The Tragedy of Macbeth with Dana Schwartz

You can’t say “Macbeth” in a theater, but you can certainly say it on a podcast! Dana Schwartz joins us (in her third Blank Check appearance on a witch-centered film) to talk about Joel Coen’s The Tragedy of Macbeth, the first solo-directorial effort from a Coen Brother after their amicable split. We’re debating the success of Frances McDormand and Denzel Washington’s performances, learning about the history of Scottish kings, and discovering Ben Hosley’s family crest in the first Blank Check episode devoted to a work of Shakespeare. Trust us, this isn’t homework. It’s fun! Listen to Noble Blood https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/noble-blood/id1468332063 Listen to Hoax https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/hoax/id1829403844 Read Anatomy A Love Story https://www.google.com/aclk?sa=L&ai=DChsSEwi-1tSt-oORAxXmU38AHReCNE4YACICCAEQABoCb2E&co=1&ase=2&gclid=CjwKCAiAuIDJBhBoEiwAxhgyFjt5DZgbua0sK_GLCQ5u31eeLbJCdUuu8mVUYsrIgBf-APFHmMkWPhoC1l4QAvD_BwE&cid=CAASugHkaA_xBoT_DHPQ8GK4_KD-fSNFnspLEwhzJEKecbFjShyuGUF9-vZvUvdjrhIXl9pvgRkIbyXdNsIpAVSzHyo9xk5kOh2PdVAGaCUNEdxQdq0aLmtvlzKB7foid2bJkgUJyeTQOyQpesxldvZ0OMhETOlXqDoNgtF6Nwx3vP-GbQ9gojRPrCmKCvSOmINXhnjeDiXXP84WosFAGh3yuyalwtUsnqCl14_fQRhx8CA-lO-tHJ9m87Sa5rE&cce=2&category=acrcp_v1_33&sig=AOD64_2n5OyqHjYuAWfWNiQgSd2SvANsoQ&q&nis=4&adurl&ved=2ahUKEwidyM2t-oORAxVek2oFHXzKIpsQ0Qx6BAggEAE Pre-order The Arcane Arts https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/771398/the-arcane-arts-by-s-d-coverly Read If Roast Beef Could Fly https://www.google.com/aclk?sa=L&ai=DChsSEwiRqpOM-YORAxXxsgMAHa0wBhUYACICCAEQABoCb2E&co=1&ase=2&gclid=CjwKCAiAuIDJBhBoEiwAxhgyFuuz5H3CEW6GKTWBRs-EyZHH5bkNvWGzK3ieysbHIAgwZFE0ZPUZyRoC41QQAvD_BwE&cid=CAASugHkaJFYLqweTqNnI6NCZkXEFxuGthG_GgQ_0uAPIYWz1YScmOCunMJgTgI-Q-ZhSuVdjH9zZRsuHdqj9ubc3JnAqa9OV3dUlCDxm_5_5hinMzSRYGhtEBGrbTFhl2c8STAWLF8k1D_giluUviowB4e7OtnYO5l86ZsU9cz6RDU9e9rGl0sIYL70CzZVzjARgMQ8yKW-lZfpbiq5ZdLJXZ7ts8EhI3ekGU3Nic6haL3n2twy8ouRkLDIEbc&cce=2&category=acrcp_v1_33&sig=AOD64_1GAfekMqkXdPsaw8PIlnsMvjgGPw&q&nis=4&adurl&ved=2ahUKEwjSzIqM-YORAxUIkmoFHWOrJEYQ0Qx6BAgMEAE Check out Forbidden Planet https://www.fpnyc.com/?srsltid=AfmBOoogDPpbkMQOrPqVwqY7w7WDasFXkNRVc4MQye8Nnz65SRIS0WCO Watch Jefferson Mays’ A Christmas Carol https://tv.apple.com/us/movie/charles-dickens-a-christmas-carol/umc.cmc.267zfa4h0yg4oxnvpznqh6gmp Sign up for Check Book https://blankcheckpod.substack.com/welcome, the Blank Check newsletter featuring even more “real nerdy shit” to feed your pop culture obsession. Dossier excerpts, film biz AND burger reports, and even more exclusive content you won’t want to miss out on. Join our Patreon for franchise commentaries and bonus episodes. http://www.patreon.com/blankcheck Follow us @blankcheckpod on Twitter https://x.com/blankcheckpod?lang=en, Instagram https://www.instagram.com/blankcheckpod/?hl=en, Threads https://www.threads.net/@blankcheckpod?xmt=AQGzctAh4mbWTwYzCV1pzNT6AMV9o99EOfymi8TLR5mTde0 and Facebook https://www.facebook.com/blankcheckpodcast/! Buy some real nerdy merch https://kinshipgoods.com/blankcheck Connect with other Blankies on our Reddit https://www.reddit.com/r/blankies/s/gpcOkQr8Sv or Discord https://discord.gg/Q6YGSR3JrA For anything else, check out BlankCheckPod.com https://www.blankcheckpod.com/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

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

• 0:02Griffin Newman?

  David.

• 0:03David Sims?

  Yep.

• 0:03Griffin Newman?

  We did a live show.

• 0:04David Sims?

  Yeah, remember?

• 0:05Griffin Newman?

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

• 0:12David Sims?

  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.

• 0:18David Sims?

  Yeah, hey.

• 0:18Speaker 02

  Hey, everyone, or should I say, oh?

• 0:20David Sims?

  Oh.

• 0:22Griffin Newman?

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

• 0:31David Sims?

  So just a few more days.

• 0:33Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 0:33David Sims?

  You can get it at dynasty.tv.

• 0:36Griffin Newman?

  Dynasty.tv.

• 0:37David Sims?

  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.

• 0:50David Sims?

  I was locked in.

• 0:51Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, very locked in and you were funny.

• 0:53David Sims?

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

• 0:56Griffin Newman?

  Oh, thank you.

• 0:57David Sims?

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

• 1:02Griffin Newman?

  You might see me shine Marie's shoes.

• 1:04David Sims?

  Exactly.

• 1:05Speaker 02

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

• 1:07Griffin Newman?

  If that gets you off.

• 1:09Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 1:10David Sims?

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

• 1:39David Sims?

  By the pricking of my thumbs, Something Wicked This Way Podcast. Um, that's pretty good Catherine Hunter.

• 1:48Griffin Newman?

  Thank you. That's why I wanted to do it. I don't, I think my Hunter's better than my Denzel. We were just joking.

• 1:56David Sims?

  Maybe you should do Denzel. Denzel Macbeth. Maybe you should do it.

• 1:58Griffin Newman?

  We were just joking that this is a quotable movie. And I made the joke, weird, there's no quotes page. And then I opened up the quotes page. There are only five quotes on the quote.

• 2:07David Sims?

  Nobody bothered. Nobody, right?

• 2:09Griffin Newman?

  That's just administrative failing. Right.

• 2:10David Sims?

  Yeah, no one was like, someone did sit down here and write the tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow speech.

• 2:15Speaker 03

  Someone copy pasted.

• 2:16David Sims?

  But I'm saying like, someone was like, ah, fuck, come on, it should be on IMDb. It's good writing.

• 2:20Griffin Newman?

  You have to imagine the logic is, who's coming to the tragedy of Macbeth page for Macbeth quotes?

• 2:26David Sims?

  IMDb page for Macbeth quotes.

• 2:27Griffin Newman?

  Right. If someone wants Macbeth quotes, there are many places.

• 2:29Speaker 03

  There is like one or two lines that they did tweak.

• 2:32Griffin Newman?

  Give them to me.

• 2:33Speaker 03

  I, I don't have them off the top of my head.

• 2:35Griffin Newman?

  Okay.

• 2:35Speaker 03

  And we'll get to this because I think it's like a bigger, not issue, but like concern of the play, but something about Lady Macbeth having children.

• 2:42Griffin Newman?

  Oh, sure.

• 2:43David Sims?

  Right.

• 2:43Speaker 03

  They shifted a tense that I was like, ah, they're, they're making a choice.

• 2:47David Sims?

  Yeah, right, right. But that's fun to do. It's fun to make a little choice.

• 2:50Griffin Newman?

  There's also that scene about the one cent stamps that they had.

• 2:54David Sims?

  Right.

• 2:54Griffin Newman?

  Where Macbeth is in bed with Lady Macbeth and he's feeling really down because his stamp art wasn't chosen.

• 2:59David Sims?

  What was a really popular song in 2021?

• 3:02Griffin Newman?

  Oh, here we go.

• 3:03David Sims?

  Right?

• 3:03Griffin Newman?

  I don't, um, fuck. Did anything exist in 2021? Uh, most popular song of 2021 was still, uh, uh, Feel Like I Do by Vin Diesel? I'm like, do I remember any? Did Taylor release an album in 2021?

• 3:17David Sims?

  Driver's License was the most popular song.

• 3:19Speaker 03

  Yeah, Driver's License is so good.

• 3:20David Sims?

  We've also got Call Me By Your Name by Lil Nas X.

• 3:23Griffin Newman?

  Oh, sure.

• 3:23Speaker 03

  Were we going crazy for Bridgerton? Was that the first season of Bridgerton?

• 3:27David Sims?

  It's probably around then. So, yeah, it'd be funny if Macbeth was like, like, away, I have to watch season one of Bridgerton. Roger Jean Page. This, Future Bond?

• 3:39Speaker 03

  He's going to pop.

• 3:40Griffin Newman?

  I don't know if you folks are feeling this. And the two of you had marriages, uh, children, things.

• 3:46David Sims?

  Oh, you're having, you don't, you don't like the COVID movie? Like the, the sort of?

• 3:50Griffin Newman?

  No, no, I, I like this one quite a lot. It's more that we've now had enough distance that I cannot demarcate anything within 2020 and 2021 anymore.

• 3:59David Sims?

  Not really. I mean, I'm not amazing at that. Yeah.

• 4:03Griffin Newman?

  I can. Remember the stuff that happened when I felt like I wasn't a person? But it's all just one soup.

• 4:09Speaker 03

  You know how I remember the beginning of COVID? Is because I had planned a trip to fly out to New York to record this, this very podcast.

• 4:17David Sims?

  Was it bewitched?

• 4:18Griffin Newman?

  It was bewitched.

• 4:19Speaker 03

  It was bewitched. It was the first thing that I was like, I don't think I'm supposed to get on a plane right now.

• 4:23David Sims?

  Oh dude, I'll never forget those early like, huh, I guess we're not gonna do our live show. Like it went from us being like, well, the live show isn't like too mu- I mean, like, two months is a long time.

• 4:34Griffin Newman?

  Well, the live show was supposed to be one week after lockdown and then we kicked it to May.

• 4:39David Sims?

  Right, right, right, right.

• 4:40Griffin Newman?

  It will definitely be over. They were like, do you want it further out? And we were like, May, this is definitely over.

• 4:46Speaker 03

  I was in a writer's room that they were like, okay, you guys are gonna work from home until April. And we like left food in the writer's room because we're like, we'll be back in two weeks.

• 4:55Griffin Newman?

  Was that She-Hulk?

• 4:55Speaker 03

  That was She-Hulk.

• 4:56Griffin Newman?

  And everything turned out perfectly.

• 4:58Speaker 03

  And it turned out perfectly. The pandemic didn't affect it at all.

• 5:01Griffin Newman?

  Nothing, nothing was affected by anything. Do you know that this is a movie? That was truly started filming in February.

• 5:09David Sims?

  In February of the 11th century.

• 5:11Griffin Newman?

  2020.

• 5:12David Sims?

  Okay.

• 5:13Griffin Newman?

  I think it was January or February and they truly just like did what you said where they were like, okay, let's just like drop the lights where they are.

• 5:20David Sims?

  They left their expressionist sets.

• 5:22Griffin Newman?

  We'll be back in like a week. And then they resumed filming in July.

• 5:27David Sims?

  Uh, that's correct.

• 5:27Griffin Newman?

  Like they did this movie largely, you know, three quarters or whatever.

• 5:31David Sims?

  Scott Rudin got canceled in between the beginning of production and the end of production.

• 5:36Griffin Newman?

  He was retroactively removed as producer.

• 5:39Speaker 03

  That's very funny.

• 5:40Griffin Newman?

  So it doesn't come out till December 2021, but this is like a movie that is slightly pre-COVID and then mostly lockdown, which thank God they committed to this visual style that made it easy to be a bubble production.

• 5:55Speaker 03

  And people, there are no big like crowd scenes. It does feel like everyone is at least six feet away from each other.

• 6:01Griffin Newman?

  And yet this-

• 6:02David Sims?

  Yeah, and some people didn't like that. It was like, why is this vibe? It's like no one's even near in the same room with each other.

• 6:08Griffin Newman?

  But it doesn't feel like a COVID movie because it was, they came to those decisions organically.

• 6:12David Sims?

  I'm not worried about it. It's all good to me. I love it. Yeah.

• 6:16Griffin Newman?

  No, I'm just saying, a lot of the stuff I don't like to revisit. The thing I remember, I did see this in a theater. But it was at the peak of like the, uh, what was it, Omicron? It was the second wave.

• 6:27David Sims?

  Sure.

• 6:27Griffin Newman?

  In December of 2021, where it was like, Jesus Christ, is this gonna happen every year?

• 6:32Speaker 03

  Did you see it in IMAX?

• 6:34Griffin Newman?

  I did not. I forgot it got a limited IMAX.

• 6:36David Sims?

  That's the box office game week we're gonna do.

• 6:38Griffin Newman?

  Okay.

• 6:38David Sims?

  Because we already did Christmas 2021 anyway.

• 6:40Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 6:41David Sims?

  And it is funny that it was released in IMAX.

• 6:43Griffin Newman?

  Right, cuz it came out the same week and as Matrix Resurrection.

• 6:47David Sims?

  Correct, yeah, yeah.

• 6:48Griffin Newman?

  I saw it, I was dog sitting for my father, uh, in the Hudson Valley, and it happened to be during that dog sitting's day that the dog died.

• 6:57Speaker 03

  Oh, no!

• 6:58Griffin Newman?

  It was not my fault, but it was an emotionally intense two weeks that also were like, is there about to be another full lockdown? It felt like we were hinging right on the edge of, is the government gonna say like, hey, let's take another three months off?

• 7:12Speaker 03

  But it-

• 7:12Griffin Newman?

  So I was like, maybe I just stay in this house forever? Maybe this is my new lockdown spot? And I took an Uber to the StoryScreen Beacon Theater, which has since been renamed and saw this movie with like one other person in the audience. Sorry.

• 7:24David Sims?

  It's now, I believe, just called The Beacon.

• 7:26Griffin Newman?

  Correct.

• 7:26David Sims?

  Yep.

• 7:27Speaker 03

  I was gonna make a, a very bad, in poor taste joke and just say, my lord, your dog is dead.

• 7:32Griffin Newman?

  I mean, that, that's what, I had to call my dad and say exactly that, and he was like, can you say it in like, normal language? Uh, anyway, those are my memories about seeing this movie, a film I like quite a bit.

• 7:43David Sims?

  You like this film quite a bit?

• 7:44Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 7:44David Sims?

  I saw this film at the, oh wait, what's our podcast? Jesus Christ.

• 7:48Griffin Newman?

  This is Blank Check with Griffin and David. I am Griffin, thou art David.

• 7:53David Sims?

  Yeah, great.

• 7:55Griffin Newman?

  Uh, it's a podcast about filmographies, directors who have massive success early on in their careers and are given a series of blank checks to make whatever crazy passion projects they want. And sometimes those checks clear, and sometimes doth bounce, baby?

• 8:08Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 8:08David Sims?

  Yeah, they doth bounce, baby. All, all, all checks are, uh, you know, um- A fucking poor player, a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets their hour upon the studio and then is heard no more. An hour, geez Shakespeare, more like three hours.

• 8:25Griffin Newman?

  This is the first Shakespeare we've covered, is that correct? Like, straight up Shakespeare, not reinterpretation? Has to be.

• 8:32David Sims?

  Yeah, I guess you're right. Gee, why haven't we done a Shakespeare?

• 8:35Speaker 03

  You've never done a Bran series.

• 8:38Griffin Newman?

  We've batted around sometimes.

• 8:40David Sims?

  It's a lot of movies.

• 8:41Griffin Newman?

  It's a lot of movies.

• 8:42Speaker 03

  A lot of mustaches.

• 8:44Griffin Newman?

  It's a lot of mustache, double mustache per movie, that's six mustaches.

• 8:48David Sims?

  We've never really done Shakespeare.

• 8:49Griffin Newman?

  No. Uh, this is a mini-series on the films of Joel and Ethan Cohen, together and separately. Today we are covering to date Joel's only solo film, although-

• 9:00David Sims?

  Making the second one.

• 9:01Griffin Newman?

  He's, he's in it right now.

• 9:02Speaker 03

  Macbeth 2.

• 9:03Griffin Newman?

  Macbeth 2.

• 9:06Griffin Newman?

  The redemption of Macbeth.

• 9:09David Sims?

  He's back!

• 9:10Griffin Newman?

  Macbeth Reawakening. It's called The Tragedy of Macbeth.

• 9:14David Sims?

  This film is called The Tragedy of Macbeth. What's the new one called? It's like The Queen of Hearts or The Jack of Spades or something?

• 9:18Griffin Newman?

  I think it's Jack of Spades, and it's, uh, uh, what's his name?

• 9:22David Sims?

  Josh O'Connor, that guy's in movies.

• 9:25Griffin Newman?

  And Frances McDormand, that's like all we know?

• 9:27David Sims?

  Um, it looks like it's, um, like a period piece, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 9:31Griffin Newman?

  There was a photo of Josh-

• 9:32David Sims?

  Leslie Mannville and Damian Lewis, I mean, I'm not uninterested.

• 9:35Speaker 03

  I'm in.

• 9:36Griffin Newman?

  Give me all that you got, but they're filming in the UK and there was a paparazzi photo of Josh O'Connor looking fucking unbelievable.

• 9:42David Sims?

  Looking very, very good in 19th century garb.

• 9:45Griffin Newman?

  But to date, this is the only solo Joel movie that has been released. That movie is perhaps not based on anything, is an original screenplay?

• 9:54David Sims?

  Uh, I don't know, yeah.

• 9:55Griffin Newman?

  Unclear, but so much of the interest of this movie is that Joel's only solo film we have seen so far is him adapting a pretty unimpeachable work of drama. Uh, so this is really a showcase for him as a director. Uh, and it's called The Tragedy of Macbeth, and today, our guest joining us for the third time-

• 10:15Speaker 03

  Third time.

• 10:16Griffin Newman?

  On the podcast, maintaining a thematic trilogy.

• 10:20David Sims?

  Is that true?

• 10:20Griffin Newman?

  Yes, because-

• 10:22Speaker 03

  It's all witches, David.

• 10:23Griffin Newman?

  All witches. Oops, all witches.

• 10:26Speaker 04

  That's so true.

• 10:27Griffin Newman?

  Oz, the great and powerful tragedy of Macbeth.

• 10:31David Sims?

  Yes.

• 10:32Speaker 05

  Dana Schwartz is our guest today.

• 10:34Speaker 03

  Thank you so much for having me.

• 10:36Griffin Newman?

  Of course.

• 10:37David Sims?

  We gave Catherine Hunter Best Supporting Actress.

• 10:39Griffin Newman?

  I remember.

• 10:39David Sims?

  At the New York Film Critics Circle.

• 10:40Speaker 03

  She's amazing in this.

• 10:41David Sims?

  Yes. And I was like, that's a cool win by us. And then no one else really bothered to award her anything. So I felt even better about it.

• 10:49Griffin Newman?

  It was kind of an Issey Oigata moment. Do you remember when he got the first, was it MBR gave him Best Supporting Actor and everyone's like, oh, fuck. Is he a contender in silence?

• 10:59David Sims?

  Right. And then it didn't happen again.

• 11:01Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 11:01Speaker 03

  Is the only sort of Oscar juice this movie gets is Denzel's nomination?

• 11:06Griffin Newman?

  Denzel gets nominated by everybody.

• 11:08David Sims?

  For three Oscars.

• 11:09Griffin Newman?

  Cinematography, production design?

• 11:10David Sims?

  That's right.

• 11:11Griffin Newman?

  Pretty undeniable.

• 11:12David Sims?

  Sure. But they all did feel a little cursory in that, like, never really felt like a serious threat to win.

• 11:20Griffin Newman?

  No.

• 11:21David Sims?

  It lost cinematography to Dune.

• 11:25Griffin Newman?

  Dune, dune, dune.

• 11:26David Sims?

  It lost production design to Dune.

• 11:29Griffin Newman?

  Dune, dune, dune.

• 11:30Speaker 03

  I really like the production design of this movie.

• 11:32David Sims?

  Me too. And Denzel lost to Will Smith, who I think accepted his award quietly and with no real drama.

• 11:38Speaker 03

  A normal way.

• 11:40Speaker 04

  I would love to live in some of these rooms.

• 11:43Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 11:43Speaker 04

  Like aesthetics.

• 11:44David Sims?

  Not heavy on like cushions, though. Not soft.

• 11:48Speaker 04

  It's not cozy.

• 11:49David Sims?

  No.

• 11:49Griffin Newman?

  They look a little bit.

• 11:50Speaker 04

  But it's got drama.

• 11:51David Sims?

  Exposed to the elements, whatever they may be.

• 11:53Griffin Newman?

  They look a little bit like Kanye.

• 11:54Speaker 03

  Foggy.

• 11:55Griffin Newman?

  Do you remember Kanye and the, at Kim's home that he kept posting photos of?

• 12:00David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 12:01Griffin Newman?

  Where you were like, don't you have kids? How do they exist in this state?

• 12:05Speaker 03

  They live in a modern art museum.

• 12:06Griffin Newman?

  All brutalist.

• 12:07Speaker 04

  But how do we feel about a puddle room?

• 12:10Griffin Newman?

  Incredible.

• 12:10Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 12:11Speaker 04

  I think it's fun.

• 12:11David Sims?

  Squashing?

• 12:12Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 12:12David Sims?

  If you're feeling weird about the overthrowing you've been up to.

• 12:15Speaker 04

  Throw some frog's breath down.

• 12:17Griffin Newman?

  Also, this concept of like, look, Macbeth, it's a cauldron forward drama, right?

• 12:24David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 12:25Griffin Newman?

  How can we put a new spin on an old cauldron? And they're like, what if the cauldron is the room?

• 12:29David Sims?

  Um.

• 12:30Griffin Newman?

  Pretty cool.

• 12:30David Sims?

  That's why Denzel was at the Oscars. And he told Will Smith, like, the devil comes for you when you're about to win an Oscar or whatever.

• 12:38Speaker 03

  You know, though, it is a good thing for all of us that no one put Lady Macbeth's name in their mouth. This is a guy who would have.

• 12:44Griffin Newman?

  Dana? That's very true.

• 12:46David Sims?

  That's true.

• 12:46Speaker 03

  This is a guy who would have.

• 12:47David Sims?

  Macbeth wouldn't have liked that.

• 12:47Speaker 03

  Would not have liked that one bet.

• 12:49David Sims?

  Although sometimes I'm like, he doesn't seem to really care. He's like, yeah, whatever.

• 12:52Griffin Newman?

  But that's, I mean, you talk about this movie's response, which was polite, where they were like, of course, Denzel is Macbeth.

• 12:57David Sims?

  It was a little polite.

• 12:58Griffin Newman?

  Cinematography and production design, we can't deny, right?

• 13:01David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 13:01Griffin Newman?

  This is one year after Nomadland. Frances has just won her third lead actress Oscar.

• 13:07David Sims?

  True.

• 13:08Griffin Newman?

  I remember Mark Harris being like, she's gonna win again.

• 13:10David Sims?

  Well, that's silly.

• 13:11Griffin Newman?

  And people were like, she can't win four times.

• 13:13David Sims?

  If you're listening, that's silly.

• 13:14Griffin Newman?

  And it was like, she's playing Lady Macbeth, and she is just like unstoppable right now. And she basically didn't even get nominations. She's not.

• 13:22David Sims?

  She's not very good in this movie.

• 13:23Speaker 03

  I, I'm gonna have a hot take.

• 13:25Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 13:25Speaker 03

  I am sorry to jump in with a hot take.

• 13:27David Sims?

  Nope.

• 13:27Speaker 03

  I think my two least favorite performances in this movie are Denzel and Frances.

• 13:32Griffin Newman?

  Interesting.

• 13:32David Sims?

  See, I like Denzel.

• 13:33Griffin Newman?

  I think Denzel's pretty.

• 13:34David Sims?

  But I sort of know what you're hinting at.

• 13:36Speaker 03

  I don't think they tone, that my, the things that I love about this movie, the, the tone of this movie, I think they're the least dialed into that tone.

• 13:44David Sims?

  I agree with you, especially on Frances McDormand, who is straight up awful in this movie.

• 13:48Griffin Newman?

  It's also fascinating because.

• 13:50David Sims?

  Who I generally love as an actress, to be clear.

• 13:51Griffin Newman?

  It's not as much of a collaborative effort as, say, like Ethan and Trisha Cook.

• 13:58David Sims?

  She's a hundred percent the creative push for Joel to do this. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 14:02Griffin Newman?

  This is absolutely a movie made by the two of them.

• 14:05David Sims?

  Yeah, she wants to do this.

• 14:06Speaker 03

  It's a Lady Macbeth movie.

• 14:06Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 14:07Speaker 03

  Um, she has Lady Macbethed him into making this movie.

• 14:10Griffin Newman?

  Absolutely.

• 14:11David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 14:11Griffin Newman?

  And she just doesn't quite have the right handle on it. Who do we each think is the best performance in this?

• 14:17David Sims?

  Alex Hassel. I mean, like, that, that's the performance where I was just like, who's this fucking guy? I mean, like Catherine Hunter's awesome.

• 14:23Speaker 03

  His face, his face is doing a lot of that work for him.

• 14:25David Sims?

  Yeah, well, it's a good face. I'll take 10 of it.

• 14:28Speaker 03

  You know who's good in this movie is Steven Root.

• 14:30David Sims?

  Steven Root's great.

• 14:32Griffin Newman?

  Steven Root I love. I gave him my. We're gonna get to the room matter later. Let's maybe do a little tease of the theme there. Uh, I believe I gave him my putters and murmurs.

• 14:40David Sims?

  He's puttering.

• 14:41Griffin Newman?

  And to putter in Shakespearean English is pretty impressive.

• 14:44David Sims?

  Very fun.

• 14:45Griffin Newman?

  I think Corey Hawkins is like unbelievable.

• 14:47David Sims?

  He's great. I think Moses Ingram is great in her big scene.

• 14:50Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 14:50David Sims?

  I think basically everyone.

• 14:53David Sims?

  Does a good job, like, um, except for Frances, which I think is kind of off for some reason in ways I can't, we can investigate. Like, I think Harry Melling is awesome.

• 15:03Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 15:03David Sims?

  It's like so cool that Dudley Dursley like became what he became and that the Coens love him.

• 15:09Griffin Newman?

  Love him. Gleason.

• 15:11Speaker 03

  Oh, Gleason, Gleason is-

• 15:13David Sims?

  Feels like he can do it in his sleep, but like, he's great.

• 15:16Griffin Newman?

  His fucking creamsicle beard looks perfect in black and white.

• 15:20David Sims?

  Again, Catherine Hunter, we literally gave her best supporting actress, the coffee's brewing.

• 15:25Speaker 04

  The cauldron is bubbling.

• 15:27Griffin Newman?

  I asked Ben to reactivate the, the rarely opened collection of Nightmare Before Christmas themed coffees. It's a rainy day in New York, and I hate to say that sentence, but Ben has brewed up a pot of Rough Weather, which is the Zero from Nightmare Before Christmas themed coffee, and I think it's cranberry flavored.

• 15:47Speaker 03

  Oh, no.

• 15:48Griffin Newman?

  I'm about to have a great time.

• 15:49David Sims?

  No, you are not. Um, but Alex Hassel was the guy, partly because I did not know who he was.

• 15:54Griffin Newman?

  I'm sorry, I'm sorry. Cranberry is the Santa Jack coffee.

• 15:58David Sims?

  That makes more sense.

• 15:59Griffin Newman?

  This is oatmeal cream pie. Yum, yum, yum, yum, yum.

• 16:02David Sims?

  Dana and I already remarked on the fact that cream pie should not be in coffee, like, flavor names.

• 16:08Speaker 03

  Let's hang that from the rafters.

• 16:09David Sims?

  This is the 21st century.

• 16:10Griffin Newman?

  Gonna have a great time. I'm a little surprised that, uh, Zero's coffee isn't pumpkin flavored since he's got that dang pumpkin nose.

• 16:18David Sims?

  What's Corey Hawkins up to recently?

• 16:20Griffin Newman?

  This is what I want to talk about for a little bit.

• 16:22David Sims?

  I'm sorry.

• 16:22Griffin Newman?

  I want to talk about this for a little bit, but we got a lot of stuff to say.

• 16:25Speaker 03

  Well, what I think is kind of one of the most interesting things about this movie is Alex Hassel's role. He plays Ross, who if you see a production of Macbeth, you would be forgiven for being like, I don't know who that is.

• 16:37David Sims?

  Because Ross is basically just the guy who says things to explain things.

• 16:41Griffin Newman?

  He's more of a functionary. Yes, yes.

• 16:43David Sims?

  Ross doesn't have his own Wikipedia page.

• 16:45Griffin Newman?

  Right. Corey Hawkins has one of the juicy roles.

• 16:50David Sims?

  Yeah, he's got the big fucking, I was from my mother's room untimely whipped role.

• 16:55Griffin Newman?

  Okay.

• 16:55David Sims?

  Ripped. Like, I mean, he's got, he delivers the twist ending.

• 16:59Griffin Newman?

  I feel like the first time I clocked him was straight out of Compton, or even just seeing the trailer, I was like, holy shit, how did they find a guy that looks this much like Dr. Drew?

• 17:07David Sims?

  Yeah, he's really good.

• 17:08Griffin Newman?

  Really fucking good in that. I've never seen this, but the year before, he played Tybalt in the bad Hailee Steinfeld Romeo and Juliet.

• 17:16Speaker 03

  I saw that movie.

• 17:17Griffin Newman?

  And then it felt like right out of Straight Outta Compton, it's like he's getting cast in everything. He's in Kong Skull Island.

• 17:24David Sims?

  No, he played, this is interesting.

• 17:26Griffin Newman?

  What?

• 17:27David Sims?

  He played Tybalt in a filmed Broadway HD production with Orlando Bloom, but not Hailee Steinfeld with Condola Rashad.

• 17:37Griffin Newman?

  Hailee Steinfeld did a movie. She didn't do it on Broadway.

• 17:39David Sims?

  She did a movie, but I think it's not Orlando Bloom, because I was about to say Orlando Bloom, Hailee Steinfeld.

• 17:43Speaker 03

  No, I think that's Douglas.

• 17:44David Sims?

  That's a no good age cap, right? Douglas, that sounds right.

• 17:47Griffin Newman?

  I was conflating the two things. I apologize for that.

• 17:49David Sims?

  No, it's fine, it's fine. But, so he was Tybalt in that.

• 17:52Speaker 03

  What he just did was Voyage of the Demeter.

• 17:55Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 17:56David Sims?

  He was in that.

• 17:57Griffin Newman?

  Uh, they make him the new lead of 24. He does a season of 24, 24 Legacy.

• 18:02David Sims?

  On everyone's.

• 18:03Griffin Newman?

  Black Klansman, he's incredible in.

• 18:05David Sims?

  Yeah, he's great in that. Yeah, well, that's the one, one big scene.

• 18:08Griffin Newman?

  Yes, but destroys it. Then like Six Underground, he's number seven.

• 18:14David Sims?

  Oh, interesting.

• 18:15Griffin Newman?

  In the Heights, another big, like, kind of co-lead role for him. He sings, he dances, he's great.

• 18:20David Sims?

  He's really good in him.

• 18:21Griffin Newman?

  Tragedy Macbeth. I'm like, this guy is like waiting to explode. And even in this, where it's like, so many of his scenes are gonna be him and Denzel. This feels like a kind of passing of the torch thing. And then it's like, two years where he does something called Survive I've Never Heard Of, that seems to maybe be a TV movie with him and Sophie Turner.

• 18:41David Sims?

  No, dude, there's a Quibi. I ordered that one.

• 18:44Griffin Newman?

  It was a Quibi?

• 18:44David Sims?

  Yeah, I ordered that personally. I was like.

• 18:48Griffin Newman?

  Do a movie between Macbeth and Voyage of the Demeter.

• 18:51David Sims?

  Well, it's only two years.

• 18:52Griffin Newman?

  And then it's Color Purple.

• 18:53Speaker 03

  And Covid.

• 18:54David Sims?

  Yeah, and Covid.

• 18:54Griffin Newman?

  Piano Lesson.

• 18:56David Sims?

  Which, so in Color Purple, he has Harp, he's Harpo, that's the, you know, that's not the most enjoyable role, obviously. He is good in the piano lesson.

• 19:05Griffin Newman?

  Uh huh.

• 19:06David Sims?

  Um, he's not, to me, the one that pops.

• 19:08Griffin Newman?

  Thank you, Ben.

• 19:09David Sims?

  But he's totally good.

• 19:10Griffin Newman?

  Mm-hmm.

• 19:10David Sims?

  He did also do Top Dog Underdog on Broadway.

• 19:14Griffin Newman?

  Oh, sure. That's a good call.

• 19:14David Sims?

  And got a Tony nomination.

• 19:15Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 19:16David Sims?

  Uh, with, um, Yaya Abdul-Matia, Wonder Man, of course. Great Wonder Man. Did you see the trailer for that?

• 19:22Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 19:23David Sims?

  What's going on?

• 19:24Griffin Newman?

  I don't know.

• 19:25David Sims?

  What's up?

• 19:26Griffin Newman?

  I don't know.

• 19:27David Sims?

  What are we doing?

• 19:27Griffin Newman?

  I don't know.

• 19:28David Sims?

  We can't just do a whole Marvel show set in, like, audition rooms.

• 19:32Griffin Newman?

  I mean, this is-

• 19:33David Sims?

  That has to just be the first 20 minutes, right? Like, we do need Wonder Man to, like, you know, shoot lasers or whatever he does.

• 19:38Griffin Newman?

  The problem with all these Marvel Disney Plus shows now, and Dana, this is something you couldn't possibly understand, is that all of them have basically been sitting on a shelf for three years.

• 19:47David Sims?

  Right.

• 19:47Griffin Newman?

  And were conceptualized five years ago.

• 19:49David Sims?

  Right, like Ironheart.

• 19:51Griffin Newman?

  Right, they're all just, like, totally out of sync.

• 19:53David Sims?

  They can't even acknowledge our president.

• 19:55Griffin Newman?

  Red Hulk. And please, Dana, if you wouldn't mind saluting.

• 19:57Speaker 03

  Saluting.

• 19:59David Sims?

  Does he have, like, two months in office? Like, his Wikipedia page is like, fuck, Thunderbolt Ross, he was a celebrated general, he was president, resigned in disgrace after turning into Red Hulk two months in.

• 20:09Griffin Newman?

  There was, like, one throwaway line in Thunderbolt where they were like, "Things have been a mess since our president hulked out," right?

• 20:14David Sims?

  Yeah, they say something, yeah. They acknowledge it, yeah.

• 20:17Griffin Newman?

  You guys talk about it more.

• 20:18David Sims?

  It should be a little, Congress should feel pretty stressed out that the president hulked out.

• 20:21Speaker 03

  The president turned into Red Hulk.

• 20:23Griffin Newman?

  I think if, during a conference, by the way, it was televised, it wasn't like AIDS report.

• 20:28Speaker 03

  They can't cover it up.

• 20:29Griffin Newman?

  Right, it wasn't like Michael Wolff broke the story. He's, like, giving a speech in the Rose Garden.

• 20:34David Sims?

  In public, you're right, yes.

• 20:37Griffin Newman?

  And then he rooked out and Captain America fought him, and he sadly, like, conceded naked.

• 20:42David Sims?

  He did. It was, and it felt like, like, a little sort of upsetting.

• 20:46Griffin Newman?

  And he's in the fucking raft now?

• 20:48David Sims?

  He's in the raft.

• 20:48Speaker 03

  Well, you know, his legacy is now gonna be on, like, internet listicles of, like, shortest terms of presidency.

• 20:54David Sims?

  Right, William Henry Harrison, he died, Red Hulk, hulked out. Like, it's like what happened to the guys, right?

• 21:00Griffin Newman?

  Do you think in, like, history classrooms where they have, like, the wraparound, like, Art of All the Presidents or the poster or whatever?

• 21:05David Sims?

  Does he get a Hall of Presidents?

• 21:07Speaker 03

  Is it Red Hulk?

• 21:09David Sims?

  Does it Hulk out?

• 21:10Griffin Newman?

  I think he absolutely makes those things, but do they have to be like, we must respect both forms of the president? Does the Red Hulk Trump? No pun intended. The regular form? I don't know. Try to make that.

• 21:24David Sims?

  Well, Corey Hawkins is in an upcoming film directed by Bart Leighton, not a director I like.

• 21:30Griffin Newman?

  Mm-hmm.

• 21:31David Sims?

  Sorry.

• 21:31Griffin Newman?

  The Man in My Basement?

• 21:32David Sims?

  No, it's called Crime 101.

• 21:34Griffin Newman?

  But he has another.

• 21:35David Sims?

  Well, but I'm telling you about Crime 101 and then I'll move on to whatever that is, because listen to who's in this movie. Crime 101.

• 21:40Griffin Newman?

  Mm-hmm.

• 21:41David Sims?

  Chris Hemsworth, Mark Ruffalo.

• 21:44Griffin Newman?

  Okay.

• 21:44David Sims?

  Barry Keoghan.

• 21:45Griffin Newman?

  Okay.

• 21:46David Sims?

  Halle Berry.

• 21:46Griffin Newman?

  Uh-huh.

• 21:47David Sims?

  Monica Barbaro. Barbaro. Corey Hawkins, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Nick Nolte.

• 21:52Speaker 03

  What?

• 21:53David Sims?

  That's like a lot of guys.

• 21:54Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 21:55Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 21:56David Sims?

  And that's an MGM.

• 21:57Speaker 03

  Is he the lead?

• 21:58David Sims?

  Uh, no, he looks like he's about sixth on the cast list here. And then he's in The Odyssey.

• 22:03Griffin Newman?

  The Odyssey's the big thing.

• 22:04David Sims?

  That's cool.

• 22:05Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 22:05David Sims?

  But I mean, maybe he plays like a rock. I mean, I don't know.

• 22:07Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 22:08David Sims?

  It's like a lot of guys in that.

• 22:09Griffin Newman?

  He hasn't stalled out. He's one of those guys where like, if he gives a good performance tomorrow, everyone's gonna be like, wow. But even when he was on.

• 22:16David Sims?

  The Man in My Basement was at TIFF.

• 22:17Griffin Newman?

  Okay.

• 22:18David Sims?

  I think it was, it got bad reviews.

• 22:20Griffin Newman?

  Even when he was on like that good growth run, I always felt like his name was not sticking with people as much as it should.

• 22:27David Sims?

  Yeah, I don't know. I love him.

• 22:28Griffin Newman?

  Yeah. And I think he's great in this.

• 22:30Speaker 03

  He's phenomenal in this.

• 22:31David Sims?

  He's great in this.

• 22:32Griffin Newman?

  Yeah. Uh, Dana, what's your history with old Bill Shakespeare?

• 22:36Speaker 03

  Uh, I really like Shakespeare. I was in college, a nerd who didn't have a lot of friends or go to parties. Uh, but I was a member of a group called Shakespeare on the Green that sort of put on site-specific Shakespeare productions around campus.

• 22:54Griffin Newman?

  Where did you go to college?

• 22:55Speaker 03

  Brown.

• 22:55Griffin Newman?

  Oh, yeah.

• 22:56Speaker 03

  Uh, I didn't even pay you to set that up.

• 22:58Griffin Newman?

  Okay.

• 22:59Speaker 03

  I just, I'm an adult woman.

• 23:00David Sims?

  You went to college in Rhode Island.

• 23:01Speaker 03

  Yeah, small college around. Uh, no, I, I actually directed a production of Arcadia with Shakespeare on the Green.

• 23:08Griffin Newman?

  Deeper cut?

• 23:08David Sims?

  No, that's not written by William Shakespeare, so you fucked up there.

• 23:11Speaker 03

  But I, I was in, I was in Winter's Tale.

• 23:15Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 23:16Speaker 03

  Shakespeare.

• 23:16Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 23:17David Sims?

  Uh, who'd you play?

• 23:18Speaker 03

  The Old Shepherd.

• 23:19David Sims?

  Cool.

• 23:20Speaker 03

  Yeah, I was having fun.

• 23:21David Sims?

  Winter's Tale, Shakespeare's weirdest play.

• 23:22Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 23:23David Sims?

  Like.

• 23:23Speaker 03

  Does not make sense.

• 23:24David Sims?

  No.

• 23:24Speaker 03

  Kind of weird. Have fun with it. Uh, I like Shakespeare a lot. I have seen a few productions of Macbeth.

• 23:32David Sims?

  Mm hmm.

• 23:32Speaker 03

  I enjoy it. I think it's fun. I like this movie a lot.

• 23:37Griffin Newman?

  Uh, David, did you ever perform Shakespeare?

• 23:39David Sims?

  I did. I was, I think I've said that on, uh, Mike. I was puck in A Midsummer Night's Dream in high school.

• 23:44Griffin Newman?

  Yep, yep.

• 23:45David Sims?

  Uh, I wore a sparkly green sweater.

• 23:47Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 23:47David Sims?

  I think that is the only Shakespeare I did. I did a little bit of drama, like high school drama. I was not good at it, but I enjoyed the camaraderie.

• 23:55Griffin Newman?

  Hmm.

• 23:56David Sims?

  And the, you know, sort of spirit of collaboration.

• 24:00Griffin Newman?

  You were also going to an all boys school, right?

• 24:02David Sims?

  Yeah, but we would do our plays with the girls.

• 24:03Griffin Newman?

  That's what I was asking.

• 24:04Speaker 03

  You weren't going Mark Rylance? You weren't, you weren't dressing up as girls?

• 24:08Griffin Newman?

  Flipping around?

• 24:09Speaker 03

  You weren't Rylancing?

• 24:11David Sims?

  We never Rylanced. You know, when Mark Rylance did that, it was very controversial. Because, so what, what Dana's referring to is Mark Rylance, who we all know, of course, as a big friendly giant who occasionally, you know.

• 24:24Griffin Newman?

  Also as the Phantom of the Open Green. What were you gonna say? Were you cuing me up to do the voice?

• 24:30David Sims?

  Yeah, you could do the voice if you want, or you could do any.

• 24:32Griffin Newman?

  May Fuzzu Impulse be decision, ribbon, robins.

• 24:39David Sims?

  He was also, uh, well, he started out at the RSC, the Royal Shakespeare Company, but then he was the artist, the first artistic director of Shakespeare's Globe for the first 10 years, which is they rebuilt Shakespeare's, uh, theater from, you know, Tudor times. You're aware of this?

• 24:55Griffin Newman?

  Yes, perfect, perfect reconstruction, but they added Dolby Atmos.

• 25:00David Sims?

  It's a very, have you been to the Globe?

• 25:02Speaker 03

  I have.

• 25:02David Sims?

  Have you been to the Globe?

• 25:03Griffin Newman?

  I haven't.

• 25:04David Sims?

  Uh, it's wonderful.

• 25:05Speaker 03

  I saw Measure for Measure there.

• 25:07David Sims?

  It's awesome. Ben, have you been to the Shakespeare's Globe?

• 25:11Speaker 04

  No.

• 25:11David Sims?

  Have you been to London?

• 25:13Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 25:13David Sims?

  Realizing? Yeah, okay.

• 25:14Speaker 04

  I did go by the theater.

• 25:17David Sims?

  Right. You can also just, it's on the South Bank. You can just walk. It's crazy.

• 25:20Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah. It's crazy to think it's just. You know, obviously, it's not the original, but-

• 25:26David Sims?

  No, and it's about 500 feet from where the original was. They actually fucked up really bad. Yeah, there was some other building that they couldn't move or whatever, but it's pretty close.

• 25:34Speaker 04

  Sure. But crazy that it's just, I mean, London's so fucking old. It's just crazy.

• 25:40Griffin Newman?

  Fucking old, yeah.

• 25:41Speaker 04

  It's crazy.

• 25:42David Sims?

  But he did try doing some all male productions because like that's what they did in Shakespeare's time. And then some people got mad because they were like, it's hard enough for female actors out here and you're fucking taking our roles away again. But he was like, I'm trying to do a thing. I think they did all women's stuff too at a certain point. I'm not sure.

• 25:59Speaker 03

  He was in sort of a celebrated production, I believe of Twelfth Night?

• 26:03David Sims?

  Mm-hmm.

• 26:04Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, and then I think-

• 26:04Speaker 03

  He played Olivia?

• 26:05Griffin Newman?

  I think you're right, David, that to make up for it, they did an all women's production of Ghostbusters.

• 26:12Griffin Newman?

  And people reacted to it very normally. Ben, how do you feel about- How do you, he answered the call. How do you feel about Shakespeare in general?

• 26:19Speaker 04

  The bard?

• 26:20Griffin Newman?

  The bard.

• 26:21David Sims?

  Willie Shakespeare.

• 26:22Speaker 04

  Well, famously, I've said on this show many times, I'm not a fan of homework.

• 26:26David Sims?

  I resist homework and I worried that this was a homework ass movie.

• 26:29Speaker 04

  It is a little bit of a homework ass movie, okay?

• 26:32David Sims?

  Because it is guys in robes going like, dost thou? And it's, you know, like, there's a certain brain turning off moment some people have.

• 26:40Speaker 04

  Little bit, little bit. I've now, later in life, have come to somewhat appreciate Shakespeare. I think, you know, he's, he's like, you know, contributed some stuff.

• 26:51David Sims?

  Oh, you think, right, right, right.

• 26:53Speaker 04

  You know?

• 26:53David Sims?

  The guy actually, he landed a couple darts on the board.

• 26:56Speaker 04

  I gotta give it up for him. Old Bill. He's done some stuff, you know?

• 27:00David Sims?

  Do you think he, that it wasn't really him? Because you do, you don't mind a conspiracy theory sometimes.

• 27:05Griffin Newman?

  Sure, I love it.

• 27:06David Sims?

  So you're just, I'm like, hey, maybe Shakespeare didn't write his plays. You're just like, I'm all in. He didn't do it.

• 27:11Speaker 04

  Maybe it's three guys.

• 27:12David Sims?

  Dana, where are you on fake Shakespeare?

• 27:14Speaker 03

  No, it was a real guy.

• 27:15Speaker 04

  Yeah. Oh, I love that. Maybe it's like three guys in a trench coat.

• 27:18Griffin Newman?

  That's the dream.

• 27:19David Sims?

  And they all, that's why, like, you know, one of them brought the comedy, one of them brought the drama.

• 27:23Speaker 03

  Do you know about the, the William Ireland Shakespeare hoax?

• 27:27David Sims?

  No, what's that?

• 27:27Speaker 03

  I mean, I, this could be a full rabbit hole, but basically it was a guy in the late 1700s who was trying to impress his dad and like forged a Shakespeare signature autograph.

• 27:37David Sims?

  Okay.

• 27:37Speaker 03

  And the dad was impressed and then- Gradually reached a point where he's like, I found a lost play that Shakespeare wrote.

• 27:44David Sims?

  So this is like, can you ever forgive me?

• 27:45Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 27:46David Sims?

  He's kicked something off and then he started being like, well, if I can do the fucking signature.

• 27:51Speaker 03

  They put it on. They put on the play.

• 27:53David Sims?

  It's called, uh, what's it called?

• 27:54Speaker 03

  Vortigern.

• 27:56David Sims?

  Okay. Is it good?

• 27:57Speaker 03

  No.

• 27:58Griffin Newman?

  No, fuck. It does make you wonder though, like, you know, they're constantly publishing new books under Dr. Seuss, right?

• 28:04Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 28:05Griffin Newman?

  And it's like a Dr. Seuss book and you're like, we all know he died 60 years ago. Some other person's writing this, but Dr. Seuss has become a brand.

• 28:12David Sims?

  Yes.

• 28:12Griffin Newman?

  It's a part of it's the language.

• 28:14David Sims?

  And so it's, is it like Community Season Four where it's like,

• 28:16Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 28:17David Sims?

  You kind of got the idea, but that doesn't mean it's good.

• 28:20Griffin Newman?

  Yes, yes.

• 28:21David Sims?

  Right, right.

• 28:22Griffin Newman?

  But I,

• 28:23David Sims?

  Where they're like, hop on, hop.

• 28:25Griffin Newman?

  I'm almost surprised that no one's been like, hey, uh, we bought the rights to Shakespeare.

• 28:30David Sims?

  Right.

• 28:30Griffin Newman?

  We're gonna start publishing new Shakespeare plays.

• 28:32David Sims?

  Right, like kind of,

• 28:33Speaker 03

  We fed AI.

• 28:34David Sims?

  Like there's new James Bond novels or whatever.

• 28:36Griffin Newman?

  Right, right, right. That all the newborn novels still say like Robert Ludlum in big letters on the top.

• 28:41David Sims?

  That's like actually written by.

• 28:42Griffin Newman?

  Written by, yeah.

• 28:44David Sims?

  Is that covered on Hoax?

• 28:46Speaker 03

  Oh, it is.

• 28:46David Sims?

  That's a podcast.

• 28:47Griffin Newman?

  Your podcast, Hoax.

• 28:48Speaker 03

  Brand new podcast, Hoax, exclamation point. Fun podcast I do with my friend Lizzie Logan where we talk about historical hoaxes, including that one, which is,

• 28:57Griffin Newman?

  You have talked about it.

• 28:58Speaker 03

  I went down the, the rabbit hole. It's just, it's very fun for me to have a job where I get to go down a rabbit hole.

• 29:02Griffin Newman?

  What's the big, like, uh, upon Wingate, what's the name of the big hoax? I feel like there's the one that has some sort of like code name for what the truthers call themselves.

• 29:12Speaker 03

  Is it the Iron Mountain?

• 29:14Griffin Newman?

  I'm gonna figure this out.

• 29:14Speaker 03

  That's like the kind of Keanu Reeves.

• 29:17David Sims?

  What, like, I don't understand, like, what's, what, what's the hoax?

• 29:19Griffin Newman?

  I guess it's the one that, uh, Anonymous is built around the idea that like Shakespeare couldn't have been a common person.

• 29:26Speaker 03

  Oh, a Shakespeare hoax. I feel like the, all those, like, it was, it was bacon do come from like sort of snobbery, this idea that like a,

• 29:34David Sims?

  How could someone, Right, seemingly regular have created this.

• 29:39Griffin Newman?

  It must have been,

• 29:40David Sims?

  It has to be fake.

• 29:40Griffin Newman?

  A member of the royal family.

• 29:42David Sims?

  Or Francis Bacon or whoever, right? That's the thing with the Shakespeare authorship stuff, right? It's like largely like, It's not like there's not enough evidence. It's more just people being like, I just don't buy it.

• 29:53Speaker 03

  And also, the, the argument that I've heard is like, well, how can someone be so good at tragedy? And comedy and poetry? And I'm like, cause he was a really good writer.

• 30:02David Sims?

  Yeah, there's a reason we, right, we still like his plays, cause he was good. Like, it's, it's circular.

• 30:09Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 30:09David Sims?

  Like, you just have to, right.

• 30:10Griffin Newman?

  It's the Oxfordian theory, but there's some dumb name I've heard those people call themselves.

• 30:14David Sims?

  They're called anti Stratfordians, if that's what you're talking about.

• 30:17Griffin Newman?

  Maybe, yeah.

• 30:17David Sims?

  Like, because they're basically like, it wasn't the man from Stratford, cause that's where he's from.

• 30:20Griffin Newman?

  Sure.

• 30:21David Sims?

  I guess. Um, and of course, he had a son called Hamnet, and we'll learn all about that soon.

• 30:26Griffin Newman?

  We're about to learn and cry about that son. Ben and I, uh, last night went to go see, uh, House, House Full of Dynamite.

• 30:32David Sims?

  Oh, did you like it?

• 30:33Griffin Newman?

  I liked it. I mean, we'll, we'll have talked about it a month ago.

• 30:35David Sims?

  Yeah, no, I know, I'm just literally interested.

• 30:36Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, I liked it.

• 30:37David Sims?

  I haven't seen it yet.

• 30:38Griffin Newman?

  I have some hangups.

• 30:39Speaker 04

  I found it a little stressful.

• 30:41Griffin Newman?

  But Ben had just finished watching Tragedy Macbeth. It was storming up.

• 30:46David Sims?

  Yeah, it was raining.

• 30:47Speaker 03

  This is real tragedy Macbeth weather.

• 30:49Griffin Newman?

  Yes, and then walked into House of Dynamite, and we walk out of the theater and Ben's just like, I feel bad.

• 30:54Speaker 04

  Yeah, for real, that was an awful double header.

• 30:56David Sims?

  Right, you probably needed to go see, well, I mean, what's the funniest movie in theaters right now? Probably fucking House of Dynamite.

• 31:03Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, my favorite.

• 31:04David Sims?

  Oh, laughs to be had in theaters.

• 31:06Griffin Newman?

  I did the opposite double feature.

• 31:07Speaker 03

  The Taylor Swift lyric, lyric film.

• 31:09David Sims?

  Yeah, maybe Gabby's Dollhouse has a couple laughs, right?

• 31:12Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, Arv argued that wig is on fire in that movie.

• 31:16David Sims?

  That's great. I love that for her.

• 31:24Griffin Newman?

  David?

• 31:25David Sims?

  Yes.

• 31:26Griffin Newman?

  Mmm.

• 31:28David Sims?

  Is that the Cine's cow?

• 31:30Griffin Newman?

  The Cine's cow is back.

• 31:31David Sims?

  Haven't heard from her in a while.

• 31:32Griffin Newman?

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

• 31:38David Sims?

  Okay.

• 31:38Griffin Newman?

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

• 31:43David Sims?

  Wow.

• 31:43Griffin Newman?

  The cow likes chicken.

• 31:45David Sims?

  Remember Cow and Chicken? Let's look it up while you tell the great listeners about the great stuff on movie.

• 31:52Griffin Newman?

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

• 32:05David Sims?

  Absolutely.

• 32:06Griffin Newman?

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

• 32:12David Sims?

  That is a line in the movie.

• 32:13Griffin Newman?

  In the new movie from Jane Schombro and Past and Future Guest.

• 32:16David Sims?

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

• 32:21Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 32:22David Sims?

  This movie rocks. It's got, of course, it stars Hannah Einbinder and Gillian Anderson. Legends and I tip my cap, but Zach Cherry.

• 32:30Griffin Newman?

  Performances, friend of the show.

• 32:31David Sims?

  Friend of the show Zach Cherry. Also in it.

• 32:34Griffin Newman?

  This is true.

• 32:35David Sims?

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

• 32:46Griffin Newman?

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

• 33:00David Sims?

  And you know, and then they hang out and it's regular.

• 33:04Griffin Newman?

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

• 33:16David Sims?

  It's now streaming exclusively on movie and you can try movie free for 30 days at movie.com slash blank check. That's M U B I dot com slash blank check for a whole month of great cinema for free.

• 33:28Griffin Newman?

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

• 33:34David Sims?

  Damn right.

• 33:39Griffin Newman?

  David.

• 33:40David Sims?

  Hmm.

• 33:40Griffin Newman?

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

• 33:48David Sims?

  Lisa.

• 33:49Griffin Newman?

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

• 33:57David Sims?

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

• 34:03Griffin Newman?

  Mm hmm.

• 34:03David Sims?

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

• 34:10Griffin Newman?

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

• 34:13David Sims?

  No.

• 34:14Griffin Newman?

  Nope.

• 34:15David Sims?

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

• 35:02Griffin Newman?

  David.

• 35:02David Sims?

  Yes.

• 35:03Griffin Newman?

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

• 35:07David Sims?

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

• 35:12Griffin Newman?

  I love that. It's very convenient.

• 35:14David Sims?

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

• 35:21Griffin 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.

• 35:30David Sims?

  Uh, got 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.

• 35:53Griffin 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.

• 36:23Speaker 03

  Should we talk about tragedy?

• 36:24David Sims?

  The tragedy of Macbeth. I love Macbeth. I have seen, have you seen Macbeth performed, Griffin Newman?

• 36:29Griffin Newman?

  I don't think I've ever seen it onstage.

• 36:31David Sims?

  I was trying to count how many times I've seen it on the stage, on the, on the stage. You, Dana, when have you seen Macbeth?

• 36:37Speaker 03

  I think I've seen it two times, two or three times on the stage.

• 36:41Griffin Newman?

  Who were your Macbeths?

• 36:42Speaker 03

  Chicago Shakespeare.

• 36:44Griffin Newman?

  Okay.

• 36:44Speaker 03

  Once in college and I feel like once more that I, I'm not placing now. You, we were texting earlier and you were bragging that you saw Sir Patrick Stewart.

• 36:54David Sims?

  I did see the Patrick Stewart production, yes.

• 36:56Griffin Newman?

  When was that?

• 36:56David Sims?

  Which was, uh, I think it was initially 2007, right? Is that right? Uh, and it was, it's, you can see it filmed. Uh, it was, uh, recorded.

• 37:08Griffin Newman?

  They did a pro shot.

• 37:09David Sims?

  Super cool. It's got this whole like, uh, Romanian, like, uh, 60s sort of, um, oppressive government thing.

• 37:17Griffin Newman?

  Mm-hmm.

• 37:18David Sims?

  I also saw it with Samantha Bond as Lady Macbeth. This is what I was trying to remember. Who was Macbeth in this? I'm gonna find it. Just sit and relax. Yeah.

• 37:28Speaker 03

  I've watched the pro-

• 37:29David Sims?

  John Bean, yes.

• 37:30Speaker 03

  The pro shot, there's a good pro shot of David Tennant.

• 37:33David Sims?

  Ooh.

• 37:33Griffin Newman?

  That one I was a little sad to have missed.

• 37:35Speaker 03

  Yeah, me too.

• 37:37David Sims?

  I also, I so I've been doing it, so I saw a lot of stuff when I moved to England. Uh, when I was a kid. And the first thing I saw at the Royal Shakespeare Company when in at the Barbican when I was in England was Julius Caesar. When I was like nine years old.

• 37:50Griffin Newman?

  Okay.

• 37:51David Sims?

  And I, you know, vaguely remember it, but like not really. And I, so I went back and looked at the programs. Cause you, cause some guy collects-

• 37:57Griffin Newman?

  Sure.

• 37:58David Sims?

  Screenshot. Paul Bettany was in it.

• 38:00Speaker 03

  Wow.

• 38:00David Sims?

  What the fuck?

• 38:01Griffin Newman?

  Wow.

• 38:01David Sims?

  I saw him on, you know, I didn't know, like, I didn't know who he was.

• 38:04Griffin Newman?

  He was Caesar. That was just a young Bettany?

• 38:06David Sims?

  Yeah, he wasn't Caesar. Um, I can find out. Uh, let's see. He played, Bettany played Brutus.

• 38:14Griffin Newman?

  Okay.

• 38:14David Sims?

  And Hugh Corshy played Mark Antony and Caesar was played by Christopher Benjamin.

• 38:21David Sims?

  Julian Glover was Cassius, like, you know, you-

• 38:23Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 38:24David Sims?

  I think back on this stuff that I saw as a kid, where I think I was, I liked Shakespeare and I was into it, but I was still a little kid. So I would get a little bored or I would-

• 38:31Griffin Newman?

  This is how I felt.

• 38:32David Sims?

  And I was a, I was a, this is so long ago and I just have no memory of these things that had the toast of, you know, later like British character actor shit, you know what I mean? Like, I saw in 96, uh, the RSC Macbeth. This is why I'm thinking about this, which had Roger Allam as Macbeth.

• 38:52Griffin Newman?

  Oh.

• 38:52David Sims?

  But he was good.

• 38:53Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 38:54David Sims?

  And, uh, let's see, who was Lady Macbeth? Bird Brennan, never heard of you. Okay. But the reason I saw that is that my friend from school was in it as one of Banquo's children. In like a scene where like all the children were like gathered on stage as part of the fantasy of the, right? And so he had no lines, but he had to go be in the play every night.

• 39:15Griffin Newman?

  That's cool.

• 39:15David Sims?

  And I was like jealous of that. I was like, that's cool.

• 39:17Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 39:18Speaker 03

  You know, like the, the historical sort of fun fact about the writing of Macbeth and why that scene is really included. What was happening in England at the time is King James of Scotland came over after Elizabeth died.

• 39:33David Sims?

  Of the House of Stuart.

• 39:34Griffin Newman?

  Of Scotland, also of the Bible.

• 39:35Speaker 03

  Of Scotland. And Shakespeare was trying to suck up to him. So he was like, I'm gonna write this play about a Scottish king. And also, it was popularly believed that that King James was descended from Banquo. Actually, he wasn't because Banquo wasn't a real person, but that was like sort of the popular understanding. So even though in the thing, in like the historical texts that Shakespeare was basing this story on.

• 40:00Speaker 04

  Holland Schutz Chronicles.

• 40:01Speaker 03

  Holland Schutz Chronicles. Banquo was like involved in the assassination. In this version, he's like, no, Banquo, good guy. And also Banquo, you know, gonna have a line of great kings, wink, wink.

• 40:13Speaker 04

  How are you as far as like the king knowledge, legacy stuff?

• 40:17David Sims?

  Unfortunately, really good.

• 40:19Speaker 04

  Like, is that something they really like pushed on you in school?

• 40:22David Sims?

  What do you think nine-year-old David, moving to Britain, thought about the fact that you could learn a big list of names of guys from the past?

• 40:31Speaker 04

  I'm gonna guess.

• 40:32David Sims?

  There's like history about their dude doings.

• 40:36Speaker 04

  Knowing you that-

• 40:37David Sims?

  Do you think like age nine David was interested in memorizing that?

• 40:40Speaker 04

  You might have got a little locked in. Yeah, I can see that.

• 40:43David Sims?

  But then, of course, there is the King of, the Kings of Scotland before what Dana's referring to, the, you know, when the, the crowns are joined and like Macbeth is a real king. But I'm not, I don't know, how good are you at, at the Kings of Scotland, Dana? Can you do it? Probably not.

• 40:58Speaker 03

  No, no.

• 40:59David Sims?

  I mean, it's pretty ridiculous. Like, there were a lot of Kings of Scotland back then.

• 41:02Speaker 04

  Their names are too plain. They need like some kind of like extra like descriptor.

• 41:06David Sims?

  A little rude, given that there was like six King Davids in Scotland. And there's been zero King Davids in England.

• 41:12Speaker 04

  Plain. Uh, well, James McAvoy, of course, was the last King of Scotland, but who led up to that? That's just facts. I don't know what to tell you guys.

• 41:22David Sims?

  Facts are facts.

• 41:23Speaker 04

  Facts are facts.

• 41:24David Sims?

  It's pretty weird that that's a movie.

• 41:26Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 41:27David Sims?

  That they're like, there's an Idi Amin movie, Forest Whitaker won best actor for. Oh, is he the lead? He's actually kinda not. James McAvoy is.

• 41:34Griffin Newman?

  He's not even the titular character.

• 41:35David Sims?

  Who does he play? The last king of Scotland? Well, not really. He plays like a guy.

• 41:38Griffin Newman?

  Yeah. Why is it called that? I don't know.

• 41:40David Sims?

  Idi Amin was kinda into Scotland. Maybe? I think.

• 41:43Griffin Newman?

  I think he called him a king at some point or some shit.

• 41:45David Sims?

  You seen The Last King of Scotland?

• 41:47Speaker 03

  I have not seen that movie. I didn't even know James McAvoy was in it.

• 41:51David Sims?

  He's not just in it, he's all over it, baby.

• 41:53Griffin Newman?

  That's the crazy thing is they like shot this movie where like Idi Amin is the supporting character. And then people watch and they were like, fuck, this performance is good. And then the poster is just giant Forest Whitaker face. Everyone, more people absolutely have seen like the Oscar clip of that movie than seeing the actual movie in full.

• 42:10David Sims?

  Right.

• 42:10Griffin Newman?

  And assume the whole movie is that.

• 42:12Speaker 03

  That is exactly my understanding of that movie.

• 42:14David Sims?

  No, it's mostly James McAvoy being like, God, I gotta get the fuck out of here. I'm like living with Idi Amin.

• 42:19Griffin Newman?

  He's like a doctor stuck in Scotland.

• 42:21David Sims?

  It's that Idi Amin needs to do a giant fart.

• 42:24Griffin Newman?

  I remember that part.

• 42:25David Sims?

  Which is a real scene, of course. And he's like.

• 42:27Griffin Newman?

  They think he's dying.

• 42:27David Sims?

  And he's like, I'm in pain. And he's like, oh, I'm a doctor, I can help you. And then he's like, I think you just have gas pain and like makes him fart.

• 42:33Griffin Newman?

  He takes a baseball bat.

• 42:35David Sims?

  You rock.

• 42:36Griffin Newman?

  And he goes behind Idi Amin, he places the baseball bat against his stomach and he like pulls really hard.

• 42:41Speaker 03

  This is a real scene, isn't it?

• 42:42David Sims?

  This is like the movie's big first act thing.

• 42:45Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, exactly. And then he's like, you're trying to kill me. And James McAvoy's like pulling the bat and then he like lets out like a fucking blazing saddles fart.

• 42:54David Sims?

  This is true.

• 42:55Griffin Newman?

  You have killed me, you are the last king of Scotland.

• 42:57David Sims?

  Analyze this vibes where he's like, yo, yo.

• 43:01Griffin Newman?

  Well, then the rest of the movie, yes.

• 43:02David Sims?

  And then James McAvoy's like, I gotta get out of here. And Idi Amin's like, I gotta do more crimes.

• 43:06Griffin Newman?

  It's like somewhere between like Analyze This and Funny People where he's like, you live in my house now. You help me with everything.

• 43:14David Sims?

  But yes, Macbeth was of course the king of Scotland in 1040 for 17 years, which is not bad.

• 43:21Griffin Newman?

  Longer than I've been king of Scotland.

• 43:24David Sims?

  Yeah, so far.

• 43:25Griffin Newman?

  By 17 years.

• 43:26David Sims?

  Yeah. But he is based, so he's based on a real guy, but the theater, theatrical character is kinda made up. But that's cool.

• 43:35Griffin Newman?

  Do you think in, in his time? Because Shakespeare constructed so many plays around famous leaders.

• 43:44Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 43:44Griffin Newman?

  That there was a kind of analog to Marvel speculation of being like, who do we think he's gonna?

• 43:50Speaker 03

  Who's gonna do next?

• 43:51Griffin Newman?

  And what's his, what's his take gonna be? How much is he gonna deviate from the source material?

• 43:55Speaker 03

  I know that like, you're, that's like a very funny joke, but I do think that people, people fully now, like scholars think there's like, quote unquote, like a lost plays where they were like, I think he probably would have written a play about this guy. And he didn't.

• 44:08David Sims?

  And no one, so why are they lost? Cause no one bothered to put them in the folio or whatever.

• 44:12Speaker 03

  Yeah, and it's like, I don't know, maybe, maybe he did them and no one wrote them down. Cause they're like, we'll give him this one.

• 44:18Griffin Newman?

  Sure. They're like, they removed all the bad ones from history. They were like, what if we zazlav a couple of these, so his legacy is pretty perfect?

• 44:26David Sims?

  He did zazlav it.

• 44:27Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 44:27David Sims?

  But that's, it's just funny to imagine like, where it's like, hey, I hear his next play is fucking Julius Caesar. And people are like, oh shit.

• 44:33Griffin Newman?

  But it must have been that.

• 44:34David Sims?

  But then once in a while, people are like, it's like about a winter's tale. I don't, I don't know what he's doing with this one.

• 44:39Griffin Newman?

  The message board is literally a message board, right? Where someone is like pinning a piece of paper.

• 44:43Speaker 03

  Do I need to have seen Eleventh Night before I saw this movie?

• 44:46David Sims?

  All right, all right.

• 44:47Griffin Newman?

  But when he.

• 44:47David Sims?

  Dana, the door's over there.

• 44:48Griffin Newman?

  When they announced something like Winter's Tale, it must have been like Nolan's speculation where you're like, what does this title imply?

• 44:53David Sims?

  Winter.

• 44:54Griffin Newman?

  Is it secretly an adaptation of, uh, what was the fucking, Blue Thunder? I don't know.

• 44:59David Sims?

  I believe that is what you're talking about, yes, Blue Thunder. Um, Macbeth, uh, let's go all the way back to Macbeth. Uh, where's my dossier for Macbeth, JJ? The play.

• 45:09David Sims?

  Um, what do you know about Macbeth, uh, Dana, apart from, I agree, I think that the historiography of like, he's, he's sucking up to King James a little bit, being like.

• 45:19Speaker 03

  Yeah, I think that's, that's kind of what I know about, about Macbeth, sucking up to a Scottish king.

• 45:25David Sims?

  Um.

• 45:26Speaker 03

  Giving us some classic like Shakespeare themes.

• 45:29David Sims?

  Some, some scholars, uh, like normal guy Harold Bloom, uh, think that, uh, it was sort of influenced by the gunpowder plot. They did try to blow up King James the first.

• 45:38Griffin Newman?

  Oh, sure.

• 45:39David Sims?

  Those, uh, rotten Catholics.

• 45:41Griffin Newman?

  Mm-hmm.

• 45:41David Sims?

  Sorry, they're all right. Um, I'm sure King James had it coming. Wait, should I be sympathizing with Guy Fawkes? I don't know.

• 45:48Speaker 03

  It is kind of funny. I always find it very funny that like Guy Fawkes, because of Euphoric Vendetta, has become this imagery that's like punk rock anarchist when he was a devout Catholic.

• 45:57David Sims?

  He was a devout Catholic who wanted to kill James out of religious fervor. And then the holiday where we burn him in effigy is an anti-Catholic holiday. And the whole thing in just 21st century Britain, you're just like, what's any of this about? Like, nobody here goes to church anymore.

• 46:13Griffin Newman?

  Well, with distance, it's just become, if they hated him, he must have been cool.

• 46:17David Sims?

  I think he was all right. What do you think about King James? He was all right.

• 46:20Speaker 03

  I mean.

• 46:21David Sims?

  He was probably gay.

• 46:22Speaker 03

  Probably gay.

• 46:23Griffin Newman?

  Go off, queen.

• 46:24Speaker 03

  You know what he did is, what I find kind of interesting about this play, which has, you know, witches, he was a little bit obsessed with, with witches.

• 46:31Griffin Newman?

  Okay.

• 46:32David Sims?

  Right?

• 46:32Speaker 03

  Sort of the witch hunter king.

• 46:34Griffin Newman?

  Obsessed in fear, you're saying? Yeah.

• 46:37David Sims?

  I think thought they were pretty real.

• 46:39Speaker 03

  Definitely thought they were real.

• 46:40David Sims?

  People at that time were like, there was a sort of a spectrum of how real do you think witches are? And he was close to heavy on real.

• 46:46Griffin Newman?

  But he wasn't goth. He was like, we have to protect ourselves.

• 46:49Speaker 03

  Yeah, he was not into witches because he liked them. He was like, we should put these women on trial and torture them.

• 46:54David Sims?

  Did you know, right, which is not well cool of him, so maybe I take it back on James the first. Did you know that in 1604, he wrote a treatise called A Counterblast to Tobacco, which is seen as one of the first anti-smoking, like publications ever, in which he says that, like, he doesn't like tobacco. He hates that it's come from the new, like, that it's the hot new thing. He says that it is hateful to the nose.

• 47:20Speaker 03

  He's right.

• 47:21David Sims?

  I know. He was just like in fucking 1604. He's like, this, why are we all smoking this?

• 47:25Speaker 03

  This smells bad.

• 47:27Griffin Newman?

  I'm just, imagine him making people write his entire screed on the back of every tobacco leaf, like it's the warning on a cigarette pack.

• 47:35Speaker 03

  Hateful to the nose.

• 47:37Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 47:37David Sims?

  He basically is like, it's sinful and it, it smells like Satan to me as well. So he gets a little hard on the, you know, if you're smoking, it's like sort of devil smoke, right?

• 47:48Griffin Newman?

  Okay, sure.

• 47:48David Sims?

  But still, he didn't like smoking.

• 47:50Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 47:50David Sims?

  Anyway. Um, so Macbeth, yeah, written in probably like sixteen oh.

• 47:55Speaker 03

  Two.

• 47:56David Sims?

  Five, three, two, somewhere around there. Can't be dated precisely. Maybe try work harder.

• 48:03Griffin Newman?

  It sounds like a JJ failing to me.

• 48:06David Sims?

  There's basically, Dana, there's basically debate over, is it like sixteen oh three to celebrate James's ascension to the throne? Or a little after the gunpowder plot, which would put it like sixteen oh six.

• 48:16Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 48:16David Sims?

  We don't know. They basically just like search the text to try and figure out like what could be a reference to like this. It seems like such a fun branch of history, but also very niche. You know, to like go through Shakespeare being like, what were they, what were they referencing here? Is this like a topical thing? Like him saying this?

• 48:34Speaker 03

  It's like how they reference driver's license in this movie, which dated precisely in twenty twenty one.

• 48:39David Sims?

  That's why they did that.

• 48:40Griffin Newman?

  Do you, do you think that Paramount's about to greenlight a bunch of movies that are like Macbeth equivalents where like our greatest storytellers are pitching films about how good tech billionaires and their children are?

• 48:51David Sims?

  I'm sorry, I didn't catch all that. Tech billionaires and their children are good.

• 48:54Griffin Newman?

  The idea was that Shakespeare was like, I got the platform.

• 48:57Speaker 03

  Sucking up to his overlords, yeah.

• 48:59Griffin Newman?

  Right, right.

• 49:00David Sims?

  Yes.

• 49:02Griffin Newman?

  You think I'm correct?

• 49:03David Sims?

  Yeah, I think you're right.

• 49:04Griffin Newman?

  Thank you.

• 49:06David Sims?

  Of course, this is, you're not supposed to say the name Macbeth, uh, if you're performing it, right?

• 49:10Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 49:11David Sims?

  It's a curse play.

• 49:12Griffin Newman?

  It's a curse in the theater. It is, of course, a curse into podcast studios as well.

• 49:16David Sims?

  We call it the Scottish play.

• 49:17Griffin Newman?

  Fucked ourselves, but the legend is always if you say Macbeth in a podcast studio, you are, uh, trapped to endorse brain powders for 20 years.

• 49:28Griffin Newman?

  And get caught in manosphere.

• 49:30David Sims?

  You like that?

• 49:31Griffin Newman?

  Say Macbeth in a podcast studio.

• 49:33David Sims?

  I don't understand.

• 49:34Speaker 03

  Well, this is a very serious play.

• 49:36Griffin Newman?

  It's a serious play.

• 49:36David Sims?

  Very serious play.

• 49:37Griffin Newman?

  Talking about a serious curse.

• 49:39David Sims?

  Michael York says that if you say the name. On stage or in a theater, you have to leave immediately, walk around three times, walk around the theater three times, which is like, Jesus, it's like 20 minutes.

• 49:50Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 49:51David Sims?

  And then spit over your left shoulder, say an obscenity, and then wait to be invited back in the building. You can't even go back in.

• 49:57Griffin Newman?

  Vampire rules.

• 49:58David Sims?

  Um, right. Uh, Patrick Stewart says, if you have played the role of the Scottish thane, then you're allowed to say the title anytime, anywhere.

• 50:06Speaker 03

  Oh, that's convenient for him to say.

• 50:09David Sims?

  Also note, he's not saying it. So it's kind of one of those things where he's like, I mean, you know, it's weird that you can't say this word. And I'm like, well, you're not saying the word either, man.

• 50:17Griffin Newman?

  I've always found the loopholes of it confusing, because it is, right, the, the thing is, oh, only call it the Scottish play.

• 50:23David Sims?

  Right.

• 50:23Griffin Newman?

  And, and basically there was a series of incidents during different productions that made people think it was cursed, right?

• 50:29Speaker 03

  Sort of Phantom of the Opera style.

• 50:31Griffin Newman?

  Yes, certain actors died or got injured, you know, like stage lights falling down and hitting people.

• 50:36David Sims?

  Maybe some witches cursed the play.

• 50:37Speaker 03

  Are you allowed to reference the historical figure Macbeth, do you think?

• 50:41David Sims?

  Well, this is my question. Also, if you're in Macbeth, you do have to say the word Macbeth.

• 50:46Griffin Newman?

  And you put it on the fucking like marquee.

• 50:48David Sims?

  That's true.

• 50:49Griffin Newman?

  They're like, if you're like working in a regional production of Hairspray and you say Macbeth, you gotta get the fuck out of here. You've just ruined everything. Yet if you stage Macbeth on Broadway with Daniel Craig, you're saying Macbeth a trillion times a night.

• 51:03Speaker 04

  So if I went to a Broadway show and yelled Macbeth.

• 51:06Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 51:07Speaker 04

  Like, is that worse than yelling like fire?

• 51:09Griffin Newman?

  Possibly.

• 51:10David Sims?

  Yeah, and we do need to test this out. And you have to go to some Broadway shows, start yelling Macbeth.

• 51:15Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 51:16Speaker 04

  All right. Um. Blank check, uh, the business will pay for that.

• 51:20David Sims?

  Sure, yeah, I'll get you box seats.

• 51:22Griffin Newman?

  Your bail as well?

• 51:24David Sims?

  Yeah. I think the reason for that superstition is because this is a tough play to do.

• 51:30Griffin Newman?

  Mm-hmm.

• 51:30David Sims?

  Weirdly.

• 51:31Griffin Newman?

  Oh, so it's more convenient to be like, ah, I can't do it because it's cursed.

• 51:34David Sims?

  Bad reviews, I think. It's like, sort of, because like, this is a weirdly straightforward play. And I think that for whatever reason, it like, I just remember almost every production I went to went, got kind of bad reviews.

• 51:45Griffin Newman?

  Hmm.

• 51:46David Sims?

  It's like a beloved role. It's famous. Everybody knows Macbeth. And yet it's kind of, for whatever reason, harder than Hamlet or King Lear in some way to like, do a good Macbeth. Patrick Stewart, accepted. We love Patrick Stewart.

• 52:00Griffin Newman?

  Mm-hmm.

• 52:00David Sims?

  Um, like, every movie version of Macbeth is kind of weird.

• 52:07David Sims?

  This Orson Welles one, which is kinda good, but the sets are sort of falling down.

• 52:11Griffin Newman?

  Uh huh.

• 52:12David Sims?

  There's the Roman Polanski one, nothing weird about that guy.

• 52:14Griffin Newman?

  Never seen that one.

• 52:15Speaker 03

  Normal.

• 52:16David Sims?

  It's interesting.

• 52:17Speaker 03

  It's similar to this one in a lot of ways.

• 52:19David Sims?

  It's very, it's the post Sharon Tate murder movie, and it's very bleak.

• 52:24Griffin Newman?

  Uh huh.

• 52:25David Sims?

  Which is easy to lean into that with Macbeth.

• 52:27Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 52:27David Sims?

  There's the very dusky Assassin's Creed guy.

• 52:31Griffin Newman?

  I love that film.

• 52:32David Sims?

  Yep.

• 52:32Griffin Newman?

  Justin Kurzweil, have you seen that one, Ben?

• 52:34Speaker 04

  No.

• 52:34Griffin Newman?

  It's the movie that got him Assassin's Creed.

• 52:37David Sims?

  Lot of, lot of, um, smoke.

• 52:38Griffin Newman?

  And it's fast bender and Marion Cootier, and they were just like, let's just move over to, from one great work.

• 52:45Speaker 03

  About assassins.

• 52:46Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 52:47Speaker 03

  About assassins.

• 52:48David Sims?

  True.

• 52:48Griffin Newman?

  But you would, you would love that movie.

• 52:50David Sims?

  Okay.

• 52:50Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, it's grimy as hell.

• 52:52Speaker 03

  There's Throne of Blood.

• 52:53David Sims?

  Which is good, and you rewatch for this podcast, so we do have to shout that out. That does rock.

• 52:58Speaker 03

  And it also feels like a lot of the fabric of that transferred over to this one.

• 53:04Griffin Newman?

  Into this.

• 53:04David Sims?

  He gets so many arrows in him at end of play.

• 53:08Griffin Newman?

  That's, it is true.

• 53:09Speaker 04

  And if you haven't seen Assassin's Creed, highly recommend it.

• 53:12Speaker 03

  I haven't, but I did listen to the podcast about it.

• 53:14Speaker 04

  Hell yeah.

• 53:14Griffin Newman?

  If you, if you like the podcast, you'd love the movie. I'm looking at the, the Scottish play Curse thing. It is built into the narrative that it is only a curse to say it when you're not performing it or rehearsing it.

• 53:29Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 53:30Griffin Newman?

  Which doesn't make any sense, but then my memory was.

• 53:32David Sims?

  Now it's just a way to be annoying. I feel like someone says Macbeth and everyone's like, huh! It's like, I'm sorry, I forgot we weren't rehearsing anymore.

• 53:39Griffin Newman?

  My memory was Origins of the Curse was weird things befalling people working on the show.

• 53:44Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 53:45Griffin Newman?

  It does seem like Origins of the Curse were, were just solely, productions never went well.

• 53:49David Sims?

  Right, bad reviews. This is what I'm saying.

• 53:52Speaker 03

  It wasn't a Spider-Man turn off the dark situation. It is, they should now start a new thing where you can't say Spider-Man turn off the dark.

• 53:59David Sims?

  You can say Spider-Man, but you can't say turn off the dark.

• 54:02Griffin Newman?

  People did think.

• 54:02David Sims?

  A phrase that people love to say, that's the problem.

• 54:06Griffin Newman?

  People did think, wasn't that phrase created by like Bono's son?

• 54:11David Sims?

  Uh, yes, it was, uh, either Bono or the Edge's son was like, turn off the dark.

• 54:15Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 54:16David Sims?

  At like bedtime once.

• 54:17Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 54:17David Sims?

  And they were like, brilliant. Our millions and millions of dollars of Spider-Man should be called this.

• 54:23Griffin Newman?

  Based on a three-year-old not understanding how a light switch works. The actual origin is that, uh, yes, a series of, uh, poor productions, but noted, commonly put on by theaters already in financial trouble. Or that high production costs put theaters in financial trouble, but it was chalked up to witches. They were like, the witches got angry. That this fucking show pinned them down.

• 54:51Griffin Newman?

  Read them for filth.

• 54:52David Sims?

  Right.

• 54:52Griffin Newman?

  And then they cursed all productions.

• 54:53Speaker 03

  Although the witch is a very cool character in this play.

• 54:55Griffin Newman?

  Good role.

• 54:57David Sims?

  Uh, witch is a very cool role. I mean, what role would you want to play?

• 55:00Speaker 03

  I would want, in this one, I'm like, the witch.

• 55:03David Sims?

  Lady Macbeth's a pretty cool role.

• 55:04Speaker 03

  But I'm not a good actress.

• 55:06David Sims?

  Right. You have to, right. You kind of got to bring it for that one. That's tough.

• 55:09Speaker 03

  I wouldn't, I would be too nervous to have a big part in this. You know what? In this one, Ross is just like, close-ups of your face not blinking.

• 55:16David Sims?

  I mean, not, sorry to say this word, but looking cunty. Like, I mean, he is serving it.

• 55:21Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 55:21David Sims?

  Uh, like, which we love. I mean, I just love that Joel Coen is like, like, you know, digging into the meat of shit. And he's like, I feel like Ross is just kind of serving.

• 55:29Speaker 03

  Serving cunt? Griffin, you're an actor. Is there a role?

• 55:33Griffin Newman?

  Kind of, yeah.

• 55:34David Sims?

  Have you done Shakespeare?

• 55:36Griffin Newman?

  I did, uh, I did Twelfth Night.

• 55:38David Sims?

  We love it. What did you play?

• 55:40Griffin Newman?

  Pretentious Unbearable High School. It was reinterpreted.

• 55:45David Sims?

  Oh, no. That's on the turn. No, come on, come on.

• 55:48Griffin Newman?

  Being in a, uh, Dust Bowl era circus. It was a real carnival rip-off, like a year after carnival.

• 55:56David Sims?

  Right. Everyone had carnival fever.

• 55:58Speaker 03

  Dust Bowl era?

• 55:59Griffin Newman?

  Yes. Our 80-year-old theater teacher with like translucent orange hair, who dressed like a 20-year-old from like Search and Destroy was like, this weird thought came to me.

• 56:09David Sims?

  So what world did you play?

• 56:11Griffin Newman?

  Fabian, who is kind of the Ross in that show where he's just like a character that exists to be the fifth guy in the group.

• 56:16David Sims?

  Yeah, I would say Fabian, he's one of the, you know, people in Olivia's household who also enjoys the pranks that are happening. He's not like sort of doing them.

• 56:25Griffin Newman?

  There is no defined character or game where everyone else kind of has a fun thing going on. And Sabina Freeman Sights, who is a successful actor and a producer to this day, they double cast us as Fabian, which doesn't mean we were playing it in alternation. The character that is already underwritten, sorry, Bill, they were like, why don't the two of you do it simultaneously? We'll split it into two characters.

• 56:53David Sims?

  Okay.

• 56:53Griffin Newman?

  Fabia and Fabian. And I was a magician. She was the magician's assistant.

• 56:59David Sims?

  So was this just sort of a way to make sure everyone participated?

• 57:02Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's high school, whatever.

• 57:03Griffin Newman?

  But so I'm like, playing a character is like not a character.

• 57:06David Sims?

  Right.

• 57:06Griffin Newman?

  And then they also like split us in half and it was absolutely random who had which line. And then we just did a bunch of magic tricks and shit.

• 57:15Speaker 03

  Well, that's fun.

• 57:16Griffin Newman?

  I wore long johns. I just did a lot of business. Yeah, I played him like a fucking gremlin. I say I played him like a gremlin. I was a gremlin and thus that's how I played it. Yeah.

• 57:25Speaker 03

  Is there a Macbeth character that you would want to sink your teeth into?

• 57:29Griffin Newman?

  The Stephen Root part, but now it's just because I see what he did with it.

• 57:33David Sims?

  You would just be copying Root.

• 57:35Griffin Newman?

  The muttering lunatic. Yeah. But I admit that like I, I felt, I have not attempted it since. But I, Shakespeare is a thing I can absolutely not get my head around as an actor. And I think like, it's one of the reasons I think Denzel is very good in this is he is one of the only people I have seen work the dialogue so thoroughly that it actually feels like it is coming out of his mouth in real time.

• 58:02Speaker 03

  Well, that's, that's what I find interesting about the Denzel performance in this is it feels like a Denzel Washington performance. It's naturalistic. It's, it's grounded, but the movie around him is very heightened and expressionist. And so to me, there's a-

• 58:16Griffin Newman?

  You want someone going bigger.

• 58:18Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 58:19David Sims?

  I know what you're saying, Dana. Right. Cause he does feel very grounded and no one else is really doing grounded. But maybe that's good to set him apart in some way because Macbeth is so in his own head.

• 58:30Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 58:31David Sims?

  I don't know. He's such a- He really respects Shakespeare, right? Like, like Denzel Washington. He's done it twice on Broadway, both times to unanimously terrible reviews.

• 58:42Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 58:42David Sims?

  But not really for him, more for just like the productions. He's done it in movies twice, because he's in Much Ado.

• 58:49Griffin Newman?

  Right, yes.

• 58:50David Sims?

  Which he's wonderful in, but mostly he's just fine as hell, right? Like, he's just playing one of the sexy guys.

• 58:56Griffin Newman?

  Looking like a snack, yeah.

• 58:56David Sims?

  Right?

• 58:58David Sims?

  He did Richard III at the public a very long time ago, and I think he got good reviews for that. But that was like when I was a child. I love that he takes Shakespeare so seriously.

• 59:10Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 59:10David Sims?

  It to keep, you know, doing it. I, and I like this performance.

• 59:14Speaker 03

  Did you see the Jake Gyllenhaal Othello?

• 59:17David Sims?

  No, I didn't actually, despite being a successful podcaster, have like $800 on me to sit, you know, in a hammock suspended from the rafters.

• 59:24Griffin Newman?

  It was just like the insanity around getting a ticket. And then the first wave of people see the first preview and they're like, yeah, it kind of sucked.

• 59:31David Sims?

  Like, not just like, oh, it's not that good. They were like, it's bad.

• 59:34Griffin Newman?

  It's actually actively bad.

• 59:36David Sims?

  I'm like, he's also way too old to be playing Othello. He's kind of too old to be playing Macbeth.

• 59:40Griffin Newman?

  Julius Caesar was the other one he did on Broadway?

• 59:42David Sims?

  That, and that was like, he played Brutus in that, I think. And that was, that was like, what, at this point, almost 20 years ago? No, it was like 2005, wasn't it?

• 59:50Speaker 03

  I mean, I, I never want to age shame anyone and be like, an actress is too old for a part, which is a thing, you know, that Hollywood loves to say. But I think it is interesting and noteworthy that this is a production of Macbeth, where Lady Macbeth and Macbeth are explicitly past childbearing age.

• 1:00:09David Sims?

  Right.

• 1:00:09Speaker 03

  Which I think informs the text in an interesting way.

• 1:00:12Griffin Newman?

  Sure, and also past the age that most people lived to in this era.

• 1:00:17David Sims?

  Macbeth, King of Scotland, lived to the age of about 51.

• 1:00:20Griffin Newman?

  How old's Denzel when he made this? 66?

• 1:00:22Speaker 03

  They seem like they're in their 60s.

• 1:00:24David Sims?

  I'm just telling you.

• 1:00:24Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:24David Sims?

  Although, a 51-year-old in the 10th century probably looked like 85, right?

• 1:00:29Griffin Newman?

  Sure.

• 1:00:30David Sims?

  Yeah. I'm gonna open the dossier. Buster Scruggs is the last film that the Coen Brothers made together. After that, Ethan said, "I'm sleepy. I want to take a rest."

• 1:00:40Griffin Newman?

  Yes. "I'm tired of making movies. We've made too many. We made too many westerns. I'm exhausted."

• 1:00:46David Sims?

  They are very, you know, they insist, "We did not break up." As Ethan puts it, "It was just me going, ugh."

• 1:00:55Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 1:00:55David Sims?

  That's, I'm trying to do who.

• 1:00:57Speaker 03

  You know what I did see was an Ethan Cohen play around this time in LA.

• 1:01:03Griffin Newman?

  Very good.

• 1:01:04Speaker 03

  Play as a poem or a poem as a play?

• 1:01:06Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:01:07Speaker 03

  I did not care for it particularly.

• 1:01:10Griffin Newman?

  He has a play, a new play running currently at the time that we're recording this episode off Broadway that I have heard is quite good from everyone I know who's seen it. But that seemed to be the narrative at the time of, you know, Ethan has all these other things he does. He publishes poetry and writes books and does nights of one acts and whatever. He's maybe gonna go off and do all that. He's tired of the machinery of film production. And so it was taken as like, maybe they're just on a hiatus until Ethan gets the bug again. And then this announcement comes out and it's like, oh shit, Joel's gonna do stuff solo, which I think was not taken as a given at first.

• 1:01:45Speaker 03

  I have heard with the DGA, if you split as a duo, it is very, very hard to get back together. Maybe there's like a Cohen exception because they are the Cohen brothers.

• 1:01:55David Sims?

  They may, but who knows what will happen if they do reunite, right? If, do they go back to the old school Joel directs, Ethan produces to avoid DJ business? I don't know.

• 1:02:05Griffin Newman?

  I'm gonna say this, I think I can say this and we could cut it out later, but we talked about it in our Barton Fink episode in this series, that our buddy Chris Weitz was talking about that being an issue where then he and his brother couldn't work together again.

• 1:02:16Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:02:17Griffin Newman?

  And not understanding like, fuck, is the solo movie's gonna prevent us from ever getting a proper Cohen collaboration? A new friend of the show Seth Rogen was telling me after listening to that episode.

• 1:02:28David Sims?

  He's also, of course, been credited as a director with Evan Goldberg.

• 1:02:31Griffin Newman?

  Yes. That Favreau has been pretty high on the DGA board for a number of years.

• 1:02:37David Sims?

  Johnny Fav's?

• 1:02:38Griffin Newman?

  And after their battle to get approved to co-direct on This Is The End,

• 1:02:42David Sims?

  Right.

• 1:02:43Griffin Newman?

  Favreau brought the two of them onto the DGA board to be like, we need to rethink all of this.

• 1:02:50David Sims?

  Right. This is like a annoying rule.

• 1:02:52Griffin Newman?

  I think there's, there's a greater flexibility in the last 10 years only. They've become less rigid about it. But, uh, yeah, I don't know. It's a weird moving target.

• 1:03:04David Sims?

  Um, in 2016, Frances McDormand, I guess I'd been basically bugging Joel for a while to direct her in Macbeth. On the stage, she did it in 2016.

• 1:03:19Griffin Newman?

  She played Lady Macbeth and the witch, is that right?

• 1:03:21David Sims?

  Uh, he just says Lady Macbeth, I'm not sure, with Conliffe Hill, great British actor, or is he Irish? I want to miss. Yeah, he's Irish, sorry. Wonderful actor, who everyone knows these days from Game of Thrones, but he's, I saw him in like, lots of British stage stuff back in the day. But Dan Sullivan directed it, Joel didn't do it, he was not interested in live theater, basically. But, he tells her, "It's something I could get my head around as a movie." Like, it's not, I don't really want to do theater, but like, I'm not uninterested in Macbeth, so, um, it's not like, he's long wanted to do the Macbeth movie and like, only his split with Ethan Coen allows this to happen, it's more, as JJ puts it, he saw his

• 1:04:06David Sims?

  wife do it on stage and was like, "That's cool." Like, "That's something I could do."

• 1:04:10Griffin Newman?

  Maybe I could build something around that. But that also makes sense at the moment that he doesn't have another movie lined up, and Joel had been the guy who seemingly kept being like, "Come on, another one, another one."

• 1:04:21David Sims?

  And it's such a non-Cohen-y thing. Like, so it's sort of like, "That's a great way to do something different."

• 1:04:27Speaker 03

  There's no humor in this, really?

• 1:04:28Griffin Newman?

  No.

• 1:04:29Speaker 03

  I mean, tiny bits, but it's not, it's not the tone of the Coen brothers.

• 1:04:33David Sims?

  My big take in my review at the time was, Macbeth is a very Coen-y character. Like, in that he is a guy who gets in way over his head on a scheme, that he doesn't really, like, have a plan, you know what I mean? And then like, keeps trying to be like, "Okay, well, what if I do this?" You know, he does have a Coen-y thing.

• 1:04:50Griffin Newman?

  And the cycles of death, like, that's another thing looming over the text that is just like, yeah, death coming for us all, uh, in meaningless ways.

• 1:04:59David Sims?

  Right. Um, Coen's friends with Hanford Woods, who's an academic who had shot, taught Shakespeare, what's going on with their brain? Uh, at Montreal's Dawson College. And so, uh, he helps explain Macbeth to Joel Coen, cool. Um, and, yes, he says, "It does prefigure a lot of 20th century tropes in American pulp fiction, a couple plotting a murder, it's not..." Dog outside.

• 1:05:28Griffin Newman?

  A dog hates murder. By the way, I just want to throw out, McDormand was one of the three witches in that production. She was double cast.

• 1:05:35Speaker 03

  That's cool.

• 1:05:35Griffin Newman?

  Which is interesting.

• 1:05:36Speaker 03

  I like that.

• 1:05:36David Sims?

  It's fun. Yeah, it's a, that's a, that seems like a cool interpretation of like, who's influencing Macbeth here? And Cohen, I mean, Cohen just says a lot of stuff about Shakespeare. A lot of people would say, which is like, yes, he was a genius of literature, but he was also constantly an entertainer, entertainer, and he was alive to aspects of storytelling and, you know, like, like, people I feel like dig into Shakespeare and realize like, these plays are thrillers. They're exciting. Like, it's not just boring homework.

• 1:06:04Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 1:06:05Speaker 03

  They're sex jokes.

• 1:06:07David Sims?

  They cut about, there's some, sometimes they make a sex joke, like they're swords of penis, you know? There's about 15% of dialogue cut. Macbeth is, I would say, the shortest tragedy already, so it's not that hard to get it into like, nice movie length. You don't have to do a major excising.

• 1:06:24Griffin Newman?

  But the Coens love coming in under two hours.

• 1:06:26David Sims?

  That's true.

• 1:06:28Griffin Newman?

  It's one of their favorite things.

• 1:06:29David Sims?

  And this is a pretty, like, this would be a tough hang if it was like, two hours, 20 minutes.

• 1:06:35Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:06:35David Sims?

  Like, this is not a high-energy movie.

• 1:06:37Griffin Newman?

  No.

• 1:06:38David Sims?

  JJ has copy paste a gigantic amounts of text of Joel telling me what he decided to cut or not, but I cannot model our for 20 minutes.

• 1:06:47Griffin Newman?

  I'm gonna quickly copy taste the, copy paste the words, "You're fired," into our group chat to see how he responds to that.

• 1:06:54David Sims?

  Now.

• 1:06:55Griffin Newman?

  Now.

• 1:06:55David Sims?

  To what Dana's saying, though. This is a postman of Paulson Macbeth, but Cohen acknowledges. It was interesting that, at this point in his career and in Frances's career, they're older. He wanted it to reflect an older couple.

• 1:07:11David Sims?

  He thinks like, you know, there's only one really good marriage in all of, all of the heterosexual relationships in Shakespeare, he says. There's only one good marriage, I guess, because most Shakespeare's about people

• 1:07:24Speaker 03

  The wooing.

• 1:07:24David Sims?

  who will be getting married later. And he's like, and it's the marriage of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth. Yeah, they're plotting to kill people, but they do, the union is fairly strong.

• 1:07:35Griffin Newman?

  They listen to each other.

• 1:07:36David Sims?

  Exactly.

• 1:07:38David Sims?

  Um, so he wanted it to be this kind of like substantial older couple. So they changed the line, I can tell you. The original line is, Macbeth says, bring forth men, children only, for thy understand metal should compose nothing but males. And Denzel says, should have composed nothing but males. So it's sort of acknowledging that they are past childbearing.

• 1:08:01Griffin Newman?

  The, the absolute lack of a biological heir. That they are doing all of this and there was no bloodline that can.

• 1:08:09Speaker 03

  That to me made this a little bit harder for me to emotionally understand. Where if there is absolutely no possibility of a biological heir, then why are you so mad that Banquo's kids are gonna become, someone's gonna have to become king after you.

• 1:08:26Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 1:08:27Speaker 03

  But.

• 1:08:27David Sims?

  But what, does it have to be Banquo? What about Ross? That guy looks great.

• 1:08:31Speaker 03

  But I also think that kind of goes into the, the co-in of it where it's like, this guy's just getting in over his head. He's just like overthinking everything.

• 1:08:38David Sims?

  Well, someone just says to him, you should be the king. And he's like, I shouldn't be the king. His wife's like, I don't know, maybe you shouldn't. He's like, all right, I'll be the king. And now he's, now he's the king. And he's like, fuck, what do I do now?

• 1:08:48Speaker 03

  Is, is Macbeth a beta?

• 1:08:49David Sims?

  Macbeth is, is a bit of a beta cuck. No, he's not. I don't, is Macbeth a beta? I mean, the thing about Macbeth is he gets told, not just the king thing, he gets told that no one can beat him. That's tough news to hear. You don't want a witch to be telling you that or whatever, right? Cause like, then you're gonna start behaving real odd.

• 1:09:06Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 1:09:07David Sims?

  If you're like, I'm invincible.

• 1:09:09Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:09:09David Sims?

  And I do like that the co-in interpretation is like, he starts doing some equalizer shit in the final act. When guys are charging at him with swords and he's just like, I'll just fucking like headbutt you. Like, you can't kill me. But a witch said so.

• 1:09:23Griffin Newman?

  He also views everything and everyone as a threat to kill him.

• 1:09:27David Sims?

  Yes, that is true.

• 1:09:29Griffin Newman?

  Birds coming at his head. He's like, not today.

• 1:09:32David Sims?

  So obviously, first actress attached is this sort of little-known actress named Frances McDormand. And they're like, okay, who's gonna be like a worthy adversary? And they ponder this guy, they've also been like batting around his name once in a while, Denzel Washington.

• 1:09:48Griffin Newman?

  There is no, uh, physical release for this movie. Hopefully they'll be corrected at some point.

• 1:09:52David Sims?

  Yeah, that'd be nice.

• 1:09:53Griffin Newman?

  Uh, this is an Apple Plus original film, co-produced with, uh, 824 and IAC. On the Apple TV app, there is like one special feature they have attached to it. That's a featurette where everyone talks other than Joel. It is all of the regular close collaborators, it is most of the main actors. They're all talking about how great Joel is and what his vision was and how they service it. But Ellen Chenoweth, who's cast a lot of the Coens movies,

• 1:10:21David Sims?

  Yes.

• 1:10:21Griffin Newman?

  was just saying like, the project is Joel wants to do Macbeth, and Frances is set for Lady Macbeth, and she's just like, it immediately becomes an incredibly short list.

• 1:10:31David Sims?

  Right.

• 1:10:31Griffin Newman?

  Of like, who is in the right age range, can hold their own against her, and is classically trained, has experience with this.

• 1:10:38David Sims?

  Jared Leto?

• 1:10:39Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, it was just Jared and Denzel. Uh, and Jared, you know, is the king of the box office. There's a reason we keep putting him in these.

• 1:10:46David Sims?

  Thirty-three million dollars guaranteed for whatever he fucking makes, and no more.

• 1:10:52Griffin Newman?

  But, but really, give him troubled IP. Give him IP that's never quite clicked.

• 1:10:57David Sims?

  Stuff that isn't on its own two feet?

• 1:10:59Griffin Newman?

  No.

• 1:10:59David Sims?

  He will keep it not on its own two feet.

• 1:11:02Griffin Newman?

  And I guarantee you, it will open ten to fifteen million dollars below projections. But, but here's why it's worth it, because he's such a good guy.

• 1:11:10David Sims?

  And a great actor!

• 1:11:11Speaker 03

  Everyone loves him.

• 1:11:12Griffin Newman?

  The performances are always so memorable.

• 1:11:16David Sims?

  It truly is. He's a zero-tool player.

• 1:11:19Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:11:21Griffin Newman?

  You always make the joke that like, when, when they keep greenlighting these movies with him, you're like, on paper, he looks good, but it's a canard.

• 1:11:28David Sims?

  Yeah, it's, it's crazy, cuz right, you're like, he's an Oscar-winning actor, he's been in hits.

• 1:11:32Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:11:32David Sims?

  He was the Joker.

• 1:11:33Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 1:11:34David Sims?

  The Joker, that's a role people have won Oscars for, not him.

• 1:11:37Speaker 03

  The Joker that everyone loves?

• 1:11:39Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 1:11:39David Sims?

  Yeah, he was a Joker.

• 1:11:42Griffin Newman?

  There was a Joker sandwich, where on either side, the pieces of bread were people winning the Oscar for playing the Joker, and it turned out in between the two pieces of bread was nothing.

• 1:11:52David Sims?

  What do you mean? He had a mouth on his hand, and so instead of his regular mouth, he could also give you hand mouth.

• 1:11:59Speaker 03

  He was damaged. The tattoo said so.

• 1:12:01David Sims?

  It did say that.

• 1:12:01Griffin Newman?

  It is funny that that is like far and away his biggest hit. And they're like, I guess the guy's got box office goods.

• 1:12:07David Sims?

  Along with his Oscar.

• 1:12:08Griffin Newman?

  They cut his performance down to six minutes. He is barely in that movie. You can tell there's an hour of footage left on the cutting room floor. Um, no, they were like, if Denzel wants to do this, that's a fucking miracle. That like solves all of our problems, better than we possibly could have imagined.

• 1:12:27David Sims?

  Yeah, I mean, that's a guy you want signing on. Uh, they had had lunch, uh, Joel said like they had had lunch with him like five or six years prior.

• 1:12:35Griffin Newman?

  Okay.

• 1:12:36David Sims?

  And had a sort of general like, it would be so cool to do a movie together someday. Chat. And then apparently Ethan had said Buster Scruggs and Denzel was like, I have to go. That, that part didn't happen.

• 1:12:46Griffin Newman?

  Do you want to play all of them? Um, but he like loves Frances McDormand, so they have very, very similar work styles.

• 1:12:52David Sims?

  Awesome.

• 1:12:53Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:53David Sims?

  Um, and so they have lunch again and they're like Macbeth and he's like, yeah, cool. Denzel's favorite Coen Brothers movie?

• 1:13:02Griffin Newman?

  Uh, Ladykillers?

• 1:13:03David Sims?

  Oh, brother, where art thou? Not Ladykillers.

• 1:13:06Griffin Newman?

  That makes sense.

• 1:13:06David Sims?

  He says, I don't even know why. It's just so weird. Uh, but he likes the Coen Brothers, um, and he likes Shakespeare. Uh, he played a fellow in college. He played it later opposite Jake Gyllenhaal. Um, for one billion dollars, he could go see it.

• 1:13:19Griffin Newman?

  Had he ever played Macbeth onstage?

• 1:13:21David Sims?

  Uh, he had never done Macbeth. He had, uh, in later years played Richard III, as I said, and Brutus and Julie Caesar. He also apparently did Coriolanus, but he did not, uh, had never really read Macbeth, he said. Like he never really, uh, you know, uh, delved into that one. He said he turned on one of the films, doesn't even say which one, watched for two minutes and turned it off. And was just like, I'll, I don't want to like, you know, be affected by anything else.

• 1:13:46Griffin Newman?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:13:47David Sims?

  Um, his take on, uh, Macbeth is tired, he says.

• 1:13:52Griffin Newman?

  Sure.

• 1:13:52David Sims?

  Says they're older. They're like, look, this is our shot, our due, give it to us. Drastic times make for drastic measures and the clock is ticking.

• 1:14:00Speaker 03

  He's coming back from war. None of their chairs look comfortable.

• 1:14:04David Sims?

  No. They had not invented comfy chairs. They were hundreds of years before someone put a pillow on a chair.

• 1:14:11Griffin Newman?

  I don't know if this was intentional or not, but this is what I think is interesting about them being older. It does reflect a modern hell we live in of people refusing to retire.

• 1:14:22David Sims?

  Wait, are you saying this is a Biden Macbeth?

• 1:14:25Griffin Newman?

  Not even Biden as much as, I think more like CEOs and shit, right? But even like senators and all this shit, like our buddy Scott Gerdner always calls it filibustering. But he's just like, these people refuse to let go of their fucking chairs in any environment. And this idea of like, why would you go through all this fucking effort? Why retire? Chill out. And instead, these people just seemingly get hungrier and hungrier and hungrier. When they're gonna have less and less time to even enjoy the fruits of their labor? Like, what's the point? Why are you fighting for this? You know, the Jay Leno thing of just like, you don't touch your Tonight Show money? You don't have kids.

• 1:15:05Griffin Newman?

  You're 75. What are you saving it for? Why are you still on the road tumbling down hills?

• 1:15:12David Sims?

  Catching on fire.

• 1:15:13Speaker 04

  Yourself on fire.

• 1:15:14Griffin Newman?

  Right. Like, just chill out, my guy.

• 1:15:16David Sims?

  He didn't light on fire, himself on fire. A car lit him on fire that he was in, or whatever, whatever that was.

• 1:15:22Griffin Newman?

  And the car yelled, stop collecting us.

• 1:15:25Speaker 03

  There's also a very like boomer sense of entitlement to it.

• 1:15:29Griffin Newman?

  This is what I'm talking about.

• 1:15:30Speaker 03

  Where, you know, Brendan Gleeson gives his son a title that Macbeth gets jealous and threatened by. And he's like, well, I just won a battle. I should also have that.

• 1:15:40Griffin Newman?

  Yes. There's, there's a freak out of the younger generation and a fundamental condescension of, you guys just don't get it.

• 1:15:48Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:15:48Griffin Newman?

  I actually need to keep doing this because there's no one who could do this in my stead. Yeah.

• 1:15:54David Sims?

  Leno might be a good Macbeth, though. That is an interesting thing to explore.

• 1:16:00David Sims?

  Do you think Leonard's like a good tipper? Like, he better be, right?

• 1:16:02Speaker 03

  Yeah, I think he is.

• 1:16:03David Sims?

  Right? Does he like get good gifts?

• 1:16:05Griffin Newman?

  He's sort of notoriously generous, right?

• 1:16:07David Sims?

  Okay.

• 1:16:08Speaker 03

  I bet his assistant gives good gifts.

• 1:16:10David Sims?

  He was- Yeah, I assume he doesn't pick out the stuff, but you know.

• 1:16:12Griffin Newman?

  He was always, I, I, I feel like by reputation incredibly generous to his entire staff-

• 1:16:18David Sims?

  His crew.

• 1:16:18Griffin Newman?

  For his entire run of Tonight Show. But it is a confounding thing where you're like, that's his fucking legacy, that he hosted The Tonight Show for 20 years, that he has never touched a cent of that, and that he lives off of touring money only. And so he still does like fucking-

• 1:16:32David Sims?

  That's the nut.

• 1:16:33Griffin Newman?

  150 dates a year, and that alone pays for all the cars.

• 1:16:38David Sims?

  He also wrote a children's book despite not having any children.

• 1:16:42David Sims?

  I don't know what it's called.

• 1:16:43Griffin Newman?

  What?

• 1:16:44David Sims?

  Do you know what I'm talking about?

• 1:16:45Griffin Newman?

  No, I don't.

• 1:16:45David Sims?

  If Roast Beef Could Fly.

• 1:16:46Griffin Newman?

  It's called If Roast Beef-

• 1:16:47Speaker 03

  Jimmy Fallon also wrote a children's book.

• 1:16:50Griffin Newman?

  Excuse me, Dan.

• 1:16:50David Sims?

  He at least has children, but yes.

• 1:16:51Speaker 03

  I have.

• 1:16:52Griffin Newman?

  Jimmy Fallon has written like 15 children's books.

• 1:16:53Speaker 03

  Has he?

• 1:16:54Griffin Newman?

  I went down this rabbit hole. He's like-

• 1:16:56David Sims?

  Then are you looking it up?

• 1:16:58Griffin Newman?

  He's hitting every holiday. It's like one sleep till Christmas, one sleep till Halloween. He, he, I wanna say he co-wrote a Spanish one with J-Lo.

• 1:17:07David Sims?

  You're talking about Fallon?

• 1:17:08Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:08Speaker 03

  I will say, you really realize when you're shopping for children's books, how many celebrities will just slap their names on children's-

• 1:17:16Griffin Newman?

  It has become the like fucking high-end liquor.

• 1:17:19David Sims?

  All I know about If Roast Beef Could Fly, because I think Scott Ackerman talks about it a lot on Comedy Bang Bang, which makes, sounds, right? That sounds right.

• 1:17:26Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:26David Sims?

  Is that it's like some childhood story where like his dad threw a roast beef out the window, but it's been turned into like a nice story.

• 1:17:33Griffin Newman?

  Okay.

• 1:17:33Speaker 03

  Oh, sweet.

• 1:17:34David Sims?

  Yeah. Uh, Jared Leto, just checking with him, I had that opened up.

• 1:17:39Speaker 03

  Should we get him to write a children's book?

• 1:17:40David Sims?

  Jared Leto has made one movie.

• 1:17:42Speaker 03

  Get him to write a children's book?

• 1:17:43Griffin Newman?

  Absolutely.

• 1:17:44David Sims?

  He has made one movie that's grossed $100 million domestic plus.

• 1:17:48Speaker 03

  Is it Suicide Squad?

• 1:17:49David Sims?

  Suicide Squad. That's it.

• 1:17:49Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:50David Sims?

  His number two is what, Griffin?

• 1:17:51Speaker 03

  Did Fight Club not?

• 1:17:52David Sims?

  No, not close. 37.

• 1:17:54Griffin Newman?

  Is number two Panic Room?

• 1:17:55David Sims?

  Yes.

• 1:17:56Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:56David Sims?

  Which almost made 195, and of course, he's not the star of that.

• 1:18:00Griffin Newman?

  Right. But it's, there's a direct correlation, the higher up he is on the call sheet, the lower the grosses go.

• 1:18:05David Sims?

  If you cast him, I genuinely think a witch's curse befalls you.

• 1:18:09Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:18:09David Sims?

  Because like Blade Runner 2049, people kinda wanted that to do better, and it didn't quite, you know, it did okay. Morbius, obviously underachieved, then recent Haunted Mansion, obviously underachieved. House of Gucci, people were hyped, it did okay.

• 1:18:22Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:23Speaker 03

  How's Tron Aries doing?

• 1:18:25David Sims?

  Poorly. Not so good.

• 1:18:28Griffin Newman?

  But even like-

• 1:18:29David Sims?

  Now, Tron Harry's the character is doing great.

• 1:18:31Griffin Newman?

  Oh, he's doing great.

• 1:18:31David Sims?

  It's also funny that those movies are called Tron. Tron is a character.

• 1:18:34Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:18:35David Sims?

  He is not present.

• 1:18:36Griffin Newman?

  They've now made two films where Tron isn't really the-

• 1:18:38David Sims?

  He appears in the second one, he's not in the third one.

• 1:18:41Griffin Newman?

  But they're hiding him in the second one.

• 1:18:42David Sims?

  Yes, until right at the end.

• 1:18:44Griffin Newman?

  You're after the fact, you're like, oh, that was Tron.

• 1:18:45David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:45Griffin Newman?

  Um, I was going to-

• 1:18:47Speaker 03

  It's a Thin Man situation?

• 1:18:49Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, a little bit, a little bit.

• 1:18:50David Sims?

  Absolutely.

• 1:18:52Griffin Newman?

  Um, what was I gonna say about Jared Leto? I don't know.

• 1:18:56David Sims?

  You love him.

• 1:18:57Griffin Newman?

  I love him, he's really good.

• 1:18:59David Sims?

  Alright, you know-

• 1:18:59Griffin Newman?

  Oh, no, no, I was gonna say Blade Runner 2049, I remember you seeing it and I was like, "How's Leto in it?" And you were like, "He's actually not in it that much."

• 1:19:06David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:07Griffin Newman?

  He's got like three scenes.

• 1:19:08David Sims?

  Dude!

• 1:19:08Griffin Newman?

  He's fine.

• 1:19:09David Sims?

  He's fine!

• 1:19:09Griffin Newman?

  And I'm like, "Why was he 60% of every trailer?"

• 1:19:12David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:13Griffin Newman?

  You're right that I think the Leto bit them in the ass, but they were marketing as if-

• 1:19:16David Sims?

  I know, I know, I know.

• 1:19:18Griffin Newman?

  People want to see Leto go toe-to-toe with Ford.

• 1:19:20David Sims?

  He's not bad in that movie, he's not great.

• 1:19:22Griffin Newman?

  He basically stays in one room, he's fine. It's a better use of him than most post-Oscar movies have had.

• 1:19:27David Sims?

  Right, right. Uh, anyway, uh, they, uh, Conan and McDormand had met Catherine Hunter all the way back in 1991. They'd always wanted to do a movie with her.

• 1:19:35Griffin Newman?

  Feels like a classic Conan back pocket, we saw this person kill it off Broadway or, or on the West End.

• 1:19:40David Sims?

  They literally see her in like a Charleston production.

• 1:19:43Griffin Newman?

  Someday we will put you in something.

• 1:19:45Speaker 03

  She famously, I think, played Richard III?

• 1:19:47David Sims?

  That's a very famous Globe performance that she gave that, when you see pictures of it, you're like, "That rocks, that looks cool." I feel like she's best known for playing Arabella Fig in the Harry Potter movies, but otherwise is mostly a stage actor.

• 1:19:59Speaker 03

  There's a big, there's sort of a-

• 1:20:00David Sims?

  Now she's kinda popping up.

• 1:20:01Speaker 03

  There's like a Harry Potter reunion happening in this movie.

• 1:20:05David Sims?

  Who else we got? Well, Gleeson, Mad-Eye.

• 1:20:07Griffin Newman?

  Yes, Melling, yeah. Uh, her post-Macbeth run is very cool. Like, she does Poor Things and Megalopolis and Andor and Hetta.

• 1:20:19David Sims?

  She's so good in Andor. I fucking forgot about that.

• 1:20:22Griffin Newman?

  She definitely like is the person who got the biggest bump from this movie.

• 1:20:26David Sims?

  Cause how do you watch this movie and not go like, who is that?

• 1:20:29Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 1:20:30David Sims?

  Like, whoa.

• 1:20:30Griffin Newman?

  What would be a fun way to use her?

• 1:20:32Speaker 03

  How can we put her in a movie? She'll just give us more juice.

• 1:20:36Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:20:36David Sims?

  Um, apparently in their first meeting, they said, how do you envision this physically? Catherine got up on a coffee table, took black pantyhose out of her backpack and pulled them over her head and started bending into the shape she does in the film.

• 1:20:46Speaker 03

  Oh, she's, that's amazing.

• 1:20:48Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, she's doing some Sims moves in this.

• 1:20:50Speaker 04

  She really is, yeah.

• 1:20:51Griffin Newman?

  Fucking horrific, double jointed nonsense.

• 1:20:54David Sims?

  Um, she wanted to evoke crows. She was thinking about like crows on a battlefield afterwards, like scavenging. Uh, you know, rather than that she did not want to do like, uh, I'm a witch with a pointy nose and a cauldron, right? You know, she didn't want to do the classic witch stuff.

• 1:21:10Speaker 04

  Seems like a great hang.

• 1:21:11David Sims?

  So a lot of like bird stuff. The witches?

• 1:21:13Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:21:14David Sims?

  I mean, they are kinda cool.

• 1:21:15Speaker 04

  They seem like they got stories.

• 1:21:18Speaker 03

  Yeah, they'll tell you in like riddles, but they do have stories.

• 1:21:21David Sims?

  That's the problem. You can't be like, so how's your day? Like, what's up, guys?

• 1:21:29Griffin Newman?

  David?

• 1:21:30Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:21:30Griffin Newman?

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

• 1:21:36Speaker 04

  Hmm.

• 1:21:36Griffin Newman?

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

• 1:21:47Speaker 04

  It is an iconic video.

• 1:21:49Griffin Newman?

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

• 1:22:11Speaker 04

  Of course, you got the classic, what they call Patterson Gimlin film. Everyone knows a Bigfoot out in the woods. Like the famous Bigfoot picture. This has other stuff shot by him.

• 1:22:20David Sims?

  That no one's ever seen. That's what makes this movie different.

• 1:22:23Griffin 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.

• 1:22:32David Sims?

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

• 1:22:35Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:22:35David Sims?

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

• 1:22:42Griffin 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.

• 1:22:56David Sims?

  I'm something of an expert in cryptozoology.

• 1:22:58Griffin Newman?

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

• 1:23:01David 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.

• 1:23:16Griffin Newman?

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

• 1:23:33Griffin Newman?

  David?

• 1:23:34David Sims?

  Yes?

• 1:23:34Griffin Newman?

  People cut the cord. Means the death of the repeat, the rerun. But where, where do repeats still exist? In your closet.

• 1:23:43David Sims?

  Ah, the sweater that goes with everything, Griffin. The tee you somehow always reach for first?

• 1:23:48Griffin Newman?

  It's, it's, we know the feeling.

• 1:23:50David Sims?

  Those are the pieces that make getting dressed easy. That's what Quince does best.

• 1:23:53Griffin Newman?

  Quince.

• 1:23:54David Sims?

  This is true for me. I will say I go to Quince. I buy a thing like a polo shirt, a sweater, whatever. And I'm like, oh, I like that. Guess I'll get a bunch more because now that's what I'm going to put on.

• 1:24:05Griffin Newman?

  Quince focuses on high-quality wardrobe staples made with premium materials like 100% Mongolian cashmere, organic cotton, and merino wool. The styles are timeless, versatile, and designed to become the dependable pieces you reach for day after day.

• 1:24:19David Sims?

  Love it. They got those 100% Mongolian cashmere sweaters. Those start at just $60.

• 1:24:23Griffin Newman?

  I love those.

• 1:24:24David Sims?

  Giving you the softness and quality you'd expect from a luxury brand without that luxury price tag. And look, it's starting to get chillier. You're gonna need layers, right? How about you just do Quince for every layer, huh?

• 1:24:37Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:37David Sims?

  Jacket, sweater, shirt.

• 1:24:39Griffin Newman?

  David, you know what I love?

• 1:24:40David Sims?

  What?

• 1:24:40Griffin Newman?

  The ultimate commuter pants.

• 1:24:42David Sims?

  Oh.

• 1:24:43Griffin Newman?

  Cause I'm commuting constantly.

• 1:24:45David Sims?

  Beep beep.

• 1:24:46Griffin Newman?

  Yep, that's me. David, I like these. They're just clean. They're comfortable. They got the right amount of pockets.

• 1:24:52David Sims?

  Wow. Find your next fall favorites at Quince. Download the Quince app for app exclusive offers or go to quince.com. Get free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. Now available in Canada and the UK too. And when Quince asks where you heard about them, let them know. It was blank check. It's the best way to support the show.

• 1:25:18Griffin Newman?

  David?

• 1:25:19David Sims?

  Yes?

• 1:25:19Griffin Newman?

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

• 1:25:40David Sims?

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

• 1:26:00Griffin Newman?

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

• 1:26:16David Sims?

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

• 1:26:48Griffin Newman?

  Can we talk about the sort of narrative of the split, right? To date, we only have this one Joel movie. Ethan has been doing all of his shit. It starts to feel a little too cut and dry that people are like, got it. Here's the takeaway. Joel is the visualist. He's the mordant one. He's just like black hearted, death obsessed. Ethan is all the like

• 1:27:11David Sims?

  Goofy, silly boys.

• 1:27:12Griffin Newman?

  Dumb people fucking up shit.

• 1:27:14David Sims?

  Right.

• 1:27:15Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 1:27:15David Sims?

  Right.

• 1:27:16Griffin Newman?

  Um, but they, they're not doing anything to help dispel that narrative. It's why I'm very interested to see the next film. But it is like, I think it is the common complaint of this movie where you're just like, it's really got like negative humor going on.

• 1:27:33David Sims?

  Yes.

• 1:27:34Griffin Newman?

  And it is so oppressively dark that as much as I think this film is like beautiful, an incredible object, like an incredible triumph of film production. Even at under two hours, it starts to get a little relentless. Like, I feel pretty beaten down an hour into this movie.

• 1:27:51Speaker 03

  The score is also just very like, to use what Jason Segel says in Forgetting Sarah Marshall. It's just like ominous tones.

• 1:27:59Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:28:00David Sims?

  I love that scene in Forgetting Sarah Marshall.

• 1:28:02Speaker 03

  But that right, Carver, well, isn't like writing like a, an epic score.

• 1:28:06Griffin Newman?

  No.

• 1:28:07David Sims?

  No. Um, they obviously never wanted to do a let's rent a castle. Let's get some horses. Let's go out into the countryside. Classic Macbeth kind of thing. They always wanted to do something abstract.

• 1:28:21Griffin Newman?

  And beyond that, the Joel was like, I think this show works better if you tie it to the theatrical.

• 1:28:27David Sims?

  Right.

• 1:28:27Griffin Newman?

  I need to create something that is cinematic and visual, but is this fucking 10 minute special feature? The word abstraction or abstracted?

• 1:28:36David Sims?

  Oh, they say. Say that one?

• 1:28:37Griffin Newman?

  It said eight thousand times, as they're talking to every sort of above the line person. They're like, these were our marching orders, that he wanted something that felt otherworldly.

• 1:28:47Speaker 03

  It's artificial by design.

• 1:28:49Griffin Newman?

  Yes, and it's very German Expressionist. It's very Murnau.

• 1:28:52David Sims?

  It might shock you to learn that this was actually all filmed on a soundstage. That's a quote from Joel Cohen. Everything was built.

• 1:29:00Griffin Newman?

  Bruno De Bonnell.

• 1:29:01David Sims?

  The amazing DP, uh, who shot a couple of Cohen movies and it, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.

• 1:29:07Griffin Newman?

  Prefers to shoot on stages, loves the complete control of being able to light his own universe. So he was just fucking thrilled at this. A surprising amount of this movie is CGI.

• 1:29:19Speaker 03

  Really?

• 1:29:19Griffin Newman?

  Yes. And I feel like I was talking to someone who was saying they don't like Buster Scruggs because Buster Scruggs feels too digital. And that's a thing that the Coens avoided, but basically like from no country on, they are some of the best at doing invisible CGI.

• 1:29:36David Sims?

  Like digital, sort of like messing around.

• 1:29:38Griffin Newman?

  Set expansion, removing things, adjusting things.

• 1:29:42David Sims?

  I think they have all these like foam blocks, basically.

• 1:29:44Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:29:44David Sims?

  And then they would like rehearse the scenes with Denzel or Francis or whoever. They would walk around and they'd be like, great, let's move the blocks now to reflect whatever it is they want to do, whatever they're sort of figuring out in rehearsal. And then, yes, I imagine they just built everything else out in the computer.

• 1:29:59Griffin Newman?

  Basically.

• 1:30:00David Sims?

  It's sort of like the volume. And the Mandalorian is also in this.

• 1:30:02Griffin Newman?

  They had a lot of set pieces, but they were more modular. You can watch this featurette and they show you the like VFX breakdowns of the layers coming in. But they were also like, you know, we've been working with Joel and Ethan for like, I guess they just said Joel. We've been working with Joel for like the last 10 years. We have a good collaboration with him. We understand the language. This is the most we've worked with a DP. Because it wasn't just someone else is shooting it and then handing it to us and saying, take this out or make this taller. That a lot of it was Bruno coming in and being like, the shadow is this. You know, the extension, the wall needs to go this high and the lights coming from here.

• 1:30:39Speaker 03

  And a lot of the shadows are like purposefully artificial, it feels like.

• 1:30:42Griffin Newman?

  Correct. So I, a lot of this is lit on the day, you know? They were like, we tried to get stuff in camera as much as possible. But it is painterly. What I like about it, what I think is so successful is. All the most digital effects, first of all, all the sets look like they're real. You buy them. It helps that they have a design language that is so simplistic that it's pretty inexpensive to just build like a giant column with no real definition, cast in shadow.

• 1:31:11Speaker 03

  Holding nothing up.

• 1:31:13Griffin Newman?

  Right, you could just build that. It just makes life easier to like build it after the fact. But even things like the reflection inside the water, right? I like that they use CGI to make something that looks like, like an O'Fool's effect or something, right?

• 1:31:30Speaker 03

  Cuts down on the smoke budget, I imagine. If they're not using digital smoke, the smoke machines are running.

• 1:31:35Griffin Newman?

  The smoke is all digital, a lot of the things that look like.

• 1:31:38David Sims?

  That was actually just Joel Coen smoking weed onstage.

• 1:31:42Griffin Newman?

  We've, we've heard from people that Joel is very into death metal.

• 1:31:46David Sims?

  Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. Sick.

• 1:31:47Griffin Newman?

  That he's like into like pitch black, super hardcore death metal. And this definitely feels like the movie where Ethan removed from the equation, he's just going full like, nothing fucking matters.

• 1:32:00David Sims?

  Del Benel calls it a haiku, right? Stripping everything down to essentials, like his sort of visual approach. Big influences, Edward Gordon Craig, who directed a lot of Shakespeare at the turn of the 20th century, pioneered like big screens and geometric shapes, things like that. Obviously, German Expressionism. Coen talks about Metropolis a lot, the first Lang film with a big robot in it. Now, this film was gonna have a robot and they took it out. A joke.

• 1:32:27Griffin Newman?

  Cowards.

• 1:32:28David Sims?

  Yes, and they have a bunch of other visual references that you can look up, but it's hard to describe visual references on an audio podcast. Sunrise, the Murano film.

• 1:32:39Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:32:40David Sims?

  Geometric sort of, you know, qualities to even like fields and stuff in that movie. Yada, yada, yada. They actually, oh my god, Richard Bell, this is, okay, Deschamps, who's Deschamps?

• 1:32:56David Sims?

  AJ, you're so fired. How many fucking names in this thing?

• 1:33:00Griffin Newman?

  How dare AJ make you learn things?

• 1:33:04David Sims?

  Stephane Deschamps, the production designer, had a friend, I'm just laughing at this because I had made a Mandalorian joke, who worked as the greens supervisor on Mandalorian and invented something called the Moss-O-Matic,

• 1:33:17Griffin Newman?

  Okay.

• 1:33:17David Sims?

  which is a gun hooked up to a tank that makes like instant grass, basically.

• 1:33:22Griffin Newman?

  Wow.

• 1:33:23David Sims?

  It shoots glue and moss and you can like give your text, your, your set some texture.

• 1:33:29Griffin Newman?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:33:30David Sims?

  So that's fun.

• 1:33:31Speaker 03

  That's amazing.

• 1:33:31Griffin Newman?

  Uh, here's another thing about this movie. Uh, unlike most black and white films, everything other than the actors was black and white. The sets were black and white, the costumes were black and white.

• 1:33:42David Sims?

  Right. What, they were too lazy to make Frances McDormand black and white every day? Paint her black and white?

• 1:33:48Griffin Newman?

  It's how you save money on the budget. You don't put color into anything. But, uh, yes, most, most black and white films, you can see the behind the scenes photos. A, they were not actually shot in black and white, as we've discussed, I feel like on Man Who Wasn't There and some other films. They convert them later.

• 1:34:01David Sims?

  Right.

• 1:34:02Griffin Newman?

  Uh, this was like shot in black and white and everything on set was black and white.

• 1:34:07David Sims?

  It's a very technical thing, what they're doing. And there is oodles of stuff in JJ's research about just how methodical they were about approaching lighting and set design and all this stuff, right? Okay.

• 1:34:21Griffin Newman?

  Uh-huh.

• 1:34:21David Sims?

  That's cool.

• 1:34:22Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:34:24David Sims?

  At a certain point, you worry that your movie's gonna get lost a little bit in your, in the, in the technical, right? Like that if you're doing something so abstract, um, you know, does it just become sort of this pretty thing for you to look at? Like, can you connect with Macbeth?

• 1:34:38Griffin Newman?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:34:39David Sims?

  Who's doing this weird thing. It's a problem with Shakespeare.

• 1:34:41Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:34:42David Sims?

  Which I, I love Shakespeare to death, of course, but like, you know, I'm here to see Macbeth. I'm like, well, I know what's gonna happen. And there's a little bit of like, you don't want to feel like the thing's just hitting checkpoints.

• 1:34:51Griffin Newman?

  I find this thing very-

• 1:34:52David Sims?

  And I don't, I mostly enjoyed this movie.

• 1:34:54Griffin Newman?

  I find this thing compelling and engaging, but not very emotionally inviting.

• 1:34:58Speaker 03

  Well, that's what I was gonna say, for someone who is unfamiliar with the text of Macbeth, I think a lot of Shakespeare productions will do a little bit of handholding to do a lot of signifiers and signposts. For someone who isn't familiar with Shakespearean language to like really communicate what's going on. Like, you don't need to necessarily know the poetry, but we'll tell you the story. This is not a movie that holds your hand, really.

• 1:35:22Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:35:23Speaker 03

  You just sort of have to be along for the ride. I like it a lot, but I don't think I would like recommend it to someone who like is like, I don't really like Shakespeare.

• 1:35:33Speaker 04

  Yeah, I was pretty much kinda like as soon as this started like, what's up?

• 1:35:40Griffin Newman?

  And that was one of the poll quotes they used weirdly.

• 1:35:43David Sims?

  I mean, obviously, right. Any geographical context has been stripped away.

• 1:35:46Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:35:47David Sims?

  Yeah. The idea that he's king of a kingdom.

• 1:35:49Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:35:50David Sims?

  Which is already a little remote, Macbeth, because Macbeth is mostly just set in castles.

• 1:35:54Griffin Newman?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:35:54David Sims?

  Like, it's not like you see him like, meeting throngs of people or crowds or whatever.

• 1:35:59Griffin Newman?

  But the Kruzel movie is like very of the land. That is a real, we're in the fucking marsh.

• 1:36:04David Sims?

  But you're like, he's the king. And you're like, he's the king of what? He sits in a chair?

• 1:36:08Speaker 03

  He's the king of this white field.

• 1:36:09David Sims?

  Right. Apple Store, like, cool. Okay.

• 1:36:13Griffin Newman?

  Right. The whole movie just feels like a nightmare. It doesn't feel like it exists in a tangible reality. I want to correct myself on something. I had the, the sort of split wrong. This movie was basically three quarters completed before lockdown and then the rest was shot in it. But 36 days in total of filming, even with, you imagine the post pandemic days being a lot longer and slower, which is the shortest shoot Joel has ever done.

• 1:36:41Speaker 03

  I will say, this set does look easy to sanitize. All these surfaces look really easy to, to Clorox.

• 1:36:48David Sims?

  There's like, pull a big lever and there's like sprinklers or whatever.

• 1:36:52Griffin Newman?

  Unless they're dueling, the actors tend to be pretty far from each other too. Yeah.

• 1:36:57David Sims?

  So, Macbeth, it's about this guy, Macbeth. He's the thane of Glamis.

• 1:37:01Griffin Newman?

  Uh huh.

• 1:37:02David Sims?

  Y'all into that?

• 1:37:02Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, I love it.

• 1:37:03David Sims?

  Glamis is a, a tiny village in Scotland, in Angus.

• 1:37:07Griffin Newman?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:37:08David Sims?

  Uh, sort of like, sort of southeast Scotland. Um, it's got a castle. It's still there. You can go if you want. You want to see the castle?

• 1:37:18Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, show it to me.

• 1:37:19Speaker 03

  Oh, that's a nice looking castle.

• 1:37:20Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, it's cool.

• 1:37:21Speaker 04

  Nice.

• 1:37:21David Sims?

  The queen's mom is from there. Not that the queen's dead now, but, you know, former queen, Elizabeth. Yeah, he's Thane Glamist. He's had a big victory. I, I, am I gonna do the plot of Macbeth?

• 1:37:32Griffin Newman?

  Please.

• 1:37:33David Sims?

  Uh, you know, over, uh, the Thane of Cawdor and he goes to see, um, some witches on a battlefield.

• 1:37:38Griffin Newman?

  As one does.

• 1:37:39David Sims?

  Accidentally, where he's with Banquo, his buddy.

• 1:37:41Griffin Newman?

  The witches kinda come to see him. Yeah.

• 1:37:43David Sims?

  And, uh, they do a whole thing where it's one actress and then there's a puddle and it looks like there's three of them.

• 1:37:48Griffin Newman?

  Cool.

• 1:37:49David Sims?

  Uh, and they say, "Ah, Macbeth, Thane of Cawdor."

• 1:37:53David Sims?

  And then they're like, he's like, "I guess so. Not really, but okay." And they're like, "Macbeth, King of Scotland?"

• 1:38:00David Sims?

  "Banquo, not king." And Banquo's like, "Fuck." And they're like, "But your sons will be kings. See you later." Right? Is that what happens? Yeah.

• 1:38:10Speaker 03

  And I will say, if that witch delivered a prophecy to me, you believe what, what she's gonna say.

• 1:38:15David Sims?

  Yeah, she's very compelling.

• 1:38:17Griffin Newman?

  It's a very arresting open. Yeah. And you, you, I mean, you start the movie with her like untangling her body and speaking to you, the audience member.

• 1:38:26Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:38:26Griffin Newman?

  Which is the thing I wish this movie could sustain a little more is the like Gothic horror of it.

• 1:38:33David Sims?

  Yes.

• 1:38:33Griffin Newman?

  Cause that feels like the one emotional element that it's able to actually kinda pull you in with.

• 1:38:40David Sims?

  King Duncan, played by Brendan Gleeson, is the king. And, um, he meets Macbeth, he sees Macbeth, he's like, "Great job, buddy. Thane of Cawdor, if I ever saw one, this guy fucking screams Thane of Cawdor." "Cawdor, all yours."

• 1:38:53Griffin Newman?

  Gonna put in a good word for you.

• 1:38:55David Sims?

  And Macbeth's like, and he's like, "And of course, my heir is Dudley Dursley, this guy right here." Good, good, good. He didn't see this coming. He's slimmed down.

• 1:39:04Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:39:04David Sims?

  He's become a thespian.

• 1:39:06Speaker 03

  Compelling face, interesting face, good eyes.

• 1:39:09David Sims?

  Honestly, an awesome actor.

• 1:39:10Griffin Newman?

  He rules.

• 1:39:11David Sims?

  And it's like, one of those things where I feel like a lot of people are like, "He's Neville," right? And it's like, "No, he's not even Neville. He's the fucking mean bully kid."

• 1:39:19Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 1:39:19David Sims?

  That Harry has to live with.

• 1:39:20Griffin Newman?

  He's the shitty stepbrother.

• 1:39:21Speaker 03

  He's the one, you almost kinda feel bad for him, you imagine, in filming, like all the other kids get to go to Hogwarts.

• 1:39:27David Sims?

  Right, they get, you're right. They all get to hang out in the castle and wear uniforms and play Quidditch or whatever.

• 1:39:32Speaker 03

  He probably never got to hang out with the other kids.

• 1:39:34Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:39:35David Sims?

  We'll shoot you out in five days.

• 1:39:36Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:39:37David Sims?

  And bully Harry Potter. Okay, we're done, we're done.

• 1:39:39Griffin Newman?

  The other thing is that like he slimmed down a couple of movies in. So then he's wearing a fat suit.

• 1:39:46David Sims?

  I believe that's right.

• 1:39:47Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:39:47David Sims?

  The first thing I saw him in that wasn't Harry Potter was Lost City of Z, which he rocks and then he's in the scenes where they're all like fighting in the, you know, the Royal Society of Geographers or whatever the hell, explorers, the explorers' club, where they're all like, "I'm the best explorer!" All those scenes are so good and he's so good at being like an evil jerk.

• 1:40:09Speaker 04

  He feels like he has to be an actor. Like, he couldn't just be like a waiter. He's too like...

• 1:40:15David Sims?

  He can't be like walking around with that face.

• 1:40:17Speaker 04

  Yeah, you're just like, "Ah, I don't know. I'll have soup, I guess."

• 1:40:22Griffin Newman?

  Have you seen Pillion? Is that what it's called?

• 1:40:23David Sims?

  No, but I want to.

• 1:40:25Griffin Newman?

  Do you know about this?

• 1:40:26David Sims?

  I hear it's good.

• 1:40:26Speaker 03

  No.

• 1:40:27Griffin Newman?

  A erotic, what, I mean, the description here is a directionless man is swept off his feet when an enigmatic, impossibly handsome biker takes him on as his submissive.

• 1:40:38David Sims?

  Yes, so Harry Melling is the sub and the dom is Alexander Skarsgard.

• 1:40:44Speaker 03

  Yes!

• 1:40:45Griffin Newman?

  And it just premiered at New York Film Festival?

• 1:40:47David Sims?

  And A24 picked it.

• 1:40:48Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:40:49David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 1:40:50Griffin Newman?

  But he's...

• 1:40:51David Sims?

  A24 were like, "Buy the pricking of my phone."

• 1:40:57David Sims?

  Yeah, sure, we want to make blockbusters now, but that sounds like one of ours.

• 1:41:01Griffin Newman?

  He's incredible in Scrubs. We will have talked about that.

• 1:41:03Speaker 03

  He's amazing in Scrubs.

• 1:41:05Griffin Newman?

  I love him in the old Garden movie that is good.

• 1:41:08David Sims?

  Yeah, he is. He's the sort of Mark Zuckerberg in that. He's the villain.

• 1:41:12Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, but he's basically good in everything. I'm always excited to see him. Yeah.

• 1:41:15David Sims?

  Totally.

• 1:41:16Griffin Newman?

  Uh, but yes, the exact guy you don't want to lose a job to.

• 1:41:20Speaker 03

  Yeah, nepo baby.

• 1:41:21Griffin Newman?

  Cast within a film. Yeah.

• 1:41:23David Sims?

  Yeah, I mean, to be fair, in Scottish and most royal antiquity, nepo babies did tend to get the crown. It was sort of procedure.

• 1:41:31Griffin Newman?

  Nepos really used to be a problem.

• 1:41:34Speaker 03

  I will also say, just like in...

• 1:41:35David Sims?

  Prince William, low-key a nepo baby.

• 1:41:37Griffin Newman?

  No one talks about this.

• 1:41:39David Sims?

  Sorry, go on.

• 1:41:39Griffin Newman?

  I just found out who Prince William's dad is and it is blowing my mind.

• 1:41:42David Sims?

  I am shocked.

• 1:41:43Griffin Newman?

  And I'm pointing at the text above my head. Yeah.

• 1:41:46Speaker 03

  Uh, no, I will say like historically, the, the really laden stone issue of like primogeniture, which is that your son is going to take over after you.

• 1:41:55David Sims?

  Gotta have a boy.

• 1:41:56Speaker 03

  Gotta have a boy. It wasn't explicitly set at this period.

• 1:42:00Griffin Newman?

  Okay.

• 1:42:01Speaker 03

  The same way, because if your son-

• 1:42:03David Sims?

  Gotta name a good heir.

• 1:42:04Speaker 03

  If your son is a dud, if he's a kid.

• 1:42:06Griffin Newman?

  You had a mulligan.

• 1:42:07Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:42:07David Sims?

  It would be something, it's like, "And because I have a dud son, instead my heir is Macbeth. This guy rocks."

• 1:42:14Speaker 03

  Well, it was just also easier for you, if you're like a powerful lord and you know that the son is a dud, when the king dies, it like, isn't impossible for you to gather support.

• 1:42:24David Sims?

  What if you marry your dud son to like some hot lady who maybe can spit out some fire grandsons for you or something? You know, there's a lot of, there's a lot of avenues.

• 1:42:33Griffin Newman?

  They're angles, yeah.

• 1:42:34David Sims?

  Um, yes, but okay, so Macbeth, of course, won't be a king of Scotland. Bummer.

• 1:42:38Griffin Newman?

  Unless-

• 1:42:39David Sims?

  Unless he goes home and talks to his wife, uh, the conveniently named Lady Macbeth. You think those guys swiped left on Tinder? I could do so many stupid jokes.

• 1:42:48Griffin Newman?

  Do them.

• 1:42:49David Sims?

  Her name's Lady Macbeth? This woman's made for me.

• 1:42:52Griffin Newman?

  Her parents named her lady?

• 1:42:55Speaker 03

  She's just Macbeth, but with a, with a bow?

• 1:42:57Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:43:00Griffin Newman?

  But the gameplay's a little stronger.

• 1:43:04Speaker 03

  Her gameplay is a little stronger.

• 1:43:05Griffin Newman?

  It is a little stronger.

• 1:43:06David Sims?

  Right. She's like-

• 1:43:08Griffin Newman?

  Worked out some kings, yeah.

• 1:43:08David Sims?

  Hmm, we could, we could kill Duncan.

• 1:43:11Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:43:12Speaker 03

  She gets word, because he reported back, like, "Pretty weird, like, the witch said I was gonna become king, but I'm not gonna become king, right?"

• 1:43:18Griffin Newman?

  That's so funny. I've been thinking a lot about murder recently and it's values.

• 1:43:22David Sims?

  Knife I have. Right, yeah. What do you think?

• 1:43:24Griffin Newman?

  This knife is way too clean.

• 1:43:28David Sims?

  My sleep is so untroubled. Like, I'd love to walk the halls being crazy.

• 1:43:32Griffin Newman?

  I'm gonna shake it up a little bit.

• 1:43:34Speaker 03

  And what's done can be undone, right?

• 1:43:36Griffin Newman?

  Of course.

• 1:43:36Speaker 03

  Just in case.

• 1:43:37Griffin Newman?

  Of course. That's what we all know about death.

• 1:43:39David Sims?

  Um, now, yeah, so he does kill him, uh, in his sleep.

• 1:43:43Speaker 03

  A classic Coen Brothers thing is accidentally bringing the knife back to his room.

• 1:43:49David Sims?

  That's true. He's already messing up.

• 1:43:50Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:43:51Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, and also that it's kind of like an awkward, clumsy death.

• 1:43:55Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:43:56Griffin Newman?

  That it's not a classic Shakespearean, like, just blade goes in, man falls to the ground, that you have this like uncomfortable sputtering and him lying there in an ugly position.

• 1:44:06Speaker 03

  It's very like the, the, the shooting in Fargo and like the blood splatter is like more human than you in the car.

• 1:44:14Griffin Newman?

  I, I saw someone on the Reddit was saying that they've been struggling in watching these movies with how flippantly the Coens treat death. And certainly their comedies, it's, it can often be used as a punchline, the way that the deaths stack up. But I think they like really, and, and watching this film, you get the sense that it's more Joel than Ethan, uh, are, are kind of obsessed with the weight of death and obsessed with how flippantly it can happen.

• 1:44:43Speaker 03

  Yeah. Superhero and action movies to me make death weightless and frictionless.

• 1:44:47Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 1:44:48Speaker 03

  And I think Coen Brothers movies by contrast make death feel very emotionally affecting.

• 1:44:53Griffin Newman?

  Yes, yes, yes. And, and like uncomfortable.

• 1:44:57Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:44:58Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:44:59David Sims?

  Um, the real Duncan was of course slain in battle at the Battle of Pitt Gavney. I'm telling you guys something you already know.

• 1:45:05Griffin Newman?

  I got tattooed on my chest.

• 1:45:06David Sims?

  That'd be weird.

• 1:45:07Speaker 03

  Visited.

• 1:45:08David Sims?

  A real king Duncan.

• 1:45:09Griffin Newman?

  I think it looks nice.

• 1:45:10David Sims?

  Um, was not killed in his sleep. What Macbeth is doing here is like violating the ancient sort of blood, uh, bread and salt thing, right? Like sort of like if you have someone in your home, you're kind of promising you won't do this to them. Like the number one rule of like being a human.

• 1:45:25Griffin Newman?

  Please don't murder me.

• 1:45:26David Sims?

  Right. In like medieval times especially.

• 1:45:28Speaker 03

  It's like, it's violating in the way that like the psycho, like killing someone in a shower. You're like, well, I'm supposed to be safe here. I'm like, if you're, if I'm a house guest in your home, presumably they're not going to kill you in your bed.

• 1:45:40Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:45:41David Sims?

  So it's kind of like, he's kind of doomed from the minute he does this, I feel.

• 1:45:45Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:45:46David Sims?

  You know, it's like, he's getting it the wrong way. Uh, he's fulfilling the prophecy in the most literal way of like, yes, he can become the king.

• 1:45:54Griffin Newman?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:45:55David Sims?

  But like, what is being the king if like, you're basically immediately like, okay, who's going to try and kill me now?

• 1:46:00Griffin Newman?

  No, Dana, as you called out, it's a classic Coensy story of a guy makes one bad decision and doesn't quite know how to deal with the fallout of it, right? Ben, we keep asking you. Because this filmography really tees up.

• 1:46:13David Sims?

  Now, you're Irish, not Scottish, really, right? Oh, there's some Scottish stuff?

• 1:46:17Griffin Newman?

  Ben Hosley, if I had been in this movie-

• 1:46:18Speaker 04

  Mostly just Irish, yeah.

• 1:46:20Griffin Newman?

  Everything would have worked out great.

• 1:46:22David Sims?

  You don't have a clan, you don't have a tartan you've ever looked up or whatever? Everyone loves to look up their clan.

• 1:46:27Speaker 04

  Yeah, no, I guess, um, the Walsh side, which is my mother's maiden name, we do have a crest.

• 1:46:34Speaker 03

  Yeah, it sounds pretty Scottish.

• 1:46:36Griffin Newman?

  What's on the crest? What does it look like?

• 1:46:37Speaker 04

  Uh, I forget now.

• 1:46:40Griffin Newman?

  It's just like a tube of toothpaste.

• 1:46:42Speaker 03

  It's funny.

• 1:46:43Speaker 04

  That's pretty funny.

• 1:46:43Griffin Newman?

  I don't know, I'm really tired.

• 1:46:45David Sims?

  Why are you so tired?

• 1:46:46Griffin Newman?

  It's Comic Con weekend, that's why Dana's here.

• 1:46:49David Sims?

  That's why Dana's here.

• 1:46:49Griffin Newman?

  It's a gauntlet.

• 1:46:50Speaker 03

  Preorder the book, The Arcane Arts.

• 1:46:53Griffin Newman?

  This is your newly announced book? You just announced it at the con?

• 1:46:56Speaker 03

  At the con, with covered, cover reveal.

• 1:46:58Griffin Newman?

  You've got so many projects.

• 1:46:59Speaker 03

  I'm, I'm busy working, scheming.

• 1:47:02David Sims?

  Dana's always like texting me, being like, "When are you gonna write a book?" And I'm like, "I'm busy, Dana." And Dana's like, "Right, I don't really, I guess I don't really get that." Like, I'm always just doing another thing. You do so many things.

• 1:47:10Griffin Newman?

  Oh, Ben is showing us the crest.

• 1:47:12Speaker 03

  That's a cool crest, I like that.

• 1:47:13Griffin Newman?

  It's pretty cool.

• 1:47:14David Sims?

  Solid.

• 1:47:15Speaker 04

  Three arrows.

• 1:47:16Griffin Newman?

  It looks like three-

• 1:47:16Speaker 03

  Yeah, roads, almost, roads pulling forward.

• 1:47:19Griffin Newman?

  Three, like, PC pointers.

• 1:47:22David Sims?

  Yeah, it's got three mouse pointers to honor his, his skill as a, as a Mac user, okay?

• 1:47:27Speaker 04

  Thanks.

• 1:47:28David Sims?

  All right, Ben, anyway, what's your question to Ben Hosley?

• 1:47:30Griffin Newman?

  Ben?

• 1:47:30Speaker 04

  Yes?

• 1:47:31Griffin Newman?

  If you were Macbeth-

• 1:47:33Speaker 04

  Yeah?

• 1:47:34Griffin Newman?

  How would things turn out for you? What would you have done differently?

• 1:47:37Speaker 04

  Okay, I have a feeling I might fuck this one up.

• 1:47:40Griffin Newman?

  Okay.

• 1:47:40Speaker 04

  Yeah, unfortunately-

• 1:47:41Griffin Newman?

  You think there's no way out on this one?

• 1:47:43Speaker 03

  No way out of murdering a king in Rome.

• 1:47:44David Sims?

  Now, are you pro-murder?

• 1:47:45Speaker 04

  Hmm, let me ponder that.

• 1:47:48Griffin Newman?

  Strike the chin on this one.

• 1:47:49Speaker 04

  I'm gonna go ahead and say no.

• 1:47:51David Sims?

  Okay!

• 1:47:51Griffin Newman?

  Good to have that on record.

• 1:47:52Speaker 04

  And I wanna have that on record.

• 1:47:54David Sims?

  The Sixth Commandment over here.

• 1:47:55Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:47:56David Sims?

  Right.

• 1:47:56Griffin Newman?

  This biblical fuck. But you don't covet thy neighbor's wife either, loser.

• 1:48:03Speaker 04

  I don't.

• 1:48:03Griffin Newman?

  Oh, okay, well.

• 1:48:06David Sims?

  Uh, there was an incident in Scotland, the Scottish history, where like guest right was somewhat broken, I think. Right, it's, but it's later. I think, and I think it's sort of post, I don't know, like, it doesn't matter. I wonder if Shakespeare's referencing something.

• 1:48:20Griffin Newman?

  Ben, is your answer that you just simply don't murder the guy and feel comfortable with your position and just stay where you are?

• 1:48:25Speaker 04

  Yeah, just take the promotion.

• 1:48:27David Sims?

  It's nice. I'll be fain.

• 1:48:29Griffin Newman?

  Nice work if you can get it.

• 1:48:30Speaker 04

  Yeah, absolutely. It seems like if anything, he's moving up.

• 1:48:34Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:48:34Speaker 04

  And he should just chill.

• 1:48:36Griffin Newman?

  You know what he-

• 1:48:37Speaker 04

  Or like retire, bitch.

• 1:48:38David Sims?

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 1:48:38Speaker 03

  You know what he could do if he actually did want to become king? The, the non-murder strategy is to undermine the son, start like whispering-

• 1:48:46Griffin Newman?

  Oh, sure.

• 1:48:46Speaker 03

  -to Brendan Gleeson, like, "Your son seems kind of bad at being a king." I didn't want to say anything.

• 1:48:51Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:48:51Speaker 04

  No, here, I got it. I meet the witches, they gave me this prophecy, I go, "I don't know about all that murder stuff, but do you guys want to chill?"

• 1:48:58Griffin Newman?

  That's what you do.

• 1:48:59Speaker 03

  By the cauldron puddle?

• 1:49:01Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:49:01Griffin Newman?

  You just become best friends with the witches.

• 1:49:03Speaker 04

  And we just like have like kind of like a witch club.

• 1:49:06Griffin Newman?

  Now, do you bring your wife in on it or not?

• 1:49:09Speaker 04

  Yeah, sure.

• 1:49:09Griffin Newman?

  Okay.

• 1:49:10Speaker 04

  Absolutely.

• 1:49:11Speaker 03

  I think if you don't tell your wife that you got this prophecy, that's not a good marriage.

• 1:49:17Griffin Newman?

  Yes, also, if you're like, "I met these cool friends, they're witches," she's gonna ask a lot of questions like, "So what are they, are they like pretty? Like, what are they?"

• 1:49:25Speaker 04

  Do they have like an Instagram I could like check out?

• 1:49:27Griffin Newman?

  Do you find them attractive?

• 1:49:28Speaker 03

  And there's three of them, they're sort of triplets?

• 1:49:30Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:49:31Speaker 04

  Right, so like, do they, what, what does that imply?

• 1:49:33Griffin Newman?

  Is that like a thing you fantasized about? I know you're telling me you're just friends with them, but you never let me come along to the puddle room?

• 1:49:41David Sims?

  Um, Robert the Bruce killed John Common in a church is what I was referencing, guys. Can you, can look that up?

• 1:49:46Speaker 03

  That sounds like a no-no.

• 1:49:47David Sims?

  Uh, it was seen as somewhat of a no-no, though it helped him consolidate power.

• 1:49:51Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:49:51David Sims?

  Um, so, uh, what?

• 1:49:54Speaker 04

  I just see, I've never seen this before, but apparently-

• 1:49:58David Sims?

  Uh-oh, is your clan canceled?

• 1:50:00Speaker 04

  It's just three fish.

• 1:50:02David Sims?

  All right.

• 1:50:02Griffin Newman?

  Eh, not bad.

• 1:50:03David Sims?

  They're probably gonna get fish.

• 1:50:04Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:50:04Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:50:05Speaker 04

  All right.

• 1:50:05David Sims?

  You feeling bummed out about this?

• 1:50:07Speaker 04

  A little bit.

• 1:50:07David Sims?

  Hey, man, back in the day, life in Scotland, there's a lot of water around you, you gotta eat, gotta get that fish.

• 1:50:13Speaker 04

  I was just hoping it would be like, I don't know, bones or something.

• 1:50:16Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:50:16David Sims?

  That would be cool.

• 1:50:17Speaker 03

  Fish have bones.

• 1:50:18Griffin Newman?

  Fish have bones.

• 1:50:19David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 1:50:19Griffin Newman?

  There are bones underneath.

• 1:50:20David Sims?

  Top Cat's always showing us the bones.

• 1:50:22Speaker 04

  And I do, I do love seeing the fish that way.

• 1:50:25Griffin Newman?

  It's one of the best things. Top Cat does. He really educates us. He does us a service.

• 1:50:30David Sims?

  Showing us skeletons.

• 1:50:31Griffin Newman?

  If you took an X-ray to that crest, it'd be lousy with bones, Ben. You're right.

• 1:50:35David Sims?

  But it would be cool if you were like, let me look up my clan and be like, the bone clan of the feared for a thousand years.

• 1:50:41Speaker 04

  It was bones and then someone just screaming.

• 1:50:45David Sims?

  Um, anyway, they kill Duncan. Sorry. And, um, Malcolm flees.

• 1:50:52Speaker 03

  Macduff comes to visit the next day and he's like, would love to see the alive king.

• 1:50:56Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:50:57David Sims?

  Right. I'm here to see our greatest breath drawing guy. King Duncan, where is he at? Um, and so, uh, they kill some servants, uh, that McMalcolm flees to England over the border. And, uh, Macbeth gets that crown. And so immediately his gaze falls to Banquo. Cause it's like, okay, well, the next thing is that you were in that fucking prophecy too. I gotta deal with that.

• 1:51:22Speaker 03

  Also was with him for the witch prophecy. So he's like, well, he might, we kind of know that the king was murdered and he kind of knows I'm a suspect.

• 1:51:30David Sims?

  As much as Shakespeare made Banquo a not villainous character, he is culpable or whatever. Like Banquo is kind of just like a bystander. He kind of knows what's going on and doesn't like do anything about it.

• 1:51:41Griffin Newman?

  Yes. Now, the, the aforementioned crown, it rests easily upon his head lightly?

• 1:51:48David Sims?

  This shit is light. I'm gonna do cartwheels.

• 1:51:51Griffin Newman?

  Gravity not an issue.

• 1:51:54David Sims?

  Um, and so what's the next thing you gotta do? You gotta go kill Banquo, right? So there's two assassins. Do you know about the third murderer? Do you know what I'm talking about?

• 1:52:03Speaker 03

  The third assassin. This is a very, this is also one of the most exciting things about this movie specifically to me.

• 1:52:09David Sims?

  Right. So I believe, correct me if I'm wrong, but, uh, there's a scene where Macbeth recruits two murderers, right?

• 1:52:17Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:52:18David Sims?

  And says, go do murder.

• 1:52:19Speaker 03

  And then this movie happens in like the tent.

• 1:52:21David Sims?

  Right.

• 1:52:22Griffin Newman?

  The Menendez Brothers.

• 1:52:22David Sims?

  But there are three murderers.

• 1:52:25Griffin Newman?

  Oh, okay.

• 1:52:26David Sims?

  Who carry out the crime.

• 1:52:28Griffin Newman?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:52:28David Sims?

  Uh, and in this movie, it's Ross is the third murderer.

• 1:52:31Speaker 03

  And the other two murderers in that scene are like, who are you? And he's like, Macbeth sent me. I'm also here for this.

• 1:52:37David Sims?

  Um, sometimes I think in the stage productions, the character is literally just an extra and they don't think about it. But it's like an opportunity for you to like, you know, like interpret something like more complicated happening, right? I mean, I don't know how else to describe this.

• 1:52:53Speaker 03

  Yeah, like some, because it's like, it's kind of interesting, like, oh, why would Shakespeare have a third murderer?

• 1:52:58David Sims?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:52:58Speaker 03

  In the murder scene, but not the recruiting scene? I've seen some writing about productions that have actually Macbeth be the third murderer.

• 1:53:06David Sims?

  Right.

• 1:53:07Speaker 03

  But then he's like late to his own banquet because he was making sure the job was done. But this movie makes the choice of taking the sort of side character Ross.

• 1:53:16David Sims?

  Right.

• 1:53:16Speaker 03

  And not only giving him this sort of media role as the third assassin, but kind of like making him like a, like mythic figure throughout this story.

• 1:53:26David Sims?

  Right. Ross is like sees all and kind of participates, but isn't really like seeking vengeance.

• 1:53:32Griffin Newman?

  Like Watu the watcher.

• 1:53:34David Sims?

  He's kind of like an Watu the watcher type.

• 1:53:36Griffin Newman?

  I just gotta bring this whole movie into my language.

• 1:53:38David Sims?

  No, I think that's totally right.

• 1:53:39Speaker 03

  It also sort, I mean, while we're talking about Ross, not to.

• 1:53:42David Sims?

  The Polanski movie also makes Ross the third murderer. It's a thing that like some people do. Um, but sorry, carry on.

• 1:53:47Speaker 03

  Make the part bigger for a high schooler.

• 1:53:49Griffin Newman?

  Right, sure.

• 1:53:50Speaker 03

  But what I, this movie kind of implied, not to get ahead with ourselves with spoilers, but like spoiling Macbeth.

• 1:53:56Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:53:56Speaker 03

  It kind of implies that Ross kills Lady Macbeth.

• 1:54:00David Sims?

  Right.

• 1:54:00Speaker 03

  A little bit. Did I?

• 1:54:01David Sims?

  Well, so there's.

• 1:54:02Speaker 03

  Did I misinterpret that?

• 1:54:03David Sims?

  No, you didn't. So like Lady Macbeth, before she dies, just to jump ahead to this, is, well, she's feeling crummy.

• 1:54:08Griffin Newman?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:54:09David Sims?

  Feeling a little blue. And we see her like looking down the stairs, but we also see Ross turning on those lamps. And gazing right at her. And it is sort of like, you can take away from it, like, does Ross like shove her down the stairs or something?

• 1:54:21Speaker 03

  He, it's not just that he's looking at her. He like, he has like a little sinister sort of like hmm.

• 1:54:26Griffin Newman?

  He see, he truly sees her for who she is.

• 1:54:29Speaker 03

  But I, you know, famously Lady Macbeth commits suicide. It's not on stage, but that's like the, the classic interpretation of, of the play.

• 1:54:38Griffin Newman?

  Can I ask, because I just, I openly, uh, struggle to, uh, crack Shakespeare and understand how to analyze it.

• 1:54:46David Sims?

  Okay.

• 1:54:47Griffin Newman?

  Can the two of you explain what you feel like McDormand is getting wrong in this performance? Cause I agree that doesn't quite work and I cannot identify why.

• 1:54:56David Sims?

  Um, it's, it's a fair question. I, Lady Macbeth is such a weird character. She's like the greatest, like, character, right? Like, everyone wants to play Lady Macbeth because it's this opportunity for these incredible monologues. You can play this descent into madness bottled into whatever.

• 1:55:11Griffin Newman?

  The power behind the power, the whisper in the ear.

• 1:55:14David Sims?

  Right. It's so cool. But also she's a completely one dimensional character in some ways in that she's just like plot motivation, right? Like she's just, she's the, the evil woman who spurs everything into action. I mean, please jump in, don't.

• 1:55:27Speaker 03

  I like a Lady Macbeth, you, you have to, I like a Lady Macbeth that's like, okay, I'm either existing in the, you know, 11th century or like Shakespeare or the, you know.

• 1:55:37David Sims?

  Cause if it's the 11th century, you're like, this ambition makes sense. Her, she would have no avenue for ambition.

• 1:55:43Griffin Newman?

  She has to follow through her husband else.

• 1:55:45Speaker 03

  And, and you know, if this is happening in the early 1600s, you're like, how does a woman have power? And what I don't maybe attach to so much in this performance for me is I don't think Frances McDormand has an interesting answer. Where it feels like a very modern marriage because they're both like in their sixties and they have like a very respectful marriage. She's just like, I don't know, you should do this. Where I think a Lady Macbeth that's informed by either like the 11th or the 17th century. It's like, she's using her sexuality in interesting ways. She has to be more subversive. I think maybe because of all the Coen Brothers movies or roles that Frances McDormand has played in her career. I read her very much as just like a, a straight shooter, good partner.

• 1:56:30Speaker 03

  And yes, she is like telling Macbeth what to do, but she's not like being really wily about it.

• 1:56:35David Sims?

  I find her very subdued.

• 1:56:37Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:56:37David Sims?

  I don't find their chemistry, it's not like it's like nonexistent, because they do have the kind of mutual respect thing going on.

• 1:56:42Griffin Newman?

  It's maybe overly comfortable.

• 1:56:44David Sims?

  Yes, or a movie where, or a story.

• 1:56:47Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:56:47David Sims?

  Where she's like, you should fucking murder the king. Low key stab that guy. That's crazy. You know, like, and everything just proceeds a little too sleepily for me.

• 1:56:59Griffin Newman?

  Well, especially if Denzel's gonna be trying to root his performance in a modern naturalism.

• 1:57:03David Sims?

  And he's heavy on the, this guy's tired, this guy's old, this guy's sort of like got a ticking clock, so he decides I'll make that decision like as my sort of last gasp.

• 1:57:13Griffin Newman?

  That also perhaps works better if it's like he's literally like the sleepwalker from Cabinet of Dr. Caligari carrying out her mission.

• 1:57:21David Sims?

  Sure.

• 1:57:21Griffin Newman?

  And she is putting a lot more electricity into it.

• 1:57:24Speaker 03

  And there's something interesting about the, I've only seen the filmed version, but like the Patrick Stewart production where it's a much younger woman for an older man, which also has like this interesting friction.

• 1:57:35David Sims?

  Patrick Stewart would know anything about that.

• 1:57:36Speaker 03

  No, no, of course not.

• 1:57:38David Sims?

  Not implying his wife is a murderer, she's a sligh-.

• 1:57:40Speaker 03

  But there's like that friction to it of like this tired guy trying to like, you know, metaphorically get it up for his younger wife.

• 1:57:46Griffin Newman?

  Right, trying his first ever New York slice, in quotes.

• 1:57:49David Sims?

  Right, exactly.

• 1:57:50Speaker 03

  But there's something to like-

• 1:57:51David Sims?

  Let's move to Park Slope, or kill the king!

• 1:57:54Griffin Newman?

  What's the, what's the quadruple take video?

• 1:57:55Speaker 03

  It's a midlife crisis.

• 1:57:57Griffin Newman?

  Muffins are the best.

• 1:57:59David Sims?

  I don't know.

• 1:57:59Griffin Newman?

  I'm trying to remember, it's some fucking double entendre.

• 1:58:01David Sims?

  Salt and pepper!

• 1:58:04Griffin Newman?

  The greatest. Sorry, Dan.

• 1:58:06David Sims?

  Who fight us? Should we just keep doing?

• 1:58:08Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:58:08Speaker 03

  Patrick Stewart, there's something to like the-

• 1:58:10David Sims?

  Musical gas for one.

• 1:58:13Griffin Newman?

  I didn't have my Romano ready to go.

• 1:58:14Speaker 03

  The way that Lady Macbeth and Macbeth are talking, it almost is like, I wanna go see my sister for Thanksgiving this year.

• 1:58:21Griffin Newman?

  It's a little low stakes.

• 1:58:22Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:58:22Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, yeah, yes.

• 1:58:24David Sims?

  I just, and I don't, like, she's fine with the language or whatever, like, I don't, it's not like I'm like, she's just reading it, like, I, she's performing, but it's, I'm just, there's times in this movie- Like whenever Denzel's raising his voice and popping off a little bit.

• 1:58:40Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:58:40David Sims?

  I'm sitting up.

• 1:58:41Griffin Newman?

  Absolutely.

• 1:58:42David Sims?

  I'm just like, it's okay, guys, to have some, you know, to have some sort of, it's not over the top, but just some like, you know, some more kind of energy for these.

• 1:58:51Griffin Newman?

  But subdued works better for him, save for Fitz.

• 1:58:54David Sims?

  I think he's got a good take.

• 1:58:56Speaker 03

  He has a good subdued.

• 1:58:57Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:58:57Speaker 03

  And I think that for me, the subdued would have worked better.

• 1:59:01Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:59:01Speaker 03

  If it was a little more like, blood and sex, Lady Macbeth.

• 1:59:05Griffin Newman?

  Denzel is also such an established movie star, and we know how he can uncork. So when he is playing in a lower register, the performance still has the tension of, is Denzel gonna explode?

• 1:59:17David Sims?

  Kind of like Equalizer.

• 1:59:18Griffin Newman?

  You're saying, when he fucking equalizes, Dana, have you equalized yet?

• 1:59:22Speaker 03

  I have equalized.

• 1:59:22David Sims?

  Equation, unbalanced.

• 1:59:24Speaker 03

  That was one of the movies where he's like, you haven't seen The Equalizer? He made sure I was equalized.

• 1:59:28Griffin Newman?

  Have you watched all three?

• 1:59:29Speaker 03

  No, I've watched two.

• 1:59:30Griffin Newman?

  Okay. Ben, have you now seen all three?

• 1:59:32David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 1:59:33Griffin Newman?

  Do you know that Ben knocked the Equalizers out on our flights to and from LA recently, David? He has finally equalized?

• 1:59:39David Sims?

  Thank God. And I gotta tell you, it was fun.

• 1:59:42Griffin Newman?

  We gotta do them on Patreon.

• 1:59:44David Sims?

  We really should.

• 1:59:45Griffin Newman?

  They will be so much fun to do.

• 1:59:46David Sims?

  We can do them on Patreon, yeah.

• 1:59:47Speaker 03

  Are you gonna talk? Are you gonna talk the Queen?

• 1:59:50Griffin Newman?

  Go on, what do you mean?

• 1:59:51Speaker 03

  Queen Latifah?

• 1:59:53David Sims?

  I don't think we can fire up Queen Latifah's The Equalizer television show, no. I don't think there's time for that.

• 1:59:59Griffin Newman?

  It is just so funny that that has just existed concurrent to this thing, and they don't have anything to do with each other.

• 2:00:04Speaker 03

  They don't acknowledge it.

• 2:00:05Griffin Newman?

  No. Uh, but the movies are so good. And yes, it is that thing of like, this, I mean, Equalizer does feel like the start of him trying to explore, who is old man Denzel? Right? Cause Denzel aged so well for so long, and he finally, he didn't like hit a wall, but we crossed a threshold where it's like, he is an old man now. He is an old man now, and the last 10 years, he's had to like lean into it more and more and try to own it. It is interesting that I feel like he goes out of his way to look even older in this film. Like certainly the gray in the hair and the beard.

• 2:00:42Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:00:42Griffin Newman?

  For a guy who tends to die, right? He's like.

• 2:00:45David Sims?

  His hair, you mean?

• 2:00:46Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:00:47David Sims?

  He rarely dies on screen, although he does die in this.

• 2:00:48Speaker 03

  He does die in this?

• 2:00:49Griffin Newman?

  He does die in this.

• 2:00:50David Sims?

  We think.

• 2:00:50Griffin Newman?

  In this film, he.

• 2:00:51David Sims?

  The Return of Macbeth.

• 2:00:52Griffin Newman?

  He doesn't D Y E, but he does D I E.

• 2:00:55David Sims?

  Yes.

• 2:00:55Griffin Newman?

  Um.

• 2:00:56David Sims?

  No, he does some tie dying as well in this movie.

• 2:00:58Griffin Newman?

  Sure.

• 2:01:00Griffin Newman?

  It just feels like he was always a very virile star. And he has finally tried to like settle into like, what is my elder statesman mode?

• 2:01:08Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:01:08Griffin Newman?

  You know, when am I supporting? Our buddy Connor Ratliff had a very good take, which is the highest to lowest. Have you seen that?

• 2:01:15Speaker 03

  Not yet.

• 2:01:15Griffin Newman?

  Feels like the first Denzel performance of him going into his late Pacino era.

• 2:01:20David Sims?

  So true.

• 2:01:21Griffin Newman?

  Where he's like-

• 2:01:22Speaker 03

  Complimentary or derogatory?

• 2:01:23Griffin Newman?

  Complimentary in my opinion.

• 2:01:25David Sims?

  But yes, it's got that kind of like, what?

• 2:01:27Griffin Newman?

  Getting that, but it's the first performance where he's just like, I'm just gonna follow every single instinct I have. What if I have a dialogue scene with a framed picture? What if I start like yelling at a can of soup, you know, like? And all of it's engaging and I think it makes sense for the story, but you haven't seen him do something that undisciplined before? Which is interesting. Like even Denzel's like weird oddball rhythms and like his like explosive like moments always feel like that is earned, that is justified.

• 2:02:00Speaker 03

  Trained.

• 2:02:01Griffin Newman?

  People wouldn't have the courage to do that, but what he's doing makes perfect sense.

• 2:02:05Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:02:06Griffin Newman?

  And highest to lowest is like him doing a fucking jazz set.

• 2:02:09Speaker 03

  For better or for worse, in this movie-

• 2:02:11Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 2:02:12Speaker 03

  There's no cra- he doesn't do anything nuts.

• 2:02:15David Sims?

  Not really.

• 2:02:16Speaker 03

  I think it's a very contained Macbeth performance.

• 2:02:20Griffin Newman?

  I don't know if it's a deliberate quote, but these sort of hallucinations, the like fit of violence, the moment with the bird in particular.

• 2:02:27Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 2:02:28Griffin Newman?

  I really like the way Joel shoots those and it feels very similar to Cassavetti's opening night.

• 2:02:33Speaker 03

  Uh huh.

• 2:02:34Griffin Newman?

  Where Jenna Rollins' character is haunted by this young fan that got hit by a car. And she imagines these fights with her that are her coming backstage and they're done in like extreme Paul Greengrassy, super up close shaky kind of like uh hand to hand combat. Uh that it's like this is going on in her head and the second you cut out to a wide, everything's fine. He thinks he's sword fighting, it's a bird that broke through a window, you know? And those moments are really exciting to watch because you're like in the middle of the fight. You're watching Denzel like joust at you from like two inches away.

• 2:03:10David Sims?

  Cause right, so much of the middle part of Macbeth is just him being paranoid.

• 2:03:15Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:03:16David Sims?

  And it can be hard to dramatize that.

• 2:03:17Griffin Newman?

  Who's coming for me? I think he visualizes that very well, Joel.

• 2:03:21David Sims?

  Is this a dagger he sees before him?

• 2:03:23Griffin Newman?

  Is it?

• 2:03:23David Sims?

  In the Polanski movie, it's just like a little hologram of a dagger.

• 2:03:26Speaker 03

  He definitely sees it before him.

• 2:03:28David Sims?

  He does see it before him.

• 2:03:31David Sims?

  Yeah, so Paranoid starts to get weird. He kills Banquo, doesn't kill Flayon's fucked up. Messed up.

• 2:03:38Griffin Newman?

  He's not an equal opportunity murderer.

• 2:03:40David Sims?

  You can kind of have the take that this is-

• 2:03:41Speaker 03

  He tries to kill Flayon.

• 2:03:42David Sims?

  They try to get in Ross is the one who fucks up. And that by casting Ross in that role, you can then kind of signify it as like, this is where Ross's loyalty starts to wane.

• 2:03:52Griffin Newman?

  They're on a break now.

• 2:03:53David Sims?

  Exactly.

• 2:03:54Griffin Newman?

  That's a roust joke. That's like a friend's roster.

• 2:03:56David Sims?

  I think that was a really good joke. Did you see that David Schwimmer got a Paul Hollywood handshake on an episode of Bake Off?

• 2:04:01Griffin Newman?

  No, that's cool.

• 2:04:01Speaker 03

  Did he?

• 2:04:02David Sims?

  Yep. He made like a pot pie with tofu in it. Yeah.

• 2:04:05Speaker 03

  But I'm sure it's kind of like Celebrity Jeopardy where like the line for a handshake is much. Yeah.

• 2:04:11David Sims?

  Would you do Bake Off?

• 2:04:13Speaker 03

  In a heartbeat.

• 2:04:13David Sims?

  Yes.

• 2:04:14Griffin Newman?

  Do you bake?

• 2:04:14Speaker 03

  I do. I bake a lot.

• 2:04:15David Sims?

  Dana's a good baker.

• 2:04:16Speaker 03

  I bake a lot.

• 2:04:17Griffin Newman?

  What's your specialty?

• 2:04:17David Sims?

  But could you make like a, you know, bake a cake that's also a readable book or whatever they do these days?

• 2:04:23Griffin Newman?

  Well, she's also good at writing books.

• 2:04:25David Sims?

  Well, maybe she could do it.

• 2:04:26Speaker 03

  I, I don't, I think I would, I'm good at studying and I'm good at like, I like a, I know.

• 2:04:31David Sims?

  You have to practice all that fucking, but how's your like rough pop pastry?

• 2:04:35Speaker 03

  I, I've made it. It's not great, but if I knew I was gonna be on Bake Off, I would really throw myself into it.

• 2:04:39David Sims?

  What about, um, I'm trying to think of all the other shit they do on that. I don't know. Sugar.

• 2:04:44Speaker 03

  You know what? Actually, what I would have trouble with is sometimes they're like, make a blah, blah, blah, and it's some like British pastry that I've never heard of.

• 2:04:50David Sims?

  It is always good with like, make the Queen's muffin. And you're like, what's that? And they're like, it's actually not a muffin.

• 2:04:55Griffin Newman?

  It's a steak. Well done.

• 2:04:59Speaker 03

  I met Kim Joy at Comic Con.

• 2:05:02David Sims?

  Oh, that's cool. She's fun.

• 2:05:03Speaker 03

  She was at Comic Con.

• 2:05:04David Sims?

  I love her. And that makes sense that she was at Comic Con. She has that moment where she really starts freaking out and crying. Do you remember this?

• 2:05:10Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:05:11David Sims?

  And Noel Fielding comes over to her, which like this happens on the, do you watch Bake Off?

• 2:05:14Griffin Newman?

  I don't.

• 2:05:14David Sims?

  Okay. Well, you know Noel-

• 2:05:15Griffin Newman?

  I watch Mighty Boosh though. It's similar to that.

• 2:05:17Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's the exact same.

• 2:05:18David Sims?

  It is so weird to watch it with, say, my wife, who did not watch The Mighty Boosh.

• 2:05:22Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 2:05:22David Sims?

  And try to explain like who Noel Fielding is and why he's here, right? Like, how could he have ended up here?

• 2:05:27Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 2:05:28David Sims?

  Cause it always feels like Noel Fielding just like walked through a tunnel and was like, oh, like it is in this tent.

• 2:05:33Griffin Newman?

  But also part of his magic was that he always had the comedy energy of an old lady.

• 2:05:37David Sims?

  Well, that's true.

• 2:05:38Griffin Newman?

  That there was this glam rocker thing, right? And this like party boy Lothario thing. But you're like, there is this like very delicate like kind of.

• 2:05:46Speaker 03

  And the kindness.

• 2:05:47Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 2:05:47Speaker 03

  He reads as kind.

• 2:05:48Griffin Newman?

  And innocent.

• 2:05:49Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:05:49Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 2:05:50David Sims?

  And there's this moment where this lady, Kim Joy, who is sort of like, how to describe her? Tweed in a sort of nerdy, nerdy anime.

• 2:06:01Speaker 03

  Anime, vibey bakes.

• 2:06:03David Sims?

  She starts like freaking out about something and it's just like, I can't do it. Like she just has the thing that I met. It would happen to me probably five minutes earlier. I was just like, I can't fucking do this. Like, you know, just like staring at sugar and spices in an oven and ah. And Noel just comes and chills her out so beautifully. And it's like one of those like your heart stops moments and bake off. Ugh. Anyway.

• 2:06:24Speaker 03

  He's all, yeah.

• 2:06:24David Sims?

  I'm glad she's doing well.

• 2:06:25Griffin Newman?

  I'm glad he's doing well.

• 2:06:27David Sims?

  He's cool.

• 2:06:29Griffin Newman?

  For the listener, David is making a gesture as if there is money in between his fingers and he's rubbing that dollar bill.

• 2:06:36David Sims?

  He just has to go to that tent.

• 2:06:37Griffin Newman?

  I'll tell you that's not a one dollar bill.

• 2:06:39David Sims?

  Him and Alison Hammond are good at their jobs, but their job is mostly just going over to people being like, you cooking?

• 2:06:45Speaker 03

  This looks good.

• 2:06:45David Sims?

  Making a cake. And the guy's like, I'm really stressed out. He's like, all right, I'll see you later.

• 2:06:49Griffin Newman?

  It's kind of the drain.

• 2:06:50David Sims?

  It's kind of great, right?

• 2:06:51Griffin Newman?

  You work what, like fucking four weeks a year?

• 2:06:53Speaker 03

  You get to eat the cakes?

• 2:06:54David Sims?

  And then, right, if you want to eat some cake, you can have it.

• 2:06:56Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:06:56David Sims?

  It's up for grabs.

• 2:06:57Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:06:58David Sims?

  Like Paul Hollywood, he has one bite.

• 2:07:00Griffin Newman?

  Good.

• 2:07:00David Sims?

  Moves on.

• 2:07:01Speaker 03

  I bet those cameramen, those cameramen are eating well.

• 2:07:04David Sims?

  I think that's what happens. They give it to the crew.

• 2:07:06Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, because there's so much left over, has to be.

• 2:07:08David Sims?

  But it's like they're giving the crew, like I said, like a kid, it's like the entire Bible replicated in cake form.

• 2:07:14Speaker 03

  Tom DeLonge's head.

• 2:07:16David Sims?

  That was really, do you know about that?

• 2:07:18Griffin Newman?

  No, they made a cake of Tom DeLonge from Blink 182?

• 2:07:21David Sims?

  So it was like make, was it music especially?

• 2:07:24Speaker 03

  No, it was just, I think, make a sculpture of any, your idol.

• 2:07:27Griffin Newman?

  Okay. Your idol? And the person chose Tom DeLonge? Were there spiders on the cake?

• 2:07:36David Sims?

  I'm showing Ben and Chris. That's crazy.

• 2:07:39Griffin Newman?

  Unbelievable. I mean, SNL now has that like recurring sketch they do.

• 2:07:45David Sims?

  Which is very funny, the one that Eddie Murphy did once. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 2:07:49Griffin Newman?

  It looks like one of those.

• 2:07:50David Sims?

  Yes.

• 2:07:50Griffin Newman?

  Jesus Christ. That is, if you.

• 2:07:54David Sims?

  I'm just laughing about it.

• 2:07:55Griffin Newman?

  If you love Tom DeLonge so much that he's your first choice answer for Idol.

• 2:08:00David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 2:08:01Griffin Newman?

  That is a disrespectful thing.

• 2:08:02David Sims?

  Cause it was the favorite, the disaster was the Freddie Mercury.

• 2:08:05Griffin Newman?

  No, but look, that at least is stylized.

• 2:08:07David Sims?

  He looks like a bath toy.

• 2:08:11Griffin Newman?

  That at least.

• 2:08:12David Sims?

  It's stylized for sure.

• 2:08:13Speaker 03

  It's kind of like a Funko Pop.

• 2:08:14Griffin Newman?

  There's an artistic interpretation. DeLonge seems to be going for realism and missing the mark.

• 2:08:20Griffin Newman?

  Wow.

• 2:08:20Speaker 03

  They've gotten, Bake Off used to be very, like, very classic where like the challenges were like, make a Victoria's sponge cake. And I think they know now, like, I don't know, 20 seasons in in the Instagram era, they've upped their game.

• 2:08:33David Sims?

  Everyone's watched the show. So now they've all become genius. Yeah, right. It used to be amateur old lady bakers who were like, I put some turmeric in this cake. And they'd be like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.

• 2:08:44Griffin Newman?

  I made one tart.

• 2:08:46Speaker 03

  Yeah. No, it would be only amateur bakers, these like grandmothers who are like, this is my Bakewell tart recipe. And they'd be like, this is great. Good job. And now it has to be, you have to fucking sculpt Blink 182.

• 2:08:58David Sims?

  Yes, right. Tom DeLonge's face now, 20 minutes.

• 2:09:01Griffin Newman?

  There was some Food Network show when my, when my sister Romley was growing up and was watching Food Network. You almost knocked over.

• 2:09:07David Sims?

  You almost knocked Chucky over, it's fine.

• 2:09:08Griffin Newman?

  Chucky.

• 2:09:09David Sims?

  He's very robust.

• 2:09:09Griffin Newman?

  But he's safe. When, when my sister Romley was just watching Food Network 24/7, the one show I liked watching with her, and I forget what it was called, but it was like The Great Cake Challenge or some shit. And it was just that kind of like insane sculptural, like multi-tier mechanized 80% fondant cake.

• 2:09:29Speaker 03

  Which are not designed to taste good.

• 2:09:30Griffin Newman?

  Right. That was the thing that was fascinating. They'd be themed and they'd be like, it's NFL day here. Everyone gets assigned a team. And you have to make a cake of that team. And then you're just doing like fucking engineering with a cake, which was fascinating, but you're also like, this looks. Looks like it would taste like paper.

• 2:09:48Speaker 03

  A lot of those like real sculptural cakes, they use like Rice Krispie treat.

• 2:09:53Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 2:09:54Speaker 03

  To to shape it out and then cover it in fondant. Like it's not even cake.

• 2:09:57Griffin Newman?

  No, that's the thing. Right. They're like ostensibly edible, but they are not a cake. And they're not elements that would taste good together.

• 2:10:08David Sims?

  The tragedy of Macbeth.

• 2:10:09Griffin Newman?

  Yeah. Is that he never lived long enough to see cake competition.

• 2:10:14Speaker 03

  If he and Lady Macbeth could just like chill out in bed, watch the Great British.

• 2:10:18Griffin Newman?

  They would have retired if the Food Network existed.

• 2:10:20David Sims?

  Paul Hollywood, Thane of Cawdor. Paul Hollywood, King of Scotland. And then Paul Hollywood gets a little glint in his blue eyes.

• 2:10:28Griffin Newman?

  Bakes a knife cake.

• 2:10:29David Sims?

  So he, he, he does start seeing ghosts and ranting and raving and Lady Macbeth starts walking around, you know, talking about her hands being covered in blood and such.

• 2:10:37Griffin Newman?

  Is this my fault?

• 2:10:38Speaker 03

  Well, the witches also warn him again to beware. They give him a sort of double headed thing. They say, beware Macduff. And also don't worry, no man born of woman can kill you. And also you're going to be fine until Burnham Wood moves to your castle.

• 2:10:53David Sims?

  Fucking forest marches. Okay?

• 2:10:56Speaker 03

  So he's like, great. I'm a mortal as long as I beware this guy. And if you want to make someone not a threat, you murder their entire family.

• 2:11:04Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, right. Easy.

• 2:11:05David Sims?

  I remember, so I saw this at the New York Film Festival and I stayed for the Q and A with Denzel because I was actually interested. I usually dash out.

• 2:11:14Griffin Newman?

  Denzel, Fran and Joel?

• 2:11:16David Sims?

  And a few other people. Corey was there. Moses Ingram was there who plays Lady Macduff.

• 2:11:21Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 2:11:21David Sims?

  And is a great actor. And Denzel like more than once shouted her out and clearly was like very happy she had been involved in the production was like, you know, uh, uh. He does seem to be someone.

• 2:11:30Speaker 03

  Great scene.

• 2:11:31David Sims?

  She's a great scene. Like someone who champions like younger black actors, right? You know, like, you know, like that's something he's good at.

• 2:11:37Griffin Newman?

  He's really good at it.

• 2:11:39David Sims?

  Throughout his career.

• 2:11:39Griffin Newman?

  He, he puts them in prominent roles. He lets them pop. Of course, the black, young black actor he has championed the hardest is Austin Butler.

• 2:11:49Speaker 03

  He's what?

• 2:11:51Griffin Newman?

  He like, he's like Austin Butler's number one mentor, because they did Iceman Cometh together.

• 2:11:56David Sims?

  Right, right.

• 2:11:57Griffin Newman?

  And, uh...

• 2:11:57David Sims?

  When Austin Butler was not famous.

• 2:11:59Griffin Newman?

  When he was just like a Carrie Diaries, like Disney Channel star.

• 2:12:03Speaker 03

  Dating Vanessa Hudgens.

• 2:12:04Griffin Newman?

  And it was like his first real stab at serious acting. And Denzel, Denzel brags about...

• 2:12:09David Sims?

  He's like, "You get caught stealing."

• 2:12:12Griffin Newman?

  Denzel brags about...

• 2:12:13David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 2:12:13Griffin Newman?

  That he always, you know, he's gonna work harder than anyone else. He's got the hardest work ethic. He was talking about with this, that he'd like get on set every day at 5 o'clock in the morning and just run the soliloquies. He's like, "I need to know these like the back of my hand. They need to feel organic." And he was like, "I felt competitive with Bruno Del Banel, because he's like me." And I kept trying to beat him to set and he'd get there an hour before me.

• 2:12:36David Sims?

  Bruno's showing up with like 8 more lights.

• 2:12:38Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 2:12:38David Sims?

  And Denzel's like, "Fuck you!" And they're like running to the door together.

• 2:12:41Griffin Newman?

  But I'm always like...

• 2:12:41Speaker 03

  Bicep curls at the light.

• 2:12:43Griffin Newman?

  Half an hour earlier. And there's this story that Austin Butler kept doing the same thing. And Denzel was like, "You're never gonna beat me. Try to show up early, I'm gonna show up earlier." And then one day, Butler beat him to the theater in the morning. And he was like, "Okay, kid, tell me what your deal is." Like, "I'm now ready to take you under my wing." And Denzel is then the one who like really brought Austin Butler around town.

• 2:13:06David Sims?

  Right.

• 2:13:06Griffin Newman?

  And was like, "This guy's a serious actor. He must be considered."

• 2:13:10David Sims?

  Do you know how early he wakes up? His alarms, you would be... 4:10, 4:11, 4:12, 4... They keep going off! I've checked!

• 2:13:19Griffin Newman?

  I think it was part of it, though, that like when he was up for Elvis, Denzel called Baz and was like, "You don't understand how hard this kid's gonna work."

• 2:13:28David Sims?

  Denzel called Baz. Like, I'm just trying to imagine like that relationship, right? I guess everyone wants to be friends with Denzel.

• 2:13:33Griffin Newman?

  But I, I don't mean this to deflate it. You are right that Denzel has been really good at like supporting young black actors. Like finding them, identifying them, giving them roles. It's just funny that Austin Butler's like his number one guy.

• 2:13:44Speaker 03

  Who is, famously, I repeat, what?

• 2:13:46Griffin Newman?

  He is... Oh, wait a second, you're telling me he's...

• 2:13:49David Sims?

  I've only had recordings.

• 2:13:52David Sims?

  Snowman, frosty snowman.

• 2:13:55Griffin Newman?

  It's not man and they're showman. We gotta do Bob.

• 2:13:59David Sims?

  We gotta do Bob, let's fucking do it. Is he working on something?

• 2:14:03Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 2:14:03David Sims?

  He's got a project coming.

• 2:14:04Griffin Newman?

  A Joan of Arc. They just announced he's doing a Joan of Arc movie.

• 2:14:07Speaker 03

  With that cool young girl.

• 2:14:09David Sims?

  That is always a bad idea.

• 2:14:11Griffin Newman?

  It's gonna be normal. He discovered some like unknown 15 year old?

• 2:14:15David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 2:14:15Speaker 03

  I saw Baz Luhrmann, I was at the Harry Styles concert a few years ago.

• 2:14:19Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:14:20Speaker 03

  And I was like in the section and he was there and he was having a great time.

• 2:14:23Griffin Newman?

  I've told this story before, but I saw him at Forbidden Planet. There was like a torrential downpour outside and it felt like he just looked for the closest store to like, get out of the rain. And he was examining the shelves of Forbidden Planet, famous New York comic book store, as if he were on an alien planet, like tilting his head at everything. And then the only purchased he made was a Wonder Woman umbrella.

• 2:14:45David Sims?

  Oh yeah. Oh, he needed to get out of the rain.

• 2:14:48Griffin Newman?

  And I was at first just like, that's a distinct looking man with specific energy. And then I was like, that's Baz Luhrmann.

• 2:14:55David Sims?

  We could do Romeo and Juliet if we did Baz Luhrmann.

• 2:14:58Griffin Newman?

  Excuse me.

• 2:14:58David Sims?

  One of my favorite movies.

• 2:14:59Griffin Newman?

  Excuse me.

• 2:15:00Speaker 03

  I love that movie.

• 2:15:00Griffin Newman?

  Romeo plus Juliet.

• 2:15:03David Sims?

  Sorry.

• 2:15:04Griffin Newman?

  That's just me being an asshole.

• 2:15:05David Sims?

  Being an asshole, you're in the right.

• 2:15:06Griffin Newman?

  Being an asshole, you're in the right.

• 2:15:07David Sims?

  You shouldn't apologize. So how do you say Moulin Rouge? Moulin Rouge!

• 2:15:13Griffin Newman?

  You gotta say it that way.

• 2:15:14David Sims?

  Every time.

• 2:15:15Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:15:15David Sims?

  Moulin Rouge!

• 2:15:18David Sims?

  Do you like Baz Luhrmann?

• 2:15:19Speaker 03

  I love Baz Luhrmann.

• 2:15:20David Sims?

  I know you do.

• 2:15:20Speaker 03

  Yeah, of course I do.

• 2:15:21Griffin Newman?

  That's his witchiest movie. What would he have you on for if we did Baz?

• 2:15:25Speaker 03

  There's a fairy in Moulin Rouge.

• 2:15:27Griffin Newman?

  Sure, the green fairy. Yeah.

• 2:15:29David Sims?

  She actually represents absinthe.

• 2:15:31Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 2:15:31Speaker 03

  I kinda think actually the most noble bloody would be the Joan of Arc. I mean, we'll see.

• 2:15:36Griffin Newman?

  Yeah. And she was burned at the stake.

• 2:15:39David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 2:15:39Speaker 03

  Pretty witchy.

• 2:15:40Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:15:40David Sims?

  She was sort of, right, witch adjacent in some people's eyes.

• 2:15:44Griffin Newman?

  Pretty witchy.

• 2:15:46David Sims?

  Right. Yeah, what are some other big witch movies we could do with you though?

• 2:15:50Griffin Newman?

  This is a really good question.

• 2:15:50David Sims?

  Outside of Baz Luhrmann.

• 2:15:53Griffin Newman?

  Your beloved Practical Magic.

• 2:15:55David Sims?

  Love that movie.

• 2:15:55Speaker 03

  I love that movie. Gotta be a sequel.

• 2:15:57Griffin Newman?

  Yeah. Gonna be a sequel. It's wrapped Suzanne Beer.

• 2:16:03David Sims?

  Pop culture is so normal right now.

• 2:16:05Griffin Newman?

  It's in the can. It's done.

• 2:16:07Speaker 03

  You've already done Witches of Eastwick.

• 2:16:09Griffin Newman?

  We have.

• 2:16:09David Sims?

  We did do that one.

• 2:16:10Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 2:16:12Griffin Newman?

  Big witch movies.

• 2:16:14David Sims?

  Witches. Hocus Pocus, of course. The Witch.

• 2:16:17Griffin Newman?

  Uh huh.

• 2:16:18Speaker 03

  I love The Witch.

• 2:16:19Griffin Newman?

  Right. We've already had you do an Oz.

• 2:16:20David Sims?

  We did have, uh, we did, um, of course, Robert Zemeckis's The Witches. A very well remembered film.

• 2:16:26Griffin Newman?

  One of the most remembered movies. We're, John M Chu is, it's inevitable.

• 2:16:31David Sims?

  Uh, Player Witch Project?

• 2:16:33Griffin Newman?

  Sure.

• 2:16:34David Sims?

  Could do that.

• 2:16:35Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:16:35Speaker 03

  Never seen that movie, actually.

• 2:16:36Griffin Newman?

  Are there any other witch comedies?

• 2:16:39David Sims?

  Uh, well, I Married a Witch.

• 2:16:41Griffin Newman?

  Oh, sure. That's a great movie. Which basically was-

• 2:16:43Speaker 03

  The Love Witch?

• 2:16:44Griffin Newman?

  The Love Witch?

• 2:16:48David Sims?

  But witches are cool now, Ben.

• 2:16:50Griffin Newman?

  Witches are cool now, Ben.

• 2:16:50David Sims?

  I mean, hey, it would be funny if I like went back to calling like women witches. Like I'm some fucking medieval guy. He's like, you witch! Like, like I'm opening a mob will assemble.

• 2:17:00Griffin Newman?

  Come into the studio exhausted. You're like, sorry, my witchy daughter kept me up all night.

• 2:17:04David Sims?

  That would be cool if my daughter like went into like witch mode.

• 2:17:08Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 2:17:09David Sims?

  She's not really, I mean, she doesn't mind witches.

• 2:17:11Speaker 03

  What's she gonna be for Halloween?

• 2:17:12David Sims?

  Uh, this year she wants to be an elephant.

• 2:17:13Griffin Newman?

  Great question.

• 2:17:14David Sims?

  Wants to be an elephant.

• 2:17:15Griffin Newman?

  Ellie or just generic elephant?

• 2:17:17David Sims?

  Elephant.

• 2:17:17Speaker 03

  You know what? I saw a lot of it Comic Con that I think is gonna be the Halloween costume is all the K-pop Demon Hunters.

• 2:17:22David Sims?

  Yes, I have heard this is brewing. That a lot of parents are making panicked Amazon orders.

• 2:17:28Griffin Newman?

  It does feel like under 20 K-pop Demon Hunters, over 21, battle after another.

• 2:17:33Speaker 03

  Yeah. It's the new dude costume for Max.

• 2:17:36David Sims?

  It's really hard to like put together that Leo in one battle. Oh, oh, I have to find a flannel shirt and some sunglasses.

• 2:17:42Speaker 03

  A robe. You get to be so comfy.

• 2:17:43Griffin Newman?

  It's just gonna be so funny when these film bros show up at parties and there are 10 other Leos already there. They're the 10th Bob to arrive.

• 2:17:51David Sims?

  You gotta be Penn. You gotta just tuck a black shirt in too tight to like some camo pants, right? And just walk like Vince McMahon. Like, that's what you gotta do.

• 2:18:00Speaker 03

  Are you, do you have a corresponding costume to elephant?

• 2:18:04David Sims?

  No.

• 2:18:04Speaker 03

  What are you dressing the babies up as?

• 2:18:06David Sims?

  Uh, Bert and Ernie?

• 2:18:07Speaker 03

  That's cute.

• 2:18:08Griffin Newman?

  Good, good, good, good.

• 2:18:10David Sims?

  They love a Bert and Ernie book that they have, like a board book about them. And they've got kind of Bert and Ernie energy a little bit.

• 2:18:16Speaker 03

  Grey Twin costume.

• 2:18:17Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:18:18David Sims?

  And we already have like a rubber ducky and a toy pigeon. We can, uh-

• 2:18:21Griffin Newman?

  Are you gonna dress your son up, or is he a little too young?

• 2:18:23Speaker 03

  We have-

• 2:18:24David Sims?

  You gotta dress up, baby.

• 2:18:25Speaker 03

  I'm sorry for even asking.

• 2:18:27David Sims?

  Throw something on that guy.

• 2:18:27Speaker 03

  I do have a little, I have a little pumpkin costume.

• 2:18:29Griffin Newman?

  Okay.

• 2:18:30Speaker 03

  Stay tuned on the gram.

• 2:18:31David Sims?

  That is, pumpkin costume is just classic for a non-walking baby.

• 2:18:34Speaker 03

  He's a very, I don't know if you've seen my baby.

• 2:18:37Griffin Newman?

  I've seen him.

• 2:18:38Speaker 03

  He's a big, he's like a pumpkin boy.

• 2:18:39David Sims?

  He's giving cheek.

• 2:18:40Speaker 03

  He's-

• 2:18:41Griffin Newman?

  He's giving cheek.

• 2:18:42Speaker 03

  He's giving cheek.

• 2:18:43David Sims?

  He's giving cheek.

• 2:18:44Griffin Newman?

  I gotta say this, baby in a pumpkin costume, always funny.

• 2:18:47Speaker 03

  That's what we're going with.

• 2:18:48David Sims?

  It's not really gonna miss.

• 2:18:49Griffin Newman?

  It's never not hitting.

• 2:18:50Speaker 03

  We live on the east side of LA, and I was like, I don't wanna do like some like hipster-

• 2:18:55David Sims?

  Right.

• 2:18:56Speaker 03

  Showing off, like that we know some cool thing that will dress up, but I'm like, I wanna put this baby in a little pumpkin.

• 2:19:01Griffin Newman?

  Is anyone gonna be unhappy to see this cherub-faced baby in a pumpkin suit?

• 2:19:06Speaker 03

  I hope not.

• 2:19:07Griffin Newman?

  No, everyone's gonna love it.

• 2:19:08Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:19:08Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:19:10David Sims?

  Uh, so Macbeth- Does kill the entire Macduff family, except for Macduff himself, who runs away, and he goes to England, he raises an army with Malcolm. They cut down tree branches, they march on Dunston Ane where Macbeth is holed up, and they, uh, you know, fulfill the prophecies. And they do eventually kill Macbeth, but I do think this movie implies, like you say, that Lady Macbeth maybe doesn't kill herself, maybe she's killed by Ross? Who maybe has switched sides. I think the amount of attention they put on Ross, right? Is suggesting that, that he's like some sort of like, you know, fair-weather friend.

• 2:19:43Speaker 03

  He's like the moral, the moral center of the movie, in that scene where he's like, mm, I'm gonna right, right the wrongs, I'm gonna balance the scales.

• 2:19:50Griffin Newman?

  Maybe I'm just a big fat dummy. Well, I am a big fat dummy, but I was-

• 2:19:54David Sims?

  You're actually quite trim.

• 2:19:57Griffin Newman?

  I'm rapidly expanding.

• 2:19:58David Sims?

  Okay.

• 2:19:59Griffin Newman?

  I'm not getting skinnier.

• 2:20:00David Sims?

  Well, none of us are.

• 2:20:02Griffin Newman?

  You know how like, uh, old people are always like, ah, back then when I was, when I was thin and beautiful?

• 2:20:08David Sims?

  Right.

• 2:20:08Griffin Newman?

  And you're like, why is everyone focused on the fact that like you were thin back then, and you're like, oh, because like, everyone just bloats?

• 2:20:15David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 2:20:15Griffin Newman?

  Even if you don't get big.

• 2:20:16Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 2:20:17Griffin Newman?

  You look at yourself when you had like zero body fat, and you're like, holy fucking shit. Um, I, I was like-

• 2:20:25Griffin Newman?

  My interpretation was, does she kill herself because she's like seen by him? That the look is less the intent to murder her and that he's like, I fucking got your number.

• 2:20:37Speaker 03

  I mean, that's the more like classical.

• 2:20:39Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 2:20:39Speaker 03

  Inter- I think that that's like the more Shakespearean.

• 2:20:41David Sims?

  She can no longer be perceived. Yes.

• 2:20:44Speaker 03

  Jefferson Mays as the doctor can only do so much.

• 2:20:47David Sims?

  Jefferson Mays bringing the heat. It is fun to do like, um, a Coen Brothers Shakespeare movie and be like, can we get Tony Winters to play literal like one line characters, basically?

• 2:20:56Speaker 03

  Multiple years has done a, in Los Angeles, has done a one man show of, uh, Christmas Carol? That is one of the most extraordinary shows I've ever seen. I saw it one year. I saw it was coming back. I'm like, I'm seeing it again. Jefferson Mays playing every character. He's so good.

• 2:21:15David Sims?

  Jim Carrey did it first and best, of course. So let's, you know.

• 2:21:18Griffin Newman?

  He only played half the characters. Carriel was played the others.

• 2:21:21Speaker 04

  Hey, this, this is coming out, uh, November 23rd, so I'll, I'll make sure to include a link to the show in the show notes.

• 2:21:29Speaker 03

  Oh, is he doing it again?

• 2:21:30Griffin Newman?

  Let's see.

• 2:21:30Speaker 04

  Well, I'm assuming, but I'll double check.

• 2:21:33David Sims?

  He's also, of course, in the daddy's boy part of Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, right?

• 2:21:37Griffin Newman?

  Yes, yes.

• 2:21:39David Sims?

  Which is one of my, one of my favorite gags ever, which is that it just cuts off and then you cut to fucking, what is it? The TCM guy.

• 2:21:45Griffin Newman?

  Yeah. Robert Osborne.

• 2:21:46David Sims?

  Right. Going like, and that's when the movie ends because the crew stopped filming it because it was so awful. And then he's like, anyway, next daddy's boy again. What's going on? It's such a good double joke.

• 2:21:57Griffin Newman?

  He, that show had jokes.

• 2:21:58David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 2:22:00Griffin Newman?

  He's also great in In Heron Vice.

• 2:22:02David Sims?

  Yes, yes, he is. That's right. I saw him in, uh, on the stage in, um, uh, the play about the Oslo Accords, which, uh, was unbelievably called Oslo.

• 2:22:12Speaker 03

  That sounds like a laugh riot.

• 2:22:14David Sims?

  No, it wasn't. And it's so much yelling. Everyone was just like, we have to do the Oslo Accords. And at a certain point I started laughing because they wouldn't stop yelling and it's like a claimed play.

• 2:22:25Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:22:26David Sims?

  Anyway.

• 2:22:26Griffin Newman?

  Um, in Christmas Carol, does he play like the biggest goose and everything? Like, does it, does it extend to the non-speaking roles?

• 2:22:34David Sims?

  Yeah, it's snowing.

• 2:22:35Griffin Newman?

  He points at the gravestone, then he becomes the gravestone.

• 2:22:41David Sims?

  That sounds like he'd be like out of breath. He's like running around, he's like.

• 2:22:43Griffin Newman?

  That's what I want.

• 2:22:44David Sims?

  Right. You want him panting.

• 2:22:46Griffin Newman?

  If he's not collapsing onstage by the end, he's not.

• 2:22:49Speaker 03

  He's tiny Tim and the crutch.

• 2:22:53David Sims?

  And I'm holding this. Like, he just goes crutch mode.

• 2:22:56Griffin Newman?

  Great.

• 2:22:57David Sims?

  Um, yeah, so, uh, Macduff kills, um, and chops off.

• 2:23:01Speaker 03

  He says, "You can't kill me, because no man, you know, born of woman." And Macduff goes, "C-section bitch."

• 2:23:06David Sims?

  He does say "C-section bitch," which was a Joel Coen addition to the plot.

• 2:23:10Griffin Newman?

  "You can't kill me," kind of the worst final words you can have.

• 2:23:14David Sims?

  It's the, the Twitter meme that, "What are you gonna do, stab me?"

• 2:23:19David Sims?

  Quote from stabbing victims.

• 2:23:20Griffin Newman?

  "I just simply would never say it out loud, because it's not worth the risk of that being."

• 2:23:25David Sims?

  I definitely wouldn't say it to anyone I was dueling with a sword.

• 2:23:28Griffin Newman?

  I, I just, I'm not gonna say it to anybody.

• 2:23:30David Sims?

  I guess so. I guess it's inviting, uh, some tragic irony, right? No matter what.

• 2:23:35Speaker 03

  You don't want to even walk down like the New York City street and be like, "A piano is never gonna fall on me."

• 2:23:40David Sims?

  Right, right. I'm not scared of air conditioners leaving their windows. Um, so.

• 2:23:46Speaker 04

  Okay, yeah, he is doing it.

• 2:23:47Griffin Newman?

  Okay, I was looking it up. Where's he doing it?

• 2:23:49Speaker 04

  At the Berkeley Rep.

• 2:23:51Speaker 03

  If anyone has the opportunity to see it, highly, highly recommend.

• 2:23:55Speaker 04

  It plays December 16th through the 21st.

• 2:23:59Speaker 03

  It's a seasonal treat. It's the, you know.

• 2:24:03Griffin Newman?

  It also, wait. No, maybe this was a past year. It looks like he did do it at the Old Globe at some point. Anyway.

• 2:24:10Speaker 03

  It's a great production. He should run it back forever.

• 2:24:13David Sims?

  He should do it in the summer. Fuck it.

• 2:24:15Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:24:16David Sims?

  Who gives a shit?

• 2:24:18Griffin Newman?

  Or he should do like Scrooge Goes Hawaiian. He should like write a new.

• 2:24:22Speaker 03

  A sequel.

• 2:24:24Griffin Newman?

  What, what happened to Scrooge after he got his head screwed on straight?

• 2:24:27David Sims?

  Oh yeah, there's just Scrooge being chill.

• 2:24:29Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:24:29David Sims?

  He's like, "You want a turkey?" Turkey!

• 2:24:31Griffin Newman?

  Mr. Scrooge's holiday.

• 2:24:33David Sims?

  "Hey, Scrooge, I need some money. Within reason, I can give you some. I'm a moneylender."

• 2:24:37Griffin Newman?

  Summer Scrooge.

• 2:24:40Speaker 03

  Within reason.

• 2:24:42David Sims?

  I can give you all my money, but I'm not gonna be an asshole about it like I used to be.

• 2:24:46Griffin Newman?

  I'm fair, but professional.

• 2:24:47David Sims?

  Right.

• 2:24:47Speaker 03

  Low interest.

• 2:24:49David Sims?

  Fucking Tiny Tim's dad, Bob Cratchit, that's his name.

• 2:24:51Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:24:51David Sims?

  Comes in, he's like, can I take some vacation? He's like, yeah, within reason, two to three weeks, I don't know, and then more with experience. That shit. Just people, just being fairly reasonable.

• 2:25:00Speaker 03

  Fairly reasonable.

• 2:25:01Griffin Newman?

  Fairly reasonable.

• 2:25:01Speaker 03

  Uh, this, this movie does do some sort of interesting stuff with the crown. You know, it's a very metaphorical flying through the air crown. He, he kinda dies because he was reaching for it.

• 2:25:12David Sims?

  Yep.

• 2:25:12Speaker 03

  A little on the nose, but I liked it.

• 2:25:14David Sims?

  It's a good death, though. I do like the, you know.

• 2:25:16Griffin Newman?

  The, the full beheading?

• 2:25:18David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 2:25:18Griffin Newman?

  But also the duel is-

• 2:25:19Speaker 03

  You get to see the head, which is fun.

• 2:25:21Griffin Newman?

  The duel is really good. Like, the choreography is, like, scary and intense.

• 2:25:25David Sims?

  Yes, it is. No, all the action at the end is, uh, well done, I would say. Uh, Denzel, obviously, very capable of such things.

• 2:25:31Griffin Newman?

  Yes, it is a movie-

• 2:25:33David Sims?

  No slouch.

• 2:25:33Griffin Newman?

  Where I just watch it and I'm like, this feels so close to greatness.

• 2:25:37David Sims?

  Hmm. There's something, there's an exercise quality to it that I cannot shake.

• 2:25:42Griffin Newman?

  That's-

• 2:25:43David Sims?

  I liked it more in the theater because it's, it is quite, uh, overwhelming.

• 2:25:48Griffin Newman?

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:25:48David Sims?

  Visually. At home, I was tired. I am a parent of three.

• 2:25:53Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 2:25:53David Sims?

  And I was squeezing this in between, you know, whatever my parental duties are. But I was having a little bit of the, hmm, heavy lids.

• 2:26:01Griffin Newman?

  I was doing the reverse Ben Hosley, watching this after House of Dynamite. And I did feel like, man, this was a lot, like, easier to get into in a giant room.

• 2:26:12Speaker 03

  You can-

• 2:26:12David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 2:26:12Speaker 03

  You can imagine a high school teacher showing this to their students.

• 2:26:16Griffin Newman?

  Yeah. Yes, yes. And I, you know, I was certainly a kid where anytime they rolled out the old AV cart and said, like, the next three classes are gonna be a movie, I'm like pumping my fist. But sometimes those movies, better than regular class, but you're like, this one's a little bit of a snooze. Watching this on, like, a small school TV split up across days would be kind of deadly. You're not like, fuck, this one's awesome.

• 2:26:43David Sims?

  Right.

• 2:26:43Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:26:44David Sims?

  Right.

• 2:26:45Griffin Newman?

  No, I think you're right. It feels like an exercise. It's what makes the the upcoming film very fascinating to see because I feel like there isn't really a sense of who Joel is as a solo filmmaker.

• 2:26:56Speaker 03

  Yeah. He didn't write this script.

• 2:26:58Griffin Newman?

  He didn't.

• 2:26:59Speaker 03

  The script's famously already written for him.

• 2:27:01Griffin Newman?

  Seen that it's based on a play.

• 2:27:02David Sims?

  Oh, this one is, right. But the new film one assumes he wrote that.

• 2:27:05Speaker 03

  Yeah, but that's what I'm saying. This one doesn't show who he is as a solo writer.

• 2:27:09David Sims?

  It would be funny if the new one was like Lil Ganz and Babylon Mandela or whatever. He was like, nah, it's just a good script. I dug it up.

• 2:27:15Griffin Newman?

  But it is like you go onto the IMDB, it's the four actors you named, directed by Joel Cohen, like no other credits. There's not even a screenplay credit. There's, no one knows if it's based on anything. Bruno's shooting it again.

• 2:27:30David Sims?

  Yep.

• 2:27:30Griffin Newman?

  I don't know. It's like a total mystery right now.

• 2:27:32David Sims?

  Totally.

• 2:27:33Griffin Newman?

  But most of his usual collaborators. Yeah.

• 2:27:37David Sims?

  Um, the film was warmly received.

• 2:27:41Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:27:41David Sims?

  But, you know, not obviously best of the year type material, I feel.

• 2:27:45Griffin Newman?

  It is also funny that in the year 2021, it felt like, oh, fuck, Apple's getting serious. They've signed the same 24 deal and one of the films is gonna be Denzel and McDormand doing fucking Macbeth.

• 2:27:57David Sims?

  Right.

• 2:27:58Griffin Newman?

  Like, this is a heavy hitter Oscar player and the movie kind of gets like a polite nod while Apple wins Best Picture for Coda.

• 2:28:06David Sims?

  Uh.

• 2:28:07Griffin Newman?

  This is the Coda year.

• 2:28:08Speaker 03

  This is the Coda year.

• 2:28:09David Sims?

  Look, it's just an, the Coda thing, obviously it's partly that's a movie goes down smooth and like it's generally crowd pleasing, but when you look at that Oscar year, it's just a lot of like studios shooting their shot in a way where you're like, oh, good try. But like Netflix being like, can we sneak Power of the Dog by you a little bit? And eventually voters like, I think too weird. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. And like, could Licorice Pizza be the PTA movie? Like, it's like, that's his least accessible movie. Uh, and then, you know, Dune doesn't have an ending. Drive My Car was nominated for Best Picture, but is a three hour movie about rehearsing Uncle Banya.

• 2:28:53Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 2:28:53David Sims?

  By and large.

• 2:28:54Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 2:28:55David Sims?

  And then like Spielberg was like, I made West Side Story. Do you like it? Everyone was like, yeah, we love it. Like, uh, zero Oscars.

• 2:29:00Griffin Newman?

  Right. Well, excuse me. Yes.

• 2:29:03David Sims?

  But like, it's funny that Spielberg was like, I have something.

• 2:29:07Speaker 03

  I made a masterpiece.

• 2:29:08David Sims?

  A big treasure chest filled with jewels and everyone's like, yeah. And then they walk over to the like glass of orange juice that is Coda.

• 2:29:14Speaker 03

  Also, the fact.

• 2:29:15David Sims?

  We're just like, it's fine.

• 2:29:16Speaker 03

  It goes down easy.

• 2:29:18Griffin Newman?

  The fact that he had shot it in 2019 and you're like, this is a pre pandemic movie. It's Spielberg with like full control, making, remaking a best picture.

• 2:29:28David Sims?

  It doesn't have any, uh, yeah, the COVID stuff.

• 2:29:32Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 2:29:32David Sims?

  Because it was just delayed.

• 2:29:33Griffin Newman?

  You're like, this thing has just been locked away for two years because he wanted to wait until audiences could come back.

• 2:29:38David Sims?

  Right.

• 2:29:39Griffin Newman?

  And everyone was just like, yeah, good job.

• 2:29:40David Sims?

  Good. We liked it.

• 2:29:41Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:29:42David Sims?

  Coda. Anyway, just a funny situation.

• 2:29:45Speaker 03

  She sings at the end? We get to hear a song?

• 2:29:47David Sims?

  She does. She sings.

• 2:29:48Speaker 03

  Because West Side Story, they don't.

• 2:29:50Griffin Newman?

  No, they don't sing. There wasn't enough singing for them.

• 2:29:53David Sims?

  Maybe they all watched it on mute by mistake.

• 2:29:55Griffin Newman?

  That's why they thought it was good.

• 2:29:56David Sims?

  They were like, this movie's weird. No one talks. We're gonna do the box office game for January 28th, 2022, which is when this film is released, um, in, uh, IMAX.

• 2:30:07Griffin Newman?

  Eight twenty-four took advantage of a, uh, a weird theatrical landscape.

• 2:30:12David Sims?

  We'll, quite a weird one. We'll see here.

• 2:30:14Griffin Newman?

  As things were rebounding and they kept getting, do you remember also that they did like one week of Nomadland in IMAX?

• 2:30:21Speaker 03

  In IMAX?

• 2:30:22Griffin Newman?

  Yes, in early 21.

• 2:30:23David Sims?

  I mean, look, man.

• 2:30:24Griffin Newman?

  A lot of these art house movies were getting like 10 day IMAX runs because they were like, we don't got fucking anything else.

• 2:30:30Speaker 03

  I would be interested in how this aspect ratio worked in IMAX.

• 2:30:34Griffin Newman?

  Yes, because this is a very boxy Academy ratio movie. It's actually pretty well suited for IMAX. Yeah. What are you laughing at, David?

• 2:30:41David Sims?

  Ben sent a link. Uh, this is very interesting. So he sent a link about, uh, House Hosley, I suppose, or, you know, whatever.

• 2:30:49Griffin Newman?

  The preview text I got is check out the early notables of the Hosley family.

• 2:30:53David Sims?

  So if I can handle this, Griffin, because I want to, want to your genuine reaction to this. So apparently this surname Hosley first found in Oxfordshire in 1190.

• 2:31:01Griffin Newman?

  Okay.

• 2:31:02David Sims?

  Uh, you know, been registered in the roles, various roles ever since, right? Early notables of the Hosley family include William Ostler.

• 2:31:12Griffin Newman?

  Just like a variation spelling.

• 2:31:14David Sims?

  Uh, died 18, uh, 16, 14, an actor in English Renaissance theater, a member of the King's Men, the company of William Shakespeare.

• 2:31:22Griffin Newman?

  Okay.

• 2:31:24David Sims?

  So there you go. Doesn't say who he played though, but he was one of the King's Men.

• 2:31:28Griffin Newman?

  Okay, that's cool.

• 2:31:29David Sims?

  So it's in my blood, but I'm also kinda like, meh.

• 2:31:33Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:31:34David Sims?

  Uh.

• 2:31:35Griffin Newman?

  The actual weekend this movie goes into limited releases, we says the Matrix Resurrections weekend.

• 2:31:40David Sims?

  I mean, again, when we're saying went into theaters, I assume it was just a couple of screens that Christmas released.

• 2:31:44Griffin Newman?

  I was surprised it was playing at this Beacon Place in mid-January. It made less than half a million in theaters.

• 2:31:51David Sims?

  I mean, it has a non-reported gross because they forewarned it, so I don't know.

• 2:31:55Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:31:56David Sims?

  Uh, number one on January 28th, though, Griffin, it's been out for seven weeks. It's made 735 million dollars.

• 2:32:03Griffin Newman?

  Spider-Man: No Way Home.

• 2:32:04David Sims?

  That's the one with all the Spider-Men.

• 2:32:06Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, it is weird that like, uh, 2021, the theaters reopen, things are rough.

• 2:32:12David Sims?

  Things are weird.

• 2:32:13Griffin Newman?

  And people were like, maybe they'll just never go back to the theater again. And at the height of a surge, like Omicron starts surging like a week before and they were like, is this gonna fuck up Spider-Man?

• 2:32:24David Sims?

  Nope.

• 2:32:24Griffin Newman?

  Becomes one of the highest grossing films of all time and basically there's another six months before something else hits.

• 2:32:29Speaker 03

  All of the Spider-Men are in it.

• 2:32:30Griffin Newman?

  All of them are in it. And that had not been done.

• 2:32:31David Sims?

  Robby McGuire, Andrew Garfield.

• 2:32:36Griffin Newman?

  Tom Holland.

• 2:32:37David Sims?

  Tom Holland. Willem Dafoe.

• 2:32:40Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:32:40David Sims?

  Uh, Spider-Man: No Way Home.

• 2:32:42Speaker 03

  Dane DeHaan? They got Dane DeHaan in it?

• 2:32:43Griffin Newman?

  No, no Dane.

• 2:32:45David Sims?

  He is not present.

• 2:32:46Griffin Newman?

  The Great Dane did not arrive.

• 2:32:48David Sims?

  In fact, right, are there, uh, the lizards in it?

• 2:32:51Griffin Newman?

  And Electro.

• 2:32:52David Sims?

  And Electro.

• 2:32:52Griffin Newman?

  But Electro's got the new new.

• 2:32:53David Sims?

  Oh, yes, yes, yes, yes.

• 2:32:55Griffin Newman?

  Electro's like, forget everything I used to be.

• 2:32:57David Sims?

  I don't have the whole blue blobby thing happening. I'm not a living jellyfish.

• 2:33:00Griffin Newman?

  What if we just reset to Jamie Foxx playing Electro?

• 2:33:05David Sims?

  A bad movie in my opinion, but undeniably enjoyable at times.

• 2:33:08Griffin Newman?

  That is how I feel about it. It is one of the sweatiest screenplays of all time. It is constructed out of nonsense. It does have juice in it.

• 2:33:15Speaker 03

  It has real chemistry between the two of them.

• 2:33:19Griffin Newman?

  This was your whole take at the time, which I really agree with, which is like, the movie is actually an argument for movie stars.

• 2:33:25David Sims?

  Right.

• 2:33:25Griffin Newman?

  That the last act of that movie works because you're like, here are three different guys in three different eras, who had such unique takes on the characters, that watching the three of them talk to each other is more exciting than like any fucking CGI fight.

• 2:33:39David Sims?

  Um, I completely agree. Those are the best. I mean, especially, I feel like it was the Andrew Garfield moment and obviously he was in Tic Tic Boom. He gets the Oscar nomination. Like, it was, Garfield was having a nice little time.

• 2:33:47Griffin Newman?

  Nice Toby back and you got all the fucking character actors in it. It's like.

• 2:33:51David Sims?

  Yes. Uh, number two at the box office is um, a horror film. It's been out for three weeks. It's a solid hit. Uh, it is the fifth in a franchise.

• 2:34:03Griffin Newman?

  It's a January 2022, fifth in a franchise. It's a solid, uh, five. It's a five.

• 2:34:11David Sims?

  But the five is not in the title.

• 2:34:13Griffin Newman?

  The five is not in the title. When does the franchise start?

• 2:34:16David Sims?

  Uh, 1996.

• 2:34:17Griffin Newman?

  It's a 96. Oh, so it's Scream?

• 2:34:21David Sims?

  It's Scream.

• 2:34:22Griffin Newman?

  It drives me crazy.

• 2:34:23Speaker 03

  Well, the five is in the title, but it's a, it's a V.

• 2:34:26David Sims?

  Only in the poster, not in the title.

• 2:34:28Griffin Newman?

  Which I hate. I hate. It is one of my least favorite modern trends is horror reboot that has the exact same name as the original and has to be referred to with the year in.

• 2:34:38Speaker 03

  The Halloween.

• 2:34:38David Sims?

  As I always tell you, you've never seen the film Scream, but that is literally addressed in the movie.

• 2:34:43Griffin Newman?

  I still.

• 2:34:43David Sims?

  Which makes sense, cause it's Scream.

• 2:34:45Griffin Newman?

  I'm hoping the new scary movie does the joke of calling itself scary movie brackets 2026.

• 2:34:52David Sims?

  They should do that. Right.

• 2:34:53Speaker 03

  That is funny.

• 2:34:54David Sims?

  Brackets 2026, brackets 2026.

• 2:34:56Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:34:56David Sims?

  Number three at the box office is an animated film. I have not yet watched these with my daughter, cause I know she will love them and I don't want to deal with it.

• 2:35:05Griffin Newman?

  Okay, it's a franchise.

• 2:35:06David Sims?

  It's the second.

• 2:35:07Griffin Newman?

  It's the second.

• 2:35:08David Sims?

  Of two.

• 2:35:09Griffin Newman?

  It's the second of two. It's not, it's not, no. Croods was a 2020. It's the second of two, but you think they're gonna make more?

• 2:35:18David Sims?

  I mean, these movies do well. I don't, no, I don't think so. They're probably done. This one did less well. The first one did very well.

• 2:35:25Griffin Newman?

  And is it a whole, oh, it's Sing Two.

• 2:35:27David Sims?

  Sing Two.

• 2:35:27Griffin Newman?

  It actually made a good amount of money. The first one was humongous.

• 2:35:32David Sims?

  First one was a huge hit. The second one in COVID time, you know, but.

• 2:35:35Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:35:36David Sims?

  Sort of uh, society opening back up times made 162 domestic, which is good.

• 2:35:40Griffin Newman?

  But the first one made like 300 domestic.

• 2:35:42David Sims?

  And it's also like, how many fucking, like?

• 2:35:45Griffin Newman?

  I don't know.

• 2:35:45Speaker 03

  It's just animals singing pop songs?

• 2:35:47David Sims?

  I believe that.

• 2:35:47Griffin Newman?

  It's animal American Idol, but it's also like, let's put on a show. We need to make a town competition to sell tickets to not lose the theater. I saw the second one and not the first one. I'm perplexed by those movies. It's Garth Jennings who's good.

• 2:36:00David Sims?

  Was once.

• 2:36:01Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 2:36:02David Sims?

  I don't know.

• 2:36:02Griffin Newman?

  They're not like poorly made, but I, I just do not get them.

• 2:36:06David Sims?

  Number four at the box office is, um, you're never gonna get this, or maybe you will. It's a Christian movie.

• 2:36:14Griffin Newman?

  I like a challenge. Okay, it's a Christian movie.

• 2:36:17David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 2:36:18Speaker 03

  Is Greg Kinnear in it?

• 2:36:19David Sims?

  He's not, although it feels like he should be.

• 2:36:21Griffin Newman?

  Good follow up question.

• 2:36:22David Sims?

  Um, it looks like it's based on a historical romance novel from the 90s, set during the 1850s gold rush.

• 2:36:32Griffin Newman?

  Jesus, okay.

• 2:36:34David Sims?

  Uh, it's got one of those posters where a man and a woman are doing like a forehead kiss and there's a big bright sun behind them.

• 2:36:41Griffin Newman?

  That's like all of them.

• 2:36:41David Sims?

  I know.

• 2:36:42Griffin Newman?

  Is there, are there any name actors in this?

• 2:36:44David Sims?

  Yes, but like not huge names.

• 2:36:47Griffin Newman?

  Can you give them to me though?

• 2:36:48David Sims?

  Abigail Cohen, Tom Lewis, Logan Marshall Green, Nina Dobrev, Pankka Janssen, and Eric Dane, who of course, uh, has recently sort of, you know, semi-retired or whatever, because he's suffering from ALS. Sort of his last films, maybe.

• 2:37:08Griffin Newman?

  I'm going to guess that this movie is called God is Gold.

• 2:37:11David Sims?

  The film is directed by DJ Caruso.

• 2:37:14Griffin Newman?

  Oh, Jesus.

• 2:37:14David Sims?

  Which is crazy.

• 2:37:15Griffin Newman?

  Yes, he's basically swamped.

• 2:37:16David Sims?

  Pivoted to that space.

• 2:37:18Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, faith based.

• 2:37:18David Sims?

  And is called Redeeming Love.

• 2:37:21Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, would never get that.

• 2:37:23David Sims?

  How could you?

• 2:37:23Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:37:24David Sims?

  Number five at the box office, of course, is a prequel to a couple, uh, action movies. Um, it's a pretty cursed movie.

• 2:37:34Griffin Newman?

  It's a pretty cursed movie. It's a prequel to a couple action movies.

• 2:37:37David Sims?

  It's a prequel to two action films.

• 2:37:40Griffin Newman?

  It's not like Transporter, but it's, is it something in that kind of bent? Is it that?

• 2:37:44David Sims?

  It's got a British bent to it, uh, for sure.

• 2:37:46Griffin Newman?

  Is it that level of franchise, though?

• 2:37:48David Sims?

  Uh.

• 2:37:49Griffin Newman?

  Oh, it's The Kingsman.

• 2:37:51David Sims?

  There you go.

• 2:37:52Griffin Newman?

  A film that ends, do you know this, Dana?

• 2:37:54Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:37:55Griffin Newman?

  With introducing Hitler like he's Thanos.

• 2:37:58David Sims?

  This is true.

• 2:37:59Griffin Newman?

  And I love that Matthew Bond's, like, of course, we're gonna make the sequel.

• 2:38:02David Sims?

  Yeah, we're working on it.

• 2:38:03Griffin Newman?

  Everyone's demanding, in fact, it might be a Hulu series.

• 2:38:05David Sims?

  It might be an Argyle as well, somehow. You've also got-

• 2:38:08Speaker 03

  Argyle, Argyle's sort of in the Kingsman universe.

• 2:38:11Griffin Newman?

  Source, yes.

• 2:38:12David Sims?

  As we have discussed.

• 2:38:13Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 2:38:13David Sims?

  But only vaguely.

• 2:38:15Griffin Newman?

  People made a really funny Reddit thread complaining about-

• 2:38:17David Sims?

  I can't believe they spoiled Argyle.

• 2:38:19Griffin Newman?

  Spoiling Argyle. Everyone was in on the bit of. I was truly about to watch it tomorrow.

• 2:38:24David Sims?

  It was really funny.

• 2:38:25Griffin Newman?

  But the funniest thing is, we did not talk about the central twist of Argyle.

• 2:38:28Speaker 03

  The main twist.

• 2:38:29Griffin Newman?

  We just talked about the two inexplicable mid-credit scenes.

• 2:38:32Speaker 03

  And the main twist is that it's based on a book written by Taylor Swift.

• 2:38:35Griffin Newman?

  Exactly. That's the main twist.

• 2:38:37David Sims?

  Uh, just to further illustrate what a weird time this was for the American box office.

• 2:38:41Griffin Newman?

  Matrix Resurrections is like, out of theaters, right?

• 2:38:45David Sims?

  Number sixteen.

• 2:38:45Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:38:46David Sims?

  Number six is The Three Five Five.

• 2:38:48Griffin Newman?

  Oh, of course.

• 2:38:49David Sims?

  Remember that one?

• 2:38:49Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 2:38:50David Sims?

  Where a bunch of women were spies.

• 2:38:52Griffin Newman?

  That was the ultimate. This can't miss. They cast five of the biggest actresses from different countries. Everyone will go see this.

• 2:38:59David Sims?

  Uh, number seven is American Underdog, The Kurt Warner Story, in which Zachary Levi plays the quarterback and religious figure Kurt Warner.

• 2:39:07Speaker 03

  Normal guy?

• 2:39:08David Sims?

  Yep, normal guy. Uh, number eight, Ghostbusters: Afterlife. Griffin!

• 2:39:12Griffin Newman?

  Well, it's still in there.

• 2:39:13David Sims?

  Yeah, after eleven weeks. This is what I'm saying. It's not good.

• 2:39:16Griffin Newman?

  Kind of, because Resurrections is like, week four?

• 2:39:19David Sims?

  West Resurrections was on fucking HBO Max day and date.

• 2:39:23Griffin Newman?

  I know, I'm just, I'm surprised Ghostbusters is hanging in there, but you're right. The answer is that like, one new movie got released every three weeks.

• 2:39:31David Sims?

  Um, uh, number nine, Licorice Pizza, number ten, West Side Story. So two somewhat, uh, underwhelming, but good Best Picture nominees.

• 2:39:40Griffin Newman?

  What's Afterlife up to at this point?

• 2:39:43David Sims?

  Uh, Afterlife has made one hundred twenty-eight on its way to a robust, uh, domestic total of one hundred and twenty-nine.

• 2:39:48Griffin Newman?

  It's, all of them end up at the same fucking number. It is incredible how, outside of the original Ghostbusters, not adjusted for inflation-

• 2:39:57David Sims?

  I have to pee so bad.

• 2:39:57Griffin Newman?

  Ghostbusters Two: Answer the Call, as staged at the Globe.

• 2:40:03Griffin Newman?

  Afterlife and Frozen Empire all basically end up at an identical number.

• 2:40:06Speaker 03

  130?

• 2:40:07Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, and it's, there's always this asterix of like, Ghostbusters 2 was a genuine disappointment, right? Like, huge drop off from the original at the time. And then, Answer the Call, they were like, "Well, the backlash. Ghostbusters is still valuable as a franchise, but the backlash killed it." And then Afterlife comes out, like, in shitty 2021, and they're like, "It was a hit, and in normal times, it would have done better." And then they release Frozen Empire in a totally normal time, and it ends up at the exact same number.

• 2:40:35Speaker 03

  I just don't think, like, Gen, and correct me if I'm wrong, it doesn't seem like Gen Z is attached to Ghostbusters as a piece of IP.

• 2:40:42Griffin Newman?

  My little cousin really likes Ghostbusters, but I'm like, is that like, speak more to him just being an obsessive kid who's really thorough with stuff. Sims always puts it, David Sims, who's the guy who hosts this podcast and is in the bathroom right now, he always puts it like, it is ultimately like, a good concept with a great logo.

• 2:41:03Speaker 03

  Yeah, and a good song.

• 2:41:04Griffin Newman?

  Right, that like, the song and the logo always are basically gonna get you to 130 domestic. And they keep trying to crack, like, what is the way to make it super relevant to kids today? And they, like, they can't do-

• 2:41:17Speaker 03

  Stranger Things, kids, is not the way to do it.

• 2:41:19Griffin Newman?

  They tried that.

• 2:41:20Speaker 04

  I mean, you name, you name a character podcast.

• 2:41:22Griffin Newman?

  You name a character podcast.

• 2:41:24Speaker 03

  I will say, I like, I think one of Ghostbusters enduring cultural legacies is now that, this will be post, when this podcast comes out, but currently, when we're recording it, it's almost Halloween season.

• 2:41:35Griffin Newman?

  Spooky season.

• 2:41:35Speaker 03

  And I feel like on every, like, pre-made playlist for, like, Halloween songs, the Ghostbusters song is, and it's like, it's actually not a Halloween movie.

• 2:41:43Griffin Newman?

  But it rules, the song rules. It's like, maybe the best song of all time. This is the thing, like, Ghostbusters will never be valueless, because the song will never stop playing.

• 2:41:51Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:41:51Griffin Newman?

  And the logo will never stop existing.

• 2:41:53Speaker 03

  It's cool.

• 2:41:53Griffin Newman?

  And then, like, one step down from that, like, Slimer and Stay Puft, like, basically should be on the back of money. Are like as important to American culture as most of our presidents. And then beyond that, you're like, what is this?

• 2:42:06Speaker 03

  Did you ever watch, um, like the Casper movies?

• 2:42:11Griffin Newman?

  Dana, I talk about them all the time. I love.

• 2:42:13David Sims?

  You're venturing into.

• 2:42:15Griffin Newman?

  Dana, David, Dana just asked, Griffin, did you ever watch the Casper movies? So buckle up, there's an hour left in this episode.

• 2:42:23David Sims?

  Was one of those put in theaters this week or something? I saw it on a box office list and couldn't understand.

• 2:42:28Griffin Newman?

  Re-releasing for Halloween.

• 2:42:29Speaker 03

  For Halloween.

• 2:42:30Griffin Newman?

  The 30th anniversary.

• 2:42:30David Sims?

  The original, the.

• 2:42:31Speaker 03

  The boy.

• 2:42:32Griffin Newman?

  Yes, the only, the.

• 2:42:33Speaker 03

  The Christina Ricci one?

• 2:42:34Griffin Newman?

  The Brad Solberling.

• 2:42:34David Sims?

  Devon Sawa.

• 2:42:35Griffin Newman?

  The sexual awakening movie.

• 2:42:36Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:42:37Griffin Newman?

  That movie fucks. I love that movie so much. And then I.

• 2:42:41David Sims?

  I remember, I saw it in theaters and I remember not even liking it at the time.

• 2:42:44Griffin Newman?

  That's dumb.

• 2:42:45David Sims?

  I'd be interested to revisit.

• 2:42:45Griffin Newman?

  That's dumb. Your brain was not developed.

• 2:42:47Speaker 03

  A young, pre-teen girl?

• 2:42:49David Sims?

  No, I was 10, I think I was possibly too old for like true kid antics shit or whatever.

• 2:42:54Griffin Newman?

  It's not true kid antics shit.

• 2:42:55David Sims?

  I, I mean.

• 2:42:56Griffin Newman?

  It's dark, the movie's dark.

• 2:42:58David Sims?

  I do remember it being a little dark because, right, there's death.

• 2:43:02Griffin Newman?

  It's right, it's like about death.

• 2:43:04David Sims?

  And Bill Pullman dies and then they resurrect him?

• 2:43:07Griffin Newman?

  Casper's dad spent his entire life trying to build a machine to bring ghosts back to life. And they revived the machine, but only have enough ghost juice to bring one ghost back to life. And Casper's cousins murder Bill Pullman and he makes the sacrifice of letting Bill Pullman have the ghost juice rather than himself. He was gonna use it for himself because he's in love with Kat, played by Christina Ricci, but she would never date a ghost. And because of his selfless act, her dead mother, who's now an angel, grants Casper one wish, which is Cinderella rules, he's allowed to be a human boy.

• 2:43:40David Sims?

  Be a boy for a day or whatever.

• 2:43:41Griffin Newman?

  For like an hour, so he shows up like the party, looking like Devon Sawa. And she loves him and he says, can I keep you? He whispers it into her ear and they're dancing and floating above the crowd. And Oscar should have been thrown at the screen.

• 2:43:53David Sims?

  Take a hike, English patience or whatever.

• 2:43:55Speaker 03

  Did you ever see, uh, Casper meets Wendy?

• 2:43:59Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 2:43:59Speaker 03

  I had that on VHS.

• 2:44:01Griffin Newman?

  Uh, I think a listener is, uh, perhaps, uh, cause Shelley Duvall is in that.

• 2:44:07Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 2:44:07Griffin Newman?

  And a Blank Check listener went to the. Shelley Duvall Estate Sale. And I believe purchased for us Shelley Duvall's copy of Casper Meets Wendy with a certificate of authenticity. That's showing up at the P O box soon, Ben.

• 2:44:20Speaker 03

  That's a really nice listener.

• 2:44:21Griffin Newman?

  Casper: A Spirited Beginning is one of the joke titles I will throw out if I can't guess something in box office games. So it gets said a lot.

• 2:44:29David Sims?

  Which is a film that was not releas- released in theaters.

• 2:44:31Griffin Newman?

  No, it's a straight to DVD movie with Paulie Shore and James Earl Jones as the voice of ghosts.

• 2:44:35David Sims?

  Gutenberg's there.

• 2:44:36Griffin Newman?

  Gutenberg's there.

• 2:44:38Speaker 03

  One of them plays the stinky ghost.

• 2:44:40Griffin Newman?

  They're different ghosts. They're new ghosts because it's a prequel. I think the.

• 2:44:45Speaker 03

  But ghosts can live for.

• 2:44:46Griffin Newman?

  The uncles are still in it, the ghostly.

• 2:44:48David Sims?

  Dana.

• 2:44:49Griffin Newman?

  The Ghost in the Hill is still in it. James Earl Jones is like some evil genie ghost.

• 2:44:53David Sims?

  He's called Kai Bosch.

• 2:44:55Speaker 03

  Really?

• 2:44:55David Sims?

  I'm not joking.

• 2:44:56Griffin Newman?

  And Paulie Shore, I'm looking up here, plays his weasely sidekick.

• 2:45:00David Sims?

  Wait, what? Uh, his, his character is called Snivel.

• 2:45:03Griffin Newman?

  Okay.

• 2:45:04Speaker 03

  Uh, that's a fun name for a weasely sidekick.

• 2:45:07David Sims?

  Um, it looks like Casper Van Deen is also in it, and I imagine he was cast as a joke.

• 2:45:12Griffin Newman?

  Probably.

• 2:45:12David Sims?

  Because he plays a character called Bystander. So do you think they were like, there's an actual actor called Casper? Do you want to be in the new Casper movie?

• 2:45:19Griffin Newman?

  The Bort joke where someone says Casper and he turns around and says like, what?

• 2:45:22David Sims?

  Me?

• 2:45:23Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:45:24David Sims?

  What's Casper Van Deen doing now?

• 2:45:26Griffin Newman?

  Isn't his, he was married to like royalty and his daughter is like a big influencer who also is in line for a throne maybe.

• 2:45:33David Sims?

  Van Deen.

• 2:45:34Griffin Newman?

  Yes. But I want to say he married like a princess. They're divorced.

• 2:45:39David Sims?

  He married, he married the daughter of the, uh, Princess of Yugoslavia, which is a country that doesn't exist anymore. So I don't know how much, right? Yugoslavia has abolished its monarchy, but I guess some sort of courtly.

• 2:45:51Griffin Newman?

  Sure.

• 2:45:51David Sims?

  Homes maybe in their, uh, life or whatever.

• 2:45:55Griffin Newman?

  Good stuff.

• 2:45:55Speaker 03

  Good stuff.

• 2:45:56Griffin Newman?

  Dana, you have.

• 2:45:57David Sims?

  They're divorced.

• 2:45:58Griffin Newman?

  Thousand things to plug.

• 2:45:59David Sims?

  Dana, Dana, plug.

• 2:46:02Speaker 03

  Uh, listen to my podcast Noble Blood, which is about history. Uh, new podcast Hoax, which is about historical hoaxes.

• 2:46:10David Sims?

  With Lizzie Logan.

• 2:46:11Speaker 03

  With my friend Lizzie Logan. Uh, if you like sort of like Gothic YA novels about grave robbers and surgery, read Anatomy, A Love Story.

• 2:46:20Griffin Newman?

  Available now in paperback.

• 2:46:21Speaker 03

  Available now in paperback. And if you want to preorder a book about, you know, sexy magic and a professor and grad student.

• 2:46:31Speaker 03

  Going on, you know, sexy little adventure.

• 2:46:36Griffin Newman?

  David's eyes bugging out.

• 2:46:37David Sims?

  I've read it.

• 2:46:38Speaker 03

  He's read some, yeah. Uh, preorder The Arcane Arts.

• 2:46:41Griffin Newman?

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:46:41Speaker 03

  Which I wrote with a friend under a pseudonym. So if you see that it's not by Dana Schwartz, I'm there. But The Arcane Arts.

• 2:46:48Griffin Newman?

  Right, right. You have a combined pseudonym?

• 2:46:49David Sims?

  Yeah, it's like S.A. Hardbody or whatever. I forget what it is. What is it?

• 2:46:53Speaker 03

  What's the story? It's S.D. Coverly.

• 2:46:54David Sims?

  S.D. Coverly, there you go.

• 2:46:56Griffin Newman?

  What is the story behind deciding like, we're gonna write this together under a pseudonym, but not hide that we're the ones who wrote it? Cause I just saw the announcement of like, Comic Con book, it's the two of us, here's the name we wrote it under.

• 2:47:07Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's because, uh, we like wrote it, we like came up with the story together. I would write the female character, he would write the male character. We'd go back and forth chapters. And then we were like talking to our editor, and basically because I had written like YA novels. This is like a little sexier.

• 2:47:23Griffin Newman?

  They were like, is it a branding thing?

• 2:47:24Speaker 03

  Is it a branding thing? And also, this is like fairly common, like people are less public about it, but there are a lot of like co-written books that just use like one pseudonym.

• 2:47:33Griffin Newman?

  I'm only, the only part that surprised me was announcing that from the forefront.

• 2:47:38Speaker 03

  I think the reason is because like, I'm not, I like this book. I think we did a good job. I'm like proud of it.

• 2:47:43Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:47:43Speaker 03

  And I think the publisher and editor know that I have like a promotional apparatus that they wanted to use. So they were like, we'll go with the pseudonym, but can you like push it on Instagram?

• 2:47:53David Sims?

  Right, we'll be public about the pseudonym.

• 2:47:55Speaker 03

  Yeah, and I was like, yeah, I like this book. I wrote it because I think it's good.

• 2:47:58Griffin Newman?

  It's a public pseudonym.

• 2:47:59Speaker 04

  Could have though showed up in a trench coat.

• 2:48:01Speaker 03

  I could have.

• 2:48:02David Sims?

  Or like with a mask and been like, I am S. What, S.D. Coverly?

• 2:48:06Speaker 03

  S.D. Coverly.

• 2:48:07David Sims?

  I am S.D. Coverly.

• 2:48:08Speaker 03

  It's very clever if you think about it, my initials are Dana Schwartz, which is a DS. So we sort of, you flip them.

• 2:48:15Speaker 04

  Mmm.

• 2:48:16Speaker 03

  It's a thinker.

• 2:48:17Griffin Newman?

  Very clever.

• 2:48:18Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:48:19Griffin Newman?

  Uh, thank you all for listening. Uh, thus concludes our one-episode series on the films of Joel Cohen.

• 2:48:25David Sims?

  Should we all take a bow?

• 2:48:27Griffin Newman?

  We should take a bow. Uh, it is fun that we'll have like a new Joel Cohen solo project hopefully to cover in 2026.

• 2:48:34David Sims?

  Yeah. And then whatever they might do in the future, either of them.

• 2:48:37Griffin Newman?

  I just want to get back together.

• 2:48:39David Sims?

  I do too.

• 2:48:40Griffin Newman?

  I'm all for this experimentation, but I'm, I certainly in rewatching all of their films and then watching the solo ones. It's like when they're together, it is the best shit on earth.

• 2:48:52David Sims?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:48:53Griffin Newman?

  Um, tune in next week for.

• 2:48:56David Sims?

  Uh, next week we're doing Drive Away Dolls.

• 2:48:59Griffin Newman?

  With MXM Tune.

• 2:49:00David Sims?

  That's right. Great episode.

• 2:49:01Griffin Newman?

  Um, and then of course we get to end the series on a bang with Honey Don't.

• 2:49:08Griffin Newman?

  A movie that I will admit kinda broke me.

• 2:49:11David Sims?

  Oh?

• 2:49:12Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, I, I need to watch it again, but I.

• 2:49:14Speaker 03

  It's the, it's the response.

• 2:49:16David Sims?

  It's okay to just not like it.

• 2:49:17Speaker 03

  The way the movie is titled is if your spouse is telling you they're gonna watch this movie.

• 2:49:23Griffin Newman?

  10 comedy points.

• 2:49:24Speaker 03

  Thank you.

• 2:49:25Griffin Newman?

  Uh, let, let me be clear, David. I'm not at war with not liking the movie. I've accepted that.

• 2:49:29David Sims?

  Right. It's not a good movie. I mean, or you can, it's a, others agree it is not good.

• 2:49:34Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 2:49:34David Sims?

  You're not screaming into the wind here.

• 2:49:36Griffin Newman?

  No, but I do think it's interesting to talk about it and we'll talk about it in.

• 2:49:39David Sims?

  Sure.

• 2:49:40Griffin Newman?

  Two weeks.

• 2:49:41David Sims?

  God, I'm gonna have to re-watch it.

• 2:49:43Griffin Newman?

  I, I.

• 2:49:43David Sims?

  Sorry.

• 2:49:44Griffin Newman?

  I ordered the Blu-ray.

• 2:49:45David Sims?

  Oh, that's a, a bridge I shall not be crossing.

• 2:49:49Griffin Newman?

  Gotta go on the shelf.

• 2:49:51Speaker 03

  Do you have the shelf space? You live in New York City.

• 2:49:53Griffin Newman?

  I don't have the shelf space. I have stacks of things on the floor.

• 2:49:55David Sims?

  The shelf space.

• 2:49:56Griffin Newman?

  So much shit in storage. My life's a nightmare. Anyway, tune in next week for Drive Away Dolls and as always, David, I regret to tell you, but because we must consider the witchy tradition in Dana's guest appearances and she already invoked it.

• 2:50:14David Sims?

  Oh.

• 2:50:14Griffin Newman?

  Casper meets Wendy locked on the feed.

• 2:50:25Speaker 04

  Dost thou?

• 2:50:27David Sims?

  Okay.

• 2:50:27Speaker 04

  Dost thou have a quote?

• 2:50:29Griffin Newman?

  Save this for the mic.

• 2:50:30Speaker 04

  I've been recorded.

• 2:50:31David Sims?

  There are actually a lot of really famous quotes from the play Macbeth.

• 2:50:34Speaker 03

  We do this any good.

• 2:50:35Griffin Newman?

  It's a very quotable movie.

• 2:50:38Speaker 04

  There's not, it's weird.

• 2:50:39David Sims?

  Like Ben, did you have moments where you were like, oh shit, like? Cause I feel like that happens so often when you watch Shakespeare, if you're not a Shakespeare person, where you're like, oh, that's like that phrase that exists in society.

• 2:50:50Speaker 04

  Say this, say this.

• 2:50:51David Sims?

  What a recording this.

• 2:50:52Speaker 04

  Yeah, this is all being recorded. I had to read and I've seen Macbeth before.

• 2:50:57David Sims?

  Fair enough. So it was not quite.

• 2:50:59Speaker 04

  So it wasn't as surprising.

• 2:51:00Speaker 03

  I like when they say, sleep no more. I'm like, ah.

• 2:51:03David Sims?

  Yeah. And then they say, you know, it's closing soon.

• 2:51:06Speaker 04

  Okay. I'm just gonna.

• 2:51:06David Sims?

  It's like doing a bank show. It's about a bank.

• 2:51:11Speaker 04

  Blank Check with Griffin and David is hosted by Griffin Newman and David Sims. Our executive producer is me, Ben Hostly. Our creative producer is Marie Bardi Salinas and our associate producer is 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, Ali 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

• 2:51:52Speaker 04

  exclusive franchise commentaries and bonus episodes. 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.