The Last Wave with BenDavid Grabinski

Peter Weir's follow up to Picnic at Hanging Rock - 1978's The Last Wave - deals with similar themes, with colonialism butting against the wild mysticism of Australia's land and people. However, this time...it's WET AS HELL. BenDavid Grabinski - the filmmaker behind the upcoming Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice - joins us to talk about this beguiling film, apocalyptic thinking, Richard Chamberlain's status as the king of TV miniseries, and Tom Shadyac's Dragonfly, weirdly enough. Watch BenDavid's new movie Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice https://www.imdb.com/title/tt27552099/?ref_=ext_shr_lnk If you're in New York, be sure to go to Sunken Harbor Club https://www.sunkenharbor.club/ or Nitehawk Trivia https://nitehawkcinema.com/prospectpark/movie-trivia-nite/ Sign up for Check Book https://blankcheckpod.substack.com/welcome, the Blank Check newsletter featuring even more “real nerdy shit” to feed your pop culture obsession. Dossier excerpts, film biz AND burger reports, and even more exclusive content you won’t want to miss out on. Join our Patreon for franchise commentaries and bonus episodes. http://www.patreon.com/blankcheck Follow us @blankcheckpod on Twitter https://x.com/blankcheckpod?lang=en, Instagram https://www.instagram.com/blankcheckpod/?hl=en, Threads https://www.threads.net/@blankcheckpod?xmt=AQGzctAh4mbWTwYzCV1pzNT6AMV9o99EOfymi8TLR5mTde0 and Facebook https://www.facebook.com/blankcheckpodcast/! Buy some real nerdy merch https://kinshipgoods.com/blankcheck Connect with other Blankies on our Reddit https://www.reddit.com/r/blankies/s/gpcOkQr8Sv or Discord https://discord.gg/Q6YGSR3JrA For anything else, check out BlankCheckPod.com https://www.blankcheckpod.com/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

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

• 0:02Griffin Newman?

  David.

• 0:03David Sims?

  Yep.

• 0:03Griffin Newman?

  We did a live show.

• 0:04David Sims?

  Yeah, remember?

• 0:05Griffin Newman?

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

• 0:12David Sims?

  It was so fun. It was very silly.

• 0:15Griffin Newman?

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

• 0:18David Sims?

  Yeah, hey.

• 0:18Speaker 02

  Hey, everyone, or should I say, oh?

• 0:21David Sims?

  Oh.

• 0:22Griffin Newman?

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

• 0:31Speaker 03

  So just a few more days.

• 0:33David Sims?

  Yes.

• 0:33Speaker 03

  You can get it at dynasty.tv.

• 0:36David Sims?

  Dynasty.tv.

• 0:38Speaker 03

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

• 0:43David Sims?

  Oh, yeah. I was moving things around.

• 0:45Griffin Newman?

  Laptop was on.

• 0:46Speaker 02

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

• 0:48Griffin Newman?

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

• 0:50David Sims?

  I was locked in.

• 0:51Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, very locked in and you were funny.

• 0:53David Sims?

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

• 0:56Griffin Newman?

  Oh, thank you.

• 0:57David Sims?

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

• 1:02Griffin Newman?

  You might see me shine Marie's shoes.

• 1:04David Sims?

  Exactly.

• 1:05Speaker 02

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

• 1:07Griffin Newman?

  If that gets you off.

• 1:09Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 1:10Speaker 03

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

• 1:39Speaker 03

  We've lost our podcasts, then they come back and we don't even know what they mean.

• 1:44Griffin Newman?

  Now, it's hard to, I'm good at neither a South African nor an Australian accent.

• 1:50David Sims?

  Okay.

• 1:50Griffin Newman?

  It is hard to impersonate South African in a movie where everyone's speaking Australian and not just fuck up both.

• 1:59David Sims?

  Where are you getting South African?

• 2:00Griffin Newman?

  Richard Chamberlain's character.

• 2:02David Sims?

  Is he South African?

• 2:03Griffin Newman?

  They say that in the movie.

• 2:04Speaker 04

  Wait, I missed that.

• 2:05Griffin Newman?

  He says he's of the South.

• 2:06Speaker 03

  I caught that.

• 2:07Griffin Newman?

  Thank you.

• 2:08Speaker 03

  But I, I, I thought it was South American.

• 2:11Griffin Newman?

  I think he says he's of, I think he says he is of South African origin.

• 2:15Speaker 03

  I heard something like that. Like when he talks about his background, that there's some discussion of like family. I thought it was him though.

• 2:24Speaker 04

  Wait.

• 2:25Speaker 03

  It's him. Being born.

• 2:26Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:26Speaker 03

  Elsewhere.

• 2:27Speaker 04

  It's when he said diplomatic immunity.

• 2:29Griffin Newman?

  Did I nail it? Did I, by melding the two accents together, did I nail it?

• 2:34David Sims?

  Hmm, gonna go with no.

• 2:37Griffin Newman?

  Did I nail it?

• 2:38Speaker 03

  I'm seeing zero nail.

• 2:40Speaker 04

  It's a little bit.

• 2:41Griffin Newman?

  Cause I'm.

• 2:41David Sims?

  You got a metal detector, you're sweeping around like, hmm.

• 2:44Griffin Newman?

  Inside me.

• 2:45David Sims?

  Quiet as a mouse.

• 2:45Griffin Newman?

  Right now, it feels like a Home Depot, fully stocked.

• 2:48Speaker 04

  So Griffin.

• 2:49Griffin Newman?

  Walls of nails.

• 2:50Speaker 04

  On one end of the spectrum is your Arnold and then on the other end of the spectrum is your Sandler in Hotel Transylvania.

• 2:58Griffin Newman?

  Blah, blah, blah.

• 2:59Speaker 04

  Yeah, it's sort of in between.

• 3:00Griffin Newman?

  Okay, you're saying, you're saying, you think Sandler, Transylvania is the best one I have?

• 3:05Speaker 04

  It sounds like the guy.

• 3:06Griffin Newman?

  Joseph Gordon Levitt's my best.

• 3:08David Sims?

  Go ahead, you can do it again. Or don't.

• 3:12Griffin Newman?

  Excuse me, one moment.

• 3:14Speaker 03

  What are you doing?

• 3:15Griffin Newman?

  In.

• 3:16Speaker 04

  Oh.

• 3:17Speaker 03

  Griffin is getting something from his desk.

• 3:19Speaker 04

  Oh man, I wish, this is the first time I wish it was a video podcast. I don't, but only in this exact moment, just for that, just for that.

• 3:26Griffin Newman?

  This is my totem. My totem is a loaded die. Only I know the exact weight and balance of this die.

• 3:32David Sims?

  You know, that film is 16 years old.

• 3:34Griffin Newman?

  Happy birthday!

• 3:35David Sims?

  Which is crazy.

• 3:36Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 3:36David Sims?

  Cause you know, feels like just yesterday, I, I heard him say that for the first time.

• 3:40Griffin Newman?

  Mm-hmm.

• 3:41David Sims?

  And it's not like he's had a bad career.

• 3:42Griffin Newman?

  No.

• 3:43David Sims?

  But when you watched that movie, you were like, right, this is it. He's about to be, you know, a big A-lister. He's popping so hard in this.

• 3:49Speaker 04

  The issue is, if you actually look at the landscape of theatrical movies, there's not a lot that have like rotating sets where you're like a couple of layers into a dream, which is his skillset.

• 3:59David Sims?

  Apparently what.

• 4:00Speaker 04

  Yeah, they go around. They're like, you know, I'm just looking for a movie about dreams on a rotating.

• 4:04David Sims?

  Are you now? You know, there is a state in Australia called South Australia. Are you sure he was not talking about being from South Australia? Well, how could I Google? There's not nothing came up, but I mean, that's not that surprising because this is a less well known.

• 4:17Speaker 04

  Well, can we just look at the future Reddit column about this episode?

• 4:21Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, let's do that.

• 4:22David Sims?

  Imagine the hell of being able to see the future Reddit posts, but not being able to stop them.

• 4:29Griffin Newman?

  That was the worst. That's a reboot of early edition. CBS's early edition. Every morning we get a notification of a Reddit post roasting us, but you can't see what the subject heading of the Reddit post is. And you're just like, how do I anticipate these criticisms?

• 4:45Speaker 04

  I'm really glad we never reached a point where someone could say Philip K. Dick is too online because that would be the short story or book he wrote. We're like, okay, man, I don't know if we needed that.

• 4:55Griffin Newman?

  That is a great point that a lot of.

• 4:57David Sims?

  Thank God he died before Twitter was invented.

• 4:59Griffin Newman?

  That a lot of writers would have gotten dinged for being too online for writing the exact thing they wrote. Right. Pre internet. Like if you wrote fucking Minority Report in 2026, they'd be like, this is some fucking Twitter brained bullshit. You're so afraid of getting canceled. You wrote Minority Report.

• 5:19David Sims?

  What if, what if the, the, the precogs went canceled when they came out of the little milk bath, right?

• 5:27Speaker 04

  That's actually a deleted scene. Well, when Matt, see when Matt Damon was in that movie, that is what it was going to be about. But then when it switched to Colin Farrell, they got rid of all the canceled stuff.

• 5:36David Sims?

  Colin's so good in that.

• 5:36Griffin Newman?

  Colin, Colin is good in that. I just love that. That's another classic Colin Farrell. I have zero memories of being on that set.

• 5:42David Sims?

  Drunk as hell, mate. Spielberg mad at me and Cruise, everyone mad at me.

• 5:46Griffin Newman?

  And also a thing we called out in that episode that I, I always think about just how different Hollywood was, uh, what 24 years ago?

• 5:56David Sims?

  Done. Yeah.

• 5:57Griffin Newman?

  He was paid 2.5 million dollars for that movie.

• 6:00David Sims?

  That's called having a good agent.

• 6:01Griffin Newman?

  Truly. But it was just like, if we've decided you're the guy and you get one of the top five parts in a giant movie, we're giving you 2.5 no matter what. And then like 10 years later, Andrew Garfield was signed to play Spider-Man and they're like, we're going to start you at 250K. You got a three movie contract and by the end of it, you end up at one if you make three of them.

• 6:23Speaker 04

  Well, there's all these movies in like the eighties and nineties and you'll see, oh, this person got 3.5 million and the budget was like 3.6. And you're like, where, how did they pay for the rest? And then they also shot it in Los Angeles for nine months.

• 6:35Griffin Newman?

  And the person getting paid 3.5 million was George Kennedy. That if George Kennedy was available for 10 days, they were like, it's worth him being 92% of our budget.

• 6:45David Sims?

  Can you do George Kennedy saying murder in Minority Report?

• 6:48Griffin Newman?

  Murder. Drebin, I'm try Drebin.

• 6:51David Sims?

  Another, another, um, another wet movie. And today we are here to take a.

• 6:57Griffin Newman?

  Oh, Minority Report. I thought you were saying Naked Gun.

• 6:59Speaker 04

  I'm like really.

• 7:00Griffin Newman?

  Does have some splashing.

• 7:01Speaker 04

  I'm genuinely upset that none of you commented on my renaming of our group chat.

• 7:07David Sims?

  I loved it. The Wet Bandits. Look, I was in a rush, but I was very into it.

• 7:10Speaker 04

  Okay. Cause I thought it was a pretty good joke. But I said it was like our Wet Bandits is the group chat talking about this movie.

• 7:15Griffin Newman?

  Ben, Ben texted and just mid-watch was, uh, is it fair to say, uh, producer Ben Hosley? A gentleman of many shades, of many sides, sometimes you're a dry guy.

• 7:31Speaker 03

  That is true. But I've had my moments, my dry eras.

• 7:35Griffin Newman?

  You have, but you've been known.

• 7:36Speaker 04

  You are a drop guy. Cause we watched Drop Zone on VHS.

• 7:39Speaker 03

  Sure. Well, that's kind of more of an air guy.

• 7:41Griffin Newman?

  You had a bad boy weekend and not a bad boy records weekend. I just feel like your weekend had, your weekend hangs seemed to have a, a, a whiff of being bad.

• 7:51Speaker 03

  It was a throwback.

• 7:52Griffin Newman?

  It was a throwback.

• 7:53Speaker 03

  Ben, David and I got Korean barbecue and then we head back to his.

• 8:00Speaker 04

  And then we drank tea and then we watched Drop Zone on VHS.

• 8:03Speaker 03

  No, we, we drank some dang beers and had maybe a couple of Jamos.

• 8:08Speaker 04

  What?

• 8:09Speaker 03

  You silly guys.

• 8:10Griffin Newman?

  Maybe.

• 8:11Speaker 03

  Maybe.

• 8:12Griffin Newman?

  Unconfirmed.

• 8:13David Sims?

  Right, right, right. Reports are surface.

• 8:15Griffin Newman?

  But I was going to say that you have been known to value what you would dub a slick flick.

• 8:20Speaker 03

  Absolutely.

• 8:21Griffin Newman?

  A wet motion picture.

• 8:23Speaker 03

  A splushy, a splashy.

• 8:24Griffin Newman?

  A splushy splashy. Sometimes you go Bobby Darin mode when you're sitting down at the cinema.

• 8:28David Sims?

  There's only so many movies where it rains inside. You know, this is the thing. There's lots of movies where it's like, oh, you're on the ocean. Oh, you know, there's a big storm, but it rains inside in this movie many times.

• 8:38Speaker 03

  It also. Water's like the villain.

• 8:40Griffin Newman?

  Water's the villain.

• 8:41David Sims?

  Kind of just, it's sort of just the theme. But beyond that, it's just kind of, this is about water.

• 8:46Griffin Newman?

  And colonialism, I'd say are the two big bads.

• 8:48David Sims?

  There's a little of that too, but I mean, like, it's like, you're like the last wave and you're like, oh, okay. So is this like a metaphorical wave? And they're like, well, no, actually, if you think about it.

• 8:56Griffin Newman?

  This is what I love. I love, I had this thought like 10 minutes into the movie. I love a title that is both metaphorical and not at all. I love when there's a title where you're like, last wave. Is it maybe just about like cultural ties changing and you're like?

• 9:10David Sims?

  Something's changing. Exactly.

• 9:11Griffin Newman?

  It is, but also.

• 9:12David Sims?

  But also right at the end, we are going to show you a big fucking wave.

• 9:14Griffin Newman?

  The last shot's one of the biggest waves you've ever seen.

• 9:17Speaker 04

  But also, almost every movie that has the word last in the title is great, but then there's like two or three that are terrible. But that's the thing I've been thinking about.

• 9:25Griffin Newman?

  Okay, let's, let's make this list.

• 9:27Speaker 04

  Oh, I started making a list on the train here and then stopped because I kept seeing Last Stand. I was like going through them, but I was, but there was like a list, I like, there's like 20 really good movies that the word last in the title.

• 9:39Griffin Newman?

  That's one of the best.

• 9:40David Sims?

  So good.

• 9:41Speaker 04

  I mean, we should definitely re-litigate Last Jedi, which I think is a masterpiece. So I can alienate everyone who doesn't like.

• 9:47Griffin Newman?

  We all agree. This is, this is safe space. By safe space, I mean a room full of people who are smart and correct.

• 9:52Speaker 04

  Yeah, I know. But, but I was like going over it and I was like, there are so many good movies that were last in the title.

• 9:59David Sims?

  The Last X is a pretty strong start. Uh, let me see.

• 10:02Griffin Newman?

  As you're looking this up, I just want to say.

• 10:04Speaker 04

  But there is one movie I saw only one time and really did not like. And maybe it's really great, but The Last Kiss. I think The Last Duel is so underrated.

• 10:11David Sims?

  Kiss is one of the worst fucking movies I ever saw in a theater.

• 10:15Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 10:16David Sims?

  Yeah. It is so goddamn bad.

• 10:18Griffin Newman?

  And that's a Goldwyn picture?

• 10:19Speaker 04

  This would have been such a bonding thing between you and me because I had like weeks of being mad about last

• 10:24David Sims?

  But it's like, it's crazy that I'm mad about. I saw it in college. Like you think I could have gotten over it. It's probably like a hundred minutes long. Like, you know, it didn't, it didn't end the world when it came out, but I walked out being like, that was bullshit.

• 10:37Griffin Newman?

  It's a hundred minutes long and of those hundred minutes, 80 minutes are Casey Affleck with a beer being like, you know, marriage is tough.

• 10:43David Sims?

  He is in it.

• 10:44Speaker 04

  But I was.

• 10:45David Sims?

  A hundred and four minutes.

• 10:46Speaker 04

  So I was in college.

• 10:47David Sims?

  Goldwin. Come on, you gotta whittle that down.

• 10:50Speaker 04

  I have to admit that I was like a severe Garden State guy where like I saw it.

• 10:55David Sims?

  How old are you Ben David? And we should introduce the podcast.

• 10:57Speaker 04

  I'm forty two.

• 10:59Griffin Newman?

  I also set up a thread that I still need to pay off.

• 11:01Speaker 04

  When this comes out.

• 11:02David Sims?

  Okay, well, I'm just gonna.

• 11:03Speaker 04

  Forty two.

• 11:03Griffin Newman?

  I'm gonna be thirty seven when this comes out. Yeah.

• 11:06David Sims?

  I, am I gonna be forty?

• 11:08Griffin Newman?

  I think it's still shorter.

• 11:09David Sims?

  No, it's still thirty nine. Phew. Um, but, uh, as someone who's a little older than me, I think that's a little embarrassing.

• 11:15Speaker 04

  So.

• 11:16Griffin Newman?

  But it's fine.

• 11:16Speaker 04

  So it came out and I was like, I don't know, twenty and I saw it and it made me cry. And then.

• 11:22David Sims?

  All the faucets turn on.

• 11:24Speaker 04

  And then.

• 11:24David Sims?

  Cause he can't cry, but they can.

• 11:25Speaker 04

  Cute girl came over and we got really stoned and listened to the soundtrack on repeat for hours, talking about the movie on CD.

• 11:32David Sims?

  I mean.

• 11:32Speaker 04

  And it, it felt really important at the time. I'm like, the symmetrical framing, it just captures what it's like to be twenty.

• 11:40David Sims?

  If there's one thing that movie has to offer you, it is quite a lot of framing.

• 11:44Speaker 04

  I, so I've not seen it since then, so I will, because I'm, I'm sure, I'm sure that I will have some more complicated feelings.

• 11:52David Sims?

  The Last of the Mohicans, good. The Last Samurai, not so good. Go ahead.

• 11:56Griffin Newman?

  Setting up too many threads simultaneously.

• 11:57Speaker 04

  Last of the Mohicans is a masterpiece.

• 11:59Speaker 03

  I also love Garden State from the state of New Jersey.

• 12:02Griffin Newman?

  When's the last time you watched it?

• 12:04Speaker 03

  It's been a while.

• 12:04Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 12:05Speaker 03

  But yeah, similarly, it was like, we were like in the pocket age wise. Ever, you ever yell at a dump?

• 12:12David Sims?

  A hole. They yell into a big hole.

• 12:14Griffin Newman?

  They yell on top of a dumpster into a.

• 12:16Speaker 04

  Have you ever gone to New Jersey with Griffin and then got stranded there and we had to take a cab?

• 12:20Griffin Newman?

  That's a whole other conversation.

• 12:21David Sims?

  I'm pretty sure that all of you were part of that misadventure. That was a real classic. David's getting texts from multiple people about what's going down.

• 12:29Griffin Newman?

  Read Ben's text.

• 12:31Speaker 04

  Yeah, of course.

• 12:32David Sims?

  The Last Castle, kind of meh.

• 12:34Griffin Newman?

  11:43 a.m. Y'all, this movie wet as hell. I just needed to get that out. I've been trying to say that for 10 minutes.

• 12:40David Sims?

  So sorry.

• 12:42Griffin Newman?

  Y'all, this movie wet as hell.

• 12:43David Sims?

  Transformers, The Last Knight, are we counting that one? Not one of the better ones.

• 12:47Griffin Newman?

  It's interesting how much-

• 12:48David Sims?

  Solidly in the middle, but that's by Transformers range.

• 12:51Griffin Newman?

  Between that and Age of Extinction, of like, which one is more engagingly deranged?

• 12:56Speaker 04

  Well, the last night-

• 12:56David Sims?

  I think that one's more engaging.

• 12:58Speaker 04

  Mark Wahlberg being revealed as the last knight of the round table, and also a, uh-

• 13:03Griffin Newman?

  Oh my god.

• 13:03Speaker 04

  Anthony Hopkins dying and a robot saying, "Of all the men I've ever served, you were the coolest."

• 13:08Griffin Newman?

  First of all, spoiler. Secondly, that's not just a robot, that is Cogman, Anthony Hopkins' human-sized robot butler that does not transform-

• 13:18David Sims?

  Played by Jim Carter.

• 13:19Griffin Newman?

  And is a self-identified sociopath-

• 13:21David Sims?

  Yes, who also sings opera.

• 13:23Griffin Newman?

  Which he says before he takes living fish and beats them on the ground on the fucking, like, grid of a submarine into submission so he can eat them.

• 13:34Speaker 04

  Okay, Last Night-

• 13:35David Sims?

  Sort of forgot about that part.

• 13:36Griffin Newman?

  Good guy.

• 13:37Speaker 04

  Has a sequence that no human being alive, including Michael Bay or anyone who worked on it, can tell me where it takes place. There's a scene where they, like, take a ship up into the sky, but then crash land in the sky in what looks like Iceland?

• 13:51Griffin Newman?

  Oh, I can tell you where that takes place. In my wildest dreams.

• 13:54Speaker 04

  Well, it's wonderful, but I'm just saying-

• 13:56Griffin Newman?

  My best imagination.

• 13:57Speaker 04

  They, like, crash land in the sky on Earth and then get up to race away from it to come back down to Earth, and I can't figure it out.

• 14:06David Sims?

  Then showing Griffin something important.

• 14:08Griffin Newman?

  Fuck, it's South America. I was trying to queue it up-

• 14:11David Sims?

  Cue what?

• 14:12Griffin Newman?

  On the Criterion app, and Ben got it before I did.

• 14:14David Sims?

  He was born there. I see.

• 14:16Griffin Newman?

  Richard Chamberlain is born in South America.

• 14:18Speaker 04

  Wow, do we delete 49 minutes of us discussing it?

• 14:22Griffin Newman?

  No, it's all in.

• 14:23Speaker 04

  Or just leave it in? I feel so much better because I'm like, I've seen this movie a lot and I don't remember.

• 14:28David Sims?

  You are the most like views of this movie on my, of my letterbox friends. Very few people have seen this movie total.

• 14:36Griffin Newman?

  We're one of your guys and I told you we're finally doing We're, knew you had a new movie coming out. It was a time to get you back on and I feel like this was immediately, you said, I would do anything. I basically would be happy to do any We're episode, but your passion for this one punched through really quickly.

• 14:52David Sims?

  Well, especially since it's less requested.

• 14:55Speaker 04

  There's two Weers in pop culture that really, really matter to me. Obviously Peter Weir, second Lindsay Weir.

• 15:03David Sims?

  Lindsay Weir.

• 15:03Griffin Newman?

  Lindsay Weir, yes, certainly. We've made a couple Lindsay Weir jokes.

• 15:06Speaker 04

  I probably love all the Weers equally. Actually, maybe the dad the most.

• 15:10Griffin Newman?

  Sam, you're not a Sam guy?

• 15:12Speaker 04

  I mean, for life, but the dad, I mean, comedy legacy.

• 15:17Griffin Newman?

  Yes, what's, it was the worst $15 I ever spent, whatever he says about losing his virginity.

• 15:24David Sims?

  It's so fucking funny.

• 15:25Griffin Newman?

  My favorite is the episode where he's trying to get them invested in the idea of family game night because the Weers need to spend more time together. And he keeps on trying to convince them that the card game pit's really exciting. And at the end, Becky Ann Baker convinces him to like loosen his grip and let them live their own lives. And then she's like, okay, well, let's finish the game and he goes, I don't want to play this. This is a terrible game.

• 15:45David Sims?

  Joe Flaherty is, I mean, I mean, RIP, he died pretty recently.

• 15:49Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 15:50David Sims?

  Money in the goddamn bank.

• 15:51Griffin Newman?

  He can be angry about anything.

• 15:54Speaker 04

  So in October, I was doing this thing where I would like watch these YouTube blocks of like horror programming and they would, there's a bunch of these where they find like all these anthology shows, sort of like Tales from the Crypt that you've never heard of. And they have an episode and they'd be like written by Andrew Kevin Walker and crazy. And I'd sent you one where it was this horror show hosted by Joe Flaherty. And then it was an episode all about Catherine O'Hara being a nun who if she fell in love with someone, they would like blow up. And I'm forgetting the details.

• 16:24Griffin Newman?

  He had a character called Count Floyd on SCTV.

• 16:27David Sims?

  Iconic. That's why he dresses up as a vampire.

• 16:29Griffin Newman?

  Right. That was his local, exactly. And then on the Ed Grimley cartoon show, which listeners might be astonished to hear.

• 16:36David Sims?

  Uh, I'm sorry, Griff, there are no more listeners on this episode.

• 16:40Griffin Newman?

  They are gone.

• 16:41David Sims?

  They rode the wave out of here 10 minutes.

• 16:43Griffin Newman?

  I'm hearing a flat line in the distance. A thing that young Griffin Newman.

• 16:49David Sims?

  Check our metrics and it's a double win. The graph is just a double win.

• 16:53Speaker 04

  Griffin, is it possible that I had a lunchbox of the Grimly cartoon? Did that exist?

• 16:59Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 16:59Speaker 04

  Or is that just some weird memory I have?

• 17:01Griffin Newman?

  No, no, probably. There was merch. There's talking at Grimly dolls that are in the animation style. But but Count Floyd would appear in live action segments. They would cut to Count Floyd on Ed Grimly's TV. So Count Floyd was very important in my childhood.

• 17:16David Sims?

  I mean, that's just the kind of statement that only Griffin Newman would make these days. But I completely believe it.

• 17:22Griffin Newman?

  Well, because free speech is illegal. You're not allowed to talk about CCTV anymore because of the tariffs.

• 17:27Speaker 04

  I didn't know that there was a live action Grimly. I had known the cartoon.

• 17:31Griffin Newman?

  That was my introduction as well.

• 17:32Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 17:33Griffin Newman?

  And I I got very confused between animated Ed Grimly and live action Pee Wee Herman because they both had cow legs.

• 17:39Speaker 04

  OK, well, what about the Ace Ventura cartoon?

• 17:41David Sims?

  Thank you. Thank you so much.

• 17:42Griffin Newman?

  With Griffin and David, that's a whole other conversation about how in 1994, Jim Carrey had $300 million domestic grocers. And by 1996, all three were converted into Saturday morning cartoons on rival networks.

• 17:55Speaker 04

  You actually just set up a perfect transition to a thing I have to admit.

• 17:58Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, I still haven't introduced the pod, by the way.

• 18:00Speaker 04

  So last time I was on the show, we all agreed that I would not come back until you're doing a Tom Shadyac series and I was going to do Dragonfly.

• 18:09Griffin Newman?

  I had originally promised that if we, the podcast, made it to 10 years, we would cover Tom Shadyac. And this, of course, is the 11th year of the podcast. And I want to promise that we will do it on year 20.

• 18:18Speaker 04

  Well, I wasn't sure what we were doing today. And I texted you for clarity and you didn't respond. So I watched both of these to prepare.

• 18:27Griffin Newman?

  You also watched Dragonfly.

• 18:28Speaker 04

  I watched Dragonfly yesterday and I prepared a bunch of talking points in case we want to get into both of them.

• 18:33David Sims?

  Isn't Dragonfly one of those movies that's very hard to like? It doesn't exist.

• 18:37Griffin Newman?

  Universal?

• 18:38Speaker 04

  It's like, there was a, I rented it on iTunes yesterday and watched it and took notes.

• 18:42Griffin Newman?

  Universal has been doing a thing I really appreciate on their like home entertainment channel. Once a month, they do a grid post that is new to digital. And it is, here are 20 movies that have been out of circulation that we're proud to tell you are now rentable on digital platforms.

• 18:57David Sims?

  Oh, good.

• 18:57Griffin Newman?

  And mostly it's like 30s, 40s programming stuff.

• 19:00David Sims?

  But they finally got Dragonfly.

• 19:01Griffin Newman?

  Dragonfly in the grit, you, you just, you don't know how much.

• 19:04David Sims?

  That was a movie that was impossible to watch.

• 19:05Griffin Newman?

  Timing helped you with this bit, because three weeks ago, this bit would have been impossible.

• 19:10David Sims?

  I have something to say about Dragonfly, or is it Frequency? Fuck, I can't remember.

• 19:14Speaker 04

  It's probably Frequency. What I have to say about Dragonfly, so it's about Dr. Joe Darrow.

• 19:17David Sims?

  He's just coming.

• 19:18Speaker 04

  Played by Kevin Costner, and his wife dies because she's on a bus filled with schoolkids that drives off a cliff into a lake and they all drown.

• 19:26Griffin Newman?

  Okay, and he can communicate with them?

• 19:28Speaker 04

  Where was Superman?

• 19:29Griffin Newman?

  Well, this is the problem. He told Superman this.

• 19:31David Sims?

  Okay, I take, I'm just gonna make my point, and then we're gonna introduce our guest. I just rewatched the Michael Honecky film, The Piano Teacher.

• 19:39Griffin Newman?

  Okay.

• 19:40David Sims?

  Uh, cuz I'm watching all of my discs that I bought, and I bought that umbrella set.

• 19:44Griffin Newman?

  You bought the Umbrella, not the Curzon.

• 19:46David Sims?

  Correct.

• 19:46Griffin Newman?

  Interesting.

• 19:47David Sims?

  That's what happened.

• 19:48Griffin Newman?

  Okay.

• 19:48David Sims?

  And, uh, I bought it a while. It's very, very good. Very well, very well done.

• 19:53Griffin Newman?

  I've been struggling to figure out which is the one to buy.

• 19:55David Sims?

  They both seem good to me. I don't know.

• 19:57Griffin Newman?

  Um, hate to get it wrong.

• 19:58David Sims?

  There's a scene in The Piano Teacher where, uh, Isabel Ubel is sitting like at a cafe or whatever, and there is a poster for the movie Frequency behind her. And I was like, that's so weird. In this like dour fucking movie about this woman who's like got a sadomasochistic relationship. It's like, oh yeah, Frequency, remember? But Frequency is not Dragonfly, but they are both about like communicating across sort of a mystical barrier, you know?

• 20:26Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 20:26David Sims?

  Similar ideas.

• 20:26Griffin Newman?

  Frequency is like CB Radio Field of Dreams.

• 20:30David Sims?

  It's Jim Caviezel.

• 20:31Griffin Newman?

  Talk to your dead dad.

• 20:32David Sims?

  Right?

• 20:32Griffin Newman?

  It's Caviezel and crazy.

• 20:34Speaker 04

  Time travel.

• 20:34David Sims?

  Right, yes. And Dragonfly is, uh, near-death experiences, the doctor.

• 20:41Speaker 04

  Yeah, so Jeff, so he doesn't believe in the afterlife, and they bring this person who OD'd, uh, in a way to try to kill himself into the emergency room after his wife dies, and he says, "I'm only interested in saving people who want to live." So this person gets sent to another doctor, he talks to her, and she gets really upset, saying, "Why'd you bring me back?" And he said, "Because there's no heaven and there's no afterlife. This is it, so you shouldn't kill yourself." And then he ends up believing in the afterlife. That's the big spoiler.

• 21:07Griffin Newman?

  Fuck you, Costner.

• 21:08Speaker 04

  And also, I'm very sorry for interrupting you, David. From now on, I'm like Michael Douglas at the end of Traffic. I'm here to listen.

• 21:14David Sims?

  Is that what he says in Traffic?

• 21:17Griffin Newman?

  I consider and concede for the first time that maybe drugs are bad. What is he listening to?

• 21:22David Sims?

  It's because his daughter is like, hey.

• 21:25Speaker 04

  Well, it's because Harrison Ford was interested and they added a bunch of scenes to that character and then Harrison Ford decided not to do it.

• 21:32Griffin Newman?

  But he's like a really aggressive.

• 21:34David Sims?

  The kind of movie that his viewers wanted to see.

• 21:36Griffin Newman?

  DEA agent?

• 21:37David Sims?

  He's the drug czar.

• 21:38Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 21:39David Sims?

  The idea in Traffic is that he has been appointed drug czar and war on drugs and then it turns out his daughter is a heroin addict.

• 21:45Griffin Newman?

  So is he like listening to the plight of addiction?

• 21:49Speaker 04

  He's had her drug thing.

• 21:50David Sims?

  He comes to her like.

• 21:51Speaker 04

  Like her AA or whatever it is.

• 21:52Griffin Newman?

  Okay. Right. He's, he's understanding the human struggle within a thing that he has viewed as.

• 21:58David Sims?

  I recently read Ed Zwick's memoir.

• 22:01Griffin Newman?

  Congrats.

• 22:02David Sims?

  Yeah. Uh, and obviously one of the more interesting things about Ed Zwick is the two Oscar nominations he got were for producing movies that other people directed.

• 22:12Griffin Newman?

  So with Shakespeare in Love and Traffic?

• 22:13David Sims?

  Traffic. Right.

• 22:14Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 22:15David Sims?

  I mean, he may have gotten other, I think Oscar's only two now.

• 22:17Griffin Newman?

  I think so. And he won. He has an Oscar.

• 22:19David Sims?

  He sure does. And he talks about that.

• 22:22Griffin Newman?

  For Best Picture.

• 22:22David Sims?

  Shakespeare in Love.

• 22:23Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 22:23David Sims?

  Uh, uh, but it is, so he asked to devote chapters to those movies that he did not make. Uh, and he's, you know, it's, it's interesting. Anyway, he talks about Traffic and yeah, apparently Ford at a certain point just sent a message being like, my fans don't want me in a movie like this right now. That's just.

• 22:38Griffin Newman?

  Get off that heroin. That's Harrison Ford telling someone to kick their habit. This is Blank Check with Griffin and David. I am Griffin.

• 22:46David Sims?

  I'm David.

• 22:47Griffin Newman?

  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 they bounce. Baby, sometimes they hate you like a giant fucking wave.

• 23:02David Sims?

  Splush!

• 23:03Griffin Newman?

  Splush indeed. This is a mini series on the films of Peter Weir. I regret to inform you, the mini series is titled Podnik at Hanging Cast because I was overruled on.

• 23:13David Sims?

  Every week you complain.

• 23:14Griffin Newman?

  Podster and Castmander, the pod side of the cast.

• 23:18David Sims?

  Has one guest agreed with you so far?

• 23:20Speaker 04

  This guest doesn't.

• 23:21David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 23:21Griffin Newman?

  Not yet. Not yet.

• 23:24David Sims?

  Not yet.

• 23:26Griffin Newman?

  Today, joining us, uh, returning to the show, a dear friend to talk about The Last Wave. He is the writer and director of the new, just about to be released, recently released.

• 23:39Speaker 04

  That's actually the funniest thing about this is by the time this comes out.

• 23:42Griffin Newman?

  March 22nd.

• 23:43Speaker 04

  It would have already been at South by.

• 23:45Griffin Newman?

  Sure.

• 23:46Speaker 04

  And it'll have reviews and it'll be about to come out and I don't know how that's gonna go. I bet it goes so good, but the.

• 23:53Griffin Newman?

  It's gonna be.

• 23:53Speaker 04

  But I, um, the last movie I made was supposed to premiere at Tribeca 2020.

• 23:58Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 23:59Speaker 04

  And, uh.

• 24:00Griffin Newman?

  Good year.

• 24:00Speaker 04

  Some interesting things happened.

• 24:01Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 24:02Speaker 04

  So I am like psychologically incapable of counting on anything having, happening between now and when this drops. But let's just assume it all worked out and it was great.

• 24:10Griffin Newman?

  Ben David, you have nothing to worry about because everything at this present moment, the first week of February 2026 has been normal. Coming off a normal January and I can't see any scenario in which things would get crazier.

• 24:22Speaker 04

  The news is great. Nothing bad is happening right now at all.

• 24:25Griffin Newman?

  I love just watching the news and relaxing and unwinding at the end of a long day. But if you're looking to get amped up and have a good time, you can watch Mike and Nick and Nick and Alice on Hulu.

• 24:36Speaker 04

  And Disney plus.

• 24:38Griffin Newman?

  And Disney plus.

• 24:39Speaker 04

  The, the main thing that matters is someday we're gonna find out what Sims thinks of all the Gilmore Girls references in it.

• 24:45David Sims?

  I mean.

• 24:45Griffin Newman?

  You've yet to seen the picture.

• 24:46David Sims?

  I have not yet seen it. I want it.

• 24:48Griffin Newman?

  Hozzy and I have seen it twice. It has a tremendous amount of Gilmore Girls content.

• 24:52David Sims?

  I am.

• 24:52Speaker 04

  That's a spoiler.

• 24:53Griffin Newman?

  Thematically interwoven.

• 24:55David Sims?

  As I think Ben David knows, I'm a, a very, very, very deeply devoted fan of the, the television show Gilmore Girls. I've written about it quite floridly. Once on a date, uh, a girl that I was on a date with realized that I was the David Sims of the AV Club. Not a celebrity, to be clear. She was like, oh, right. And then she was like, wait, did you write that Gilmore Girls thing? And I was like, huh? And then she called it up and started like reading it to me, being like, I can't believe a boy wrote this. Not in a bad way. She was sort of, she was positive, but she was also like, this is crazy.

• 25:27Griffin Newman?

  That's like the When Harry Met Sally scene.

• 25:29David Sims?

  Back then.

• 25:30Griffin Newman?

  Terry Fisher quotes Bruno Kirby to him.

• 25:32David Sims?

  Yes.

• 25:33Griffin Newman?

  And he's like, I wrote that New York Magazine.

• 25:34David Sims?

  Yeah. I mean, this is pretty sexy.

• 25:36Griffin Newman?

  She's like, I never quote articles.

• 25:37David Sims?

  There you go. It's a good scene.

• 25:39Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 25:39David Sims?

  Um, didn't work out, but, uh, great, great, great moment.

• 25:43Griffin Newman?

  My condolences.

• 25:43David Sims?

  Back then, Gilmore Girls, you know, people, people lived in the shadows.

• 25:48Griffin Newman?

  Our guest today.

• 25:48David Sims?

  Considering it great art.

• 25:49Griffin Newman?

  Is Ben David Grabinsky, AKA a joke we somehow didn't call out in your previous episode. Ben David Griffinsky, your name already contains two out of the three of us and it requires very few letters to make it all three.

• 26:03Speaker 04

  If I remember correctly, it was a different time because I lived in Los Angeles then and I live in New York now. So it feels like lifetimes ago. I think it was hours into it when someone said, wait, your name's Ben David and we keep saying Ben and David. This might be confusing.

• 26:19Griffin Newman?

  Yes, yes. When I cite you on the podcast, it sometimes gets.

• 26:22David Sims?

  Are you named for multiple people? Is that the?

• 26:24Griffin Newman?

  Great question.

• 26:25David Sims?

  Analogy.

• 26:25Griffin Newman?

  Hard hitting question.

• 26:26Speaker 04

  I think like in the same way that you guys had that we had a John, we had a discussion about John Travolta on the podcast that ended up happening in a whole other podcast where it was almost like verbatim. And I was like, I feel like I've heard this conversation somewhere. I realized like we had had it. I bet you this was ass last time.

• 26:45David Sims?

  It may have been. I'm sorry.

• 26:45Speaker 04

  But if it wasn't.

• 26:46Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 26:48Speaker 04

  I was named Ben David. I was born on Lincoln's birthday in Lincoln, Nebraska, and my parents were gonna name me Abe. And when they were sleep deprived, someone thought, that's kind of weird. So we're gonna name him Ben David. And there was never any reasoning given beyond that.

• 27:02David Sims?

  No justification.

• 27:03Speaker 04

  My 42 years on the planet.

• 27:05David Sims?

  Let's pivot off of Abe. Let's find something normal. And they kind of crashed two normal names together.

• 27:09Speaker 04

  There's been no explanation ever. That was just an impulsive thing someone thought of.

• 27:14David Sims?

  So your birthday is in a week or so, if you were born in Abraham Lincoln's birthday, which is of course February 12.

• 27:20Griffin Newman?

  Excuse me. Ben David and I, our birthdays are exactly one week apart and we're very close.

• 27:25Speaker 04

  All right. So I got.

• 27:26Griffin Newman?

  Much like when Maurice sits at that desk, it is the desk that is closest to me and reserved for the person whose birthday is closest to mine.

• 27:33Speaker 04

  All right. So last year, Griffin and I had a joint birthday party.

• 27:36Griffin Newman?

  We did.

• 27:36Speaker 04

  And then the bartender made a very special elaborate drink for the birthday boy.

• 27:41Griffin Newman?

  The great Tom Wolfson, who's a loyal, longtime blankie.

• 27:45Speaker 04

  The guy was amazing.

• 27:47Griffin Newman?

  Sunken Harbor Club in New York City, one of our favorite bars, if not our number one favorite bar.

• 27:51David Sims?

  One of the great tiki bars in New York City.

• 27:53Griffin Newman?

  It's incredible. It's a wonderful place and it's, it's a, it's a tiki bar minus all problematic elements.

• 27:59David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 27:59Griffin Newman?

  It is a thing I want to actually communicate.

• 28:01David Sims?

  It's really more of a like nautical bar.

• 28:04Griffin Newman?

  It is.

• 28:04David Sims?

  Right.

• 28:05Speaker 03

  It's like an undersea bar.

• 28:06Griffin Newman?

  It is tiki style drinks in basically what feels like 20,000 leagues under the sea. It's like old British Krusty Men. It's closer to a Master and Commander bar.

• 28:15Speaker 03

  Now, listeners might be surprised to learn that part of the deal with some of the drinks is there's a little performance.

• 28:23Griffin Newman?

  There's some performance, there's sugar, there's lights, there's music. The place feels like a high end kind of Disney attraction.

• 28:29Speaker 03

  It feels like a theme park.

• 28:30Griffin Newman?

  You feel like you're underwater and that you hear the waves rustling.

• 28:34Speaker 03

  Shocking that Griffin Newman would gravitate to a place like this.

• 28:37David Sims?

  This is his favorite.

• 28:38Griffin Newman?

  We share many common interests. I should mention Ben David's other major credits, of course, Scott Pilgrim takes off, the film happily, and most importantly, founding member of the historic group text, the 4DX Club, which despite Sims's jokes, is not a sausage party. And in fact, we are the comfortable male identifying minority in the group text. This is, the 4DX Club is a matriarchy.

• 29:03Speaker 04

  Wait, is 40% of the 4DX group men? I think that's true.

• 29:06Griffin Newman?

  Correct.

• 29:06Speaker 04

  All right. Anyway, we got to get to the punchline of this drink.

• 29:09David Sims?

  I don't think I've ever accused 4DX of being too male.

• 29:11Griffin Newman?

  I called out the 4DX Club and you went, oh, bet there was a lot of women in that group text.

• 29:16David Sims?

  Sounds like a great gag by me.

• 29:19Griffin Newman?

  This group text has binders full of women. Three.

• 29:24David Sims?

  Three binders.

• 29:27Griffin Newman?

  Sunken Harbor Club. Tom Wolfson sets us up, a gentleman and a scholar. I will let you now deliver the punchline.

• 29:32Speaker 04

  So, um, at some point, they're like, well, here's the birthday boy.

• 29:37Griffin Newman?

  He calls me over.

• 29:38Speaker 04

  And there's birthday boys plural, but they behave as if there's only one and you can explain what happened.

• 29:44Griffin Newman?

  He hands me an envelope with like a, a red light keychain to locate a hidden message that I then say out loud to the bartender. And then I believe they start playing the, the Lalo Schifrin music. Do an entire act out of being suspicious and trying to like sneak around the bar and then like construct something and light it on fire and hand it to me with like a lot of pomp and circumstance. And I go like, did you just fucking see that? How fucking cool is that? We get like a Mission Impossible drink for our birthday. You should go up and order it. And I hand you the envelope and I'm like, here's the password. And then what happens?

• 30:20Speaker 04

  And the guy's like, oh, we only plan one because it's his birthday.

• 30:23Griffin Newman?

  We have exactly one amount.

• 30:25Speaker 04

  And I have an IMF tattoo. I ran a Mission Impossible two website in high school and I didn't get the Mission Impossible drink. So I think the great thing about New York is it's just humbling. You know, ever since I moved here, every single situation, just, you know, they're like, you don't get a Mission Impossible drink. And I'm like, well, that's good.

• 30:42Griffin Newman?

  It's also funny that the left side of your tattoo is part one and the right side of your tattoo is something different.

• 30:48Speaker 04

  This is the final tattoo?

• 30:49Griffin Newman?

  It just is like, no, nobody was always supposed to be this design.

• 30:52David Sims?

  I think we should.

• 30:53Speaker 04

  Wait, I have one more thing about tiki bars. So, you know, is it Trader Sam's at Disneyland?

• 30:58Griffin Newman?

  Correct.

• 30:59Speaker 04

  I was watching for the first time recently, the Eddie Murphy Haunted Mansion.

• 31:02Griffin Newman?

  Oh, yeah, not a good film.

• 31:03Speaker 04

  They shoot a scene in Trading Sams.

• 31:05Griffin Newman?

  Yes. It had just opened.

• 31:07Speaker 04

  It's kind of overlit.

• 31:09Griffin Newman?

  It is. That whole movie, I would say is overlit for a haunted house comedy.

• 31:12David Sims?

  Well, Rob, Rob Minkoff, you know, he was a cartoon director. So yeah, had a big light on the cartoons as you drew him maybe. And he never learned his lesson.

• 31:20Griffin Newman?

  Sims, that's an incredible insight. You're right.

• 31:24David Sims?

  I say that in like, you can't, an academic setting. It's like, fire this.

• 31:28Griffin Newman?

  You can't draw in the dark. So animators don't know how to shoot live action other than to just.

• 31:34David Sims?

  Hey, it's me, David Sims. I'm here to teach film 101. Why is the Haunted Mansion overlit? Uh, I don't know. Cartoonists need big lights to see all the cartoons they draw.

• 31:42Griffin Newman?

  Minkoff on set with a big bullhorn. I need 80 more desk lamps.

• 31:46David Sims?

  Can't see everything.

• 31:47Griffin Newman?

  Pointing desk lamps at Eddie Murphy's head.

• 31:49Speaker 04

  That movie ends with a Nelly song that samples the theme from People's Court.

• 31:53Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 31:54David Sims?

  Sounds pretty good.

• 31:55Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 31:55David Sims?

  Who else is in The Haunted Mansion with Eddie Murphy?

• 31:57Griffin Newman?

  Well, there's one slam dunk piece of casting, which is Terrence Stamp as a creepy butler, like as a ghost butler.

• 32:04David Sims?

  Okay.

• 32:04Griffin Newman?

  And then Wallace Shawn is like a creepy horseman.

• 32:08David Sims?

  Wallace Shawn.

• 32:08Griffin Newman?

  Carriageman.

• 32:09David Sims?

  Wait, Wallace Shawn is indeed, it seems, maybe third build, which I love the guy.

• 32:15Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 32:15David Sims?

  Maybe you're in trouble if, if, if he's that high up on the call sheet.

• 32:19Griffin Newman?

  But he's ever's and ever's royalty. He's trying to sell The Haunted Mansion, him and his family have to stay there for a night. So most of it is his wife and his two children, Marsha Thompson, is that maybe the name of the actress?

• 32:31Speaker 04

  So you want a great transition.

• 32:33Griffin Newman?

  Please.

• 32:33Speaker 04

  Marsha Thomason.

• 32:34Griffin Newman?

  There we go.

• 32:34Speaker 04

  From Lost, which clearly was inspired by Fearless.

• 32:38Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, which was directed by Peter Weir. We're making it weird today. Today, we're talking about The Last Wave, Peter Weir's third film. What is interesting about Peter Weir's career versus many other directors we've covered is like, these three films kind of come out as like one movement of expression, right? Like, he's sort of just like.

• 32:57David Sims?

  Uh, yeah, they sort of all, right. They, it's not like they happen simultaneously, but he, right, he set several balls rolling. And so when, it's not like he did the last, we'll talk about it, but like he did The Last Wave based off of his success of Picnic and Hanging Rock. It was already well in motion by the time Picnic was in post-production or whatever.

• 33:16Griffin Newman?

  Right, the success of Picnic got him a little extra money for this, but yeah, these three films just sort of like started rolling at the same time and then come out in very short succession.

• 33:27David Sims?

  Certainly true, and it, I guess it's sort of the breadth of, I mean, Gallipoli is probably the big thing for him, but like, and you're living dangerously, but like the breadth of like genres, moods, tones that he's showing here. If I'm in Hollywood, I'm kind of like, this guy feels like he could do a lot of stuff.

• 33:45Griffin Newman?

  Like, a lot of, a lot of.

• 33:46David Sims?

  Throw him on anything.

• 33:47Griffin Newman?

  Our favorite types of directors to cover, talk about, like, early in your career, you start to strategize, how do I not get pigeonholed into being one thing? How do I prove that I can make all different types of movies? A lot of careers go astray when someone is like, I want to prove that I can make this kind of thing. And then their second film abandons everything their first film does well and their career stumbles. But Peter Weir kind of has the perfect version of it where the first three movies, he's like, here's a fucking tapestry, let me work.

• 34:13David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 34:14Griffin Newman?

  When did you see The Last Wave for the first time?

• 34:17Griffin Newman?

  Ben David Grabinski.

• 34:18David Sims?

  Cause for me, it's a couple nights ago.

• 34:19Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 34:20Speaker 04

  You hadn't seen it before?

• 34:21David Sims?

  No.

• 34:22Speaker 04

  I mean, I respect that.

• 34:23David Sims?

  You said that very dismissively.

• 34:24Speaker 04

  No, no, no.

• 34:25David Sims?

  I, I simply had not. I don't want to tell you.

• 34:28Speaker 04

  Um, so like, Weir is one of my guys and based on actually what you just talked about, it was like a real accidental thing, right? Like three movies as a kid that meant everything to me, but I didn't know, like, what directors were besides, like, everyone knew who Tim Burton was and like Spielberg. But I'd seen Dead Poet Society, which I fucking loved.

• 34:52Speaker 04

  In school, they showed me Gallipoli, which traumatized me. And I just watched it two days ago and it made me cry so hard I almost vomited.

• 35:00David Sims?

  Things didn't go great in Gallipoli.

• 35:02Speaker 04

  But Gallipoli has, I think, it is maybe the saddest movie ever. It, I, I was like, I got so upset. I was like an adult and I cried so hard I almost puked.

• 35:12Griffin Newman?

  Ben David knows me well enough that he texted the other night. I advise you to not watch Gallipoli right before recording because I think the ending will leave you in a bad mood. I was like, oh, good night before.

• 35:23David Sims?

  It ends with someone just staring into the camera being like, fuck Griffin Newman, by the way. That guy sucks. Bad at podcasting. Anyway, roll the credits.

• 35:32Griffin Newman?

  Who the fuck wrote this?

• 35:33Speaker 04

  The end of the movie.

• 35:33Griffin Newman?

  Kyle Chandler's character from early edition? He got posts from our Reddit?

• 35:39Speaker 04

  The, the movie is Mel Gibson looking at the camera and saying, Griffin Newman's Arnold impression is terrible.

• 35:45Griffin Newman?

  Yeah. And I'm like, I'm not going to fight you on that.

• 35:47David Sims?

  Was it arguing? It wasn't.

• 35:48Griffin Newman?

  It feels like a weird use of your platform.

• 35:50Speaker 04

  But the other movie was Witness, which I saw on TV with commercials on like KUTP 45. And as a kid, like, you know, Raiders and Han Solo, like that was your shit. And I watched Witness and I'm like, this is the greatest thing ever.

• 36:04David Sims?

  Correct, correct reaction.

• 36:05Speaker 04

  And that, but also just that it, I'd never seen anything like it because it's like, you think you're watching like a cop movie, but you're also watching this unbelievable sad love story. And like this introduction of the world of the Amish. And I'm like, this is like the greatest movie ever. So like these three movies that I like, I really like. Um, and I have no idea like they're the same guy until I'm, you know, like in my late teens or whatever. And then the, I say Truman, I was obsessed with Truman Show. Like I have the score on CD and I would like listen to it all the time. But what happened, the reason I got into this movie. Is very dumb and weird, but like Garden State, but in a different way. My freshman year of college, I saw Donnie Darko and I was so into it.

• 36:50Speaker 04

  And the thing I couldn't put a finger on was like, the vibe of like, the world is ending. And this is melancholy and but it's also not devastating. It's sort of like this slow crawl where like a lead character is sort of feeling like the world around him is like reaching the end.

• 37:09Griffin Newman?

  But also the world around him is like revealing itself. It's explaining what he maybe had always kind of felt and couldn't put his finger on.

• 37:16Speaker 04

  And I, I did this thing back then, I was like very formative for me, which is if I really liked a movie, I tried to figure out what inspired the director, which is how I ended up becoming such a huge Demi fan was because like PT wouldn't stop talking about him. And there was an interview with Richard Kelly where he mentioned The Last Wave. And I'm like, what the fuck is The Last Wave? So I got it from Netflix, DVD mailed to me and I watched it and it like fucked me up. And I hadn't seen Twin Peaks yet. I actually saw, I think I watched Twin Peaks for the first time, like actually right after that. And I hadn't seen a ton of Lynch. And there's a, there was a mood to it that felt very singular. And now I've realized that like, there's a few like masters of it.

• 37:58Speaker 04

  But that thing of just the mounting dread, the reality and the things you're imagining or your dreams kind of bleeding into each other. And it just really clicked for me. And I think I realized later, um, my love of both of those movies at the time and now is actually partially, this is getting weird, is connected to like growing up super Christian. Like I was, I went to like a Christian school from like age five to like 12 and went to way too much church and like Baptist church and. They made you feel 24/7 like the world was gonna end at any moment. And if you're not saved, you're fucked. So it's like, you need to like, become a Christian before the rapture and the end times are real and all this stuff.

• 38:39Speaker 04

  And I think I grew up really genuinely thinking that the world was gonna end because of that omnipresent feeling.

• 38:46Griffin Newman?

  It is wild that that's a thing.

• 38:48Speaker 04

  Yeah, it's like where I would have like nightmares thinking I was gonna wake up and all my friends would be gone and I was like alone.

• 38:53David Sims?

  Instead, you should just tell your kids like, I don't know, be nice to each other.

• 38:57Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, that like most, almost all forms of Christianity have some underpinning of like, and if the apocalypse happens tomorrow, it'd actually be good news.

• 39:04David Sims?

  I would, I would disagree with that. I would say most forms of Christianity do not. I would say it's the more, well, the more kind of like, we really read the book and everything and it is true types that are like, no, no, no, no, no. Like, the world's gotta end for shit to be really good.

• 39:18Speaker 04

  Well, what I-

• 39:18David Sims?

  A lot of the bland or Christianity is more in the realm of like, be nice to each other.

• 39:21Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, and that's the stuff I like.

• 39:23David Sims?

  Right, you know, not, not to defend Christianity, which is bad.

• 39:26Griffin Newman?

  No, no, you love it.

• 39:27David Sims?

  Yeah, sure, I love it.

• 39:28Speaker 04

  Well, I would, I'd say I think that there's something very escapist for me about movies about the end of the world. They're not like, you know, Judeo-Christian where it's about like this separate thing where you can enjoy it. And then it's not like a callback to some kind of weird childhood like trauma about that stuff.

• 39:49Griffin Newman?

  I also think this movie is kind of about the like, peeling back of a Judeo-Christian societal structure that was imposed upon a stolen land, you know? Like, part of it is this white guy, South American, in origin.

• 40:08David Sims?

  I guess so.

• 40:09Griffin Newman?

  Who's kind of like-

• 40:10David Sims?

  He was at least born there. Maybe he's the son of a diplomat or something, right?

• 40:12Griffin Newman?

  It's not contested now that we know he certainly was born there. I've never been wrong on this podcast once.

• 40:18David Sims?

  No, no, no, no, no, no.

• 40:20Griffin Newman?

  Never.

• 40:21David Sims?

  Certainly not.

• 40:22Griffin Newman?

  And I wanna make this clear, anytime I've been wrong, I am reading verbatim from the dossiers of J.J. Burke.

• 40:28David Sims?

  Right, it's all his fault.

• 40:29Griffin Newman?

  Who will never be fired, but will always take the fall. No, but that, that it's sort of him like recognizing- That that there has been a suppression of the rules of the land and the world and life that this Judeo-Christian movement placed themselves on top of and have been like smothering, right? It's like him peeling back the layers to like, what the fuck is actually going on here?

• 40:54David Sims?

  It's definitely a right. It's a little bit about whatever's up with his bland ass as well as the wider, you know, implications of colonialism and and the arrival of white people in this country that is not their own totally chill arrival, right? With no issues. And then possibly, yes, like, I mean, I think Peter Weir just loves the idea of like, what if this like, really prosaic, really fucking by the numbers guy had to believe in kind of magic, you know, like, like, you know, had to confront the supernatural.

• 41:25Griffin Newman?

  As he put it, the whole hook for him on this movie was like, what if a pragmatist experiences a premonition? Like, that was the core animating idea.

• 41:35David Sims?

  And who has to kind of think like, start thinking like, is that, was that real? That wasn't just a weird dream?

• 41:39Griffin Newman?

  But I think there's something to what you're saying of like, you know, white people showing up, not just wanting to like, reap the riches of the land and massacre the people and claim everything for their own, but also be like, and by the way, we come from our country where we cracked society. We understand how everything works. Here's the system. Everyone conform to us now. And the indigenous people of whatever country they have taken over hostilely are sort of forced to figure out how they exist in relation to that being the dominant societal structure.

• 42:13Speaker 04

  It's very similar to the movie Dragonfly.

• 42:15Griffin Newman?

  It's very similar to the movie Dragonfly, which is now available digitally from our friends at Universal Home Entertainment.

• 42:21David Sims?

  Thank you.

• 42:22Griffin Newman?

  Thank you, UHE.

• 42:23David Sims?

  Big Planet?

• 42:24Griffin Newman?

  We love that big planet, don't we?

• 42:26David Sims?

  You know, that's the logo.

• 42:28Griffin Newman?

  The globe. We love that globe.

• 42:30David Sims?

  Big Earth.

• 42:40Griffin Newman?

  David?

• 42:41David Sims?

  Yes.

• 42:42Griffin Newman?

  Moooo.

• 42:44David Sims?

  Is that the Cineas cow?

• 42:46Griffin Newman?

  The Cineas cow is back.

• 42:47David Sims?

  Haven't heard from her in a while.

• 42:48Griffin Newman?

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

• 42:53David Sims?

  Okay.

• 42:54Griffin Newman?

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

• 42:58David Sims?

  Wow.

• 42:59Griffin Newman?

  The cow likes chicken.

• 43:01David Sims?

  Remember cow and chicken? Let's look it up. While you tell the great listeners about the great stuff on MUBI.

• 43:08Griffin Newman?

  Well, MUBI 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 MUBI does. Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma.

• 43:20David Sims?

  Yes.

• 43:20Griffin Newman?

  One of my favorite movies of the year.

• 43:21David Sims?

  Absolutely.

• 43:22Griffin Newman?

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

• 43:28David Sims?

  That is a line in the movie.

• 43:29Griffin Newman?

  In the new movie from Jane Schomburn, Past and Future Guest.

• 43:32David Sims?

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

• 43:36Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 43:36David Sims?

  A great friend.

• 43:37Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 43:37David Sims?

  Um, this movie rocks. It's got, of course, it stars Hannah Einbinder and Gillian Anderson.

• 43:43Griffin Newman?

  Uh huh.

• 43:43David Sims?

  Legends, and I tip my cap, but Zach Cherry.

• 43:45Griffin Newman?

  Performances, friend of the show.

• 43:47David Sims?

  Friend of the show, Zach Cherry.

• 43:48Griffin Newman?

  Zach Cherry.

• 43:49David Sims?

  Also in it.

• 43:50Griffin Newman?

  This is true.

• 43:51David Sims?

  Such a cool movie, one that queer Paul McCann, 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 MUBI.

• 44:01Griffin 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.

• 44:16David Sims?

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

• 44:20Griffin 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.

• 44:32David Sims?

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

• 44:44Griffin Newman?

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

• 44:49David Sims?

  Damn right.

• 44:55Griffin Newman?

  David.

• 44:56David Sims?

  Hmm.

• 44:56Griffin 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.

• 45:04David Sims?

  Lisa.

• 45:05Griffin 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.

• 45:13David Sims?

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

• 45:18Griffin Newman?

  Mm hmm.

• 45:19David Sims?

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

• 45:26Griffin Newman?

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

• 45:29David Sims?

  No.

• 45:30Griffin Newman?

  Nope.

• 45:31David Sims?

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• 46:18Griffin Newman?

  David.

• 46:18David Sims?

  Yes.

• 46:19Griffin Newman?

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

• 46:23David Sims?

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

• 46:28Griffin Newman?

  I love that. It's very convenient.

• 46:30David Sims?

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

• 46:37Griffin 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.

• 46:46David 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.

• 47:09Griffin 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.

• 47:42Griffin Newman?

  I'm surprised you had never seen this before, David. Cause you love Weir, although I recently said Weir's one of your main guys and you went, it's less he's one of my main guys and more that he's made some movies that are amongst my favorites and that he feels like a perfect encapsulation of the type of director I like to cover on.

• 48:01David Sims?

  Exactly that. But I do love, love, love, love, love, love.

• 48:05Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 48:05David Sims?

  A handful of the movies he's made and then I tend to pretty much like the rest of them. Is that for Dead Poets Society, which we will talk about, not a movie I hate, but a movie I'm very mixed on.

• 48:15Griffin Newman?

  Sims was the, was the, the negative Nelly on that episode. No offense to your wife, Ben.

• 48:20David Sims?

  Well, she's positive Nelly.

• 48:22Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, of course. I just don't want anyone to get it mixed up.

• 48:24Speaker 04

  That is always how I describe them. There's negative Nelly and positive Nelly and one is Sims.

• 48:28Griffin Newman?

  Maybe it's no problem, Nelly. Maybe that's the way, just so it's.

• 48:32David Sims?

  Yeah, I don't know. I don't know what the cleaner version is.

• 48:35Speaker 03

  Positive works.

• 48:36Griffin Newman?

  Sure. I just.

• 48:37David Sims?

  I've never seen The Way Back is the other one.

• 48:39Speaker 04

  I haven't seen Green Card and The Way Back, but the rest I've seen a lot.

• 48:43David Sims?

  A movie I adore. Um, The Way Back, it's just kind of crazy that I haven't seen it because like. Colin Farrell's in it.

• 48:52Griffin Newman?

  It's wild that you didn't see it because Colin Farrell's in it.

• 48:54David Sims?

  And it was the follow up to Master and Commander. Like,

• 48:56Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 48:57David Sims?

  But of course, when it came out, everyone was like snooze. And I was like, oh, I guess I won't bother.

• 49:00Griffin Newman?

  It got a makeup nomination.

• 49:02David Sims?

  It sure did.

• 49:03Griffin Newman?

  It was like enough at the periphery of the Oscar conversation that I'm even surprised I didn't watch it that year. Cause that feels like peak obsessive. What if I watch literally every single nominee?

• 49:13David Sims?

  But it got those classic snoozy reviews where everyone was just like, oh, it's fine. I suppose. You know, like, there was just no enthusiasm for it. I've heard a couple of whispers of people being like, you know, that movie's underrated over the years, but very little.

• 49:28Griffin Newman?

  I also think it's interesting that Weir was kind of a perfect example of a director who was beloved within the industry. It felt like, you know, he, he had a handful of director and picture nominations. A-list movie stars clearly loved him, flocked to him with his, their passion projects. But he was not really a household name. When you look at his like 90s films, they're sold as from the director of blank and blank. But Peter Weir was not kind of like known to the public as an auteur as much. And it feels like outside of Australia, where I think the first four or five films are so impactful.

• 50:06Griffin Newman?

  And he's such an important figure in the Australian new wave that there was a real kind of hometown hero, immediate kind of like claiming of him. But I feel like when The Way Back comes out, the Master and Commander hive had not fully.

• 50:23David Sims?

  I was there, but.

• 50:24Griffin Newman?

  You were there, but it was a little bit of an outside opinion.

• 50:27David Sims?

  Yeah. Then it was like the best movie ever made. Yes.

• 50:30Griffin Newman?

  But if like two years ago, they were like, Peter Weir has returned to the cinema.

• 50:34David Sims?

  People would be.

• 50:35Griffin Newman?

  With a Serbian refugee drama called The Way Back. People would be hooting and hollering. I'm not saying to make a hundred million dollars. But there would be a sort of.

• 50:42David Sims?

  Right. But he has long been a director who is taken seriously, who, you know, makes big movies, blah, blah, blah. But. People do not stand in the way of, you know, some big auteurs.

• 50:55Griffin Newman?

  No, I do think Master and Commander growing made certain people revisit and do what you're saying, Ben David, of being like, oh, fuck, he directed all five of those movies I love. And there's been a little bit more of a retrospective auteurist swing on him.

• 51:10David Sims?

  Now, why did you, Ben David, vibe with this movie specifically? Well, you said it already, basically.

• 51:16Speaker 04

  Well, I was, but I would say that.

• 51:17David Sims?

  Did you catch it on DVD? Like, what was your first?

• 51:20Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, Netflix got in the mail.

• 51:21Speaker 04

  There is a.

• 51:21Griffin Newman?

  Proto quickster.

• 51:22Speaker 04

  The funny thing about, there's like stuff that like you gravitate towards that also is not at all, like it's not your sensibility, like the stuff you're making. But a thing to me that I think is magic, if you can do it, is the, the movies that make it where you blurring the lines between what's actually happening and what's not.

• 51:42Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 51:43Speaker 04

  And making you feel like you're in the same headspace as the person. My favorite of all time of that is Perfect Blue.

• 51:50Griffin Newman?

  Yes, the, the Coen movies are my favorite execution of that, which is also one of my favorite things.

• 51:56Speaker 04

  It's like if someone can make me feel like I'm losing my grip on reality alongside the lead character, I think that's just like a real, there's almost like a sense, there's like a magic to it, like between editing and sound design and music. And this movie to me is one of the most effective. Like he's taking stuff that's in Picnic at Hanging Rock, which I think is a better movie. I'd say, I think it's one of the best movies ever made, but this movie leans really hard into the feeling you get in the first third of that, like when they're on that trip. That thing where like nature and, you know, this cosmic, almost like a cosmic horror kind of thing. It's like a very, very sophisticated prestige.

• 52:38David Sims?

  Yes.

• 52:39Speaker 04

  Version of that.

• 52:39David Sims?

  It's also, I will say, not an easy movie to sell someone under scribe in any way.

• 52:45Griffin Newman?

  Like, we'll get into it in the dossier.

• 52:47David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 52:47Griffin Newman?

  Fascinating thing is that the success, and at least like the critical sort of notoriety of Picnic at Hanging Rock, translated to united artists putting up a good chunk of the budget for this movie because they felt like is. We're someone who's about to translate over to the States.

• 53:02David Sims?

  Which was true.

• 53:03Griffin Newman?

  And when they watched the final film, they were like, yeah, you can sell it to someone else to release it. We don't want to put this out. They had put the money into it.

• 53:10David Sims?

  It's a weird one.

• 53:11Griffin Newman?

  And production was done and they were like, feel free to shock.

• 53:13David Sims?

  I mean, I'm not shocked because I think they saw it and they were probably like, this is very Australian. Like this is not something that's going to translate. And my wife was like, what's, you know, she like comes in as I want, she's like, what's it about? And I'm like, well, um, and I, I really struggled to lay out the setup of the movie.

• 53:31Griffin Newman?

  There is like a two sentence you could give on this movie that would not represent it well, but would actually be conveying the major movements of it, if that makes sense.

• 53:42David Sims?

  I guess so. Yeah. It's like, there's a, a white guy in a sort of town, kind of in the outback, who gets drawn into a crime or an alleged crime and discovers that there's maybe like a sort of supernatural thing going on or a sort of, you know, ancient religious, you know, kind of thing going on. And then maybe he's sort of involved with it, like.

• 54:07Griffin Newman?

  Tax murder.

• 54:08David Sims?

  Supernaturally.

• 54:09Griffin Newman?

  Has to represent Aboriginal murder in digging deeper, understands that perhaps there is a supernatural phenomenon coming on that also points towards the end of days.

• 54:23David Sims?

  It's a bit, right. It's a bit hard to just kind of lay out to somebody.

• 54:26Griffin Newman?

  That's not wrong, what I just said, but also if you said that to someone, they would not picture the movie that exists.

• 54:31Speaker 04

  I think, well, I mean, I didn't watch it because like I'd read the premise and the premise sounded amazing. I watched it because I was, you know, being an idiot going down a rabbit hole of like, oh, like, you know, Richard Kelly said he liked it and blah, blah, blah. There's another thing about it that it has that I love, which is kind of the foundation of like Jallow movies, which is like a detective story where it's not a detective and they're solving something that is kind of bigger than the thing where like, I love, I love when it's like a lawyer or a journalist or like a saxophone player or something where like someone who's from the out, who doesn't traditionally every day wake up and try to solve some gigantic unsolvable thing.

• 55:08Griffin Newman?

  Like a movie about.

• 55:08Speaker 04

  Getting deeper and deeper and deeper.

• 55:10Griffin Newman?

  A movie about like a white man jazz saxophonist who starts to realize there's a weird pattern relating to the number 23 and needs to get to the bottom of it. You're saying that's your ideal kind of movie. I've never seen it.

• 55:19Speaker 04

  I thought you were sort of say the movie Deep Red. There are actually so many movies about like jazz players who get involved in a big scary mystery.

• 55:27Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, and no bigger mystery than 23. I've yet to hear a bigger number cause that much damage. I haven't seen it because I didn't, I fucked up and I didn't watch it when I was 23 and now I gotta wait till I'm 46.

• 55:37Speaker 04

  Someone very earnestly, recently, I hope he doesn't hear this and think I'm mocking him, was talking to me and said, have you ever noticed how the number 23 is everywhere? And I was like, is this a bit, do you know about the movie number 23? And he wasn't aware that anyone else had ever said that before. He was just noticing it.

• 55:56Griffin Newman?

  He hasn't seen the picture.

• 55:58Speaker 04

  No, yeah, he just was like, he thought he was the first guy to notice that the movie number 23 was everywhere.

• 56:03Griffin Newman?

  It is funny, movies like number 23 and pay it forward that are just like immediately met with derision and bomb. But also, even before their release, they're like, we're just gonna pluck this and put it into the vernacular. No one has seen the movie. Everyone's seen the trailer. We all want to make number 23 jokes for the rest of our lives.

• 56:24David Sims?

  That's me being Jim Carrey in that movie. Prove me wrong.

• 56:27Griffin Newman?

  I think you were like 17 notes short.

• 56:29Speaker 03

  And for the listeners at home, Dave is doing incredible sax work.

• 56:32Griffin Newman?

  So the finger work is so specific and precise.

• 56:35Speaker 04

  So the didgeridoo, I think, is the second best instrument after the alto sax, just because I played that.

• 56:41Griffin Newman?

  You played alto sax?

• 56:42Speaker 04

  I just.

• 56:42Griffin Newman?

  You played didgeridoo?

• 56:43Speaker 04

  No, I'm just saying like, I wish I did. I think that it is, anything that is both a instrument and also sounds like sound design, to me, that's sick, in my opinion.

• 56:54David Sims?

  I'm opening the dossier. Crack of this film.

• 56:56Griffin Newman?

  Yep.

• 56:56David Sims?

  Peter Weir's second film was Picnic at Hanging Rock. It came out in 1975. It was a huge success in the country of Australia. And then it was, it was a global success, but it took years.

• 57:07Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 57:07David Sims?

  So it really only gets to America in 1979, which is two years after the last wave comes out. So that's how, you know, slowly things are going. Now Stanley Kubrick was a huge fan of Picnic at Hanging Rock. He had very good taste.

• 57:20Griffin Newman?

  Also, I can't remember if we called this out in the episode. He, at some point before he died, wrote a list of his hundred favorite movies of all time.

• 57:28David Sims?

  People often obsess over said list.

• 57:30Griffin Newman?

  Cars That Ate Paris is on that list. He was specifically locked in on that from release.

• 57:35David Sims?

  Good for him.

• 57:36Speaker 03

  Sure, we've called it out.

• 57:37Griffin Newman?

  Okay, well, who knows? It's possible to say.

• 57:39David Sims?

  He recommended to Warner Brothers that they hire him to do the Salem's Lot TV, this legendary TV adaptation of Salem's Lot, which of course was instead directed by.

• 57:49Griffin Newman?

  Mick Garris?

• 57:51David Sims?

  Is that right?

• 57:52Griffin Newman?

  Did Mick Garris do Salem's Lot?

• 57:53Speaker 04

  Larry Cohen did the second one.

• 57:55Griffin Newman?

  I think, I think it's Mick Garris, unless he did one of the other.

• 57:58David Sims?

  Toby Hooper. I knew it wasn't Mick Garris.

• 58:01Speaker 04

  That was really embarrassing.

• 58:02David Sims?

  With the famous, with the boy at the window.

• 58:05Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, JJ wrote that down.

• 58:07David Sims?

  When I interviewed Ranko for Sinners, he brought up Salem's Lot, the book, which is an incredible book, as like a book about like, you don't realize that everyone's fucking turning into a Dracula until like, you know, it's almost over.

• 58:21Speaker 04

  Blabbered blah.

• 58:22David Sims?

  Right? And I was like, yeah. And then the TV, the TV thing. And he was like, I've honestly actually never seen the TV thing. And I was like, right. But and then at the same time, we were like, the boy at the window. I was like, everyone's seen that.

• 58:33Griffin Newman?

  Everyone knows.

• 58:34David Sims?

  Everyone knows that one scene.

• 58:35Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 58:36David Sims?

  Anyway, he gets recommended for that. We're passes.

• 58:40Griffin Newman?

  He's kind of skeptical of making the Hollywood jump at that point in time.

• 58:44David Sims?

  Yeah, he's kind of like, perhaps wisely, like, I don't think I can handle like jumping from this quiet indie, you know, off the grid Australian nascent film scene to like the horrors of harsh Hollywood, right? Makes sense. He's like, I like to write my own material. I know I'll probably film abroad one day, but you know, I think I need to build up some more confidence. I mean, good for him. So, uh, obviously Australia is pretty still tough to make a movie. You gotta really scrape your money together, right? You know, it's like a little bit of. Government money, a little bit of like, you know, random little companies and stuff like that.

• 59:21Griffin Newman?

  But the Australian New Wave is also basically developing in like, perfect tandem parallel with his career. Like he said, as, as, as he made each successive film in his career, the industry around him had leveled up.

• 59:37Griffin Newman?

  And the amount of money that people were willing to invest into movies and the government grants and all of that kept leveling up at the exact same pace that his ambitions were growing.

• 59:47David Sims?

  He, in 1971, made a little trip to Tunisia. Cool. Saw some Roman ruins and was very like, sort of seized by it and was like digging up stone, thinking like, I'm gonna find like, a head.

• 1:00:03Griffin Newman?

  He felt a premonition.

• 1:00:05David Sims?

  Right. And then he says he, he finds like a chunk of stone that was first attached to a head. Must have been part of a cupid, he says. He smuggled it out of Tunisia, which is kind of a, you know.

• 1:00:15Griffin Newman?

  I just wanted to alert you.

• 1:00:16David Sims?

  Kind of a soft crime.

• 1:00:17Griffin Newman?

  I know you like, feel like anything in the dossier is homework, classic Ben Kryptonite. But in fact, this anecdote is about Peter Weir stealing ruins.

• 1:00:28David Sims?

  So cool. He, he got it dated at the University of Sydney and confirmed where he still has it, or at least at the time, he, you know, it was like on his desk or whatever. So he's like, huh, I'm a pretty pragmatic guy. And yet I felt like I had like a weird premonition. And that's why I did that insane thing. So what if that's like the origin of an idea for a movie?

• 1:00:48Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:00:49David Sims?

  What an odd guy. That's a weird way to describe.

• 1:00:53Griffin Newman?

  Do you know what's a weird thing we've uncovered, Ben David, in doing these first couple of episodes? Do you know that Peter Weir was like, very involved in sketch comedy?

• 1:01:00Speaker 04

  Oh, what?

• 1:01:01Griffin Newman?

  That he like, performed, wrote and directed sketch comedy when he was young. I think like, started in college, but extended outside of it.

• 1:01:07David Sims?

  And it was his early work in film darts.

• 1:01:10Speaker 04

  So he's original Jordan Peele?

• 1:01:12Griffin Newman?

  Kind of. And then his filmmaking is like, oh, this is like an interesting medium that can combine all these different things I've done. Like, you know, I've done photography, I've done, I've worked with actors, I've performed. But it's funny because. Even the movies he has made that are comedic do not feel like they come from someone with a background in sketch comedy. In a way, I would argue like Craig or and Peel have kind of like sketch comedy machinery built into their storytelling motors.

• 1:01:37Speaker 04

  But there's not comic uh timing built into the editing, even in a droll way of weird stuff. Like, you know, Truman Show is almost anti comedy in a way where it's undercutting any possible laughs you could get.

• 1:01:51Griffin Newman?

  Correct, correct.

• 1:01:52Speaker 04

  That's fascinating.

• 1:01:53Griffin Newman?

  You see like Craig or and Peel construct horror set pieces with a kind of uh sketch comedy brain for structure and timing.

• 1:02:03David Sims?

  When he's making TV, Luke's Kingdom, which I don't think was uh sketch comedy, but one of his early TV things, he met, and I want to get it, I'm not totally sure how to say his name, but David Gold pillow, I mean, uh, Gold Pillow is how it sort of looks.

• 1:02:20Griffin Newman?

  That's the name of uh his next picture.

• 1:02:23David Sims?

  Um, who had been in Walkabout, obviously, that's like his, you know, breakout role, which is an incredible movie, the Nicholas Rogue movie, about. Um, but so he meets him there. And initially, we had been conceiving of this sort of mystical project of his as being about like Incan ruins or whatever. And he starts talking to him about like, you know, Aboriginal people and their, you know, the, their culture and their religion and like whatever. And, and he grow, he's like, I've never really fucking, you know, delved into this, despite being Australian. Like, I don't know much about this.

• 1:02:59Griffin Newman?

  The movie feels like him forcing himself to do the work that the character is doing.

• 1:03:06David Sims?

  Uh, right. Yes.

• 1:03:08Griffin Newman?

  Like, the process of making the movie is like a self imposed, like, I need to think more deeply about the land I'm standing on.

• 1:03:14David Sims?

  He, he, this is, I'm quoting, we are here, but he gets drunk with a guy. And he says, uh, Gold Pillow married a de tribalized woman, moved her to the city, became an actor, he broke his tribal laws. In the course of our conversation, he said something like this, "Last week, my wife was very upset with me because of the great space." Because the great space had left me and there I stood. And that was because the moon was there. I thought maybe I'd had too much to drink and I asked him to repeat that. And he repeated the same thing and then he's repeated it a third time. It turned out the, you know, premonitions were very ordinary for him and I became very excited. And I was confronted by a basic error that made in my assessment of tribal Aboriginals that they perceived life the way I did.

• 1:03:55David Sims?

  So he's very suddenly drawn to collaborating with him and like writing it about, you know, people in Australia, the country he lives in.

• 1:04:05Griffin Newman?

  And all the Aboriginal actors he cast in this film were very involved in the script from the moment they were hired. He, he basically was like, tell me what I don't know.

• 1:04:16Speaker 04

  That actor was also on The Leftovers, which was heavily inspired by

• 1:04:19David Sims?

  Right.

• 1:04:20Speaker 04

  A bunch of weird movies.

• 1:04:21David Sims?

  He's such, I mean, he's in Rabbit Proof, he's in Crocodile Dundee. I did get a small role.

• 1:04:25Griffin Newman?

  He's in Australia and Far Way Downs.

• 1:04:27David Sims?

  He's in Australia, I think by law. I think everyone in the cast of that movie, like they were like, get all the Australian actors.

• 1:04:33Speaker 04

  I thought Australia was a mini series on Hulu.

• 1:04:35Griffin Newman?

  Well, that's Far Way Downs. It has a different title.

• 1:04:38Speaker 04

  Oh, it does it?

• 1:04:39Griffin Newman?

  Yes, it does.

• 1:04:40David Sims?

  He made a movie called Charlie's Country like about 10 years ago that he won like every Australian acting prize for. A movie that I think did not really cross over, but was a big deal in Australia. It was kind of a, like the Australian film industry being like, we recognize you're, you're the wealth of your career and all this.

• 1:04:57Griffin Newman?

  It was his

• 1:04:58David Sims?

  Kind of his fucking

• 1:04:59Griffin Newman?

  Color of money.

• 1:04:59David Sims?

  True grit.

• 1:05:00Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:00David Sims?

  Whatever.

• 1:05:02Griffin Newman?

  He died fairly recently?

• 1:05:04David Sims?

  Uh, yeah, he died in 2021.

• 1:05:07Griffin Newman?

  Richard Chamberlain died like in the last year at 90.

• 1:05:10David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:11Griffin Newman?

  David, David. David, this is actually

• 1:05:13David Sims?

  Took him down.

• 1:05:14Griffin Newman?

  This is the single worst place to confess that.

• 1:05:17David Sims?

  Being recorded? No, he, he died, uh, never married and had no children.

• 1:05:21Griffin Newman?

  Richard Chamberlain?

• 1:05:23David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:23Griffin Newman?

  He, he came out late in life, but he was, he was a kind of don't ask, don't tell Hollywood, a barely closeted man who did in his memoirs, I think in the early 2000s.

• 1:05:36David Sims?

  He finally was sort of like, by the way, this is, this is a thing. Um, so anyway, uh, he starts to, uh, crack this story, brings on Tony Morfit, uh, who'd worked on Luke's Kingdom to write it with him. And then Petru Papescu, who had worked with We're Before was brought in to make the script more appealing to potential investors, make it more commercial, I think, basically. Like maybe their script is too weird and he kind of cleans it up, although I think it's still a little weird.

• 1:06:03Griffin Newman?

  Yeah. He's got the McElroy brothers, uh, who produced the first two movies on board with this.

• 1:06:09David Sims?

  Uh, sure.

• 1:06:10Griffin Newman?

  In between podcasting and tabletop campaigns.

• 1:06:14David Sims?

  Indeed. Uh, and so they all get to work on it. Uh, he says, he admits, we're admits, he could never really figure out the ending of this movie.

• 1:06:24Griffin Newman?

  Well, I kind of cracked it by just ending with a big ass wave.

• 1:06:28David Sims?

  He said, uh, I didn't really find a solution to the problem about it. And if there is no ending, I was kind of painted into a corner. Uh, and, uh, you try to be clever. I tried a couple of other endings that stopped short of a wave. They were too neat. Um, and so he decided to end with a big old wave.

• 1:06:45Griffin Newman?

  I think the ending works. I wonder for him, he's just sort of like, I didn't have the resources to show more of an apocalypse.

• 1:06:54David Sims?

  I think it's the kind of ending that is going to send a, a bunch of your audience out going like, oh,

• 1:07:04David Sims?

  not going up being like, you gotta see this movie I just saw. Like, you know, like it's definitely a head scratcher.

• 1:07:10Griffin Newman?

  But, but it's an ending that definitively answers, something is happening, which is kind of all the movie needs to make good on in my end, mind to, to conclude properly.

• 1:07:22David Sims?

  I think the part of the ending that, uh, I, I struggle with is, um,

• 1:07:28Speaker 04

  I don't really think they like set up and pay off the cyclical nature of like opening with someone stealing these relics and then him trying to steal them and then killing the guy in the process. Like, it feels very kind of out of nowhere that he's so determined to bring those things out with him. Or like, his intention behind doing it, I don't, doesn't really track. I like the idea of that kind of biblical comeuppance where he gets trapped and the more he gets trapped, he keeps dropping the things until he has nothing left. Like, that feels like a good idea. I don't love that stuff, but what I do love is the titular Last Wave. I like that.

• 1:08:07Griffin Newman?

  I agree with that. I think that's a good point. I also would say my criticism of the ending would be knowing that they specifically brought extra writers in to try to help this movie appeal to American audiences with a kind of Hollywood viewpoint. Big must-missed opportunity to not have Stitch hanging 10 on that wave. He's one of our biggest stars. The man's consistent box office gold.

• 1:08:30Speaker 04

  I struggle with this joke.

• 1:08:31Griffin Newman?

  You end with a Stitch cameo, the thing just, the audience walks up cheering. It's not even a joke, it's a great point. The audience is cheering.

• 1:08:39David Sims?

  He does not-

• 1:08:40Griffin Newman?

  He's king of the fucking box office.

• 1:08:41David Sims?

  Sure, he doesn't-

• 1:08:42Griffin Newman?

  Look at 2025, the numbers don't lie.

• 1:08:44Speaker 04

  But then Peter Weir would have story credit on Lilo and Stitch because he created Stitch.

• 1:08:48Griffin Newman?

  Good, he deserves it.

• 1:08:48Speaker 04

  That's the way time works.

• 1:08:49Griffin Newman?

  Good.

• 1:08:50David Sims?

  That is the way time works. The Last Wave, Weir does not see it as like an end of the world movie. It's more just like a catastrophe is what he's seeing, right?

• 1:08:58Griffin Newman?

  It's not a total-

• 1:08:59David Sims?

  It's not, right, right. It's not like total apocalypse. He also doesn't think it's an occult movie. He's like, I don't want to sound pretentious, but it's spiritual. Like, you know, it's a spiritual movie. It's ambiguous. Like, and here's on what his, what he's going for, mood he's going for. "I was frightened by a noise heard outside my window last night, a rasping inhuman sound which seemed to come from nowhere. That's a fear we've all experienced at one time or another. Some choose to forget such fears. I choose to remember them and use them in my work." I kind of know what he's going for there. And like the creepiest dream in this movie, the one where you're kind of going up the stairs. The noise is kind of like a noise like that, that like weird noise you're hearing.

• 1:09:42David Sims?

  Very cool. Not like terrifying, but a little unsettling.

• 1:09:47Griffin Newman?

  Yeah. This movie, right. One of the key things, uh, pillars of this movie is the idea that dreams are method of communication. That, that they are not abstract processing, but they are an attempt for the universe, for spirits, for souls, for what have you, to be able to communicate something to you in a non literal way. Kind of like how frequency, there's a radio that allows you to talk to dead people.

• 1:10:17Speaker 04

  So did frequency invent podcasting or did I just do a real Bill Simmons bit?

• 1:10:21Griffin Newman?

  No, no, frequency invented podcasting. Peter, we invented Stitch.

• 1:10:24Speaker 04

  Oh, but they use the CB radio from the past to connect to the future to find out who Stitch was to put Stitch in the finale. See, I thought the joke you were gonna make is they should play the song wipe out at the end.

• 1:10:33Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, I'll make that joke too.

• 1:10:34Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 1:10:35Griffin Newman?

  They should play the song wipe out at the end.

• 1:10:37David Sims?

  Ooh, wipe out, right?

• 1:10:39Griffin Newman?

  Audience would have left cheering.

• 1:10:40David Sims?

  So, uh, I don't know.

• 1:10:42Griffin Newman?

  Stand by it. I think we're making good points all around.

• 1:10:44David Sims?

  Okay.

• 1:10:45Speaker 03

  Maybe it's a mashup and it's like, the final wipe out.

• 1:10:49David Sims?

  So they get a bunch of money. I'm really, I'm just steamrolling all this. They get some money, Yanis Films, Southern Australia. It doesn't matter. Come on, Jesus.

• 1:10:56Griffin Newman?

  No, it doesn't matter.

• 1:10:57David Sims?

  Too much. Richard Chamberlain, best known, I would say is Dr. Kildare on NBC.

• 1:11:02Griffin Newman?

  They called him the king of the mini series.

• 1:11:05David Sims?

  Sure. Well, that's true. I do feel like that is, cause he's in, uh, he's in the original, uh, Shogun, right? That was a huge show.

• 1:11:12Griffin Newman?

  He does the Yardbirds after this, which I think comes out of him enjoying his time in Australia.

• 1:11:17David Sims?

  I think you mean the Thornbirds. The Yardbirds is like the band, right?

• 1:11:21Griffin Newman?

  I'm gonna correct JJ's typo here. Hold on one second.

• 1:11:25David Sims?

  Stop blaming JJ. Another, another, uh, TV mini series he did is called Centennial, not, not one I know. But that was like a big show in the seventies or, but that, I've, I've, look, I have never seen, um, Dr. Kildare, but that was like a show. In the six, right? Like that was like a, there was like a popular doctor show in the earlier days of television, right? Does everyone agree with me?

• 1:11:47Griffin Newman?

  Correct. But, but also the, this is, you know, the mini series, which has now basically just become the prestige TV show was a very powerful thing in the seventies and he was kind of the go to leading man.

• 1:11:58David Sims?

  Right.

• 1:11:58Griffin Newman?

  For.

• 1:11:59David Sims?

  He's a good looking guy.

• 1:12:00Griffin Newman?

  He's, he's a classically handsome, broad-shouldered, steady voiced man.

• 1:12:05David Sims?

  Right.

• 1:12:05Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:12:06David Sims?

  You don't see him and go like, holy shit, this is the best fucking actor I ever saw.

• 1:12:10Griffin Newman?

  No, but I think he's quite good in this and it's smart casting because there is something unnerving about watching this guy who just feels like really kind of on top of it, just get a little frazzled and thrown off.

• 1:12:23David Sims?

  You know, he's in I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry?

• 1:12:25Griffin Newman?

  No, what does he play?

• 1:12:27David Sims?

  He plays, he's pretty buried in it. Councilman Banks.

• 1:12:31Speaker 04

  Uh, he's not buried in it. He thrives in it.

• 1:12:33Griffin Newman?

  Thank you.

• 1:12:33David Sims?

  Does he?

• 1:12:34Griffin Newman?

  I imagine he must be presiding over the court.

• 1:12:39David Sims?

  There's definitely some.

• 1:12:40Speaker 04

  I think he gives like a speech, like where he's like, you two have done great things.

• 1:12:47Griffin Newman?

  Thank you for solving.

• 1:12:49Speaker 04

  The, the thing.

• 1:12:50Griffin Newman?

  Marriage.

• 1:12:51David Sims?

  Cause that is a movie that at the end they're like, and you guys are heroes too for doing this.

• 1:12:55Griffin Newman?

  Yeah. People applaud them.

• 1:12:56David Sims?

  You're not gay, but you are heroes.

• 1:12:58Speaker 04

  Cause the heroes is Alexander Payne.

• 1:13:00Griffin Newman?

  And Jim Taylor.

• 1:13:01Speaker 04

  For getting writing credit on that.

• 1:13:03Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:04David Sims?

  Um, so Richard Chamberlain, uh, you know, he's a American actor, but the, and the Australian sort of press was a little grumpy of think about the fact that this movie didn't star an Australian and like, we're just kind of like, I don't know, like he's a famous guy and he was good in the movie. Like he, he does not, he's no hangups about casting Richard Chamberlain.

• 1:13:26Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:26Speaker 03

  The right look.

• 1:13:27David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:28Griffin Newman?

  He does. It also does sound like he, in not wanting to try to make the jump over to Hollywood movies, he was trying to figure out the way to make his movies play more in the States. Like it felt like that was a defensive chess move of if my movies can have some North American box office pull, then perhaps I can stay in Australia for even longer.

• 1:13:48David Sims?

  Uh, right. I mean, which, cool.

• 1:13:51Griffin Newman?

  Right. Richard Chamberlain's like the cheapest version of a leading man you can get because he's not as much a movie guy while feeling very comfortable to American audiences.

• 1:14:01David Sims?

  Yes.

• 1:14:01Griffin Newman?

  I, I think he's quite good in this.

• 1:14:02Speaker 04

  I think he knew that someday he was gonna be in Twin Peaks and that was a good reason to put him in there.

• 1:14:07Griffin Newman?

  Yes. That's also, yes. Well, Stitch told him.

• 1:14:10David Sims?

  Um, so more important, I think, is that we're like meets with the sort of Aboriginal cultural foundation in Darwin, Australia. And basically like the vibe he's like, he's like, you can't just like, show up and be like, anyway, I'm making a movie. Can you like, show me some guys? Like, can you introduce me to the right people? Like, you gotta be like, here's the story I want to tell. Does this, you know, is this palatable? Is this interesting to people? You know, like you, you, you want to be very sensitive and respectful. And so he's, you know, introduced to people. He attends a sort of dance group. And, you

• 1:14:48David Sims?

  know, uh, he kind of just like, keeps quiet and observes and talks and reads more. Uh, look, there's a lot of things in this dossier. I'm just not going to get it. It's just too, it's too much, JJ.

• 1:15:02Griffin Newman?

  Just a lot of factual errors.

• 1:15:04David Sims?

  It's just, I mean, look, he did a lot of work finding the right actors. Okay. I'm sorry.

• 1:15:11Griffin Newman?

  It's flooded with information. There we go.

• 1:15:14David Sims?

  And obviously he already knew David Gull pillill, uh, cause he'd worked with him before they shot the movie. Russell Boyd shoots it. Um, you know, his, his, his go-to cinematographer.

• 1:15:26Speaker 04

  Russell Boyd or John Seal.

• 1:15:28David Sims?

  Right. John Seal is sort of initially, I think Boyd's number two. Uh, that's how they meet. And then of course becomes a legendary cinematographer in his own right.

• 1:15:36Griffin Newman?

  Boyd, a relationship that runs through to Master and Commander.

• 1:15:39David Sims?

  Yeah. Wins the Oscar. He's the, it's the only tech Oscar that, uh, Lord of the Rings, The Return of the King was not nominated for.

• 1:15:46Griffin Newman?

  Yes. No, I remember.

• 1:15:47David Sims?

  Which was crazy.

• 1:15:48Griffin Newman?

  Cause it, it won every single category.

• 1:15:51Speaker 04

  And Andrew Leslie is an Australian cinematographer.

• 1:15:53David Sims?

  He is. And he has one, obviously for fellowship. And I think he was like, I don't know. It's so weird that he wasn't nominated for, it doesn't matter.

• 1:16:01Griffin Newman?

  But I remember that night watching the Oscars.

• 1:16:03David Sims?

  Rings 11 out of 11.

• 1:16:04Griffin Newman?

  But cinematography having this weird tension to it where you're like, this is the only category we can't predict because it's the one you can't put Return of the King down for.

• 1:16:13David Sims?

  Yeah, exactly. And he deservedly won an Oscar there. Um, obviously with Last Wave, he goes blue.

• 1:16:20Griffin Newman?

  He was working quite blue in this film.

• 1:16:22David Sims?

  They're going for a real blue look.

• 1:16:23Griffin Newman?

  Yep.

• 1:16:24Speaker 04

  That's actually something Peter Weir talks about in his interviews of the movie is that he wanted Picnic to have golden light and for this one to have blue.

• 1:16:31David Sims?

  And light, I think.

• 1:16:32Griffin Newman?

  Nailed it on assignment.

• 1:16:33David Sims?

  Nailed.

• 1:16:33Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:35David Sims?

  The raining frogs, they wanted to try and initially film like black rain. Like the phenomenon of black rain could not afford how to like, they were like, we don't know how we would do that. And it's too expensive.

• 1:16:46Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, they tried chubby rain, but it just, it felt like it threw off the mood, the tone of the movie was too funny.

• 1:16:51David Sims?

  Here's how they filmed the raining frogs. Someone got on a ladder and threw some frogs, frogs on the fucking ground.

• 1:16:57Griffin Newman?

  Fucking magic of movies.

• 1:16:58Speaker 04

  I can't believe they ripped off Magnolia.

• 1:17:00Griffin Newman?

  How many ladders were used? I know, I know there's no film set without a couple ladders, but did you feel like you had any ladder aided gags in your new movie?

• 1:17:11Speaker 04

  I had, uh, so the thing I, when I watch is what I think of, well, two things. One, I grew up in Phoenix, which had like severe monsoon seasons and I was driving to see American Beauty at a press screening because I was a 16 year old film critic for the Arizona Republic for a little bit.

• 1:17:30Griffin Newman?

  You were saying this, that you had a radio show as a teenager and you lost your slot when your voice broke and they no longer.

• 1:17:37Speaker 04

  When my voice changed, I got fired because I no longer sounded like a kid. And then I never got hired for work like that again.

• 1:17:43Griffin Newman?

  Did you have a catchy name like Lights, Camera, Jackson?

• 1:17:46Speaker 04

  No, I had a catchy name, Ben David Grabinski.

• 1:17:48David Sims?

  It is, it is.

• 1:17:49Griffin Newman?

  Pretty catchy.

• 1:17:49David Sims?

  It lodges in the memory.

• 1:17:51Speaker 04

  You know, you sort of, unless you, you get to the end of a pod and realize there's Ben and David already.

• 1:17:55Griffin Newman?

  But it wasn't like Ben David Grubin's skill versus green.

• 1:17:59Speaker 04

  Well, I was seeing, I was seeing American Beauty and I was driving and you couldn't see two inches in front of the windshield because the way the monsoon rain would be then is it feels like the rain scenes in this movie were like, it's completely obstructing your vision.

• 1:18:13David Sims?

  I have driven in those kinds.

• 1:18:15Speaker 04

  I had to pull off the road and wait for it to stop raining. But the other thing I think of is that I had a rain machine on a project, which I will not name. And they said, we couldn't afford it because we were over budget. And I said, well, how much is my trailer? My trailer was more than a rain machine. So they said, fine, we can have a rain machine. After I gave up my trailer, I found out that we were under budget by half a million.

• 1:18:38Griffin Newman?

  God fucking damn it.

• 1:18:39Speaker 04

  So that's what I think of whenever I see rain in a movie is me being petty about someone lying to me about the budget.

• 1:18:44Griffin Newman?

  And then the problem is during lunch, you have to take naps on top of a rain machine.

• 1:18:47David Sims?

  Now.

• 1:18:48Speaker 04

  I actually did.

• 1:18:48David Sims?

  When you don't have a trailer, what, what do you do? Where, where do you go?

• 1:18:54Griffin Newman?

  I just answered, he takes naps on top of the rain machine.

• 1:18:56Speaker 04

  Well, I'm ahead of the people, so I'm just gonna.

• 1:18:59Griffin Newman?

  He said he did. I don't have to tell you.

• 1:19:00Speaker 04

  I'm gonna just, you know, sit and hang out. Uh, you just have no place to nap. You always have a place to go. There's always chairs.

• 1:19:07Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:07Speaker 04

  I've never napped because I just, if I, if I napped, then it would just be over. Um, like.

• 1:19:13Griffin Newman?

  Not a good napper.

• 1:19:14Speaker 04

  When I'm directing, I have to like at lunch, like if I'm, especially if I'm writing it too, like go over the pages and like workout stuff, a place where like no one will find me. But on that thing, I was a showrunner and it was live action. So I've already given away what it was. Uh, but, uh, I, I didn't, I didn't need the trailer and you, no one really does. But in that case, it was just like the finding out, that's like the weird thing. It's like, oh, a rain machine costs like $36,000 for a day or something. And so this movie, I think they had infinity dollars for their rain budget.

• 1:19:45Griffin Newman?

  The rain budget's insane. I, you brought up Kugler, Sims, weirdly, for unrelated reasons.

• 1:19:52David Sims?

  Sure.

• 1:19:53Griffin Newman?

  I was thinking a lot, not having seen this movie before. The way water is depicted feels very similar to me to what Kugler does in Wakanda Forever.

• 1:20:02David Sims?

  Movie I like a lot.

• 1:20:03Griffin Newman?

  A movie that is all over the place, but has stuff in it that I think about a lot. And the main thing is the way he uses the device of like when Namor and people are coming, that water just starts like pooling in areas.

• 1:20:15David Sims?

  I, that, I love all of that shit.

• 1:20:18Griffin Newman?

  That shit's incredible. And this movie has the like, when the water is pooling out of the car radio, just the eeriness of like water flooding through in places it shouldn't. Uh, with a, with a looming dread.

• 1:20:31Speaker 04

  Did that remind you guys of the opening of eight and a half, like this car stuff? For some reason it reminds me of that.

• 1:20:36David Sims?

  That's a movie I've not seen in a long time.

• 1:20:38Speaker 04

  It's funny because eight and a half is a movie that I only really strongly remember two things is the opening, like when he's in a car and he's like, the way that it's lit and shot where he's like surrounded by other cars and you sort of feel trapped. And then the dancing scene that I think they also did in Brother.

• 1:20:53David Sims?

  I remember when he's a balloon.

• 1:20:54Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, circus at the end.

• 1:20:55Speaker 04

  Same scene. Well, at that one, he floats away and then someone like has to pull him down. But the way that the car stuff in the opening of Eight and a Half is shot reminds me of those scenes. Like when he's in his car and you feel like the world is so oppressive, you know?

• 1:21:08David Sims?

  It's just funny that that's kind of like an early art film that a lot of people are shown because it's so famous. And so I was probably like 16 or something or 15 when I saw it.

• 1:21:17Griffin Newman?

  Probably same, yeah.

• 1:21:18David Sims?

  I'm like, oh yeah, I really relate to this story of like kind of a middle aged Italian director being like, maybe I've made too many movies.

• 1:21:25Speaker 04

  The art movie everyone.

• 1:21:27Griffin Newman?

  Making your 20th picture after you've been heralded a genius for decades.

• 1:21:30David Sims?

  And every woman alive from birth to death wants to fuck you.

• 1:21:34Griffin Newman?

  That does suck.

• 1:21:35Speaker 04

  It's relatable.

• 1:21:36Griffin Newman?

  People keep trying to like smother me in their giant pendulous breasts.

• 1:21:41Speaker 04

  I'd say the two.

• 1:21:41Griffin Newman?

  Don't I relate to this?

• 1:21:42Speaker 04

  Two art movies that everyone sees as a teen.

• 1:21:44Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:45Speaker 04

  Eight and a Half and Clifford.

• 1:21:47Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:21:48David Sims?

  Thought you were gonna say Seven Samurai, but yeah, Clifford.

• 1:21:50Griffin Newman?

  Which are, which are both kind of depictions of the burden of, of genius.

• 1:21:55David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:56Griffin Newman?

  And success.

• 1:21:57David Sims?

  I mean.

• 1:21:58Speaker 04

  They're both movies about a stinker.

• 1:22:00Griffin Newman?

  They are.

• 1:22:01David Sims?

  Clifford is a burden. We can, we cannot deny that.

• 1:22:03Griffin Newman?

  I don't even. Talented. He's talented. He's very talented. He's an artist. He's an artist in his own way. Go. Uh, dinosaur land? That's right.

• 1:22:10Speaker 04

  Both movies have a dinosaur theme park in them.

• 1:22:12Griffin Newman?

  Thank God Clifford never came across a pair of giant pendulous Italian breasts. I don't even want to know what he would have done.

• 1:22:18Speaker 04

  That was the sequel, the entire premise.

• 1:22:29Griffin Newman?

  David?

• 1:22:30David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:30Griffin Newman?

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

• 1:22:36David Sims?

  Hmm.

• 1:22:36Griffin 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?

• 1:22:47David Sims?

  It is an icon. Iconic video.

• 1:22:48Griffin Newman?

  Footage that became the most analyzed and debated in history. Fifty nine 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.

• 1:23:11David Sims?

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

• 1:23:23Griffin 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.

• 1:23:31David Sims?

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

• 1:23:34Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:23:35David Sims?

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

• 1:23:42Griffin 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.

• 1:23:56David Sims?

  I'm something of an expert in cryptozoology.

• 1:23:58Griffin Newman?

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

• 1:24:00David 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.

• 1:24:16Griffin Newman?

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

• 1:24:33Griffin Newman?

  David?

• 1:24:33David Sims?

  Yes?

• 1:24:34Griffin Newman?

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

• 1:24:42David Sims?

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

• 1:24:47Griffin Newman?

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

• 1:24:50David Sims?

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

• 1:24:53Griffin Newman?

  Quince.

• 1:24:53David 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. Cause now that's what I'm gonna put on.

• 1:25:04Griffin 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.

• 1:25:19David Sims?

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

• 1:25:23Griffin Newman?

  I love those.

• 1:25:24David 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?

• 1:25:37Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:25:37David Sims?

  Jacket, sweater, shirt.

• 1:25:39Griffin Newman?

  David, you know what I love?

• 1:25:40David Sims?

  What?

• 1:25:40Griffin Newman?

  The ultimate commuter pants.

• 1:25:42David Sims?

  Oh.

• 1:25:42Griffin Newman?

  Cause I'm commuting constantly.

• 1:25:45David Sims?

  Beep beep.

• 1:25:46Griffin Newman?

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

• 1:25:52David 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.

• 1:26:19Griffin Newman?

  David?

• 1:26:19David Sims?

  Yes?

• 1:26:20Griffin Newman?

  Nobody likes bank fees. Why would you like them?

• 1:26:24David Sims?

  When I was younger.

• 1:26:25Griffin Newman?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:26:26David Sims?

  I really would have benefited from a bank that did not charge me fees anytime I did anything, basically. Which is, I feel like what I was always dealing with.

• 1:26:34Griffin Newman?

  Chime, that's where chime comes in. Chime.

• 1:26:37David Sims?

  They're changing the way people bank. They're not like traditional banks who charge fees and get key perks and rewards. They offer the most rewarding fee free banking, all with no overdraft fees, no monthly fees and no minimum balance fees. Okay?

• 1:26:51Griffin Newman?

  We love being fee free. We love it.

• 1:26:52David Sims?

  You're gonna get 5% cash back on a Chime card in a category of your choice, like gas or groceries.

• 1:26:58Griffin Newman?

  My two favorite things.

• 1:26:59David Sims?

  Uh, all while building credit through regular everyday spending with no credit check. And you can grow your money faster with a savings rate that's nine times the national average. And if you're ever in a pinch, SpotMe lets you overdraft up to $200 fee free.

• 1:27:12Griffin Newman?

  Fee free.

• 1:27:13David Sims?

  So join the millions who are already banking fee free with America's number one choice for banking. Head to chime.com slash blank check. That is chime.com slash blank check. Sign up now. It only takes a few minutes.

• 1:27:28Speaker 05

  Chime is a fintech, not a bank. Banking services and Chime card provided by Chime's bank partners. Qualifying direct deposits required. Terms and limits apply. Go to chime.com slash disclosures for details.

• 1:27:52David Sims?

  In the last wave, the opening's actually super evocative where it's, it's like just this little town. Kids playing on the street and then weird like rainfall starts and then like fucking golf ball hail starts happening.

• 1:28:06Griffin Newman?

  It takes quite a bit before the story starts in order.

• 1:28:10David Sims?

  Right. It's a real mood setter.

• 1:28:12Griffin Newman?

  Yes. Emersing you in the, the various scenes.

• 1:28:15David Sims?

  This is where we are. We're in this town. We're not in like Sydney. We're not in like, you know, sort of, uh, more built up Australia and weird shit is happening and everyone's, it's not like deadly, but everyone is a little like thrown.

• 1:28:32Griffin Newman?

  There's a weird amount of water.

• 1:28:34David Sims?

  Yes.

• 1:28:35Griffin Newman?

  Shit's getting wet.

• 1:28:36David Sims?

  Y'all ever been in like true like golf ball hail?

• 1:28:39Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 1:28:40David Sims?

  London gets it a lot. It's really weird.

• 1:28:42Griffin Newman?

  There was a, there was a moment, uh, in between us traveling for shows that, uh, Connor Ratliff, Patrick Kotner and I were in a car together going from one George Lucas talk show to another, where like it went from zero to a hundred. It was dry and then suddenly the rain started coming down like last wave hard. And I cite it as the closest I've come in my life to feeling like I was about to die. There was a moment where all three of us tensed up.

• 1:29:07David Sims?

  Who was driving?

• 1:29:08Griffin Newman?

  Patrick Kotner.

• 1:29:09David Sims?

  Oh dear.

• 1:29:10Griffin Newman?

  Well, if I was driving, we would have already been dead.

• 1:29:12David Sims?

  Well, yes. He wasn't saying you should be driving.

• 1:29:15Griffin Newman?

  No, Patrick was driving and the rain started coming down really hard, really furious. The windshield wipers could not combat it and we were on a freeway and every car you could see was panicking at the same time. And it just felt like any one of us could kind of like lose control and then start like a 20 car pileup. And then like we just in silence, all tensed up. Five minutes later, it just stopped cold out of nowhere and we all breathed and we're like, oh, I was ready to die. I thought it was about to.

• 1:29:47David Sims?

  You said you were gay.

• 1:29:48Griffin Newman?

  I did.

• 1:29:52Speaker 04

  You have to respect the wind, like Van Halen said in the song from Twister.

• 1:29:55Griffin Newman?

  That was the problem.

• 1:29:56Speaker 04

  That was the problem.

• 1:29:57Griffin Newman?

  That was, I wasn't right and I hadn't seen Twisters yet, so I hadn't considered that you could ride it.

• 1:30:02Speaker 04

  Had you seen Lee Loewenstich?

• 1:30:03Griffin Newman?

  I had that little alien. They say he's all bad, but actually I think there's some good in him.

• 1:30:11David Sims?

  So weird shit is happening, heavy rainfall, frogs, other anomalies. Local Aboriginal people in this town seem spooked and during one of these rainstorms, there's a fight and somebody dies. But it's all pretty mysterious.

• 1:30:31Speaker 03

  And by town, we're talking Sydney.

• 1:30:32David Sims?

  Well, the, the first like sequence is not in Sydney. This is the schoolhouse, the town, the bar fight, I think is in Sydney, right?

• 1:30:41Speaker 04

  Yeah, I know the tunnels are in Sydney, like the underground stuff. And I know that Sydney is where they shot Mission Impossible two.

• 1:30:49Griffin Newman?

  They shot this mostly.

• 1:30:50David Sims?

  A lot of movies got shot.

• 1:30:51Griffin Newman?

  In Adelaide.

• 1:30:53David Sims?

  Is that right?

• 1:30:54Griffin Newman?

  But it seems like it was mostly a weather issue when they were planning on shooting in Sydney.

• 1:30:58David Sims?

  I don't know much about Adelaide, but I'll admit, I don't know much about a lot of places in Australia. Let's see where it is.

• 1:31:04Speaker 04

  Wasn't that a Blake Lively, Harrison Ford movie?

• 1:31:06Griffin Newman?

  I don't know much about Adelaide.

• 1:31:08David Sims?

  So Adelaide is in South Australia, right? It's all, it's on the, the, in the sort of middle of the country, uh, on the southern side. I don't know what you're about it. Um, looks nice. Every Australian city always just looks so sunny and pretty.

• 1:31:21Griffin Newman?

  I believe they had an issue where there was actually too much rain in Sydney, so they went to Adelaide so that they could control the fake rain.

• 1:31:29David Sims?

  Right, right, right. I mean, makes makes sense. You actually do need to be able to control it.

• 1:31:34Speaker 04

  What's it with Australian directors having production problems because of rain?

• 1:31:38Griffin Newman?

  I think probably the through line there is that Australia is crazy.

• 1:31:41David Sims?

  It rains a lot.

• 1:31:42Speaker 04

  Is the spiky car from the Cars That Ate Paris, uh, did that inspire the car in Fury Road? Did you guys figure that out?

• 1:31:48David Sims?

  It's a direct homage.

• 1:31:50Speaker 04

  Oh, that is so sick.

• 1:31:51Griffin Newman?

  Uh, inspired all of Mad Max.

• 1:31:53David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 1:31:54Griffin Newman?

  That George Miller sees it and is like, oh, what if you built a whole fucking movie out of this?

• 1:31:57David Sims?

  Miller seeing it is inspired to make the first Mad Max, which is why in Fury Road. He's like, I want to pay homage to the goat.

• 1:32:04Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:32:04Speaker 04

  And that spiky car showed up. I was like, wow.

• 1:32:06David Sims?

  Those guys rock.

• 1:32:08Griffin Newman?

  You know what's also crazy?

• 1:32:09David Sims?

  They're silly.

• 1:32:09Griffin Newman?

  Fact that we forgot to bring up, do you know that the Doof Warrior was a P A on the Cars That Ate Paris? That was his first credit before he realized what he wanted to do.

• 1:32:18Griffin Newman?

  He's just interested in films. Ben has thrown his headphones down.

• 1:32:21David Sims?

  Ben's out.

• 1:32:21Griffin Newman?

  He has handed in his two weeks notice.

• 1:32:23David Sims?

  Ben Hozley is out.

• 1:32:24Speaker 04

  We'll miss you, Ben.

• 1:32:25Griffin Newman?

  He is serving me with papers.

• 1:32:27David Sims?

  So the character of David Burton, played by Richard Chamberlain, is a lawyer. Um, but the end and sort of essentially is like assigned, right, to this murder case to to defend one of the men. Maybe all of the men? Definitely to defend Chris.

• 1:32:43Speaker 04

  Yeah, all five of them, because they say if one of them doesn't show up, then the trial's over or something.

• 1:32:47David Sims?

  Um, there's something extremely sort of obscure and bureaucratic about Australian law that like, he is a tax lawyer, not a criminal defense lawyer, but because of the divide between like indigenous people and European settlers, settlers, colonizers, uh, you know, like he gets assigned the case. This is discussed in the movie. It was a little over my head.

• 1:33:12Griffin Newman?

  Same. Uh, it's it's, yes, it's the quirk of the Australian legal aid system. I mean, this is sort of what I was getting at earlier.

• 1:33:19David Sims?

  Why? It's too, it's essentially just that's why he's an outsider, like especially an outsider.

• 1:33:24Griffin Newman?

  But these like weird circumstances and Which colonialists come in, impose their view of how a society should be structured onto a land that is not theirs.

• 1:33:35David Sims?

  Right.

• 1:33:36Griffin Newman?

  And then like a century later.

• 1:33:37David Sims?

  They're bringing Western law to a dispute that for, I mean, for one, the, all the accused just like do not want to talk about what happened.

• 1:33:44Griffin Newman?

  But then like centuries later, these countries start to go like, oh, fuck, do we gotta like own up to what our ancestors did? And then they start to carve out rules of like, well, this doesn't apply to you because we've been disrespectful to your customs and your traditions. So everything is sort of, yes, there's some weird quirk of the system where through the legal aid system in Australia, now a tax lawyer has to represent a murder case.

• 1:34:08Speaker 04

  Do we know why John Grisham never did cosmic horror?

• 1:34:11Griffin Newman?

  Incredibly good question.

• 1:34:13Speaker 04

  And besides the, the Christmas movie with the cranks.

• 1:34:15Griffin Newman?

  Well, yeah, that is the answer.

• 1:34:17Speaker 04

  Christmas.

• 1:34:18Griffin Newman?

  It was, yes, but also in the book, they're not the cranks, they're the catholos.

• 1:34:23David Sims?

  So David's having, I'm steamrolling this, so David's having.

• 1:34:26Griffin Newman?

  Thank you.

• 1:34:27David Sims?

  Uh, weird dreams on top of this case and he is seeing Chris.

• 1:34:32Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:34:33David Sims?

  The Go-Boo character.

• 1:34:34Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:34:34David Sims?

  In his dreams.

• 1:34:35Griffin Newman?

  Saw, sees him prior to first meeting him.

• 1:34:37David Sims?

  Correct.

• 1:34:38Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:34:38David Sims?

  And it is spooky.

• 1:34:43David Sims?

  And that is the vibe of the movie until the end. I'm not saying other things don't happen, other things do happen, but what I just described is kind of what the movie's about. It's David being like, something feels weird and I'm having weird dreams. What's going on? And these people largely are sort of like, we don't want to talk about it and it's kind of none of your business. And he's like, I know, but I'm having these weird dreams. And they're like, well, that is weird and that is interesting, but I don't know, man. Like, it's like a lot of that.

• 1:35:12Griffin Newman?

  It is kind of fascinatingly a like anti white savior movie or like inverted white savior movie in a way where it's like, oh, here's like a noble, square drawed, very conventional white lawyer who is assigned to a case to prove the innocence of Aboriginal men. And the worst version of this movie is seen 20 times as he's like, I've learned that you are a person. And he gives some 20 minute mon- Analog arguing that they have feelings and thoughts and he teaches people how to end racism. And Lynda Cartelini is the heart of the movie, right?

• 1:35:43Speaker 04

  Well, uh, the only thing I want to bring up that I'm sure is already in the dossier is when Charlie comes over for dinner. Somebody says, uh, that law is like the most important thing in their culture. And the guy who played Charlie.

• 1:36:00David Sims?

  Whose name is, uh, Nanjwara Amagula.

• 1:36:05Speaker 04

  Yes, when he, cause he was not an actor and when he agreed to be in the movie, his only stipulation was that. They represent that within the movie because that was something very important to him. To convey within the movie is that in his culture, uh, the law of their tradition superseded everything. Which I thought was interesting because that moment does feel very authentic to something when they convey that.

• 1:36:29Griffin Newman?

  I was gonna say the moment where he meets the clients, uh, and especially Chris, he basically goes like. What the fuck is going on here? I'm not crazy that like, none of this makes sense, right? Like he just owns up to, I fucking don't know what movie I'm in. And they're sort of like, you're not ready for this shit.

• 1:36:48David Sims?

  Right. The dinner scene that Ben David is referencing, according to Peter Weir. Was sort of constructed by Golpilil and Nanjwara, like, and he put in all the lines about the law and all that stuff. And Weir was just kind of like, I kind of let them do it. And they're kind of just talking to Richard Chamberlain and I kind of just let him talk and then called cut. You know what I mean? Rather than like, let's do the script. It was like, you guys, you know, you guys just tell him, try to explain this to him.

• 1:37:16Griffin Newman?

  I say this from the perspective of a white man who knows nothing of what this movie is about in real life.

• 1:37:21David Sims?

  You disgust me.

• 1:37:22Griffin Newman?

  Thank you. I'll take the hit.

• 1:37:26Griffin Newman?

  But this does feel like a good example of a know what you don't know endeavor.

• 1:37:31David Sims?

  Yeah, right, right.

• 1:37:32Griffin Newman?

  Right? Like, it feels like everything you read and it is entirely possible there are huge missteps in this movie that I am oblivious to.

• 1:37:40David Sims?

  I think, no, I think they sort of were taken away from making missteps by the actors.

• 1:37:46Griffin Newman?

  And certainly when you read about the process, it felt like he was very open in that of, I can write the white man part of the movie. I do not want to impose something on here. You tell me what this should be and let them sort of take a lot of authorship over their scenes.

• 1:38:01David Sims?

  Like, Weir says at one point, they were like, hey, so what are some like tribal symbols we can use for all the like tribal symbol shit? And Nanjor was like, you absolutely are forbidden from using any real tribal symbols. We can make some up.

• 1:38:13Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:38:13David Sims?

  You know, like, we won't be using anything real.

• 1:38:15Speaker 04

  That dinner scene in that subplot is something I always love in a movie, like in God Told Me Too or Devil's Advocate or something, when like the lead character thinks that there, there's nothing about them besides just being kind of the guy. And someone's like, starts to say things about like their past and like where they came from. And they're starting to be like, wait, hold on, hold on, what? Like, I always love feeling like the ground beneath lead characters start to get unsettled, where they feel like they understand everything about themselves. And then they start to realize they don't.

• 1:38:45David Sims?

  In Devil's Advocate, I know what you're talking about. The guy gets a job at a law firm. And boss seems normal to me. Very successful.

• 1:38:51Speaker 04

  Yeah, he learns something about himself and his heritage or something.

• 1:38:54David Sims?

  Big personality, I guess.

• 1:38:56Griffin Newman?

  What's his name in that again?

• 1:38:57David Sims?

  John Milton.

• 1:38:58Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 1:38:58David Sims?

  Which I really love.

• 1:38:59Griffin Newman?

  Right. Cause Angel Heart is Lou Cypher.

• 1:39:02David Sims?

  Yeah, that one was maybe a little on the nose.

• 1:39:06Speaker 04

  One of my favorite things about that movie is they shot in Trump's apartment and they picked it because it was so ugly and terrible. And when he was there.

• 1:39:13David Sims?

  Only Satan himself would want to live here.

• 1:39:15Speaker 04

  And then I guess Trump was like, I'm so glad you want to show the plays. And Tony Girory's like, I don't know how to tell him we did it because it's like so fucking ugly.

• 1:39:22Griffin Newman?

  I mean, it's, it's the great, like, fucking Mulaney bit of Donald Trump feeling like the way a, like, rail riding hobo in a 30s movie would describe a rich person.

• 1:39:32David Sims?

  Imagining a rich person, yes.

• 1:39:34Griffin Newman?

  Everything in his house is gold and his hair is made of yarn.

• 1:39:39David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 1:39:39Griffin Newman?

  Or made of cotton candy.

• 1:39:40David Sims?

  Fine gold silk.

• 1:39:41Griffin Newman?

  Fine gold silk. Yeah.

• 1:39:43David Sims?

  I've listened to that bit too many times. Um, so they make the movie and it's good. Let's talk more about the movie. So, um, Ben, David, can you talk more about the movie, please?

• 1:39:55Speaker 04

  I feel like I've talked way too much already.

• 1:39:59Griffin Newman?

  I can't tell if you're being facetious or not.

• 1:40:01Speaker 04

  I don't know. Ben keeps looking at me like mouthing, shut the fuck up.

• 1:40:04David Sims?

  Ben's actually looking at his phone right now. I think he's watching, you know, another movie or maybe he's.

• 1:40:08Speaker 03

  No, I'm watching the, the last wave.

• 1:40:10David Sims?

  The last wave.

• 1:40:10Griffin Newman?

  Again?

• 1:40:11Speaker 03

  Well, cause I'm just scrubbing through the plot.

• 1:40:14Griffin Newman?

  Okay.

• 1:40:14Speaker 03

  Trying to, you know, be a good producer.

• 1:40:16Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, but we haven't gotten anything wrong yet. So.

• 1:40:18David Sims?

  So, look, I mean, essentially, again, look.

• 1:40:22Speaker 04

  The rest of the movie is a bunch of cascading dreams that you, and real life stuff, and then a wave comes.

• 1:40:29David Sims?

  So there's this, you know, the first, the first thing I ever, like many, I think, a, you know, non-Australian Westerner especially. The first thing I ever fucking learned about Aboriginal people was the book or movie Walkabout. I read the book when I was like 12 and then I saw the movie and you know, the whole thing in that movie and book is that, uh, the boy, the Aboriginal boy who finds these, it's about these British kids who crash land in the outback and like their parent dies and they meet an Aboriginal and they like sort of, uh, survive it. Have you seen Walkabout?

• 1:41:00Griffin Newman?

  I've seen Walkabout. Yeah, I have read the book.

• 1:41:01David Sims?

  Obviously there's this crazy sexual undercurrent going on and like, but like that.

• 1:41:05Speaker 04

  Very good director.

• 1:41:06David Sims?

  Right. Um, that like, the, the, the major plot point is that she kind of looks at the guy wrong. And he's just like, you've essentially sort of marked me and he just goes to die. And like, that is sort of what Richard Chamberlain is putting together in this movie, right? Of like, are you, did somebody die because someone pointed like a bone at him essentially like, you know, like, is this a sort of like ritual? You know, mystical death that's rooted in like a culture I do not understand. And everyone's basically like, we don't talk about it with you.

• 1:41:43Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 1:41:44David Sims?

  Rather than like, yes, yes, let's tell us the secrets. They're like, it's not for you to know. Stop putting us into your system.

• 1:41:51Griffin Newman?

  There's, he's sensing that there seems to be some kind of unified code to their silence.

• 1:41:57David Sims?

  Yes.

• 1:41:57Griffin Newman?

  And their refusal to really even engage in conversation.

• 1:42:01David Sims?

  Stitches. I mean, come on.

• 1:42:02Speaker 03

  Well, the offender we see.

• 1:42:05Speaker 03

  Steal some kind of stones and give them to to some unidentified person. There's some kind of arrangement and then he ends up at a bar. And this is where they have the confrontation and then he has the bone pointed at him and ends up dying.

• 1:42:26David Sims?

  Right. In a sort of, I mean, they say he drowned, but like, it's very mysterious.

• 1:42:31Speaker 03

  Well, he drowned in like a puddle.

• 1:42:32Speaker 04

  He broke the laws of their world, which supersede our stupid laws. The guy in the wig.

• 1:42:40Griffin Newman?

  So their whole attitude is just sort of like, throw whatever the fuck you want us. This isn't what's real, you know? They seem a little kind of like, uh, they refuse to accept the the Western rules of law that are being imposed on them. Yeah.

• 1:42:58Speaker 04

  Right. So who's the worst lawyer, this guy or the lawyer in JFK?

• 1:43:02David Sims?

  Uh, this guy, he's really bad. The lawyer in JFK is just crazy. God bless him. Jim Harrison.

• 1:43:07Griffin Newman?

  The worst lawyer is the lawyer and the judge.

• 1:43:10Speaker 03

  I don't know. Troy McClure.

• 1:43:12Griffin Newman?

  I think you're confusing Troy McClure and.

• 1:43:15Speaker 04

  The judge, the judge is about a lawyer?

• 1:43:17Griffin Newman?

  Ben, that's, hold on, just, I'm sorry, Ben, David, just sidebar for one second.

• 1:43:20Speaker 03

  So embarrassed.

• 1:43:21Griffin Newman?

  Ben, that's like rough because that's the first incorrect thing that's been said on this episode and you don't have JJ to take the fall for this.

• 1:43:27Speaker 03

  All right, I'll put on my dunce cap.

• 1:43:29Griffin Newman?

  No, I just, I just think whatever we got to do in the edit, we can cover this up. We can all agree to just never speak of this ever again.

• 1:43:35David Sims?

  I'm watching this movie and I do start to think like, okay, this is going to end up being a sort of a legal drama. Where this, you know, world that Richard Taylor's character does not understand, kind of gets dragged into the courtroom. And it's sort of like, a lot of things get like sifted through in the courtroom. That is not what happens. Instead, he loses his court case. Like you see, there's a scene in the courtroom where he's trying essentially to kind of make that happen. And it doesn't really work like, and then the rest of the movie is him like increasingly being like, I am having weird visions that something weird is going to happen.

• 1:44:11Griffin Newman?

  I feel like we landed on this in picnic and hanging rock of saying like, this movie feels so unique in his filmography. It's not really the vibe of the rest of his films. And then we realized he basically has. Four different versions of a reality collapse movie in his career. It's these two back to back. It's fearless, I would argue. And Truman Show is obviously one of the most extreme versions and now has become like a shorthand for a psychological phenomenon of this is fake.

• 1:44:40David Sims?

  You live in a simulation.

• 1:44:41Griffin Newman?

  But, but this movie feels like in its own quiet way, very similar to Truman Show where that like, meeting these guys basically causes the light to fall out of the sky for him. And then he's just hyper fixated on like, tell me what the fuck's going on? Because I've been kind of feeling this.

• 1:44:56David Sims?

  We won't, but you do seem to be a, they use the word mulkrul, right? Like it's sort of like you, you seem to be somehow descended from, you know, a shaman or someone who's connected to the, the dreaming, the, the parallel world, like the whatever, like the sort of like our more deeper understanding of reality.

• 1:45:19Griffin Newman?

  And he still wants to find a way to get them acquitted, but it does feel like it is a secondary concern in the movie to how do I get them? To explain what's going on to me.

• 1:45:30Speaker 04

  Well, he thinks he's helping, which is that classic

• 1:45:33Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 1:45:34Speaker 04

  failed thing where he's like, they tell me they don't want me to do this defense. Everyone tells me not to do this, but I know better and no good comes from it.

• 1:45:43Griffin Newman?

  Don't you also think it's sort of a lie he's telling himself or he's saying, look, you need to tell me so I can help you? Be absolved of this crime, but in reality, he's just like, I need fucking answers.

• 1:45:55Speaker 04

  I do think he means well because he like makes that guy drop off who wanted them to plead guilty. But again, that could just be ego too of like, that that's like a failure.

• 1:46:05Griffin Newman?

  I, the reason I, I noticed the South American thing so much is there's the, the dinner table scene where his wife says, I'm a fourth generation Australian. I've never met an Aboriginal, right? Which is such a like telling statement for someone to identify as a fourth generation Australian and being like, okay, you're like,

• 1:46:26David Sims?

  I think in 1977, you're basically saying like, I mean, a fourth is probably about as far back as you go.

• 1:46:31Griffin Newman?

  Correct.

• 1:46:32David Sims?

  If you're a white person in Australia.

• 1:46:34Griffin Newman?

  Right. And you're just sort of like, I'm a fourth generation Australian, considering the idea that Australia starts when my first relative landed here and that reality before that doesn't exist. And I have never engaged with the indigenous population of the country, the continent that my family has lived in for now over a century. And he is from a different place, but with a very similar energy that he, even if he moved here very early and he does have like a nationalized identity and an Australian accent that I nailed in the introduction, that it's not his home fundamentally in the same sense that she's taking pride in the idea of being a fourth generation Australian, as if that

• 1:47:15Griffin Newman?

  gives her some cultural weight and that it feels like he is never totally settled in this place ever. It's why I thought South African, because I was like, that's kind of an interesting analog.

• 1:47:29David Sims?

  Hmm.

• 1:47:30Griffin Newman?

  But I was wrong about it and JJ will apologize publicly.

• 1:47:35Speaker 04

  Do you guys into folk horror?

• 1:47:36Griffin Newman?

  JJ did a lot and he did the fucking Troy McClure thing. Yeah, we're just gonna fucking fix it in the edit.

• 1:47:42Speaker 04

  Does this count as folk horror?

• 1:47:44Griffin Newman?

  It's close.

• 1:47:45David Sims?

  Yeah. I mean, if it's if you call this movie horror, I don't know what else.

• 1:47:49Speaker 04

  I think that this is too fancy to be like horror per se, but I think it's incredibly effective horror filmmaking.

• 1:47:56David Sims?

  We get media calls it a mystery drama, which I mean, is also a fair attempt. It's a bit of a tough one to nail down.

• 1:48:03Griffin Newman?

  It is.

• 1:48:04David Sims?

  Genre wise.

• 1:48:04Griffin Newman?

  Interesting. You said.

• 1:48:05David Sims?

  Because it's not really a thriller.

• 1:48:06Griffin Newman?

  Too fancy. It's almost like an elevated horror.

• 1:48:10Speaker 04

  But this is an example, I always say of like, I wish every fancy director made a horror movie and Peter Weir has a bunch of movies that almost qualifies existential horror. There's just something about someone who's just very good at their job tackling that or not feeling like they're above those things.

• 1:48:25Griffin Newman?

  It's similar to me to, uh, Synecdoche, New York, coming out of Amy Pascal saying to Spike Jonze and Charlie Kaufman, it'd be interesting to see you guys try to make a horror movie together. And then like two years later, he hands in that script and she's like, I don't know what the fuck this is, but good luck. And this feels like you say, Peter, we're like, try writing your own horror movie. And he was like, here's what upsets me.

• 1:48:46David Sims?

  That's the thing. He's kind of like, I, right. I am troubled by this idea. Is anyone else?

• 1:48:52Griffin Newman?

  Right. This is a movie about me feeling haunted.

• 1:48:55David Sims?

  Kind of. Whereas Picnic and Hanging Rock is sort of the same vibe in a way. It's not his personal, because it's based on a book and it's based on someone else's weird feeling. That one comes out and everyone's like, ooh, this is spooky in a way that's never been like put on movies in film before.

• 1:49:10Speaker 04

  Yeah. Wait, can I tell you guys a horrific thing that happened to me last night?

• 1:49:13Griffin Newman?

  Please.

• 1:49:13Speaker 04

  So I saw the movie Iron Lung.

• 1:49:16David Sims?

  How is that?

• 1:49:17Speaker 04

  Well, let me tell you, when it was over, something really like cosmic and insane happened. So I left, I saw it with my friend Taylor, a fan of the show.

• 1:49:25Griffin Newman?

  Hi Taylor. A great Taylor.

• 1:49:26Speaker 04

  Taylor Levy. And I was leaving the theater and I reached into my pocket, the Village Seven AMC.

• 1:49:32David Sims?

  Absolutely.

• 1:49:33Speaker 04

  On the fifth floor.

• 1:49:34David Sims?

  A mildly haunted theater, I would say.

• 1:49:37Speaker 04

  I left the theater, I'm a couple of blocks away. I reached in my pocket to take out these wireless, uh, soundproof Sony headphones. And in my pocket were two of them.

• 1:49:46David Sims?

  Not getting paid for that. There were two sets of headphones?

• 1:49:48Speaker 04

  Exact same headphones, same brand, same color. These are in multiple colors. And I reached in my pocket and there's two pairs. And I like, my brain almost explodes. There's an actual photo of me reacting in real time. Because I'm like, this seems made up. And the movie is very kind of a, the last 20 minutes of your very mindfuck thing. And there's double headphones in my pocket. I don't own another pair. There's, no one in my household has another pair. And I have two. And I'm like, what the fuck happened? So like, I'm like, what do I do now? So I check and one of them is paired to my phone and one's not. And I'm like, these must be from the theater, but I don't know how. So we walk all the way back to the theater and find some, uh, young, like 20 something girl in the lobby freaking out because she can't find her headphones.

• 1:50:33David Sims?

  Wow.

• 1:50:34Speaker 04

  So what had happened was she walked by and dropped her headphones onto my coat that was on the seat next to me.

• 1:50:40Griffin Newman?

  And then you assume.

• 1:50:41Speaker 04

  And then when I got up to pick up my coat, my headphones are there and I put them in my pocket. And then if I hadn't, I could have gotten all the way home with those and been haunted for the rest of my life about why there was two of the exact same model of headphones in my pocket. So I'm just saying, I feel a lot like a character. I felt like a character in one of these existential.

• 1:50:58David Sims?

  That would also spook me. I still want to know how the movie is.

• 1:51:01Griffin Newman?

  I also want to know.

• 1:51:02David Sims?

  I'm seeing it, uh, tomorrow.

• 1:51:03Griffin Newman?

  I, I want to know if Amy Pascal asked you to write and direct a horror movie. Is that what you'd pitch?

• 1:51:08Speaker 04

  Okay, so what I would say about Iron Lung is Iron Lung has like, Iron Lung has like a really, really dense kind of lore to it that felt very like, oh, well, this is from the video game.

• 1:51:17David Sims?

  Sure.

• 1:51:17Speaker 04

  Um, and it's the storytelling of it is very kind of like outsider art and the way it like tries to explain the exposition. And that's a nice way of saying I didn't understand 70% of the exposition. So afterwards, I was like, well, this must be just directly from the game. So I want to go watch a playthrough and a playthrough of the whole game is 70 minutes and the movie is more than two hours long. And so Taylor watched the 70 minute playthrough and he said, oh, there's no lore in the game. It's just you're in a submarine and you're just like trying to get a fish and sometimes the fish bites you.

• 1:51:46David Sims?

  Oh, that is, that is how life goes.

• 1:51:47Speaker 04

  And it is like, the whole thing is like a huge, very, very complicated future, like Lovecraftian style thing that I didn't understand at all. And I'm like, well, if I'll play the game and I'll get it. And it was not from the game.

• 1:51:59David Sims?

  Okay. So this sounds like a mildly negative review.

• 1:52:04Speaker 04

  I thought it was very interesting. It was like 70 minutes too long.

• 1:52:07David Sims?

  It's quite long. It is, it is the one thing I'm seeing it tomorrow out of total interest in just like.

• 1:52:12Speaker 04

  I'm really glad.

• 1:52:14David Sims?

  And all that. But like, I do, I do see one 25 minutes and I'm like, now hang on a second. Like, wait, your YouTube horror movie should be 85 minutes long. That should be a law.

• 1:52:23Griffin Newman?

  Uh, I just want to say if it's about being in a submarine and trying not to get bitten by a fish, they should have sent fucking Cogman down there because shit wouldn't have gone down like that.

• 1:52:30David Sims?

  We're gonna do another Stitch joke.

• 1:52:32Griffin Newman?

  No, why would I do that? This was a natural tee up for Cogman. The Stitch joke only happens when it's super organic, clean and is met with gales of laughter.

• 1:52:39Speaker 04

  Is there ever a natural tee up for Cogman?

• 1:52:42Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, it just happened.

• 1:52:43Speaker 04

  You know what's gonna happen is someone's.

• 1:52:44Griffin Newman?

  He goes inside a submarine, he beats fish.

• 1:52:46Speaker 04

  Someone's gonna watch my movie now and be like, he thinks he's better than The Last Kiss and Iron Lung. And I'm like, you're right.

• 1:52:52David Sims?

  You're better than The Last Kiss. Although if Goldwyn comes for you, I don't know what to tell you.

• 1:52:56Griffin Newman?

  They're also gonna be like.

• 1:52:57Speaker 04

  That would be a scandal.

• 1:52:58Griffin Newman?

  They're also gonna watch your movie and be like, this is on Hulu. Why didn't he put Stitch in it? He's like in the family.

• 1:53:03Speaker 04

  Well, I do open with a song from Oliver and Company.

• 1:53:05Griffin Newman?

  You do?

• 1:53:06Speaker 04

  So.

• 1:53:07Griffin Newman?

  Dodger kind of the Stitch of his day. Uh, can you tell David about your current movie watching project for 2026?

• 1:53:13David Sims?

  Oh, I'm so interested in whatever this is.

• 1:53:15Griffin Newman?

  Exactly. I'm teeing you up like Cogman.

• 1:53:16David Sims?

  Project.

• 1:53:17Speaker 04

  Wait, which one is it?

• 1:53:18Griffin Newman?

  Your theatrical.

• 1:53:20Speaker 04

  I'm seeing every horror movie that is released at my local AMC in 2026 and so far.

• 1:53:26David Sims?

  Love that.

• 1:53:27Speaker 04

  It has been a choice.

• 1:53:29Griffin Newman?

  January and February are heavy duty months for that channel.

• 1:53:33Speaker 04

  I've seen like six movies already this month. So I'm like an A-list.

• 1:53:36David Sims?

  So you're gonna see Wes.

• 1:53:37Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah, I'm definitely.

• 1:53:38David Sims?

  You're gonna blow it away.

• 1:53:39Speaker 04

  So I just watched the first two, Strangers, Chapter One and Chapter Two, so I can see three and have it make sense.

• 1:53:44Griffin Newman?

  I'm sure it wouldn't make sense, yeah.

• 1:53:46Speaker 04

  Two has a part where a boar chases her around for a while and almost eats her. And then you cut to a flashback of a kid with a baby boar and said, someday I will teach this boar to do amazing things.

• 1:53:58Griffin Newman?

  Is it the same boar from Send Help?

• 1:53:59Speaker 04

  It actually is.

• 1:54:00Griffin Newman?

  Good rap.

• 1:54:01Speaker 04

  It's crazy how they like figured out how to do that between two different studios.

• 1:54:05Griffin Newman?

  I hope Strangers, Chapter Three ends with one of them saying, nice to meet you.

• 1:54:11Griffin Newman?

  Like as a full circle, oh, fuck, they're not strangers anymore now.

• 1:54:14Speaker 04

  One has the exact same opening as Cobra, where there's like, there's 57 deaths every 30 seconds. There's 12 rapes. Like it lists like the exact amount of time and how often crimes happen. I love Renny. It's great.

• 1:54:27Griffin Newman?

  Sims, Ben David and I saw Mercy, AKA Chair of the Movie in 4DX.

• 1:54:31David Sims?

  Are we counting that as horror or was this separate from that?

• 1:54:34Griffin Newman?

  It is a horrifying experience.

• 1:54:36David Sims?

  I saw your Letterboxd.

• 1:54:37Griffin Newman?

  It is one of the most insidious things I've ever seen, even more so than the entire insidious franchise.

• 1:54:41David Sims?

  Right.

• 1:54:42Griffin Newman?

  The opening line of that film, as I quoted my Letterboxd review, is millions had been affected by crime.

• 1:54:47David Sims?

  No, no. I hope a guy in a chair can solve this problem.

• 1:54:50Griffin Newman?

  Like replacing the Dent Act for me, where going to outlaw crime. The opening is just voiceover, random guy about crime. Millions had been affected by crime.

• 1:55:00Speaker 04

  So I saw, I've seen Night Patrol, We Bury the Lead, Primate, Return to Silent Hill, Iron Lung, Send Help, 28 Years, Bone Temple.

• 1:55:09David Sims?

  What was the first two? Night Patrol and Bury the Lead?

• 1:55:12Speaker 04

  Night Patrol, where Justin Long plays a dirty cop vampire. We Bury the Dead with Daisy Ridley.

• 1:55:19David Sims?

  Oh, that one I heard. That one I heard was okay. Sort of like a zombie movie.

• 1:55:23Speaker 04

  It was interesting.

• 1:55:24David Sims?

  Yeah. How was the Justin Long?

• 1:55:26Speaker 04

  It's interesting. It's like, it's, I like, I'm glad I saw it. But Return to Silent Hill, I just got to talk about, which is in Return to Silent Hill.

• 1:55:34Griffin Newman?

  Stan's been talking about it.

• 1:55:36David Sims?

  I love Silent Hill very much. The game.

• 1:55:38Speaker 04

  I do too.

• 1:55:39David Sims?

  And Silent Hill 2, which I know this is specifically an adaptation of the game Silent Hill 2, which is the best of the games. Would we agree?

• 1:55:46Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 1:55:47David Sims?

  Yeah. I love Kristoff Gans's film Silent Hill. I think it is the best video game movie ever made.

• 1:55:52Speaker 04

  I think that if you make one change, it is a 10 out of 10 movie.

• 1:55:56David Sims?

  The second Silent Hill film, I believe it's called Revelation, is very poopy and bad.

• 1:56:00Speaker 04

  Did not see it.

• 1:56:01David Sims?

  It's no good.

• 1:56:02Griffin Newman?

  Adelie Clements.

• 1:56:02David Sims?

  Sad if you say so.

• 1:56:04Griffin Newman?

  Yep.

• 1:56:05David Sims?

  So then Kristoff Ganz is announced, just making this return to Silent Hill.

• 1:56:09Speaker 04

  Now, I haven't, yeah.

• 1:56:10David Sims?

  I haven't heard much from Kristoff recently, but I'm still kind of.

• 1:56:13Griffin Newman?

  First filming quite a lot.

• 1:56:15David Sims?

  But I'm still like, hey, he understood the franchise in a way like, I'm excited. The movie comes out, my letterbox starts flashing half stars. Like I'm seeing a lot of.

• 1:56:24Griffin Newman?

  You're getting like, very, it's on your phone.

• 1:56:26David Sims?

  I've seen a couple of people push against this trend. Where do you fall on this? I haven't seen it yet.

• 1:56:32Speaker 04

  I just have two things to say about it. I'm really glad I saw it. I think that there's some really cool craft and stuff in it. I just have two issues in it. Someone goes by a marquee that has Jacob's ladder on it. And I think fundamentally, it'd be like if you were at McDonald's and they had like an advertisement for the world's best burger on the wall.

• 1:56:54David Sims?

  Right, right.

• 1:56:54Speaker 04

  While you're eating a Big Mac.

• 1:56:55David Sims?

  Because it means Silent Hill is very inspired by.

• 1:56:57Griffin Newman?

  It's like an asshole move to be like, remember that other movie?

• 1:57:01Speaker 04

  Yeah, but don't remind me of a movie.

• 1:57:03David Sims?

  Yeah, oh, terrible idea.

• 1:57:04Speaker 04

  That I just have to think like, oh, God, I wish I want to see that in the theater. And then the other one was, the whole time I'm like, who is this lead guy? And I didn't realize he was the warhorse.

• 1:57:13Griffin Newman?

  Jeremy Irvine.

• 1:57:14Speaker 04

  Yeah, and I was like, and that was, that's always like an interesting thing for me when you're like.

• 1:57:18Griffin Newman?

  Me neither. Let's correct. He was the war boy. Owner of the warhorse.

• 1:57:24Speaker 04

  I thought it was very interesting. The first one, the issue is they keep cutting outside of Silent Hill to Sean Bean.

• 1:57:31David Sims?

  There you do. I know, and that was, that was literally a studio note of there are no men in this movie.

• 1:57:34Speaker 04

  But it's like, if you're watching.

• 1:57:35David Sims?

  One of the funniest thing I've ever heard.

• 1:57:37Speaker 04

  Like in Wizard of Oz, you can't cut to Kansas because then that makes it feel like these things exist silently.

• 1:57:42David Sims?

  David, I agree with you that that's a flaw with that movie. I just feel like that movie captures the atmosphere of a video game.

• 1:57:49Speaker 04

  No, I'm saying if it didn't have that, I would defend everything in the movie.

• 1:57:52David Sims?

  Exactly, right.

• 1:57:52Speaker 04

  I would defend everything.

• 1:57:54David Sims?

  We all have our flaws, except for one guy.

• 1:57:56Speaker 04

  The Brotherhood of the Wolf, though, I think is perfect.

• 1:57:59David Sims?

  That's a cool movie. I mean, I haven't seen it since I was a teenager, but.

• 1:58:02Griffin Newman?

  I haven't seen Bury the Dead, but I really liked that Daisy Ridley horror movie from last year. The one where I read the news story that she was secretly married.

• 1:58:13David Sims?

  That was good.

• 1:58:14Speaker 04

  I gotta tell you.

• 1:58:15David Sims?

  That was good.

• 1:58:16Speaker 04

  That zagged.

• 1:58:17David Sims?

  That buried the Stitch joke and I'm feeling great.

• 1:58:20Griffin Newman?

  Am I back? Is Griffin funny again? Christopher Hitchens has to rise from the grave to write a new op ed piece.

• 1:58:26David Sims?

  Griffin is funny.

• 1:58:28Griffin Newman?

  Question mark?

• 1:58:40David Sims?

  The last wave, guys, please try to help me understand what happens at the end of this movie. I will read to you like what the synopsis says happens.

• 1:58:52David Sims?

  After meeting with the shaman of Lee's tribe and learning more about Aboriginal practices and the concept of green dream time is a parallel world of existence. Burton comes to believe that his dreams and heavy dreams of strange heavy rain bode the signs of a coming apocalypse. He senses danger. He makes his wife and kids leave town. There's a crazy flood. And then he goes into subterranean tunnels under the city, which lead to a sacred ritual site. And he sees a lot of paintings that basically confirm the dreams he'd been having. Then he leaves and sees a big wave.

• 1:59:23Griffin Newman?

  You're forgetting also, first of all, beautiful reading.

• 1:59:25David Sims?

  Thank you.

• 1:59:25Griffin Newman?

  You're forgetting that he also, in a moment that very much feels like the, the weird inciting incident story he shares about having the premonition of the head and then stealing it.

• 1:59:37David Sims?

  Oh, right, right.

• 1:59:38Griffin Newman?

  From the cave, he finds a mask that looks exactly like his own face.

• 1:59:42David Sims?

  Yeah, which, you know, would throw anyone off a little bit.

• 1:59:44Griffin Newman?

  Would throw me quite off my game.

• 1:59:46Speaker 03

  They keep calling him the Mokurul.

• 1:59:48Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:59:49Speaker 03

  Which is a race, a separate race or an ancestry that comes from a different race. It's hard. Again, it's very vague, hard to define.

• 2:00:01Speaker 04

  I think they're purposely not descriptive. There's like priests on the wall who warned about the wave last time. So they're basically implying he's like one of those priests who did it on the last cycle?

• 2:00:13David Sims?

  Sure.

• 2:00:13Griffin Newman?

  Yes, it's, it's.

• 2:00:15David Sims?

  He's a descendant of these people in some way.

• 2:00:17Griffin Newman?

  An interpreter of premonitions, a warner, not a warner brother, one who can warn. But, but yes, there's, I mean, that scene I think is incredible where there's sort of the stare down interrogation of who are you? Who are you? And it uses Richard Chamberlain's kind of like very studied stillness to great effect. Because it's like a Meisner exercise where they just keep asking him, who are you? Who are you? Until he kind of breaks down and then they ask like, are you Mokuru? And he nods. And it's, he's saying yes to something he doesn't even understand, but he understands that he is something beyond his own awareness of existence. That there's something else happening through him.

• 2:01:02David Sims?

  Absolument.

• 2:01:03Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 2:01:03Speaker 04

  David, how upset were you that there was no subway when they got on the tunnel?

• 2:01:06Griffin Newman?

  Great question.

• 2:01:07David Sims?

  You know, I actually was not thinking about that because I actually, a good gag and I love the subway and we can talk about it for a second if you want, because I know you, you love my love of the subway.

• 2:01:16Speaker 04

  It's my favorite thing about the podcast.

• 2:01:17David Sims?

  Eighty percent of the phone exchanges we have, like text or DM or whatever about the subway.

• 2:01:23Griffin Newman?

  Also, like, you know, a new, a new son of New York City.

• 2:01:27David Sims?

  Right.

• 2:01:28Griffin Newman?

  You're in the early days of your love affair of the subway.

• 2:01:30Speaker 04

  It's the 40X in the subway. That's what made me.

• 2:01:33Griffin Newman?

  Very similar, very similar. This is what I haven't been able to convey to David. Very similar. You're usually surrounded by people who feel a little dangerous.

• 2:01:41David Sims?

  I really.

• 2:01:41Griffin Newman?

  At the very least unhinged.

• 2:01:43David Sims?

  I really love the tunnel stuff in this movie. I found it so cool and evocative. I loved how it looked. I loved how spooky and like, you know, interesting it was.

• 2:01:52Speaker 03

  There's so many different steps to get down into that tunnel.

• 2:01:56David Sims?

  Right. I loved how implausible it was, right? Where you're like, there's this much like, but like, I didn't care at all. And then he like emerges out of a drainpipe and you're like back in like seeing the wave. Um, but yeah, it would have been cool to see a subway.

• 2:02:09Speaker 03

  We skipped my favorite part.

• 2:02:10David Sims?

  That's right.

• 2:02:11Griffin Newman?

  Hey, we're skipping around.

• 2:02:12David Sims?

  Yeah, it's all good.

• 2:02:13Speaker 04

  So the thing that I love so much when it happens in a movie is like when at the end of the second act, someone who's known you your whole life says like two sentences that they've never told you before, that suddenly reframes everything where he's like, well, don't you remember how when you were a kid, you had a bunch of nightmares and they ended up being exactly how your mom died?

• 2:02:33Griffin Newman?

  That you were afraid of the cab driver coming to take you away, that you always talked about the cab driver.

• 2:02:38Speaker 04

  It's one of those things where it always works to me when like a character or someone just shows up is like, but don't you remember this thing? And they go, oh my God. And then suddenly the entire movie makes sense. It's like, you could have told him before, but it's perfect that you told him now for dramatic purposes.

• 2:02:53Griffin Newman?

  People telling David Dunn about his drowning.

• 2:02:55Speaker 04

  Yes, that's exactly right.

• 2:02:57Griffin Newman?

  There is a little bit of a David Dunn thing in this movie of like, oh, uh, maybe it wasn't murder. Maybe it was just, um, puddle drowning.

• 2:03:04Speaker 04

  Oh, I was gonna make the same fucking joke. Well done. I was gonna say it's all about puddle drowning.

• 2:03:09Griffin Newman?

  We forgot to go see Unbreakable last night. Unbreakable was playing last night.

• 2:03:12David Sims?

  It was at the Nighthawk there.

• 2:03:12Griffin Newman?

  Excuse me. Unbreakable!

• 2:03:15David Sims?

  Thank you.

• 2:03:16Speaker 04

  I saw Die Hard with a Vengeance, uh, at the Nighthawk and I took the same train.

• 2:03:21Griffin Newman?

  We did. I was there.

• 2:03:22David Sims?

  Hey.

• 2:03:23Speaker 04

  Wait, oh no, we saw Die Hard Two. No, Die Hard, we saw the first Die Hard. I saw Die Hard with a Vengeance.

• 2:03:28Griffin Newman?

  Fucking JJ. Fucking JJ. That's insane.

• 2:03:31Speaker 04

  I took the train that the bomb is on to go see it at Nighthawk.

• 2:03:35David Sims?

  The three train?

• 2:03:36Speaker 04

  That was like a religious experience where I realized I'm like, I, that's the train I was on.

• 2:03:40Griffin Newman?

  Which train is it?

• 2:03:41Speaker 04

  I think it's, it's the two or the three.

• 2:03:42Griffin Newman?

  It's the two or the three. That is the greatest New York movie of all time. I think we can all agree.

• 2:03:45David Sims?

  You know what I call the three train?

• 2:03:47Griffin Newman?

  First round draft pick, what?

• 2:03:48David Sims?

  The, the Red Rocket.

• 2:03:50Griffin Newman?

  I love that.

• 2:03:51David Sims?

  Yep. And like anytime I'm going home on the three, I text my wife, like I'm on the Red Rocket and she knows what I mean.

• 2:03:56Griffin Newman?

  Do you have nicknames for other trains?

• 2:03:57David Sims?

  Yes, some, not all. The Lonely F, of course. I call the F the Lonely F because it's so often separated from its, uh, trackmates. I call, uh, the four, the queen of the I R T because she is the queen of the I R T. Uh, I can think of others. Those are the big ones.

• 2:04:12Griffin Newman?

  This feels like David, like sharing diary entries from, like this is, I feel like the most personal you have ever gotten on the podcast.

• 2:04:18David Sims?

  Can I tell you something else? Unrelated. I was just looking at what's coming up on Nighthawk. You reminded me. Showed my daughter the trailer for Goat, the Steph Curry Goat Basketball Player movie.

• 2:04:27Griffin Newman?

  As I've said many times, my little cousin George's most anticipated movie of 2026, he's been asking about it for six months. When is Goat coming out?

• 2:04:35David Sims?

  She, she was, uh, pretty intrigued. She was like, I might want to. You wore this goat.

• 2:04:40Griffin Newman?

  We were texting our mutual friend Sean Fantasy was having a panic about how to schedule programming for the February on Big Picture because of the lack of big releases outside of Wuthering Heights. And we were just like, yeah, it feels like nothing's really gonna hit between like Wuthering Heights and Mario and Project Hail Mary. And I was like, look out for fucking goat.

• 2:05:00David Sims?

  Goat might just sink an easy 35 mil.

• 2:05:02Griffin Newman?

  Cause Zootopia's hanging in there so hard because nothing's really giving it a run for its money. Zootopia's still fucking like number three at the box office at the time we're recording this?

• 2:05:12David Sims?

  Uh, maybe four.

• 2:05:13Speaker 04

  Sean's not gonna do an episode about Strangers, Chapter Three?

• 2:05:17Griffin Newman?

  Well, he is going to break off and do an entire new podcast just about the Stranger Saga.

• 2:05:22David Sims?

  Well, he's gonna record a Strangers episode, but he has to do it by breaking into someone's house that he's never been there before.

• 2:05:28Griffin Newman?

  Do you know what, Ben David? Actually, you're joking, but they had an open slot where they haven't been able to decide what to do and they let people vote on the four ideas. And one of the four ideas was Amanda, Sean movie swap. Sean has to watch Mamma Mia for the first time. Amanda has to watch the original Strangers for the first time. There is a chance that episode will have come out by the time people are listening to this. Goat might be about to shatter the backboard.

• 2:05:52David Sims?

  We love it. Uh, last wave, guys. What else happens?

• 2:05:55Speaker 04

  The thing about taking a train to see a movie where you just get off the train and walk right into a theater and you don't have to park your car, that was probably the biggest reason why I was like, I might stay here for a bit.

• 2:06:07Speaker 03

  Courtroom scene. What silly friggin' wigs. What's going on?

• 2:06:13Griffin Newman?

  Ben asked if we had remembered to bring our barrister wigs and embarrassingly, all four of us left them at home.

• 2:06:18David Sims?

  Uh, yes. Uh, do you? Yeah, the barristers in the UK, I think recently actually maybe are now not required to wear wigs anymore. I think that, I think that's like, I'm actually.

• 2:06:29Speaker 03

  Do they still have to go hrum hrum?

• 2:06:33Griffin Newman?

  Here's my interpretation of the ending and I cannot get into deeply, but just sort of in larger strokes, how I took the ending on a narrative level. The whole movie is the Aboriginals warning him not to go deeper into this, right? And just being like, this is not for you. You cannot understand exist in your world. And they all feel somewhat encumbered by the tension between the natural wavelength that they feel like they engage with reality and this sort of like Western colonial structure placed on top of them that they have to conform to, to some degree, or at least live in conscious like parallel with, right?

• 2:07:15Griffin Newman?

  And the end of the movie is him literally just like going down the fucking rabbit hole, going so deep down the tunnel, which presents it only with a series of new questions that make no sense to him. And then he walks out and he sees a fucking wave and you don't know if it is in fact-

• 2:07:30David Sims?

  A dream, something is happening.

• 2:07:32Griffin Newman?

  Is this a premonition? Is this the thing the premonitions were hinting at? But it speaks more to like, he has now gone through the tunnel and on the other side and he cannot return to the other world. And if he does, he is fully now exited the, the acceptance of that reality. He will become like a stranger in the land that he used to live in.

• 2:07:51David Sims?

  Again, I know very little about the sort of Australian Aboriginal mythology of the dreaming or dream time, but I believe if you read more and more about it, I really don't want to try and like some things like this up on this podcast. But I think that sort of barrier between what is real, what is imagined, or what is real, what is being dreamed is, is sort of sifted through in an interesting way in that mythology. That's all. I don't really know much.

• 2:08:18Speaker 04

  The question is, do they all know that the wave is coming and they just don't want him to have to deal with that stark reality?

• 2:08:25David Sims?

  Cause like- Possibly. I mean, it's like, what are you going to do?

• 2:08:28Speaker 03

  And he also is a figure-

• 2:08:29David Sims?

  Build a wall?

• 2:08:30Speaker 03

  Where because of his ancestral connection, that people like him show up ahead of an apocalyptic event.

• 2:08:39Griffin Newman?

  Right. They're sort of-

• 2:08:42David Sims?

  They're like, yeah, you being here means it's happening.

• 2:08:44Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 2:08:44Speaker 03

  It's a sign.

• 2:08:45Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 2:08:45Speaker 04

  So like Stitch.

• 2:08:47Griffin Newman?

  Quite like Stitch. If Stitch shows up, you know, the box office is about to be rocked.

• 2:08:53David Sims?

  Yeah, I just, what else do people want to say about this? I can tell you that when the film came out, let me tell you that, the reception and so on and so forth, it came out sort of Christmas time in 77 in Australia. It was like a hit and it did okay on the Australian art house, the American art house circuit. But like, nothing like Picnic at Hanging Rock where like huge attention and a fair amount of money. I think more just like a modest hit. We're basically in retrospect is like, I haven't checked in on that movie. Like, he's like, I don't feel bad about it. He's like, yeah, it did pretty good. I haven't looked at it in a long time.

• 2:09:32David Sims?

  In 2012, uh, he sort of was, yeah, he's similarly kind of reflective about it. Like, he calls it a graduation film. You know, it's kind of like him getting closer to the next stage of his career. But yeah, he doesn't, he doesn't reflect on this movie as a failure or as like a special gem.

• 2:09:54Griffin Newman?

  But it does speak to sort of, uh, how weirdly and like out of order and almost in one lump sum, these movies are seen by Hollywood and America, uh, that this is the one that doesn't really function as any sort of stepping stone in his career in a clear way. He also said that like, when he was trying to get money from like the Australian Film Fund, so everyone was really against the idea of him trying to do a contemporary, serious film. It was like contemporary comedy, period drama. Yeah.

• 2:10:29Speaker 04

  But when you get to the end of Picnic at Hanging Rock, which I just watched the other day because I was trying to watch these in order, you feel like this guy is a god of doing period. And Glibly, I feel the same way where it's like, it's funny that he's very contemporary and very, very effective at it. And also very effective at doing movies that feel like you're time traveling.

• 2:10:48David Sims?

  But I never, right. He never picked a lane there. He would sort of switch between them.

• 2:10:52Griffin Newman?

  I, I've yet to watch Glibly. I'm excited to watch it the night before I record. So I have proper time to process it Saturday and day, but that feels like a more obvious kind of, okay, I'm ready to make my version of some size of epic now. And also, he like, for the first time, identifies an A-list leading man at the center of his movie.

• 2:11:13Speaker 04

  I think Witness feels a little bit like a combo of the two in a weird way because it, the fish out of water thing functionally feels like.

• 2:11:22David Sims?

  Yeah, no, Witness has some last wave in it.

• 2:11:24Speaker 04

  And then it's like very, very modern when he's doing the cop stuff. And when he's there, it almost feels like one of his period movies, just by virtue of Amish culture.

• 2:11:33David Sims?

  But Witness is interesting because it's about someone sort of falling in love with a culture that's not his own, learning about it, somewhat getting accepted. This is not that. But you know, like this is about him trying to understand a culture, but it's not about them being like, you know what? You get it.

• 2:11:49Speaker 03

  Like, at the end, he kills the shaman.

• 2:11:51David Sims?

  Yeah, well, the shaman is, is, is being quite scary.

• 2:11:54Speaker 03

  I mean, but he's also.

• 2:11:55Speaker 04

  But he's also trying to steal stuff.

• 2:11:56Speaker 03

  Taking all the relics. Yeah, he's, he's the one who's in the wrong.

• 2:12:00David Sims?

  I, I would say that he's, he's made a few mistakes. Yes.

• 2:12:04Griffin Newman?

  Uh, but, but this is the thing in, in talk about these movies, and we've recorded quite a few of the ones to come after this. Uh, they're all sort of about the friction between cultures and realities placed very close together in one way or another. That's like really a through line through his work.

• 2:12:22David Sims?

  Yeah. Uh, which is very, very interesting. And it's a very interesting, evocative movie. I have a disc. What, what disc do I have it on?

• 2:12:29Griffin Newman?

  I got the, the last, uh, the Umbrella Last Wave, the 4K. Is that what you got? There's a Criterion?

• 2:12:35David Sims?

  I think that's exactly.

• 2:12:35Griffin Newman?

  But they haven't put it out since DVD.

• 2:12:37David Sims?

  Yeah, right. I did not buy the Criterion DVD.

• 2:12:39Speaker 04

  Wait, there's a 4K and I didn't know it?

• 2:12:43Griffin Newman?

  My friend.

• 2:12:43Speaker 04

  I, I'm gonna go walk into traffic.

• 2:12:46Griffin Newman?

  The fine folks at Umbrella Entertainment.

• 2:12:48David Sims?

  They're good guys, which is Australian company, right?

• 2:12:51Griffin Newman?

  Correct. Yeah. Yes. I, our, our buddy Alex Ross Perry was the first to visit the Umbrella Closet.

• 2:12:56David Sims?

  He went to their, right, to their.

• 2:12:58Griffin Newman?

  He has become the inaugural attendee of the Umbrella Closet, which basically they did not think of even presenting. As a Mecca.

• 2:13:07Speaker 04

  They did the Super Mario Brothers gigantic set, which is movie heaven.

• 2:13:12Griffin Newman?

  Do you have that box, David?

• 2:13:14David Sims?

  Uh, which box?

• 2:13:15Griffin Newman?

  The Super Mario Umbrella set.

• 2:13:16Speaker 04

  Looks as big as like an encyclopedia.

• 2:13:18David Sims?

  No.

• 2:13:19Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, it's like the size of a car.

• 2:13:20David Sims?

  I think I have this, I think Arrow put out a Super Mario disc, maybe?

• 2:13:25Speaker 04

  Well, this one is like this big and it comes with, it's like ninety discs.

• 2:13:30Griffin Newman?

  The shooting script, but also an original.

• 2:13:32Speaker 04

  And it has like a book of art.

• 2:13:34Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 2:13:34Speaker 04

  It's got so much stuff.

• 2:13:36David Sims?

  Yeah, it sounds a little much as much as I I enjoy, of course.

• 2:13:40Speaker 04

  My review was it was not enough.

• 2:13:42Griffin Newman?

  It includes the King James Bible.

• 2:13:47David Sims?

  And then there's a post it on the Bible saying Mario is better than this.

• 2:13:50Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, it also, it comes with a chicken dinner.

• 2:13:52David Sims?

  Sounds good.

• 2:13:53Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:13:53Speaker 04

  The only time I've gone back.

• 2:13:55David Sims?

  A Yoshi dinner.

• 2:13:55Speaker 04

  Since moving here.

• 2:13:57Griffin Newman?

  Yoshi's gonna fucking rule the box office this year. He's so lucky that Stitch is sitting this one out.

• 2:14:02David Sims?

  What? Who's voicing him?

• 2:14:03Griffin Newman?

  I don't think they've announced anybody.

• 2:14:04Speaker 04

  I saw a joke post that I thought was real for about two minutes where they said it was Kendrick Lamar. Uh, and, uh, but it's nothing.

• 2:14:11David Sims?

  Will he just like say Yoshi?

• 2:14:12Griffin Newman?

  I feel in the trailer, he just says like, yeah.

• 2:14:15Speaker 04

  But Benny, the Safdie voice casting is still one of the wildest choices ever.

• 2:14:20David Sims?

  I think that really, I was watching a trailer, I was yawning a little bit and I was like, I wonder who's playing Baby Bowser? What do I care? And then when they said Benny Safdie, I was like, um, you mildly got me with that one.

• 2:14:30Griffin Newman?

  It was, it was the Nintendo Direct thing, right?

• 2:14:32David Sims?

  Yeah, right, right, right.

• 2:14:33Griffin Newman?

  And I'm watching it and they play the trailer first and I hear the voice and I turn to my girlfriend and I go, God fucking damn it. Adam Devine, they cast Adam Devine in another animated movie because he's like, I'm Bowser Jr.

• 2:14:45David Sims?

  This camp.

• 2:14:45Griffin Newman?

  I'm gonna get you plumbers. And I was like, it's fucking Adam Devine. Adam Devine gets another one off the fucking backboard and then it cuts back to like Miyamoto. And he's like, we are proud to announce that of course Bowser Jr. Will be played by Benny Safdie. And they just flash Benny Safdie's headshot and I, I truly was doubled over laughter.

• 2:15:04David Sims?

  It was so funny.

• 2:15:05Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, of course.

• 2:15:06David Sims?

  Of course, the only choice.

• 2:15:08Griffin Newman?

  Who else but the director of The Smashing Machine? No one else could bring Bowser Jr. To life. We've all been waiting for it. It's obvious. It's like fucking John Goodman playing Fred Flintstone. The culture has waited for this moment.

• 2:15:19Speaker 04

  When I went, I went back to LA after being gone for a very long time and I was trying to see a bunch of friends at the same time because I was there for a short amount of time. So I invited everybody to go see Super Mario Brothers at NewBev because they're playing it for like a kid's matinee and uh.

• 2:15:33Griffin Newman?

  Hoskins not Pratt.

• 2:15:35Speaker 04

  Oh, I mean, yes, Hoskins. And so it was one of those things where someone's like, okay, how much do I really want to see this guy? And uh, somehow so like 20 people went. I don't know if they, I think that I'd say 80% didn't enjoy it as much as I did.

• 2:15:46Griffin Newman?

  It's a fascinating movie.

• 2:15:47David Sims?

  I really like the look of that movie. I cannot, you know, defend every single story decision that it makes, but I just love how it looks.

• 2:15:54Griffin Newman?

  Our buddy Patrick.

• 2:15:55David Sims?

  It was a big movie for me.

• 2:15:56Griffin Newman?

  A really good video of the contrast of the Illumination movie, which is so obsessed with being faithful to the games.

• 2:16:02David Sims?

  It's, it's the way our culture has.

• 2:16:04Griffin Newman?

  And has nothing else going on. It's literally just pointing at things from the games. And then the Mario Brothers Hoskins movie is like, what if we took a different fucking script we wrote?

• 2:16:13David Sims?

  I mean.

• 2:16:13Griffin Newman?

  And map the character names onto it and you're like.

• 2:16:16David Sims?

  I miss it. I miss that era where Hollywood's like, it's not like we're gonna make a real fucking Mario Brothers movie. Embarrassing. That would suck. Let's shit on it with this insane thing anyway.

• 2:16:26Griffin Newman?

  Can Hollywood come back around to having complete contempt for all IP?

• 2:16:30David Sims?

  I agree. Rather than being like, and now you will meet the Blue Ranger. I'm like, no, you should be humiliated that I have to meet the Blue Ranger.

• 2:16:38Griffin Newman?

  The horseshoe has come all the way around. I'm tired of Hollywood being like, do you like this? We made this just for you. Do you like it? I want them to be like, fuck you, you piece of shit. Here's your fucking trough.

• 2:16:47David Sims?

  The wave that's coming of video game movies.

• 2:16:49Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:16:50David Sims?

  That they're all just gonna be like.

• 2:16:51Griffin Newman?

  They're gonna be hyper.

• 2:16:52David Sims?

  Easter egg movies.

• 2:16:53Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:16:54David Sims?

  Ugh.

• 2:16:55Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:16:56Speaker 04

  I, I, I do miss the era of someone being like, this fucking sucks. Can you come up with something? Um, you know, and usually it was stuff that was actually really cool, but that you can, you end up with something very interesting when someone has total contempt.

• 2:17:10David Sims?

  I, you, and as a kid, I was still like, they made a Mario movie. I'm happy.

• 2:17:16Griffin Newman?

  I was thrilled.

• 2:17:17David Sims?

  He's got a little red hat on. Like, that's all I need.

• 2:17:19Griffin Newman?

  Four things happen in this movie that vaguely resemble things from the game.

• 2:17:23David Sims?

  Very.

• 2:17:23Griffin Newman?

  What complaint could anyone have?

• 2:17:25David Sims?

  Miyamoto is like, that brought great shame to our company. Like, he was definitely.

• 2:17:28Speaker 04

  Not like, oh, it was interesting.

• 2:17:31Griffin Newman?

  But like, there's like a fucking street musician busker who's a human dude with a harmonica around his neck and a guitar named Toad. And I like do the fucking Leo point to my brother and I'm like, it's Toad. They got Toad on screen. And I'm like, that's not fucking Toad.

• 2:17:48Speaker 04

  I've been trying to.

• 2:17:48Griffin Newman?

  Then they turn him into a dinosaur headed motherfucker. They got Toad.

• 2:17:53Speaker 04

  He's the best part in the movie.

• 2:17:55Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, he rules.

• 2:17:56Speaker 04

  The Bob Arm is my best part. Forever, but I've been trying to make a bad dudes movie for like 15 years. So I hope someday a trend goes in that direction is all I care about.

• 2:18:05David Sims?

  So I'm going to play the box office game now.

• 2:18:08Griffin Newman?

  Is there anything else you want to say about the last wave or your general weird thoughts, Ben David?

• 2:18:13Speaker 04

  I genuinely feel like I've said way too much.

• 2:18:15David Sims?

  You're crazy. You have not talked enough.

• 2:18:17Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 2:18:18David Sims?

  You should be humiliated by how little you've talked. This film.

• 2:18:21Speaker 03

  Oh, wait, I just have one final thing I want to say.

• 2:18:22Griffin Newman?

  Sure.

• 2:18:23Speaker 03

  Cue sounds of rain splashing waves, water generally.

• 2:18:27Griffin Newman?

  Cool. And also place it in like 20 times up until this point, like anytime after a joke of mine fell flat, put the waves in. So it sounds like.

• 2:18:35Speaker 03

  Toilet flushing?

• 2:18:35Griffin Newman?

  No, like a triumphant wave.

• 2:18:38Speaker 04

  I have something to say about that, which is that I have a noise machine that plays rain sounds. Whenever I play it when I go to sleep and I've had many days where I forgot to turn it off. So now like the sound of rain becomes this thing that my brain kind of cancels out as if it's part of just the sound mix of my life. And that's only been something that's happened like in the recent year or so. And it's the first time I've revisited the movie since then.

• 2:19:03Griffin Newman?

  Was it, were you catching feelings?

• 2:19:05Speaker 04

  It was a very odd kind of disconnect where it felt like I was watching a movie and had left my rain sleep machine thing on. So I'm really glad I shared that.

• 2:19:16Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, no, it was really good. Thank you.

• 2:19:18David Sims?

  This film came out in America, it says in New York City, so in some small way. In basically Christmas time, December 19th of 1978.

• 2:19:30Griffin Newman?

  Okay, so still even before picnic.

• 2:19:33David Sims?

  So exactly. So what would have been at the box office on this random weekend?

• 2:19:37Griffin Newman?

  Okay, December 1978.

• 2:19:38David Sims?

  Number one is a gigantic smash hit movie that we have covered on our Patreon.

• 2:19:42Speaker 04

  Lilo and Stitch.

• 2:19:43David Sims?

  That is incorrect. Good guess, though.

• 2:19:46Griffin Newman?

  We've covered it on our Patreon.

• 2:19:48David Sims?

  We sure.

• 2:19:49Griffin Newman?

  It's a gigantic smash hit.

• 2:19:51David Sims?

  It sure is.

• 2:19:52Griffin Newman?

  Is it a re-release of Star Wars?

• 2:19:53David Sims?

  No, it is not.

• 2:19:54Griffin Newman?

  No, uh, seventy-eight, seventy-eight, seventy-eight.

• 2:19:57David Sims?

  I believe if it wasn't the biggest movie of seventy-eight, it was one of the biggest.

• 2:20:01Griffin Newman?

  Uh, biggest movie seventy-eight, it's not, uh, oh, it's, uh, Superman, the movie.

• 2:20:08David Sims?

  Superman. Richard Donner Superman.

• 2:20:12Griffin Newman?

  The movie.

• 2:20:12David Sims?

  You a fan of that one, Ben David?

• 2:20:14Speaker 04

  I haven't seen it. What is that one? Is it?

• 2:20:16Griffin Newman?

  It's about a man who is super.

• 2:20:18David Sims?

  He sure is.

• 2:20:19Griffin Newman?

  Uh, they sent him to Earth to teach us that boys can be big and strong and proud and shouldn't be ashamed.

• 2:20:25Speaker 04

  I actually watched the movies while you guys were covering it on Patreon and, um, I, I, uh, I think they're pretty great. I, the, the one movie that I should never revisit, I think is two, because two, I thought was literally the best movie ever made when I was a kid.

• 2:20:41David Sims?

  It's a good movie when you're a kid.

• 2:20:42Speaker 04

  It is great. It is great. It is great.

• 2:20:44Griffin Newman?

  It's kid crap.

• 2:20:45Speaker 04

  I, I wish I could just live in that kid memory where like every part of it felt like the coolest thing I'd ever seen.

• 2:20:50David Sims?

  Well, you and everyone in our generation, apparently, like, you know, I'm saying a lot of people just wish they were twelve forever. Um, number two at the box office is.

• 2:20:59Griffin Newman?

  For the Super Mario Galaxy movie.

• 2:21:02David Sims?

  Is, um, it's an interesting one. It's a sequel to a gigantic film.

• 2:21:09Griffin Newman?

  It's a sequel to a gigantic film, but this film is less gigantic.

• 2:21:12David Sims?

  Uh, oh, yes. And it is, I would say, pretty forgotten. It's almost forgotten that this movie exists at all.

• 2:21:19Griffin Newman?

  Is it the Sting two?

• 2:21:20David Sims?

  No, but that is the vibe.

• 2:21:22Griffin Newman?

  That's the vibe.

• 2:21:23David Sims?

  It is the sequel to like a box office sensation that won, uh, it was nominated for best picture. It was like a big cultural movie.

• 2:21:29Griffin Newman?

  Shoot your guys.

• 2:21:30Speaker 04

  Is it, uh, which, uh, Sundance and Cassie, the early years?

• 2:21:33David Sims?

  No, it is not. Again, you're, you know, you're.

• 2:21:36Griffin Newman?

  But it's a to and done. This fucking ends the thing forever.

• 2:21:39David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 2:21:40Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:21:40David Sims?

  But I mean, like, there was no sequel to be made of the first movie.

• 2:21:44Griffin Newman?

  It was a bad idea.

• 2:21:44David Sims?

  This is happening eight years later.

• 2:21:46Griffin Newman?

  Oh, is it the love story sequel?

• 2:21:47David Sims?

  Correct. And what is that called?

• 2:21:49Griffin Newman?

  Ryan's story?

• 2:21:50David Sims?

  You're close.

• 2:21:50Griffin Newman?

  Ryan O'Neal's the actor.

• 2:21:52David Sims?

  Ryan, that's right.

• 2:21:52Griffin Newman?

  The character's name is.

• 2:21:54David Sims?

  Different movie.

• 2:21:55Griffin Newman?

  David?

• 2:21:56David Sims?

  Yes.

• 2:21:57Griffin Newman?

  No, I was guessing.

• 2:21:57David Sims?

  The character's name is Oliver.

• 2:21:59Griffin Newman?

  Oliver's story.

• 2:22:00David Sims?

  The film is called Oliver's Story.

• 2:22:02Griffin Newman?

  He falls in love with Buckets Bergen, right?

• 2:22:03David Sims?

  He falls in love with Candace Bergen and of course, the tagline was, "It takes someone very special to help you forget someone very special." Like, who's like, yeah, no, yeah, who'd he fuck later? You know, like, like, who watches Love Story and then comes out being like, "I sure want to know who he later marries."

• 2:22:21Griffin Newman?

  Like fucking successful date nights across America, couples walk out wiping away their tears and they're like, "I just wish I could see him get over her."

• 2:22:28David Sims?

  He was so young. I hope he remar- I'm like, I'm sure he will.

• 2:22:31Griffin Newman?

  The fucking hell was I talking about?

• 2:22:33Speaker 04

  Well, what's more difficult? What's more difficult, doing a story to Love Story or following up the tagline of the original?

• 2:22:38David Sims?

  I know. The, the tagline writer was like, "All right, we want to be very respectful to the dearly departed Al McGraw."

• 2:22:44Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 2:22:46David Sims?

  I recently watched Love Story.

• 2:22:47Griffin Newman?

  You've watched this for the first time?

• 2:22:48David Sims?

  Which I had never seen. Obviously, that is a movie that was a colossal phenomenon that I would say, close to forgotten now.

• 2:22:54Griffin Newman?

  It is the kind of movie you and I bring up where we're like, these movies that were so big in their day that no one talks about anymore and feel like such a product of their time. And you and I will be like, "Is that secretly awesome?" If we throw that on tomorrow?

• 2:23:05David Sims?

  Throw it on, let me tell you, no.

• 2:23:07Griffin Newman?

  Shoo!

• 2:23:08David Sims?

  Really, really, actually quite bad. The first 20 minutes, which is the two of them just going at each other, being so mean.

• 2:23:15Griffin Newman?

  That should be the good part.

• 2:23:15David Sims?

  Where he's like, "You're such a stuck up bitch." And she's like, "You're a fucking rich boy asshole."

• 2:23:20Griffin Newman?

  You're Ryan O'Neal. Your reputation precedes you.

• 2:23:23David Sims?

  And they're kind of, and then they're like, anyway, after 20 minutes of going at each other, so we're fucking in love with each other. And she's like, "Oh yeah, absolutely."

• 2:23:28Griffin Newman?

  And she's like, "I'm so sorry. I forgot that I'm dying."

• 2:23:31David Sims?

  And then you're just like, "Ah, it's so boring."

• 2:23:34Speaker 04

  But love means you never have to say you're sorry.

• 2:23:37David Sims?

  That is a line in the movie.

• 2:23:39Speaker 04

  But that is the tagline of the original and that's, they say, part of the reason it was such a big hit was that people would hear that and go, "What? Holy fuck."

• 2:23:46David Sims?

  Huh. And then later, when you think about it, you're like, "What does that mean?" And you're, it's like, doesn't mean anything.

• 2:23:51Speaker 04

  It feels like a Seinfeld bit.

• 2:23:52David Sims?

  Total mythology.

• 2:23:54Speaker 04

  Does it mean never having?

• 2:23:55Griffin Newman?

  You're saying like, how does the second movie?

• 2:23:57David Sims?

  His asshole dad is like, "By the way, I'm sorry your wife died." And he's like, "Love never means never having to say you're sorry."

• 2:24:01Griffin Newman?

  He says it to his dad?

• 2:24:03David Sims?

  Yeah, well, he's repeating it. She had already said it to him.

• 2:24:05Griffin Newman?

  Okay, okay.

• 2:24:05David Sims?

  And, and you know, the dad's like, "Oh, okay." And the dad should be like, "Fucking what?" Like, you should just be like, "Huh? Parce that out for me, bud."

• 2:24:13Griffin Newman?

  If they were trying to top the tagline of the first movie, Oliver's Story's tagline should have been, "Sorry to that dead lady, but Oliver's got to get some."

• 2:24:23David Sims?

  Look, time heals all wounds. All right. Oliver's gotta meet someone new.

• 2:24:26Griffin Newman?

  He's ready to say apologies to her memory as he fucks on top of her grave.

• 2:24:30Speaker 04

  Um, so guys, the tagline for Dragonfly was when someone you love dies, are they gone forever?

• 2:24:37Speaker 04

  It's a good question.

• 2:24:38Griffin Newman?

  It's pretty good.

• 2:24:39David Sims?

  I will say, uh, Michael Eisner, who was the head of Paramount at the time, the film, the studio that released Love Story and Oliver's Story, his quote on the movie was, let me find it exactly. One way or another, we're doing a secret love story.

• 2:24:50Griffin Newman?

  Doesn't fucking matter.

• 2:24:53David Sims?

  Uh, anyway, the movie came out, nobody liked it and it was a not a hit at all. And, uh, I think, you know, again, I'm making fun of the original movie, but I think it was a bit of a disgrace to the memory of a movie people like.

• 2:25:04Griffin Newman?

  I imagine people were offended.

• 2:25:06David Sims?

  Yes. Yeah. All right. So that's the number two. Number three is a film I've not heard of. So let me look this up. It is a.

• 2:25:12Griffin Newman?

  Is this first weekend of Superman or second?

• 2:25:14David Sims?

  Uh, it's the fir-, well, I don't know.

• 2:25:18Griffin Newman?

  Okay. I'm just wondering if we did this exact weekend on the Superman episode. Either way.

• 2:25:21David Sims?

  Like we would have done these riffs.

• 2:25:23Griffin Newman?

  Yeah. Oliver's story sounds a little familiar. Go on.

• 2:25:26David Sims?

  You're right. It does seem like it's kind of the first weekend of Superman. Anyway, uh, yeah. Cause this is sort of familiar and Iranian, American adventure drama directed by James Fargo, starring Anthony Quinn. Look, it's called Caravans.

• 2:25:39Griffin Newman?

  Okay. Yeah.

• 2:25:40David Sims?

  And then number four is the movie about being in Turkish prison. It makes Turkish prisons the, the thing you don't want to be in for 20 years.

• 2:25:47Griffin Newman?

  Uh, we all know this film is called Oh Heavenly Dog and it stars Benji and Chevy Chase. It's Midnight Express.

• 2:25:54Speaker 04

  You know, that might be the only movie where I know the score so well and I've listened to it a hundred times and I've not seen the movie.

• 2:26:00Griffin Newman?

  That's another one where you're like, you watch fucking sitcoms from the eighties as I do day and night.

• 2:26:05David Sims?

  We have done this riff before.

• 2:26:06Speaker 04

  This like Cherry, it's a fire.

• 2:26:07Griffin Newman?

  We're just fucking syndicating ourselves now.

• 2:26:09David Sims?

  Yeah, seriously. We are. But like, yes, where like in sitcoms, super like Turkish prison, bad.

• 2:26:14Griffin Newman?

  For 15 years, it's used as shorthand for worst thing you can possibly imagine. I've seen Midnight Express and now you're just like, no one has watched that movie fresh in 15 years.

• 2:26:23David Sims?

  It's not a movie that's much discussed.

• 2:26:25Speaker 04

  See, I thought, I thought the bit was knowing music without having seen the movie. So that's why I said Cherry, it's a fire.

• 2:26:29Griffin Newman?

  Oh, sure.

• 2:26:30Speaker 04

  Didn't want to, I want to explain my.

• 2:26:32Griffin Newman?

  Yeah. And I thought it was, it was good. It was good. It was really good. You're talking, keep talking.

• 2:26:36David Sims?

  Shut the fuck up.

• 2:26:37Griffin Newman?

  Keep it quiet.

• 2:26:38David Sims?

  Griffin, uh, number five is a, a, a, a very important comedy film of the year.

• 2:26:43Griffin Newman?

  The Jerk?

• 2:26:44David Sims?

  No, good. That's a better movie.

• 2:26:45Griffin Newman?

  That's 79.

• 2:26:46David Sims?

  Uh, but this is a good movie.

• 2:26:47Griffin Newman?

  It's a good movie. It's not a Brooks. It's important.

• 2:26:51David Sims?

  Yeah, it's like a big influential comedy movie, giant hit.

• 2:26:53Griffin Newman?

  It's not a prior wilder.

• 2:26:55David Sims?

  No.

• 2:26:56Griffin Newman?

  Uh, is it, is it star driven or is it like director driven?

• 2:27:00David Sims?

  No, it's a big ensemble, but it, it, it features a big star who's, it's sort of, you know, he's already famous from TV and it's his big movie, uh, moment.

• 2:27:09Griffin Newman?

  Huh. It's his big movie moment. It's an ensemble. It's on Alan Alda.

• 2:27:14David Sims?

  No.

• 2:27:15Griffin Newman?

  Uh, TV famous, big ensemble. It's not Kimball Run.

• 2:27:22David Sims?

  No.

• 2:27:23Griffin Newman?

  I'm trying to think.

• 2:27:23David Sims?

  It's like good. It's like a good movie.

• 2:27:25Griffin Newman?

  Good. It's good. We like it?

• 2:27:26David Sims?

  Sure.

• 2:27:28Griffin Newman?

  Sure, kind of.

• 2:27:29David Sims?

  I, it's never been a big movie for me, but I mean, it's very influential and important.

• 2:27:33Griffin Newman?

  Who's the distributor of this picture?

• 2:27:34David Sims?

  Oh my God.

• 2:27:35Griffin Newman?

  I'm asking you a very basic question.

• 2:27:37David Sims?

  It's a fair point.

• 2:27:38Griffin Newman?

  Thank you. That's all I wanted.

• 2:27:40David Sims?

  Uh, the film was of course released by Universal.

• 2:27:45Griffin Newman?

  The fine folks at Universal. Um, it's Animal House?

• 2:27:49David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 2:27:49Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, there we go.

• 2:27:50David Sims?

  Animal Lampoon's.

• 2:27:50Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:27:51David Sims?

  Animal.

• 2:27:51Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, very, very, very.

• 2:27:53David Sims?

  But like a movie where it's like, the, by the time I'm seeing that, I'm sort of being shown it as a bit of a relic, but like a good one. Where they're like, you can see the seeds of the comedy you enjoy today here. And I'm like, yeah, but this is also funny. And I'm like, yeah.

• 2:28:08Griffin Newman?

  The difference for me.

• 2:28:08David Sims?

  Didn't watch it a million times.

• 2:28:09Griffin Newman?

  Is that despite having very overprotective parents who, uh, greatly monitored what I watched and wouldn't let me watch Rugrats. My father probably showed me Animal House when I was six and was like, this is important. This is like more important than the Talmud in my eyes in terms of you understanding where you came from. Uh, so yes, it was like, I, I almost learned what funny was by asking my dad, why is that funny?

• 2:28:34David Sims?

  There you go.

• 2:28:35Griffin Newman?

  That's how I turned out normal. Anyway, what else?

• 2:28:36Speaker 04

  National Lampoon's did lead to everything.

• 2:28:39Griffin Newman?

  They led to everything.

• 2:28:40David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 2:28:40Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:28:40David Sims?

  Totally.

• 2:28:41Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:28:41David Sims?

  Uh, Halloween, Junk Carpenters Halloween, wow, wow, wow. Ralph Bakshi's The Lord of the Rings, which is very cool. The Anthony Hopkins film Magic, recently discussed, of course, on our Sam Raimi episode.

• 2:28:53Griffin Newman?

  Hoping Raimi goes through with that remake.

• 2:28:55David Sims?

  A film we very recently discussed on our Patreon, The Wiz.

• 2:28:58Griffin Newman?

  The Wiz, bombing.

• 2:29:00Speaker 04

  By the way, that movie is so good and I watched it for the first time last week and anyone who hates it is a loser and uh, maybe right. I don't know. Uh, it just blew me away.

• 2:29:11Griffin Newman?

  Wrong. Gorgeous 4K, the fucking, the best.

• 2:29:15David Sims?

  And then, um,

• 2:29:16Speaker 04

  It's very short.

• 2:29:17David Sims?

  Uh, Ben might be interested to hear the number 10 is Cheech and Chong Up in Smoke?

• 2:29:23David Sims?

  Which is the kind of the good one.

• 2:29:25Griffin Newman?

  Oh, yeah. Every year Ben resubmits the idea of Cheech and Chong for Patreon and David's like, how's that gonna feel on the seventh episode?

• 2:29:33David Sims?

  Right. I'm like, look, we're all gonna be, it's, I mean, it's like,

• 2:29:36Speaker 03

  Oh, I did think of a new one.

• 2:29:37Griffin Newman?

  Oh, sure.

• 2:29:38Speaker 03

  Pitch.

• 2:29:38Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:29:39Speaker 03

  Dangerfield.

• 2:29:41David Sims?

  Yeah, sure.

• 2:29:42Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:29:42David Sims?

  How many is that?

• 2:29:43Griffin Newman?

  Well, what are we?

• 2:29:44David Sims?

  Star vehicles.

• 2:29:45Speaker 04

  Cartoon.

• 2:29:46David Sims?

  No.

• 2:29:47Griffin Newman?

  Well, that's already been designated as part of standup animation.

• 2:29:50David Sims?

  Right.

• 2:29:51Speaker 04

  Oh, I voted for that when that happened.

• 2:29:53Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, it was kind of the Kamala era of last year.

• 2:29:55David Sims?

  Well, oh, yeah. Uh, huge disappointment.

• 2:29:57Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:29:59Speaker 04

  I got a migraine.

• 2:30:00Griffin Newman?

  Too many hopes on it. It didn't have.

• 2:30:02Speaker 04

  On that one.

• 2:30:02David Sims?

  I guess you would do, well, like, do you do caddy shack? No, right?

• 2:30:07Griffin Newman?

  I think.

• 2:30:08Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:30:08David Sims?

  No, no, I think, no, no, I think you want to do,

• 2:30:11Griffin Newman?

  Back to school.

• 2:30:11David Sims?

  Rodney Dangerfield is the only guy on the poster.

• 2:30:14Griffin Newman?

  Back to school, easy money, ladybug.

• 2:30:16David Sims?

  First is easy, easy money.

• 2:30:17Griffin Newman?

  Okay.

• 2:30:17David Sims?

  Which, here's the poster. It's his face going like this.

• 2:30:21David Sims?

  And then back to school, which is his face going like this.

• 2:30:24Griffin Newman?

  And in both of these cases, going back. American audiences are standing to the side of the posters saluting him, right? Showing him the utmost respect.

• 2:30:30Speaker 04

  So.

• 2:30:31David Sims?

  Number three is Ladybugs.

• 2:30:32Griffin Newman?

  Uh huh.

• 2:30:33David Sims?

  Where he's going like this.

• 2:30:34Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, a bunch of kids. Pointing at a soccer ball, saluting him.

• 2:30:37David Sims?

  Number four. Ooh.

• 2:30:41Griffin Newman?

  Meet Wally Sparks? Like, is, does it kinda?

• 2:30:43David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 2:30:44Griffin Newman?

  To the 90s?

• 2:30:44David Sims?

  It's Meet Wally Sparks, where he's going like this.

• 2:30:47Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, he's holding a drink. And he's asking you to meet him.

• 2:30:49David Sims?

  And I think that's kind of it, like, for, like, true Rodney vehicles. I mean, and there is the cartoon.

• 2:30:56Griffin Newman?

  I gotta say, I don't know those two late ones.

• 2:30:58David Sims?

  Imagine they are.

• 2:30:59Speaker 04

  You don't know Meet Wally Sparks?

• 2:31:00David Sims?

  You've never heard of Ladybugs? I've heard of Ladybugs, never seen it.

• 2:31:04Speaker 04

  You don't know Ladybugs was a big deal?

• 2:31:05David Sims?

  It's like, what if Rodney was the coach for Girls Soccer?

• 2:31:08Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, it's Little Giants.

• 2:31:10David Sims?

  I'm on board.

• 2:31:11Griffin Newman?

  Right, yeah.

• 2:31:11Speaker 04

  All right, but that made me think you should do a series of movies with prominent Billy Joel songs, who's got Easy Money.

• 2:31:18Griffin Newman?

  Sure, Oliver and Company.

• 2:31:19Speaker 04

  And then you could do Mike, I'm just kidding, I could do Mike, but, but, uh, oh, that, the one joke I do want to say about that was, uh, I cleared a lot of my music in prep. And at one point, a very stern, uh, person walked into my office and said, "Are you aware that the song you have chosen is from an animated dog picture?"

• 2:31:36Griffin Newman?

  As if this was news to you.

• 2:31:37Speaker 04

  Yeah, like, can you imagine if I, like, went to all this effort?

• 2:31:41David Sims?

  Oliver and Company.

• 2:31:41Speaker 04

  Yeah, just said, "Why should I worry in a movie?" And I'm like, "It's from a what?"

• 2:31:44Griffin Newman?

  Yes. Do you succeed in being only the second film in history to use Why Should I Worry?

• 2:31:53Speaker 04

  That could be.

• 2:31:55Griffin Newman?

  Quite possibly.

• 2:31:56Speaker 04

  True.

• 2:31:57Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 2:31:57Speaker 04

  I am the second movie to have Cool as Ice, the theme from Cool as Ice.

• 2:32:01Griffin Newman?

  Well.

• 2:32:01Speaker 04

  In my movie.

• 2:32:02David Sims?

  I will also say that Rodney Dangerfield did apparently make, his last basic movie is a movie called The Fourth Tenor. This is the poster.

• 2:32:11Griffin Newman?

  I remember.

• 2:32:11David Sims?

  I do think we'd have to track this one down, which may be illegal in some states.

• 2:32:16Griffin Newman?

  Rodney does opera. I love it.

• 2:32:19David Sims?

  Uh, the glass he's holding in that poster might be hard for you to tell this because it was a little grainy is breaking. Cause he's singing.

• 2:32:25Griffin Newman?

  And he's got a bad voice.

• 2:32:28David Sims?

  Dangerfield gets no respect, but at eight years of age manages to get a laugh or two in this low budget comedy found DVD and video guide. It's the only review listed on the Wikipedia page.

• 2:32:37Griffin Newman?

  Do you remember?

• 2:32:38Speaker 03

  Demanded votes.

• 2:32:39Speaker 04

  A laugh or two is so mean. You're like, I can't remember if there was a second laugh.

• 2:32:42David Sims?

  Dangerfield gets a laugh or two when he like is unconscious on fucking Carson like.

• 2:32:47Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 2:32:48David Sims?

  That's not good news. In 90 minutes, he rustled up a laugh or two.

• 2:32:53Griffin Newman?

  That's his lowest laugh.

• 2:32:54David Sims?

  That's not good.

• 2:32:56Griffin Newman?

  Do you know, or do you remember that when Dangerfield died, which must've been close to, if not over 20 years ago now?

• 2:33:02David Sims?

  It was oh, four.

• 2:33:03Griffin Newman?

  His.

• 2:33:04David Sims?

  Over 10 years.

• 2:33:04Griffin Newman?

  His widow, when she was like doing the Larry King Browns and such to like eulogize him was like, well, don't worry. Rodney's coming back. We cloned him.

• 2:33:15David Sims?

  Okay, okay.

• 2:33:17Griffin Newman?

  Rodney will be back soon.

• 2:33:18David Sims?

  So she is that, what's the status of?

• 2:33:20Griffin Newman?

  My point is, I don't think we've heard of him since then.

• 2:33:23David Sims?

  Well, if you, if not to go with this literally, but if you had literally cloned him, that would mean that there currently is a 24, 25 year old guy.

• 2:33:31Griffin Newman?

  Which sounds pretty funny.

• 2:33:32David Sims?

  I know, but I'm like Rodney only got famous in his like 50s. It's like a long way.

• 2:33:37Griffin Newman?

  Right. There's currently a Ronnie Dangerfield clone who's selling aluminum siding.

• 2:33:41David Sims?

  Right.

• 2:33:41Griffin Newman?

  And it's just 15 years before he decides to focus on stand up.

• 2:33:44David Sims?

  Because like 25 years from now, we're definitely going to be able to just make like a Rodney hologram. You know, like the clone will be like, I'm ready. And it's like, you are getting no respect. Like we just.

• 2:33:55Griffin Newman?

  It's not a bit. We don't care.

• 2:33:57Speaker 04

  I was waiting to make that respect joke and I should have known like that it was going to happen anyway.

• 2:34:02David Sims?

  With, with a sharp comic mind like David Sims on the ones and twos.

• 2:34:06Speaker 04

  I don't know, man. Uh, you've got, you made me laugh a lot listening to this podcast, but not the subway stuff. I take that very seriously.

• 2:34:12Griffin Newman?

  That's fair, sir. That's, that's dramatic.

• 2:34:13David Sims?

  Do you have any subway questions I can answer on here before we wrap up the show?

• 2:34:16Speaker 04

  Hmm. What's your favorite movie that has a subway in it?

• 2:34:20David Sims?

  Great.

• 2:34:20Speaker 04

  Besides Jason Takes Manhattan.

• 2:34:21David Sims?

  Taking a poem.

• 2:34:22Griffin Newman?

  Oh, yeah. Yeah.

• 2:34:23Speaker 04

  That's the only correct answer.

• 2:34:24David Sims?

  It's the gold standard. And you know, the original, but I also, I have a huge soft spot for the Tony Scott.

• 2:34:30Speaker 04

  He's a god to me, but the, the streaming version of it is 16 by nine instead of scope, which is really.

• 2:34:37Griffin Newman?

  Fuck out of here.

• 2:34:38Speaker 04

  Several Tony Scott movies.

• 2:34:39David Sims?

  I think when we do Tony Scott, I mean, not that we, we love to watch a disc on this.

• 2:34:43Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:34:43David Sims?

  Yeah, we're really gonna have to go to the discs.

• 2:34:45Griffin Newman?

  Only, they've been fucking with his legacy.

• 2:34:47Speaker 04

  I, I can't do that series because there's like eight movies I'd wanna do. And if I didn't get them, I would be too upset. So just automatically ban me from it.

• 2:34:53David Sims?

  Getting one would upset you. You'd be like, what about the other seven?

• 2:34:55Speaker 04

  No, I'm saying, no, I'm saying all of them. It's like, I feel like I really wanna talk.

• 2:34:58David Sims?

  You're doing the fam.

• 2:34:59Speaker 04

  I would, I would bring his filmography to a desert island before Ridley's and Ridley's made some of my favorite movies.

• 2:35:04Griffin Newman?

  Uh, I'd agree with that. I think it's a better survival tactic. Uh, Mike and Nick and Nick and Alice.

• 2:35:11Speaker 04

  Okay, I'm gonna, I'm gonna very briefly, uh, cause you know, no one listens to this show for promo, but I, I have to mention, I have a movie coming out in the future, which I think is right after this.

• 2:35:21David Sims?

  It's, it's coming out, I believe, five days after this episode drops.

• 2:35:24Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 2:35:25David Sims?

  It's, it's uncanny timing, given that we didn't really plan it that way.

• 2:35:28Griffin Newman?

  Sometimes.

• 2:35:29Speaker 04

  Yeah. Get who live without commercials, invite your friends over, turn off the lights, turn it loud, eat some pizza.

• 2:35:35Griffin Newman?

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:35:36Speaker 04

  Uh, you watch it and try to have fun watching it. Buddy action, comedy, gangster, time travel, rom-com.

• 2:35:42David Sims?

  Emily Hampshire, is she cool?

• 2:35:44Speaker 04

  She is the greatest. We'd be good, good friends.

• 2:35:47David Sims?

  Huge, huge fan of Emily Hampshire.

• 2:35:49Speaker 04

  She plays a dirty cop in it.

• 2:35:51Griffin Newman?

  You have not seen the picture yet, David, but can I spoil something for you? Here's the fucking headline. Keith David is in the movie owning bones.

• 2:36:02David Sims?

  Not surprised to hear it.

• 2:36:03Griffin Newman?

  Ben David wrote some fucking meaty monologues for Keith David, who you might be astonished to hear.

• 2:36:08Speaker 04

  He gives a big monologue, he gives a big monologue about my dead cat. So.

• 2:36:12David Sims?

  There you go.

• 2:36:13Speaker 04

  So the, that comes out and I'm very proud of it and, uh, it's cool. And then also Scott, that my new Scott Pilgrim game will have just come out when this comes out. And then I think.

• 2:36:23David Sims?

  I believe this.

• 2:36:23Speaker 04

  This comes out as the Blu-ray of Scott Pilgrim Takes Off starring Griffin Newman.

• 2:36:27David Sims?

  Well, hey, I, that, then that is also on Netflix if people want to watch it.

• 2:36:32Speaker 04

  Yeah, but physical. Media has audio commentaries from me and Brian.

• 2:36:35David Sims?

  I'm just saying, you know.

• 2:36:37Griffin Newman?

  We love physical media. Uh, I, I played a handful of characters on the show that you very kindly invited me in to do, including, uh, Wallace's straight stunt double, straight Wallace. Uh, one of the most cursed characters in modern media, uh, who is not included in the game, but I believe there is, uh, any blankies, uh, getting ready to play, uh, Scott Pilgrim, uh, acts.

• 2:37:00Speaker 04

  Mm hmm.

• 2:37:00Griffin Newman?

  Might, might notice a, a thing, a conscious nod?

• 2:37:04Speaker 04

  Uh, there is a nod to.

• 2:37:07Griffin Newman?

  Me as a person.

• 2:37:08Speaker 04

  And to porch movies.

• 2:37:10Griffin Newman?

  Yes, that is also true. Right. Brian Leomally, friend of the show.

• 2:37:14David Sims?

  Yeah, we love Brian. He's a huge hero of mine.

• 2:37:17Griffin Newman?

  Um, I, I also just not to, not to fucking tee you up like Hoggman on this, but partially some of the inspiration from, for Mike and, uh, Nick and Nick and Alice. Comes from us covering Mikey and Nikki on the podcast, correct?

• 2:37:33Speaker 04

  Partially, yes. I mean.

• 2:37:35Griffin Newman?

  It like jostled your brain.

• 2:37:36Speaker 04

  Yeah, there's a, there's, there's a.

• 2:37:38David Sims?

  Olivia Craig.

• 2:37:39Speaker 04

  There's a.

• 2:37:40Griffin Newman?

  Olivia Craig, the great Olivia Craig.

• 2:37:41David Sims?

  We love her.

• 2:37:42Speaker 04

  Yeah, the, the premise of the movie is a gangster, uh, goes back in time to try and, um, but you, you can skip ahead of this if you don't want to spoil anything, but a guy, guy goes back in time to try to, uh, fix. A mistake he had made, kind of betraying his friend. And, um, I had sort of had this idea when there's a lot of these like nihilistic gangster movies, like these. Relationship things. And I always wonder, you know, you get to the end and you have that pitch black thing. It's like, what if that person could redo it? You know, that, that's kind of the kernel of it. And then the other thing was just the, I like the buddy comedy thing of like. The redeemed guy and the unredeemed guy butting heads. So it's like Scrooge at the end with Scrooge from the beginning.

• 2:38:20Griffin Newman?

  Right. What if it's two of the same guy at different points in his journey?

• 2:38:23Speaker 04

  Also a bunch of Gilmore Girls references.

• 2:38:25Griffin Newman?

  It's an excellent movie. Tremendously fun, strongly encourage everyone to watch it. What was, I'm sorry.

• 2:38:31David Sims?

  Are you a Jessica, a Dean guy, or a Logan guy?

• 2:38:33Griffin Newman?

  Important.

• 2:38:33Speaker 04

  Uh, there is a def- a very long discussion about who the best boyfriend is. And I'll just say, anything that James Marsden says in the movie about Gilmore Girls is my opinion. I think that you always give the correct opinion to, you know, the handsome James Marsden guy.

• 2:38:48David Sims?

  Absolutely.

• 2:38:49Speaker 04

  So, uh, in Q and As, I've already had people say, oh, so, so what is your take? Cause there's a lot of different opinions.

• 2:38:54David Sims?

  You just saw the take.

• 2:38:55Speaker 04

  Like, anything Marsden says?

• 2:38:56Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:38:56Speaker 04

  That's, that's, that's me.

• 2:38:58Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, I gave, I gave the take to the best pair of cheekbones.

• 2:39:01David Sims?

  You remember when Dean gets married and then his wife tries to make him a roast?

• 2:39:04Speaker 04

  So Dean was, Dean's the worst boyfriend on the show, objectively, but who was the best?

• 2:39:09David Sims?

  I, I'm a Jessica.

• 2:39:11Speaker 04

  See, I like Jess a lot.

• 2:39:13David Sims?

  But are you saying who's the best boyfriend to Rory?

• 2:39:15Speaker 04

  For her. There's only one answer.

• 2:39:19David Sims?

  Uh, oh, boy. I don't know if I agree that there's only one answer. I think that Jess, in his more mature form, is probably the best boyfriend for Rory. I think that if you take the actions of the characters on, of, on the show, it's probably Logan, I guess. But Logan's kind of a dweeb. I don't know. It's complicated.

• 2:39:39Speaker 04

  Well, someone's gonna have to get on Hulu to find out my take.

• 2:39:41David Sims?

  I'm very excited to listen.

• 2:39:43Griffin Newman?

  Uh, thank you all for listening.

• 2:39:45David Sims?

  Yes. Jess really fumbles the bag with Rory, though. We all agree. I mean, season three, Jess completely fumbles the bag, right?

• 2:39:52Speaker 04

  So here's the thing.

• 2:39:53David Sims?

  Swan song.

• 2:39:53Speaker 04

  Last Wave, I want them to release it in 4DX and I want to drown in the theater.

• 2:39:57Griffin Newman?

  Ben, okay, right. That was your response to when?

• 2:40:01Speaker 04

  They should just fill the theater with water and you're slowly drowning while you're watching it. That's, that's my big hot tip, my big hot wet take.

• 2:40:08David Sims?

  I mean, Ben, you have definitely proposed a theater that is, you are underwater the entire time.

• 2:40:13Griffin Newman?

  Yes, and he proposed underwater theory, proposed upside down theater.

• 2:40:16David Sims?

  That one was.

• 2:40:17Speaker 04

  What if you watch Deep Rising in a theater that's filled with water?

• 2:40:20Griffin Newman?

  Great idea.

• 2:40:21David Sims?

  I would watch Deep Rising on my phone right now.

• 2:40:23Speaker 04

  While you're on a jet ski in a theater filled with water?

• 2:40:25David Sims?

  Yep.

• 2:40:25Griffin Newman?

  You would watch it in a tree. You would watch it, yeah. Uh, my brain is puttering out. I'm excited for you and I to fucking dominate a trivia, Ben David.

• 2:40:36David Sims?

  Oh, you guys doing trivia tonight?

• 2:40:37Griffin Newman?

  Big time.

• 2:40:37Speaker 04

  We are about to do a trivia. I really hope someone's gonna have a round that's all about the with or and actor credits.

• 2:40:44David Sims?

  I'm so mad at that.

• 2:40:45Griffin Newman?

  David had a difficult.

• 2:40:46David Sims?

  My basketball chat heard about the trivia round.

• 2:40:49Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:40:49David Sims?

  And so they were like, come on now, do it to us. Come on. We all work in Hollywood.

• 2:40:53Speaker 03

  Mostly like LA guys and I did it and they got mad at me too. They're like, this is too fucking hard. I'm like, I know, I know. I messed up.

• 2:40:59Griffin Newman?

  We kinda accidentally went Christian Grey on that trivia.

• 2:41:02Speaker 04

  Griffin and I have the trivia team that we do and the worst we've ever done in a round is maybe getting like seven out of 10. On Sims round, I think I got two out of 14.

• 2:41:11Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, sorry. It was, it was tough. It was tough.

• 2:41:14Speaker 03

  The ones that I thought were layups, I look back and I'm like, well, but those are, you basically have to guess and maybe you get it.

• 2:41:20Griffin Newman?

  We were running all our questions by each other and I was like, yeah, good round. Fair.

• 2:41:27Speaker 03

  This is the kind of shit we just talk about all the time.

• 2:41:29Griffin Newman?

  I did an action figure round and I was sending all the pictures to Marie and she got all of them immediately. And I was like, good. So all of these are apparent. Everyone knows what all these characters dress like, especially if their faces are poorly sculpted.

• 2:41:40Speaker 04

  Ben's round was great.

• 2:41:41Speaker 03

  Ben's round was.

• 2:41:41Griffin Newman?

  Ben nailed it. Ben did a video round on holes.

• 2:41:44Speaker 03

  Yes, he did.

• 2:41:44Griffin Newman?

  Anyway, thank you all for listening. Please remember to rate, review and subscribe. Tune in next week for Gallipoli.

• 2:41:49Speaker 03

  That's right.

• 2:41:51Griffin Newman?

  And as always, Ohana means family.

• 2:41:55Speaker 04

  No.

• 2:41:55Griffin Newman?

  I'm looking for the ratings bump. That guy's the king of the fucking box office.

• 2:41:59Speaker 03

  I blame JJ.

• 2:42:05Speaker 03

  Blank Check with Griffin and David is hosted by Griffin Newman and David Sims. Our executive producer is me, Ben Hostly. Our creative producer is Marie Bardy Salinas and our associate producer is AJ McKeon. This show is mixed and edited by AJ McKeon and Alan Smithy. Research by JJ Birch. Our theme song is by Lain Montgomery in the great American novel with additional music by Alex Mitchell. Artwork by Joe Bowen, Holly Moss and Pat Reynolds. Our production assistant is Minnick. Special thanks to David Cho, Jordan Fish and Nate Patterson for their production help. Head over to blankcheckpod.com for links to all of the real nerdy shit. Join our Patreon Blank Check Special Features for exclusive franchise commentaries and bonus episodes.

• 2:42:50Speaker 03

  Follow us on social at Blank Check Pod. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter, Checkbook, on Substack. This podcast is created and produced by Blank Check Productions. I'm rolling and hey, depending on your quote selection.

• 2:43:06Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:43:08Speaker 03

  Could throw a little bit storm sounds and posts.

• 2:43:12Griffin Newman?

  I think you want to be throwing some splish splashes in here throughout the episode at your discretion.

• 2:43:17Speaker 04

  I think there should be like rain soothing rain sounds under the whole.

• 2:43:21Griffin Newman?

  I think you do what what works.

• 2:43:24Speaker 03

  Well, I didn't prep anything, but.

• 2:43:25Griffin Newman?

  I think in the final product at least.

• 2:43:27Speaker 03

  The final product.

• 2:43:28Griffin Newman?

  Okay.

• 2:43:29Speaker 04

  Can we license that song splish splash? I was taking a bath.

• 2:43:32Griffin Newman?

  Bobby Darren. Bobby Darren. Can Bobby Darren sponsor this episode?

• 2:43:35Speaker 03

  I'll I'll reference if if a storm moment feels right.

• 2:43:39Griffin Newman?

  Okay.

• 2:43:40Speaker 03

  But yeah, I didn't.

• 2:43:41Griffin Newman?

  I'm happy. It's fine to just be a post thing. I just.

• 2:43:43Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 2:43:44Speaker 04

  Yeah, I think this should be in the episode. This is a good discussion.

• 2:43:46Griffin Newman?

  This is after. This is the post credit cookie. So people can see how the sausage is made. Okay, ready?