3:15:25David Sims?

  Oh, I'm sorry.

• 3:15:26Griffin Newman?

  The joke I was gonna tee up. I was gonna say that 15 years later, they finally cracked the formula. And so get rid of the guy. Just make it car breaks down and car is stuck in a car.

• 3:15:33David Sims?

  It's like he crashes into a fence and they're like, you have to be a doctor for 30 hours of community service. To make back the cost of.

• 3:15:41Griffin Newman?

  The first Cars is so one to one Doc Hollywood. It's insane.

• 3:15:44David Sims?

  You know what, Ben? He kind of learns that like life at a slower pace with sort of like, you know, more sort of down to earth folk. Some appeal.

• 3:15:51Griffin Newman?

  Cause you know who plays.

• 3:15:53David Sims?

  Like before he was a guy in Hollywood who had sunglasses and he might kind of like look down the sunglasses, perhaps at a lady. And he's, he would be in a rush. He's in a rush. He's got a cellphone.

• 3:16:03Griffin Newman?

  This is why Cars is so smart. Cause what's faster than a race car? The ultimate rush. Um, Woody Harrelson basically plays the mater in that movie.

• 3:16:11David Sims?

  Uh, yes, Woody Harrelson is the, the folk. Who's the, who's the love interest?

• 3:16:15Griffin Newman?

  It's Julie Warner?

• 3:16:16David Sims?

  Julie Warner.

• 3:16:17Griffin Newman?

  Is playing sort of the Sally Carrera.

• 3:16:19David Sims?

  Right. Did not have a gigantic career.

• 3:16:21Griffin Newman?

  Yeah. Who's the Doc Hudson in that picture?

• 3:16:22David Sims?

  Uh, David Argen Stiers.

• 3:16:24Griffin Newman?

  Oh, of course.

• 3:16:24David Sims?

  Who's fun. It's a fun movie. It's a classic TV movie.

• 3:16:27Griffin Newman?

  Who would you say is the Sarge in the film?

• 3:16:28David Sims?

  Moving on to the third film, which is only covered, a very popular action film.

• 3:16:33Griffin Newman?

  Uh huh.

• 3:16:33David Sims?

  Been out for two months. It's a sequel. We certainly.

• 3:16:35Griffin Newman?

  Is it Terminator two judgment day?

• 3:16:37David Sims?

  Correct.

• 3:16:37Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 3:16:37David Sims?

  Good movie.

• 3:16:38Griffin Newman?

  The highest grossing film of the year.

• 3:16:39David Sims?

  That is a good movie. Number four at the box office is a movie I have vaguely heard of.

• 3:16:44Griffin Newman?

  Okay.

• 3:16:45David Sims?

  Um, it stars an Oscar winner. It's a drama.

• 3:16:48Griffin Newman?

  Hmm.

• 3:16:49David Sims?

  I think it's based loosely on like a real guy's memoir. Uh, he would have won in the eighties. Yeah, probably the last five or six years, but I think his career is starting to curdle.

• 3:16:58Griffin Newman?

  Okay.

• 3:16:59David Sims?

  I famously, a bit of a tough cookie, this actor.

• 3:17:02Griffin Newman?

  This actor is a bit of a tough cookie.

• 3:17:05David Sims?

  Oh, I feel like I know. What is it? If you guess this movie. No, I can't guess the movie, but is it George C. Scott? No, no. George C. Scott. He's already.

• 3:17:13Griffin Newman?

  No, he's with us.

• 3:17:14David Sims?

  No, no, no, George Scott's still with us, I think.

• 3:17:17Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, George Scott, uh, his final film is Angus, which is later.

• 3:17:21David Sims?

  He died in 1999. No, no, this is an actor. He was a huge asshole. I mean, but he was a big movie star. He was a good actor. Not Dreyfus, but you're close. Who's the other one?

• 3:17:29Griffin Newman?

  It's not Dreyfus, it's not Hackman, it's not Pacino.

• 3:17:31David Sims?

  From that era, who is a huge asshole?

• 3:17:33Griffin Newman?

  It's not John Voight.

• 3:17:33David Sims?

  No.

• 3:17:34Griffin Newman?

  Uh, who's, oh, is it William Hurt?

• 3:17:37David Sims?

  Yes, a man robbed of the opportunity to play the Red Hulk by mortality. Poor Mr. Hurt. And that's right, I'm gonna keep bringing up the Red Hulk, you can't stop me. The film is, the film is called-

• 3:17:48Griffin Newman?

  Can you tell the listeners what I got you for your birthday?

• 3:17:51David Sims?

  You got me a, it's sort of like a Pez dispenser, but for lollipops in the shape of the Red Hulk.

• 3:17:56Griffin Newman?

  It's like a lollipop protector. It's a plastic Red Hulk.

• 3:17:59David Sims?

  I guess so, it's like you could do a little lollipop and then like, right, store it away.

• 3:18:04Griffin Newman?

  I'm just mindful, you love sucking on a lolly, but your least favorite part is that once you start, you can't stop. There's no pause point.

• 3:18:08David Sims?

  So true.

• 3:18:09Griffin Newman?

  And I said, what if the skull of the Rolk?

• 3:18:11David Sims?

  We've been recording for so long.

• 3:18:12Griffin Newman?

  Could protect your lolly.

• 3:18:13David Sims?

  Is called The Doctor.

• 3:18:15Griffin Newman?

  Birthday present. You still haven't said thank you.

• 3:18:18David Sims?

  Thank you.

• 3:18:19Griffin Newman?

  Oh, you're welcome.

• 3:18:19David Sims?

  I definitely said thank you.

• 3:18:20Griffin Newman?

  It came from the heart.

• 3:18:21David Sims?

  Uh, the film was called-

• 3:18:22Griffin Newman?

  You were pretty drunk when I gave it to you. Oh, no, I gave it to you during the day.

• 3:18:24David Sims?

  I wasn't drunk. Uh, and I wasn't even that drunk at my birthday.

• 3:18:27Speaker 05

  How long are we running then? Are we, are we heading for record territory?

• 3:18:30Griffin Newman?

  Gentlemen's 310.

• 3:18:31David Sims?

  It's a long time.

• 3:18:31Speaker 05

  Yeah, we're getting, yeah, we're getting there.

• 3:18:33David Sims?

  Is called The Doctor. Has anyone heard of this film?

• 3:18:36Griffin Newman?

  No.

• 3:18:36David Sims?

  Plays like a doctor.

• 3:18:37Griffin Newman?

  Never heard of that.

• 3:18:38David Sims?

  What's it about?

• 3:18:38Griffin Newman?

  What if there was?

• 3:18:39David Sims?

  Fucking doctor. Uh, it's God, William Hurt, Christine Lottie, Tinkin's there.

• 3:18:45Griffin Newman?

  Okay.

• 3:18:45David Sims?

  Perk, Inns, Elizabeth, that is.

• 3:18:48Griffin Newman?

  Oh.

• 3:18:48David Sims?

  Adam Arkin.

• 3:18:50Griffin Newman?

  Yep.

• 3:18:50David Sims?

  I don't know. Uh, whatever. It's a movie, it's one of those things where it's like, the movie, uh, got fine reviews and made forty million dollars. And you're like, forty million dollars for a movie I've never heard of that's clearly stupid?

• 3:19:01Speaker 05

  In 1991, that's amazing.

• 3:19:03Griffin Newman?

  I've been going through this thing where like, fucking, uh, I watched all the vacation movies because of doing European vacation with Heckling, right? I didn't, I hadn't watched The Goldstein Daily when we had recorded that episode, watched it after the fact.

• 3:19:14David Sims?

  What'd you think?

• 3:19:15Griffin Newman?

  I thought it was okay. It's got moments.

• 3:19:16David Sims?

  I really think the first twenty minutes, you're like, hell, yeah, this is funny. And then you just kind of lose it.

• 3:19:21Griffin Newman?

  There's stuff. It's wonky. Uh, and it's emblematic of a crisis point for, uh, studio live action films. And I think of that movie as being seen as a big disappointment and like a big failure.

• 3:19:30David Sims?

  And then you look up what it made.

• 3:19:31Griffin Newman?

  And you look at it and you're like, it made a fucking a hundred and fifty million dollars worldwide?

• 3:19:35David Sims?

  Not bad.

• 3:19:35Griffin Newman?

  People were like pulling their hair out of the fact it only ended up at like sixty-seven domestic or whatever?

• 3:19:40David Sims?

  Number five at the box office.

• 3:19:41Griffin Newman?

  He's a proper.

• 3:19:42David Sims?

  Is a neo noir thriller. It is a director who we could cover, but he's made a lot of movies at this point.

• 3:19:49Griffin Newman?

  Friedkin?

• 3:19:50David Sims?

  No, Friedkin's dead, so he's, he can't make any more movies. This guy's alive.

• 3:19:55Griffin Newman?

  Oh, oh, oh, oh, well, it's not Soderbergh.

• 3:19:58David Sims?

  No, not. Adrian. That line. Dear career, not Adrian Lyne. The fact that it's a neo noir is a bit of a trick.

• 3:20:05Griffin Newman?

  That's not his main.

• 3:20:06David Sims?

  No, it's his second film. And I do feel like it's him being like, hey, I got more in me than what you think I do. But he did make a lot of more epic, costumey stuff.

• 3:20:17Griffin Newman?

  Interesting, but he.

• 3:20:18David Sims?

  He's also an actor and he's also. Ron Howard. This film, not Ron Howard.

• 3:20:21Griffin Newman?

  Made too many films at this, but he's also the star of this.

• 3:20:24David Sims?

  He sure is.

• 3:20:25Griffin Newman?

  And he's made a lot of them. It's not a Clint Eastwood, obviously. He's a, he's an.

• 3:20:29David Sims?

  Mel Gibson.

• 3:20:30Griffin Newman?

  Director who's made a lot of movies. That's interesting. Cause a lot of these guys were throwing out direct infrequently.

• 3:20:37David Sims?

  He, in the 2020s, has already made four movies and he's got another one coming.

• 3:20:41Griffin Newman?

  And does he still star in most of them or does he mostly?

• 3:20:44David Sims?

  He is pulling back on starring in all of them.

• 3:20:47Griffin Newman?

  Okay.

• 3:20:47David Sims?

  He did recently make a franchise for himself.

• 3:20:50Griffin Newman?

  He did recently.

• 3:20:51David Sims?

  He is the star of, and he made three movies.

• 3:20:53Griffin Newman?

  He recently made a.

• 3:20:56David Sims?

  His mind.

• 3:20:56Griffin Newman?

  And he directed all of those?

• 3:20:58David Sims?

  He sure did.

• 3:21:00Griffin Newman?

  Who is this guy?

• 3:21:02David Sims?

  You know him. You love him. He recently won an Academy Award.

• 3:21:05Griffin Newman?

  He recently won. Academy.

• 3:21:08David Sims?

  Hollywood's highest honor.

• 3:21:09Griffin Newman?

  Lead or support it?

• 3:21:11David Sims?

  Screenplay.

• 3:21:13Griffin Newman?

  It's Kenneth Branagh?

• 3:21:14David Sims?

  Kenneth Branagh.

• 3:21:16Griffin Newman?

  And it's dead again?

• 3:21:17David Sims?

  The film is Dead Again with Emma Thompson.

• 3:21:20Griffin Newman?

  This is a perfect example.

• 3:21:21David Sims?

  Really good movie, like a really fun. Yeah, it's a super fun movie. Fun, early 90s thriller.

• 3:21:26Griffin Newman?

  That is a perfect example of everything you just described. You're like, this is impossible. No one possibly fulfills all the.

• 3:21:32David Sims?

  The craziest thing is that Branagh's like, I'm going to direct my ass off. And it's like, and by the way, I'm sneaking in those Poirot movies. You guess who the star is? You'll look at Adam.

• 3:21:42Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 3:21:42David Sims?

  By the way, very nice man. I. Incredible amount of energy as well.

• 3:21:47Griffin Newman?

  Clearly, he's got fucking five movies a day.

• 3:21:49David Sims?

  You see Tenet, him doing those monologues? He's great.

• 3:21:54Griffin Newman?

  Do you know he was directing two Poirot's while filming?

• 3:21:57David Sims?

  Doing Tenet?

• 3:21:58Griffin Newman?

  Like mid.

• 3:21:59David Sims?

  When he's doing phone calls, right? He's like.

• 3:22:02Griffin Newman?

  He's got like a little.

• 3:22:02David Sims?

  He's having to the nail of scenes and then just cut around it.

• 3:22:05Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 3:22:06David Sims?

  Venice needs to be more haunted. I'll talk to you in 10 minutes. Dead Again, fun movie. Other movies in the top 10, we've got the Jean-Claude Van Damme twin picture Double Impact, which I've never seen.

• 3:22:19Griffin Newman?

  Me neither.

• 3:22:19David Sims?

  Bet you it's good. We've got the Mickey Rourke sort of tail end of his movie star career Harley Davidson and the Marlboro Man.

• 3:22:28Griffin Newman?

  He always cites that as the movie that single-handedly killed his career, to which I would say, I think you, there were a couple steps in that process.

• 3:22:35David Sims?

  Yeah, there's a behavior as well that you might want to point to.

• 3:22:38Griffin Newman?

  One bad movie and suddenly people stop picking up the phone. Maybe you were like, also the punches you were throwing.

• 3:22:45David Sims?

  There is Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves, another big hit of that year. There's a comedy I've never heard of called Pure Luck starring Martin Short and Danny Glover.

• 3:22:53Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 3:22:53David Sims?

  Wow. It's like a cop comedy?

• 3:22:55Griffin Newman?

  It's a French director.

• 3:22:56David Sims?

  Yes, Nadia Tass.

• 3:22:58Griffin Newman?

  Had a bit of a Barton Fink experience and has spent the last 25 years, 30 years being like, this is why Hollywood is bad, relating everything back to her experience.

• 3:23:06Speaker 05

  I make my film Pure Luck, no one understands.

• 3:23:08Griffin Newman?

  I, yes. I believe it's a buddy cop movie.

• 3:23:10David Sims?

  Yeah, looks like it.

• 3:23:11Griffin Newman?

  Or Glover's a cop.

• 3:23:13David Sims?

  Glover's a cop, for sure.

• 3:23:14Griffin Newman?

  And Martin Short's like a suspect or a witness or whatever.

• 3:23:18David Sims?

  He's a psychologist.

• 3:23:19Griffin Newman?

  But the whole thing is that he's got like cosmically bad luck, that like cartoonishly bad things keep happening.

• 3:23:26David Sims?

  Hmm. Uh oh. Uh, number 10 at the box office is a film called Defenseless. What is that?

• 3:23:32Griffin Newman?

  No idea.

• 3:23:33David Sims?

  1991 film called Defenseless, directed by Martin Campbell, starring Barbara Hershey and Sam Shepard.

• 3:23:38Griffin Newman?

  Hmm.

• 3:23:39David Sims?

  Uh, legal thriller.

• 3:23:40Griffin Newman?

  Okay.

• 3:23:41David Sims?

  I don't know. Got bad reviews. Uh, because you need a defense. You need a legal defense.

• 3:23:45Griffin Newman?

  If you are defenseless.

• 3:23:46David Sims?

  If you're in love and if you're, you're defenseless against someone's charms.

• 3:23:49Griffin Newman?

  Stakes are high.

• 3:23:50David Sims?

  Yeah, very good. All done. Gotta pee again because we've recorded for so long.

• 3:23:55Griffin Newman?

  I need to pee as well and I've just been holding it in and I'm not looking for applause. I just want people to know that. Chris, anything else?

• 3:24:02Speaker 05

  Uh, let me see. Do I, do I have anything to add? Um, no, I'm just really glad to be back on the main feed.

• 3:24:09Griffin Newman?

  I just feel like you go through these cycles. And by the way, always happy to receive these texts and give you pep talks, which are often just like, Chris, you're a good guy and you do good work. This industry is frustrating. I don't think you should give up. Uh, but, but you will, you will go through these cycles and they will both be in terms of like, the nature of the industry and your experiences working on things, but also you, you have, uh, uh, one of the strongest moral backbones of anyone I know. I truly mean that. And you often will just text and be like, I am just so disgusted by like, this behavior I'm seeing, or this attitude, or this thing, and I just don't know if I want to be around these people.

• 3:24:51Speaker 05

  Uh, I want to be in Hollywood, but not of it if possible, but, um, uh, yeah, let, let me see what, what, actually, you know, when I, I, I think I've been in kind of a meta cycle of like 15 years ish, kind of in, in the wilderness in a way of like trying to react to that, um, you know, kind of devastating experience of the golden compass. And kind of always sort of over hyper correcting in some, some other weird way. And I think the one movie that, that I really think like, that is a good movie is, um, is A Better Life.

• 3:25:19Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 3:25:19Speaker 05

  The, the movie that Demi Bisho starred in, which, which is unfortunately still relevant. Um, and, uh, and I'm like, okay, okay. That, that was a good one. That was a good one.

• 3:25:28Griffin Newman?

  But I, I mean, I love Operation Finale.

• 3:25:30Speaker 05

  Thank you very much.

• 3:25:30Griffin Newman?

  You, it is part of what is so, uh, unique and fascinating about your exact position is you, like have spent the last 15 years in a very successful wilderness.

• 3:25:42Speaker 05

  Funk.

• 3:25:43Griffin Newman?

  Right. Like, you know, but it's, it speaks to the weird reality of this industry of like, you constantly are like looking in the mirror and going like, what am I doing? And yet from the outside, because I know you're a real person who just like the mere kind of credits or like, box office numbers does not make you feel good. It's right. You're striving for things and you have things you want to say and whatever. But it's like that, that this is an industry that can make you feel like a failure when you're a success.

• 3:26:11Speaker 05

  It is kind of funny.

• 3:26:12Griffin Newman?

  And that forces failures to pretend they're successes, you know?

• 3:26:15Speaker 05

  Right. No, it is, it is kind of funny that way. And, and I, um, Um, yeah, yeah, it's very strange. I, I, I think, I think what I've come to is that in order to, to actually do the thing that, that I want to do, whatever that may be, it's probably going to be independent, um, and, and very small scale. Um, and actually, you know, I, I had a call with Alex Ross Perry the other day. He was very kind about this in terms of sort of, who I only know via the, via Blank Check. So there's this kind of Blank Check, uh, extended.

• 3:26:40Griffin Newman?

  I remember.

• 3:26:41David Sims?

  You guys met when we did the

• 3:26:43Griffin Newman?

  Big Nice.

• 3:26:43David Sims?

  Commentary.

• 3:26:44Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 3:26:44Griffin Newman?

  You were leaving from doing the Rogue One commentary.

• 3:26:47Speaker 05

  And I didn't get to play the, uh, the Keep Role Playing game, which was a

• 3:26:50Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, someday.

• 3:26:51Speaker 05

  Yeah, someday we'll get it back together.

• 3:26:53Griffin Newman?

  He's someone I'm also having these fucking text conversations with all the time where we're just like, we feel like we missed the industry. Like, it's like the fucking Sopranos thing of like, you ever feel like you got in too late?

• 3:27:04Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 3:27:05Griffin Newman?

  Like, the best of it was over, right?

• 3:27:06Speaker 05

  Well, you want to go back to the studio system.

• 3:27:08Griffin Newman?

  Clearly.

• 3:27:09Speaker 05

  Apparently.

• 3:27:09Griffin Newman?

  Yeah. I just want the trains running on time.

• 3:27:12Speaker 05

  I'd like to go to the seventies, maybe?

• 3:27:13Griffin Newman?

  That's where I really want to be. That, I think that was

• 3:27:16Speaker 05

  That was a more exciting time.

• 3:27:18Griffin Newman?

  Right balance between the two extreme poles of what the industry has been.

• 3:27:22Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 3:27:23Griffin Newman?

  And there was a little bit of the best of both worlds, but it is, I mean, I'll, I, I talk about this with like, all of my friends of sort of my generation where it's just like, we feel like we got in just in time to watch it all get gutted.

• 3:27:36Speaker 05

  Hmm.

• 3:27:37Griffin Newman?

  That like, the dream jobs we thought we were aspiring to, not even could we not get them, but they stopped existing.

• 3:27:43Speaker 05

  Well, but, you know, I take a lot of energy from, from you guys and from this podcast, I gotta say, uh, that, that like

• 3:27:48David Sims?

  All right, that's enough. We don't need any plays.

• 3:27:50Griffin Newman?

  You don't want to share this.

• 3:27:52David Sims?

  Deflating.

• 3:27:53Speaker 05

  Um, no, but the decade of dreams and, and like, it's time for, it's time for the, you know, uh, members of the extended family to come back and, you know, and, and attest to

• 3:28:02Griffin Newman?

  Well, you're welcome back any, anytime.

• 3:28:04Speaker 05

  Thank you very much.

• 3:28:05David Sims?

  And hopefully you come back sooner.

• 3:28:07Speaker 05

  I, I would like to very much.

• 3:28:09Griffin Newman?

  Did you notice, by the way?

• 3:28:11Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 3:28:11David Sims?

  Oh, he saw it.

• 3:28:12Speaker 05

  The application to retire bit is up on the wall.

• 3:28:15Griffin Newman?

  It's on the wall framed.

• 3:28:17Speaker 05

  Although I do feel like, really still feel really guilty about that. But we had to, I think, I think I couldn't come up with any more cool shit for Night Eggs. I was, I was, I was dancing as fast as I could.

• 3:28:27Griffin Newman?

  There are rumblings that Night Eggs might be going back redevelopment. Yeah.

• 3:28:30David Sims?

  Yeah, we'll, we'll see. You know, but I think we, it was a good time to put it down and we could always pick it back up when the time comes.

• 3:28:37Speaker 05

  Yeah, with the proper formalities.

• 3:28:39Griffin Newman?

  Chris, I believe by the time this episode comes out, the full season of Murder Bot will be out there. August 3rd.

• 3:28:47Speaker 05

  August 3rd, it will have, yeah, it will have already been seen, but, but binge, binge away, please. I really like it. I think it's good.

• 3:28:56Griffin Newman?

  I, you very kindly invited Ben and I to the premiere.

• 3:28:59Speaker 05

  And David, but I knew that he was gonna get it.

• 3:29:02Griffin Newman?

  You know what's a crazy Decade of Dreams thing? When we met you, you had three kids and David had zero. Now he's caught up to you.

• 3:29:11Griffin Newman?

  Dead time.

• 3:29:12Speaker 05

  Well, I know David is really against the great replacement, you know.

• 3:29:16David Sims?

  I had a dinner with you and your wonderful wife and Griffin. Like the day that, or the day before I was getting sleep training my first child.

• 3:29:23Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 3:29:23David Sims?

  And it's a dinner that really lives in my memory because it was also, no, I'm serious. Because it was also an early, like, COVID, didn't, like, it's like, I hadn't had dinner with people much.

• 3:29:33Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 3:29:33David Sims?

  Like, we were just starting to.

• 3:29:34Griffin Newman?

  That was maybe my first dinner after having my fucking gallbladder surgery.

• 3:29:39David Sims?

  Yes, right.

• 3:29:40Speaker 05

  You were still dealing with that.

• 3:29:43Griffin Newman?

  It was like the first night out, I remember where it's like, I can eat a variety of foods again. And the other big thing I remember that night was I was waiting to get a message back from my doctor about whether or not I was allowed to drink alcohol yet.

• 3:29:55Speaker 05

  And the word, did the word came, come in?

• 3:29:57Griffin Newman?

  It didn't, and I was like fucking white knuckling. And I was like, I can't, like, fuck, four more days. Before my system can process it.

• 3:30:04Speaker 05

  Oh, man.

• 3:30:05Griffin Newman?

  Uh, yeah, look at, look at all the Deca Dreams memories.

• 3:30:08Speaker 05

  The time.

• 3:30:09Griffin Newman?

  Look, look at the time. Uh, but people should watch My Reboot. Uh, Ben and I got to see the first two episodes. It's, it's very, uh, I feel like it exists on a bit of, uh, Verhoeven.

• 3:30:20Speaker 05

  Uh huh.

• 3:30:20Griffin Newman?

  Uh, continuum, but with maybe a little bit of that White's Brothers feeling, a little bit more of that heart.

• 3:30:25Speaker 05

  It does have some heart. Uh, Scar, Scarzy is, is very good in it.

• 3:30:29Griffin Newman?

  He is, he's quite excellent in it. And I will say this, he's a pretty good looking guy.

• 3:30:33Speaker 05

  He's fairly good looking.

• 3:30:34Griffin Newman?

  It was pretty absurd to watch him on a big screen and then see him in person and be like, both. Make me feel like a piece of shit.

• 3:30:41Speaker 05

  He is a specimen.

• 3:30:42Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 3:30:42Speaker 05

  All right, we must be done. Yeah, this is, uh, in the top 10 longest episodes.

• 3:30:47Griffin Newman?

  Hell, yeah.

• 3:30:47Speaker 05

  I don't like that that's a not. I'm so happy. But I actually think that the fan, the fans appreciate it. No, I mean, I love, I love this movie and I wanted a long episode.

• 3:30:55Griffin Newman?

  And that's who we do it for. We do it for the common people. It's podcasting of the people.

• 3:31:00Speaker 05

  For you, Don, the working stiff out there.

• 3:31:03Griffin Newman?

  Chris, thank you for being here.

• 3:31:04Speaker 05

  Thank you.

• 3:31:04Griffin Newman?

  Look forward to having you on again much sooner.

• 3:31:06Speaker 05

  Everybody.

• 3:31:06Griffin Newman?

  Thank you all for listening. Please remember to rate, review and subscribe. Uh, tune in next week for Harga. Oh, no, I'm sorry. The Hudson proxy, my favorite with guest 2BD.

• 3:31:20Griffin Newman?

  Yeah. And as always, we're just looking for a little bit of that Blank Check feeling.

• 3:31:31Speaker 02

  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 Bardy Salinas. And our associate producer is AJ McKeon. This show is mixed and edited by AJ McKeon and Alan Smithy. Research by JJ Birch. Our theme song is by Lain Montgomery and the Great American Novel, with additional music by Alex Mitchell. Artwork by Joe Bowen, Holly Moss and Pat Reynolds. Our production assistant is Minic. Special thanks to David Cho, Jordan Fish and Nate Patterson for their production help. Head over to blankcheckpod.com for links to all of the real nerdy shit. Join our Patreon Blank Check Special Features for exclusive franchise commentaries and bonus episodes.

• 3:32:16Speaker 02

  Follow us on social at Blank Check Pod. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter, Checkbook on Substack. This podcast is created and produced by Blank Check Productions.