The Year of Living Dangerously with Tracy Letts

Tracy Letts - Pulitzer and Tony winner, but most importantly The King of Physical Media - makes his much-anticipated Blank Check debut on an episode about a film that has no legitimate BluRay release. The irony! This week, we're discussing Peter Weir's The Year of Living Dangerously, a romantic drama set against the backdrop of Indonesian political unrest. We're discussing the star-power of Mel Gibson, the improbable performance of Linda Hunt, and, because this is Blank Check - the trench run at the end of Star Wars. Plus, we present the King of Physical Media with some meticulously chosen discs. Log your physical media using CLZ https://clz.com/movies Check out Night Owl Video https://nightowlvid.com/ if your are in the Brooklyn area. ⁠Listen to The 1988 Movie Draft https://www.theringer.com/podcasts/the-big-picture/2026/03/26/the-1988-movie-draft, The 1982 Movie Draft https://r.search.yahoo.com/_ylt=Awrijqc4h85pUiQAK04PxQt.;_ylu=Y29sbwNiZjEEcG9zAzEEdnRpZAMEc2VjA3Ny/RV=2/RE=1776352313/RO=10/RU=https%3a%2f%2fwww.theringer.com%2fpodcasts%2fthe-big-picture%2f2025%2f03%2f21%2fthe-1982-movie-draft/RK=2/RS=rHxYkhJgC6Nh0wwPkCw3lpxZs08-and The Legal Draft Episode https://www.theringer.com/podcasts/the-big-picture/2023/10/24/the-lawyer-movie-draft-with-griffin-newman-and-david-sims-of-blank-checks of The Big Picture Read the Linda Hunt Interview https://bombmagazine.org/articles/1986/07/01/linda-hunt/ Listen to Mike Duncan's Revolutions https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/revolutions/id703889772 Sign up for Check Book https://blankcheckpod.substack.com/welcome, the Blank Check newsletter featuring even more “real nerdy shit” to feed your pop culture obsession. Dossier excerpts, film biz AND burger reports, and even more exclusive content you won’t want to miss out on. Join our Patreon for franchise commentaries and bonus episodes. http://www.patreon.com/blankcheck Follow us @blankcheckpod on Twitter https://x.com/blankcheckpod?lang=en, Instagram https://www.instagram.com/blankcheckpod/?hl=en, Threads https://www.threads.net/@blankcheckpod?xmt=AQGzctAh4mbWTwYzCV1pzNT6AMV9o99EOfymi8TLR5mTde0 and Facebook https://www.facebook.com/blankcheckpodcast/! Buy some real nerdy merch https://kinshipgoods.com/blankcheck Connect with other Blankies on our Reddit https://www.reddit.com/r/blankies/s/gpcOkQr8Sv or Discord https://discord.gg/Q6YGSR3JrA For anything else, check out BlankCheckPod.com https://www.blankcheckpod.com/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

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

• 0:02Griffin Newman?

  David.

• 0:03David Sims?

  Yep.

• 0:03Griffin Newman?

  We did a live show.

• 0:04David Sims?

  Yeah, remember?

• 0:05Griffin Newman?

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

• 0:12David Sims?

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

• 0:15Griffin Newman?

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

• 0:18David Sims?

  Yeah, hey.

• 0:18Speaker 02

  Hey, everyone, or should I say, oh?

• 0:20David Sims?

  Oh.

• 0:22Griffin Newman?

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

• 0:31Speaker 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.

• 0:37Speaker 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.

• 1:39Griffin Newman?

  A podcast caught in the fire of revolution.

• 1:42David Sims?

  So that's the podcast, that's the.

• 1:44Griffin Newman?

  I've been going tagline heavy on this series mostly, um, not because I'm trying to avoid doing an Australian accent. I could nail it if I wanted to.

• 1:51David Sims?

  You ever done an Australian accent?

• 1:53Speaker 04

  I haven't. I'm told that the secret is really.

• 1:56David Sims?

  Really?

• 1:57Speaker 04

  Rowley.

• 1:58David Sims?

  Rowley.

• 1:59Griffin Newman?

  What's, I feel like the one that's gotten really big when I see

• 2:02Speaker 04

  Rowley.

• 2:03Griffin Newman?

  Doing like Australian accent Instagrams is no.

• 2:07David Sims?

  No.

• 2:08Griffin Newman?

  No. We're doing it terribly.

• 2:10David Sims?

  Yeah, we're, we're.

• 2:10Griffin Newman?

  But that they, there's a no with an R. We've been, uh, really upsetting the entire continent, this entire series. Just so you know what you're walking into, Tracy.

• 2:19David Sims?

  Luckily, this movie isn't set in Australia, but we have been, you know, our, our, our knowledge gaps about Australian history and culture have been exposed a little bit.

• 2:27Griffin Newman?

  Look, we.

• 2:27Speaker 04

  Yeah, I've heard some of this, some of your Australian prejudice. I mean.

• 2:33David Sims?

  Cause I admitted to it because I grew up in Britain. Yes. Okay. So you've heard. Yeah. I'm copping to it, you know?

• 2:38Griffin Newman?

  And we thought it was a positive stereotype to assume that upon meeting, every Australian takes out a knife and compares whose knife is bigger than the others. We did not think that was offensive.

• 2:48Speaker 04

  Have you ever been to Australia?

• 2:49Griffin Newman?

  I have. You know what? This has not come up much in this series.

• 2:52David Sims?

  You've been multiple times or just the one time?

• 2:54Griffin Newman?

  I've been two times.

• 2:55David Sims?

  Right. Both for work.

• 2:58Griffin Newman?

  Well, no, one, once for fun. I had a, I had a good friend, uh, growing up whose family relocated to Australia. And I went to visit him when I was a teenager and then I went, I went for work. I was, uh, I was on a, a TV show, uh, which no one should ever make. Uh, I feel like you have some similar experiences or similar opinions on the process of making a TV show, uh, which is fairly brutal.

• 3:25Speaker 04

  I don't know. It depends on the show.

• 3:26Griffin Newman?

  Okay. You're right. You're right.

• 3:28Speaker 04

  What show were you on?

• 3:28Griffin Newman?

  It's called The Tick. It was a superhero parody and, um, uh, we had an extended press tour that ended in Australia.

• 3:36Speaker 04

  Oh, wow.

• 3:37Griffin Newman?

  And they were like.

• 3:38Speaker 04

  You took you to Australia?

• 3:39Griffin Newman?

  They took me to Australia and it was a thing where the cast. It was an international press tour and every time we like jumped a continent or a country, someone would drop off and be like, either we're cutting the budget, we're reducing the cast, or I'm not available for another week of this. And so it got down to Australia and it was just me and the creator of the show. And they were like, and you're down to do the Australia stop, right? We'll fly you in. It's just 36 hours and we'll fly you back. And I was like, I'm not going to Australia unless you give me five days in a hotel. It was one of my only flexes ever.

• 4:11Speaker 04

  Were you in Sydney?

• 4:12Griffin Newman?

  I was in Sydney proper, but then did some driving around. Not me. People drove me around.

• 4:18Speaker 04

  Yeah, he can't drive.

• 4:18Griffin Newman?

  I can't drive. I'm afraid of cars.

• 4:20Speaker 04

  Have you been to Australia, David? Never been. I would love to go in theory.

• 4:24Griffin Newman?

  Have you been?

• 4:25Speaker 04

  I have been three times.

• 4:26Griffin Newman?

  Sure.

• 4:27Speaker 04

  I went once, somebody was doing my play Killer Joe at an independent production. And so I went for that, do some press for that. My play Augustosage County was done at the National Theater when Kate Blanchett and her husband were running the National Theater. So we took our production to. So same cast, like you, the whole, the whole show went. Took our group down there. And then the third time, oh, was when Carrie was shooting The Leftovers. They shot season three. There were only three seasons. They shot season three in Melbourne. So I have a brother in Singapore. We went, we got, visited him in Singapore, got terrible food poisoning, then went to Melbourne and

• 5:12Speaker 04

  we got there earlier than she was supposed to start work. But we were there at the same time the Melbourne International Film Festival was going on. Very good festival. Yeah. MILF as a MILF. And we, we just became festival goers. We got, we got passes and just went to all the movies at the, it was a great way to learn the city and learn the trains and stuff. And we had a great time in Mel.

• 5:35Griffin Newman?

  MILF sounds like a real filth. Festival I'd like to frequent. Um, the thing you are teeing me up for here unknowingly, Tracy, which I somehow have not brought up at all this series is, uh, my brother, James Newman boarded a plane on New Year's Eve, 2025, and January 1st landed in Sydney, Australia, where he now works full-time as the general manager of the Sydney basketball team.

• 6:01David Sims?

  I feel like you have brought this up.

• 6:02Griffin Newman?

  I think I haven't within this series. I can't remember because of recording order.

• 6:06David Sims?

  Right.

• 6:06Griffin Newman?

  But my brother is now like an Australian resident, or he at least has a work visa, is, is, you know.

• 6:12David Sims?

  What does he do for the basketball?

• 6:14Griffin Newman?

  He's the general manager.

• 6:15David Sims?

  The GM of the Sydney Kings.

• 6:16Griffin Newman?

  Of the men's and women's teams in Sydney, Australia. We are very different people, but I love him very much and I'm very proud.

• 6:23Speaker 04

  They're a very, uh, healthy people, the Australians, uh, regardless of their physical attractiveness. They're always running and jumping in front of you. There's a lot of running and jumping and biking and.

• 6:34David Sims?

  Positive stories.

• 6:35Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 6:35David Sims?

  They're all fit.

• 6:36Griffin Newman?

  He was calling me and saying like, uh, you're the only person I know who's visited, like, and I know you've only gone like, you know, short trips and work stuff and whatever, but what's your takeaway? And I'm just like, the quality of life there seems unbelievable. And on average, not to stereotype positively, people seem happy.

• 6:54Speaker 04

  They do.

• 6:54Griffin Newman?

  It is like one of the least tense major cities I have ever visited.

• 6:59Speaker 04

  There's a lot of running. There's a lot of jumping. There's, uh, every, every animal can kill you. Everything.

• 7:04David Sims?

  Every spider.

• 7:05Speaker 04

  Around every corner is a scorpion. Yeah.

• 7:07David Sims?

  Right.

• 7:08Speaker 04

  They're, and they're.

• 7:08Griffin Newman?

  Just like running a restaurant.

• 7:09Speaker 04

  We're, we're out of anti-toxins. So be careful when you're, you know.

• 7:13David Sims?

  Don't you dare bring in a green bean because they'll yell at you, but.

• 7:17Griffin Newman?

  That's why it helps to have a basketball in Sydney, though. You can just dribble those motherfuckers.

• 7:21David Sims?

  Uh, I mean, you know, I have, I have a friend who's from Brazil and I was talking to her about like the stereotype, you know, that she, the, the, you know, the cute stereotype, like, right, we're always just all on the beach all the time, just dashing into the water. That's how I feel like about Australians too. I know it's not true.

• 7:38Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 7:38David Sims?

  But that they're all just running up and down the beach and jumping in the water and firing up the barbecue.

• 7:43Griffin Newman?

  I mean, I'm almost definitely going to visit this year. And for the foreseeable future, Sydney is probably a place I go to. More than most places. I mean, it's obviously a big commitment trip, but like if he keeps working there, I'm gonna.

• 7:55Speaker 04

  Good food.

• 7:56Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 7:57Speaker 04

  Surprisingly good food.

• 7:58David Sims?

  Seafood, right?

• 7:59Speaker 04

  They call seafood and some Asian influence, some spice in the food. It's good.

• 8:03Griffin Newman?

  David, you held up one finger.

• 8:04David Sims?

  Well, some of, and we're, it's funny just because we're talking about a film that was largely filmed in the Philippines.

• 8:08Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 8:08David Sims?

  Although they did shoot some in Australia.

• 8:10Griffin Newman?

  It was basically an Australian production. He treats Witness as his first Hollywood film, even though a Hollywood studio came in and rescued this movie at the last moment before production started. But we're also talking about an Australian filmmaker.

• 8:24David Sims?

  Yep.

• 8:25Griffin Newman?

  One of the canonical Australian filmmakers.

• 8:27David Sims?

  And this is his departure from Australian film.

• 8:29Griffin Newman?

  This is really the full.

• 8:30David Sims?

  Farewell.

• 8:31Griffin Newman?

  Yes. And we've been nailing all discussions of Australia up until this point and is continuing on this episode.

• 8:37Speaker 04

  Should we take a moment to pat ourselves on the back for how good of a job we've been doing?

• 8:41Griffin Newman?

  Yeah. Ben, can you cut in like the loudest thumping sound of all time? Or maybe toilet flushes again.

• 8:48David Sims?

  What's this mini series called?

• 8:48Griffin Newman?

  This is Blank Check with Griffin and David. I'm Griffin.

• 8:52David Sims?

  I'm David.

• 8:52Griffin Newman?

  It's a podcast about filmographies, directors who have massive success early on in their careers, such as basically leading the Australian new wave, being certainly one of the leaders.

• 9:01David Sims?

  Vanguard.

• 9:02Speaker 04

  I'm already throwing a flag on this.

• 9:05Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, really?

• 9:05Speaker 04

  Yeah. He was not a massive success.

• 9:08Griffin Newman?

  Well, well, well, well, you don't think he got there?

• 9:11Speaker 04

  Well, he got there. Yeah. But I, what, the way you describe the ethos of Blank Check makes it sound like he had a massive success and now he's, but.

• 9:21David Sims?

  Tracy, look, our ethos has suffered. It's 12 years into this show. We're a little bit out of those guys. Not completely out.

• 9:28Griffin Newman?

  And some of those guys were saving.

• 9:29David Sims?

  Some of those guys were saving. Mostly we want to discuss interesting filmmakers and we're, he doesn't quite, I mean, his, what's his most runaway success?

• 9:38Griffin Newman?

  Truman Show.

• 9:39David Sims?

  It's Truman Show.

• 9:40Griffin Newman?

  I'd say Witness is his guarantor. It happens right after this.

• 9:43Speaker 04

  Witness is the, is the breakout, right?

• 9:46Griffin Newman?

  The guarantor is what we call, the hit that convinces them to hand you the Blank Check book. And then I think he is a bit of a blank check filmmaker. I do think his studio run, even though to a certain degree, he was a hired hand, green card, obviously more his personal passion project.

• 10:03David Sims?

  Right. Look, the thing is, Tracy, if we had a director on and we said, we think that Hollywood gave you a blank check, they would be like,

• 10:09Griffin Newman?

  Shoot us in the face.

• 10:10David Sims?

  Do you know how hard it is?

• 10:12Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 10:12David Sims?

  Even guys we've talked about, like Nolan or M. Night Shyamalan, who really did get, you know, a lot of power.

• 10:18Griffin Newman?

  And M. Night Shyamalan who now,

• 10:20David Sims?

  This is still very hard.

• 10:21Griffin Newman?

  M. Night Shyamalan now literally funds his own movies and would be like, there is no such thing as a blank check.

• 10:26David Sims?

  Right, right.

• 10:26Griffin Newman?

  But George Lucas, I mean,

• 10:28David Sims?

  He's the, he's the, he's the model, he's the original.

• 10:30Griffin Newman?

  And you love him and his films.

• 10:32David Sims?

  Sure.

• 10:32Griffin Newman?

  Especially,

• 10:33David Sims?

  Here's Wado, right here. He's got Wado.

• 10:36Griffin Newman?

  Look, this is a massive success early on in their careers, a given a series of blank checks, make whatever crazy passion projects they want. And sometimes those checks clear and sometimes they bounce. Baby, this is a film, a mini series on the films of Peter Weir is called Podnik at Hanging Cast.

• 10:49David Sims?

  That's right.

• 10:50Griffin Newman?

  Which I approve of. Thank you. Okay, so then I give up. Because what was the other one? Podster and Castmander, colon, the pod side of the cast. Whoa, really fucking bad. Okay, I, you know what? I can't fight that. This is a man of letters here. This is a fucking Pulitzer Prize winner. I'm not going to argue my writings better. It's Podnik at Hanging Cast. You will hear no further gripes from me. Who did Gallipoli, but will have already aired by now, so you can say, right?

• 11:22David Sims?

  Jennifer Kent, the wonderful filmmaker Jennifer Kent, who made The Babadook and The Nightingale.

• 11:27Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 11:28David Sims?

  Uh, we wanted an Australian filmmaker, especially for Gallipoli.

• 11:31Griffin Newman?

  Yes, sure. We tried for several. What's tough is that they live eight trillion hours away.

• 11:36David Sims?

  Right. We did it, what, it was like 9:00 PM our time and it was like the next morning her time.

• 11:41Griffin Newman?

  Yes. She was on Zoom. We were taking nightfall and she was drinking coffee.

• 11:45David Sims?

  Right, but she rocked. She was great.

• 11:46Griffin Newman?

  She's awesome.

• 11:46David Sims?

  Do you like Gallipoli?

• 11:47Griffin Newman?

  Very much. Gallipoli, I think, is very, very phenomenal. Had never seen that before, had never seen this one before. Both of the Mel Gibson films were blind spots for me. I do have holes in my Peter Weir filmography.

• 11:59David Sims?

  I mean, sorry, bit of a, bit of a aggressive question there.

• 12:02Griffin Newman?

  Who are your holes?

• 12:03Speaker 04

  I, Master and Commander.

• 12:04Griffin Newman?

  You've never seen?

• 12:05Speaker 04

  Interesting.

• 12:06Griffin Newman?

  Interesting.

• 12:07David Sims?

  As I learn more about you, you've been on our friend Sean's show, obviously, you've, you know.

• 12:11Speaker 04

  I'm third chair on the big picture.

• 12:12Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 12:12Speaker 04

  Let's just say I'm third.

• 12:13Griffin Newman?

  We should, we should, let's, let's introduce with proper titles here.

• 12:17David Sims?

  Okay.

• 12:17Griffin Newman?

  Not only is he third chair on the big picture, not as, only is he a Pulitzer Prize winner in drama.

• 12:22David Sims?

  Yes, this is true.

• 12:23Griffin Newman?

  Tony Award winner as well, as both writer and actor, correct?

• 12:26Speaker 04

  Correct.

• 12:27David Sims?

  You gotta flex it.

• 12:28Griffin Newman?

  But most importantly, he is the king of physical media.

• 12:31David Sims?

  I also, at one point, called him a bad bitch on this podcast.

• 12:34Griffin Newman?

  Excuse me.

• 12:34David Sims?

  Oh, I didn't hear that.

• 12:35Griffin Newman?

  I believe we called him the boss bitch.

• 12:37David Sims?

  Maybe a boss bitch.

• 12:38Griffin Newman?

  In our awards show episodes we do annually, I nominated you Best Supporting Actor for indignation. And I believe David responded Tracy Letts, the boss bitch.

• 12:49David Sims?

  Because you'd had a good, really good year.

• 12:51Griffin Newman?

  It was a good year.

• 12:52David Sims?

  You'd been in a lot of stuff that, that's when you're in like, Christine and like Wiener Dog and The Lovers. I don't know, it was like a very, very sort of exciting.

• 12:59Griffin Newman?

  It's when you meet Hitmaker and he gives you the secrets, he's like, here's how you make a hit.

• 13:05David Sims?

  Wait, when did he meet, when, when, what did they work on?

• 13:06Griffin Newman?

  Christine.

• 13:07David Sims?

  Christine, right, right, right.

• 13:08Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 13:09David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 13:09Griffin Newman?

  Of course. And he was like, the women have to be little and it will go over a hundred million dollars. And you run to Greta Gerwig. I'm holding a hot hand. Tracy Letts is here in the studio.

• 13:20Speaker 04

  Thank you very much for having me.

• 13:21David Sims?

  Welcome Tracy, thank you.

• 13:22Speaker 04

  On the blank check.

• 13:23Griffin Newman?

  Now, you're saying that you've never seen Master and Commander before. I was happy that this is the series that you came on for. It is one of our great joys in life for David and I. When we pick a new director, we put him on the schedule, we immediately crack our knuckles, pull up blu-ray.com and go, what do I already have? And what are the holes I have to fill? And then what's the best addition? And it used to be, oh, no domestic release of this, too bad, I'm not going to have it. I've started being a, no matter what, by any means possible, I'm getting all of them. And this is, this is a varied stack here. We got Les Voitures où on mange Paris.

• 14:01Speaker 04

  Right.

• 14:02Griffin Newman?

  This is a French copy of The Cars That Ate Paris. Uh, who's, who's even the distributor here? Esca Editions?

• 14:10David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 14:11Griffin Newman?

  EFI about to reissue this in 4K. Got this fucking Mondo second site picnic at hanging rock.

• 14:17David Sims?

  I got that. That's very nice.

• 14:18Griffin Newman?

  It's a good box.

• 14:19David Sims?

  I just have the criterion of that. But it's a very.

• 14:21Griffin Newman?

  That only has the director's cut and this is theatrical plus the book. You get it's kind of like a better rendition.

• 14:25David Sims?

  I, yeah, I got them both.

• 14:26Griffin Newman?

  I tried to convince, I used this specifically to try to convince Amanda that physical media isn't ugly. I was trying to combat your, I live in a GameStop thing by being like, but look, this is nice.

• 14:37David Sims?

  No, there are nice ones.

• 14:39Griffin Newman?

  There are nice ones.

• 14:40David Sims?

  But sometimes are you a little skeptical of the really nice ones? Sure. I mean, I have giant boxes of movies that. For like fricking Congo. I mean, maybe Congo is rude because I know the boxes are great, but then you're like, inside is William Friedkin's, you know, Jade. Like, which is a movie I like, but doesn't belong in this finery.

• 14:58Griffin Newman?

  I just bought the umbrella 4K of the live action Super Mario Brothers, which I think is a hundred dollars and contains more literature than like the Encyclopedia Britannica. It has four separate books.

• 15:09David Sims?

  Film that I enjoyed, but like that most people involved with are like a stain on my reputation.

• 15:14Griffin Newman?

  It is objectively dog shit. And I want to be clear. I love that film. It is objectively dog shit and it comes with a book that includes two different scripts, two rejected scripts for that movie. And that's one of only three books included in that box. Last wave from the aforementioned umbrella, the fine folks.

• 15:32David Sims?

  Yep, I got that.

• 15:33Griffin Newman?

  We got Gallipoli has just a Paramount, a pretty basic blue that only came out recently. I'm glad they finally put it out.

• 15:39David Sims?

  I've got Gallipoli, but I, I'm going to look at my.

• 15:41Griffin Newman?

  Okay. I wonder if I'm wrong in this was just a reissue.

• 15:44David Sims?

  What do you use?

• 15:45Griffin Newman?

  This has a 2023 copyright.

• 15:47David Sims?

  Something called CLZ. I use that too. Yes. Very fond of that. Uh, let's see. Gallipoli. How do we spell that? G A. G A L L.

• 15:58Griffin Newman?

  IP. Yeah, that's what I got. Yeah. From a place you've never heard of comes a story you'll never forget. We both agreed in this episode, kind of a rude tagline. Yeah, a bit. But then I saw you on your Letterboxd log where people were getting excited, oh, fuck, is Tracy Letts doing Year of Living Dangerously? I'm sorry, I didn't realize when I, when I logged it that people would. The fun of the sport.

• 16:18David Sims?

  Oh, no, it's good. It's good. We like that.

• 16:21Griffin Newman?

  But you were posting in anger. Yeah. That you had to watch it on YouTube Premium because it was the only better option than the DVD you had. The DVD, I actually played them side by side. You're aware of this? What is that? This is a Spanish Blu-ray. I've been a little suspicious that it's a bootleg, but it seems like it's not. Have you watched it? Yeah. It looks okay. Well, there's the whole thing where. I would not say it is reference quality. Right. It looks like probably YouTube Premium just on a disc. Why isn't this movie at, why, why do I have a fucking box for Congo on my shelf and not the Year of Living Dangerously?

• 17:04Griffin Newman?

  This is underground pictures. They put this out. What's the copyright here for the disc release? I'll figure it out. But this is, yeah, it's got, this is 2014.

• 17:12David Sims?

  I feel like often with these.

• 17:14Griffin Newman?

  This is the only country in which any Blu-ray release of this movie has happened. It was 12 years ago.

• 17:19David Sims?

  These MGM United artists, like, you know, that sort of tricky period for this, right? Like, the rights will get weird, right? That's always, isn't that always the answer? It's like, no one can untangle.

• 17:28Griffin Newman?

  Sometimes I also wanna, like, we'll get into this, but I wonder if there's a feeling of touchiness around this movie of if we restore this too thoroughly and spotlight it too much, are people gonna get up in arms?

• 17:38David Sims?

  William Friedkin's Jane, they're not touchy about Jade. Sorry. Yeah. You know, like, there's other movies that get put out.

• 17:43Griffin Newman?

  Well, that's a touchy movie. That's a movie people touching each other the whole time.

• 17:46David Sims?

  Versus grabbing everyone.

• 17:47Griffin Newman?

  And I got the rest of, I got the, the Arrow Witness, I got the Dead Poets, the basic Disney release, green card. I don't, I don't own Dead Poets. Do you not like it? Uh, it's, uh. As soon as it's on the same page.

• 17:59David Sims?

  It's my least favorite weird film.

• 18:01Griffin Newman?

  I think mine too. Fearless, I think, is a Warner Archive, Truman, Basic, Paramount 4K, Master and Commander got the steelbook, but I assume you don't have that yet? I have it. I just haven't watched it. Yeah. Interesting. And then Wayback's an image release, so. I have that as well. Yeah. I, I don't think I've seen Wayback.

• 18:15David Sims?

  Do you like Brit shit? You know what I mean? Like, so like, did Master and Commander kind of pass you by just because it was like, sort of a big blockbuster at the time and you were like, eh, like, like, how did it pass you by, I wonder?

• 18:27Speaker 04

  Based on those books, right? I have no, I've never had any relationship to those books. I don't go out to see a movie just because Russell Crowe's in it. I don't not see a movie because Russell Crowe's in it.

• 18:39Griffin Newman?

  Sure, but he's not, he's not an automatic guy.

• 18:41David Sims?

  Do you go out to see? Exactly. What about the sea? You know, the shining sea.

• 18:44Speaker 04

  Are you a boat guy? Sea, uh, yeah.

• 18:47David Sims?

  Not, not. Is this the Midwestern or are you, you're like oceans? They're thousands of miles away.

• 18:53Speaker 04

  I have no good reason for not having seen Master and Commander. Maybe I'll go home and watch it tonight.

• 18:57David Sims?

  So, so it's, it's the best. It's so good.

• 18:59Griffin Newman?

  It's one of David's favorite movies. I have not rewatched it since I saw it in theaters. We have not done that episode yet.

• 19:05Speaker 04

  Can you say what your favorite where is?

• 19:07Griffin Newman?

  My.

• 19:08David Sims?

  That one is certainly my favorite.

• 19:09Griffin Newman?

  Yeah. My favorite is.

• 19:11David Sims?

  But I love a lot of his films.

• 19:12Griffin Newman?

  Huh.

• 19:13David Sims?

  Yeah. What's your number one, bud?

• 19:15Griffin Newman?

  Is it Truman Show? That feels kind of lame, but it feels like that might be my answer.

• 19:21David Sims?

  What's your favorite? Is it this?

• 19:22Speaker 04

  It's Year of Living Dangerous.

• 19:23David Sims?

  Yes, right. I mean, we, we talked to you when we were planning the series, being like, Peter, where does he spark interest? And Year of Living Dangerously was your Reno.

• 19:32Griffin Newman?

  I believe you said it's one of my 50 favorite movies of all time.

• 19:34Speaker 04

  You know, I made a list recently of my favorite movies. It was gonna be my top 100 list.

• 19:39Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 19:39Speaker 04

  And it turned out to be about 160 something on my list.

• 19:43Griffin Newman?

  Is it ranked or is it?

• 19:44Speaker 04

  Not ranked.

• 19:45Griffin Newman?

  Okay, just what's in the pot.

• 19:46Speaker 04

  Chronological order. And, uh, yeah, Year of Living Dangerously is on that list.

• 19:51Griffin Newman?

  So it's basically at this point, it's like, this is the canon. These are the movies.

• 19:55David Sims?

  You were just sort of going through everything you've seen, being like.

• 19:57Speaker 04

  My, these are my favorites. These are the things I will watch again, uh, that I know and love.

• 20:03Griffin Newman?

  Now, you might have sensed David and I both trying to sniff out some of your movie blind spots, right? What don't you like as much? What, what haven't you seen and for what reasons? It's because we came into this loaded with a challenge. Ben, producer Ben, who is not a physical media guy, I've gifted him a couple discs over the year, but this is not his beat.

• 20:25Griffin Newman?

  When we lock down a day and a time to record.

• 20:27Speaker 03

  Well, I should say I have vinyl. I have a big vinyl collection. Love music, but as far as, yeah, movies, I only really have a handful.

• 20:37Griffin Newman?

  Yeah. And he says, you know, it would be fun if we tried to gift Tracy with a disc that he doesn't already have. And I said, Ben, you don't understand the scale of the challenge you just proposed. That's impossible. And then the more we got into talking to him about how hard that would be, the more we were like, wait a second, you should try. You should try, Ben. You should see if you can pick out a movie he hasn't seen and/or placed in his collection. And then he bought three and it sparked a competition and David and I, and we have also each bought three movies for you.

• 21:17Speaker 03

  Wow.

• 21:18Griffin Newman?

  And this is the Tracy Let's Challenge. There are nine discs that are about to be presented.

• 21:23Speaker 03

  Oh, fantastic.

• 21:23Griffin Newman?

  And we want to know, are any of these not already in the collection?

• 21:27Speaker 03

  Oh, great.

• 21:28Griffin Newman?

  Ben, I feel like you should go first since you spurred this whole thing.

• 21:31Speaker 03

  So I want to shout out, we went to Night Owl Video. You ever been there?

• 21:36David Sims?

  It's a really nice place.

• 21:37Speaker 03

  Great place. Lovely little place.

• 21:38Griffin Newman?

  Nice. It's about a year old. It's finally bringing physical media stores back to New York City.

• 21:43David Sims?

  Shout out to Night Owl Video. They got a very nice used collection, very, you know, and all the new stuff, obviously. And their motto is death to streamers, physical media forever. So they're definitely going for it.

• 21:53Griffin Newman?

  I was trying to give Ben some, some help in strategizing. He also went with our friend Ben David Grabinsky, past and future guest, who was sort of guiding Ben through the understanding of certain labels have subscription programs. Tracy might be pre-buying a full year.

• 22:07Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 22:08Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 22:08Speaker 03

  Yeah. Yeah. He had mentioned you're a subscriber to Vinegar Syndrome. So I avoided those releases.

• 22:15Speaker 04

  And we're looking for, you want rigorous honesty.

• 22:18Griffin Newman?

  Rigorous honesty. Complete honesty.

• 22:19Speaker 03

  Absolutely.

• 22:20David Sims?

  Cause you have about what?

• 22:22Griffin Newman?

  20,000?

• 22:22Speaker 03

  No.

• 22:23Griffin Newman?

  No, that's crazy.

• 22:24Speaker 03

  11,000 plus.

• 22:25David Sims?

  Still a lot.

• 22:28Speaker 04

  But I appreciate you throwing out the number 20,000 makes it seem reasonable.

• 22:32David Sims?

  Well, 20,000 was sort of starting to approach like the amount of movies that might exist.

• 22:38Griffin Newman?

  This is why the challenge is fun.

• 22:39David Sims?

  Right. But you buy a lot of stuff and kind of are like, I'll get to it or I have a completionist surge or whatever.

• 22:46Speaker 04

  I've seen perhaps 30% of the movies on my show.

• 22:51David Sims?

  Cause I'm currently in this project of like, I gotta fucking watch everything I own on disc that I've either never seen or do not remember.

• 22:57Speaker 04

  How many discs do you have?

• 22:58David Sims?

  I have over a thousand, I think. I'm nothing like you, but I have a lot.

• 23:01Griffin Newman?

  I think I'm similar in numbers.

• 23:02David Sims?

  And my wife is, it goes in one room. And so it's a little mysterious what's going on, I think to her, but like then she'll glimpse like, what's, and I'm like, no, no, no, don't worry about it.

• 23:12Speaker 04

  You live in Brooklyn?

• 23:13David Sims?

  I live in Brooklyn.

• 23:14Speaker 04

  So your space is somewhat, you have some.

• 23:16David Sims?

  Somewhat limited. There's gonna have to be, I'm gonna need, there's some shelving conversations I'm gonna need to have.

• 23:22Griffin Newman?

  Choices that need to be made.

• 23:23Speaker 04

  See, we bought this house and it had a basement and it looked like a Marriott ballroom. And it's just like, oh, well, this is where we can put everything.

• 23:30David Sims?

  I mean, I'm very jealous.

• 23:31Griffin Newman?

  Tracy, I need you to know that I now often repeat the phrase, all I want is the type of success where I can have a Tracy Letts basement. It has become basically the driving force of any professional ambitions I have is if I can just get a Tracy Letts basement, imagine having a home where there was space for all of my sickness is the way I think about it.

• 23:56Speaker 04

  And you can pass your sickness on to your family members.

• 23:58Griffin Newman?

  Well, that's the real thing. Yeah.

• 24:01Speaker 04

  All right.

• 24:01David Sims?

  Well, and so I want to preface as well, as far as curation, you saw my porch.

• 24:07Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 24:07David Sims?

  So just keep that in mind as like a kind of lens.

• 24:11Griffin Newman?

  These are kind of three porch movies. If this helps you understand the kind of subgenre of porch movies.

• 24:16David Sims?

  So of course, first here, I have a limited edition steelbook of Ace Ventura Pet Detective.

• 24:22Speaker 04

  I do not own this film.

• 24:24Griffin Newman?

  You do not own this film. Have you seen it before?

• 24:26Speaker 04

  I don't think so.

• 24:28David Sims?

  Wow. Wow. You're in store for a good time.

• 24:30Speaker 04

  Oh, great.

• 24:31David Sims?

  How do you feel about James Carrey?

• 24:35Speaker 04

  Funny.

• 24:35Griffin Newman?

  Funny.

• 24:36David Sims?

  Well, then you probably at least get a couple.

• 24:38Speaker 04

  I mean, I mean, obviously not so funny that I've ever sought out Ace Ventura, which I think would be one of the touchstone films in his.

• 24:46David Sims?

  It's his launchpad, obviously.

• 24:48Griffin Newman?

  I will say this was part of my strategy was thinking the 90s might have been the era where you were dismissing certain commercial films.

• 24:58Speaker 04

  Definitely, definitely. It started in the 80s, but certainly extended well into the 90s. We'll get in more into the 80s, 90s discussion.

• 25:07Griffin Newman?

  Great.

• 25:08Speaker 04

  I will say that I just worked with Peter Farrelly.

• 25:10Griffin Newman?

  Oh.

• 25:11Speaker 04

  I shot a movie with him called I Play Rocky, which is coming out later this year. And at one point I got a note from him to take it down. And I said, wow, the director of Dumb and Dumber just told me I was a little too broad.

• 25:25Griffin Newman?

  That's incredible.

• 25:27David Sims?

  In a movie about making Rocky, who do you play in I Play Rocky?

• 25:31Speaker 04

  Uh, I play a fictional.

• 25:34Griffin Newman?

  Okay.

• 25:34Speaker 04

  Uh, bad guy.

• 25:35Griffin Newman?

  You'll never make this movie.

• 25:37Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 25:38David Sims?

  Boxing movies don't amount to shit.

• 25:40Griffin Newman?

  I'll tell you, Rocky will never win Best Picture.

• 25:42Speaker 04

  You might have actually quoted a few of my lines.

• 25:44David Sims?

  Do you, do you like to get that call? Cause like Four Versus Ferrari, great movie. And you're very, very good in it, but like where it's like, oh, fun racing. Well, no, no, you're the guy who shits on everyone in the office.

• 25:54Griffin Newman?

  I think this movie sucks. I wish this movie weren't happening. But then what's great about Four Versus Ferrari is you get the scene of the emotional breakdown. The best version of that character.

• 26:04Speaker 04

  I turned down a lot of those things unless it's got that extra thing in it that I go, oh, this is, this is good. I want to do that extra thing.

• 26:13Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 26:13Speaker 04

  And so I Play Rocky has that.

• 26:16David Sims?

  No, I'm excited for I Play Rocky. I am a sucker for that kind of movie. I like, I like.

• 26:20Speaker 04

  Uh, early word is good. I'm excited about it.

• 26:22Griffin Newman?

  Do you know that the young actor playing Sylvester Stallone in the movie is the same young actor who played Al Pacino in The Offer, one of my obsessions of the last decade?

• 26:31Speaker 04

  I have not seen it, but he's very good.

• 26:34Griffin Newman?

  I almost bought you The Offer on DVD and then I was like, it's TV and it's DVD. This is offensive. This is rude, but The Offer is one of the more bizarre things ever made.

• 26:43Speaker 04

  Thank you for the Ace Ventura. I will gladly accept.

• 26:45Griffin Newman?

  Right. Wait. And it's one of one right now. One out of one.

• 26:48David Sims?

  And so I should mention, that was a shout release. Next we have, this is Arrow Video. It is.

• 26:54Speaker 03

  A 4K of Spawn.

• 26:57Speaker 04

  I do not own that.

• 26:58Speaker 03

  Wow.

• 26:59David Sims?

  That doesn't shock me.

• 27:00Speaker 03

  Have you ever seen Spawn?

• 27:01Speaker 04

  I have not.

• 27:02Griffin Newman?

  Mark Aziz Depe's Spawn.

• 27:04Speaker 03

  Are you familiar with the character?

• 27:06Speaker 04

  Uh, is he a vampire or a vampire hunter?

• 27:08Griffin Newman?

  Oh, he's from hell.

• 27:11Speaker 04

  He's more demonic.

• 27:12Griffin Newman?

  Hellspawn.

• 27:13David Sims?

  Yeah, he's a former, uh, what is he, soldier? Yeah, like, he dies, he goes to hell and Satan is sort of like, I'll let you go back to earth, but you do have to be kind of like a hellish superhero.

• 27:24Speaker 04

  Was he originally a comic book?

• 27:26Griffin Newman?

  Correct.

• 27:26Speaker 04

  It's comic.

• 27:27Griffin Newman?

  Todd McFarlane, T-Dog Mac.

• 27:28David Sims?

  Nineties, very nineties.

• 27:29Griffin Newman?

  A lot of chains.

• 27:32Speaker 04

  And who directed the film?

• 27:33Griffin Newman?

  Mark Aziz Depe, who's a legendary special effects artist. He's widely credited as being one of the two guys who really cracked CGI for Jurassic Park. And they were like, well, that means you should make a whole movie. And he did this, and I believe he never directed a live action film ever again. He directs direct to video Garfield sequels now.

• 27:53Speaker 04

  Yeah. Then you're two for two, man.

• 27:55Speaker 03

  Wow. I'm thrilled.

• 27:56Griffin Newman?

  By the way, this has theatrical and directors cut on it. I recommend directors.

• 28:00Speaker 04

  Thank you. I appreciate it.

• 28:01Speaker 03

  And there's some really great special effects. And that's all I'm going to say. Okay?

• 28:05Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 28:06Griffin Newman?

  Roger Ebert gave this movie three stars.

• 28:08Speaker 03

  And then here lastly, we have Trash Humpers by Harmony Corinne.

• 28:14Speaker 04

  I do not own Trash Humpers.

• 28:15David Sims?

  Wow. I knew that was gonna be, okay, I was, I believe.

• 28:19Griffin Newman?

  That was the one that was borderline. Harmony Corinne doesn't feel like quite your taste zone, but also.

• 28:24Speaker 04

  I've got a couple of Harmony Corinne on the show.

• 28:26Griffin Newman?

  This was the thing.

• 28:27Speaker 04

  So I'm glad to have Trash Humpers on disc.

• 28:29Speaker 03

  Hell, yeah. Yeah, I'm a big fan of his work and I'm, I just, I can't believe three for three.

• 28:35Speaker 04

  Well done, man.

• 28:36Speaker 03

  Incredible.

• 28:36Speaker 04

  Well done.

• 28:37Griffin Newman?

  David, would you like to go next?

• 28:38David Sims?

  Sure, why not? All right. Okay, first off, this is the most obvious one. You might have this one. This is Arrow's, yes, 4K release of Dominic Senes film Swordfish.

• 28:49Griffin Newman?

  Okay, he's checking the app.

• 28:50David Sims?

  He's checking his database here, which is what I thought, where you, I doubt you've seen Swordfish.

• 28:54Speaker 04

  I have seen it.

• 28:55David Sims?

  All right, you've seen it. Okay, so I was wrong, but one of those where I was like, did you buy it? Just because there's a nice new addition out of a sense of completionism.

• 29:02Speaker 04

  I do not own Swordfish.

• 29:04Speaker 03

  Okay, okay.

• 29:05David Sims?

  Hugh Jackman, Halle Berry, uh, of course John Travolta.

• 29:08Griffin Newman?

  Don Cheadle.

• 29:09David Sims?

  Yeah, Don Cheadle, a role that you would play now in this movie, where it made today is Sam Shepard's role as the US Senator who's sort of like, stop, yay Travolta, you gotta cut out your, whatever it is you do.

• 29:22Speaker 03

  I don't like these computers.

• 29:23David Sims?

  You're right.

• 29:25David Sims?

  And she bolted, it's interesting and shoots him death in like Utah or some, you know, some extravagant location.

• 29:33David Sims?

  Just to make sure I'm thinking of the right film, Halle Berry nude scene. Correct. Very famously, they, they leaked this, this, oh, terrible leak came out from the studio. Like, oh, she's filming a nude scene, an extra scene has leaked. Oh, who could have spilled this info? There was also a moment. Clearly someone sent them a long range tracking report and they were like, can we leak the, can we pay Halle Berry another million dollars?

• 29:56Griffin Newman?

  There's a moment in the trailer of her undressing and I remember being surrounded by teenage boys, being a teenage boy at the time, people being like, I hear she keeps taking clothes off. Like it was, the buzz was really strong.

• 30:08David Sims?

  It's a scene in the film, her nude scene that I would say doesn't feel entirely dramatically central to the.

• 30:14Griffin Newman?

  But she's sunbathing and then she just drops the cover, shows her breasts clear.

• 30:18David Sims?

  I have seen the movie.

• 30:19Griffin Newman?

  For about 60 seconds and then just puts it back.

• 30:21David Sims?

  Honestly, the nude scene is what it's sort of known for. I think this is a crazy text. Like this is a bizarre, like when Hollywood was sort of like, we should be doing like cyberpunk Tarantino movies. And then like one year later, they were like, enough of that. Like we gotta stop. Who directed this? Dominic Sena, who also made, uh, John and 60 Seconds remake.

• 30:40Griffin Newman?

  He did.

• 30:40David Sims?

  He was, he was a Fincher guy. He was one of the Fincher staple.

• 30:43Griffin Newman?

  I always get Sena and Simon West confused.

• 30:46David Sims?

  Right. Well, they were both Fincher guys.

• 30:48Griffin Newman?

  They're both, yeah.

• 30:48David Sims?

  He did that kind of nasty Brad Pitt movie, California, if you remember that, like a serial killer movie. Yep. He was, you know, all sizzle.

• 30:58Griffin Newman?

  No sin?

• 30:58David Sims?

  Medium, medium to small steak. You guys are four for four. All right, all right.

• 31:02Griffin Newman?

  Oh, he did Season of the Witch, which I love. Have you ever seen Season of the Witch?

• 31:05David Sims?

  I have.

• 31:06Griffin Newman?

  Great movie. One of our finest.

• 31:08David Sims?

  All right. Next up, this is, this is a strange one. This is DVD. Used DVD. Wow. Cause I was really trying to get weird. Scott Alexander and Larry Karasowski screwed.

• 31:17Speaker 04

  Checking the database.

• 31:19David Sims?

  Now, this is Griffin.

• 31:21Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 31:21David Sims?

  An exceptionally strange movie.

• 31:23Griffin Newman?

  I agree with that.

• 31:24David Sims?

  Yes.

• 31:24Griffin Newman?

  I believe it has never been released on high.

• 31:26Speaker 04

  Don't own it.

• 31:26Griffin Newman?

  Wow.

• 31:27Speaker 04

  Don't own it.

• 31:27Griffin Newman?

  Have you ever seen it?

• 31:28Speaker 04

  No.

• 31:29David Sims?

  It looks a light to medium use here. We've got some crinkling on this. I'm sorry to give you this.

• 31:34Griffin Newman?

  It is an odd kind of blank check movie because they'd had such success as screenwriters that people went, we should let these guys make a whole film and it was trying to launch arguably three comedy stars at the same time.

• 31:45David Sims?

  Trying to launch, it's sort of trying with Norm again, Norm MacDonald around the dirty work era, right? Like our little after.

• 31:51Griffin Newman?

  I think it's almost contemporaneous.

• 31:53David Sims?

  And then Dave Chappelle, it's sort of half baked era.

• 31:56Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 31:57David Sims?

  Dave Chappelle. I'm talking, and I mean, who's the third?

• 31:59Griffin Newman?

  Sarah Silverman.

• 32:00David Sims?

  Yeah, yeah, sure. Sure. She's in there.

• 32:03Speaker 04

  But Larry doesn't disown this movie, right? I mean, Larry is fond of.

• 32:07David Sims?

  I think they're both, it was, it was one of those movies they had no idea how to market. It has one of the weirdest trailers. They clearly just have no idea what to tell you about this movie.

• 32:17Griffin Newman?

  It is so odd.

• 32:18David Sims?

  Quite odd and kind of vulgar.

• 32:20Griffin Newman?

  I was gonna say it's in this category I would classify as like big budget studio versions of John Waters material. You know, and I think it's a little post like Something About Mary, people want gross out. It is very dark. It's very odd.

• 32:35Speaker 04

  Oh, thanks. Five for five.

• 32:38Griffin Newman?

  DeVito is great in it.

• 32:39David Sims?

  Doing great. Finally, Crank High Voltage.

• 32:43Speaker 04

  I've not seen Crank High Voltage.

• 32:45David Sims?

  Have you seen Crank?

• 32:46Speaker 04

  I haven't seen Crank. I've actually been on a bit of a Statham tear recently.

• 32:54Speaker 04

  I've not gotten to it yet.

• 32:55David Sims?

  Both vital. I'm sorry that I went for High Voltage here because the completionist in you now means you'll probably end up buying Crank as well. This is the sequel, Crank High Voltage.

• 33:04Speaker 04

  Is Joan Allen in one of these movies?

• 33:06Griffin Newman?

  Joan Allen is in Death Race. A movie I really fight for. She, she plays the, I, no, I was gonna say she plays the Tracy Letts. I don't want you doing Death Race. It is the opposite. She is the evil prison warden. And she's like, you motherfuckers better Death Race. And there's a bit in that movie that I love where Joan Allen goes on like a 30 second tear and says every American curse word six times.

• 33:30Speaker 04

  Nice.

• 33:30Griffin Newman?

  Cause she's angry at how Statham is breaking her system.

• 33:34Speaker 04

  For a while, the, my treadmill watches were TV shows, keeping up with the TV shows. But it just became too painful. And so what I've been doing.

• 33:44David Sims?

  Cause you're gonna fall asleep watching these shows in 10 episodes before they do any plot.

• 33:48Speaker 04

  Yeah, right. It wasn't an enticement to get back on the treadmill. So I've been catching up on a lot of action.

• 33:54David Sims?

  Like trashy action.

• 33:55Speaker 04

  From 90s, 2000s action. Like I've watched the Equalizer series.

• 34:00Griffin Newman?

  I saw you logs out.

• 34:01David Sims?

  Yeah, extremely good.

• 34:02Griffin Newman?

  Tracy, I had considered buying you the Equalizer trilogy. So I did some cross referencing. We were just talking about those movies. I love them so much. They make me so happy.

• 34:11David Sims?

  Just to pitch you on Crank, Crank, the first Crank, the idea is it's speed, but with his heart. So he has to keep his heart rate above a certain, you can crank Harry Valtage. I believe he's been in, given an artificial heart. So he has to literally like grab onto like, uh, like.

• 34:24Griffin Newman?

  Use electricity.

• 34:25David Sims?

  Electric cords and bite them to.

• 34:27Speaker 04

  Just wait, really?

• 34:28David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 34:28Griffin Newman?

  The first Crank. Sounds fun. Ends with him dying.

• 34:31David Sims?

  Right.

• 34:31Griffin Newman?

  And it was enough of a hit that justified the sequel. Well, what if they put an electric cart in him? But it resulted in one of the greatest taglines of all time, which is, which is he was dead, but he got a lot better.

• 34:41David Sims?

  Yeah, he got better.

• 34:42Speaker 04

  Mr. Statham never made a movie that he, he, he couldn't find his way to make a sequel to.

• 34:47Griffin Newman?

  Absolutely. That's so true. All doors are open in the world of Jason Statham.

• 34:51David Sims?

  I like this era of his better, which was more martial artsy versus this new one where it's like, he's a gentle gardener, but he used to. And then like some nice old lady dies and he has to go kill Hillary Clinton or whatever.

• 35:03Griffin Newman?

  But Beekeeper is incredible. Beekeeper, have you seen Beekeeper?

• 35:06Speaker 04

  I have seen Beekeeper.

• 35:07Griffin Newman?

  Beekeeper is just so insane in, in the world it establishes.

• 35:11David Sims?

  I forget which crank it is. One of the cranks has one of my favorite gags, which is, uh, Japanese guys talking to him and you see the subtitles. And Statham is so out of it that you then cut to a reverse of Statham looking at the subtitles. Like the shot is reversed going like.

• 35:25Griffin Newman?

  Neville Dean and Taylor.

• 35:26David Sims?

  All right. So I got, I got three for three too.

• 35:28Speaker 04

  Six for six.

• 35:29Griffin Newman?

  Okay. Wow. I, I took a very specific strategy. A, I was like, I feel like the nineties are the zone where you were maybe not keeping up as, uh, omnivorously with all the commercial cinema.

• 35:39Speaker 04

  I think that's true.

• 35:41Griffin Newman?

  And B also, you talk about on your, on your physical media episodes. So big picture, the things you were watching with your children. And I was sort of trying to triangulate your children's tastes, where things are going. And I'm like, are there movies that I grew up with? That you would not have seen at the time, but that might be good to introduce your children to.

• 36:00Speaker 04

  I like.

• 36:01Griffin Newman?

  They can come grift stamped. I'm just agreeing with you. They can also swear. Maybe they knocks these discs a little higher up on the watch list because there's a little bit of an activity.

• 36:09Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 36:09Griffin Newman?

  Okay. So first of all,

• 36:13Griffin Newman?

  Joe Dante's 1998 picture, Small Soldiers. Have you seen it?

• 36:16Speaker 04

  I have not seen Small Soldiers.

• 36:18Griffin Newman?

  And I assume that means you don't own it?

• 36:20Speaker 04

  I do not own.

• 36:20Griffin Newman?

  Okay.

• 36:21Speaker 04

  Nor have I seen Joe. I didn't even know it was a Joe Dante movie.

• 36:24Griffin Newman?

  You're making a Sherman-esque statement. Tracy, that's exactly what I was betting on because I went, I bet Tracy has respect for Joe Dante.

• 36:32Speaker 04

  Sure.

• 36:32Griffin Newman?

  But he lost track of the last couple.

• 36:34Speaker 04

  I did. I did not know that was his film.

• 36:36Griffin Newman?

  This incredible film about the military industrial complex, about the corporatization of America.

• 36:43Speaker 04

  Is that a person on the cover?

• 36:45Griffin Newman?

  So it is about a tech company, a military tech company that buys a toy company and they're endless sort of gobbling up a conglomeration of everything and decide to try to make, this film's very relevant now, basically AI toys. What if GI Joes could actually do shit? And they put military microchips in them and they start literally waging war on our backyard. They come to life. But are there people in the film? Yes, there are. It's not an animated film. It's a live action film.

• 37:13Speaker 04

  Right.

• 37:13Griffin Newman?

  This is Major Chip Hazard, who is the main villain toy voiced by Tommy Lee Jones and Frank Langella, Archer, leader of the Gorgonites. But this film stars Kirsten Dunst, Gregory Smith. Great Kevin Dunn. Phil Hartman's final film performance, Dennis Leary, David Cross, Anne Magnusson. It's got a really good cast. Jay Moore, of course. It was that era where we were trying to make that happen. But it's, it's a, it's a wonderful film. I think, I think it's a razor sharp satire.

• 37:41Speaker 04

  You guys are.

• 37:42Griffin Newman?

  Very funny.

• 37:43Speaker 04

  You guys are killing it.

• 37:44Griffin Newman?

  Uh, big action.

• 37:45Speaker 04

  I'm going to show that to my son.

• 37:46Griffin Newman?

  Yeah. I think, I think he will like it. It's got, it's not, I know he's very into Kaiju film. I know it is not a

• 37:53David Sims?

  These are small, not big.

• 37:55Griffin Newman?

  There's a similar

• 37:57David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 37:57Griffin Newman?

  Energy of chaos.

• 37:59Speaker 04

  Creature featurey kind of.

• 38:00Griffin Newman?

  He likes the first question is always, is there a creature? It is mostly very small animatronic puppets. You know, of monsters fighting army men. Got it. And humans being like, the fuck is going on?

• 38:14Griffin Newman?

  One of the best films of 1998. Similarly, this comes from, this was DreamWorks when DreamWorks was launching and Spielberg was like, we need a family slate. We need Amblin-esque pictures and he greenlit odd versions of Amblin-esque pictures. That didn't quite perform as well as they should have at the time. Gore Verbinski's Mouse Hunt, his first film. I do not own Mouse Hunt, nor have I ever seen.

• 38:35David Sims?

  Wow, you'll like that.

• 38:36Griffin Newman?

  This is quietly one of the best film craft films of the 90s. If this movie came out tomorrow, best cinematography, best art direction, best sound, best editing. People would be like, nothing has looked this good since the 50s. Who directed Mouse Hunt? Gore Verbinski. Oh, you just said. It is his first film. It is him cashing in the heat of directing the Budweiser Frog commercials. And it's a script that's just, these two guys are trying to catch a mouse. And he's like, what if it has the aesthetics of delicatessen? He built an insane house. He insisted on doing almost all of it with real mice. They had like 60 mice who they trained as actors. It's Nathan Lane and Lee Evans. Lee Evans.

• 39:19Griffin Newman?

  But it's also, it's Christopher Walken's in it, Maury Shaken's in it. Sure. It's William Hickey's last performance ever. Oh, yeah. Wonderful film. Saw it recently at Film Forum. It's a beautiful 4K. I'll tell you what. This is reference quality. If you, if you score this last one, nine for nine. This is my biggest swing because this is more recent, but I had a feeling that you just kind of opted out on this whole series. This is, I picked, it's an excellent adventure picture. It's it's a family story done in a style, I'd say almost heightened to melodrama. With the broad kind of allegorical storytelling of your biblical epics of yore. It is called Avatar, The Way of Water.

• 40:02Speaker 04

  I've never seen Avatar, The Way of Water.

• 40:05Griffin Newman?

  Did you blind buy it?

• 40:06Speaker 04

  I did not blind buy it. I do not own it.

• 40:08Griffin Newman?

  Nine fresh discs. Now, did you see the first one?

• 40:13David Sims?

  Did you see the first one?

• 40:14Speaker 04

  I've never seen one of the Avatar.

• 40:15Griffin Newman?

  It's my guess that you just went, not my thing, right?

• 40:18Speaker 04

  I've not, yeah, I haven't seen.

• 40:20Griffin Newman?

  This is a ripro an adventure about how we have lost touch with nature.

• 40:25Speaker 04

  So now I have to go buy the first one.

• 40:27David Sims?

  This is the problem. We're making homework for you here, buying these sequels.

• 40:31Griffin Newman?

  It's a boy and a whale. The mighty Pygon, who you will be thrilled to meet.

• 40:36Speaker 04

  How long is that movie?

• 40:38Griffin Newman?

  Let's not talk about runtime. Runtime, what is a runtime?

• 40:41Speaker 04

  Well, just in terms of showing it to my son, there there are.

• 40:45David Sims?

  Your son will be into it, I would imagine.

• 40:47Griffin Newman?

  Your son will be into it. It might be split over a couple nights. 192 minutes long.

• 40:50Speaker 04

  192 fucking minutes. It's longer than Lawrence of Arabia.

• 40:56Griffin Newman?

  It's similar to Lawrence of Arabia.

• 40:58David Sims?

  Longer than Lawrence of Arabia. But has your son seen Lawrence of Arabia?

• 41:01Griffin Newman?

  That is a question.

• 41:01David Sims?

  Actually, you know what? Lawrence of Arabia is longer. Lawrence of Arabia is almost four hours long.

• 41:05Griffin Newman?

  Is it really?

• 41:05David Sims?

  Yeah, it's really, really long.

• 41:06Griffin Newman?

  It's four discs. So after you watch the movie, you can go into the making of?

• 41:11Speaker 04

  You know, recently, Sean and Amanda on the Big Picture Podcast, we're talking about how even if you're not into it, it's undeniable that the the specialness of the special effects are in fact kind of jaw dropping and beyond what you're accustomed seeing when you watch a lot of AI slop.

• 41:33Griffin Newman?

  I would agree.

• 41:33Speaker 04

  Or CGI slop.

• 41:34Griffin Newman?

  It is. It is very much. Yes. It stands in opposition to that. And I we we agree that it is the best of the three.

• 41:43David Sims?

  Yes, absolutely.

• 41:44Speaker 04

  Really?

• 41:45Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 41:45David Sims?

  I think the sequel is the best.

• 41:46Griffin Newman?

  I do think you could watch it cold. It does a pretty good job of table setting at the beginning of the film. And there's such a big time jump between the first and the second, that there is a bit of a clean entry point.

• 41:58Speaker 04

  Now, I have to say, you guys have done absolutely beautiful work in collecting these nine discs. I'm really impressed and I'm really happy to have them in my collection. And I'm happy to give all of them a spin. All of them. Does anybody listening to this give a shit about?

• 42:20David Sims?

  What we're talking about?

• 42:21Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 42:21David Sims?

  Oh, very deeply. Are you kidding me?

• 42:23Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah.

• 42:23David Sims?

  You go on Sean's podcast, which is bigger than this podcast and you guys, you know, speak at length on these matters.

• 42:30Speaker 04

  I always assume that those episodes are just very niche, that there's just a very, there's a small but dedicated number of people.

• 42:37David Sims?

  But this is a growing area of interest for people. I feel like I do feel like there's this general person, you know, like there's just feeling amongst film fans of like, it's just not good out there anymore.

• 42:49Griffin Newman?

  It's bad and we need to take a stand and we need to do something.

• 42:52David Sims?

  It's so annoying sifting through these streaming services. It's so annoying, kind of like trying to find the best version of it, you know, and like, it's so satisfying to own something. I don't know. I don't know.

• 43:00Speaker 04

  I can just hear a lot of pissed off film guys going, what do you mean? He's never seen Ace Ventura. What? Who is this asshole?

• 43:06Griffin Newman?

  The balance of these things. Look, people gotta come to blank check and understand this is the flow. This is the natural order, you know?

• 43:13Speaker 04

  Have you ever had anybody on this show older than me?

• 43:17Griffin Newman?

  Yes. Your father. My father. Are you willing to say your age on Mike?

• 43:22Speaker 04

  Sixty.

• 43:23Griffin Newman?

  Yeah. My father, my father has been only on Patreon, but he is 73. No, he's 73. Uh, I believe Clint McElroy.

• 43:31Speaker 04

  Oh, sure. Amy Irving.

• 43:33Griffin Newman?

  Amy Irving.

• 43:34David Sims?

  The great Amy.

• 43:35Griffin Newman?

  She was only on Patreon though. Uh, Colin Quinn, I believe. Do you know, I think Colin Quinn is older than you.

• 43:41Speaker 04

  I would think.

• 43:41Griffin Newman?

  I think so.

• 43:42David Sims?

  Colin Quinn is six years older than you.

• 43:44Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 43:44Speaker 04

  There you go.

• 43:44Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 43:45David Sims?

  You're rubbing it in his face next time.

• 43:46Griffin Newman?

  Yeah. So unfortunately you don't get, you get to retain the crown as king of physical media.

• 43:50Speaker 04

  Let me tell you a few people who are older than me. I'll surprise you.

• 43:52Griffin Newman?

  Yeah. Um, we do, there's one last, uh, disc reveal.

• 43:58Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah.

• 43:59Griffin Newman?

  The remainder of the bag, you mentioned, of course, your, your physical media episodes on the big picture, which started out as just you and Sean, and then grew to include Chris Ryan and, and Tim Hitmaker Simons as well. There was one person who has been desperately trying to make his way onto the physical media high council.

• 44:18Speaker 03

  Well, I'll read this note he left. Mr. Letts, please accept this meager offering of physical media. Sorry, it's hard to read his handwriting. It's really chicken scratch here. Representing some of my movies, only two are reference quality. It's less about hoping you watch and enjoy and more the honor of contributing my work to the definitive archive, Alex Ross Perry.

• 44:45Speaker 04

  Oh, Alex Ross Perry. How lovely. And what did he send?

• 44:49Speaker 03

  He gave you three of his films, which is Her Smell, Pavements and Listen Up Philip.

• 44:56Speaker 04

  Yes. I own Listen Up Philip.

• 44:58Griffin Newman?

  You own Listen Up Philip? This same, the Eureka Edition?

• 45:00Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 45:01Griffin Newman?

  Wow.

• 45:01Speaker 04

  I own that.

• 45:02Speaker 03

  Then I'll take that.

• 45:02Griffin Newman?

  Wow. I mean, this is, this is like an epic L for ARP that we went fucking nine for nine and ARP gets up to bat and immediately you fucking imported one of his movies?

• 45:14Speaker 04

  I haven't watched it. I should watch it.

• 45:16Griffin Newman?

  It's next film.

• 45:16Speaker 03

  I think you'd like it.

• 45:17Griffin Newman?

  Incredible drama and Price performance.

• 45:18Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 45:19David Sims?

  Yeah. Price is incredible in it. I don't know if you, I'm another, you know, a theater legend in his own right, who also did Yellowface, which

• 45:27Griffin Newman?

  I was gonna say.

• 45:27David Sims?

  is important to our discussion today.

• 45:29Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 45:29David Sims?

  Of the year, dangerously.

• 45:40Speaker 03

  David?

• 45:41David Sims?

  Yes.

• 45:42Speaker 03

  Mmm. Is that the C S cow?

• 45:46Griffin Newman?

  The C S cow is back.

• 45:47Speaker 03

  Haven't heard from her in a while.

• 45:48Griffin Newman?

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

• 45:53Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 45:54Griffin Newman?

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

• 45:58Speaker 03

  Wow.

• 45:59Griffin Newman?

  The cow likes chicken.

• 46:01Speaker 03

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

• 46:08Griffin 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.

• 46:20David Sims?

  Yes.

• 46:20Griffin Newman?

  One of my favorite movies of the year.

• 46:21David Sims?

  Absolutely.

• 46:22Griffin Newman?

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

• 46:28David Sims?

  That is a line in the movie.

• 46:29Griffin Newman?

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

• 46:32David Sims?

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

• 46:36Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 46:36David Sims?

  Great friend.

• 46:37Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 46:37David Sims?

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

• 46:42Griffin Newman?

  Uh huh.

• 46:43David Sims?

  You know, legends and I tip my cap, but Zach Cherry.

• 46:45Griffin Newman?

  Performances, friend of the show.

• 46:47David Sims?

  Friend of the show, Zach Cherry.

• 46:48Griffin Newman?

  Zach Cherry.

• 46:49David Sims?

  Also in it.

• 46:50Griffin Newman?

  This is true.

• 46:51David Sims?

  Such a cool movie. Won the 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, uh, this summer and now it's on movie.

• 47:01Griffin 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.

• 47:16David Sims?

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

• 47:20Griffin 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, uh, an example of there still being new stories to tell.

• 47:32David Sims?

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

• 47:44Griffin Newman?

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

• 47:49David Sims?

  Damn right.

• 47:55Griffin Newman?

  David.

• 47:56David Sims?

  Yes.

• 47:56Griffin Newman?

  Shop.com is giving away $1 million in shop cash.

• 48:00David Sims?

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

• 48:06Griffin Newman?

  I love that. It's very convenient.

• 48:07David Sims?

  And now 1,000 shoppers are each going to win $1,000 in shop cash just in time for the holidays.

• 48:15Griffin 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.

• 48:23David 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.

• 48:46Griffin Newman?

  From cult favorites to the world's biggest brands, score suite deals and checkout fast all at shop.com. Enter to win the $1 million shop cash giveaway from now until November 1st. Just go to shop.com. There are so many ways to win. That's shop.com. Shopping designed around you. No purchase necessary. Restrictions apply. Official rules available at shop.com.

• 49:18Griffin Newman?

  David.

• 49:18David Sims?

  Hmm.

• 49:19Griffin 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.

• 49:26David Sims?

  Lisa.

• 49:28Griffin 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.

• 49:35David Sims?

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

• 49:41Griffin Newman?

  Mm hmm.

• 49:41David Sims?

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

• 49:48Griffin Newman?

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

• 49:52David Sims?

  No.

• 49:52Griffin Newman?

  Nope.

• 49:53David Sims?

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

• 50:42Speaker 04

  By the way, the big picture has come up a couple of times here. They did a 1988 draft.

• 50:50David Sims?

  I'm in the middle of listening to it as we speak.

• 50:52Speaker 04

  I was not invited. And I said to them, you know, I'm going on Blank Check tomorrow.

• 50:57David Sims?

  Right.

• 50:57Speaker 04

  And maybe if the Blank Check guys adopt me, you know, we're all New Yorkers. We're New York.

• 51:04David Sims?

  Yeah, that's true.

• 51:05Speaker 04

  I was like, maybe, maybe, maybe I wind up jumping ship. And let me tell you, the text I got from Sean was pretty definitive.

• 51:14Griffin Newman?

  You even think you fucking ran.

• 51:17David Sims?

  For one fucking second. I was having a fun time listening to that. It's an interesting year, 88. And I really, I respected Chris, Chris's bind there, Chris Ryan's binder of getting the number one pick. Where it's like, you're on the big picture. You know, it's like, you have to pick Die Hard. That's sort of like the, and he, he lost Midnight Run and I felt for him. Cause Midnight Run.

• 51:37Speaker 04

  Well, I sent them immediately upon conclusion, I sent them a few movies they left off of the 1988 draft that I would have.

• 51:44David Sims?

  Such as?

• 51:45Speaker 04

  Gladly. Well, Thin Blue Line would be top of.

• 51:48David Sims?

  Great.

• 51:48Speaker 04

  For me. And it was just like, how is this not, I mean.

• 51:53Griffin Newman?

  Would be a beautiful use of a wild card pick.

• 51:55Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 51:56Griffin Newman?

  Did it get snubbed for best documentary?

• 51:57David Sims?

  Yeah, of course. It was, he was, right. He wasn't doing what that branch appreciated, you know, like he was doing something new. So he was, they never liked it.

• 52:05Griffin Newman?

  So you'd have to take it in wild card.

• 52:06David Sims?

  I think, did he eventually win for Fog of War? Like, I feel like they eventually gave Errol Morris an Oscar.

• 52:11Griffin Newman?

  And then he also did the fucking, the stuff for the Oscars.

• 52:14David Sims?

  He did. Those were fun. Yeah. He won for Fog of War, though. That's his only ever Oscar nomination. Like, they were, you know, they were always kind of like too snooty for him.

• 52:22Griffin Newman?

  It's just one of the most incredible lasting cultural artifacts is from Errol Morris doing those, that Oscar intro one year where he interviewed people about their favorite movies. We have the clip of Donald Trump looking into the Inter- Intertron? Is that what he calls?

• 52:38David Sims?

  Intertron, yeah.

• 52:39Griffin Newman?

  Right. And talking about why he loves Citizen Kane and misreading it confidently.

• 52:43David Sims?

  Right.

• 52:44Griffin Newman?

  It's a movie about a guy who gets everything.

• 52:46David Sims?

  In a big house.

• 52:47Griffin Newman?

  I think he literally says, it's a movie about a guy who gets everything.

• 52:51Speaker 04

  That reminds me, I was at a, I was at some party in Los Angeles and David Zasloff, I was with Carrie and some of the other Gilded Age.

• 53:01David Sims?

  And of course Carrie's in the HBO family, of course.

• 53:03Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 53:04David Sims?

  The queen of the HBO family.

• 53:05Speaker 04

  She's on Gilded Age and Zasloff came up and he was so excited to see them and we came to realize after a while, I was like, oh, the robber barons are his heroes.

• 53:14David Sims?

  Of course. I love what you're ramming that railroad right across America.

• 53:18Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 53:19David Sims?

  I, God, my favorite thing in the Gilded Age is anytime Morgan Specter's character is just like, I feel like I need to go, you know, kill 10,000 railroad guys just to, just to get my rocks off, you know, just really gotta like, go fight with JP Morgan about something. Um, I love the Gilded Age.

• 53:38Speaker 04

  Sure.

• 53:38David Sims?

  Gilded Age is number one kind of show for me where I can Google after and like act and learn about the.

• 53:45Griffin Newman?

  David just said this in our, our way back episode with, with Alex Ross Perry.

• 53:49David Sims?

  Have you seen Peter Weir's The Way Back? One of his least seen films, his final film, the film about escapees from the Gulag who trekked across the Gobi Desert all the way to India.

• 53:59Speaker 04

  I remember my mom watching it and saying, this is really good. How come I didn't see this fucking movie?

• 54:05David Sims?

  It was completely ignored on release. It's a fairly handsome, like, you know, solid. It's not his best movie, but.

• 54:11Griffin Newman?

  But David was saying he loves anything, any watch that can cause him to open up some Wikipedia tabs and start digging.

• 54:18David Sims?

  You know, afterwards, I'm like, so Mongolian, the 50s, what was going on there?

• 54:22Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 54:22David Sims?

  Like stuff like.

• 54:23Griffin Newman?

  I want to hear your other 1988 snubs.

• 54:27Speaker 04

  Let me consult my.

• 54:29David Sims?

  I'm guessing Akira wasn't picked. I haven't finished.

• 54:31Griffin Newman?

  Akira was not picked.

• 54:33David Sims?

  It's also, I'm trying to think of like definitive 88 movies that probably are too niche or whatever.

• 54:36Griffin Newman?

  They keep complaining about how bad the sequel slate is.

• 54:41Speaker 04

  It was very bad. And in fact, Amanda asked me specifically what my pick would have been.

• 54:46Griffin Newman?

  It's really bad.

• 54:47Speaker 04

  I suggested Lady Terminator, which is not actually canon.

• 54:51Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 54:52David Sims?

  That one's not canon?

• 54:53Griffin Newman?

  You have Halloween four, Hellraiser two, Nightmare four, but I'm just immediately here, no one.

• 54:58David Sims?

  It's not great.

• 54:59Griffin Newman?

  Even with Thriller open, no one picked Child's Play and no one picked Dead Ringers?

• 55:04Speaker 04

  Dead Ringers was definitely on my list. I think they mentioned it in their honorable mentions, but not good enough. Another Woman, the Woody Allen movie, Another Woman, which, you know.

• 55:14David Sims?

  That would have been a surprising pick.

• 55:16Speaker 04

  It would have been, but because I listened to the New York draft. While we had to dance between the raindrops on that one. Didn't pick Woody Allen? I'll tell you the difference to Woody Allen.

• 55:25Griffin Newman?

  No one picked Woody Allen. I want to make it clear.

• 55:26Speaker 04

  Woody Allen's name was never said on a New York movie draft.

• 55:30David Sims?

  We were in front of a live audience.

• 55:32Griffin Newman?

  We were in front of a live audience. Backstage, there wasn't like a blood pact. Like, we all agree, no one's gonna utter his name. It did not happen.

• 55:39David Sims?

  No, no.

• 55:40Griffin Newman?

  I think if we were not in front of a crowd.

• 55:43David Sims?

  I don't know, though. Like.

• 55:44Griffin Newman?

  Who knows?

• 55:45David Sims?

  Because the whole populist agenda of the drafts of like, you're supposedly trying to win the audience's favor.

• 55:51Speaker 04

  It's always dicey, right?

• 55:52David Sims?

  The other thing, I will say the other thing with Woody Allen in a New York movie draft is it's like, okay, well, so do you figure Manhattan is the pick there? There's other definitive New York movies. Well, you know, almost all like, like, what's the New York movie?

• 56:06Griffin Newman?

  Right. It's more the canon than the idea of he has one film that feels most representational of New York, other than the one that's named after a borough and has a poster of the bridge.

• 56:15David Sims?

  He has some great fucking photography of Manhattan, but like, yeah, what's the New York movie?

• 56:19Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 56:19Speaker 04

  Well, I would probably pick Manhattan, but certainly if somebody picks Annie Hall in comedy, or Hannah and her sisters in comedy.

• 56:28David Sims?

  These are not shocking. No, you're not wrong.

• 56:30Griffin Newman?

  Hannah and her sisters.

• 56:31Speaker 04

  The Bear, 1988.

• 56:33Griffin Newman?

  Never seen The Bear.

• 56:34Speaker 04

  Jean Jacques, I know.

• 56:35David Sims?

  The Bear, the great, the Bear actor.

• 56:39Speaker 04

  It's a great, yes, Bart the Bear plays the bear. It is a, it's a nature film, shot really from the bear's perspective. It's very good.

• 56:49David Sims?

  I have never seen. I know. And that is a genre of movie that doesn't exist anymore. The sort of. Gentle, nature focused, plot light.

• 56:58Speaker 04

  It's not that gentle. That's the good thing.

• 57:00David Sims?

  Right, right. We've got some peril.

• 57:01Speaker 04

  Yeah, there's, there's, there's fucking in it. There's psychedelic drugs.

• 57:06David Sims?

  Oh, yeah?

• 57:06Speaker 04

  Yeah, no, the bear's kind of.

• 57:08Griffin Newman?

  But like, the, the animal drama doesn't exist anymore, right?

• 57:13Speaker 04

  Right.

• 57:13Griffin Newman?

  On, on a tapestry from like, you know, Black Stallion to The Bear, it used to just be like, once or twice a year.

• 57:19Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 57:20Griffin Newman?

  We took some fucking cameras.

• 57:21David Sims?

  We went to the jungle. You're gonna love it.

• 57:23Griffin Newman?

  And we're like, we think we got this animal to act.

• 57:27Speaker 04

  Never Cry Wolf. Do you guys know that movie?

• 57:29David Sims?

  Oh, yeah. I've never seen it. I know it.

• 57:30Speaker 04

  Beautiful movie and there's no good physical media.

• 57:33Griffin Newman?

  That's Carol Ballard, right? That's the kind of king of what we're talking about.

• 57:36Speaker 04

  Terrific. Yeah. I had my neighbor Totoro, but then Sean informs me, maybe that's not quite the right release.

• 57:42David Sims?

  It's tough. I, you can call it an 88 movie, but I, to me, that's one where it's like, you can't go by the American date because that movie was never properly released in America.

• 57:51Griffin Newman?

  It got a fucking Toronto release.

• 57:53David Sims?

  Yeah, right. Yeah.

• 57:54Speaker 04

  Hairspray.

• 57:56David Sims?

  Hairspray's a great movie.

• 57:57Speaker 04

  Uh, Things Change.

• 57:59David Sims?

  Never seen, never seen.

• 58:00Speaker 04

  David Mamet, Joe Mantegna and Don Amici, a very good.

• 58:04David Sims?

  It's the poster where they're in the back of the limo, right?

• 58:07Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 58:07David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 58:08Speaker 04

  That's a very good movie. And there's a good disc of that, too. I think it's Indicator has a nice disc of that.

• 58:13David Sims?

  Crossing Delancy, did that come?

• 58:15Griffin Newman?

  Amanda fucking trapped the shit out of Crossing Delancy.

• 58:18Speaker 04

  My comedy pick, Chicken and Duck Talk.

• 58:22Griffin Newman?

  Chicken and Duck Talk?

• 58:24David Sims?

  Never heard of it. Looking it up. Okay. Looks like it's a, a Chinese film?

• 58:29Speaker 04

  Uh, Hong Kong.

• 58:30David Sims?

  Hong Kong.

• 58:30Speaker 04

  Comedy.

• 58:31David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 58:31Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 58:32David Sims?

  Michael Hui.

• 58:33Speaker 04

  Very funny.

• 58:34David Sims?

  Don't know it.

• 58:34Speaker 04

  Chicken and Duck Talk.

• 58:36David Sims?

  Okay, I'll check it out.

• 58:37Griffin Newman?

  I was pretty astounded that Fantasy didn't pick Police Story 2. He mentioned it as, I considered it. And I'm like, yeah, you should have considered it and then picked it. That's a good move.

• 58:47David Sims?

  Mystic Pizza, did that get picked?

• 58:49Griffin Newman?

  Amanda chose Crossing Delancy over Mystic Pizza. This is really fun how we're relitigating.

• 58:54David Sims?

  I was gonna kind of. And I will move off this right now, but my last, Clint Eastwood's Bird, I think one of his best movies is an 88 film. That's an incredible film.

• 59:03Speaker 04

  They did not draft that.

• 59:04Griffin Newman?

  They did not. The one I want to ask you about Tracy, because I feel like a couple of times now, Big Picture has done sort of a drive by of apathy towards this movie, and I like it quite a bit. Clean and Sober, the Michael Keaton film.

• 59:15Speaker 04

  I like it quite a bit.

• 59:16Griffin Newman?

  I think that's a very good film.

• 59:17Speaker 04

  I think I mentioned it actually on their podcast, on one of the physical media podcasts, because I was talking about the, the value of Warner Archives.

• 59:25Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 59:26Speaker 04

  Right, which puts out sort of standard issue releases. They're very clean. There's no extras to speak of. There's no giant boxes. It's just, here's the movie in a nice, clean presentation. And it might not have been kind of a big deal movie at the time, but I really like Clean and Sober. I think it's a very good movie. And as a person sober for a long, long time, I have to say Clean and Sober is one of the movies that gets it right, gets the psychology of that right.

• 59:51Griffin Newman?

  I was on the Michael Keaton.

• 59:53David Sims?

  Fan.

• 59:53Griffin Newman?

  Michael Keaton's maybe my favorite living actor, but I was on the Michael Keaton Mount Rushmore?

• 1:00:01David Sims?

  Yes. It was kind of a bad episode. Like it was a fun episode with you guys talking about Keaton, but like the, the four big Keaton movies was actually fairly easy for you guys to arrive at.

• 1:00:10Griffin Newman?

  The problem is it's easier and more interesting to pick eight to 10 Keaton movies than it is four, because the four are always going to be pretty chalk.

• 1:00:19Griffin Newman?

  But they, they were just like, it was not in the conversation for them. And I went in there being like, clearly this is one of his key texts.

• 1:00:26Speaker 04

  Well, they get weird about some of that stuff. And I can say, in fact, to bring it back to Peter Weir.

• 1:00:30Griffin Newman?

  Please.

• 1:00:31Speaker 04

  It comes up with Witness. You know, Amanda and I really love Witness.

• 1:00:35Griffin Newman?

  Amanda.

• 1:00:35Speaker 04

  It's a great movie.

• 1:00:36Griffin Newman?

  We will spoil, we'll be on the Witness episode next.

• 1:00:38Speaker 04

  Sean gets, Amanda's going to be on the Witness episode.

• 1:00:42Griffin Newman?

  Absolutely.

• 1:00:42Speaker 04

  Fantastic.

• 1:00:43David Sims?

  We recorded it. It's in the bag.

• 1:00:44Speaker 04

  Yep. Sean gets a look on his face like his ass is sucking lemons and he says,

• 1:00:50Speaker 04

  is it a great movie?

• 1:00:51Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:51Speaker 04

  And I go, now look, it depends on where, you know, it's all relative, right? We could say Seven Samurai and Bicycle Thieves are great movies. And these other movies aren't. But if you're going to live in a world where you're telling me that A Few Good Men and Pelican Brief are great movies, then goddamn right Witness is a great movie.

• 1:01:13Griffin Newman?

  Yes. I also.

• 1:01:14David Sims?

  This is also definitively a great movie. I think that's.

• 1:01:17Griffin Newman?

  It is analogous to Kurosawa, where you're like, well, like making Samurai movies in the Japanese film industry at that time was akin to doing like a programmer and he was elevating it to such a high level. I'm not saying Witness is the Seven Samurai of cop movies, but I think there is a similar, okay, but what is the most thoughtful, intelligent, deliberate, nuanced, detailed, lived in version of this? And it is what makes Peter Weir a blank check filmmaker, arguably, I would say, not in this film, where he had a little bit of a blank check in the Australian film industry up until this point. This starts to transition him, especially with Mel Gibson being a guy who had crossed over. But then

• 1:02:01Griffin Newman?

  once he makes Witness work at that level, and here's just what should be a cop action movie, drama, that is now nominated for Best Picture, Best Director, gets Harrison Ford's only acting nomination, it's like every A-list actor in Hollywood wants to work with this guy. They want to bring their passion projects to him because he can lend integrity to them. But that is the next chapter of his career that ends with the film we're talking about today.

• 1:02:28Speaker 04

  Well, I think he showed a particular skill at a kind of stranger in a strange land story, which seems to be a theme running through a lot of Peter Weir's work.

• 1:02:42David Sims?

  Even something like Dead Poets Society, like which is ostensibly an inspirational teacher, but you know, Robin Williams is the stranger in a strange man there. Yeah.

• 1:02:50Griffin Newman?

  I have.

• 1:02:51David Sims?

  Card for sure.

• 1:02:52Griffin Newman?

  Yes. I have, you know, continued to say this kind of quickly because I lack the knowledge and the intelligence to make this point more thoroughly, let alone the historical context. But especially watching his early Australian films, it feels very informed by a man who has spent a lifetime trying to reckon with his relationship to the country he lives in. Do I belong here? What is my ownership over this place? Does this place own me? Who has been disposed in my favor, you know? And it feels like his films are constantly cultures kind of butting up against each other, interrogating each other, and, and people crossing those lines and feeling out of sorts in their world.

• 1:03:37Speaker 04

  Did I read correctly that this Year of Living Dangerously is a recent rewatch for both of you?

• 1:03:44David Sims?

  He'd never seen it. I saw this film several years ago, but I did rewatch it for this show.

• 1:03:50Speaker 04

  And when did you watch it for the first time? For the first time ever, last night?

• 1:03:55Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, I like to be fresh.

• 1:03:56Speaker 04

  Fantastic. That's great. Well, what'd you think?

• 1:03:59Griffin Newman?

  I liked it quite a lot. It is, it is an interesting film. I have so greatly enjoyed,

• 1:04:07Griffin Newman?

  you know, the exercise of this show where we cover someone's full filmography. At times, even when it's a great career, you start to get into a feeling of,

• 1:04:18Griffin Newman?

  for like months, I've just been on this one guy's wavelength and it's starting to get a little samey, even if I can extricate the values of each individual film, I'm in a bit of a loop here. And other times, the filmography is so disparate that you're just like, I'm swinging all around here. I don't have any grounding force. I have just by and large felt the cruising altitude of Peter Weir movies is so comforting to me. There is this kind of like thoughtful patience to his films. I love movies that feel like they have some answers that they're not sharing with you, both in terms of actually the text, but also the craft, that you can feel the intentionality in the thought.

• 1:05:02Griffin Newman?

  And that's force you to sort of lean in and try to interrogate what the person is doing. And this movie does have just such an incredible vibe to it. In a very basic, fundamental way, I don't know how many films I've seen that more accurately capture the feeling of being in a foreign country. Just the basic feeling of I have landed in a place and I'm trying to acclimate to how this place works. And so much of this movie is the interrogation of who are the people who landed here and act like they already own it. Who are the people here who are trying to claim ownership? Who are the people fighting to be seen within it?

• 1:05:46Griffin Newman?

  And I also love anytime it can be pulled off a movie about a fairly, um, how would I put this? He's not a weak lead character, but he's almost irrelevant to the movie in a certain way.

• 1:06:01David Sims?

  He does not drive the action. No, it's a he's, he's changed by the action.

• 1:06:04Griffin Newman?

  He's changed by the action and the movie is, okay, I guess I'm leaving this now.

• 1:06:09David Sims?

  He's pretty shallow.

• 1:06:11Griffin Newman?

  He's pretty shallow.

• 1:06:12David Sims?

  Yeah. And he gains obviously some depth.

• 1:06:14Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 1:06:15David Sims?

  As it goes along and he gains some understanding of the way things really work, which is what I love about this movie. I think this movie is so good.

• 1:06:22Griffin Newman?

  Weir's early films, which this thing we've discovered in doing this is that like he came out of a background of sketch comedy, like performing and directing and then directing sketch comedy leads to directing theater and then directing film. And his early works, especially his short films feel way more kind of barbed and, and pointed in their kind of satire of this kind of guy, a sort of a well-meaning liberal, uh, white man who, uh, wants to be involved in causes, who wants to help and doesn't quite get it. And this feels like this interesting, I mean, this movie is just the transition point of like

• 1:07:03Griffin Newman?

  everything in his career, but he's basically removed any of the satirical edge from the character. He is presenting it very earnestly, but he is also presenting kind of how unimportant he is. And even in the framework of it being like, oh, right. He's not telling the story.

• 1:07:21David Sims?

  But I think it's also like about an Australian becoming alienated from like,

• 1:07:27David Sims?

  Where he like, it's about Australians becoming alienated from like the Western world, or like the way the Western world works and the way the Western world operates on the rest of the world, right? And he's going in there being like, I'm like these British guys and these Americans, right? Like, I'm in this mix and then becoming alienated from it, which I think is so interesting, especially that it's Weir's last Australian film before he joins Hollywood. And he does so well in Hollywood and I don't ever feel like he like, you know, he never like made shit there, right? Like, he always did his own movies. But it's interesting that he sort of says farewell to Australia by with that.

• 1:08:04Griffin Newman?

  And the first four films are just so thoroughly about him interrogating his own sense of identity as an Australian of his generation and how he sees the world from that experience.

• 1:08:14Speaker 04

  Well, I mean, the character of Guy makes basically one ethical decision in the whole movie and it's the wrong one, right? Totally fed by his ambition and without any sense of context. It's like, I'm here to do this job and I don't care who gets hurt as a result of me doing this job as long as it gets me what I'm, what I'm after. And yeah, I think you can read that as personal on the part of Weir, especially given, as you say, he's about to go to Hollywood, he's about to leave Australia, he's about to become that guy. I mean, he's gonna become quite a, quite a player on the world cinema scene.

• 1:08:55David Sims?

  I don't know if he's making this film, because you keep, we can, we have a dossier of research, I'm gonna open it up, but like, he'd been trying to make this for years. This was a longstanding passion project of his. So he's not making it in this sort of swan songy way. But it's interesting how it sort of worked out. Have you ever read the book, the Christopher Koch book?

• 1:09:14Speaker 04

  I have. I think it's Koch.

• 1:09:16David Sims?

  I was about to say, with that spelling, you never know how.

• 1:09:19Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:09:20David Sims?

  Christopher Koch's 1978 book, which is based on his younger brother's life. His younger brother was a reporter in Indonesia during.

• 1:09:27Speaker 04

  Is this the dossier? Have you opened?

• 1:09:29David Sims?

  I've opened the dossier.

• 1:09:30Griffin Newman?

  It's not physical, you seem disappointed.

• 1:09:31Speaker 04

  I mean, especially given the year of living dangerously, you kind of want.

• 1:09:36Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:09:36David Sims?

  Write a big vanilla folder right out of a filing cabinet.

• 1:09:38Griffin Newman?

  Acted out with shadow puppets.

• 1:09:40David Sims?

  So, uh, his brother, you know, was in Indonesia for the fall of the Sicardo regime. Weir reads the book and buys, reads it in a single day and will inquires for the rights like immediately. His quote is, I could smell the, now he, what's this word? Sate? Sate? I don't know what that is.

• 1:09:58Griffin Newman?

  S A T E?

• 1:09:59David Sims?

  Yes.

• 1:10:00Griffin Newman?

  Interesting.

• 1:10:00David Sims?

  Not sure. I think it's just a different spelling of satay. Uh, the tang of cloves cigarettes, the distant sound of the gamelan, the exotic Japanese atmosphere. Like he, he, you know, his whole thing, I feel like with Weir is he has these like aesthetic reactions to stories or whatever. It's like, he'll read a script and be like, yeah, that's interesting. But then once in a while he reads a script where he's like, oh, I can't stop thinking about the world. Like the, how, you know, and that's always seems to be why he then pursues a project.

• 1:10:29Griffin Newman?

  He reads a thing. He goes, this is overwhelming. I could never touch this. And then he can't stop thinking about it.

• 1:10:33David Sims?

  Like Gallipoli is him walking on the beaches, right? In, in Turkey.

• 1:10:38Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:38David Sims?

  And seeing this like hand from an Australian.

• 1:10:41Griffin Newman?

  A medication bottle.

• 1:10:42David Sims?

  Right.

• 1:10:42Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:42David Sims?

  And being like, oh my God. And like then not being able to let go of like, right, our boys were here with their shit.

• 1:10:47Griffin Newman?

  And then last wave was basically the same thing, like literally finding an object in a space and then going like, oh, so who is the person who left this here?

• 1:10:56Speaker 03

  David, it's scared grilled meat.

• 1:10:58David Sims?

  Yeah, right. It's satay. Okay. Right. It's, it was just spelled differently. Probably JJ's fault.

• 1:11:02Griffin Newman?

  It's probably fire.

• 1:11:03David Sims?

  Uh, have you seen the last wave? Obviously you've seen Gallipoli. Have you seen? Yes. Last one was pretty cool.

• 1:11:07Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:11:07David Sims?

  And that was recently put on a disc, wasn't it?

• 1:11:09Griffin Newman?

  Umbrella has had a disc out for quite a while. I missed out on the deluxe edition.

• 1:11:14David Sims?

  I know. Criterion is now also re-releasing it. I had the old Criterion DVD. Yeah, right.

• 1:11:19Griffin Newman?

  They, they only have it on DVD. They haven't announced, I think, a Blu-ray or a 4K yet. It is a movie that they own outright.

• 1:11:26David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:26Griffin Newman?

  So like it is a movie that domestically is owned by Criterion. So I think it is coming soon, hopefully.

• 1:11:31David Sims?

  So Weir, uh, was trying to make The Thornbirds, which of course eventually got turned into a mini series. I don't know if you know this, and then, uh, he gets sort of diverted onto Gallipoli, but then, uh, the, the investors withdraw from Gallipoli. So then he turns to your living dangerously. Then Rupert Murdoch himself.

• 1:11:50David Sims?

  Funds Gallipoli, and so he gets put back to Gallipoli. So you're living dangerously is back Bernard. He had visited Asia in the 60s briefly, I guess, in his sort of, he went to Colombo, which is the capital of Sri Lanka while he was traveling up through Europe. He was very intrigued by it. Bali had become a vacation spot for him. So Bali is obviously a different island in Indonesia. I've never been to Indonesia, I will admit now.

• 1:12:18Speaker 04

  I have not either.

• 1:12:19David Sims?

  I've not, of course, has been many times. No, Ben, Ben, you're always.

• 1:12:23Speaker 04

  I would love to someday.

• 1:12:24David Sims?

  Yes. My wife's been to Indonesia, but she lived in China for years. So she's been everywhere.

• 1:12:28Griffin Newman?

  In China for years?

• 1:12:30David Sims?

  Yes. Do you not know that?

• 1:12:31Griffin Newman?

  No.

• 1:12:32David Sims?

  Do you not know that my wife is fluent in Mandarin?

• 1:12:34Griffin Newman?

  This is so surprising for someone I'm so close with.

• 1:12:37David Sims?

  Griffin has known my wife since, since they were teenagers.

• 1:12:40Griffin Newman?

  I went to high school with David's wife, so I like to contend correctly that I'm actually closer with her than he is because I've known her longer.

• 1:12:47Speaker 04

  Is that how you guys met?

• 1:12:48David Sims?

  Nope.

• 1:12:49Griffin Newman?

  No, complete coincidence. We became friends and he was like, you want to hear something funny? I'm going on a date tomorrow with someone you went to high school with.

• 1:12:55Speaker 04

  Oh, wow. Oh, so you got, your friendship actually predates your relationship with your wife.

• 1:13:00Griffin Newman?

  Correct. Here is the order.

• 1:13:02David Sims?

  Very much.

• 1:13:02Griffin Newman?

  I meet his wife, I meet David, they meet each other. I know both of them better than they know each other.

• 1:13:09David Sims?

  So true.

• 1:13:10Griffin Newman?

  Three kids, who cares?

• 1:13:13David Sims?

  But you don't know that she's fluent in Mandarin.

• 1:13:15Griffin Newman?

  Or that she's lived in China.

• 1:13:16David Sims?

  That she lived in China. Is it working as a teacher, living in Hunan province?

• 1:13:20Griffin Newman?

  Okay.

• 1:13:21David Sims?

  But because she lived in China, she was like, oh, I'm in fucking China. I'm going to go everywhere.

• 1:13:25Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:26David Sims?

  And so she's been to Indonesia. She's been to Thailand and Cambodia, Japan.

• 1:13:29Griffin Newman?

  Was this right after college?

• 1:13:30David Sims?

  Yeah, right after college.

• 1:13:31Griffin Newman?

  So those are the years we fell out of touch.

• 1:13:34David Sims?

  She was in fricking China. It was hard to contact her, I think. But she says it's very cool. You know, she's, yeah, anyway.

• 1:13:41Griffin Newman?

  Can I circle back to a thing? I know we'll have covered this in Gallipoli, but I think it's important kind of restating. Rupert Murdoch invested all this money into the idea of, we gotta start weaponizing what's coming out of the Australian new wave. Not out of as much a sense of cultural pride. National pride as I think there's money in them hills. All these good filmmakers seem to be making interesting stuff. An industry that is still so small. Can we turbocharge that by throwing money into it? And so that's how he ends up fully financing Gallipoli. And it was part of what was supposed to be a company that was going to be mimicking this a larger project. It is the only film they ever make. But Gallipoli gets all this fucking investment.

• 1:14:23Griffin Newman?

  His budget jumps way up from what he had done before because of Murdoch. And the other thing is that there's this energy. It's why Gallipoli gets more of an American distribution deal upfront. With everyone post Mad Max being like, how do we get Mel Gibson to Hollywood? How do we cross this bridge? This guy is just clearly like a raw element of movie star. If an Australian filmmaker has Mel Gibson, they've like opened a bunch of doors into our offices.

• 1:14:52Speaker 04

  Do we have a timeline for what is considered the Australian new wave?

• 1:14:58David Sims?

  Uh, great question. I think it's basically like the first film that is marked as like, you know, the Australian new wave. Is like Wake and Fright or the, the comedy Stork.

• 1:15:11Griffin Newman?

  And those are both 71. Been corrected. Wake and Fry is directed by Ted Koechhoff, who is not in fact Australian.

• 1:15:16David Sims?

  This is the whole thing. Walkabout is also marked as an early one, but that's also not directed. But it's like, at least those are films where it's like they're filmed in Australia. And then The Adventures of Barry Mackenzie, which is 72, which is a Bruce Beresford movie. Which is like a silly comedy, but that's, that's starting to spark like independent Australian cinema again. Right? Like homegrown. And so early seventies is where you market Cars That Ate Paris is 74.

• 1:15:42Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 1:15:42David Sims?

  And that's a really, you know, that's a real Kickstarter.

• 1:15:45Griffin Newman?

  And then that leads to Mad Max. But this is seen as kind of the beginning of the end. Cause right after this, you get into sort of like, uh, uh, Brian Trenchard Smith, more kind of like just genre plays. Mad Max sequels, Crocodile Dundee. Like the thing has become commercialized.

• 1:16:03David Sims?

  Correct.

• 1:16:03Griffin Newman?

  And, and most of the breakout directors have gone to Hollywood.

• 1:16:06David Sims?

  Right.

• 1:16:06Speaker 04

  That makes sense because, you know, I grew up in a small town in Oklahoma and I probably heard, first heard of the Australian new wave. Around the year that this comes out.

• 1:16:15David Sims?

  So this comes out in American 83.

• 1:16:19Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:16:20David Sims?

  And by then there'd been Mad Max's. I don't know if Road Warrior had like made it to America, but it's probably around when it's.

• 1:16:26Speaker 04

  I had seen Road Warrior in the theater, definitely before this.

• 1:16:29David Sims?

  And then like beyond Thunderdome is 85 and that's that sort of thing where it's like, well, now this has gone Hollywood.

• 1:16:34Griffin Newman?

  And then Dundee is 86.

• 1:16:36David Sims?

  Dundee is 86. Yeah.

• 1:16:38Speaker 04

  And then it's over.

• 1:16:39David Sims?

  It's over. Right. And, and like you're saying, like all those guys, so like Bearisford, Russell Mulcahy, like even the, the, the sort of lower level guys, they've all gone to Hollywood. Yeah. And they, they go Philip Noyce, right. And they go make genre stuff mostly.

• 1:16:52Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 1:16:53David Sims?

  And then you have Peter Weir and George Miller is the kind of like esteemed, you know, whatever, like Hollywood big shot.

• 1:16:59Griffin Newman?

  Yes. I mean, George Miller's the, the odd one because he figures out how to basically keep.

• 1:17:04David Sims?

  But he still makes like Witches of Eastwick. Like he's still.

• 1:17:06Griffin Newman?

  It's the one. That's the one that like broke him where then he's like, if I'm doing this, I'm doing it on my own terms, even if I'm ultimately handing the product over to Hollywood at the end of the day.

• 1:17:14David Sims?

  Now, did you see this film when you were, you know, in 83, like in theaters?

• 1:17:19Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:17:19David Sims?

  So you would have been what?

• 1:17:21Speaker 04

  17, 18 years old.

• 1:17:22David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:22Griffin Newman?

  And what, what drove you to see it? Or was it just seeing everything?

• 1:17:26Speaker 04

  Well, at that time I saw everything. Uh, I knew who Peter Weir was. Uh, and you know, Mad Max, or I should say the Road Warrior had announced, uh, Mel Gibson as a movie star in the most profound way. Just a theater full of people going, that guy's a fucking movie star and I'll follow him anywhere. And I want to see what he's got. And of course, Year of Living Dangerously was quite a calling card for him in that it's like, oh, he's not just, he's not an action star. He's not Dolph Lundgren up there. He's smart. He's, uh, he can, he can play the male action star, but he can also play the romantic lead. He's

• 1:18:09Speaker 04

  smart. He, he can also play a guy who's a bit of a son of a bitch, right? He, there, there are a lot more arrows in his quiver. We realized with Year of Living Dangerously.

• 1:18:18Griffin Newman?

  I, I was thinking, watching this and not having seen it before, this. Maybe feels like his most normal performance ever because obviously here he's fighting against the Mad Max thing, right? And trying to show his range he has. But then I feel like when his Hollywood persona as a movie star settles, it's still using 10% of the mania, you know? It's the lethal weapon. It's the caged animal thing. And then he can also still be in rom coms or dramas or whatever, but he does have that odd kind of manic energy to him. And this, he is just so fucking steady. You know, he's not charming and schmoozing in the way he is in Gallipoli, where he's such an exciting kind of like-

• 1:18:59David Sims?

  He's playing like an innocent sort of, which it's like, not something he really did much of.

• 1:19:03Griffin Newman?

  I don't think he's ever played someone this kind of like, simple in a way, not simple in like a backhanded way.

• 1:19:09David Sims?

  I never saw The River. That is he playing a kind of this kind of guy in that? Like, I'm trying to think of a comparable-

• 1:19:15Speaker 04

  No, The River, he's playing a Midwestern farmer, not completely convincingly, but it's not an embarrassment either.

• 1:19:23David Sims?

  But yeah, he never really did the kind of slightly bright eyed, you know?

• 1:19:27Griffin Newman?

  It was just making me think of how different sort of Hollywood sees development of movie stars now, where like, you have a foreign export movie that crosses over here. Everyone points and goes, that guy's a fucking movie star. And Hollywood's like, okay, collectively, how do we do this? You know, and there is this feeling of, it's not like one studio signs him to a 10 year deal, but everyone's like, it is worth continuing to throw money at movies that have Mel Gibson in them, so we can test them out and grow him incrementally. Like, he needs to be in spring training, right? It helps if he's in a drama. Audiences need to meet him in different flavors. We need to test what he's good at and bad at, at a low enough budget level, that this will

• 1:20:12Griffin Newman?

  ultimately help all of us. Versus your Taylor Kitsch, you're on Friday Night Lights, and then they're like, great, you're the star of three $200 million movies.

• 1:20:20Speaker 04

  But nobody's actually having, nobody's actually saying that, right? They're all individually-

• 1:20:26David Sims?

  Right, they're not circling it.

• 1:20:27Griffin Newman?

  But it did feel like there was a kind of, I don't know, you read about these things like a collective unconscious, in the period between when the studio system kind of collapses, and the star contracts where, you know, people are literally saying, we're buying this guy, we're sending him to charm school, we're molding him in our image, things dissipate, but still, there is a sense of like- Movie stars are rare. If there is one potentially on the board, it benefits all of us to just chip away at this guy. Part of it, I'm sure is also selfishly like, will Mel Gibson look fondly upon us 10 years from now because we financed one of his early films?

• 1:21:06Speaker 04

  Not to mention what Mel himself wants, right? Because he wants to be taken very, you know, eventually he's going to wind up making Hamlet. He's going to wind up making Braveheart. He wants to be taken seriously in this way. So of course, he's not going to follow Road Warrior with, I can't think of anything stupid enough.

• 1:21:25David Sims?

  Well, right. Oh, you're trying to think of like, what's the dumb thing?

• 1:21:27Speaker 04

  What would be the dumb thing he could do?

• 1:21:29David Sims?

  What's interesting is that he follows Road Warrior and Year of Living Dangerously with three prestige pictures, none of which I feel like were quite it. Like there's the Donaldson Bounty film.

• 1:21:40Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:21:40David Sims?

  Just like, pretty good. It's like.

• 1:21:42Speaker 04

  Pretty good.

• 1:21:43David Sims?

  Everyone's.

• 1:21:44Speaker 04

  He gets to be opposite Anthony Hopkins.

• 1:21:46David Sims?

  Everyone's all dressed up and yelling and it's fine. He does the river, which I feel like didn't really make an impact, but on paper made sense.

• 1:21:54Speaker 04

  Who directed the river?

• 1:21:55David Sims?

  Mark Riedel.

• 1:21:56Speaker 04

  Oh, right.

• 1:21:56David Sims?

  So like, you know, he'd done The Rose, that had gone Oscar nominated, obviously on Golden Pond. And then he does that thing, Mrs. Softail with Diane Keaton, which I've never seen, but I.

• 1:22:07Speaker 04

  That's a mistake.

• 1:22:07David Sims?

  Julian Armstrong is a good director, but right, like a, a.

• 1:22:10Griffin Newman?

  That feels like he gets stuck in the, he's a little too earnest.

• 1:22:14David Sims?

  Yeah. And it feels like these are movies that the bigger guys had passed on.

• 1:22:17Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 1:22:18David Sims?

  And it was like, well, let's gamble on the, this Australian guy who's so handsome. Like he'll make sense.

• 1:22:22Griffin Newman?

  And, and playing him a little more romantic maybe. And then they're like.

• 1:22:25David Sims?

  Thunderdome and then Lethal Weapon.

• 1:22:27Griffin Newman?

  And then.

• 1:22:28David Sims?

  And then it's like, okay.

• 1:22:29Griffin Newman?

  The races.

• 1:22:30David Sims?

  Well, it's off to the races, but it is him doing action for a while. It's like Tequila Sunrise, Era America, like those. And then.

• 1:22:35Griffin Newman?

  But I think.

• 1:22:36David Sims?

  He grabs the prestige with like Hamlet and.

• 1:22:39Griffin Newman?

  I think what they dialed in with Lethal Weapon and with Thunderdome in particular, where he's older, where he's like a more haunted Max and everything is like, what's the right level of crazy we want here? Maybe we cleaned him up too much, you know, with like your Mrs. Softails and stuff. Like, let's get a little bit of the energy back in there. And then those two movies, it's like, we got it. We know who he is. We have a handle on him. Off to the races.

• 1:23:04Speaker 04

  How old is he when he does Year of Living Dangerously?

• 1:23:08David Sims?

  It's a good question.

• 1:23:10Speaker 04

  Young.

• 1:23:10David Sims?

  If that film is made around 81, 82, he's. Let me do the math here.

• 1:23:15Griffin Newman?

  Twenty seven?

• 1:23:16David Sims?

  No, he's older than that. Uh, he was born in fifty six. Yeah, no, you're right. You're twenty six.

• 1:23:20Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:23:20David Sims?

  He's really young.

• 1:23:21Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:23:22David Sims?

  Yeah. He's only seventy now.

• 1:23:25Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:23:25David Sims?

  And it's obviously he's been famous my entire life.

• 1:23:27Griffin Newman?

  I mean, he is so pretty in this. It is kind of astounding, just the serenity of his face.

• 1:23:33David Sims?

  Look, it's the magic of aging. It means if you're Pacino or whatever, that I can show someone like the Godfather and they're like, I didn't realize he used to look like this. And you're like, yeah, take a look. Like, there was a reason everyone was going insane about this.

• 1:23:47Griffin Newman?

  Apologies for the tangent, but I, I found recently, I did through doing some Wikipedia rabbit holes. Do you know that Al Pacino was actually on the record as, as far as we are able to historically document these things? As one of the twenty five oldest fathers in human history.

• 1:24:05David Sims?

  Oh, wow. Okay. Well, good for him. Good for.

• 1:24:07Griffin Newman?

  No, I didn't know that. Everyone was like, oh, he had a kid really old. And I'm like, yeah, doesn't that happen like a lot though? And it was like, no, he's like, he's up there.

• 1:24:15David Sims?

  Here is a Wikipedia entry, list of oldest fathers on record.

• 1:24:19Griffin Newman?

  And a couple of them are questionable, like the top guy, they're like, that guy might've been adding two decades to his age. And I'm like, then throw him off this fucking list. Let me tell you, the top twenty five you don't know about. They're not on, they're not on.

• 1:24:30David Sims?

  They're not bragging about it.

• 1:24:32Griffin Newman?

  On record. There's one guy also.

• 1:24:33David Sims?

  Tony Randall is on this list.

• 1:24:35Griffin Newman?

  Tony Randall.

• 1:24:36David Sims?

  He had a child at seventy seven.

• 1:24:37Griffin Newman?

  Yes. He was married to one woman for like forty or fifty years. She passed away. He married a twenty something. They pumped out two kids really fast and he passed away. Tony Randall, also from Tulsa, Oklahoma. Wow.

• 1:24:59Griffin Newman?

  David?

• 1:24:59David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 1:25:00Griffin Newman?

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

• 1:25:16David Sims?

  It is an iconic video.

• 1:25:18Griffin Newman?

  Footage that became the most analyzed and debated in history. Fifty nine years later, a reel of sixteen 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.

• 1:25:41David 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.

• 1:25:52Griffin 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.

• 1:26:01David Sims?

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

• 1:26:04Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:26:04David 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.

• 1:26:11Griffin 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.

• 1:26:25David Sims?

  I'm something of an expert in cryptozoology.

• 1:26:27Griffin Newman?

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

• 1:26:30David 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.

• 1:26:46Griffin Newman?

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

• 1:27:01Griffin Newman?

  David?

• 1:27:02David Sims?

  Yes.

• 1:27:03Griffin Newman?

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• 1:27:23David Sims?

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• 1:27:33David Sims?

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• 1:27:43Griffin Newman?

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

• 1:27:59David Sims?

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• 1:28:34Griffin Newman?

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• 1:28:34David Sims?

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• 1:28:39David Sims?

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• 1:28:49Griffin Newman?

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• 1:29:05Griffin Newman?

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• 1:29:07David Sims?

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• 1:29:13Griffin Newman?

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• 1:29:27Griffin Newman?

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• 1:29:43Speaker 02

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• 1:30:06David Sims?

  So the screenplay is written by three people, right? So Weir and David Williamson are one team. They already had written Gallipoli together. Playwright, playwright. Right. Playwright. A great playwright, I feel like of the, you know. And then, so it's coach or? Koesh. Koesh. I think it's Koesh. Right, Koesh wrote his own script and they kind of merged them. But Weir describes the relationship as bumpy.

• 1:30:29Griffin Newman?

  But it was a little, not exquisite corpse, but like, uh, the, these things were happening, siloed processes that were then mushed together.

• 1:30:38Speaker 04

  As it usually is, I think, when you see multiple screenwriters on a thing. Somebody didn't meet somebody else.

• 1:30:44Griffin Newman?

  I just think sometimes it's more iterative.

• 1:30:47Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:30:47Griffin Newman?

  Where it's handed off from one person. I guess that's more exquisite corpse. Whereas this, it was more like Frankenstein's monster where they're like, we got four bodies. Which parts do we want to pluck from each of them?

• 1:30:57Speaker 04

  Though the movie is not, does not differ from the book in any

• 1:31:01Griffin Newman?

  Interesting.

• 1:31:02Speaker 04

  Great way.

• 1:31:03Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:31:03Speaker 04

  A different narrator, I suppose, is probably the biggest change.

• 1:31:08Griffin Newman?

  It's, it's not Billy in the book.

• 1:31:09Speaker 04

  It's not Billy in the book.

• 1:31:10Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:31:11Speaker 04

  It's a, it's a, it's another journalist.

• 1:31:14Griffin Newman?

  Okay.

• 1:31:14Speaker 04

  In the book.

• 1:31:15Griffin Newman?

  Okay. But that, that feels very telling.

• 1:31:18Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:31:19Griffin Newman?

  Whether that was Weir's decision or that Weir responded to someone else suggesting that.

• 1:31:23Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:31:24Griffin Newman?

  It does feel like kind of

• 1:31:26Speaker 04

  No, it's a big, that's

• 1:31:26Griffin Newman?

  The most important framework the movie provides.

• 1:31:28Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:31:29Griffin Newman?

  Yeah. For how to read it, in my opinion.

• 1:31:31David Sims?

  So, uh, Koesh says, you know, uh, and there was initial publicity that left his name off. He, he says he sort of fought for the screenplay credit. And, uh, that, you know, as, as, as it always is with these sort of screenwriting disputes, everyone's got their story. Um, but Weir, uh, he, Koesh says it gave Weir a screenplay. He liked it. He took it to CBS in America. They didn't like the script. And so, you know, there was a polish, it turned into a rewrite and Koche is like, I know I'm not trying to be like the sensitive novelist here, but like, you know, they, they had fucked up my story and I fought to put stuff back in.

• 1:32:14David Sims?

  And so Weir kind of rewrites the rewrite. The rewrite was done by a guy called Alan Sharp, who is, you know, wrote Night Moves, like a Hollywood guy. Weir rewrites the Sharp script, more in the direction of what Koche is interested. CBS drops out, Williamson then comes on board. Koche's final estimates is that the script is 55% Williamson, Weir 45% me, Sharp excised, which was the stuff he really didn't like. So, you know, he's moderately happy. Peter Weir's take is, I ate the novel, I digested it and it was delicious. I can only recall the taste, but what I then spoke as a result of the experience was my way of telling the story.

• 1:32:57David Sims?

  He really has a way with words. Like a lot of guys sat down in front of a D W J panel or whatever and was like, well, I ate the script and I tasted.

• 1:33:06Griffin Newman?

  I will say in our months of reading and watching interviews with Peter Weir, and as someone who loves to just drive a bit into the ground, his commitment to metaphors and talking about his process, he will pick one and he will really stick with it and ride it out to the end of the thought.

• 1:33:23David Sims?

  Right. Yeah. So great. They altered the Kwan character. Weir says he's much less likeable in the novel. Would you agree?

• 1:33:31Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:33:33David Sims?

  And I guess he wanted sort of to alter the balance of that. So in what way is he not likeable? Is he just like more of a cynical kind of?

• 1:33:44Speaker 04

  Yeah, I think my, my, my recollection of it is that he's, Kwan is more manipulative.

• 1:33:52David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 1:33:54Griffin Newman?

  Because like this movie frames, it is a film that positions Kwan as the hero of the story. It is almost kind of like a big trouble in Little China in many ways of sort of like, here's your like fake lead at the center, but actually this movie is being driven by this person who would never be allowed to be the center of a story.

• 1:34:14David Sims?

  He also says he filled out Jill's character more. In the book, the character's pregnant. He felt like that was a little too much. Like essentially, why would she be sort of throwing herself into all of this? Why would Hamilton be interested? You know, like in a further complication of that, you know, like, so they removed that. And, you know, it's just essentially, like, I assume this is correct. And we were saying the book is more very much about the politics of the time. And the movie is not really, not that it's, it's how am I trying, like, it's like, this movie could be set in other moments of sort of critical change in a country, I guess.

• 1:34:51Speaker 04

  You don't need to know anything about Indonesian history or politics in order to enjoy the movie, The Year of Living Danger.

• 1:35:00David Sims?

  You need to, you're, you know that there is essentially a sort of coup that happens at the end of the film, but like, this is a crazy and fascinating moment in Indonesian, like, history. And it's only, and like, the point is that he's only grasping little bits of it anyway.

• 1:35:15Griffin Newman?

  I will say, I'm the opposite of David in this regard, where I, more than anything, value a movie that can be in conversation with real historical events, but not require you to open a bunch of Wikipedia tabs. I don't look to those films as educational resources. I don't walk out of them going, clearly, I know everything. But I like the ability to sort of tell a story adjacent to, in tandem with, real hard history that just kind of works as a complete closed loop on its own dramatically.

• 1:35:45Speaker 04

  Well, how well do you know Vienna, post-World War II? How, how well do you need to know it in order to enjoy The Third Man?

• 1:35:55Griffin Newman?

  Yes, right.

• 1:35:59Speaker 04

  We're going to give you just enough context so you know what the fuck is going on.

• 1:36:02Griffin Newman?

  Right. It's the job of any movie. And I think Weir is in particular, very good at that. Almost all of his films are like in conversation with larger, thornier issues that are too hard to compress down narratively, but he is telling one very clear emotional story within that.

• 1:36:19Speaker 04

  But of course, you've also got the problem.

• 1:36:23Speaker 04

  The, the issue of Peter Weir and David Williamson and C J Kosch and Mel Gibson and Sigourney Weaver, telling you a story set in exotic Indonesia.

• 1:36:35Griffin Newman?

  Yes. And I think that's a lot of this movie's tricky, like, standing at this present moment is, hey, but just take a little cursory, view a letterbox. I feel like there is a conversation for a movie that's a little bit lost. And part of this is no proper physical media representation, not streaming in the regular places. A cruddy streaming. Right. Like. Is, is this movie a peak example of kind of Hollywood exoticism, even though it was not fully a Hollywood movie? Or is this a movie that is actually kind of interrogating that? Which does not mean is not guilty of any of the attributes.

• 1:37:15Griffin Newman?

  But I do think, and I, I especially think this in having watched the earlier Australian films up until this point, I do think that is very deliberately what he is doing. I think he is very skillful at making movies where he is owning what his perspective is and the limitations of his perspective and working that in textually and narratively and commenting within that. But I think everything we're saying about the re-centering of the Billy Khan character, which we will get to momentarily, is its own major conversation, is what he's really trying to say here of like, here's a story of a guy who lands in a foreign country that is under

• 1:37:57Griffin Newman?

  great turmoil and is primarily focused on advancing his own career with a sense of kind of back patty, I want to be doing the right thing. And falls in love and has a hot fucking two movie stars at the prime of physical specimenship.

• 1:38:17David Sims?

  I mean, Sigourney is stunning.

• 1:38:19Griffin Newman?

  The two of them look unbelievable in this, but it's like they're just getting it on while people are really fucking suffering.

• 1:38:26David Sims?

  Right.

• 1:38:27Griffin Newman?

  And, you know.

• 1:38:28David Sims?

  But the movie's very conscious of that.

• 1:38:29Griffin Newman?

  Right. And, and the actual story is this Billy Quan character trying to push these kind of useful idiots into helping, you know, rather than hurting.

• 1:38:40David Sims?

  And but without, like Billy never wants to tip his hand.

• 1:38:44Griffin Newman?

  Correct.

• 1:38:45David Sims?

  Like he cares too much.

• 1:38:46Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:38:46David Sims?

  He's paying too much attention to everybody, that he's keeping his files, right?

• 1:38:50Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, yeah. Right. I mean, even the question of like, why, why do you have access to the president? You know, why do you have his ear that he's just sort of kept tabs on everything for any moment he feels like he can move the chess pieces around the board to help the cause. But of course, the tragedy of this movie is like Billy Quan falls out a window and Sigourney Weaver and Mel Gibson get on a plane and get to go like, well, that was interesting, but back to our normal life. And they just leave the problem there.

• 1:39:17Speaker 04

  That's right. And does Weir get away with something because he's already established his liberal bona fides, his, the story points that you talk about colonialism in Australia? Does, is he giving us a little extra credit for that? Whereas the people who made Casablanca or the, the third man.

• 1:39:40Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 1:39:41Speaker 04

  Are not given that kind of credit. I mean, obviously, when I saw this movie in 1983 in a movie theater, none of this shit ever crossed my mind. Right? But I see it now in a different light. Right? Forty years changes the perspective.

• 1:39:55David Sims?

  Was, yes, I wonder what, yeah, right. What, what the sort of discourse was at the time, because this was a big ish film.

• 1:40:03Griffin Newman?

  It was banned in Indonesia until like 2000.

• 1:40:06David Sims?

  Yeah, well, that's not a country that.

• 1:40:08Griffin Newman?

  No, no, I know.

• 1:40:08David Sims?

  Allowed discourse on its politics until the 21st century.

• 1:40:11Griffin Newman?

  But also.

• 1:40:12David Sims?

  And even after that, yes.

• 1:40:14Griffin Newman?

  There was discourse and what was it? Death threats against Weir and Gibson from Muslims who believed the film would be anti Islamic forced the production to move to Australia.

• 1:40:24David Sims?

  Uh, yes, right.

• 1:40:25Griffin Newman?

  Because they were going.

• 1:40:26Speaker 04

  From the Philippines.

• 1:40:27Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:40:28David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 1:40:28Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:40:29David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 1:40:29Griffin Newman?

  Yeah. Cause I'm sorry, it was supposed to film in Jakarta.

• 1:40:33David Sims?

  Which is in Indonesia.

• 1:40:34Griffin Newman?

  Right. Then it was denied. So then it moved to the Philippines and then they had to end up filming the final chunk of it in Sydney.

• 1:40:43Speaker 04

  Got it. Because all the actors, I believe, who are not the three principals or four principals are Filipino actors.

• 1:40:53David Sims?

  Yes. Ultimately, films financed by MGM. The first of their Freddie Fields era of famous super agent, who is the president of MGM in the 80s, cost 6 million American, sorry, Australian dollars. Don't know like what that translates to, but you know, sort of a small to medium spend, I guess.

• 1:41:14Griffin Newman?

  Sure. About 10, I think, based on the math we did for Gallipoli.

• 1:41:20Speaker 04

  See, I was about to go the other direction. All right. Good to know.

• 1:41:22Griffin Newman?

  Okay, I think.

• 1:41:23David Sims?

  They supported the Linda Hunt casting choice, which was sort of a fraught choice.

• 1:41:29Griffin Newman?

  Yeah. So he cast David Atkins at first, who is like an Australian dancer and a national treasure.

• 1:41:35David Sims?

  And I assume they cast him more for sort of like a physical reason. And then they like start doing rehearsals with Gibson and they're like, oh, he cannot hold his own against Gibson.

• 1:41:43Griffin Newman?

  He was, he was a small Caucasian man, but not a man with dwarfism.

• 1:41:48David Sims?

  Um, right. And so they start like looking for, you know, anybody essentially they, they, they look in America because they had, according to We Are Exhausted, they're casting like sessions in Australia and Hong Kong and London. Wallace Shawn tested, which is unbelievable to imagine.

• 1:42:08Griffin Newman?

  And, and the other one is Bob Balaban.

• 1:42:10Speaker 04

  Oh my god.

• 1:42:11Griffin Newman?

  That they were like, who are tiny guys with particular energies who can be pulling like Mel Gibson's suit jacket? I mean, beyond just the fact that Linda Hunt gives such a good performance in talking about everything that is tricky about watching this performance today, it is, I just think, helpful to envision how much worse it could have been.

• 1:42:34David Sims?

  Yes.

• 1:42:35Griffin Newman?

  Because that's a, to imagine Wallace Shawn doing this. No disrespect to the great Wallace Shawn.

• 1:42:40David Sims?

  Of course. It's like

• 1:42:42Griffin Newman?

  The film would be illegal.

• 1:42:43David Sims?

  A thing that Linda Hunt is famous for after this movie is Aunt Dan and Lemon, the Wallace Shawn play she's in, right?

• 1:42:50Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:42:51David Sims?

  It's funny that they, I have no idea if this came up of like, what was your Billy Quan audition?

• 1:42:56Griffin Newman?

  I found a whole interview with her where she was talking about it and comparing notes with him.

• 1:42:59David Sims?

  That's, there you go.

• 1:43:00Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:43:00David Sims?

  Um, so, you know, uh, how did, so bad casting session in LA. Um, he's reading the Gibson Park, you know?

• 1:43:11Griffin Newman?

  For David, or David Atkins, or you're saying Wallace Shawn?

• 1:43:14David Sims?

  No, no, no. Weir is like reading with people. He's reading Gibson's lines, like everything sucks, apparently.

• 1:43:19Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:43:19David Sims?

  And a casting director holds up a photograph and he was like, that's perfect. And the casters was laughing and was like, no, this is a woman. And Weir is like, I was just desperate and I was like, I want to meet her. Like, please, like.

• 1:43:32Griffin Newman?

  She had done one movie up until this point.

• 1:43:35David Sims?

  Right.

• 1:43:35Griffin Newman?

  She had been in Robert Altman's Popeye as part of basically the ensemble of Sweet Haven. I think she is Roundhouse's mother, maybe.

• 1:43:43David Sims?

  Right. I mean, and she'd done Broadway. She'd done some theater.

• 1:43:46Griffin Newman?

  She'd done a lot of theater.

• 1:43:47Speaker 04

  She had gone to the theater school at DePaul University, formerly the Goodman School of Drama, and I believe she was cut. I think she was cut from that program. And then when she became very famous, they went back to her and said, would you mind if we, you were a

• 1:44:03Griffin Newman?

  Fucking unbelievable.

• 1:44:03Speaker 04

  An alum.

• 1:44:04Griffin Newman?

  Yeah. Um, she's a, she's a New Jersey native, Ben.

• 1:44:08David Sims?

  But grew

• 1:44:09Speaker 04

  From Marstown. Grew up in Westport, I believe.

• 1:44:12Griffin Newman?

  Um, yes, and, and she's, uh, as a teenager diagnosed with hypopatietary dwarfism.

• 1:44:18David Sims?

  Right. She's four nine.

• 1:44:19Griffin Newman?

  Yes. Um, she is a Caucasian woman.

• 1:44:22David Sims?

  This is so true. This is unbelievably true.

• 1:44:24Griffin Newman?

  Yes, it couldn't be more true.

• 1:44:25David Sims?

  She asked, I think the sensitivity at the time was more that she was like, can we rewrite this to be a woman? Like, she was a little bit more like, I'm not sure I can pull off playing a guy. Like, uh, I don't know how much, unfortunately, there was hand wringing over like, you know, putting someone in yellow face at the time.

• 1:44:43Griffin Newman?

  It, it, when you read the response at the time where people talk about the making of the movie, it felt like their concern was Will this look silly? Not is this offensive?

• 1:44:54Speaker 04

  Right, yeah.

• 1:44:55Griffin Newman?

  It was, this is a big swing and in a serious dramatic film, does it throw the entire thing off balance? And the fact that it doesn't and that her performance is so good is, fantasy has been talking about this a lot recently. It is one of those rare examples of a best supporting actress win. That's basically a cakewalk and the only nomination that movie got.

• 1:45:17Speaker 04

  It is so crazy.

• 1:45:18Griffin Newman?

  It's similar to the Amy Madigan weapons thing of just people being like, yeah, this is just like, this is kind of one in a million thing. This immediately like is stuck in everyone's mind.

• 1:45:27Speaker 04

  I mean, it's kind of hard to imagine you're living dangerously without Linda Hunt in it.

• 1:45:32Griffin Newman?

  It is the defining element.

• 1:45:33Speaker 04

  You make with the movie.

• 1:45:37Speaker 04

  I think weirdly, David, that it's considered brown face.

• 1:45:41Griffin Newman?

  It's a fair point.

• 1:45:42Speaker 04

  Yellow face because she's portraying a

• 1:45:45Griffin Newman?

  A South Asian.

• 1:45:46Speaker 04

  Southeast Asian.

• 1:45:47Griffin Newman?

  Correct.

• 1:45:48Speaker 04

  Person.

• 1:45:49Griffin Newman?

  This is clearly something I'm very good at parsing out and talking about and like

• 1:45:57Griffin Newman?

  No, you're right. I mean,

• 1:45:58Speaker 04

  But no, nobody was concerned about that in 1982. And nor am I going to, yes, but the decision at the time, right? We, we, we show the movies to our kids that come with the disclaimers now. This was wrong at the time. It's wrong now.

• 1:46:15Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 1:46:16Speaker 04

  And I, I, I believe that absolutely to be true.

• 1:46:19Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, then that's, and that's how I feel. The thing with this one that's so odd is it's not like Breakfast at Tiffany's or whatever, where you're like, wow, this is, this is plainly offensive at the time. And it's just playing into a stereotype and all this. You know, like Remo Williams, The Adventure Begins is only like a year or two after this. It has Joel Grey playing a villainous character who is like borderline Fu Manchu.

• 1:46:41Speaker 04

  Right, right.

• 1:46:42Griffin Newman?

  And that is a performance that gets like a Golden Globe nomination.

• 1:46:45Speaker 04

  But that, that was Hollywood at the time was like,

• 1:46:47Griffin Newman?

  They were obsessed with the stunt of,

• 1:46:49Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 1:46:49Griffin Newman?

  It was as if like, oh my God, and this is, I'm choosing my language very carefully here. I'm saying that this was their attitude at the time. And this is exactly what the danger of the dehumanization was. It was treated as, can you believe this human being convincingly played a dog? You know, that it was like,

• 1:47:06Speaker 04

  Right, right.

• 1:47:06Griffin Newman?

  Oh, they transformed it.

• 1:47:07Speaker 04

  Of course, it's acting, my friend.

• 1:47:08Griffin Newman?

  And makeup and a voice, and they changed the whole thing. And now we obviously have like an entirely different language for how we consider like, who should play what and how. It is interesting that it feels like, The gender part of this is the most interesting part of the performance, the most powerful, and I actually think would be seen as progressive today, in my mind.

• 1:47:31Speaker 04

  In that, in that light, it would. I'll also tell you, you know, when you're the director and you're setting up the auditions and you're working with a casting director and you say, what we need from this character is a Chinese, half Chinese, half Australian dwarf.

• 1:47:46Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 1:47:46Speaker 04

  Of a, within a certain age.

• 1:47:49Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 1:47:49Speaker 04

  And you set up the auditions and then you look out in the waiting room and you go, they're not, they're not out there, they're not, they're not coming in because, not to say they didn't exist, but say there are four of them out there, Chinese Australian people with dwarfism who are coming in to audition and maybe two of them are the wrong age and one of them is just terrible and one of them, we're like, oh, maybe we can make this work.

• 1:48:11Griffin Newman?

  I'm not gonna like rank the levels of offensiveness of which things are touchier than others, but it's like, what if you find the right guy and he's six foot seven and now he's like walking with like shoes on his knees, you know? And it did feel like the part of this that felt risky creatively was the gender element. And it is the thing that gives this movie this like entirely different, like power and text. I don't know if it's just me watching this from, for the first time yesterday, but it feels like baked in. And I was, it was this interview I found that Lynda Hunt did with Bomb Magazine where she's talking about having just done the run of the Wallace Shawn play. And she said, like, that was deliberate in my mind, that like I am playing a supra

• 1:48:56Griffin Newman?

  personality, that I am not trying to play a man. And you watch this now and it, it feels like there is a reading that is pretty easy to get to of this character being like an Albert Knobbs, of being someone who has assumed a different gender identity, whether out of personal expression or out of means of survival. And that is kind of like the secret the movie is holding. And I think that was the thing that just made this performance so transfixing that, you know, in an era where people are just doing kind of race swapped casting offensively, without any delicacy, playing into stereotypes without any larger gain,

• 1:49:39Griffin Newman?

  this performance is not doing that, or rather, that's not the main driving force. So people were just like, fucking hand her the Oscar right away. And as like a kid growing up in the 90s and trying to learn about Oscar history, it was such a weird thing to stumble upon and be like, in like the 80s, they gave best supporting actress to a woman playing a Filipino man? And it's like someone I haven't heard of, but now that you're pointing her out, she does just kind of pop up in things.

• 1:50:12Speaker 04

  Does he, do you suppose there's any consciousness that he's indemnifying the brown face decision by, by doing that?

• 1:50:22Griffin Newman?

  Gender swap? I do wonder.

• 1:50:24David Sims?

  I, but I really think the way he presents it is more just the total desperation of, we could not find anyone even close to being good for this.

• 1:50:32Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 1:50:32David Sims?

  And it's such a unique and specific role. And then he at one point was like, should I make the character even more physically unusual? Should I make it a hunchback? Should I essentially just kind of transform it in a way that it might fit other actors? Right? And then he pulls back from that because he finds Linda Hunt. I do think Linda Hunt wins the Oscar because she's good. I do also think she wins because it was one of those kind of like, well, like you said, like, well, this has never happened before. We have to sort of acknowledge what an unusual performance this is.

• 1:50:58Griffin Newman?

  Who else was nominated that year?

• 1:51:00David Sims?

  That's a good question.

• 1:51:01Griffin Newman?

  It's a weird year. I was looking at, because it's Cher for Silkwood, who I think wins the Golden Globe. The SAG doesn't exist yet.

• 1:51:08David Sims?

  Right, and that's Cher's entree.

• 1:51:11Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 1:51:11David Sims?

  You know, like of being taken seriously and she'll win.

• 1:51:14Griffin Newman?

  Right, maybe Cher was going to be the frontrunner.

• 1:51:16David Sims?

  This is the year, so it's Cher and Silkwood, Amy Irving and Yentl, a lovely performance, but probably not going to win. Alfred Wood and Cross Creek, which is a great performance, but is a small movie. And again, probably sort of like a welcome, welcome to the biz, you know? And then Glenn Close in The Big Chill, which is not. Like the definitive close performance, but I feel like now they'd look back and be like, should we just fucking give it to her for that?

• 1:51:38Griffin Newman?

  This is what

• 1:51:39David Sims?

  Saves us the headache of, yeah.

• 1:51:40Griffin Newman?

  Right. Every time they nominated her, they were like, but we'll give it to her for the next one.

• 1:51:44Speaker 04

  And she was the only actor nominated from The Big Chill.

• 1:51:47David Sims?

  Which is weird because she is good in it, but she doesn't actually have a big role.

• 1:51:52Griffin Newman?

  I think it just speaks to her status that she was so.

• 1:51:54David Sims?

  She has the scene where she cries in the shower.

• 1:51:56Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:51:56David Sims?

  Which is like a big Oscar-y kind of scene.

• 1:51:59Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:51:59David Sims?

  But like, if I'm giving someone an Oscar for that movie, it's like Joe Beth Williams or so. I don't know. It's someone else.

• 1:52:05Speaker 04

  Well, it's absolutely the argument for an ensemble award.

• 1:52:10David Sims?

  It is.

• 1:52:10Speaker 04

  Right? I mean.

• 1:52:11Griffin Newman?

  That would have won best.

• 1:52:12Speaker 04

  Big Chill would have won it hands down.

• 1:52:14Griffin Newman?

  Yeah. Uh, and then who's the fifth nominee again?

• 1:52:17David Sims?

  Is Linda Hunt. It's a, so Linda Hunt shared Glenn Close, Amy Irving, Alfred Woodard.

• 1:52:21Griffin Newman?

  Right, right. Okay.

• 1:52:22Speaker 04

  Good year.

• 1:52:23David Sims?

  It's a great performance. Interesting year.

• 1:52:25Griffin Newman?

  It's an interesting year.

• 1:52:26David Sims?

  Uh, that's, that's the terms of endearment year.

• 1:52:28Griffin Newman?

  Right. And they run both of them in lead.

• 1:52:30David Sims?

  Yes.

• 1:52:31Speaker 04

  They had the, so surely.

• 1:52:32David Sims?

  You could have put.

• 1:52:35Griffin Newman?

  Today, they would have put.

• 1:52:36David Sims?

  McLean in supporting.

• 1:52:37Griffin Newman?

  No, I think they would have put Deborah in supporting and it would have been bullshit.

• 1:52:41David Sims?

  No, I think they would have put McLean in supporting, which is weird.

• 1:52:44Griffin Newman?

  I think you're, you're disregarding the kind of like.

• 1:52:48David Sims?

  I know what you're arguing.

• 1:52:48Griffin Newman?

  Elder statesman rule. I, I would point to Carol as the analog.

• 1:52:53David Sims?

  Yeah, but, uh, but, um, um, Officer and Gentleman had already come out. So Deborah Winger was a big movie star and that movie's more about her. And McLean is the sparky supporting character, like in this bullshit read of it. Like I, I think Deborah would have been lead and might have won. Hmm. Maybe they should have done some category fraud.

• 1:53:12Griffin Newman?

  Both won.

• 1:53:12David Sims?

  But Linda Hunt won. And Linda Hunt's such an interesting actor who has such a crazy, interesting career in some ways.

• 1:53:18Griffin Newman?

  Now.

• 1:53:18David Sims?

  But is also someone that like, obviously Hollywood never really knows what to do.

• 1:53:23Griffin Newman?

  No, there's a fascinating kind of like paycheck run. And I don't say that disparagingly where the studios are like, this person's interesting. How can we work her into our big movies? And you're like, oh, she's like the madam running the saloon in Silverado. She's like the stern principal in kindergarten cop. Like there's a good series of big studio paycheck gigs for her that all use her in an interesting way.

• 1:53:46Speaker 04

  Another one or two Altman movies too, right?

• 1:53:49Griffin Newman?

  She's in Prete Porté.

• 1:53:50Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:53:51Griffin Newman?

  And then she ends up on, she was on a nineties legal show and then she was on NCIS.

• 1:53:57David Sims?

  She's on the practice.

• 1:53:58Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:53:59David Sims?

  But as like one of the judges, but NCIS.

• 1:54:02Speaker 04

  For a hundred years. She was on that show for 100.

• 1:54:05Griffin Newman?

  Los Angeles?

• 1:54:05David Sims?

  Los Angeles, right. I always forget if it was New Orleans or Los Angeles.

• 1:54:08Griffin Newman?

  This is a thing I discovered that I just, I'm, I'm so happy. I, I, I did the research and stumbled upon this myself. Linda Hunt twice won the Teen Choice Award Surfboard for Choice Female TV Star, colon, Action.

• 1:54:27David Sims?

  For NCAA?

• 1:54:29Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:54:30David Sims?

  Those awards, of course, are full of integrity and brought it on by.

• 1:54:33Griffin Newman?

  Action.

• 1:54:33Speaker 04

  Wait a minute, they give a surfboard?

• 1:54:35Griffin Newman?

  They, they give you a big ass surfboard.

• 1:54:37David Sims?

  You got a gun for one of these. You got your Pulitzer, you got your Tonys.

• 1:54:41Griffin Newman?

  You gotta get a surfboard.

• 1:54:42Speaker 04

  You go up on stage and they give you a.

• 1:54:44Griffin Newman?

  I was desperately trying to find a video of her accepting the surfboard.

• 1:54:47David Sims?

  There's no way.

• 1:54:47Griffin Newman?

  On her IMDB, she is credited once as self at one of those ceremonies, but I could not find any video of it. But both years, I think the category was exactly the same. I believe she beat Yvonne Strachasky for Chuck. Maggie Q for the Lefem Nikita TV show. Like, it's like four TV shows.

• 1:55:05David Sims?

  Shaleen Woodley accepting a surfboard.

• 1:55:07Speaker 04

  Oh, it's a full-size fucking surfboard.

• 1:55:09David Sims?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:55:10Griffin Newman?

  It, it was two years in a row, the exact same nominees.

• 1:55:14Speaker 04

  I think I just like leave the, leave it in the, like, in the, in a parking spot, you know, outside, just like, yeah.

• 1:55:20Griffin Newman?

  No, you gotta ride that shit home. I just love that it was four women in high heels who kicked people. And that both times they were like, the teens have spoken and they like Linda Hunt sitting behind a desk.

• 1:55:32Speaker 04

  What if you don't surf? This is my, what are you gonna do with a surfing board?

• 1:55:36David Sims?

  Sell it, frame it.

• 1:55:38Speaker 04

  Do we call it a surfing board?

• 1:55:40David Sims?

  It's just a surfboard. This is again, you're sort of, you're not really a Hollywood guy, I'm feeling here.

• 1:55:47Griffin Newman?

  But to this point, it's like, this wasn't an anointment of a career. She was basically unknown to most of Hollywood. She was, you know, established in theater, but had done almost no on-camera work. And then Hollywood is like, I guess we gotta cast her in stuff, but she never becomes, you know, like, you look back and go like, oh, that makes sense that Linda Hunt has an Oscar.

• 1:56:08David Sims?

  She got a Tony nomination for End of the World, a play I don't really know in the 80s. Yeah, that's about, that's a, yeah. Anyway, she's in the film. Gibson, obviously, was the choice to begin with. Apparently, he was vaguely wary of the character, I think because he'd never done that kind of a thing, right? The sort of more cool detached.

• 1:56:28Griffin Newman?

  Just the hold the center thing. Yeah.

• 1:56:30David Sims?

  Right. Yeah. Sigourney Weaver, Peter, we're like the film Alien.

• 1:56:35Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:56:36David Sims?

  Like many of us. And so, I don't know, he didn't, he didn't, like, you know, didn't have to press too hard.

• 1:56:43Griffin Newman?

  Her, her time in between Alien and Ghostbusters wasn't rocky, but you do look back at it and you feel her fighting against getting pigeonholed as just genre.

• 1:56:56David Sims?

  As right, like a sort of an action queen or whatever.

• 1:56:58Griffin Newman?

  Right. And it feels like she tries a lot of interesting stuff when she in Ghostbusters can prove that she's funny. And then that's followed by Aliens and Gorillas in the Mist and everything like.

• 1:57:07David Sims?

  Right.

• 1:57:08Griffin Newman?

  By 84, 85, it's like, oh, Sigourney Weaver can do anything.

• 1:57:11David Sims?

  But she only does one movie in between Dangerously, which is Eyewitness.

• 1:57:16Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:57:18Speaker 04

  She and Bill Hurt both kind of anointed new movie stars at that point.

• 1:57:22David Sims?

  Never seen, they're like journalists, right? They're like TV journalists.

• 1:57:26Speaker 04

  Peter Yates, right? I think James Woods is also in that. That's not bad.

• 1:57:29David Sims?

  Sure.

• 1:57:32Speaker 04

  You know, when she had been in college, she had gone to school with Christopher Durang.

• 1:57:36David Sims?

  Right.

• 1:57:37Speaker 04

  And he had written these plays. They would do these plays in college and he wrote these roles for her where she was kind of the, you know, in a sense, he's writing, yeah, they were very, very much comedies and she got to do lots of wacky stuff or be kind of, the, the fact that she was tall, statuesque, beautiful, long legged, and yet being in these screwball comedies were playing a kind of Margaret Dumont character in, in these things that, that Durang would write. So it makes sense that after Alien, she would say, well, that's not really who I, I'm not really an ass kicking action star. I do different stuff. But in Year of Living Dangerously, she and Mel, right, find an opportunity to play.

• 1:58:21Speaker 04

  I mean, she's just so fucking smart, right? Her, her screen persona is so fucking smart. And so you can imagine a lot of actors who would feel not, not equipped to play this role that she plays in Year of Living Dangerously.

• 1:58:38Griffin Newman?

  She has a tremendous amount of intelligence and authority on screen that just is established. Second one, when you see her.

• 1:58:45Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:58:46Griffin Newman?

  In a movie that doesn't have a ton of time to backfill character.

• 1:58:49David Sims?

  Right after this is when she does Hurly Burly on Broadway, which I feel like was another kind of big fucking deal.

• 1:58:55Speaker 04

  Yeah. Does she do much theater now? Like she did Christopher D'Arang.

• 1:59:00Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 1:59:01Speaker 04

  Masha and so yeah.

• 1:59:03Griffin Newman?

  That was the last one.

• 1:59:05Speaker 04

  I think so. She doesn't do a lot of it these days.

• 1:59:06Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:59:07Speaker 04

  Is she in these fucking Avatar things?

• 1:59:09David Sims?

  Tracy.

• 1:59:09Speaker 04

  She sure is.

• 1:59:10Griffin Newman?

  Tracy, Tracy, I'm so glad you asked. In, in a stroke of almost Linda, Linda Hunt-esque casting.

• 1:59:18David Sims?

  It is bizarre what they do with her.

• 1:59:19Griffin Newman?

  Sigourney Weaver plays a 13 year old alien.

• 1:59:22David Sims?

  So in the first film.

• 1:59:24Griffin Newman?

  It's a phenomenal performance.

• 1:59:25David Sims?

  In the first film Sigourney Weaver plays the scientist, a human person.

• 1:59:28Griffin Newman?

  She's like a, a chain smoking tired.

• 1:59:32David Sims?

  I'm trying to figure out these avatars.

• 1:59:33Griffin Newman?

  How do people become aliens?

• 1:59:35David Sims?

  She dies in the first film, spoiler alert, but her mind is uploaded, of course, to a mind tree. Don't worry about it.

• 1:59:40Speaker 04

  When you say spoiler alert after the spoiler, it's gonna lose some.

• 1:59:44David Sims?

  A little bit, yeah. And then in the second and third films, she plays in a Navi and aliens. So with motion capture performance, but they use the motion capture so that she can play a 13 year old girl.

• 1:59:56Griffin Newman?

  But it looks like her. It's, it looks like Sigourney Weaver's face on a 13 year old blue cat alien. And she is so good in the films.

• 2:00:03David Sims?

  And she is.

• 2:00:04Griffin Newman?

  Such a, a well observed performance of a teenager.

• 2:00:07David Sims?

  It is. She's, here she is.

• 2:00:09Speaker 04

  Oh, there you go.

• 2:00:10David Sims?

  Uh, anyway, but back to the Year of Living Dangerously. It's just so exciting having you on the show. And I feel like I just want to tell you all these things.

• 2:00:17Griffin Newman?

  We're excitedly showing you our like macaroni.

• 2:00:20David Sims?

  As we said, they, you know, they, they were never really going to do Indonesia. They shot in Manila, uh, which was very arduous. Uh, then there were terrorists.

• 2:00:31David Sims?

  Threats, uh, which was a problem. Um, Manila is a very Catholic city at the time, I think. Then they start shooting in a village that's very heavily Muslim and this causes a lot of friction. And they, I think, don't know how much of a mess they're making by doing all of this. Like they're just blundering around making their movie. Uh, so they eventually have to retreat to, I mean, at one point, uh, a note was left in a vehicle saying, in the name of Allah, the Almighty, stop your imperialistic film or we will stop you.

• 2:00:59Griffin Newman?

  That's the thing. The discourse of this movie, I, I think it was not touchy in the States. It was touchy the places they were filming.

• 2:01:07David Sims?

  That makes sense.

• 2:01:07Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 2:01:08David Sims?

  So we're like, we were gonna leave. Imelda Marcos, the then first lady, uh, but a big Filipino politician, obviously. Personally reaches out and begs them like, don't leave, like, you know, like we'll figure this out. But we're is just kind of like, this is too fucked up. Like, we don't need to be, you know, dealing with all this. Life first, movie second is how he puts it. Uh, so then they, they do another like six weeks in Sydney, recreating some of the sets, like patching it all together. And, uh, yeah, the, the biggest battle, what do you think the biggest battle over this movie was after it was, uh, you know, final cut? The biggest battle? Like the biggest kind of like a US censor kind of, you know, like, you know, the, the studio thing, like it's that there's child nudity.

• 2:01:53David Sims?

  That there's the boy naked when he's sick and that like, isn't that, you know, isn't that how it goes though? Like, you know, it's like, but they're like, well, wait a second though. Why are we seeing a penis? I don't like a child's penis. From the dead child. Who's being.

• 2:02:08Griffin Newman?

  Right. Priorities there, maybe a little out of whack.

• 2:02:11David Sims?

  Film came out eighty, December eighty two in Australia. Uh, January, late January, uh, eighty three in America. So Linda Hunt wins an Oscar for a performance that was a year plus old.

• 2:02:21Griffin Newman?

  Wild.

• 2:02:22David Sims?

  Like she only, she wins in the eighty four Oscars.

• 2:02:24Griffin Newman?

  Yeah. And looking through it, it, it really felt like, uh, she just sort of swept all the critic awards.

• 2:02:31David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 2:02:32Griffin Newman?

  It must've been a performance that people were like, that was interesting. Obviously that's not a traditional Oscar winning performance. And then it became such a critic's cause that she, she carried. It all the way. I just think back to the casting thing for a second. An interesting comparison point that I saw people pointing out on Letterboxd. To your point of like, yes, it is incredibly hard to cast these things, right? And in theater, you are granted more sort of latitude if people can play things representationally. And in a film, we expect a kind of literalism. And how do you find the real person and also know that they can deliver what's necessary for the role? And all of that, which is, none of this said as an excuse, right? Just that casting is an incredibly tricky art form. The weird kind of counter to this movie is Killing Fields two years later,

• 2:03:17Griffin Newman?

  where they hire Hyang Nesh Nagor, who basically just was the guy he was playing. And he wins an Oscar as well, you know? And it's in an academy that has very rarely awarded Asian actors at all. He is one of the few. And it's basically, he is considered, it's him and Harold Russell from Best Years of Our Lives, are the two times that someone who was like, straight up a non-professional actor, we hired this guy based on life experience and it worked. Even then, you know, it's going to be hard if you go, well, let's just assume we can direct them and we can get the performance out of them. We have to find a four foot nine and a half Australian Filipino dwarf. It's still like a tough challenge.

• 2:04:01Speaker 04

  You know, I, years ago.

• 2:04:03Griffin Newman?

  Just to literally identify that human being alive on the planet.

• 2:04:07Speaker 04

  Right.

• 2:04:07Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:04:07Speaker 04

  Years ago, I did a play of mine called Linda Vista. And there's a Vietnamese-American character in Linda Vista. And we went about trying to cast this role and trying to cast a Vietnamese actor in Chicago was challenging. We, we eventually got there. I, I have a Chinese-Korean-American friend who said to me, why are you, why are you trying to cast a Vietnamese person? You're not going to find a Vietnamese person. You just cast an Asian person. And I said, but don't you think that the Vietnamese person would have a different perspective on that? And would want to see themselves, want to see the Vietnamese person represented on stage by a Vietnamese actor? And she said,

• 2:04:50Speaker 04

  That's not the way we look at it. She said, if I have to wait for the role to come up, that's a Chinese, Korean, American. I've already got a limited number of roles I can play. And now you're going to tell me that I can only play a role if it's Chinese, Korean, American. Well, I don't know what Linda Hunt would say, since she has dwarfism.

• 2:05:13Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 2:05:13Speaker 04

  About a role that comes up in which she's being asked to play a dwarf.

• 2:05:17Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 2:05:18Speaker 04

  Now, would she say something different now than she said back in 1982? I don't know.

• 2:05:23Griffin Newman?

  I don't know. It's, we're not hand waving or excusing any of it. There are like two fundamental truths, which is this casting would never happen today, and this performance is extraordinary. And it is like,

• 2:05:35Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:05:35Griffin Newman?

  really the juice of the movie in every way. And, and back to just the reframing around this characters, the whole reason this movie works for me on top of her just nailing the performance so hard. But I think today there would be some form of reconceptualization around the character somehow.

• 2:05:54Speaker 04

  I think today a director would say, let's find that person before I do anything else.

• 2:05:59Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 2:06:00Speaker 04

  Right? It's like, I've got to know that I've got that person.

• 2:06:03Griffin Newman?

  I mean,

• 2:06:03Speaker 04

  That I can build this movie around.

• 2:06:05Griffin Newman?

  There was, whatever years ago, 2019, Steven Spielberg announced he was going to make that movie about the kidnapping.

• 2:06:12David Sims?

  The kidnapping of Carter Montana. It's been made since then.

• 2:06:14Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 2:06:15David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 2:06:15Griffin Newman?

  But he announced it as his next film, and they said, and now we begin the worldwide casting search for the kid.

• 2:06:22David Sims?

  Right.

• 2:06:22Griffin Newman?

  And basically after two years, he was like, I can't make this movie.

• 2:06:26David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 2:06:26Griffin Newman?

  We never found the kid.

• 2:06:28David Sims?

  Right.

• 2:06:28Griffin Newman?

  You know? And if you're Steven Spielberg, you have the clout to be given the money and the runway to search, knowing that you might not find the kid. If you're Peter Weir at this point in your career,

• 2:06:37David Sims?

  Oh, yeah, no, I know. Yeah.

• 2:06:38Griffin Newman?

  They're saying to you, here's when you start filming.

• 2:06:41David Sims?

  Yeah. In Manila, no less.

• 2:06:43Griffin Newman?

  Right. You decide who's playing that role, but we're not waiting around for four years. Mel's got like two more fucking Mad Maxes to make or whatever.

• 2:06:51David Sims?

  Right.

• 2:06:51Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:06:52David Sims?

  So the film, uh, we should discuss a little more in depth, I would imagine. Uh, you know, what, what do we?

• 2:06:57Griffin Newman?

  It opens with Billy Quan, a character who we'll later find out is dead.

• 2:07:01David Sims?

  Sure.

• 2:07:02Griffin Newman?

  But is telling the story of the film to us.

• 2:07:04David Sims?

  Sure, sure. You're right. He's narrating from beyond.

• 2:07:06Griffin Newman?

  In, in, in diary form. Yes.

• 2:07:09David Sims?

  Uh, in a way.

• 2:07:10Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:07:10David Sims?

  Uh, but, uh. Does this mean we're done with the dossier? We are, I'm sorry. No, it's all right. I, I'm. The only thing left there is, um, you know, uh, the reviews, the reception of the film, uh, which I can tell you more.

• 2:07:22Griffin Newman?

  If there's a specific questions, we can always plug back in.

• 2:07:23David Sims?

  I can tell you played it can, uh, I can tell you that it was well received by critics. Uh, and, uh, we're these days is sort of like, I'm not sure about that film's legacy, but I'm glad, you know, it still exists. He doesn't talk about it in a reverential way exactly, but I think it was a pain in the neck. Here, here's what I don't know yet. How do you feel about this film?

• 2:07:44David Sims?

  I love this film. I, I love this film. I, you know, sensitivities aside and all, like the things we discussed, like I just, it's just the kind of movie I,

• 2:07:55David Sims?

  really respond to, um, because it's sexy, but also like politically complex and like rewarding in its complexity. Just like not giving you an easy answer, not giving you an easy guy to root for. Like he makes mistakes that are identifiable mistakes to me. He behaves in a way that I'm like, yeah, I don't know that I would really be of upright integrity here either. I don't know that I would know how to navigate this situation, but I would be kind of thrilled by it or, and, um, it's just a film that feels very relevant, always. You can say it's relevant now. Everything's relevant now. Right now, everything is relevant.

• 2:08:36Griffin Newman?

  Right now, everything is relevant.

• 2:08:37David Sims?

  But like.

• 2:08:38Griffin Newman?

  The Super Mario Galaxy movie has never been more relevant.

• 2:08:41David Sims?

  Right. All, all films, but like. Capturing like the feeling of a country on the brink of something is hard to do like, and I love any movie that does that. And I love like Rossellini movies or I'm trying to think of like, what are, what are other movies that you would put in that genre of like sort of films about a revolution, but that aren't about like the instigators of that revolution? I don't know.

• 2:09:03Griffin Newman?

  That's an interesting question.

• 2:09:05David Sims?

  But I love revolutions.

• 2:09:06Speaker 04

  Missing.

• 2:09:07David Sims?

  Missing is, yeah, another film that's impossible to find right now, right? Isn't Missing a?

• 2:09:12Speaker 04

  It's on a criteria.

• 2:09:13David Sims?

  Oh, it's on criteria.

• 2:09:14Speaker 03

  Then I should go fuck myself.

• 2:09:17Griffin Newman?

  But Gallipoli is sort of.

• 2:09:18Speaker 04

  Not, not inherent in my comment that you should go fuck yourself.

• 2:09:21Griffin Newman?

  Gallipoli is, is similar in that regard. It is, you know, back rounding a giant historical moment and showing it to you only through the perspective of people who don't understand how important what is happening around them is actually going to be.

• 2:09:37David Sims?

  Yes. Um, I like what I, I look, I'm no expert on Indonesia. I don't know if you are, are you?

• 2:09:45Speaker 04

  I am not an expert on Indonesia.

• 2:09:47Griffin Newman?

  This is good to get out there.

• 2:09:48David Sims?

  But like Sicardo, from what I understand, Sicardo was not a communist, but he was sort of like loosely aligning himself, lefting, left wing, loosely aligning himself with the Soviets, maybe loosening, loosely drifting from the Americans. And what's happening in this movie is the Ameri, the West, the Americans, the Brits, the whatever, the old nasty stakeholders are like, let's fucking sow chaos so that we can get our guy in, right? Like, that's what happened in Indonesia, right? Cause like, uh, Su Harto is the guy who replaces him is, he's like, uh, you know, I'll, I'll, I'll do what the Americans.

• 2:10:26Speaker 04

  Uh, David is saluting for those of you listening at home.

• 2:10:29David Sims?

  I, and I know that I am embarrassingly simplifying Indonesian like politics here, but right? Like, and I just love that in, what, what's up?

• 2:10:37Speaker 03

  Cause I, I was really trying to figure out like,

• 2:10:41Speaker 04

  He seems to be this figure like a hero.

• 2:10:44David Sims?

  He is. Sicarno? Or, yeah, he is. He's the father of like Indonesian independence. Like, they broke off from, they were controlled by the Dutch for, you know, 100 fucking more. I mean, how many, you know, hundreds of years, they were the Dutch East Indies. And like post-war, he's the leader of their independence movement.

• 2:11:02Speaker 04

  And completely anti-imperialist, right? He, he doesn't want anything to do with the colonizers.

• 2:11:09David Sims?

  Right.

• 2:11:11Speaker 04

  And, and, and therefore sets himself up as a leader of the country. But of course, he's terribly corrupt as well.

• 2:11:19David Sims?

  And that's what the tension of especially Billy Quan, I mean, everyone else here is there, they're drifting in here because it's interesting. Like Billy Quan wants Sicarno to, to help. And Sicarno like, and, and I guess identifies in Sicarno like, you know, good, right? Like you could be doing good. I mean, like, were I in charge of a nation of what 10,000 islands with like 400 million languages and like that had just been liberated from Dutch bond? I, yes, I imagine corruption would reign. I don't really know, like the, this is what I don't know. Like, was Sicarno a bad leader? Like, I don't think so. Like, I think it was just like an insane and complicated situation that then the, the West kind of like blew up.

• 2:12:03Griffin Newman?

  I also think there's an interesting chicken and egg thing. When you look at like radical revolutionary movements and how often those leaders are proven to be corrupt and whether there is some driving force in them that pushes the politics, even if ultimately helpful to their people, so that they can achieve their own ultimate desires and gains, or if it's just classic fucking absolute power corrupts absolutely. But so often you have these arcs of the person being the savior, ultimately becoming the exact kind of person that they existed to topple.

• 2:12:36David Sims?

  Yeah, a little. Not the exact same. Threat of that happening, but I think it never actually even really came to that.

• 2:12:41Griffin Newman?

  I'm not even saying with him in general, I'm saying like globally across history, that is a thing that repeats itself so much.

• 2:12:46David Sims?

  History aside, I just like how the film captures that, you know, all of That ambiguity.

• 2:12:52Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:12:52David Sims?

  While still being a 100 minute sexy journalism thriller.

• 2:12:56Griffin Newman?

  Also, to your point, what I like is-

• 2:12:58David Sims?

  It's a pretty darn watchable movie.

• 2:13:00Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 2:13:00David Sims?

  But it's not a movie where he's gonna break the case and fucking save the day. And it's not a movie where he's like the white savior or whatever, you know, like it doesn't really-

• 2:13:08Griffin Newman?

  No, no.

• 2:13:09David Sims?

  It avoids all these pitfalls.

• 2:13:10Griffin Newman?

  It's like an anti white savior movie, even though it is obviously placing this guy front and center in the story.

• 2:13:14David Sims?

  Doesn't feel like it yells at the audience at any point.

• 2:13:17Griffin Newman?

  But it's, it's why I said the like useful idiot thing is there's this sense of like, as you said, Billy Kwan being like, man, if someone could get through to this guy, he really could help everybody. And he identifies guy, literally just some white dude named guy who's handsome and charming. And it's like, he might listen to him. If I can load the right ideas into his head and he can go relay them, and he's a better delivery system than maybe I would be, does that affect change?

• 2:13:50David Sims?

  I, I find that idea very moving that, that this, the, the, what's going on globally, politically, what's going on in this country is so far beyond the reach of the characters.

• 2:14:03Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:14:03David Sims?

  They really don't understand quite, quite the world they're operating in. And they basically, you know, one of them dies and the other two run away.

• 2:14:13Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:14:13David Sims?

  I mean, that you're right, there's-

• 2:14:14Griffin Newman?

  They get to just live a fucking Hollywood romance.

• 2:14:17David Sims?

  A scene that I love is when they, they make it through the checkpoint. It's so tense and then they're laughing, even though they're, they just witnessed like state murder.

• 2:14:26Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 2:14:27David Sims?

  And I'd probably, because like they're just so exhilarated and they're like, you know, happy to be alive. You wouldn't put that in a Hollywood version of this movie.

• 2:14:35Griffin Newman?

  No, because it-

• 2:14:35David Sims?

  Because it makes him look like a jerk or an idiot.

• 2:14:37Griffin Newman?

  It's also, it is, it is begging to be misread, whereas I view that as pointed. And part of that is the prism of looking at his other films and the continuity of his viewpoints. I brought it up in other episodes, but there is, one of the first things Peter Weir did was he made one of the chapters in an omnibus movie called Three to Go. That was truly like the very beginning of the Australian new wave. Let's get these kids out of film. And try to make a movie commenting on the youth of Australia. And it's it's three different stories of three different characters. And he made one called Michael that is about a upper middle class, kind of very coddled,

• 2:15:15Griffin Newman?

  privileged, kind of well meaning liberal intellectual kid who is fighting or he wants to rebel against his parents and what he feels views as the safety of their bubble and wants to get into the shit and starts entrenching himself in kind of radical politics and radical art and wanting to feel dangerous and wanting to tell himself that he's not just comfortably sitting in an ivory tower. But it is ultimately an act as an effect. It's him just wanting to rebel against whatever is imposed upon him, even if what is imposed upon him is like immense privilege and security and safety.

• 2:15:57Griffin Newman?

  And it builds to him inviting this radical kind of theater troupe over to his parents' house, mostly to kind of just say fuck you to his parents. And then immediately is hit with like, actually, is this more chaos than I want? And I think it's really interesting as like basically the first extended narrative thing Peter Weir ever made on film, because it feels like it is him very much trying to excoriate the the exact person he doesn't want to be.

• 2:16:28David Sims?

  Sure, right. That sort of culture of tourists.

• 2:16:31Griffin Newman?

  Right, right. And the guy who gets out when things get a little too messy, who likes to believe that he could get down and dirty and and really give everything to the cause.

• 2:16:42David Sims?

  But what does he do in this? He doesn't do much.

• 2:16:44Griffin Newman?

  Exactly. That's the difference is that this guy.

• 2:16:46David Sims?

  Really the first act of the movie, like just kind of circling around like he's really not doing anything.

• 2:16:51Griffin Newman?

  Right. That movie feels right. It feels much more barbed and this, the way it is, I think, getting at a somewhat similar thing is much less critical of the character and more critical of the societal systems. And then, as you're saying, like, the moving part of it for me is Billy Quan basically understanding that everything boils down to people, that these issues that can feel so humongous and impossible to manage or ever affect change, ultimately.

• 2:17:22Griffin Newman?

  Are swung by two people having a conversation. Right? And can you get the right two people in the right place? Can you get them to align on the same things?

• 2:17:31David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 2:17:31Speaker 04

  And so much of the movie's philosophy is contained in that first conversation that Billy and Guy have as Guy is just arriving and Billy's talking to him about, you know, he talks to him about Tolstoy and, you know, what, what would you, do you help the one person in front of you? How do you, how do you help? What then must we do?

• 2:17:54Speaker 04

  Which is all pulled straight from the book, by the way, this Kosh's book. I mean, the dialogue is pulled straight out of the book. And it's really the argument that, or the conversation, I should say, that sits at the center of the film and that we keep coming back to. I mean, like I say, Guy only makes one ethical decision in the movie and it's arguably the wrong one.

• 2:18:13David Sims?

  So, okay, the plot of this movie though.

• 2:18:15Speaker 04

  Oh, we're still back to the plot.

• 2:18:16David Sims?

  No, no, it's fine. We don't have to be, but I'm just trying to think like, uh, how, how it progresses.

• 2:18:21Griffin Newman?

  I mean, much like Mel Gibson wanting to show people that he is not just an action star and that he can do drama. This is a guy who wants to be boots on the ground, an important photo journalist, you know, video journalist, film journalist, I guess. Doing something meaningful, but also he wants to stake his claim as important. He both wants to feel like he is fighting for the right issues and also that he is seen as someone who can tackle issues of weight.

• 2:18:50David Sims?

  He's, he arrives, he knows nothing. His predecessor has left him nothing, right? Like, so he's kind of like a true babe in the woods. So he meets all the guys, Michael Murphy, love to see that guy.

• 2:19:01Speaker 04

  Always love to see.

• 2:19:02David Sims?

  Incredible face.

• 2:19:03Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:19:04David Sims?

  What's he, I mean, he, he's an Altman guy to me, like, yeah, like he's a big Altman guy, but he, he did a million things.

• 2:19:10Griffin Newman?

  Everything.

• 2:19:10Speaker 04

  Yeah. And he's a terrific, this is only what, two or three years removed from, uh, unmarried woman, where he was also a son of a bitch. Oh, and Manhattan, a couple of years after Manhattan, where he's also a son of a bitch. He played, he just played this sort of bland, waspish, son of a bitch.

• 2:19:26Griffin Newman?

  It is rare to have someone who was that good and that handsome.

• 2:19:31Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:19:32Griffin Newman?

  Fully embrace the idea of being a character actor.

• 2:19:36David Sims?

  Yeah, right.

• 2:19:37Griffin Newman?

  Pass strategically to represent the most annoying kind of person.

• 2:19:41David Sims?

  You know what I've never seen is Shocker.

• 2:19:44David Sims?

  Craven movie that is the lead up.

• 2:19:46Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:19:46David Sims?

  And I've always wondered what that is.

• 2:19:48Griffin Newman?

  He's the human lead being haunted by the shocker, right?

• 2:19:51David Sims?

  I believe that is correct.

• 2:19:52Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 2:19:53David Sims?

  Is what Mitch Pileggi is the original shocker?

• 2:19:55Griffin Newman?

  Right. He's the man who sends him to the electric chair and then the man in the electric chair.

• 2:20:00Speaker 04

  I haven't seen shocker.

• 2:20:01David Sims?

  Wes Craven. Yeah.

• 2:20:02Griffin Newman?

  But even like.

• 2:20:03David Sims?

  That sort of weird eighties Craven where he wasn't sure what's.

• 2:20:06Griffin Newman?

  He's great as the fucking ineffectual mayor in Batman Returns. He's great in Away From Her. Like he's, he's, I just think he is.

• 2:20:12David Sims?

  He's always good.

• 2:20:12Griffin Newman?

  Always fantastic. And this is such a perfect use of him.

• 2:20:16David Sims?

  He became a big narrator. He narrates like any PBS shit that that's Michael Murphy.

• 2:20:21Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 2:20:22David Sims?

  Anyway.

• 2:20:23Speaker 04

  Still alive, by the way.

• 2:20:24David Sims?

  Still alive? Uh, how old is Michael Murphy?

• 2:20:29Griffin Newman?

  He's about to turn eighty eight.

• 2:20:30Speaker 04

  And I think he's the only Amer- well, I was about to say he's the only American, except Linda Hunt, of course, is American.

• 2:20:35David Sims?

  Yeah, right. But he's the only American.

• 2:20:37Speaker 04

  Sigourney Weaver's American. He's the only American character. That's what I mean.

• 2:20:40Griffin Newman?

  Yes, he is the, he is the token ugly American and it's another scene that I think is really telling.

• 2:20:44David Sims?

  Sigourney is at the, she's a British.

• 2:20:46Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 2:20:47David Sims?

  Diplomat.

• 2:20:47Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:20:47David Sims?

  Right. But she's an American actress. Yeah.

• 2:20:50Griffin Newman?

  The, the scene around the table where Michael Murphy is trying to sell Mel Gibson on the sexual tourism of the Philippines where you're like, you know, okay, but like, cut the bullshit. You're not here because you actually care on any humanitarian level. This is a cushy job because they treat you like royalty.

• 2:21:09David Sims?

  Right.

• 2:21:09Griffin Newman?

  And the laws are looser.

• 2:21:10David Sims?

  Your money goes far. You're right. Yeah.

• 2:21:13Griffin Newman?

  Right. And then who's the other actor?

• 2:21:14David Sims?

  His name's Noel Ferrier. He's an Australian actor.

• 2:21:19David Sims?

  Oh, who is, you might be unsurprised to learn, had a big like sort of comedy career, contemporary Barry Humphries, who's a big Australian, you know, who's Dame Edna. Is there, is Barry Humphries, he died. Okay. Died, died very recently.

• 2:21:33Speaker 04

  Do we get a sense of like what publications, what countries?

• 2:21:37David Sims?

  These would be like wire journalists, I would assume, right? Like my dad was a wire journalist.

• 2:21:41Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 2:21:41David Sims?

  He worked for UPI. He lived in Vienna. He lived in Beirut. He lived in Rome, like.

• 2:21:46Speaker 04

  Hated the Australians.

• 2:21:48David Sims?

  My, no, my dad hated Welsh people. And that is too strong to say that he hated them. It's more that my dad, I would detect in him disdain for the Welsh. Where I was like, you grew up so fucking poor in London. Like, what is, you know, what do you have on the Welsh? Nothing like, you know, it's like, you're just as like a bunch of a yokel as them, except you grew up in like South London or whatever, but like, and like, and he just kind of had these like, yeah, but they're just so silly. You know what I mean? And I'll be like, this is because we, what the Brits conquered them a thousand years ago.

• 2:22:21Griffin Newman?

  This is also tale as well as time. You're, you're all stuck under the same boot and you point to the other person and go, I think they're the fucking problem.

• 2:22:28David Sims?

  So funny about it. And it wasn't like he was the only one that it's a common thing in Britain that people are like, ha, the Welsh. Like, and it's just, I'm like, they're like a hundred miles that away. How different are you? You know, it's like, but, um, no, he didn't. My dad didn't have an Australian thing. Other British people do. I mean, don't you, I mean, like, have you been to, you know, it's like they, the Brits, the way they are, especially with Australians. But, you know, any like, um, you know, Canada news, you know, America, where they're just like, you know, those guys are kind of Britain junior. You know, we kind of invented this whole thing, right?

• 2:22:59Griffin Newman?

  Fucking running circles around the British labels in terms of physical media these days. The Australians are stepping up.

• 2:23:05David Sims?

  I mean, what is a good, is there a good British, like?

• 2:23:08Griffin Newman?

  Eureka.

• 2:23:09David Sims?

  Eureka.

• 2:23:09Griffin Newman?

  The FBI. Yeah. Indicators is UK and Radiance is UK.

• 2:23:13David Sims?

  Radiance is UK. Yeah. But like the old tartan label and all that, right? Like they're gone, right?

• 2:23:17Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:23:18David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 2:23:19Griffin Newman?

  But you got, you got imprint and umbrella and via vision.

• 2:23:21David Sims?

  But I'm just pointing to the time we got to, let's keep going with the plot.

• 2:23:25Griffin Newman?

  The scene, the scene of them sort of like trying to suss out in Mel Gibson, what is your sexual deviancy? As if the only reason you would take this job is to be able to take advantage. Right? And it's like, Michael Murphy is basically, I wasn't even gonna say coded. He is like, this is a man with like pedophilic inclinations, uh, who is like primarily driven by underage girls.

• 2:23:51David Sims?

  Yes.

• 2:23:52Griffin Newman?

  And the other guy is like deeply closeted. Right.

• 2:23:56David Sims?

  And it's. Cause when Billy's laying it all out at the end, that's what he's right. He's poking at all of those sort of unspoken things.

• 2:24:02Griffin Newman?

  And in that first scene, I think where you're introduced to those guys around the table and they're poking, uh, Billy as like, what's your fucking thing? Who are you fucking? What's your fucking deal? And, and he like very, like stands very firm of like, that is not my relationship with her, you know? They're like, so you're fucking her on the side, right? Why would you talk to her otherwise? And he has this like, you don't understand kind of thing where it just feels like Billy is a character who is completely grounded in the value of seeing people and seeing the worth of people and the relationship of people to each other in a non-transactional way.

• 2:24:39David Sims?

  It's why it's so interesting to me to learn that the book character is less pleasant. But I guess, because like, to me, it's like, right, they invest the morality in the movie in Billy.

• 2:24:49Griffin Newman?

  Cause this character is very strategic, but not in a devious way.

• 2:24:52David Sims?

  Yeah, I'd be like, fine, manipulate me. Oh, no, no, you made me fall in love with Courtney Weaver. Oh, this sucks.

• 2:24:58Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, that would suck.

• 2:24:59David Sims?

  Oh, fuck.

• 2:25:00Griffin Newman?

  I hate when that happens.

• 2:25:02David Sims?

  Oh, no, what do I do? Um, so Billy nudges Guy towards Jill, right? And I feel like Bill nudges Jill towards Guy as well, right? Like, there's all this sort of subtle manipulation going on. And.

• 2:25:15Griffin Newman?

  And also lets Guy know that he can give him access to the president in exchange for agreeing to make Billy his exclusive cameraman. That is framed originally as just, you do all that for me. And it's like, look, I just want steady work, which of course is not.

• 2:25:32David Sims?

  I don't think it's the president. I think it's the leader of the communist party.

• 2:25:35Griffin Newman?

  I'm sorry, correct.

• 2:25:36David Sims?

  That's right.

• 2:25:37Griffin Newman?

  Yes, yes, yes. But who does later, historically, did become the first president.

• 2:25:40David Sims?

  So.

• 2:25:41Griffin Newman?

  Am I wrong about this?

• 2:25:42David Sims?

  No, Suharno was the president of Indonesia.

• 2:25:45Griffin Newman?

  There we go.

• 2:25:46David Sims?

  At the time.

• 2:25:47Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 2:25:48David Sims?

  Suharno is eventually related, but so what happens is there's a communist, you know, not revolution exactly, but like, there's communist fighting. Tracy, I'm looking at you because you know everything about this. I assume you know more about this than I do, but there's communist fighting.

• 2:25:59Griffin Newman?

  Suharno was the first president.

• 2:26:01David Sims?

  Yes, the military led by Soeharto uses that as an excuse to completely wipe out the communists and all opposition.

• 2:26:07Griffin Newman?

  That's right.

• 2:26:08David Sims?

  And then eventually kick out Zaccardo, so Harder becomes the president of Indonesia for 35 years or whatever, until death? No, not until that. Right. They're in the 90s. It's like the economy gets bad and it's finally his time to go. I listened to this podcast called Revolutions by Mike Duncan. I highly recommend it to everyone. It's well known, where he goes through every single revolution that's ever happened. It's just him talking. Just tells you, I'm on Mexico right now. And it's just always so interesting how it's always the same fucking mistakes. The guys just stay a little too long. And it's like, hey, you're getting old. Do you want to like, pick a successor? And he's like, well, if I pick a successor, then you'll try to get rid of me. You know, like, it's like, you know,

• 2:26:53David Sims?

  it's like, you started the relationship by cheating on someone. Then you're like, I think you're gonna cheat on me. Like the whole like, right. Yeah.

• 2:27:00Speaker 04

  And Zaccardo was kind of laying the groundwork for the communist uprising that was eventually put down. One of the ways he did this was with a speech in which he spoke about living dangerously.

• 2:27:18David Sims?

  Correct.

• 2:27:18Speaker 04

  That's where the title comes from, which is never referenced in the film. It's referenced in the book.

• 2:27:23David Sims?

  Right.

• 2:27:24Speaker 04

  Straight off the bat, but.

• 2:27:26David Sims?

  Vive re pericoloso.

• 2:27:29Speaker 04

  Well said.

• 2:27:33David Sims?

  And like, he, he called, he gave the speech during like an anniversary of their independence. I know it was about a year before the coup. But was he like, did he want this coup to happen the way it happened? Like, no, right? Like, like the 30s. This is the thing that's all sort of.

• 2:27:53Speaker 04

  You started to get in the weeds here. And it's like, I, I'm, I'm lost.

• 2:27:58David Sims?

  I'm lost.

• 2:27:58Speaker 04

  Again. Seeing it in 1983, I couldn't have found Indonesia on a map.

• 2:28:03David Sims?

  Sure.

• 2:28:03Speaker 04

  Right. Uh, there's so, uh.

• 2:28:06David Sims?

  That didn't matter. Like it didn't matter.

• 2:28:08Speaker 04

  Film effect.

• 2:28:09David Sims?

  But what, what spoke to you about the film then? I guess, apart from just they're kind of wrong.

• 2:28:14Speaker 04

  Well, again, the, the stranger in a strange land aspect of it. The, the, the quality of the performances, the love story that you talk about that, I mean, the scene where he goes into the embassy party and then she comes and she gets in the car with him. And we start to play the Van, Van Jolies song is just the hottest scene. Unbelievably hot.

• 2:28:38David Sims?

  They really like peak handsome to it, you know, like Gibson and Weaver.

• 2:28:42Speaker 04

  Well, they're not only physically attractive, but they're such good actors and they, they play, they play that desire so effectively.

• 2:28:51David Sims?

  They don't even speak that much to each other. But then there's also the, the sort of loaded mystery of like, you know, is there, is there a secret layer to this relationship? Are you gaming me a little bit? Is that, which just kind of makes it harder.

• 2:29:05Speaker 04

  Yeah. And. And the, the filmmaking, I mean, I suppose with Picnic at Hanging Rock, he had established that he was a great filmmaker.

• 2:29:15David Sims?

  Sure.

• 2:29:16Speaker 04

  But you know, I just watched, uh, The Stuntman last night and.

• 2:29:21David Sims?

  Bemoaning who we, who's the director?

• 2:29:22Speaker 04

  Richard Rush.

• 2:29:23David Sims?

  That's new Radiance, right? Yeah. Why did this guy never make another great film?

• 2:29:27Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:29:28David Sims?

  That's one of my.

• 2:29:28Speaker 04

  So it's like, what is gonna be? How are we gonna know that Peter Weir is really that guy? And I think Year of Living Dangerously, it's very apparent that he is that guy. That scene where the British journalist says, I've taken a bungalow. And then we cut from there to the guys having a kind of rickshaw or tuck tuck.

• 2:29:50David Sims?

  He takes about five minutes to say, I've taken a bungalow.

• 2:29:52Speaker 04

  Yeah, right.

• 2:29:52David Sims?

  He does a lot of sort of purple preamble to, but yes.

• 2:29:56Speaker 04

  And then the, the music choices and the, the tuck tuck race that takes us into the bungalow. And then the whole bungalow sequence in which we hear very little of the dialogue being spoken, but so much of the sexual tension between Sigourney Weaver and Mel Gibson is playing out through the dance, the Jerry Lee Lewis music, all of that, just the way all of that is put together is. Really masterful filmmaking, I think.

• 2:30:21Griffin Newman?

  In a really unshowy way, he has such an incredible command of like the music of cinema in in the sense of the magic you can get when you just have every element of this art form working in tandem. And you're not doing anything really gimmicky or flashy, but it is just the camera and the editing and the performances and the language and the literal music, the blocking, the framing, the art direction, everything. You know, he, he, it's like subtle magic trick shit, you know? It's, it just feels like he's always doing like close up magic that is very skillful and making these things just flow so organically and be so.

• 2:31:03Griffin Newman?

  His movies are weirdly seductive, even when they are not sexually charged.

• 2:31:08David Sims?

  But he'd never made a sexually charged movie up until now.

• 2:31:12Griffin Newman?

  This is his horniest movie.

• 2:31:14David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 2:31:15Griffin Newman?

  I would argue Picnic at Hanging Rock is very sexually charged, but with, with

• 2:31:19David Sims?

  But it's dreamy.

• 2:31:20Griffin Newman?

  The threat of sexual violence.

• 2:31:21David Sims?

  Exactly. And it's mysterious and like, I mean, it's just at the time, especially imagine if you had, had you seen other weird movies when this came out, probably not, right? Like, imagine being like, okay, what did the guy who made Picnic and Hanging Rock and The Last Wave and Gallipoli make next?

• 2:31:37Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:31:38David Sims?

  I guess this has a little bit of a handshake with Gallipoli.

• 2:31:40Griffin Newman?

  Yeah. And the Mel especially, but this idea of now we're gonna start digging in.

• 2:31:44David Sims?

  Yeah. And like, let's tell us, like Gallipoli and this both tell like human stories of like intimate relationships in a grand setting, like, you know, where there's a big thing playing out in the background.

• 2:31:57Speaker 04

  And I just find it ultimately just really transporting. When the movie starts, I'm, I'm in a different era. There's even something about the way the credits look, the way, the way the credit sequence is shot.

• 2:32:10Griffin Newman?

  The shadow puppets.

• 2:32:11Speaker 04

  Yes, it feels, it feels of another time.

• 2:32:14Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:32:14Speaker 04

  Very effectively transporting me to a different time and place. And I love that.

• 2:32:20Griffin Newman?

  Our friend Bobby Finger, past and future guest, I was looking at all the Letterboxd logs for this movie. He used the term meandering as a positive, which I'm like, that is a good way of putting.

• 2:32:33David Sims?

  I also.

• 2:32:34Griffin Newman?

  The weird movies feel like they're very much on their own time zone.

• 2:32:37David Sims?

  Sure.

• 2:32:37Griffin Newman?

  They're working at their own pace and they lull you into what they're doing.

• 2:32:41David Sims?

  But it's the mood it should have because it's like that until it's not.

• 2:32:45Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:32:45David Sims?

  And then when everything's going down, it makes the like the shock of that so much stronger. And then the death of Billy so much more like, you know, unbearable.

• 2:32:54Griffin Newman?

  It is also the thing I'm almost most allergic to in historical films or films about important political issues is characters who are so aware of the importance of what they are doing in every line, in every gesture and filmmaking that is just focused on communicating that to you. The stakes of the importance in a way that is not representative of what it feels to live, to be a person, even when you were in the most extreme circumstances imaginable, you are not burdened with the weight of importance of what you're doing and how it's going to be studied.

• 2:33:28Speaker 04

  I think that's right.

• 2:33:29Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:33:29Speaker 04

  I think that's, I think you're right about that. I think, you know, if, if Woodward and Bernstein were sitting around and all the presidents men saying, you know, this is the future of.

• 2:33:42David Sims?

  Right.

• 2:33:42Speaker 04

  You know.

• 2:33:43David Sims?

  Fucking fate of democracy rests on our shoulders.

• 2:33:45Speaker 04

  You know, but instead they're saying, I gotta go and talk to that lady and see if I can get her on the right.

• 2:33:50Griffin Newman?

  You know, it's what's most well judged about that movie is the amount of time that's them just being like, huh, she didn't pick up, you know?

• 2:33:56Speaker 04

  Right.

• 2:33:57Griffin Newman?

  That you're not just seeing the important things and that they don't immediately have the full picture.

• 2:34:01David Sims?

  The first time I saw that movie when I was a teenager or whatever, and it ends with them publishing.

• 2:34:06Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:34:07David Sims?

  I was like, wait a second, this isn't the Watergate movie about like where they get fucking Nixon and like the last half of it is like Congress and, you know, testimonies and like, oh, they erased the tapes and like, it's like, none of that's in the movie.

• 2:34:20Griffin Newman?

  No, it's literally just a movie about getting that story.

• 2:34:22David Sims?

  Such a good movie.

• 2:34:23Griffin Newman?

  Rules.

• 2:34:24David Sims?

  Yeah, it's pretty cool.

• 2:34:25Griffin Newman?

  Good 4K. You got that 4K?

• 2:34:27Speaker 04

  Oh, hell yeah.

• 2:34:28Griffin Newman?

  That's, I mean, talk about a good image.

• 2:34:32David Sims?

  Is Pakula up or down? He like back in because like, I feel like for a while.

• 2:34:37Griffin Newman?

  David, we bounced him off of March Madness. He was in the potential bucket for the losers bracket this year.

• 2:34:43Speaker 04

  He's a great, great.

• 2:34:44Griffin Newman?

  I don't know. I don't know what.

• 2:34:44Speaker 04

  Yeah, I've heard you reference this. I don't know what this is.

• 2:34:46Griffin Newman?

  Every March we do 32 directors, a daily vote.

• 2:34:52David Sims?

  A bracket like a, you know.

• 2:34:53Speaker 04

  Who's voting?

• 2:34:54Griffin Newman?

  Our listeners and we let them dictate one piece of programming a year.

• 2:34:59Speaker 04

  But where do they go to vote?

• 2:35:01Griffin Newman?

  Well, it's on our Twitter, which I don't know if you've heard is doing really well right now. It's a normal place to have civil discussions and now we do it on our own website.

• 2:35:08Speaker 04

  Oh, it's on our website. You can go vote. Would you?

• 2:35:11David Sims?

  I'll vote for you right now. Wes Anderson or Preston Sturgis?

• 2:35:14Speaker 04

  Preston Sturgis.

• 2:35:15Griffin Newman?

  My man.

• 2:35:16David Sims?

  Correct answer. Yeah. No offense to Wes, who is a great guy.

• 2:35:19Speaker 04

  No offense. Wes would vote for Preston.

• 2:35:21David Sims?

  Wes would vote in a second.

• 2:35:23Griffin Newman?

  Yes. But you, you had said you were like, is Pakula too many films? Is he a little down?

• 2:35:29David Sims?

  No, it's a very great, interesting filmography. I mean, the latter half of his career is a little less sexy, but.

• 2:35:35Griffin Newman?

  It's what's interesting to us when we try to cultivate and curate who's going to be on the bracket each year is.

• 2:35:40Speaker 04

  But you guys already know you've, you've got this thing planned out for the next five years.

• 2:35:44David Sims?

  We're crazy.

• 2:35:44Griffin Newman?

  Okay, somewhat.

• 2:35:46David Sims?

  About a year and a half.

• 2:35:46Griffin Newman?

  But we leave gaps to let this one thing, right?

• 2:35:49David Sims?

  One director per year.

• 2:35:50Griffin Newman?

  Whoever wins this March Madness thing will just go on the.

• 2:35:52Speaker 04

  For a whole series?

• 2:35:54Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 2:35:54Speaker 04

  The fans pick a whole series?

• 2:35:55Griffin Newman?

  Correct.

• 2:35:56Speaker 04

  Who's the last director they picked?

• 2:35:58Griffin Newman?

  The last director.

• 2:35:58David Sims?

  The Coen Brothers.

• 2:35:59Griffin Newman?

  The Coen Brothers.

• 2:36:00David Sims?

  Poor us.

• 2:36:01Griffin Newman?

  Right. So it was like.

• 2:36:01David Sims?

  They usually pick someone cool.

• 2:36:02Griffin Newman?

  Five months, but it was a good fucking five months.

• 2:36:05David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 2:36:05Griffin Newman?

  Yeah. And right now, yeah, it's, it's Scorsese.

• 2:36:09David Sims?

  Scorsese, Milos Forman.

• 2:36:12Speaker 04

  You haven't done Scorsese yet?

• 2:36:13Griffin Newman?

  No.

• 2:36:13David Sims?

  No, because it's a very hefty ask. So that's a little bit of us being like to the fans, like, are you cool with essentially a sort of a half a year on this guy?

• 2:36:22Speaker 04

  All right.

• 2:36:23David Sims?

  Which is like, it's fine. I mean, it's Martin Scorsese.

• 2:36:25Griffin Newman?

  We're like the size that is perfect for us. If you got like.

• 2:36:29Speaker 04

  How about Charles Lawton?

• 2:36:31David Sims?

  I mean, well, you know, he's pretty easy. Just knocking it out.

• 2:36:33Griffin Newman?

  Sometimes if there's like a guest being floated who might be tough in terms of scheduling, we'll throw out, is there a one film filmography you want to cover? Cause we know we could just slot that in anywhere. And so long we've always kind of kept on the table is like, is anyone ever going to try to claim that?

• 2:36:50David Sims?

  Pretty good movie.

• 2:36:51Griffin Newman?

  Pretty, pretty fucking excellent movie. Um, but no, but yeah.

• 2:36:54David Sims?

  You worked with one, but you've worked with multiple blank check. Uh, you've worked with Catherine Beggel, oh?

• 2:36:58Speaker 04

  I have.

• 2:36:59David Sims?

  Uh, who we've covered on it. I'm trying to think of like who else.

• 2:37:01Speaker 04

  You guys shit all over, uh, shit all over my movie. What? Hey, you were a little more positive than the other people.

• 2:37:08Griffin Newman?

  Yes. Uh, I made a joke about you being terrified that, uh, you had a physical media.

• 2:37:13David Sims?

  I like that you shouted out Lindor.

• 2:37:16Griffin Newman?

  That was gonna get bombed. Yeah.

• 2:37:18Speaker 04

  Who's the other Marie? Is that her name?

• 2:37:20David Sims?

  Our social media.

• 2:37:21Speaker 04

  She's on my shit list.

• 2:37:23David Sims?

  Marie's gonna be thrilled to hear this. We covered the post way back when.

• 2:37:27Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 2:37:28Speaker 04

  And hold on, I'm not done talking about Marie.

• 2:37:30Griffin Newman?

  Let's get into it. Yeah.

• 2:37:32Speaker 04

  So Marie, she says at one point, she said, well, I missed this vital part of the movie because I had just happened to look away from the screen for a minute. It's like, happened to look away? Who happens to look? You don't know how to watch a movie. Cause I know what that means. It means she's looking at her fucking phone, which means she doesn't know how to watch a movie. And she's totally on my shit list.

• 2:37:52David Sims?

  She's on my Marie, you have to earn Tracy's, you have to earn Tracy's respect back or his trust.

• 2:37:57Griffin Newman?

  I'm looking here, like Adam McKay, Todd Solons.

• 2:38:00Speaker 04

  Sure.

• 2:38:01Griffin Newman?

  I'm like, these are people where they're like major directors, but we haven't done them. And I don't know if we would.

• 2:38:05Speaker 04

  All right.

• 2:38:06David Sims?

  But we, we, we covered the post. Um.

• 2:38:09Speaker 04

  Were you kind to the post? I haven't seen it.

• 2:38:11David Sims?

  I love that film. We were very, we were very, very, um, high on it in the moment because it was a new release. So we were very excited by it. I have not revisited that film, but I like that film.

• 2:38:21Speaker 04

  We really don't have to do my filmography.

• 2:38:23Griffin Newman?

  No, I'm just, I'm just trying to see if there are other directors we've covered, but those are the two, I think.

• 2:38:27Speaker 04

  Catherine and Stephen.

• 2:38:28Griffin Newman?

  Yes. And then we, we covered Ghostbusters Afterlife. Of course you're the main character in that.

• 2:38:34Speaker 04

  That was a favor. I don't mind saying that. I mean, I would say that if Jason were here.

• 2:38:39Griffin Newman?

  You were around.

• 2:38:39Speaker 04

  The truth is that Mike Judge was supposed to play that part.

• 2:38:42Griffin Newman?

  Oh, really? Funny.

• 2:38:43Speaker 04

  He was supposed to play the part. And for some reason it was the last minute, there was a scheduling problem. And Jason, we're in Calgary where Carrie's shooting the movie.

• 2:38:51David Sims?

  You were already there.

• 2:38:52Speaker 04

  I was there with my wife and kids while she was working on the movie. And Jason's like, wow, if only we could think of somebody from Oklahoma.

• 2:39:00Speaker 03

  Who could do a single carry.

• 2:39:02Speaker 04

  So that's how I wound up in that. But you've not done Jason on the.

• 2:39:06Speaker 03

  No, we did on our Patreon. We watched the Ghostbusters.

• 2:39:10Griffin Newman?

  So you got to work with Muncher. Muncher's the ghost in Ghostbusters.

• 2:39:14Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 2:39:16Griffin Newman?

  A blue guy.

• 2:39:16Speaker 03

  Again, just being mindful of timing.

• 2:39:18Speaker 04

  Yeah, we should wrap up soon.

• 2:39:19Speaker 03

  Try and maybe just hit a couple more major points in the plot. Griffin, you were referencing like Mel's character being aware of living through a major event.

• 2:39:28Griffin Newman?

  No, being not being burdened with that self-importance, that he is kind of not solipsistically, but he is primarily just going, okay, let me figure out the lay of the land. What is like, who are the pieces on the board? And how do I take the right side?

• 2:39:44Speaker 03

  But really.

• 2:39:45Griffin Newman?

  Not thinking about the impact he has. He's just trying to build a good career, starting from that point.

• 2:39:51Speaker 03

  Where I'm trying to steer us is that Jill passes him info and that the Chinese communists are about to arm the PKI, which is the local Communist Party.

• 2:40:01Speaker 04

  Right.

• 2:40:02Speaker 03

  And he, he makes the decision that we've been saying throughout, you know, the ethical decision that's really not the right one.

• 2:40:09Speaker 04

  Ben, we haven't heard what you think about Year of Living Dangerously.

• 2:40:13Speaker 03

  I had never seen it before. And I really, really loved it. It really resonated with me. I have such romanticism for this kind of life of like a journalist, living abroad, living hard, smoking cigs, drinking, hanging out at bars.

• 2:40:33Griffin Newman?

  You've lived dangerously most years of your life.

• 2:40:36Speaker 03

  I mean, I would say I have a past and I, you know, still think about those times fondly. And glad I made it out. And but yeah, this, this movie was just such a joy to watch.

• 2:40:51Speaker 04

  Great. I'm glad to hear that. Cause I'm, I feel like, you know, obviously this is my presence here on your show is endorsement of the year of living danger.

• 2:41:00Speaker 03

  I mean, you could always come on to discuss a film you don't think works. Like it's fun to talk about movies that don't work or that are outright failures like that. That can be kind of fun, too.

• 2:41:09Griffin Newman?

  Can I share it also? It made me feel like I was able to live in a Tom Waits song.

• 2:41:16Speaker 03

  Nice.

• 2:41:16Griffin Newman?

  That is well put.

• 2:41:17David Sims?

  This is just like, that's the thing with a Tom Waits song. Like this is just not my climate. I just, you know, it's

• 2:41:22Griffin Newman?

  A Tom Waits song is not your climate?

• 2:41:24David Sims?

  Or, or Well, cause Tom Waits is, you know, that sort of the bayou and this is kind of like the, you know, the same thing. It's too, the air is just too wet for me. Like I would just be struggling.

• 2:41:33Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:41:33David Sims?

  I can't be in, in this sort of jungly.

• 2:41:36Griffin Newman?

  This is a damp movie.

• 2:41:37David Sims?

  Yes. I love the beach. I love the water.

• 2:41:39Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:41:40David Sims?

  Like that, that's sort of, I know I would just, I would suffer very hard.

• 2:41:44Speaker 03

  They let the actors sweat, right?

• 2:41:46David Sims?

  They do. It's part of the sexiness. It's part of the like, and like, um, yeah. So the, the decision it read, so it's basically Jill's like, hey, this shit's about to go down. You gotta get out. And he's like, aren't I a fucking journalist? Like, right? He does the one kind of journalistic thing. He's like, I'm going to, you know, publish this news.

• 2:42:03Speaker 03

  But it's selfish. Cause he's like, this is my big story. Right? It's part of his motivation.

• 2:42:08David Sims?

  You're right that there's a little bit of him being a hot dogging, right? Kind of guy.

• 2:42:14Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:42:14David Sims?

  You're right. You're right.

• 2:42:15Griffin Newman?

  But everyone else is like manipulating him towards positive ends. You know, they are, they are sort of driving him as a vehicle in the right direction because I think they all identify. I was, I was thinking a little bit of this movie in relation to broadcast news, which is obviously so much about completely, uh, excoriating the, the William Hurt character. But there's, there's certain commonalities between these two of just like, oh my God, here's just a guy with the right shoulders and the right eyes and the right voice and the steady hand. He is so dangerous if he does not have a moral compass installed in him or the wrong

• 2:42:59Griffin Newman?

  people get a hold of him. Because immediately is this understanding of whatever this guy communicates to the public is going to be heard. You know, he is like a human printing machine for the legend.

• 2:43:11David Sims?

  Right. Yes.

• 2:43:12Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 2:43:12Speaker 03

  I just love too, he's a radio journalist. Like I love hearing him deliver the news.

• 2:43:18Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 2:43:18Speaker 03

  And it's not just that he's writing the pieces.

• 2:43:21Griffin Newman?

  That scene's so good too, when he's doing the broadcast and he can't stop sweating.

• 2:43:25Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:43:25Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:43:35Speaker 05

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

• 2:44:00Speaker 04

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

• 2:44:11David Sims?

  The character Kumar, we haven't really talked about, but sort of a vital character in the last act of the film.

• 2:44:16Speaker 04

  He is. His, um, the fact that he is PKI, which is revealed late in the film.

• 2:44:24David Sims?

  Right.

• 2:44:24Speaker 04

  Is so obvious.

• 2:44:25David Sims?

  Yes.

• 2:44:25Speaker 04

  When you watch the movie. The second, it was like, oh shit. How many times does Peter Weir show him sort of looking, giving side eye to, uh, to the other woman who works in the office? Or, I mean, clearly he's, it's like, everybody knows it but Mel Gibson.

• 2:44:42David Sims?

  But that's what I love about this is like, you kind of vibe of Gibson is just, he's not dumb, but he's just too innocent to really understand. Like, the die has sort of been cast.

• 2:44:53Griffin Newman?

  Well, that's also.

• 2:44:54David Sims?

  Like, I've arrived at a situation that is already wrapping up and I, I'm just like here to have fun and learn things.

• 2:45:00Griffin Newman?

  It's the other thing that reminded me of Broadcast News, where you're just sort of like, there, there is this cultural reckoning with, has the media become something that is now out of our control? You know, it has gained too much power. We have given it to a medium we don't quite understand, where the values can be completely thrown out of whack based on things like watchability, you know, and the right.

• 2:45:24Speaker 04

  The answer to that is yes.

• 2:45:25Griffin Newman?

  Yes, yes. And that's, uh... You know, there's this attitude of William Hurt's more aware that he's part of the problem, but he's sort of like, if not me, then who? Someone else is gonna do it, right?

• 2:45:37Speaker 04

  And he's right.

• 2:45:38Griffin Newman?

  I'm not the one who created this situation.

• 2:45:40Speaker 04

  You know, with, with some years, you can look at it and go, oh, actually, if it's not William Hurt, it's gonna be another William Hurt.

• 2:45:47Griffin Newman?

  Totally. And, and the other part of it is, for better or worse, this guy projects intelligence. Whether or not he has intelligence is irrelevant. Whether or not he understands the situation is irrelevant. It is that no one will listen to Billy Kwan and people will listen to Sigourney Weaver even less, despite being a mega babe movie star, because she is a female diplomat.

• 2:46:11Speaker 04

  That's right.

• 2:46:12Griffin Newman?

  Right. And this guy is going to be able to, yeah, he's a megaphone. He's gonna be heard.

• 2:46:16David Sims?

  He's the best kind of character. Smart enough to know that what he wants isn't gonna happen, but still like a little bit of a, like can't dodge the true believer thing. I'm like, but what if you fed your people? Or what if you helped, you know, in the way I know you want to, or you could, or what, you know? And it's such a great, you know?

• 2:46:37Speaker 04

  Again, the third man, Holly Martins, right? He's, Holly Martins goes through the, the same, the same crisis over the course of the film. Not understanding the situation he's in, having the situation explained to him, still doesn't get it, has to see the situation played out in front of him.

• 2:46:55Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 2:46:55Speaker 04

  To sort of start to grasp just, just what the stakes are.

• 2:46:59Griffin Newman?

  It is what I also find fascinating about like the possible queer reading of this movie and the Billy Kwan character is there is a notion of, is Billy Kwan someone who was born biologically female, who has adapted the persona of a male? Whether through like a genuine expression of gender identity or strategic means to an end to be taken seriously and to be able to power these things. I think there is like a queerness that Linda Hunt. Plays. And in this interview I read where she made the super persona comment, she said that was a deliberate thoughtful thing in her mind, that she was not like, clearly I am playing this role like a cross dresser. But I think it's part of what's fascinating

• 2:47:43Griffin Newman?

  about this performance is it doesn't just feel like, well, this is like a stylistic kind of flourish that you just suspension of disbelief by this performance. There is a, even I think in how every scene is played, the other characters kind of eyeballing Billy and going, what's going on here?

• 2:48:03David Sims?

  Yeah. What's the, yeah. What is the, the deal?

• 2:48:06Griffin Newman?

  And part of that is that Billy holds his cards close to his chest. But part of that also is like, so what, so is that's the haircut? What's, you know, like everything's a little, no one has really looked or sounded like this.

• 2:48:20David Sims?

  Uh, death of Billy, very sad. And like, and just like, that's really, of course, like, I mean, do you buy that? I, I don't really think that guy's in danger. As much as guy is in real danger after that and gets through the blockades and gets the airport up, but you are like, right. But the, you know, the loss already happened. I mean, guess, I guess that guy's eye gets fucked up.

• 2:48:39Speaker 03

  Well, and he has to navigate it without any help from Billy, right? It's not just Billy's death, but that he doesn't have a guide.

• 2:48:49David Sims?

  Right. Yeah.

• 2:48:50Griffin Newman?

  And what he has to navigate is how do I get the fuck out of Dodge?

• 2:48:53David Sims?

  Right. And then it is right. There is like, it's not like, I'm going to expose this. I'm gonna, right. Oh, I just watched the government murder a journalist. Like, and it says like, where's the fucking airport?

• 2:49:03Speaker 03

  But it's, it's so, it's so silly that he goes to the palace and the way he conducts himself.

• 2:49:10David Sims?

  Right.

• 2:49:10Speaker 03

  Right. It's like, clearly he's, he's not thinking in his right mind because he's upset, but also he doesn't have Billy to guide him anymore.

• 2:49:18David Sims?

  Yeah. Right. Right. Right. That's not going to work.

• 2:49:20Speaker 04

  Well, he's also got the, the presumption of a white guy. It's like,

• 2:49:24David Sims?

  Like they, they wouldn't dare kill me, right?

• 2:49:27Griffin Newman?

  Right. And there's something so, uh, kind of like undignified about Billy's death, right? And even the way it is shown on screen, that we get the moment of the breaking through the door and Billy's reaction. And then we're mostly seeing just the body lying on the ground afterwards. Once Guy comes to the scene.

• 2:49:48Speaker 03

  And Guy later says when they're cleaning up Billy's stuff, that, uh, Sicarno didn't even see the banner.

• 2:49:54Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 2:49:56Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:49:56Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 2:49:57Speaker 03

  Tragic.

• 2:49:58Griffin Newman?

  But it's, it's not some epic, uh, uh, sacrifice moment.

• 2:50:02Speaker 03

  Sure.

• 2:50:03Griffin Newman?

  You know?

• 2:50:03Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:50:04Speaker 04

  There, there is. It's not a, not effective.

• 2:50:08Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:50:08David Sims?

  So dumb, pointless, but you understand that, you know, the motivation, this sort of like, you have the desire to, uh, just do something.

• 2:50:17Speaker 03

  And Billy's so distraught because he's been giving money to that family and that young boy gets sick and passes away. And I think that just like really pushes them over the edge.

• 2:50:30Griffin Newman?

  Yes, yes. And, and it's like, it's the, it's the dehumanization.

• 2:50:35Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:50:36Griffin Newman?

  It is the, the, these are not chess pieces. These are human beings.

• 2:50:40David Sims?

  We should play the box office game.

• 2:50:42Griffin Newman?

  You're going straight from.

• 2:50:44David Sims?

  I think so. I mean, is there anything else we want to say about the film? I, I'm just, I'm trying to bring the plane in here. I don't want it.

• 2:50:50Speaker 04

  I think we haven't paid enough attention to Maurice Jauray and.

• 2:50:54Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:50:55Speaker 04

  Incredible work.

• 2:50:55Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:50:57Speaker 04

  Van Jelis, who the song is credited in the closing credits, but Van Jelis himself is not name checked. So you would almost think that song is written by.

• 2:51:06David Sims?

  Maurice.

• 2:51:07Speaker 04

  Maurice, and it's not.

• 2:51:09Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:51:09David Sims?

  Yeah. It's, um, the classic, like Peter Weir would just have like a collection of tapes. He would play music all the time.

• 2:51:16Griffin Newman?

  All the American rock and roll pop music is really like, it's just fun to have tutti frutti in this movie.

• 2:51:22David Sims?

  He just liked that little, you know, that little song he uses, uh, and uses it twice, obviously. Apart from that, it's Maurice.

• 2:51:30Speaker 04

  Uses, uses it twice, very close together, by the way. It's sort of unorthodox, the way he uses it. Also Russell Boyd.

• 2:51:37David Sims?

  His guy. Yeah. And to be clear about Jauray, Jauray then goes to Hollywood, does Witness, does Mosquito Coast, does Dead Poets, like becomes.

• 2:51:45Griffin Newman?

  This is really the, the key team that he carries over.

• 2:51:48David Sims?

  Right.

• 2:51:48Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:51:49David Sims?

  Uh, Russell Boyd, the legend, uh, like who is, you know, at Picnicking, Hang Rock, like where they have no money figuring out all these innovative ways to like.

• 2:51:58Speaker 04

  Make the air feel magical, essentially. And he's such an incredible DP. He's still alive. All the more, still working, I think.

• 2:52:06David Sims?

  He hasn't really worked much since we're retired.

• 2:52:09Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:52:09David Sims?

  Way back is the way back.

• 2:52:11Griffin Newman?

  Yeah. And before that, of course, Ghost Rider.

• 2:52:13David Sims?

  He did shoot Nicholas Cage's Ghost Rider.

• 2:52:17Speaker 04

  Why is this movie not on? 4K. Well, I guess we already talked about this. It's almost certainly a rights issue.

• 2:52:23Griffin Newman?

  It's probably a rights thing, but it is odd that no one's left to figure it out.

• 2:52:28Speaker 04

  It's worthy of restoration.

• 2:52:33Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, I agree.

• 2:52:34Speaker 04

  Uh, and it's worthy of conversation, right? If, doesn't it provide an opportunity to revisit this question of casting?

• 2:52:41Griffin Newman?

  Sure.

• 2:52:42Speaker 04

  The question of politics and, uh, it would seem to me that a new release would provide the opportunity to further that discussion.

• 2:52:50Griffin Newman?

  To go hard, I think that's why also MGM or whoever has fucking access to MGM home video now through Amazon, maybe Sony, isn't going to just be like, yeah, just like put that one out with a theatrical trailer. I think there's a worry about just giving it the kind of release that Gallipoli got from Paramount, which is just like, we put it on a disc. Are you happy? Versus this is a movie that needs to be like, have a thoughtfully curated extras package of dialogue around it and context provided. Uh, so I don't, one of the, one of the specialty labels needs to step up.

• 2:53:25David Sims?

  Yeah. Um, this film came out. Do you know about the box office game?

• 2:53:29Speaker 04

  I've heard you guys play the box office game. I intentionally did not do any investigation because I want to play legit.

• 2:53:36Griffin Newman?

  An honest player.

• 2:53:37David Sims?

  So, um, this film came out limited release, January 21st, uh, 1983.

• 2:53:43Griffin Newman?

  Wow.

• 2:53:44Speaker 04

  So I graduated high school.

• 2:53:45Griffin Newman?

  Congratulations.

• 2:53:46Speaker 04

  Thank you.

• 2:53:47David Sims?

  Uh, so.

• 2:53:48Speaker 04

  That's as far as my education went, but nevertheless.

• 2:53:53David Sims?

  Where'd you go to high school?

• 2:53:54Speaker 04

  Uh, Durant High School in Durant, Oklahoma.

• 2:53:57Griffin Newman?

  Hell yeah.

• 2:53:58David Sims?

  Um, so, uh, it is obviously it's limited release, so it's not in the top five. Number one, it's a lot of holdovers, I would say from, you know, the 82 season.

• 2:54:07Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:54:07David Sims?

  Uh, number one is a big Oscar winning movie of 1982, a comedy classic.

• 2:54:14Griffin Newman?

  But it wasn't the big, what's Tootsie?

• 2:54:16David Sims?

  It's Tootsie.

• 2:54:16Griffin Newman?

  It's Tootsie. Cause Tootsie was a December release?

• 2:54:19David Sims?

  Tootsie came out in December. Yeah.

• 2:54:22Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:54:22David Sims?

  December 82.

• 2:54:23Speaker 04

  Massive box office. Unbelievable box office.

• 2:54:27Griffin Newman?

  And in my past of, of trying to memorize box office charts and such, it does just feel like the first four to six months of 1983 are ruled by Tootsie.

• 2:54:36David Sims?

  Um.

• 2:54:36Griffin Newman?

  Until ET comes.

• 2:54:37David Sims?

  I assume you saw Tootsie at the time?

• 2:54:39Speaker 04

  I did.

• 2:54:39Griffin Newman?

  Oh, no, ET came out before.

• 2:54:41Speaker 04

  In a packed movie theater.

• 2:54:42Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:54:43David Sims?

  Did you enjoy Tootsie?

• 2:54:44Speaker 04

  I loved it.

• 2:54:44David Sims?

  Do you, have you thought about Tootsie lately? I now I feel like I'm like a psych I selected it. Is Tootsie in the room with us? We did a 1982 movie draft on the big picture and I selected. I listened to it. Yes. A film I've only seen once. Really? Maybe twice. Yeah. But I enjoyed, but I have not seen in years. Which what? Tootsie. Tootsie. Oh, worthy of revisit. I'll revisit. Criterion, Criterion Edition. Very good. Yeah. Yeah.

• 2:55:13David Sims?

  Number two. Tootsie number one. What's Tootsie up to? Uh, well, it's only been out for a few weeks, but it has made, damn, it's made 81 million dollars. I think it at the time was one of the 10 highest grossing films in American history. All right. Yeah. Uh, so number two is an action film, uh, that had come out earlier in December. Okay. A gigantic breakout hit for one of its stars. For one of its stars. I, I mean, the other guy is. It's a two-hander. It's a two-hander. I mean, the other guy's a little bit more of a name. I guess it's sort of a breakout for both of them. Uh, but for especially for the supporting. Especially for the. For the sort of. So one guy was already more established, but the less established guy really kind of popped on this. Becomes the most famous actor of the eighties. Action comedy?

• 2:55:58David Sims?

  Yes, very much. It's. It's 48 hours. Oh, well, yes. Walter Hill's 48 hours. Yes. Like Nolte at that point, like he's not nobody. No, he's a big deal. But, but, you know. He's a, he's an established. Coming. Yeah. Star. Right. Yeah. And Eddie Murphy is 21 years old. He's but a child essentially. So fucking. Uh, so those are, I mean, like, so obviously those are like, sort of. Yeah. It's like, basically, do you want to go see, you know, this kind of comedy or that kind of comedy? Right? They're, they're just kings of the box office. Number three is, I mean, and now I'm thinking about the 1982 draft that you did. Certainly one of my favorites of 82, probably not my number one favorite, but, uh, um, one of your favorite directors. Uh, you know, sort of was nominated for many Oscars, a big drama. It's a.

• 2:56:43David Sims?

  Gandhi. Not Gandhi, but I can tell you that Gandhi is number four. Is it a Lumet? It is a Sidney Lumet. Is a Sidney Lumet movie? Uh, The Verdict. It's The Verdict. Hell, yes. So.

• 2:56:55Griffin Newman?

  I think I got that in the legal draft on Big Picture. If we're just all reminding people of our past draft.

• 2:57:02David Sims?

  I got the verdict. I got the verdict.

• 2:57:03Griffin Newman?

  You got the verdict?

• 2:57:04David Sims?

  Absolutely. That was my like number one. I think so. I can try to look it up. But the verdict is the best.

• 2:57:11Speaker 04

  I got the verdict in the 82 draft.

• 2:57:13Griffin Newman?

  Why do I feel like?

• 2:57:14David Sims?

  I'm gonna look it up.

• 2:57:15Griffin Newman?

  Oh, because I took 12 Angry Men?

• 2:57:18David Sims?

  I don't know.

• 2:57:19Griffin Newman?

  I feel like I had first.

• 2:57:20Speaker 04

  You guys did a legal draft?

• 2:57:21David Sims?

  We did a lawyer movie draft. I got, this is lawyer movie. So it was drama, comedy, thriller, Oscar winner, movie lawyer that you would want to represent you.

• 2:57:30Speaker 04

  Oh, nice.

• 2:57:31David Sims?

  And then John Grisham was its own category. And I got the verdict, intolerable cruelty, the devil's advocate, Chicago, the firm, and Atticus Finch. Not bad. You got Bridge of Spies, Legally Blonde, Michael Clayton, Philadelphia, The Rainmaker, and Grisham. And then you picked Stanley Tucci in Spotlight as your lawyer.

• 2:57:53Speaker 04

  Oh, nice.

• 2:57:54Griffin Newman?

  That's what I knew that I had first round pick. And I was like, what would I have gone for over the verdict? And the answer was, I knew it was going to be a feeding frenzy for Michael Clayton.

• 2:58:01David Sims?

  You got Michael.

• 2:58:01Griffin Newman?

  I had to get Michael Clayton.

• 2:58:03David Sims?

  Yes.

• 2:58:03Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:58:04David Sims?

  So, okay, yeah, the verdict. So number four is Gandhi. What's your take on, of course, the best picture winner, it will, or it's about to be the best picture winner, Gandhi.

• 2:58:15Speaker 04

  What about it?

• 2:58:16David Sims?

  You're a big fan?

• 2:58:17Speaker 04

  No, it's kind of.

• 2:58:18David Sims?

  I feel like you guys all kind of shat on Gandhi.

• 2:58:20Speaker 04

  We didn't.

• 2:58:20David Sims?

  In the 82 draft. No, maybe.

• 2:58:21Speaker 04

  They shat on it more than I did. It was important in the moment and Kingsley was undeniable.

• 2:58:27David Sims?

  Kingsley's unbelievable in it. I think Gandhi is, you know, it's not one of the great movies of 82, but it gets a slightly bad rap. It's, it's like, it's very watchable. It's like pretty good.

• 2:58:37Griffin Newman?

  Never seen it.

• 2:58:38David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 2:58:39Griffin Newman?

  I have it in that big Columbia Classics box set. And I'm just like, when am I in the mood to just throw on three hours of Gandhi?

• 2:58:45Speaker 04

  Let me tell you, well, Kingsley really elevates it. I mean, there really is a whale on board with that movie. But also to see a hundred thousand extras.

• 2:58:55David Sims?

  That's why it's just on a unimaginable.

• 2:58:58Speaker 04

  You'll never see it again.

• 2:58:59Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:59:00David Sims?

  Yeah. It's, it's all right. I mean, you know, it's not, not incredible. It's got all the flaws you'd think it has. Number five is a real Griffin movie.

• 2:59:10Griffin Newman?

  It's a real Griffin movie. Is it an 82 holdover or an 83?

• 2:59:14David Sims?

  It's an 82 holdover. A fantasy film.

• 2:59:17Griffin Newman?

  It's a fantasy film. It's like one of my favorites or is it just my type of thing?

• 2:59:20David Sims?

  I'm sure you.

• 2:59:21Griffin Newman?

  It is the dark crystal. Yeah, I like.

• 2:59:23Speaker 04

  Oh, my son's favorite movie.

• 2:59:25David Sims?

  Wow, there you go.

• 2:59:26Speaker 04

  Most watched movie in our house.

• 2:59:28David Sims?

  Scary. Spooky scary.

• 2:59:30Speaker 04

  He loves it.

• 2:59:31Griffin Newman?

  Can I tell you the movie I almost bought as one of the three and I actually just could not physically locate a copy in time? But if you have not watched it with your son yet, I highly recommend. Have you guys done Paranorman?

• 2:59:43Speaker 04

  He got scared by, is it called Coraline?

• 2:59:46Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 2:59:47Speaker 04

  He got scared by Coraline.

• 2:59:48Griffin Newman?

  Interesting.

• 2:59:49David Sims?

  Yeah, Coraline's scary.

• 2:59:50Speaker 04

  And so we haven't gone back into, he likes box trolls.

• 2:59:55Griffin Newman?

  And I noticed you had done James and the Giant Peach as well. Yeah.

• 2:59:58David Sims?

  Box trolls is the guy who eats the cheese in his face.

• 3:00:01Speaker 04

  Ben Kingsley.

• 3:00:02David Sims?

  Yeah, that's right. He's good, but it's very freaky.

• 3:00:06Griffin Newman?

  Yes. Paranorman is about fear.

• 3:00:10David Sims?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 3:00:10Griffin Newman?

  It is like reckoning with fear and I think it is one of the better dramatizations of fear mongering I have ever seen.

• 3:00:18Speaker 04

  We have it on the shelf, I think in a steel box.

• 3:00:21Griffin Newman?

  Okay. Okay. So if I had gotten it for you, I would have fucking struck out on that one. Okay. I chose right.

• 3:00:25David Sims?

  I'll tell you the rest of the top 10. Number six is The Toy, the Richard Donner film with Pryor and Gleason that is.

• 3:00:31Speaker 04

  Remake of a French.

• 3:00:33David Sims?

  That's right.

• 3:00:34Speaker 04

  Le jouet.

• 3:00:35David Sims?

  Yeah. Oh, does that have perfect politics? I haven't seen it.

• 3:00:38Griffin Newman?

  Jackie Gleason buys a black man and hands him to his son and says, have fun.

• 3:00:44David Sims?

  Another Oscar. So that's a December 82 release that didn't really translate. Another Oscar, future Oscar winner.

• 3:00:49Griffin Newman?

  Pretty big hit though. Not at the same scale of Tootsie and Forty Hours.

• 3:00:53David Sims?

  Forty seven million. That was pretty good. Sophie's Choice.

• 3:00:56Griffin Newman?

  Sure.

• 3:00:57David Sims?

  Which is, you know, is okay. I don't know. I don't know what you feel about Sophie's Choice.

• 3:01:03Speaker 04

  Haven't seen it since.

• 3:01:05David Sims?

  Since like 82.

• 3:01:07Speaker 04

  Well, I've seen it since then. It was on cable a lot.

• 3:01:10Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 3:01:12David Sims?

  I recall it being pretty good. Yeah. Peter McNichols, fantastic in that thing. Such a good actor.

• 3:01:17Griffin Newman?

  It's, his career is fascinating when you zoom out.

• 3:01:20David Sims?

  Right. How many times you discover him later in life and you're like, okay, so who's, what's this? How did this guy get started? You know, like Sophie's Choice is not what you would expect. Uh, numbers, sorry, number eight is Best Friends. The Burt Reynolds. Goldie Hawn. Goldie Hawn. Valerie Curtin screenplay.

• 3:01:39Griffin Newman?

  Okay.

• 3:01:39David Sims?

  I believe, yeah. Valerie Curtin wrote it with Barry Levinson and it's based on their friendship. Right. Right. So is it a sort of like they're like? It's a bit of a, it's a, it's a, when Harry met Sally. Right, right, right, right, right. Directed by Norman Jewison. I've never seen.

• 3:01:55Griffin Newman?

  No, me neither.

• 3:01:56David Sims?

  It's not great. Sure, fair enough. Number nine is ET. Big one.

• 3:02:00Griffin Newman?

  Big movie.

• 3:02:01David Sims?

  And then, uh, number 10 is The Man from Snowy River. What is this? Australian film. Really? Directed by George Miller, not that George. George T. Miller. Yeah. Wow. Who also directed The Neverending Story 2. Yes. Australian western. Griffin was offered Crocodile Dundee and had to turn it down. I can't believe it cracked the top, top 10. Well, it's, it's opening at number 10, so not amazing.

• 3:02:28Griffin Newman?

  But yeah, but yeah.

• 3:02:29David Sims?

  Kirk Douglas?

• 3:02:30Griffin Newman?

  It's what we were saying, the, the Australian kind of like, uh, Australian fever is cracking.

• 3:02:35David Sims?

  In dual roles as brothers Harrison and Spur. Man from Snowy River is good. I give that a thumbs up. Right. And it got a, it even got a sequel, Man from Snowy River 2.

• 3:02:46Griffin Newman?

  What's the, what's the physical, a physical media report on Man from Snowy River? What are we looking at?

• 3:02:50David Sims?

  I don't think I own it.

• 3:02:51Griffin Newman?

  Okay.

• 3:02:51David Sims?

  I don't know, uh.

• 3:02:52Griffin Newman?

  Let's see.

• 3:02:54David Sims?

  So you have to sort of dutifully like log, like, cause the, see, uh, the database thing, what's it CLZ or whatever it's called? It's like, my problem is I'm always like, did I put this in? You know, like where you do this little barcode scanning. Yeah. But every day I assume another pallet arrives, you're opening them up. It's my, it's my full time job.

• 3:03:14Speaker 04

  It's my job.

• 3:03:15David Sims?

  Like, has an Amazon driver or anyone like that ever said to you like, you have a fucking DVDs, buddy?

• 3:03:20Griffin Newman?

  I guess. I live in a doorman building.

• 3:03:23Speaker 04

  Driver has never said that to me. My wife says it to me.

• 3:03:25David Sims?

  Oh, no, sure.

• 3:03:26Griffin Newman?

  I live in a doorman building, humble brag.

• 3:03:28David Sims?

  Congratulations.

• 3:03:29Griffin Newman?

  And it does feel like every time I pick up a package, they're like, got a lot of stuff shipped to you.

• 3:03:35David Sims?

  How many do you have? How many discs?

• 3:03:37Griffin Newman?

  I think I'm probably around a thousand, but I'm not dutifully logging. I should.

• 3:03:42David Sims?

  How do you store them? Like, do you have shelves? I mean, I, you know, I don't, I don't really know.

• 3:03:47Griffin Newman?

  I have shelves that I have outgrown. There are now pillars of vertically stacked discs, like the books in Ghostbusters.

• 3:03:53David Sims?

  This is my problem is I have

• 3:03:55Griffin Newman?

  Too many discs in storage.

• 3:03:56David Sims?

  A very well arranged, like shelving situation, but it's full.

• 3:04:00Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 3:04:00David Sims?

  And so now the new stuff arrives and I'm like, well, I'll figure this out.

• 3:04:04Griffin Newman?

  That is exactly what I, where I'm at. I now just have like a shelving unit that is full and then a corner where discs live. And I'm in between, I'm waiting on the new shelf.

• 3:04:14David Sims?

  I'm watching this Bud Budaker westerns right now, that Criterion. Is that what it is?

• 3:04:19Speaker 04

  We did

• 3:04:19David Sims?

  The T and all the

• 3:04:20Griffin Newman?

  Renowned westerns?

• 3:04:21David Sims?

  Renowned westerns, right.

• 3:04:22Speaker 04

  Carrie and I did every one of them. We did like one a week for five weeks.

• 3:04:26David Sims?

  How are they?

• 3:04:26Speaker 04

  They're fantastic. Every one of them.

• 3:04:28David Sims?

  I'm great. I'm really liking the sort of like, I just have to wash my discs because then it's sort of like, the choice is out of my hands. Like, I'm not going to agonize over

• 3:04:37Speaker 04

  This is why Carrie wants me, which is why I pick the movie every night.

• 3:04:41David Sims?

  Right, right. Like, I don't want to choose. I don't want to scroll through.

• 3:04:45Speaker 04

  She's like, the shelves intimidate me. The streaming tiles, I can't make heads or tails of it. You pick, you put it on, no bitching. Obviously, she's got veto power. I think the entire time we've been together, she's vetoed two movies.

• 3:05:00Griffin Newman?

  What are the two vetoes?

• 3:05:01David Sims?

  Or is it a secret?

• 3:05:02Speaker 04

  One of them was a movie with Cate Blanchett and Judy.

• 3:05:08David Sims?

  Notes on a Scandal.

• 3:05:09Speaker 04

  Notes on a Scandal.

• 3:05:10David Sims?

  Good movie.

• 3:05:11Speaker 04

  I hadn't seen it. I put it on and Carrie said, I've seen this and I remember it.

• 3:05:14Griffin Newman?

  Okay, okay.

• 3:05:15David Sims?

  So it was just a been there, done that.

• 3:05:17Speaker 04

  That was one veto.

• 3:05:18David Sims?

  Parliament Hill classic.

• 3:05:19Speaker 04

  Something else.

• 3:05:20David Sims?

  Notes on a Scandal is a Parliament Hill classic.

• 3:05:22Griffin Newman?

  A Parliament Hill classic?

• 3:05:23David Sims?

  It's, uh, there's a lot of scenes set at Parliament Hill, which is a park I used to.

• 3:05:28Speaker 04

  But no, she doesn't veto. She, if she wants, and she doesn't blame me when the movie is bad.

• 3:05:33David Sims?

  Right.

• 3:05:33Griffin Newman?

  Does she ever tap out?

• 3:05:35Speaker 04

  She never taps out.

• 3:05:36Griffin Newman?

  She never taps out?

• 3:05:37Speaker 04

  Sometimes, uh, it's hard to keep her awake because she gets up early.

• 3:05:40Griffin Newman?

  But that's napping, how?

• 3:05:41Speaker 04

  There's a lot of like, uh, me making her sit up and I scratch her back while we, while we finish the movie.

• 3:05:47David Sims?

  But your kids do a good bedtime? This is, this is the biggest thing in my life.

• 3:05:50Speaker 04

  Kids are pretty good with the bedtime.

• 3:05:52David Sims?

  Good for them.

• 3:05:52Speaker 04

  And now occasionally I'll put on a movie that I've seen that I like and she watches it and she's like, what the fuck?

• 3:05:58Griffin Newman?

  Sure, right.

• 3:05:59Speaker 04

  The brood. Uh, there's still, uh, this is a conversation in our house still. She's like, what the fuck?

• 3:06:06David Sims?

  That movie rocks. But I mean, it is certainly, you gotta be in the right mood for it and it's, it's such a poisonously angry movie.

• 3:06:13Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 3:06:14David Sims?

  Which I love.

• 3:06:15Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 3:06:15David Sims?

  And I know it's his like divorced movie and it's, ah, that movie rocks, but yeah.

• 3:06:19Speaker 04

  I want to make sure I said everything I have to say. I wanted to bitch about Marie.

• 3:06:23Griffin Newman?

  Noted. So wear it as a badge of honor.

• 3:06:25Speaker 04

  I, I wanted to, uh, uh, say, oh, the big picture, right? The big, you know, it was questionable whether or not I'm, uh, big picture or a blank check.

• 3:06:35Griffin Newman?

  Well, can we get a head? Can we get a cartoon likeness of you to wear on that desk and tell people they're sitting at Tracy's desk? We're allowing you to sit at Tracy's desk today.

• 3:06:45David Sims?

  Right. We're not possessive like Sean. I was also, this is a very free and open environment. Sean's a little bit more with the chairs and the, the committees and the, you know, all this stuff.

• 3:06:53Griffin Newman?

  Lucy goosey, but also I do, I have airdropped a contract over to you. If you want to look it over, there's potentially a five year first look deal on the table. Not exclusive, but first look.

• 3:07:03Speaker 04

  I was surprised that you guys had guests come back. I didn't realize that till I listened to somebody recently and you're like, oh, they came back. So I want to, I want to look at your, I want to look at your list. I want to see, uh.

• 3:07:12Griffin Newman?

  We will, we will. Dictated by March Madness. It's, it's the next.

• 3:07:17David Sims?

  We'd love to have you on anytime. I don't know if you know this, but you're a you're quite an estimable person. So we don't want to just like bug you all the time, but we'd love to have you back.

• 3:07:24Speaker 04

  I I don't feel like that, but that's that's all well and good.

• 3:07:28David Sims?

  Right.

• 3:07:29Speaker 04

  The last thing I want to say is that you're living dangerously. So I showed it to Carrie years ago. Again, oh, I didn't know the other things we wanted to talk. Or did we want to cover Star Wars? Or did we want to cover cover Godfather?

• 3:07:41Griffin Newman?

  Say what you're gonna say and then Star Wars.

• 3:07:44Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 3:07:44David Sims?

  Two minutes on Star Wars.

• 3:07:46Speaker 04

  So Carrie doesn't remember the movies. I showed her Year of Living Dangerously a few years ago. She had no recollection of it. The nanny and I were watching it a couple of nights ago in preparation for this.

• 3:07:56Griffin Newman?

  Former SAG after president.

• 3:07:58Speaker 04

  And Carrie walked in halfway through the movie. She'd been working in town and she walked in and halfway through the movie and she's like, I remember none of this. I have no recollection of any of this. But she watched Mel Gibson for a few minutes and she said, my God, he's so in his body to watch the way he moves on camera is just like.

• 3:08:18David Sims?

  It really is what he could do.

• 3:08:20Speaker 04

  There's a scene where he's going out to the airport at the very end of the movie and he does a jog out to this sort of high stepping jog he does on the way out to the airport. And instead, it is a marvel to see. It's too bad what happened to that guy. He was one of our one of our great, great movie stars.

• 3:08:38David Sims?

  And I think even before he went publicly insane, he lost some thread of like the kinds of movies he should be making. You know, he got too into the sort of Hollywood gigantic paycheck world.

• 3:08:47Griffin Newman?

  Then also his revenge thrillers started getting weirder and darker.

• 3:08:51David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 3:08:51Griffin Newman?

  In a way that.

• 3:08:52David Sims?

  He's an incredibly magnetic screen presence, especially in the eighties.

• 3:08:57Griffin Newman?

  That is a very good quote from her. And I I often, almost always, the the infrequent times that I now work as an actor, I think I used to do a lot more. Now I'm a professional podcaster who sometimes acts. I think about a quote I read.

• 3:09:11Speaker 04

  How I define myself.

• 3:09:13Griffin Newman?

  I'll tell you, the first time you did Big Picture after Hitmaker had set it up.

• 3:09:17Speaker 04

  Right.

• 3:09:17Griffin Newman?

  And we were watching all that happen. We have a text thread called News and Deals that Alex Ross Perry is in as well as the great filmmaker David Lowery. We're all sharing Blu-ray announcements and deals. And we saw it happening, right? Hitmaker saying, you should maybe have Tracy on. Do you know Tracy? Yes, I can connect it, this and that. And we go, Sean, you've recorded Tracy today? How was it? And he said, if that guy ever decided to start a movie podcast, we'd all be cooked.

• 3:09:48Speaker 04

  Bumped right down the church.

• 3:09:49Griffin Newman?

  We're done.

• 3:09:50Speaker 04

  That's very sweet.

• 3:09:51Griffin Newman?

  It is our saving grace that he is so in demand in other areas. He is so esteemed in so many other fields that he never will commit to a permanent desk, which is why he can be third chair, fourth desk, whatever. But I remember some interview that Carrie gave where she talked about being a full body actor. How she feels like she can always rely on her theatrical training to in on camera work, which is often so bizarre and nonsensical and can leave you in a position where things are changing so fast and you have so little bearing of where you are in the story that you can look kind of nonspecific in a scene that she relies on her instincts and using her full body and everything.

• 3:10:34Griffin Newman?

  And anytime I'm like acting professionally again, I go like, am I, am I doing full body actor shit? Or am I just thinking about my fucking head, you know?

• 3:10:41Speaker 04

  Very nice.

• 3:10:42Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 3:10:42Speaker 04

  Very nice.

• 3:10:43Griffin Newman?

  So it means a lot coming from her.

• 3:10:45Speaker 04

  She's also a former athlete and I, Mel clearly has some athletics in his background as well, right?

• 3:10:51Griffin Newman?

  It's a big part of it. Yeah. And I, I think, I mean, you're talking about like, you know, the shame of how fully this man unraveled, but it is an interesting thing where like, great actors are often people who have a really great

• 3:11:05Griffin Newman?

  dialogue ongoing with their own psychology and their own body and ability to take control of these things and own them and use them in a very deliberate way. But very often, great movie stars are people who have some weird kind of unresolved thing within them. There is some inherent tension that makes them more unwatchable, makes them more watchable, even if it makes them less functional as a human being. And sometimes it is in a destructive way, sometimes it's in a self-destructive way. Sometimes it's just oddness. You know, you meet certain movie stars and you're like, how do you tie your shoes? But I, on screen, I will buy anything you are selling. It is a fascinating thing and you know, we were talking with Marie, now officially on the shit list,

• 3:11:51Griffin Newman?

  recently, who was saying that she had just re-watched Apollo 13 and she was like, how the fuck did Braveheart beat Apollo 13 for best picture? And we were like, you cannot overstate how powerful Mel Gibson was at that moment in time.

• 3:12:03Speaker 04

  It's really true.

• 3:12:03Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 3:12:04Speaker 04

  Yeah, he was. Star Wars?

• 3:12:07Griffin Newman?

  Yes. So you threw out one of the worst movie takes I've ever heard of all time.

• 3:12:10David Sims?

  Wait, remind, oh, that you don't like the trench run, right?

• 3:12:13Griffin Newman?

  That you specifically said, we all agree that the ending of Star Wars sucks.

• 3:12:18David Sims?

  Give me your appeal, it's.

• 3:12:19Speaker 04

  What I said was that the ending of Star Wars is the most boring climax to a great movie.

• 3:12:25David Sims?

  That's so crazy.

• 3:12:26Speaker 04

  That's what I said.

• 3:12:27Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, but you said it like we're all on the same page.

• 3:12:30David Sims?

  Yeah, and you're saying it to boys there. I mean, boy and girl, but you're into, you know, like where I'm like, I watched the trench run. I would watch the trench run over. I would rewind my VHS. The DVD has just degraded.

• 3:12:41Griffin Newman?

  Fantasy has like the trench run tattooed on his body, like he's the fucking prison break character.

• 3:12:46David Sims?

  And the thing about the trench run to me is like, I love the climaxes of the other Star Wars movies where he had more money and he went more epic. But it's actually kind of small in this beautiful way.

• 3:12:56Griffin Newman?

  Dramatically, it's like perfect. And even like, I think these moments that are constantly ripped off from that sequence, but exploded and overstated, even down to just the return of Han Solo at the moment you think he's got no support. Is, I just think so gracefully and sort of succinctly done without making too much of a meal out of it.

• 3:13:16Speaker 04

  All right. Let me tell you, millennial boys a thing or two.

• 3:13:19Griffin Newman?

  We're young ass whippersnappers.

• 3:13:21David Sims?

  I'm an old millennial.

• 3:13:22Speaker 04

  You know,

• 3:13:25Speaker 04

  you millennials are so monolithic in their movie opinions. Let me tell you, first of all, we never called it the fucking trench run. I don't know whoever came up with the trench run.

• 3:13:39David Sims?

  Oh, they called it the end of Star Wars.

• 3:13:41Griffin Newman?

  Okay.

• 3:13:41David Sims?

  And by the way, the movie was called Star Wars.

• 3:13:44Griffin Newman?

  I always call it Star Wars.

• 3:13:45David Sims?

  That I am with you.

• 3:13:46Griffin Newman?

  We, in this house, we call that movie Star Wars.

• 3:13:48David Sims?

  A new hope.

• 3:13:49Griffin Newman?

  New hope doesn't fucking exist.

• 3:13:50David Sims?

  That really sounds like he had five minutes where he was, they were like, hey, by the way, are you going to put like a title on the other one? He's like, uh, yeah, new hope.

• 3:14:00Griffin Newman?

  It's also so, it's so funny for him to land on that title after he's promised he would make prequels someday, but hadn't figured out what the prequels were. And he was like, the one safe bet is this is probably a reset point.

• 3:14:11David Sims?

  Because.

• 3:14:12Griffin Newman?

  Call it a new hope.

• 3:14:13Speaker 04

  Because Star Wars isn't a good title. Star Wars isn't working.

• 3:14:18David Sims?

  It's such, it's so crazy how good a title Star Wars is.

• 3:14:21Speaker 04

  So a new hope, which is like, it sounds like a Faith Hill album.

• 3:14:24David Sims?

  Isn't it crazy that Star Trek was a title before Star Wars?

• 3:14:29Speaker 04

  Yeah, right.

• 3:14:29David Sims?

  You know, like Star Trek sounds more esoteric and what is that? Why'd you pick that? No one had done Star Wars?

• 3:14:35Speaker 04

  Now, the, the actual trench run itself.

• 3:14:38David Sims?

  Right.

• 3:14:39Speaker 04

  First of all, you know, it's stolen from a movie called The Dam Busters.

• 3:14:42David Sims?

  Yes, he would cut in footage of it, right? Damn Buster's damn good movie.

• 3:14:46Speaker 04

  Yeah, very good movie.

• 3:14:47Griffin Newman?

  D G A M.

• 3:14:48Speaker 04

  But we've not, why, why is Luke piloting one of these goddamn?

• 3:14:53David Sims?

  Cause he used to shoot one brass in his T-14.

• 3:14:57Speaker 04

  Yeah, I don't know. Do you really think that he has the know-how to get into this machine? Drive into this cravat?

• 3:15:06David Sims?

  It is really funny. Star. That you imagine like, this is a ragtag rebel group and they're like, we've scraped together like 10 of these ships.

• 3:15:14Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 3:15:14David Sims?

  And he shows up and they're like, ah, you're like six foot two. Yeah. You want to get in this thing?

• 3:15:18Griffin Newman?

  They also, first of all, he's like five foot 10. Secondly, they got like, like 20, like lifer pilots and all of them fucking flame out. And Luke is the last hope.

• 3:15:28David Sims?

  He's the Jedi, he's the chosen one.

• 3:15:30Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, of course, of course.

• 3:15:31Speaker 04

  But why are we supposed to care about Victor Bono, who suddenly shows up late in the movie? In the ship is just like, where did he come from? Who's he's, and I'm, one of the guys, one of the big picture guys tells me that character has a name.

• 3:15:44Griffin Newman?

  Porkins, we're talking about Porkins.

• 3:15:45David Sims?

  You're talking about the actor is actually William.

• 3:15:47Griffin Newman?

  William Hookins.

• 3:15:47David Sims?

  He does have a bit of a.

• 3:15:48Griffin Newman?

  Really rude of you.

• 3:15:49David Sims?

  Victor Bono, I saw William Hookins play, I've, I've told Griffin this, I'm sure, maybe I'm, there's a play called Hitchcock Blonde and he played Hitchcock.

• 3:15:57Speaker 04

  Oh, right.

• 3:15:57David Sims?

  On the West End stage, he was.

• 3:15:59Speaker 04

  With, uh, Rosamund.

• 3:16:00David Sims?

  Rosamund Pike.

• 3:16:01Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 3:16:01David Sims?

  Right. And David Haig and, uh, can't remember.

• 3:16:03Griffin Newman?

  He's not still with us, right? Hookins passed.

• 3:16:05Speaker 04

  He must be pretty old if he is.

• 3:16:07Griffin Newman?

  He also, he's in Raiders, Lost Ark. He's the guy.

• 3:16:09Speaker 04

  Do you assume that Porkins, that there was a scene between Porkins? And the mechanic who put Porkins in the thing and the mechanic's name was Beans? Do you suppose there was a scene between Porkins and Beans?

• 3:16:23David Sims?

  Yes, they're better than.

• 3:16:24Griffin Newman?

  Tracy, and you are getting at why?

• 3:16:26David Sims?

  It is.

• 3:16:26Griffin Newman?

  Star Wars has the cultural stranglehold it does, because it opens up these questions, these conversations. Tracy, we start thinking about beans, you could write 10 beans novels.

• 3:16:35David Sims?

  My dad introduces me to Star Wars, obviously, as a sort of a right, right? You know, I watch it like, and then I'm obsessed with the trench run. And yeah, I only know, it's like, yeah, there's the guy who gets shot immediately. You know, to prove that there will be deaths like where these guys are going to blow up. Yeah, I'm all right. Boom. Right. That's put and then you like, uh, start to read books about Star or like you get, and you're like, the guy's name is fucking Porkins. Like they, they couldn't spend five minutes like figuring out a better name for this guy.

• 3:17:04Griffin Newman?

  Yeah. This guy's got a squid head. What's his name? I don't know. He's a Montcalm.

• 3:17:08Speaker 04

  Why is Darth Vader in a ship?

• 3:17:11David Sims?

  Well, how, why have we?

• 3:17:13Griffin Newman?

  He's in a little tie fighter.

• 3:17:14Speaker 04

  Have we been led to believe that Darth Vader is good at flying, uh, on these ships?

• 3:17:20David Sims?

  So now what you're doing here is very interesting because it's sort of what we did when we started the show, which is like, if you examine Star Wars without the further context, because like, of course, then you watch the prequels. It's like, oh, he was a crack.

• 3:17:31Griffin Newman?

  Everything's backfilled and explained.

• 3:17:32David Sims?

  But like, you're right. The, the whole thing with Darth Vader in general in Star Wars, where it's like, there's a fascist empire. It is mostly run by British white men who are older and are kind of like, we should kill all of them. Who is this sadist robot who walks around among them with a cape? Everyone else is a fascist Nazi guy.

• 3:17:53Griffin Newman?

  It's what's fascinating about.

• 3:17:54David Sims?

  Is Peter Cushing, right?

• 3:17:55Griffin Newman?

  Vader getting retroactively turned into like the greatest villain in cinema where you're like, he was meant to be like the weird gimmicky Bond henchman.

• 3:18:03David Sims?

  Yes.

• 3:18:03Griffin Newman?

  There's some big guy who's got an odd energy.

• 3:18:06David Sims?

  Who is like, like, I just wish someone would be like, where are you on the org chart? Buddy, I'm a major. What are you? Why do you get a cape?

• 3:18:14Griffin Newman?

  Darth.

• 3:18:16David Sims?

  There's an emperor, then there's some, you know.

• 3:18:21David Sims?

  Who are you? And so then it kind of makes sense that he's like, I'll get in my ship. Like there's some ships, like, let's go.

• 3:18:27Griffin Newman?

  Right. Why is he getting a ship? Because it's like, that's the guy James Bond has to punch at the end because it's not satisfying to watch him punch Doctor No. Doctor No is like an intellectual.

• 3:18:35David Sims?

  He is.

• 3:18:36Griffin Newman?

  He's not gonna punch.

• 3:18:37David Sims?

  Doctor No had a lot of good ideas out there.

• 3:18:41Speaker 04

  I stand by that take. Okay. I've rewatched Star Wars, the original trilogy with my son. He's liked them. We've watched them two, three times.

• 3:18:50David Sims?

  But he's not, he is not venturing.

• 3:18:52Speaker 04

  Gripped by them.

• 3:18:53David Sims?

  No.

• 3:18:53Speaker 04

  And he may be a little young for it. I mean, I saw them all in the movie theaters when they first came out.

• 3:18:58David Sims?

  But you were probably.

• 3:18:58Speaker 04

  The right age.

• 3:18:59David Sims?

  Right. Yeah.

• 3:19:00Speaker 04

  Right?

• 3:19:00David Sims?

  Sure. Well, the other thing with us.

• 3:19:02Griffin Newman?

  Eight is when I saw them, I think.

• 3:19:03David Sims?

  I saw the re-release, you know, I've seen them already, but I was there for the re-releases in 97.

• 3:19:08Griffin Newman?

  Those are my first.

• 3:19:08David Sims?

  And I was 11 and that was perfect.

• 3:19:10Griffin Newman?

  It was everything.

• 3:19:12Speaker 04

  I couldn't believe how bad Phantom Menace was. I couldn't believe it.

• 3:19:16David Sims?

  It's quite. Phantom Menace is tough because, yeah.

• 3:19:20Speaker 04

  I had always been told it was bad.

• 3:19:22David Sims?

  Finish your sentence.

• 3:19:25David Sims?

  Because? Well, it's bubbling with some interesting ideas and some bad ideas.

• 3:19:30Griffin Newman?

  This podcast only exists because of our obsession with that film and how we are constantly wrestling with it.

• 3:19:35David Sims?

  Keep attacking it being like, are we gonna like it this time?

• 3:19:38Griffin Newman?

  And we're not wrestling with, is this good or not as much as what is going on here? And I contend it is the best of those three. So when it started and people were like, well, maybe he'll like, he's a little rusty, he'll regain his footing.

• 3:19:52David Sims?

  I contend it's the best of the three.

• 3:19:53Griffin Newman?

  It's the best of the three now.

• 3:19:54David Sims?

  I think the pod race sequence is wonderful, which again, he's ripping off Ben Hur, but like.

• 3:19:59Griffin Newman?

  It feels similar to the trench run where he's taking a classical visual language of an epic cinema of past and applying it to future.

• 3:20:07David Sims?

  The thing that's happened with the prequels lately, you know, the prequels come out, they were hits, obviously, but they are derided.

• 3:20:12Griffin Newman?

  Reviled.

• 3:20:13David Sims?

  Yes. And now that the Disney legacy sequels have come out and had their own life cycle. Now the fans are like, well, the prequels are interesting because they are interesting.

• 3:20:21Griffin Newman?

  They are.

• 3:20:22David Sims?

  They're weird. George Lucas is a weirdo.

• 3:20:24Griffin Newman?

  Outsider art.

• 3:20:25David Sims?

  Right.

• 3:20:25Griffin Newman?

  They are made by a lunatic who can fund his own films at the highest level.

• 3:20:29David Sims?

  Was like, I want to sort of, you know, write about the fall of the Roman Empire, right? Like, I want to write about this sort of decline.

• 3:20:35Griffin Newman?

  How do fish just?

• 3:20:36David Sims?

  But I also think there should be like a Jamaican fish alien because kids watch it. You know what I mean? And like in the original movies, you can see Lucas being tempered and that there's a lot of interest, you know, a lot of mature people around him as well. And the prequels, he's unfettered. So he's like, we'll have Jar Jar Binks and no one at any point is like. This fucking sucks. Like, we cannot do this.

• 3:21:01Speaker 04

  That's part of the problem when you become as big as George Lucas.

• 3:21:03David Sims?

  A hundred percent.

• 3:21:04Speaker 04

  Nobody can tell you.

• 3:21:05David Sims?

  Now everyone reveres Lucas and I revere him too, because there's nothing like him and God bless this thing. You know, he, he did lots of interesting things, but like, I remember reading interviews with Mark Hamill at the time, like in the nineties where he's like, he's the fucking Pope. You, getting lunch with him is a day long production. He, you can't have a conversation with him anymore. Like where it's just like a regular, like, hey, why are you know, like, and like, that's what, and so they're interesting objects in that way. Cause like, when, how often does that happen in Hollywood?

• 3:21:31Griffin Newman?

  Never.

• 3:21:32David Sims?

  Never.

• 3:21:32Griffin Newman?

  Literally never.

• 3:21:33David Sims?

  So that's interesting, but are they like a good movie?

• 3:21:36Griffin Newman?

  No.

• 3:21:37David Sims?

  But you, you know.

• 3:21:38Griffin Newman?

  Fascinating.

• 3:21:39David Sims?

  It sounds like your son watches a lot of goofy Kaiju movies, which rock, but like they're silly too, right? Like, it's like the right balance of silliness is something that's can be hard to find.

• 3:21:47Speaker 04

  Right. Is the, like I said, the question is, is there a creature and especially are the creatures fighting?

• 3:21:52Griffin Newman?

  I, not to, not to spoil you, I did additionally get two Kaiju action figures for your children.

• 3:21:56David Sims?

  Oh my God. Oh my God. See, you think the big picture ever did this? There you go. See, this is, we treat our guests right, especially after we make them do a three hour plus episode. This has been far too long.

• 3:22:07Griffin Newman?

  That's a, that's a funky color, Hadora, but then this is, I think a really skeleton Godzilla after he is atomized from the end of the 54 movie at the bottom.

• 3:22:18David Sims?

  Oh, that's fantastic.

• 3:22:19Griffin Newman?

  Isn't that fucking cool?

• 3:22:20Speaker 04

  He has a, a bigger Hadora, but he'll love, you can't have it. He just had a gamma themed eighth birthday party. It got so many gamma.

• 3:22:31Griffin Newman?

  Son is so.

• 3:22:32David Sims?

  The other kids from second grade walking into this being like.

• 3:22:36Griffin Newman?

  Has he converted other people like, or has his friends into gamma?

• 3:22:39Speaker 04

  Not at all.

• 3:22:39Griffin Newman?

  No.

• 3:22:40David Sims?

  Right. They're all into like K-pop Demon Hunters or whatever.

• 3:22:42Speaker 04

  Which he's never seen, doesn't know anything about.

• 3:22:44David Sims?

  Right.

• 3:22:45Speaker 04

  He goes over to a friend's house and they watch, he has no idea what.

• 3:22:48David Sims?

  But, but he's not coming home being like, I must now watch K-pop Demon Hunters. Since everyone's talking about it at school or whatever. Right. Well, that's great. I mean, I'd say, I mean, I'm right at the start of this with my kids. Like, you know, the sort of like the larger osmosis and you watch.

• 3:23:02Speaker 04

  I have to say, I didn't do a lot of conditioning to get him Kaiju.

• 3:23:07David Sims?

  Right. This isn't a thing where like, this isn't like when parents are like, my kid's favorite band is The Clash. And you're like, okay, you know.

• 3:23:15Speaker 04

  I had the Criterion box of Godzilla, which has a big sort of comic book.

• 3:23:21David Sims?

  I know I have it myself, of course. Yes.

• 3:23:23Speaker 04

  He became interested in those visuals before he could even read and page through that. And he went through that over and over. He memorized all the, I taught him the titles. He memorized all the titles. And then I said, well, if you like this so much, maybe we should watch one of the movies. And I put on one of the movies. That's it.

• 3:23:39Griffin Newman?

  Immediately.

• 3:23:39Speaker 04

  That's it.

• 3:23:40David Sims?

  Because they are weird.

• 3:23:41Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 3:23:42David Sims?

  Like, they're weird to watch. They're not like movies now.

• 3:23:44Griffin Newman?

  Like, your daughter, you haven't shown them.

• 3:23:46David Sims?

  No, my, my daughter is quite fearful as we, she loves movies. I mean, and she loves Bowser, who is something of a Kaiju.

• 3:23:52Griffin Newman?

  I got her the big Godzilla toy, which she alternates between being scared.

• 3:23:55David Sims?

  Well, now, now the Godzilla toy is just a favorite friend in our house. Griffin got her a Godzilla that's like, large.

• 3:24:02Speaker 04

  But a big, how old again?

• 3:24:03Griffin Newman?

  Black and white, 54.

• 3:24:05David Sims?

  But he got her this a couple of years ago. And initially, yeah, sometimes the Godzilla had to be like, put away.

• 3:24:09Speaker 04

  Yeah, right.

• 3:24:09David Sims?

  Like, it was a little.

• 3:24:10Griffin Newman?

  And then had to act like Godzilla was eating his finger and that killed.

• 3:24:14Speaker 04

  That was, that bit was killing.

• 3:24:16Griffin Newman?

  She plays like fucking dead comedy.

• 3:24:17David Sims?

  She needs you guys to come over again. She's been asking.

• 3:24:20Speaker 04

  Hey.

• 3:24:20David Sims?

  Hey, wow.

• 3:24:21Griffin Newman?

  Anytime.

• 3:24:21David Sims?

  But, uh, but, um, yeah, but she, she hasn't seen Godzilla yet.

• 3:24:25Griffin Newman?

  I, I got, I got one.

• 3:24:26David Sims?

  She doesn't like when Ursula gets big in The Little Mermaid. Like, that like freaks her out.

• 3:24:30Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 3:24:31David Sims?

  And so that's also Kaiju adjacent. So I've been like, maybe.

• 3:24:34Griffin Newman?

  But I also think, don't start with 54. Start with the movies where Godzilla is the good monster and he fights the bad monsters.

• 3:24:41David Sims?

  Right.

• 3:24:41Speaker 04

  I think maybe the first movie he watched was destroy all monsters.

• 3:24:45Griffin Newman?

  That I would say is the best starting point. Cause then you also have the menia in that one, right?

• 3:24:49Speaker 04

  The, the, the witch?

• 3:24:51Griffin Newman?

  Uh, and I was gonna say the little, little baby Godzilla.

• 3:24:54Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah. Manila.

• 3:24:55Griffin Newman?

  Manila. Yeah.

• 3:24:57David Sims?

  Oh, I know that one. That one's cute.

• 3:24:58Griffin Newman?

  He's cute. He's a good entry.

• 3:24:59David Sims?

  I'm not even that deep on Godzilla. I like Mothra. Mothra's cool.

• 3:25:04Speaker 04

  All right. So I want to shout out, uh, we have, I looked up our Indonesian listenership the last 12 months, got about like 1,500 downloads.

• 3:25:16Griffin Newman?

  Really?

• 3:25:17Speaker 04

  So there's some folks out there. So we just want to shout out to our listeners.

• 3:25:21David Sims?

  Very nice.

• 3:25:22Speaker 04

  Hello Jakarta.

• 3:25:23Speaker 03

  What's up?

• 3:25:25Speaker 04

  Would love to visit.

• 3:25:26Speaker 03

  Sure.

• 3:25:26Speaker 04

  It just looks like I was like looking at Google Maps.

• 3:25:30Speaker 03

  Quite stunning.

• 3:25:30Griffin Newman?

  If you're one of those 1500, let us know what the local comedy theater breakdown is. If there's a good opportunity for us to do a live show.

• 3:25:37Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah, please do.

• 3:25:39David Sims?

  Uh, yes, Tracy, we've taken far too much of your time.

• 3:25:42Griffin Newman?

  Thank you so much.

• 3:25:43Speaker 04

  I can't believe this podcast is going to be four hours long. You're going to have to find some.

• 3:25:48David Sims?

  It'll be 315, which unfortunately may not even crack top five.

• 3:25:53Griffin Newman?

  It won't crack the 10, I don't think.

• 3:25:55Speaker 04

  The audience weirdly just demands longer and longer. I don't know why.

• 3:25:59Griffin Newman?

  You're a king amongst men. You are. You are the boss bitch.

• 3:26:02Speaker 04

  You guys are sweet.

• 3:26:03David Sims?

  Have anything to plug, is there? And Bug just ended its run on Broadway.

• 3:26:06Speaker 04

  Yeah, not plugging nothing.

• 3:26:07Griffin Newman?

  Ben went to see Bug, did you not?

• 3:26:08Speaker 03

  I loved it.

• 3:26:09Speaker 04

  Oh, thanks, Ben.

• 3:26:10Speaker 03

  I think it really captures the paranoia of being on drugs.

• 3:26:16Speaker 04

  Thanks.

• 3:26:18David Sims?

  Bug rocks.

• 3:26:21Speaker 04

  No, nothing to plug. As I've said before, this is my job. The, the, the acting and the playwriting is hobby.

• 3:26:27Speaker 03

  That's just.

• 3:26:28Griffin Newman?

  You're plugging physical media and the value of owning the films you care about.

• 3:26:34David Sims?

  But you guys, yes, Tracy has spoken very well of like, why it's great to own a disc. But you know, our fans already know that.

• 3:26:41Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 3:26:41David Sims?

  I would say.

• 3:26:42Griffin Newman?

  I will tell you as someone with a, with a, unfortunately, an overwhelming amount of anxiety at most times in my life. I'm constantly trying to find different pieces of media that can function as a bomb for me. Things that for whatever reason, physiologically, just calm me down, slower the heart rate. Slower the heart rate. Slow down the heart rate.

• 3:27:06Griffin Newman?

  Long form interviews with you have started really doing the trick.

• 3:27:10Speaker 03

  You got a great voice.

• 3:27:11Speaker 04

  Very nice.

• 3:27:12Griffin Newman?

  You've got a great voice. But thank you for being here. We will absolutely force you to come back again. We will hold you to your openness and thank you all for listening. Please remember to rate, review and subscribe. Tune in next week for Witness with Amanda Dobbins, Dob Mob for Life. We're, we're just doing it. He's, he's crossing the ocean. He's coming over to Hollywood.

• 3:27:33David Sims?

  Yep, this episode, this series has Dobbins, it has Sean, it has Hitmaker. It's got all the big boys.

• 3:27:38Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 3:27:38David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 3:27:39Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 3:27:39Speaker 04

  Thanks y'all.

• 3:27:40Griffin Newman?

  Thank you.

• 3:27:42Speaker 03

  As always.

• 3:27:43Griffin Newman?

  And as always, I have to ask because I almost bought it. Have you seen slash do you own slash has your son seen the role in Emmerich Godzilla?

• 3:27:53Speaker 04

  No.

• 3:27:54Griffin Newman?

  And is that a forceful blocking him from that experience?

• 3:27:57Speaker 04

  No. In fact, when he turned eight, I said to him, you can now watch any Godzilla movie. If Godzilla's in it, you can watch it.

• 3:28:06Griffin Newman?

  Wow.

• 3:28:06Speaker 04

  That had not been the case before he was eight.

• 3:28:09Griffin Newman?

  That's like the best version of like the birds and the bees talk. You're old enough to start.

• 3:28:14Speaker 04

  I was like, he was limited for a long time to the Shoah era. And then I expanded to the Heisei era, but now he can watch any Godzilla movie.

• 3:28:21Griffin Newman?

  Wow. If, if he ever watches it, please let us know. Cause I think he will hate it.

• 3:28:29Griffin Newman?

  But I was curious. I didn't want to infect your collection with the disc. I don't think it's a good film. Much like Phantom Menace, I've always been fascinated by how broken it is. But I saw it about his age and really struggled with why it didn't make me happy.

• 3:28:48Speaker 03

  Blank Check with Griffin and David is hosted by Griffin Newman and David Sims. Our executive producer is me, Ben Hosley. Our creative producer is Marie Bardy Salinas. And our associate producer is AJ McKeon. This show is mixed and edited by AJ McKeon and Alan Smithy. Research by JJ Birch. Our theme song is by Lain Montgomery and the Great American Novel, with additional music by Alex Mitchell. Artwork by Joe Bowen, Holly Moss, and Pat Reynolds. Our production assistant is 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.

• 3:29:33Speaker 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.