Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World with John Hodgman

Beat to quarters, men..and nice Brazilian lady holding an umbrella! We're sailing the high seas with John Hodgman this week as we unpack one of David Sims' favorite films - 2003's Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World. We're talking Crowe. We're talking Bettany. We're talking James Cameron's Mexican water tank. We're talking soused hog and we're talking Saluting Day. And yes, we are talking BOATS. Is Ben about to enter his Salty Dog Era? He should! If you wish to inquire about Ship Happens, [email protected]. mailto:[email protected] Check out the rest of Patrick O’Brian’s work. https://wwnorton.com/author/OBRIANPATRICK/patrickobrian Read New 'Master and Commander' Film In The Works, But Russell Crowe And Paul Bettany Probably Won't Be Back BY Ben Pearson. https://www.slashfilm.com/581490/new-master-and-commander-film/ Listen to The Lex G Podcast. https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-lexg-movie-podcast/id1554679929 Pop over to the Sunken Harbour Club if you’re in NY. https://r.search.yahoo.com/_ylt=AwriramOcRBq4UYAxtoPxQt.;_ylu=Y29sbwNiZjEEcG9zAzEEdnRpZAMEc2VjA3Ny/RV=2/RE=1780672143/RO=10/RU=https%3a%2f%2fwww.sunkenharbor.club%2f/RK=2/RS=KrLUiIoVL8Zzf4ignkJ1y5N05Rg- Watch Medieval Barber Theodoric of York - SNL http://youtube.com/watch?v=edIi6hYpUoQ Read Grab your breeches, hoist the mainsail and prepare for an epic ride -- but is 'Master and Commander' seaworthy? By Mick Lesalle https://www.sfgate.com/movies/article/Grab-your-breeches-hoist-the-mainsail-and-2512121.php Watch Dicktown on Hulu https://r.search.yahoo.com/_ylt=AwrErZnzlxFqi2cERh8PxQt.;_ylu=Y29sbwNiZjEEcG9zAzEEdnRpZAMEc2VjA3Ny/RV=2/RE=1780747508/RO=10/RU=https%3a%2f%2fwww.hulu.com%2fseries%2fdicktown-845eca18-d4d6-46a3-a575-212f4b98fea3/RK=2/RS=zRRw6I0MJL56wUJOYD1aGwoNKgk- Read Hodgman https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/authors/163886/john-hodgman/’s Books in any format https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/authors/163886/john-hodgman/ Subscribe to Hodgman’s Substack https://hodgman.substack.com/ 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 live streamed 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 spread master 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?

  April 1805, Napoleon is master of Europe. Only the British fleet stands before him. Podcasts are now podcasts.

• 1:49David Sims?

  Podcasts are now podcasts?

• 1:50Griffin Newman?

  Podcasts are now podcasts.

• 1:51David Sims?

  No, I think it's, it has got to be podcasts are now battlefields or oceans are now podcasts.

• 1:56Griffin Newman?

  Which one is it?

• 1:56Speaker 03

  I think it's oceans are now podcasts.

• 1:58Griffin Newman?

  Oceans are now podcasts.

• 1:59David Sims?

  You can't put podcasts for both. Doesn't, yeah. But there is a lot you could do. Like one must always choose the lesser of two podcasts.

• 2:06Griffin Newman?

  You just said there's only one thing I could do.

• 2:07David Sims?

  I think that's the thing.

• 2:08Griffin Newman?

  And I tried to throw you off the hump by putting podcasts in two places to make you annoyed.

• 2:13Speaker 03

  Joe Rogan is master of podcasts.

• 2:14David Sims?

  I would like to, at the start of this episode, ask you to try and not make me annoyed on this episode, please. That is a sincere request from me. Okay?

• 2:21Griffin Newman?

  I am not intending to make you annoyed on this episode.

• 2:23David Sims?

  Okay. Well, I want to make that sincere request. This is a movie that really matters to me and I don't want you to be.

• 2:28Griffin Newman?

  I'm very real.

• 2:29Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 2:31David Sims?

  I want that right on the record to start this episode.

• 2:34Griffin Newman?

  I'm not trying to do any nagging.

• 2:35David Sims?

  You just said he tried to make me. Damn hobbies, man. The one thing.

• 2:40Griffin Newman?

  You said there's only one thing I could do.

• 2:42David Sims?

  Well, I mean, I do feel like I'm wearing it right now.

• 2:45Griffin Newman?

  You are.

• 2:45David Sims?

  I feel like that is because it's the opening. Cause like it's the most, but then I was, I was, I was like, but of course there are so many great lines.

• 2:53Griffin Newman?

  And I love your Admiral hat.

• 2:57David Sims?

  There are no admirals in this movie, Ben. Oh, boy. Here we go.

• 3:00Griffin Newman?

  Is this one of your 10 favorite movies of all time?

• 3:02David Sims?

  Yes, I think it is. And I think I should just like, next time I do sight and sound, stop being like, I love some important movie. Should just fucking put this on there.

• 3:14Speaker 04

  Cause why is this not an important movie?

• 3:16David Sims?

  It is. This is what I'm saying.

• 3:17Speaker 04

  Before we started recording, you said, maybe this is the most.

• 3:20David Sims?

  I think it's the most important movie to me.

• 3:22Griffin Newman?

  Last night you texted like the best movie ever.

• 3:24David Sims?

  This is, isn't it? Is it not?

• 3:26Speaker 04

  Are you talking to me?

• 3:27David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 3:28Speaker 04

  Very self-conscious about being here, I must say.

• 3:30David Sims?

  Oh, you're worried because you're like, I don't, you know.

• 3:32Griffin Newman?

  You don't feel worried.

• 3:33Speaker 04

  I had.

• 3:34David Sims?

  I'm not worried.

• 3:35Speaker 04

  Some weeks ago, as the Peter Weir thing was just getting started in my feed.

• 3:41Speaker 04

  I had lunch with J D Amato.

• 3:44Griffin Newman?

  The great J D Amato.

• 3:45Speaker 04

  The great J D Amato.

• 3:46Griffin Newman?

  And I'm willing to say this, past and future guest.

• 3:49Speaker 04

  That's a big.

• 3:50David Sims?

  Oh, yeah.

• 3:51Speaker 04

  It's a big, that's a big promise.

• 3:52Griffin Newman?

  He was on just last week and he'll come back again.

• 3:55Speaker 04

  Good. Cause he's waiting outside.

• 3:56David Sims?

  Oh, right. Right. He was just on the show.

• 3:59Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 3:59Speaker 04

  And I said to JD, we're talking about all kinds of things, you know?

• 4:03David Sims?

  Oh, actually, you know what? Embarrassing for you?

• 4:05Griffin Newman?

  Mandalorian and Grogu.

• 4:06David Sims?

  It's in between. Fuck. So Gethard was right. But JD was on two weeks.

• 4:09Griffin Newman?

  I regret to inform you, it is in fact, the Mandalorian and Grogu.

• 4:13Speaker 04

  So I, uh, really?

• 4:15David Sims?

  I was gesturing to Grogu some.

• 4:17Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 4:19Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 4:19Speaker 04

  In, in this.

• 4:20David Sims?

  Down there.

• 4:20Speaker 04

  In this palace of secrets and delights.

• 4:23David Sims?

  I'm sure we got a Grogu somewhere.

• 4:24Speaker 04

  You gotta, gotta, you gotta get a Grogu in here somewhere.

• 4:26David Sims?

  There's gotta be a Grogu, right?

• 4:27Griffin Newman?

  You know, there isn't. And I've actually, I've been surveying the landscape recently. I'm like, does there need to be some Grogu representation in this office? And if there is, what's the one? I don't know if you know this, it's a very merchandised character.

• 4:40David Sims?

  Oh, you're kidding.

• 4:41Griffin Newman?

  There's too many Grogu items out there. So I'm trying to pick the one, but I'm sorry, you were getting lunch with the.

• 4:46Speaker 04

  Oh, so I was having lunch with J D Amato. We're talking about a lot of things and I mentioned. I'm excited about this Peter Weir thing.

• 4:52David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 4:53Speaker 04

  Cause I love Peter Weir.

• 4:54David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 4:55Speaker 04

  I haven't seen all the movies.

• 4:56David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 4:56Speaker 04

  But I mean, and a lot of them I hadn't seen since they came out because I'm elderly and I'm we, I was a weird, I'm realizing now I was quite a weird child.

• 5:04David Sims?

  Mm hmm.

• 5:05Speaker 04

  I remember seeing Gallipoli when it came out.

• 5:07David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 5:08Speaker 04

  Or maybe a couple of years after.

• 5:10David Sims?

  Would have been a teenager.

• 5:11Speaker 04

  I would have been like 12 or 13.

• 5:12David Sims?

  Right.

• 5:13Griffin Newman?

  But this is a man who feels.

• 5:14Speaker 04

  Why was I, why was I going to see the year of living dangerously?

• 5:18Griffin Newman?

  This is a man who feels aligned with your sensibilities and makes movies that are aligned with your interests. Is that fair to say?

• 5:24Speaker 04

  My, my interest as a 12 year old was definitely Sigourney Weaver. So that, that cracked the code as to why.

• 5:30David Sims?

  But you're also, you know, a bit of a weird, a nerdy fella.

• 5:34Speaker 04

  I was a pretentious only child.

• 5:35David Sims?

  Historical, right? Might have interested you.

• 5:38Speaker 04

  But I said to J D Amato, I can't wait till they get to Master and Commander.

• 5:41David Sims?

  Mm hmm.

• 5:42Speaker 04

  And I wonder who the guest will be.

• 5:44David Sims?

  Hmm.

• 5:44Speaker 04

  And JD said, I don't know if anyone will, because it's, it may be David's favorite movie. It's one of David's favorite movies.

• 5:50David Sims?

  So we did Spirited Away.

• 5:51Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 5:52David Sims?

  That's, that's in that conversation.

• 5:53Griffin Newman?

  Mm hmm. This, this is the exercise I wanted to do.

• 5:56David Sims?

  Never done Alien, but we did on Patreon.

• 5:58Griffin Newman?

  We did on Patreon. I was thinking through our respective 10 favorite movies of all time. And I, I feel like we have covered most of our list, the majority. And then the question is, what are the outliers?

• 6:12David Sims?

  We haven't covered a lot of what I would call my favorite.

• 6:14Griffin Newman?

  What would you put in your 10? Spirited Away, Alien, Master Commander.

• 6:17David Sims?

  Matter of Life and Death.

• 6:18Griffin Newman?

  Uh huh.

• 6:19David Sims?

  Uh.

• 6:20Griffin Newman?

  We both, we both hope to do that someday.

• 6:22David Sims?

  Choking Express, uh, which I, you know, think we'll do him someday. One car wide, of course. We done Mulholland Drive?

• 6:29Griffin Newman?

  We have.

• 6:30David Sims?

  Never done Yi Yi?

• 6:31Griffin Newman?

  No, but another one has been thrown out a lot. Okay. So four out of 10 right now.

• 6:36David Sims?

  La Lanta.

• 6:37Speaker 03

  Malibu's Most Wanted.

• 6:38David Sims?

  Malibu's Most Wanted.

• 6:40Griffin Newman?

  Projection.

• 6:41David Sims?

  Uh, the Malibu's Most Wanted spec sequel that I wrote and you said it had to be filmed.

• 6:45Griffin Newman?

  Second most wanted. Isn't it nice when a title just gives you a layup on the sequel like that?

• 6:51David Sims?

  I know the film didn't succeed, but it is right there. They could have done it.

• 6:55Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 6:55David Sims?

  Uh, you know, there's probably others I'm not thinking of. I mean, I don't know.

• 6:58Griffin Newman?

  I feel like there's.

• 6:59David Sims?

  We've done it. We've done it.

• 7:00Griffin Newman?

  Jerry Maguire, you've often referred to as being way up there. Jerry Maguire.

• 7:04David Sims?

  Well, we did that and that is true. Right. It's sort of like Jerry Maguire. I've seen 40 times. Master and Commander. I've seen many, many, many, many. Do I think like Late Spring is one of the greatest movies ever day? Yes. Yeah. Have I seen it like?

• 7:15Griffin Newman?

  Like the.

• 7:15David Sims?

  Two or three times max, you know?

• 7:17Griffin Newman?

  The big, the big 10. I'm, cause I'm like.

• 7:19David Sims?

  Put this movie on to.

• 7:20Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 7:20David Sims?

  It's like, I was just watching the pit last night, pit finale.

• 7:23Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 7:24David Sims?

  Anyone watch?

• 7:25Griffin Newman?

  No.

• 7:25David Sims?

  Push Master and Commander to, to get my BP down, right? I'm coming in, in crisis. Like Dr. Robbie would be like, get Master and Commander in the DVD right now. It'll calm, that'll, that'll, that'll get his sats where they need to be, right? I have done that many times in my relationship with my wife, like not, you know, like I've been like stressed out and then I put it on. And then like 20 minutes and she's like, that really, that really dis-settle your mood.

• 7:51Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 7:52David Sims?

  And I'm like, yeah, ship is England.

• 7:54Griffin Newman?

  Yeah. We, we have a movie coming up in a couple of weeks. That is one of those for me.

• 7:58David Sims?

  Right.

• 7:58Griffin Newman?

  But I was thinking, uh, cause like Toy Story two, Ed Wood, guested on by our current guest.

• 8:04Speaker 04

  I think that was the first time I ever appeared on the show.

• 8:06Griffin Newman?

  I believe so.

• 8:07Speaker 04

  Is that right?

• 8:07Griffin Newman?

  Yeah. Yeah. I think so.

• 8:08Speaker 04

  Gosh.

• 8:09Griffin Newman?

  Broadcast news is probably in my 10.

• 8:11David Sims?

  Good one.

• 8:12Griffin Newman?

  Robocop, Robert Cobb.

• 8:13David Sims?

  I was gonna say that, that's sort of the Griffin episode too, where you're just kind of like, you're Kobe. You're just like, let me have the ball. Like it's 48 minutes.

• 8:22Griffin Newman?

  I, I want to be clear because I, I, I note your sensitivity and I want to be very clear. This is your episode. The way you talk about like, it'd be great if we did the Muppets. So I could take two months off. I want to watch you two go off about this movie.

• 8:36Speaker 04

  It is David's episode.

• 8:38Griffin Newman?

  It is.

• 8:38Speaker 04

  And so, and I, and when JD told me that I was like, oh, great. I can't wait to hear it.

• 8:43Griffin Newman?

  Oh, sure. Right.

• 8:43Speaker 04

  And then, you know, I'm also, aside from being a weird only child, even to this day, I'm also a great insinuator, but I promise you, I insinuate myself into things that I love.

• 8:53Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 8:54Speaker 04

  And I promise you though, that I was not trying to like, I texted you guys after I listened to the Gallipoli episode with Jennifer Kent, which is great.

• 9:02Griffin Newman?

  Thank you.

• 9:02Speaker 04

  And I revisit Gallipoli.

• 9:03Griffin Newman?

  She's the coolest.

• 9:04Speaker 04

  She's the coolest. Movie's amazing, et cetera. All this journey and I couldn't help myself. And I text, I said, I can't wait till you guys get to Master and Commander. And then David goes, do you want to be on it?

• 9:13Griffin Newman?

  Well, I'll give you a little behind the scenes here. We had been going back and forth on, is this a classic guestless?

• 9:19David Sims?

  Do we do no guests? Which is fine.

• 9:21Griffin Newman?

  Sometimes there is a movie like, like Robocop, you know, where it's just like, this means so much to one of us. Do we need another voice in the room? And then when we get into those hypotheticals, there's always a like, if it was the right person, it could add even more to the episode. It could be cheese on top of the burger.

• 9:37Speaker 04

  Oh, look, I wasn't gonna say no, because I love this movie, but at the same time, I feel self-conscious because I have, I just want to say this to you.

• 9:46David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 9:47Speaker 04

  Okay. I don't know what qualifies me to be here, other than I have been on a boat. And I'm very happy to talk about boat.

• 9:52Griffin Newman?

  You've been on many a boat. You're a boatsman.

• 9:54David Sims?

  I mean, I want to share with the listeners that when Mr. Hodgman was doing his levels, he was going through different kinds of wind.

• 10:04Griffin Newman?

  This is true. And he's wearing a hat.

• 10:05David Sims?

  You know more about the high seas than I.

• 10:08Griffin Newman?

  He's wearing a hat that says, why not? And has a drawing of a knot.

• 10:12David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 10:12Griffin Newman?

  Hey, N O T.

• 10:13David Sims?

  It's a pink trucker hat.

• 10:14Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 10:15Griffin Newman?

  But, but to my point.

• 10:16David Sims?

  I'm sorry. I'm not sure, Griffin, but I think he might have drawn that on there. Not sure that that was bought.

• 10:22Speaker 04

  Committed? I had to say, it was not commissioned. It's not, it's not bespoke. I bought it off the rack.

• 10:27Griffin Newman?

  Really?

• 10:28Speaker 04

  At the general store in the unnamed coastal town in Maine, where I spent some time. It was created by the daughter of our friend Molly, Lola Blake, 13 year old Lola Blake. You're gonna like this, Ben. She makes T-shirts and hats where she draws nautical shit on it. And the name of the line is Ship Happens.

• 10:47Griffin Newman?

  This is good. This is really good.

• 10:50Speaker 04

  And if you, and if you, if you wish to inquire, I've just received an email from her mom.

• 10:55Griffin Newman?

  Hey.

• 10:55Speaker 04

  Ship happens, [email protected]. That's P R O O K L I N.

• 11:00Griffin Newman?

  People want to order. Okay.

• 11:01Speaker 04

  If you want to inquire, she's not, she's 13 years old.

• 11:03Griffin Newman?

  Okay.

• 11:04David Sims?

  Yeah, let's not overwhelm her. Let's not overwhelm her.

• 11:06Griffin Newman?

  Inquire. But, um, we, we had gone back and forth. We were like, maybe this guest, if the timing worked out, there were a couple of options, but we kept being like, but also, David, it could be guestless. I think that's a strong move if it's guestless. And then you had popped into my head truly the night before as like, I feel like Hodgman loves that beyond. Just being a man of the low seas. I think he specifically loves that movie. You sent the text. I side text David. I go, I've been thinking Hodgman for M and C. And immediately David was like, yeah, that makes sense. There was no argument about it. It was a absolutely.

• 11:41David Sims?

  I like, I like a comforting guest.

• 11:43Speaker 04

  Well, I aim to be, I aim to be a comfort to you here. I'm, I feel sometimes I push my way through into, into podcasts and sort of try to wrestle control. I mutiny. Do you know what I mean? But today you are a captain, my captain.

• 11:58David Sims?

  Relax, everyone.

• 12:00Speaker 04

  And I am your, I, I, I am your midshipman Harlem. Just a shameful.

• 12:05David Sims?

  I was gonna say, but that's not the guy you wanna be.

• 12:07Speaker 04

  Shameful.

• 12:08David Sims?

  And he's worse than the books.

• 12:09Speaker 04

  Imposter syndrome guy. And at any point, I'm gonna jump off this ship with a cannonball.

• 12:15Griffin Newman?

  He's worse than the books?

• 12:16David Sims?

  Yeah, his character is less sympathetic in the books. Uh, but I, we don't have to get into that because this is not, you know, the books.

• 12:22Griffin Newman?

  How hard have you gone on the books?

• 12:23David Sims?

  I, I'm not as hard as I could because there's so many of them. Uh, we're so, okay, wait, what's this podcast?

• 12:30Griffin Newman?

  This podcast is called Blank Check with Griffin David. My name is Griffin.

• 12:34David Sims?

  I am David.

• 12:37Griffin Newman?

  Let's put down our violins for a moment and get to podcasting.

• 12:41Speaker 04

  Which are playing like guitars.

• 12:42Griffin Newman?

  Yes. It is a cool moment.

• 12:44Speaker 04

  It's a, it's incredible.

• 12:45David Sims?

  Greatest ending in a movie ever.

• 12:49Griffin Newman?

  This movie?

• 12:49David Sims?

  It's the fucking greatest shit that's ever happened.

• 12:52Griffin Newman?

  This movie obviously does not mean as much to me as it does to you, but I cannot deny that ending for a millisecond.

• 12:57David Sims?

  For, all right, it's like the greatest ending line.

• 13:00Griffin Newman?

  It's phenomenal.

• 13:00David Sims?

  Perfect ending line. You're like, oh, I'm so happy. And then they're like, let's fucking, you know, have sex, AKA play our stringed instruments together. And you're like, wonderful. They're doing it. And you're like, this is great. And then he does a little, does a little violin to the side. And you're like, oh, this is so saucy. And then they swap it. I mean.

• 13:18Speaker 04

  And then.

• 13:18David Sims?

  And you're like, they're gonna have a million more adventures.

• 13:20Speaker 04

  Like where else, where else can this go? Are you gonna tell me that the vision is now picking up his cello and playing that like a guitar?

• 13:26David Sims?

  He is the vision.

• 13:27Speaker 04

  Like in the, in this perfect scene, how could it get better? And he does. That's the final scene of the movie.

• 13:32David Sims?

  My father owned all of these books. He was very, very into these books. And so I have them all in my house. I have read, I would say, I think six of them. I have, they are. They are something that dads especially are.

• 13:48Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 13:48David Sims?

  Go very deep. There's 20 books.

• 13:51Griffin Newman?

  There was a 21st that was unfinished at the time of his death.

• 13:53David Sims?

  That is unfinished. And I think.

• 13:55Speaker 03

  This is by whom?

• 13:57David Sims?

  The author's name is Patrick O'Brien. I think it's a pseudonym. And he wrote them, the first one's 1969, the last one came out 30 years later. So we're 20 books in 30 years.

• 14:05Griffin Newman?

  And Master Commander is the first one?

• 14:07David Sims?

  The name of the first one is Master and Commander.

• 14:09Griffin Newman?

  Okay.

• 14:10David Sims?

  Uh, and the name of the last, uh, the name of the 10th one is The Far Side of the World.

• 14:14Griffin Newman?

  Got it.

• 14:14David Sims?

  This one, I, this, but the movie.

• 14:16Griffin Newman?

  It's pulling.

• 14:17David Sims?

  It pulls from various things.

• 14:18Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 14:19David Sims?

  They are, as I think our, our guest, John Hodgman, who we haven't introduced yet.

• 14:23Speaker 03

  Oh, boy.

• 14:24Griffin Newman?

  I also haven't finished the intro, but yes.

• 14:27David Sims?

  They are very heavy on the particulars of naval life and Napoleonic procedure and all of the stuff that goes into being on a fucking boat.

• 14:37Griffin Newman?

  Sight on seance?

• 14:38David Sims?

  Certainly the poop.

• 14:39Griffin Newman?

  That is exactly what I imagine these books to be.

• 14:41Speaker 03

  The ropes, the knots.

• 14:43Speaker 04

  Lines, Ben.

• 14:44Griffin Newman?

  Lines, lines, Ben. We all know this, lines.

• 14:47Speaker 04

  They're called lines, not ropes on a ship.

• 14:49David Sims?

  They're very interesting. What's crazy is that the first book, Master and Commander, is, you know, what you think it is. Uh, it's Aubrey's only, uh, he's just become Master and Commander. He used to be a lieutenant. Uh, Master and Commander is like a naval rank, to be clear. It's sort of, sort of like a captain, basically. Uh, and it's like him meeting Matern and all that. The second book is called Post Captain, and it's mostly about them onshore while they're like various shit is happening, like he's lost money because like the debt court is dealing with his seizure assets and I, and it's kind of like a Jane Austen novel and it's kind of about them both falling in love. You know, like, it's just crazy that that was the second book. And then the third book, like they get the HMS surprise, they're back on the seas, like,

• 15:30David Sims?

  the books actually do defy what you think of them, uh, as just like dad shit. They are really, really awesome and interesting, but I am no expert on them. I'm, I'm not. I'm like, not an expert on the book.

• 15:41Speaker 04

  I'm certainly less of an expert than you.

• 15:43Griffin Newman?

  And I, you read the first one, you said?

• 15:45David Sims?

  I've read, no, I've read like six of them.

• 15:46Griffin Newman?

  I read about half of the first one and I realized.

• 15:49Speaker 04

  If I go down this road, I will never get off.

• 15:50David Sims?

  Maybe you should read them all.

• 15:51Griffin Newman?

  You got up to the ampersand and then you give up.

• 15:54Speaker 04

  I read the master part.

• 15:56Griffin Newman?

  This is a podcast about filmographies, directors who have massive success early on in their careers and are given a series of blank checks to make whatever crazy passion projects they want. Sometimes those checks clear and sometimes they bounce baby. This is a mini series on the films of Peter Weir. I tried to call it Podster and Castmander, the Podside of the Cast, but instead it is called Podnick at Hanging Cast. Today, we are talking about his penultimate film.

• 16:20David Sims?

  Yes.

• 16:22Griffin Newman?

  Which is fascinating only because it is 23 years ago, the man is still alive, and this has now become at the top tier of the films that he's known for.

• 16:34David Sims?

  For sure.

• 16:35Speaker 04

  But I wonder if he is even known for the film. That's, in other words, I think that people who idolize this film and its reassessment that's been going on over the past half a decade or so, or decade, think of it as a Peter Weir film or just think of it as this, a master in commander.

• 16:54Griffin Newman?

  It's certainly a question we've been interrogating and doing this series is, how many people put these movies together under the vision of one person and how they're filed in their mind? It feels like there are few people who have enough films that loom this large in the culture that the public doesn't really have a sense of.

• 17:14Speaker 04

  Well, as I've been watching them over the course of listening to you guys do it so far, I'm reminded like, he, he, uh, he doesn't have a genre.

• 17:25Griffin Newman?

  No.

• 17:26Speaker 04

  He doesn't have, it doesn't have like a through line.

• 17:29Griffin Newman?

  His defining style is very subtle and is malleable.

• 17:32Speaker 04

  Yeah, and he's not showy.

• 17:34Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 17:34Speaker 04

  Even though he is probably the, one of the most showy not telly directors.

• 17:39Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 17:40Speaker 04

  That I can think of off the top of my head.

• 17:42Griffin Newman?

  But in a very elegant, quiet way.

• 17:44Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 17:44Griffin Newman?

  I also think.

• 17:45Speaker 04

  It kind of disappears.

• 17:46Griffin Newman?

  It is interesting to me even just in going through these movies, how few of them at the time were really sold as from the director of blank and blank.

• 17:55David Sims?

  You couldn't do that with him because I feel like it would just look weird.

• 17:58Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 17:58David Sims?

  For this poster with Russell Crowe's face to then be like, from the director of the Truman Show. People are like, well, I like the Truman Show, but that doesn't affect me.

• 18:06Speaker 04

  Yeah, well, I mean, how do you connect the Truman Show?

• 18:10David Sims?

  That's true.

• 18:11Griffin Newman?

  That's a good point.

• 18:11David Sims?

  They both have sailing scenes.

• 18:12Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, but like, let me just say the Truman Show sailing scene, not very realistic. First of all, it's inside a dome.

• 18:18David Sims?

  Well, that's a very rare point. The film, one might call science fiction. If you think about it a little bit.

• 18:25Speaker 03

  Isn't the shared thing we've been talking about with him, though, is that his films cover small communities?

• 18:31David Sims?

  I was about to say.

• 18:32Griffin Newman?

  Yes. I think that's very insightful.

• 18:35David Sims?

  There's so many boat movies. There are so many other boat movies. And I feel like there are so few that are about like the ecosystem of life on the boat that like versus this. Obviously Pirates of the Caribbean.

• 18:47Griffin Newman?

  This same year.

• 18:49David Sims?

  That they have.

• 18:49Griffin Newman?

  It's fascinating.

• 18:50David Sims?

  Tentacles.

• 18:51Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 18:52David Sims?

  Possibly and have been cursed. And we do get into that life.

• 18:56Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 18:57David Sims?

  But do we hear about Saluting Day? Okay.

• 18:59Griffin Newman?

  No.

• 19:00Speaker 03

  No.

• 19:00David Sims?

  Does, you know, I mean, like, does, is there a Kilik type? No, there's not.

• 19:05Griffin Newman?

  No, well, because Jack Sparrow has a $40,000 a month rum budget.

• 19:10David Sims?

  He does.

• 19:10Griffin Newman?

  He's staying up all night with his Hollywood vampire friends.

• 19:13David Sims?

  Much.

• 19:14Griffin Newman?

  Noodling, riffing.

• 19:16David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 19:16Griffin Newman?

  Yeah. First mate, Alice Cooper.

• 19:18David Sims?

  I wonder, yeah, what Aubrey would make of Captain Jack Sparrow, if you, if you would like the cut of his gym. I feel like maybe not, but, uh, it is funny that, right, the same year you have Pirates of the Caribbean and all the British naval officers in that, which I think is great, are these prigs, right? Are these like stuffy, sort of gray?

• 19:38Griffin Newman?

  They're Star Wars Imperial officers.

• 19:40David Sims?

  Right. You know, I mean, I know Jack Devanfor has a little more flair and then he gets sexy in the second one. And then he's sort of back to being regular.

• 19:46Griffin Newman?

  Good narrative. He's got a good arc in those movies.

• 19:48David Sims?

  Those movies are good, the first three.

• 19:49Griffin Newman?

  Yeah. But, uh, Pirates of the Caribbean did kind of fuck this movie, right? I mean, obviously this film was well reviewed, got a ton of Oscar nominations. It did all right.

• 19:59David Sims?

  I don't think Pirates of the Caribbean.

• 20:00Griffin Newman?

  Super expensive and obviously the ambition was to launch a franchise that didn't happen.

• 20:05David Sims?

  This movie is a miracle.

• 20:06Griffin Newman?

  This movie is a miracle.

• 20:07Speaker 03

  It is a miracle it exists.

• 20:08David Sims?

  This movie, it's incredible it exists. It's incredible it was made. It was, right, it was an Oscar contender. It like, yes, should there have been sequels? Certainly.

• 20:16Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 20:17David Sims?

  If 20th Century Fox had just, you know, had a stiff back about it and just fucking done it. Because like, it's a movie that had such a long life.

• 20:25Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 20:26David Sims?

  Has such a long.

• 20:27Griffin Newman?

  Sure.

• 20:27David Sims?

  And they could have just seen that come and they could have just been like, look, Crow. He's gonna fit into these, you know, breaches for another six, seven years next. Like, let's, let's try to get another two movies made.

• 20:40Griffin Newman?

  Well, we always point to Robin Hood as the last time.

• 20:42David Sims?

  Robin Hood is seven years later.

• 20:45Griffin Newman?

  Tightened up a little.

• 20:46Speaker 04

  You wouldn't even look, I mean, all respect to Crowe's performance in this movie, which is good. Like, it didn't even tempt someone to go, why don't we do a young Jack Aubrey?

• 20:56Griffin Newman?

  There have been threats recently. I don't know if you saw this.

• 20:59Speaker 04

  Yes, but then someone stops and thinks about it and goes, oh shit, we'd have to film it on a boat.

• 21:04David Sims?

  I, I think that's what often happens.

• 21:06Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 21:06David Sims?

  It's how do you achieve it? I mean,

• 21:08Speaker 04

  I couldn't even, I, even though I've seen this movie a couple of times rewatching it.

• 21:13Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 21:13Speaker 04

  For this, the first thing I thought of this movie is a miracle in the sense that I can't believe it existed and it will never exist again.

• 21:19Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 21:20Speaker 04

  In part because, uh, those boats are, it's nuts what they did.

• 21:23Griffin Newman?

  I also think.

• 21:24Speaker 04

  And it would be CGI now and it would not.

• 21:26David Sims?

  I think that's more, you could do it, but it'd probably be a little.

• 21:28Griffin Newman?

  But to the credit of the, the, the people running 20th century films now, don't you think they know if they made a young Aubrey prequel that was shot in the volume? People would revolt. They, they know they can't do that.

• 21:42Speaker 04

  They, there'd be immunity.

• 21:43David Sims?

  I, I, I don't think they're gonna do that. What do you want to say?

• 21:46Speaker 04

  Permission to speak?

• 21:46Griffin Newman?

  Please. Our guest today is John Hodgman, by the way, Judge John Hodgman.

• 21:50David Sims?

  How many episodes have you been on? One, two, three, four, five, six. All right. This is your seventh episode, not including voicemails.

• 21:57Griffin Newman?

  You've done some favors.

• 21:59Speaker 04

  Thank you.

• 21:59Griffin Newman?

  The, the they live subliminal cut.

• 22:02Speaker 04

  That's right. I forgot.

• 22:02Griffin Newman?

  You were inside the little door in the Coraline episode.

• 22:05David Sims?

  You did, of course, watch Infinity War with us on Patreon, having watched the movie the night before.

• 22:10Speaker 04

  I didn't realize we were gonna be watching.

• 22:11Griffin Newman?

  A live show or two.

• 22:13David Sims?

  Yeah, you've been.

• 22:13Speaker 04

  I'm a, I'm a, I'm a, I'm much more of an able seaman now.

• 22:16Griffin Newman?

  You're a dear friend of the show.

• 22:17Speaker 04

  I'm more seasoned.

• 22:18Griffin Newman?

  You've always delivered.

• 22:19Speaker 04

  In the dialogue of the show, I started out as a landsman, as a lubber.

• 22:23David Sims?

  You're a pretty.

• 22:24Speaker 04

  And I became a normal seaman. I, I now I'm an able seaman.

• 22:27David Sims?

  Consistent, kind of one a year on Blank Check, I will say, looking at your record here.

• 22:32Speaker 04

  Anytime, anytime you wish, I will be here.

• 22:35David Sims?

  Well, you're a busy man.

• 22:36Speaker 04

  Hmm.

• 22:37David Sims?

  All right, take it back.

• 22:40Speaker 04

  Let's maintain that fiction. I'm gonna make, I'm gonna make this case that if someone at 20th fixtures, like, let's do another Master and Commander. Uh, it would be a failure. And here's why. David put his, uh, his, his masterly and commanderly finger on it. This is dad shit. And the thing is, this came out in my thoughts. The, in kind of the last time dads were going to movies. So many dads were seeing Peter Weir movies. There are a lot about dadism.

• 23:14David Sims?

  Just to get this out of the way. What would happen is a show, not a movie. They would do a streaming series.

• 23:19Speaker 04

  Yes, well, that's the thing now.

• 23:20David Sims?

  And that's what they often.

• 23:21Speaker 04

  Like dads are still, and I'm speaking to this from personal experience. Dads are definitely watching YouTube's about sleeper cars on trains across.

• 23:29David Sims?

  Oh, I love to watch one of those.

• 23:31Speaker 04

  Right? Uh, gondolas and finiculators.

• 23:34David Sims?

  Uh, I would say less so for me.

• 23:37Speaker 04

  Dead empires.

• 23:38David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 23:39Speaker 04

  And, and you think.

• 23:40David Sims?

  What were the Hittites up to? Tell me.

• 23:42Speaker 04

  Exactly. And you think I haven't been going to sleep, watching YouTube videos with 3D models of the HMS Victory, breaking down a classic British ship of the line of 1805, of course. And that's what I'm doing at home. Dads are not gonna go to the, dads, dads stay at home and watch things.

• 23:56David Sims?

  Go see the HMS Victory, you know?

• 23:58Speaker 04

  That's what I hear.

• 23:59David Sims?

  You should go.

• 24:00Speaker 04

  Well, where is it?

• 24:01David Sims?

  Portsmouth.

• 24:02Speaker 04

  Portsmouth, New Hampshire?

• 24:04David Sims?

  Unfortunately, my friend, no, it's in the original Portsmouth.

• 24:07Speaker 04

  I'll stop on the way to Maine.

• 24:08David Sims?

  It's kind of out in, in the UK.

• 24:10Speaker 04

  Yeah, well, it's a little easier. This is the point. A lot more dads would stay at home and watch a streaming Master and Commander than they would go to Portsmouth to stand on the victory.

• 24:18David Sims?

  Unfortunately, I think one day it will happen.

• 24:20Speaker 04

  More dads would even go to Portsmouth to stand on the deck of the ship where Lord Nelson died, the HMS Victory.

• 24:27David Sims?

  Yes, he did die there. The greatest man in the world.

• 24:30Speaker 04

  Then go to a cinema to watch a Master and Commander movie. I just think it's where we're at. And this is like, the dad shit in this movie is obviously obsession with boats and procedure and all male worlds. But it's also about the dadly relationship that he has with the young officers. It's all dadism all the way down.

• 24:51David Sims?

  I just want, you know who Horatio Nelson is, obviously.

• 24:54Speaker 04

  Sure.

• 24:55David Sims?

  Okay, only you know a little bit.

• 24:57Speaker 04

  Yeah, even.

• 24:57David Sims?

  And you guys don't know who Nelson is, right? Who's invoked in this movie a lot.

• 25:01Speaker 04

  Viscount Lord Nelson.

• 25:03David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 25:04Speaker 04

  The guy who stands on the column in Trafalgar Square.

• 25:05David Sims?

  Well, yes, that's, that's how I often will like, cause my wife has watched this movie with me multiple times. And every time I'm like, you get who Nelson is, right? And she's like, no, don't know what you're talking about. Like whatever you told me last time it's gone again. But like, and I keep trying to be like, he is the most important British person who ever lived. And it's kind of crazy that like,

• 25:23Speaker 04

  most important.

• 25:24David Sims?

  Probably. And like, it's crazy apart Churchill, I would say is the other.

• 25:27Griffin Newman?

  That's feels like the obvious.

• 25:28David Sims?

  It's between the two of them, but Churchill is like, obviously he, you know, he's, he's, he's pretty cool, like, or whatever, but he's a pretty complicated figure.

• 25:37Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 25:38David Sims?

  You know, he has, he has some, some failures, Gallipoli among them in his ledger, you know, he, you know.

• 25:44Griffin Newman?

  Guy liked his grog.

• 25:45David Sims?

  Yeah. He did like.

• 25:46Griffin Newman?

  I mean, but in the morning he'll be sober and you'll still be ugly.

• 25:49David Sims?

  But like Nelson is fucking five. Nelson's the guy who beat Napoleon.

• 25:53Speaker 04

  Say something nasty, sit in a circle with these guys.

• 25:58David Sims?

  And it's like, one of those things where I'm like, right. Like only British, every British child knows who Admiral Nelson is, but like no, fascinating, no other person really outside of Britain would care too much.

• 26:07Griffin Newman?

  Who is he equivalent to even in like American?

• 26:10David Sims?

  Eisenhower, I guess. Like who's the most famous?

• 26:12Speaker 04

  Grant.

• 26:13Griffin Newman?

  Plenipotent, probably.

• 26:14David Sims?

  Yeah. Who's the most famous American military leader? It's one of those guys.

• 26:18Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 26:18David Sims?

  Eisenhower, Patton.

• 26:19Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 26:20David Sims?

  Grant, someone like that.

• 26:21Griffin Newman?

  Washington.

• 26:22Speaker 04

  Nelson is the other ship captain they're talking about, right? Yeah. And that's kind of the beauty of all of Peter Weir's storytelling, which in my opinion, he'll drop esoteric shit, but he can text you. Well, I mean, if you're an American, but it's contextualized enough for an American and for a lay viewer that you know, this is like the greatest dude that's ever lived. And they're all excited just to have.

• 26:45David Sims?

  But you do know.

• 26:45Speaker 04

  That he sat at a table with him is blowing people's minds.

• 26:48David Sims?

  Right. You do know that there's the big column in Trafalgar Square in London. Like there's a big column with a guy. He's the guy on top of it.

• 26:54Speaker 04

  Oh shit.

• 26:55David Sims?

  Cause he beat Napoleon.

• 26:56Griffin Newman?

  Right, right.

• 26:57David Sims?

  Which we kinda, which we, you know, British people really like to bring up, you know, like that we, I mean, he beat Napoleon the second time. Wellington also.

• 27:06Speaker 04

  Bonaparte.

• 27:07David Sims?

  Yeah, Napoleon Bonaparte.

• 27:08Speaker 04

  Oh, okay. I was wondering.

• 27:10David Sims?

  Uh, you've, but at the.

• 27:11Griffin Newman?

  The guy from the water park. Yeah.

• 27:13David Sims?

  I mean, sorry, he, his was the first time. Uh, Wellington is the second.

• 27:16Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 27:17David Sims?

  Wellington is Waterloo.

• 27:18Griffin Newman?

  Uh, there're two things I wanna, uh, say. One about the death of dad cinema, right? It does feel like that is an audience that was lost permanently in the pandemic. That those are people who are just like, I just got used to watching things this way. It is just not a thing I even consider going to theater to see stuff.

• 27:38Speaker 04

  Right. And I can surround myself with all my dadly comforts.

• 27:41Griffin Newman?

  Yeah. And I think even through the late 2010s, there would be dad hits that would punch through. And it feels like those things go straight to streaming now. And one that's really emblematic and feels like a counterpoint of the miracle of this movie being made at this scale by a major studio, this seriousness close to 25 years ago versus like, I think still one of the most watched streaming movies of all time, certainly the number one movie in the history of Apple Plus is Tom Hanks' Greyhound.

• 28:11David Sims?

  Good movie.

• 28:12Griffin Newman?

  Which was meant to be a theatrical movie.

• 28:14David Sims?

  Right. It was a COVID shuttle to Apple TV because of COVID.

• 28:17Griffin Newman?

  And he just finished filming a second one. Like, he has made this a franchise for him. And they are movies that just like, unless you are the target audience, you aren't aware of this exists.

• 28:26David Sims?

  I would say, here are some examples of dad movies recently I think succeeded.

• 28:30Griffin Newman?

  Okay.

• 28:31David Sims?

  Top Gun Maverick, but that doesn't totally count, but it still counts.

• 28:34Griffin Newman?

  The magic of that is that dad movies are part of the slice versus the whole pie.

• 28:38David Sims?

  Ford versus Ferrari, I think dad movie was a big part of the.

• 28:41Griffin Newman?

  That's a 2019 though. That's a perfect example for me.

• 28:44David Sims?

  But not that long ago.

• 28:45Griffin Newman?

  Sully, you know, these are movies that still like made 100 million domestic.

• 28:49David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 28:49Griffin Newman?

  And you're like, this audience is majority dad.

• 29:01Griffin Newman?

  David?

• 29:02David Sims?

  Yes.

• 29:03Griffin Newman?

  Moooo.

• 29:05David Sims?

  Is that the Cine's cow?

• 29:07Griffin Newman?

  The Cine's cow is back.

• 29:08David Sims?

  Haven't heard from her in a while.

• 29:09Griffin Newman?

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

• 29:15David Sims?

  Okay.

• 29:15Griffin Newman?

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

• 29:20David Sims?

  Wow.

• 29:20Griffin Newman?

  The cow likes chicken.

• 29:22David Sims?

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

• 29:29Griffin 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.

• 29:41David Sims?

  Yes.

• 29:41Griffin Newman?

  One of my favorite movies of the year.

• 29:42David Sims?

  Absolutely.

• 29:43Griffin Newman?

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

• 29:49David Sims?

  That is a line in the movie.

• 29:50Griffin Newman?

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

• 29:53David Sims?

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

• 29:57Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 29:57David Sims?

  Great friend.

• 29:58Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 29:58David Sims?

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

• 30:04Griffin Newman?

  Uh huh.

• 30:04David Sims?

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

• 30:07Griffin Newman?

  Performances, friend of the show.

• 30:08David Sims?

  Friend of the show, Zach Cherry.

• 30:10Griffin Newman?

  Zach Cherry.

• 30:10David Sims?

  Also in it.

• 30:11Griffin Newman?

  This is true.

• 30:12David Sims?

  Such a cool movie. One of the queer palmit can. If you haven't heard about this movie, I don't know what's going on with you, but like, it obviously has, it was out in theaters this summer and now it's on MUBI.

• 30:22Griffin 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.

• 30:37David Sims?

  At Camp Miasma, yes. And you know, and then they hang out and it's regular.

• 30:41Griffin Newman?

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

• 30:53David Sims?

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

• 31:05Griffin Newman?

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

• 31:16Griffin Newman?

  David!

• 31:17David Sims?

  Yes?

• 31:17Griffin Newman?

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

• 31:22David Sims?

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

• 31:27Griffin Newman?

  I love that. It's very convenient.

• 31:28David Sims?

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

• 31:36Griffin 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.

• 31:44David 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.

• 32:08Griffin Newman?

  From cult favorites to the world's biggest brands, score sweet 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.

• 32:39Griffin Newman?

  David!

• 32:39David Sims?

  Hmm.

• 32:40Griffin Newman?

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

• 32:47David Sims?

  Lisa!

• 32:49Griffin Newman?

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

• 32:56David Sims?

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

• 33:02Griffin Newman?

  Mm-hmm.

• 33:02David Sims?

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

• 33:09Griffin Newman?

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

• 33:13David Sims?

  No.

• 33:13Griffin Newman?

  Nope.

• 33:14David 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.

• 34:03David Sims?

  Post-COVID, it's the oldies aren't showing up and we got them to show up. We gotta get them to show up, but that's not gonna make Russell Crowe 40 years old again. There's no sequel. There's no perfect sequel to Master and Commander by Peter Weir with Russell Crowe and Paul Bettany that we'll ever get, but that's okay because we have this movie and it ends so perfectly.

• 34:21Griffin Newman?

  This is the second thing I wanted to say to this point. This movie's a miracle. How does it exist? Tom Rothman, who was pretty infamous at this point of being like a pretty brutal kind of mercenary, sort of here's the future of studios, you know, he's not too precious about art. He wants to make entertainment. He's noting everything to death. Now he's in charge of Sony, Columbia.

• 34:44David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 34:44Griffin Newman?

  And he feels like the throwbacky guy who's going out to CinemaCon.

• 34:47David Sims?

  I love Tom Rothman.

• 34:48Griffin Newman?

  We gotta make original movies, you know?

• 34:50David Sims?

  He was just at CinemaCon just like last week being like, stop having so many fucking ads in front of everything and all of the AMC people are like shifting in their seat.

• 34:59Griffin Newman?

  Windows need to be three or four months. You know, we need to make things for like different audiences. In the 2000s, he was seen as like, is this guy too crass a businessman? And now he feels like one of the last guys fighting for integrity, but was just sort of a brass tacks guy. Despite being, as everyone said, a big fan of movies, very well educated, but he's like, but my job is to like run this like a business. This was a fucking passion project for him. He was not applying the usual checks and balances in his head to this movie because it was like from the moment he fucking got that seat at Fox, he was like, I'm gonna be the guy who's finally gonna get the fucking Aubrey movies off the ground on onto.

• 35:37David Sims?

  And can I say something?

• 35:38Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 35:39Speaker 04

  Looking at his biography here, I can tell you that when this movie finally came out, he was 48 years old. In real dad territory, he's the dad to two daughters.

• 35:48Griffin Newman?

  Yep.

• 35:49Speaker 04

  He was into this dad shit.

• 35:50Griffin Newman?

  He was into this dad shit.

• 35:51Speaker 04

  He's into this dad shit.

• 35:52Griffin Newman?

  Now, here's the weird parallel, I was gonna say. When the story came out a couple of years ago, that Ox's maybe, or 20th Century is maybe noodling with a Master and Commander reboot. There's no writer attached, or there was a writer attached, no director attached, young Aubrey, whatever it is. The reason that was happening was not just because this movie has gained such a reputation and a cult. It is because Jason Isbell, who is now the head of 20th Century, his first movie as a junior exec.

• 36:23Speaker 04

  I think it's Steven As.

• 36:24Griffin Newman?

  You're right. Sorry.

• 36:25Speaker 04

  Jason Isbell is a musician, I believe.

• 36:27Griffin Newman?

  Different guy.

• 36:28Speaker 04

  Okay, I was gonna, I mean, I like him as a musician. Tears it up on, online with right wing weirdos.

• 36:34Griffin Newman?

  This was the first movie he ever worked on. And so he has some weird romanticism and nostalgia for this as well. I don't think he gets it over the finish line, but it's the only reason we're even talking about.

• 36:44David Sims?

  But let's move off of that, because we're not talking about that. We're talking about Master and Commander. We're talking about Peter Weir's film, Master and Commander. When did you see this film, Griffin?

• 36:51Griffin Newman?

  I saw this in theaters.

• 36:52David Sims?

  Sure.

• 36:53Griffin Newman?

  I believe if not even opening weekend, I want to say there was maybe even like a preview.

• 36:57David Sims?

  Possible.

• 36:58Griffin Newman?

  Weekend a week or two early.

• 36:59David Sims?

  Maybe.

• 37:00Griffin Newman?

  Here is my relationship to this movie.

• 37:01David Sims?

  Came out in November, right before Thanksgiving 2003, makes obviously perfect sense for it.

• 37:07Griffin Newman?

  I went to see this with the off-invoked Derek Simon, my childhood friend, my oldest friend.

• 37:11David Sims?

  Hi, Derek.

• 37:11Griffin Newman?

  We went to see it opening weekend. The movie starts and like three minutes in, I was like, oh, right. I don't like this kind of movie.

• 37:18David Sims?

  Sure.

• 37:19Griffin Newman?

  I sat there and was just like.

• 37:20David Sims?

  You're a young man. You're, what are you, 14?

• 37:22Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 37:22David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 37:23Griffin Newman?

  This is not my kind of thing. I sit there, I respect the craft of it. But there was a little bit of, oh, I just signed up for a class in a subject I'm not interested in, right?

• 37:32Speaker 04

  What kind of movie was it to you at that time?

• 37:35Griffin Newman?

  What kind of movie was it to you? When you say, I don't like this kind of movie.

• 37:39David Sims?

  It's like a history movie. It's a bunch of boys. It's a war movie. You know, like this is not a Griffin movie, especially not Teen Griffin.

• 37:47Griffin Newman?

  No, especially not.

• 37:47David Sims?

  There's no monsters or puppets.

• 37:50Griffin Newman?

  No.

• 37:51David Sims?

  There's no cartoon characters.

• 37:53Griffin Newman?

  I don't want to, let's not make it sound like that's the only kind of thing I like.

• 37:56David Sims?

  When you were 14, though, like you liked more genre.

• 37:59Griffin Newman?

  It's a very stoic film. It's a very emotionally reserved film.

• 38:03David Sims?

  A light heart with a lot of wonderful humor to it. But yes, that's true.

• 38:06Griffin Newman?

  And it's, it's, I think, very earnest.

• 38:09David Sims?

  Sure.

• 38:10Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 38:11David Sims?

  Pretty earnest.

• 38:12Griffin Newman?

  Right. I was not a fan of history in a general sense.

• 38:15David Sims?

  It's just one thing after another. You might've said, that's what James Ford says in the history books.

• 38:19Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 38:20David Sims?

  The history boys.

• 38:22Griffin Newman?

  Didn't, never rewatched this movie because I was just sort of like, I respect it, but it's not my kind of movie.

• 38:27David Sims?

  But you've slowly, over the years, like anyone, you've noticed like, huh, that movie gets talked about a lot.

• 38:32Griffin Newman?

  A hundred percent.

• 38:32David Sims?

  It's got kind of a cult around it. Huh. Beyond cult, at this point, it's sort of like revered or whatever.

• 38:37Griffin Newman?

  When we become friends and you tell me this is one of your favorite movies, I'm like, that makes perfect sense.

• 38:42David Sims?

  Best movie of 20.

• 38:43Griffin Newman?

  It both perfectly aligns with everything I know about you at that point and helps me understand you further. Six or seven years ago, Derek, who I'd seen it with, and we walked out with the same reaction, was like, have you ever seen Master and Commander? And I was like, yeah, we saw it together. We were both bored. And he's like, I've seen it like 20 times now. Clearly it just bounced off me at the time. I rediscovered it. I'm now obsessed with it. I watch it all the time. I'm like, huh, I do need to reassess this movie. But also Peter Weir is pinned to the board as an inevitable. So I just have kind of held off rewatching it. And also the 4K only came out recently. There wasn't a good version of it for a while, what have you. So I like, set it up for this moment. And I, I will say, like simultaneously, I rewatched this and I was like, I totally get this. I completely get this.

• 39:28Griffin Newman?

  It makes perfect sense to me. I understand the value of this movie. It is innately not my kind of film, but I was not disengaged from it in the way I was as a 14 year old.

• 39:37David Sims?

  But it's the best movie ever made. Ben. David. Or sorry, Mr. Sims. That's, that's how you do it. Mister. Yeah, exactly. Um, had you seen this film?

• 39:50Speaker 03

  Uh, yes.

• 39:51David Sims?

  Okay.

• 39:52Speaker 03

  Because of enthusiasm.

• 39:54David Sims?

  Okay. So you didn't see it at the time?

• 39:55Speaker 03

  I didn't see it at the time, but I probably

• 39:58David Sims?

  Man.

• 39:59Speaker 03

  Two or three years ago, I threw it on.

• 40:01David Sims?

  Yes.

• 40:02Speaker 03

  And I gotta tell you, I had a big old smile on my

• 40:05David Sims?

  Yes.

• 40:06Speaker 03

  Loved it. It is so comforting.

• 40:09Speaker 04

  Really one of the most likeable movies.

• 40:12David Sims?

  It is incredibly likeable for a movie in which like a 12 year old's arm is amputated, various people die, there's war, there's no women, like, and I love women.

• 40:22Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 40:22David Sims?

  And this is a womanless movie.

• 40:24Speaker 03

  I was gonna say.

• 40:25David Sims?

  Consciously, you know, like.

• 40:26Griffin Newman?

  That's the thing I I saw the Wikipedia noting that people vaguely complained about at the time, only because there are characters in the books.

• 40:33David Sims?

  There are women. I mean, like, yes, I mean, they're not on the boats usually, but like, there's female characters and there's, they have lives at home. Cause the whole thing is you go away and then you come back. This is the naval life of like, someone has to wait for your ass. Like, if you like, got engaged to them and you're like, anyway, I gotta go.

• 40:51Griffin Newman?

  You got Laura Linney on the phone.

• 40:53David Sims?

  They don't have phones.

• 40:54Speaker 04

  Oh, right.

• 40:54Speaker 03

  Don't have phones.

• 40:55David Sims?

  They don't have the telephone.

• 40:57Speaker 04

  They don't even have the mail.

• 40:58David Sims?

  Wait, Ben, you're picking this up? Oh, no.

• 41:00Speaker 03

  Oh, well.

• 41:02David Sims?

  Nope.

• 41:02Griffin Newman?

  You handed us a piece of paper folded and said, don't look at it yet. I'm not looking.

• 41:06David Sims?

  Ben, I gotta say, this is unrelated. This chair is so squeaky now. I need my new chair, I think.

• 41:11Griffin Newman?

  I know, we gotta.

• 41:12David Sims?

  A squeaky ass chair.

• 41:13Griffin Newman?

  What I was gonna say. Wifi network name. Yeah.

• 41:15Speaker 03

  This movie.

• 41:16Griffin Newman?

  Hmm.

• 41:17Speaker 03

  Taught me what bad down the hatches means.

• 41:20David Sims?

  Okay.

• 41:21Speaker 03

  It literally means there's a lot of.

• 41:22David Sims?

  Hammer the hatches closed.

• 41:24Speaker 03

  So the water doesn't.

• 41:25David Sims?

  It's gonna be raining a lot.

• 41:26Griffin Newman?

  Down. Bat them down.

• 41:28Speaker 03

  This, my whole life going through, just not even really recognizing what that meant.

• 41:34Speaker 04

  We're gonna talk about beating to quarters. We're gonna talk about.

• 41:37David Sims?

  Shall we beat to quarters?

• 41:38Speaker 04

  Colors. We're gonna talk about giving leeway. All these phrases come from the HMS.

• 41:44David Sims?

  We shall be two quarters. We should have started this episode by beating to quarters. That is true.

• 41:49Griffin Newman?

  Sam's see this immediately and love it.

• 41:52David Sims?

  I saw it at the Odeon Leicester Square with Howard Amos. Shout out Howard, wherever you are, probably Scotland, where you live, my friend. Uh, we were both 17 years old. It was, uh. I think it must have been, well, it wasn't winter break yet. I think it came out in Britain at the same time, but now I want to find out.

• 42:09Griffin Newman?

  See, seeing this in England must have been a very specific.

• 42:14David Sims?

  Well, but like.

• 42:15Griffin Newman?

  Fucking insane and.

• 42:16David Sims?

  I was 17 years old, so I am not yet dad, right? And I have not.

• 42:20Griffin Newman?

  You're surrounded by.

• 42:22David Sims?

  Oh, for sure. It was a big deal. Yeah, no, it came out same, same week in Britain. Yeah. So I had. It's, it's mid-November. It's November 17th or whatever is, or 14, whatever. That's sort of like mid-November. We'll, and of course we'll do the box.

• 42:35Griffin Newman?

  This is not like a Westerosi fantasy world.

• 42:38David Sims?

  No, although I love that one too.

• 42:39Griffin Newman?

  Was to American audiences.

• 42:41David Sims?

  Sure. Yes. No, no, it's, it's, you're right. It's a much shorter thing to walk. And like, we all had watched Hornblower on TV in the 90s.

• 42:49Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 42:50David Sims?

  You'd like, and of course.

• 42:51Speaker 03

  What is Hornblower?

• 42:52David Sims?

  Oh, Ben, you'd love it. Hornblower is a series of TV movies based on books, very popular books. George Lucas is a big fan of Hornblower.

• 43:01Griffin Newman?

  Don't you watch The Hornblower?

• 43:03David Sims?

  I do.

• 43:03Griffin Newman?

  Once a year?

• 43:04David Sims?

  No, it's more like once every sort of five, six months with, with Marie.

• 43:10Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 43:10David Sims?

  David and Elisa, David Erlich and his wife. And of course, David, Barti, Salinas, who fucking, he might be the biggest fan of The Hornblower.

• 43:18Griffin Newman?

  Very unsurprised.

• 43:19Speaker 03

  And this is about a jazz band?

• 43:22David Sims?

  If only. Yeah. It's about.

• 43:23Griffin Newman?

  On ships of the line, there were very strange jobs.

• 43:27David Sims?

  It's about a young.

• 43:29Griffin Newman?

  Was The Hornblower.

• 43:30David Sims?

  It's about a young Navy lieutenant, a lieutenant called Horatio Hornblower, who, you know, the, the first one, he's like low on the totem pole, but he rises over this series. And it happened because Elisa, David Erlich's wife texted me like, I want to watch like a Master and Commander thing, but not Master and Commander, because I've seen enough Master and Commander.

• 43:49Griffin Newman?

  Okay.

• 43:49David Sims?

  And I was like, uh, there's not much, but there's Hornblower.

• 43:52Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 43:53David Sims?

  And she was like, what's that? And I was like, it's this British TV thing.

• 43:55Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 43:56David Sims?

  And she was like, it's not streaming. And I was like, all right, well, I'm buying the fucking box set. I have it.

• 44:00Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 44:00David Sims?

  Bought it now. And we're watching them. So we all watched that. We blow the horn, we say.

• 44:05Griffin Newman?

  Does this, is this really like the only modern version of this executed at this level of quality in movies? And when I say modern, I say like anything post 1950?

• 44:18David Sims?

  There's gotta be some other like, you know, there's other stuff, isn't there?

• 44:22Speaker 04

  Sailing, sailing ships at sea, doing cannon play with each other.

• 44:26Griffin Newman?

  Like, here's the thing I felt.

• 44:28Speaker 04

  Getting feisty with the 25 pounders.

• 44:30Griffin Newman?

  Past the opening title cards, the moment this movie started, I had a very clear thought. Oh yeah, this is the only movie that gets right what it's like to have been on a ship in this time period.

• 44:39David Sims?

  I think so.

• 44:40Griffin Newman?

  And then I step back and I go, I don't fucking know that. I have no lived experience.

• 44:43David Sims?

  No, I mean, I'm looking at like lists of Napoleon. It's like, there's not much. There was more back in the day, back in the sort of 40s, 50s, 60s. But I think most of the Napoleonic stuff back then, it's more the land. Like there's that movie Waterloo, but that's about, you know, okay, well, you should.

• 44:58Griffin Newman?

  Do you know what I'm talking about though? That, that sensation of seeing something in a movie that you have no firsthand experience of. Right. And the creaks in you're just like, yeah, I feel like they got this right. This feels accurate to something I don't know shit about. In a way like Sunshine, I always point to that movie for me versus other sci-fi movies. I'm like, this is what it feels like to live in a spaceship for a couple of years. And I just, I have no knowledge. I can't speak to that with any authority, but I feel the same way about this.

• 45:31Speaker 04

  I think that one of the things, it's, I mean, look, I did not live during the Napoleonic War era. Um, I saw this movie for the first time after I had spent a week with my family. I believe in a 90 foot, uh, wooden two masted schooner, sailing schooner on a course that I took on schooner navigation.

• 46:01Griffin Newman?

  Specifically?

• 46:02Speaker 04

  Yeah, because you know, it's something that comes up a lot. You'd be surprised at how often you want to know how to sail a schooner. But the wooden boat school in Brooklyn, Maine, offered this week on the merry day. And so I had spent time on a wooden boat and learning the pin rail and then sails and all this stuff. And when we got back, I was like, I want more of that.

• 46:25David Sims?

  What year is this?

• 46:26Speaker 04

  This would have been recently. I didn't see this movie when it came out.

• 46:29David Sims?

  Wow.

• 46:29Speaker 04

  This would have been 2018 or 2019.

• 46:31David Sims?

  Okay.

• 46:32Speaker 04

  When I was like, you know, I never saw Master and Commander.

• 46:34David Sims?

  You're in a boat headspace, right? And you're like, what are the boat movies? And there's only so many.

• 46:38Speaker 04

  So at that time, I am a dad. At that time, our son was not yet an adult, but was living with us. He had been on the boat. I was like, let's watch some boat shit.

• 46:47David Sims?

  Does your son care about this boat stuff?

• 46:51Speaker 04

  I mean, I think he thinks of it relatively fondly, but he didn't get into it necessarily.

• 46:54Griffin Newman?

  Am I wrong in remembering that your son went to a boat school?

• 46:57David Sims?

  School on a boat?

• 46:58Speaker 04

  You know, look, I've been coy about this town.

• 47:01Griffin Newman?

  Sure.

• 47:01Speaker 04

  But I've already mentioned it twice. So it's Brooklyn, Maine.

• 47:05Griffin Newman?

  Yes, you're loathe to mention it.

• 47:06Speaker 04

  And there are, well, I mean, it's just, you know, it's kind of a long running joke.

• 47:10Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 47:11Speaker 04

  Because E.B. White had lived there and he wouldn't reveal where he lived.

• 47:14Griffin Newman?

  Got it.

• 47:14Speaker 04

  He'd always say, I live somewhere on the coast of the United States between New Brunswick, Canada and Cuba.

• 47:20Griffin Newman?

  And Vacation Land is only available on hardcover, right?

• 47:23Speaker 04

  No, it's available now in paperback. Thanks for asking.

• 47:25Griffin Newman?

  That's helpful.

• 47:25David Sims?

  I think I'm going to start talking about my experience seeing the movie again. I feel like we got off the rails.

• 47:30Griffin Newman?

  No, no, I'm driving towards a specific point. I just remember when I first met your son, that he was very interested in boating.

• 47:36Speaker 04

  Yeah, they, they built, so there's, there's a lot of wooden boat building in that community.

• 47:41Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 47:41Speaker 04

  And, and there was for local kids and summer kids. They all built a wooden skiff.

• 47:47Griffin Newman?

  This is a family interest that runs deep.

• 47:48David Sims?

  I understand, but I was in the

• 47:50Griffin Newman?

  We kind of forced him to do it.

• 47:51David Sims?

  Okay.

• 47:52Speaker 04

  David.

• 47:53David Sims?

  Yeah. So I saw it with Howard. I thought it was great. I then saw it on a date. It's a bad idea. It was a disastrous date. Movie is quite long. It's not that long, really. It's two hours, 20 minutes. And it's about what it's about, boys on a boat. And did not, it did not, my, my date was not excited by Master and Commander. I

• 48:15Speaker 04

  Probably.

• 48:17David Sims?

  During seventeen, I mean, you know, Saul.

• 48:20Griffin Newman?

  What did, what did you deem skippable enough for a quick make out sash?

• 48:25David Sims?

  Oh, during the movie? No, no.

• 48:26Griffin Newman?

  No, okay, okay, okay.

• 48:28David Sims?

  After, I think.

• 48:29Griffin Newman?

  Cause I was confused by, yeah, the idea that you would look away from the screen for even a second.

• 48:34David Sims?

  Not during the movie.

• 48:34Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, that didn't sound like.

• 48:35Speaker 04

  You actually shoot her away.

• 48:36David Sims?

  I'm like, go ahead.

• 48:37Speaker 04

  We need a quarter. Yeah, she's leaning in like, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, my dear, I must watch.

• 48:41David Sims?

  I really liked this movie, but when I was like seventeen, my favorite movies of that year were Elephant, which was a big movie for me then.

• 48:50Griffin Newman?

  That was a big one for me as well.

• 48:51David Sims?

  Elephant, yeah. Trying to think like, David Gordon Green's All the Real Girls, like that was a big movie for teen David. Yeah, obviously I enjoyed the Lord of the Rings, his epic conclusion and X-Men two.

• 49:03Griffin Newman?

  Yes, that was way up there.

• 49:05David Sims?

  Twenty eight Days Later, Kill Bill, Volume One, right? You know, these were the big movies. I was at the time foolishly disappointed by the Matrix sequels and Hulk. I would, right, you know, I would, I would mature.

• 49:17Griffin Newman?

  You'd get there.

• 49:18David Sims?

  Right, like, right, but Master of Command was a movie I like really liked. Uh, and I, you know, my dad liked it, obviously as a big fan of the books, he enjoyed it. I bought it on DVD right away.

• 49:27Griffin Newman?

  But it was not an immediate, this is one of my favorite movies ever.

• 49:30David Sims?

  No, and then it just, I think as it was for a lot of people, I just kept going back to it. And they kept making movies that weren't like it, which they have consistently done to this day. Hollywood just keeps making zero movies in which Paul Bettany in a housecoat angrily yells at the captain of his ship that he can't go on the Galapagos Islands to look at cormorants because the ship has to go like fight, you know, the French.

• 49:55Griffin Newman?

  This is an interesting point. Is, is this movie's rise in cult also a byproduct of a kind of like, the longer time goes on, it is one stop shopping. This is the only place you can go to this.

• 50:06David Sims?

  Paul Bettany's performance in this film is the greatest.

• 50:09Griffin Newman?

  I think he's incredible.

• 50:09David Sims?

  The greatest performance ever captured by a camera.

• 50:11Griffin Newman?

  Kind of the best cyber performance too.

• 50:13David Sims?

  The best everything. The, the seriousness of this man, right? Like from moment one, like just like the gravitas, just steadiness, right? You know, like Aubrey's got more bluster and maturing's like very calm. And then like just for an hour into the movie for him to just show up in that coat with the hat. Right. Ready to go. Ready with his wooden cages to capture some iguanas. And finally, finally admit to, you know, like, you know, show some vulnerability with, when Aubrey's like, we gotta fucking go. And he's like, you promised me I could look at birds. I need to look at the birds right now.

• 50:52Griffin Newman?

  It may not surprise you to hear that Paul Bettany's character is the one thing I remember connecting with.

• 50:56David Sims?

  Of course.

• 50:57Griffin Newman?

  Seeing it as a 14 year old.

• 50:58David Sims?

  I mean, he actually got Oscar buzz. Like, I mean, he was in the mix.

• 51:01Griffin Newman?

  But I was just like, I get this guy. This is the closest analog to what I would feel like in this experience. I loved him. I was like all in on Paul Bettany at the time.

• 51:10David Sims?

  Yeah, exactly. He was such an exciting young actor at the time.

• 51:13Griffin Newman?

  Fucking good in Beautiful Mind. I feel like with distance, he's arguably the best performance in that movie.

• 51:18David Sims?

  Sure. You know what? I, that's a movie I have not seen in 25.

• 51:22Griffin Newman?

  A little bit terrified to rewatch, but I remember my mom and I walking out being like, who the fuck is that?

• 51:27David Sims?

  Right. He was, he was, he was brand new, very excited. He'd obviously been in Knight's Tale that year too.

• 51:32Griffin Newman?

  And Gangster number one was a couple of years before that. But when this, seeing this, I was like, well, this clearly feels like an anointment moment where they're gonna give him a kind of Star is Born, Jude Law and Talented Mr. Ripley. Best Supporting Actor nom. You've proven yourself and now you're a leading man. And instead, his career like kind of immediately gets waylaid after that.

• 51:52Speaker 04

  Well, at that time, I was writing for Men's Journal Magazine, which is the very famous national magazine covering the trend of men keeping journals.

• 52:01Griffin Newman?

  Yep, of course.

• 52:02Speaker 04

  And I pitched a profile of Paul Bettany, having not seen the movie.

• 52:07Griffin Newman?

  Just liking him already.

• 52:08Speaker 04

  This character is gonna pop. I'm like, yeah. And they said, no, not that nerd.

• 52:12David Sims?

  Wow. Can I tell you that?

• 52:13Griffin Newman?

  An insane thing to say about the man who is married to Jennifer Connelly.

• 52:17David Sims?

  Although he wasn't yet, right?

• 52:19Griffin Newman?

  They were together.

• 52:19David Sims?

  They may have been together. Cause they met on Beautiful Mind?

• 52:22Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 52:22David Sims?

  Even though he's a figment of someone's imagination in that movie. So how could they have met?

• 52:27Griffin Newman?

  Hmm. They also don't have, right? Any scenes together, but they did.

• 52:30David Sims?

  Cause he's a figment of his imagination. He has no scenes with anyone but Russell Crowe.

• 52:34Griffin Newman?

  I believe the story is that they like had a flirtation and maybe a hookup during the filming of Beautiful Mind.

• 52:40David Sims?

  Well, well, well.

• 52:41Griffin Newman?

  Then the movie's obviously done and 9/11 happens. And as he tells the story.

• 52:47David Sims?

  Sure.

• 52:48Griffin Newman?

  When he sees the news on TV, he's like, all I want to do is call Jennifer.

• 52:52David Sims?

  You're right. That is on his Wikipedia.

• 52:53Griffin Newman?

  And he called her and was like, should we fucking give this a go? And they were married like six months later.

• 52:57David Sims?

  Right. Been married ever since?

• 52:59Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 53:00David Sims?

  Paul Bettany, the Oscar nominees that year for supporting actor were Tim Robbins for Mystic River. Who wins? Well, no, in my opinion, not a very.

• 53:06Griffin Newman?

  A bad wins.

• 53:07David Sims?

  Yes. Kind of a bad win.

• 53:08Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 53:08David Sims?

  Good actor.

• 53:09Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 53:09David Sims?

  A lot of good performance. Alec Baldwin in The Cooler. It was the Alec Baldwin moment.

• 53:14Griffin Newman?

  Yes. But in retrospect, you're just like, that movie doesn't exist. It is so weird. That's his only Oscar.

• 53:19David Sims?

  It's not a bad movie, but it doesn't really exist.

• 53:22Griffin Newman?

  I remember him being good in it.

• 53:23David Sims?

  He's really good.

• 53:24Griffin Newman?

  But it also was, it was just the moment of him embracing the character actor thing. Everyone liked him being the bear.

• 53:30David Sims?

  Benicio in 21 Grams. He's amazing in that.

• 53:33Griffin Newman?

  What I have often contended, if he hadn't won for traffic, he would have won this year.

• 53:36David Sims?

  An amazing performance, but.

• 53:37Griffin Newman?

  Yeah. He's a dog shit movie, but he's phenomenal in that.

• 53:39David Sims?

  Not a very well remembered movie. Jaimon Hones who in, in America, a performance I really like, a nom I kind of love.

• 53:46Griffin Newman?

  Same.

• 53:46David Sims?

  But another one that you're kind of like, huh, like another performance, nobody really talks about.

• 53:50Griffin Newman?

  Kind of a nomination morning surprise. I forget who he bumped out, but he was not as much in the.

• 53:54David Sims?

  That's what I'm getting to.

• 53:55Griffin Newman?

  Bettany.

• 53:56David Sims?

  And then Ken Watanabe in Last Samurai, which is a movie I don't love, but a performance I adore.

• 54:01Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 54:01David Sims?

  Like, and that was kind of a nice, you know, that was a nice.

• 54:05Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 54:05David Sims?

  The, um, Globes had, right. So like Peter Sarsgaard in Shattered Glass, who cleaned up the critics.

• 54:11Griffin Newman?

  Bubble guy. Yeah.

• 54:11David Sims?

  Amazing performance.

• 54:13Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 54:13David Sims?

  Got snubbed. Rude. Albert Finney in Big Fish got the Globe and BAFTA noms.

• 54:17Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 54:18David Sims?

  Seemingly an obvious nom there.

• 54:20Griffin Newman?

  Real lifetime.

• 54:20David Sims?

  And then the Oscars just like spurned to Big Fish generally. They were just kind of like, not for us. The BAFTA nominees were, Robbins.

• 54:29Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 54:29David Sims?

  That's the only one it shares with the Oscars.

• 54:32Griffin Newman?

  He was inevitable that season. There was almost no tension.

• 54:35David Sims?

  You know, it's.

• 54:36Griffin Newman?

  It also felt like he's had a really big eighties and nineties. And here's the Annoyment moment. And from the moment he gets that Oscar, his career is basically.

• 54:43David Sims?

  They were like, never employ this man again.

• 54:44Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 54:46David Sims?

  Tim Robbins Mystic River, Ian McKellen Return of the King. I think that's a bit of a,

• 54:49Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 54:49David Sims?

  That's a bit of a softball nom, but whatever.

• 54:51Griffin Newman?

  And the thing I find very funny is that Ian McKellen often in interviews will say, I, I believe I'm the only actor to be nominated twice for playing the same character, which is both wrong in that other people have done it and he didn't get the Oscar nomination.

• 55:06David Sims?

  No.

• 55:06Griffin Newman?

  But he thinks he did because of the BAFTA.

• 55:08David Sims?

  Because of the BAFTA.

• 55:09Griffin Newman?

  He'll cite it all the time.

• 55:10David Sims?

  Gandalf the White and Gandalf the Grey are kind of different characters.

• 55:13Griffin Newman?

  In a way.

• 55:13David Sims?

  True.

• 55:14Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 55:14David Sims?

  One of them doesn't even remember his own name.

• 55:15Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 55:17David Sims?

  Um, Ian McKellen, Albert Finney.

• 55:19Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 55:19David Sims?

  Big Fish.

• 55:20Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 55:20David Sims?

  Bill Nighy who won for Love Actually.

• 55:22Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 55:23David Sims?

  Which is a little bit of a moment. I think the Brits getting a little too huffy on their own paint.

• 55:28Griffin Newman?

  They used to do this though.

• 55:29David Sims?

  I mean, he's so fun in that movie and I don't like that movie, but obviously, and it was the Nighy moment. We were all like, ah.

• 55:36Griffin Newman?

  This is also like my beloved, like Denham Elliott, winning Best Supporting Actor for Trading Places.

• 55:41David Sims?

  And, and Paul Bettany was nominated.

• 55:43Griffin Newman?

  Okay.

• 55:43David Sims?

  By the BAFTAs. It was the, the one he, uh, he did get the nom. But no, yeah. After this, he did Wimbledon and it, it killed his career. It's insane.

• 55:51Griffin Newman?

  It's kind of wild.

• 55:53David Sims?

  Like when he gets, when he gets the Iron Man job.

• 55:55Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 55:56David Sims?

  You know, to be the voice of Jarvis.

• 55:57Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 55:58David Sims?

  It's kind of a like, you don't have any, any fucking other shit going on, do you buddy?

• 56:02Griffin Newman?

  And that's because it's Favreau in Wimbledon. They were friends from that.

• 56:05David Sims?

  Right.

• 56:06Griffin Newman?

  I think Favreau's in Wimbledon as an actor.

• 56:07David Sims?

  For you. I mean, like, obviously he's like the villain in Da Vinci Code. Like he was working.

• 56:11Griffin Newman?

  This is what I was gonna say. Da Vinci in another universe, you're like, if this movie isn't repellent dog shit, is this an opportunity for like a fucking John Malkovich and in the line of fire moment? And instead it feels like there's six years where he's either just doing true paycheck shit. Like he's the villain in firewall.

• 56:28David Sims?

  Yep.

• 56:29Griffin Newman?

  Or there's like.

• 56:30David Sims?

  Cart.

• 56:31Griffin Newman?

  Right. In Cart's another one.

• 56:33David Sims?

  He's like a guy in Young Victoria. Or it's stuff like Legion where it's like, he is on the poster, but that's like a really odd junkie movie.

• 56:40Griffin Newman?

  Fifteen million dollar Screen Gems movie. Wasn't Paul Bettany supposed to be the guy? I like both of those movies.

• 56:45David Sims?

  I do too.

• 56:45Griffin Newman?

  Very odd and stylish.

• 56:46David Sims?

  I, I like both of those.

• 56:47Griffin Newman?

  But it was like, okay, so this guy's neither seen as a serious actor nor a major movie star. And then he just has a run of being like Johnny Depp's.

• 56:55David Sims?

  Men's Journal wouldn't profile him.

• 56:56Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 56:57Speaker 04

  Hollywood's like, yeah, I guess we gotta take the message.

• 56:59Griffin Newman?

  It's so strange.

• 57:01Speaker 04

  He's not gonna break through.

• 57:01Griffin Newman?

  And then he has three consecutive Johnny Depp's best friend performances.

• 57:05David Sims?

  Mordecai in Transcendence. I'm not sure the other one.

• 57:07Griffin Newman?

  And also, uh, why am I blanking on the other one here?

• 57:11David Sims?

  Oh, no.

• 57:11Griffin Newman?

  Uh, there is a third one.

• 57:12David Sims?

  I believe you.

• 57:13Griffin Newman?

  It's the, the tourist.

• 57:14David Sims?

  Oh, right. He's in the tourist.

• 57:15Griffin Newman?

  Maybe he's a villain in the tourist.

• 57:16David Sims?

  He's good in Margin Call, but that's a small movie.

• 57:19Griffin Newman?

  He's really good, but that would be the thing. He'd pop up as like seventh build in a movie with like a good dramatic scene. You'd be like, why is no one fucking using this guy?

• 57:26David Sims?

  He says when he got to be Vision that he, he really was like, like just his career was, his agent was kinda like, it's just not happening for you anymore.

• 57:35Griffin Newman?

  He, he directed a film starring his wife, Jennifer Connelly. Nice work if you can get it. And Anthony Mackie called Shelter about a homeless romance. And he was like, I needed to tell this story and I turned down a lot of jobs and I focused on this for like three or four years. And it went to festivals and everyone was like, why the fuck did you make this? And then he tells the story of his reps being like, we're dropping you. Like you're just, you fucked it up, man. And he's like, literally the same day Favreau called me and was like.

• 58:03David Sims?

  No, it was Whedon. Whedon calls him.

• 58:05Griffin Newman?

  Isn't he in the first one?

• 58:06David Sims?

  He's in Iron Man, but like the, but he's the voice, but like, but Shelter came out in 2014. It's Whedon's then like, hey, by the way, like I have this fun idea of like, you're the voice of Jarvis and I'll make you Vision. And he's like, well, that sounds good. Is that good? And Whedon's like, yeah, like that's like.

• 58:24Griffin Newman?

  That's gonna save my fucking life. Yeah.

• 58:26Speaker 04

  I, I, this is purely speculative, but he's been married to Jennifer Connelly for a long time. First person he thought of when the Twin Towers came down.

• 58:35Griffin Newman?

  Yep.

• 58:36Speaker 04

  They seemed to have a real marriage.

• 58:37David Sims?

  He said he's like had, he had a crush on her from like Labyrinth, which I mean, get in line.

• 58:42Speaker 04

  Well, yeah, I thought he was the only one.

• 58:44Griffin Newman?

  But like, I hear that story and I'm like, maybe I should have called Jennifer Connelly on nine 11.

• 58:48David Sims?

  Hey, can I holler at you, Jennifer? I'm 13 years old.

• 58:52Speaker 04

  I'm not, I'm not saying that the vicissitudes of Hollywood were not unkind to him, et cetera, et cetera.

• 58:59David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 58:59Speaker 04

  Obviously, Men's Journal really fucking blackballed him, but sometimes I feel like when someone is in a good marriage.

• 59:05David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 59:05Speaker 04

  That maybe his priorities are, are different.

• 59:08David Sims?

  Although she also has had an odd career.

• 59:10Speaker 04

  Say it again.

• 59:11David Sims?

  She has.

• 59:11Speaker 04

  She's had an odd career. I know, and maybe that's because they love each other and love spending time with each other and they're, and they're, and they're not chasing fame in the way that a, a single hungrier person would do.

• 59:21David Sims?

  Yeah, sure.

• 59:22Speaker 04

  Like, you know.

• 59:22David Sims?

  I have no idea.

• 59:23Speaker 04

  And they're, and they're dads and moms too, right?

• 59:25Griffin Newman?

  Connelly, yes, yes. Connelly obviously wins the Oscar for the movie they did together at the very beginning of their relationship. And then it feels like she has continued to be for the last 25 years, one of these people where I'm just like, why is everyone fucking taking her for granted? Every four or five years she'll like pop up again in a way. And everyone's like, right, Jennifer Connelly, still looks great, is always good. And then she goes back to being ignored for another four or five years.

• 59:48Speaker 04

  But is she being ignored or is she making a choice to just?

• 59:50Griffin Newman?

  I don't know.

• 59:51David Sims?

  I don't know.

• 59:51Griffin Newman?

  I think like fucking five seasons of Snowpiercer.

• 59:54David Sims?

  She did the Snowpiercer show.

• 59:55Griffin Newman?

  It's not like she's choosing to not work, but it just feels like the stuff isn't sticky.

• 59:59Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 59:59Griffin Newman?

  And then she'll be in like fucking Top Gun Maverick.

• 1:00:02David Sims?

  Which she's great in.

• 1:00:03Griffin Newman?

  She's.

• 1:00:03David Sims?

  She's luminous.

• 1:00:04Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:00:05David Sims?

  And she's got incredible chemistry with Tom Cruise in that movie. Sexual chemistry.

• 1:00:10Griffin Newman?

  I actually think it is the most successfully a woman has conveyed.

• 1:00:13David Sims?

  Cause she's so good.

• 1:00:14Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:00:15Speaker 04

  She's that great an actress.

• 1:00:16Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:16David Sims?

  He seems a little uncomfortable, but she's so good.

• 1:00:18Griffin Newman?

  I think that movie has the exact right strategy in how to make you buy their relationship and what they show you and the things they're just like, we're not even gonna attempt to show you this.

• 1:00:28David Sims?

  I'm going to open the dossier and then we're gonna talk about Master Commander.

• 1:00:30Speaker 03

  Let's drop anchor.

• 1:00:31David Sims?

  Okay.

• 1:00:31Speaker 03

  Yes, okay. And pop open that dossier.

• 1:00:34David Sims?

  All right. In 2000, here's a curious note, uh, from a, uh, from, this is not related to Master Commander, but in 2000, Peter Weir, Wolfgang Peterson, Rob Reiner, Jonathan Demme, the great bad Brad Silverling, director of your favorite Casper, participated in a creative bake off to pitch themselves as the director of Harry Potter.

• 1:00:53Griffin Newman?

  Okay.

• 1:00:54David Sims?

  They were all part of, I assume Warner Brothers was essentially like call a bunch of kind of esteemed-ish directors who've done big productions.

• 1:01:02Griffin Newman?

  Can you run that list again quickly?

• 1:01:03David Sims?

  Wolfgang Peterson. So like, obviously, you know, he's a big director.

• 1:01:06Griffin Newman?

  Had done a lot of stuff for Warner Brothers.

• 1:01:08David Sims?

  Yeah. Rob Reiner.

• 1:01:09Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:09David Sims?

  I mean, at that point, he's starting to lose his luster, but he's still, he's made huge movies. Demi.

• 1:01:15Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:15David Sims?

  Demi's kind of a wild choice.

• 1:01:17Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:18David Sims?

  What's, I mean.

• 1:01:19Speaker 04

  That would have been very interesting.

• 1:01:20Griffin Newman?

  This is like, who knows? Post Beloved.

• 1:01:22David Sims?

  Right. But he's still fucking Jonathan Demi. Like, you know, and Brad Sibberling.

• 1:01:26Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:27David Sims?

  Who, you know, is, he's kind of like a, I mean, they got Chris Columbus. Right. And it's like, Chris Columbus is more proven than him, really.

• 1:01:35Griffin Newman?

  Right. Columbus is more emotional. Sibberling is a little more technical.

• 1:01:38David Sims?

  But it's also like, Columbus has just made two of the biggest movies ever with like kids in them.

• 1:01:42Griffin Newman?

  I mean, also, the, the other famous story is that like, uh, J.K. Rowling said, my first choice is Terry Gilliam. And Warner Brothers said, that's not a conversation.

• 1:01:50David Sims?

  Yeah. Warner Brothers is like, okay, lady. I mean, like, there was like the rumor that Spielberg sniffed and, uh.

• 1:01:58Griffin Newman?

  Only wanted to do it with Haley Joel.

• 1:02:00David Sims?

  Right. And Rowling was like, I'm not doing like American Harry Potter. I'm not like, you know, she knew that he would box her out. Like, he's more powerful than her.

• 1:02:06Griffin Newman?

  He also was like, I'd want to make some changes. And, and Warner Brothers was like, your job is to adapt the books, Harry Potter, in a way that satisfies all audiences.

• 1:02:13David Sims?

  Emily Shyamalan supposedly was also like, given a phone call. I've heard that, you know, and, you know, whatever. It ended up with Chris Columbus. They went for like a very safe. Weir would have been, uh, possibly interesting, possibly not, no idea.

• 1:02:25Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:26David Sims?

  Instead, though, Weir does not win this bake off, obviously. Uh, he gets attached to an adaptation of Master and Commander for 20th Century Fox. Tom Rothman, uh, back when he was president of production at Samuel Goldman Company in the nineties, read an Aubrey Matern book and loved it. And asked Samuel Goldman, acquire the film rights, please. So that's in 1993. The rights then cycle between Goldman and Touchstone, which is of course a Disney subsidiary.

• 1:02:51Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:02:52David Sims?

  Um.

• 1:02:52Griffin Newman?

  John Mc. This movie has three studios attached to it. It has Miramax, Fox and Universal.

• 1:02:57David Sims?

  Does. Yeah. John McTiernan, at one point was attached to direct an adaptation for Touchstone.

• 1:03:02Griffin Newman?

  Makes. Perfect sense.

• 1:03:04David Sims?

  Absolutely.

• 1:03:04Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:05David Sims?

  At one point, Goldwyn asked Weir to do it in sometime in the 90s. And he says he turned it down because they wanted to do the first book in the series, which is like more of a young Aubrey, like Aubrey has just gotten his first command. By 98, Goldwyn has the rights again, and he has a new home at 20th Century Fox. And I'm sorry, Rothman has the rights again, and then Rothman's at 20th Century Fox. And then Fox, he becomes president and CEO in 2000. And it is his passion project. It is like, you know, his, like, as you're saying, Griffin, like.

• 1:03:37Griffin Newman?

  This is the one I'm going to be remembered for.

• 1:03:39David Sims?

  And I'm going to ignore the usual studio note kind of like, well, you know, kind of, you know, anyway.

• 1:03:45Griffin Newman?

  This is the one for him.

• 1:03:46David Sims?

  Weir is always his top choice.

• 1:03:48Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:49David Sims?

  He's been his top choice since the mid 90s. And since the mid 90s, he's only like, he's only gotten more obsessed with the books. He's now read, you know, the entire opus.

• 1:04:00Griffin Newman?

  Weir has, you're saying?

• 1:04:01David Sims?

  No.

• 1:04:01Griffin Newman?

  Or Rothman?

• 1:04:02David Sims?

  Rothman has.

• 1:04:03Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:03David Sims?

  Yeah. Patrick O'Brien dies at the age of 85, January 2000.

• 1:04:07Griffin Newman?

  Okay. As far as he knew, the two towers stood forever.

• 1:04:13Griffin Newman?

  He's lucky in that.

• 1:04:14David Sims?

  He's lucky. Weir is still hesitant to sign on, but I, I mean, it just seems like Rothman was basically like, well, here's, here's, here's the story. They'd have a meeting and Rothman says, what I really think you should do. And then he pulls out a captain's sword and hands it to him and says, is take command of the HMS Surprise. And Peter Weir is like, can I keep the sword? And they were like, yeah, you can have the sword. Like, you know, go ahead.

• 1:04:40Griffin Newman?

  You also have to imagine that Rothman's basically saying to him like, I'm going to give you full support to make the best version of this movie. You're not going to deal with dumb fucking notes.

• 1:04:50David Sims?

  This is exactly what Weir says.

• 1:04:51Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:51David Sims?

  He says, you could not have made this without a studio executive at the top of the tree who loves the material. Like you, you need Rothman at the top. Every time someone's like, hey, Peter, we just bought a million more gallons of water. Rothman's like, approved.

• 1:05:03Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 1:05:04David Sims?

  Give him another million.

• 1:05:05Griffin Newman?

  The guy, the guy with the stamp, the rubber stamp needs to be someone who understands exactly what these books are and has no temptation to be like, could we add a romantic subplot? Could we do this? Could we do that? Kind of bullshit. Yeah.

• 1:05:18David Sims?

  There's a talking parrot.

• 1:05:19Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:20David Sims?

  That would be fun.

• 1:05:20Griffin Newman?

  That was my main note at the time. Yeah.

• 1:05:22David Sims?

  Ben, the name of the boat is the HMS Surprise.

• 1:05:26Speaker 04

  So you know.

• 1:05:28David Sims?

  Okay.

• 1:05:29Speaker 04

  And if you want to know, if you want to know how to drop anchor, I'll tell you sometime.

• 1:05:33David Sims?

  I would.

• 1:05:34Speaker 04

  Okay. Put a pin in it.

• 1:05:35David Sims?

  Great. So we're still like, I don't want to do the first book, which has still mostly been every attempt to adapt it has been working. He's like, I want it to be on the friendship of Aubrey Matern. I want it to be on their longer voyage. You know, I like, if we're doing essentially an origin story, we won't really have that. His favorite inspiration is 1984 is the far side of the world, the 10th book. It's where they get the subtitle, but it is not a strict adaptation. They have some of the first book in there. They have some original stuff. John Colley, a Scottish born physician and professor, whose medical travels have taken him across the world before he settled in Australia is brought in. He's like a novelist and screenwriter as well. He's brought in to help. I don't really know John Colley. What are his other credits?

• 1:06:19Speaker 04

  Happy Feet. Really?

• 1:06:22David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:22Speaker 04

  It says here.

• 1:06:23David Sims?

  Wow. He wrote Happy Feet.

• 1:06:24Speaker 04

  Happy Feet.

• 1:06:25David Sims?

  I mean, one of the several writers.

• 1:06:26Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:06:27David Sims?

  Happy Feet.

• 1:06:27Griffin Newman?

  Along with the lady from the plumber.

• 1:06:29David Sims?

  But this is his first, this is essentially his first movie, apart from a movie called Paper Mask, which is based on a book he wrote.

• 1:06:36Griffin Newman?

  Okay.

• 1:06:37Speaker 04

  In three episodes of Star Cops on BBC Two in 1987.

• 1:06:42Griffin Newman?

  What is Star Cops? Do you have any familiar with Star Cops, David?

• 1:06:45David Sims?

  Sounds kind of cool. It's a British sci fi thing from the 90s. Can't say I know this one. I was a Bugs guy. If anyone watched Bugs, hit me up. It was another BBC like kind of sci fi cop show. It was really cool. It was set in like the near future because they would, computer bugs, they would do like hacking shit.

• 1:07:05Speaker 04

  Star Cops is set in a time when space travels become common. Mankind is in the process of exploiting and colonizing the solar system. They need cops. It takes place in 2027.

• 1:07:14David Sims?

  Do we need cops?

• 1:07:15Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, I gotta say, guys.

• 1:07:17David Sims?

  Hands on hips.

• 1:07:17Griffin Newman?

  I'm, I'm, I'm gonna, yeah. A scab. All space cops are bad.

• 1:07:22David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:24David Sims?

  Uh, love that. Um, so the breakthrough is the breakthrough is according to Colly sings the film as a dialogue about what it is to be a man. We're really writing about a family in which Jack is the dad, Steven is the mom, Blakeney, Max Perkis is the kid. The rest of the crew are the teenagers, right? You know, like, that's how they think about it. And like, I think the Max Perkis character is so vital, the, the boy who loses his arm.

• 1:07:50Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:07:51David Sims?

  Because, I mean, because it's a really good performance. That kid's great. He ended up on Rome. I don't know what happened to him after that.

• 1:07:58Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:07:59David Sims?

  But, you know, he was sort of around.

• 1:08:01Speaker 04

  You know what? In 2016, he was appointed head of acquisitions and distribution at Embankment Film. So it sounds like he moved to the other side of the industry.

• 1:08:08David Sims?

  Yeah, that's great. Yeah. Um, it just rocks that you're like, this is this tender relationship, but it's also a military relationship. Both Aubrey and Matron have like separate relationships to him, you know, like Aubrey has the, you know, naval and talking about Nelson and stuff, but then he likes all the bugs and the stuff he does with Matron. And then at the end, Aubrey's like, you're in charge of the ship. And then he is, and then he's like, we need to fucking storm them. And he's got a gun and he's got one hand and he's shooting French people.

• 1:08:34Speaker 04

  Cool.

• 1:08:35David Sims?

  It rocks.

• 1:08:36Speaker 04

  When he walks through the hole in the other ship.

• 1:08:38David Sims?

  And he's just like, rah!

• 1:08:39Speaker 04

  With a gun in one hand.

• 1:08:40David Sims?

  He is not.

• 1:08:41Speaker 04

  And no hand in the other hand.

• 1:08:43David Sims?

  It's crazy.

• 1:08:45Speaker 04

  It's the greatest.

• 1:08:46David Sims?

  Ah.

• 1:08:47Speaker 04

  Just do a show about him.

• 1:08:49David Sims?

  I could. I could do a show about anyone. Kilik is my favorite. My favorite is when he says, my favorite moment in Master and Commander.

• 1:08:56Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:08:57David Sims?

  Is when he says an extra grog of, you know, an extra ration of rum.

• 1:09:00Speaker 04

  Ration of rum for the two guys.

• 1:09:01David Sims?

  And Kilik's like, we're saving the rum for saluting day. He's like, we'll drink wine and oh, we'll drink wine on saluting day. And you're like, what the fuck is saluting day? And they never, it's like, you, you don't have to know.

• 1:09:14Speaker 04

  The captain steward.

• 1:09:15David Sims?

  He's the only guy who talks back to like, apart from, Matron does it like in a very formal way. Kilik is the one guy who's like, I was saving the grog, the saluting day I was.

• 1:09:25Speaker 04

  Which is, it will be done when it's done. He's always turning senses.

• 1:09:29David Sims?

  Which it is his sous hog's face, sir. I love it when he says soused hog's face. And Aubrey is like, yeah, that's my favorite. I love, he loves soused hog's face.

• 1:09:40Speaker 04

  My mom, my mother loves.

• 1:09:42David Sims?

  You hear hog face and you're like, ah, fuck. It's hog face week.

• 1:09:45Griffin Newman?

  When I was a kid and my parents.

• 1:09:47David Sims?

  Bring it on.

• 1:09:48Griffin Newman?

  When my parents said, like, what are we having tonight? Hogs face? I would be like, again?

• 1:09:53David Sims?

  You soused another face?

• 1:09:56Speaker 04

  It sounds disgusting, but what it is, is you boil a hog's head.

• 1:10:01David Sims?

  The head.

• 1:10:02Speaker 04

  You take off all the meat and then you put it into a mold and all the gelatin that's come out of the skull bones, turns it into a tureen and you slice it.

• 1:10:13David Sims?

  Yes, it's cold. You spread it like on toast.

• 1:10:15Speaker 04

  Yeah, and my mom would eat it by the slice.

• 1:10:18David Sims?

  I, I, I personally, I love a pate. I don't, I don't like, I.

• 1:10:22Speaker 04

  Never messed with it.

• 1:10:23David Sims?

  It doesn't sound like the greatest thing in the world.

• 1:10:25Speaker 04

  I've never had it.

• 1:10:26David Sims?

  A lot of, a lot of jellying.

• 1:10:27Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:28David Sims?

  Of things on ships.

• 1:10:29Griffin Newman?

  See, for me, when it was Monday at the school cafeteria and they served just up hog's head, I was excited, but then later in the week, when you're like, oh, it's like hog's head loaf. It's hog's head.

• 1:10:38David Sims?

  Right, right. When they're using every part of the.

• 1:10:40Griffin Newman?

  I see what they're doing. Hog's head tacos. You're like, I'm, I'm tired of it by Friday.

• 1:10:44David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:54Griffin Newman?

  David?

• 1:10:54David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:55Griffin Newman?

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

• 1:11:00David Sims?

  Hmm.

• 1:11:01Griffin Newman?

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

• 1:11:12David Sims?

  It is an iconic video.

• 1:11:13Griffin Newman?

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

• 1:11:36David 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.

• 1:11:47Griffin 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.

• 1:11:56David Sims?

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

• 1:11:59Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:11:59David 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.

• 1:12:06Griffin 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.

• 1:12:20David Sims?

  I'm something of an expert in cryptozoology.

• 1:12:22Griffin Newman?

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

• 1:12:25David 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.

• 1:12:41Griffin Newman?

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

• 1:12:57Griffin Newman?

  David?

• 1:12:58David Sims?

  Yes?

• 1:12:59Griffin Newman?

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

• 1:13:07David Sims?

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

• 1:13:12Griffin Newman?

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

• 1:13:14David Sims?

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

• 1:13:18Griffin Newman?

  Quince.

• 1:13:18David Sims?

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

• 1:13:29Griffin Newman?

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

• 1:13:43David Sims?

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

• 1:13:48Griffin Newman?

  I love those.

• 1:13:48David Sims?

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

• 1:14:01Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:02David Sims?

  Jacket, sweater, shirt.

• 1:14:03Griffin Newman?

  David, you know what I love?

• 1:14:04David Sims?

  What?

• 1:14:05Griffin Newman?

  The ultimate commuter pants.

• 1:14:06David Sims?

  Oh.

• 1:14:07Griffin Newman?

  Cause I'm commuting constantly.

• 1:14:10David Sims?

  Beep beep.

• 1:14:10Griffin Newman?

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

• 1:14:16David Sims?

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

• 1:14:42Griffin Newman?

  David?

• 1:14:43David Sims?

  Yes?

• 1:14:43Griffin Newman?

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

• 1:15:04David Sims?

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

• 1:15:24Griffin 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.

• 1:15:40David Sims?

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

• 1:16:16David Sims?

  All right. So the beauty of, Colley says, the beauty of the books is the richness of the technical detail, the correctness of the dialogue. You know, the plots are good, but the incidents, the little stuff, that's why people love these books. Like, they love the detail. And it's perfect for us because we can just, you know, achieve all this verisimilitude just by using the books. Like, it's all in there already. You don't need to do a zillion, he did all the research for you. The whole point of those books is they are very accurate. Like, they are really striving for, like, this is life.

• 1:16:47Griffin Newman?

  But, and, Peter Weir is particularly good at capturing the minutia of worlds, of communities and worlds.

• 1:16:55David Sims?

  He always is.

• 1:16:55Griffin Newman?

  So, you know, it's a, it's a perfect match.

• 1:16:59David Sims?

  Takes him two years to write a satisfactory screenplay.

• 1:17:02Griffin Newman?

  And then he stops, right? That's my, that's my work ethic. Is it satisfactory? Good.

• 1:17:06David Sims?

  Russell Crowe comes aboard, and he wanted to beef up their maturing and Aubrey relationship a little bit more. So Akiva Goldsman, who of course had just written Beautiful Mind, does some rewrites, which is interesting, because I think of Akiva Goldsman, of course, as a master of trash, but he's also been involved in things I like.

• 1:17:25Griffin Newman?

  Yeah. And at this moment, he was seen as hyper legit.

• 1:17:29David Sims?

  This is true. Yeah. Weir says his ideal choice would have been Richard Burton. Unfortunately, he was very dead.

• 1:17:36Griffin Newman?

  Quite dead. Yeah.

• 1:17:37David Sims?

  And also, before he died, had been a little bit of a handful in those last 20 to 30 years of his career.

• 1:17:43Griffin Newman?

  I would go as far as to say that at this point in time, Richard Burton was extremely dead, more dead than most, and that the last 20 years in which he was alive were also kind of death-like.

• 1:17:54David Sims?

  Exactly. I don't think Richard Burton would have maybe had his sea legs, one might say. But anyway, he turns to Russell Crowe, who correctly is the closest thing you're gonna get to a Richard Burton type in 2000-ish, right? A big, burly, fucking man, who is a great actor and a movie star.

• 1:18:14Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:18:15David Sims?

  But who, like, embodies, like, a kind of masculinity that a lot of guys don't.

• 1:18:21Griffin Newman?

  I was listening to the Lex G podcast yesterday.

• 1:18:24David Sims?

  Loves the Lex G podcast.

• 1:18:25Griffin Newman?

  The greatest.

• 1:18:26David Sims?

  What's the name of it?

• 1:18:27Griffin Newman?

  It's called The Lex G Podcast.

• 1:18:29David Sims?

  Got it.

• 1:18:30Griffin Newman?

  The world's greatest commenter has his own movie podcast. And he was talking about, he was doing kind of a new release roundup and doing this sort of like... Why do I even see these movies anymore? Why do I still feel this compulsion to go?

• 1:18:45David Sims?

  This seems to be the constant existential crisis.

• 1:18:47Griffin Newman?

  Why am I seeing Ready or Not 2, opening weekend, whatever? And then he was saying like, I'm really trying to like, watch more old movies. And I'd love to make the podcast more about old movies, but I feel like people won't listen. But I've been, I've been watching Ben Hur because the 4K just came out. And he was just kind of waxing about Ben Hur. And he was like, and fucking Charlton Heston, like, we don't have anyone who can do this today. Like, no one acts like this anymore. No one can hold a movie like this and sort of know how to be larger than life, but also just steady at the center. And I was thinking, hearing this right before, doing the rewatch, Crow's career has been weird. Like, 2001, right? You're like, this guy's the top of the fucking world.

• 1:19:26David Sims?

  And always will be.

• 1:19:27Griffin Newman?

  He had three consecutive Oscar noms. He won the middle one. Gladiator was a massive blockbuster. Beautiful Mind was a massive blockbuster. And it was like, if this guy can do fucking big epics and intimate dramas, then he's everything. This guy's like Mel Gibson and Gregory Peck and Charlton Heston at the same time. And then he has gone off in a thousand weird directions. There is the consistency of like, this was a reasonable hit, although obviously did not make as much as they wanted relative to the budget. And then you could basically say the same about Robin Hood and Noah, where like, people went to see them.

• 1:20:03David Sims?

  Uh, yes, they did. And again, it's the dad thing we're talking about of just that audience was bigger.

• 1:20:09Griffin Newman?

  He never hit the Gladiator thing quite as big, but you were like, this is the only guy, I would argue, for the last 25 years, who people buy doing this type of movie. And when they try to put someone else into this, even when it is a proven actor, like, you get fucking Exodus Gods and Kings with Christian Bale as Moses, and everyone's like, not buying it. You know? And then like, Russell Crowe will hire a trainer and be like, I'm gonna try to look like a person again for this one. And everyone's like, yeah, sure, yeah. He's the one guy who can pull this shit off in our modern era.

• 1:20:41David Sims?

  Crow and Weir, obviously, are both from Australia, but they never worked together. But obviously, Crowe's, at this point, a gigantic movie star. He has made Gladiator, when he gets signs on here. Beautiful Mind is about to come out. He's committed to Cinderella Man, which is going at that point to be made by Lasse Hallström. Ron Howard eventually makes that. That is the movie that comes, that's 2005. So that's his next movie after Master and Commander. He wants to do Master and Commander, and he says, can you wait while I do Cinderella Man? Like, can you wait a year? And Weir says, the ship sails with the tide. Nope, not waiting. So Crow decides to postpone Cinderella Man.

• 1:21:16Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:21:16David Sims?

  And instead boards the surprise. And that's probably tough on him because like Cinderella Man, he's playing a boxer. Like, he's gotta have the physique and all that. And you probably would want to do that. I mean, what, how old is Crow? How old is Crow when he makes this movie?

• 1:21:30Speaker 04

  That's a great question. I'm gonna guess 30. Are we gonna realize that Crow is significantly younger than I am right now in this film?

• 1:21:39David Sims?

  Yeah, Russell Crowe is significantly younger than you are right now. He is 39 when this film comes out. So Crow is basically just like, I could not stop thinking about it. Like, and, and he says, like, did I want to give up a chance to work with Peter Weir? I dreamed about working with Peter Weir my whole career. Like, he, he immerses himself. He loves the books. He finds that the later books turn Aubrey into a bit of a buffoon, which he doesn't like. But he, you know, he loves the character generally. He loves the teacher-student thing with this, with the kids. He wanted to show the responsibility that Aubrey has, having these kids on board. Because like, to be clear, the officer class, as I'm sure you know, these are the young boys of like aristocracy.

• 1:22:17Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 1:22:17David Sims?

  Who like, it's usually if you're like the fourth son, right? Like, son one, you're gonna inherit the land. Son two, you're the backup. Stick around. Son three, maybe you marry next door neighbor who's gonna inherit their land. Son four, we don't know what to do with you. It sounds like you're going to a boat.

• 1:22:32Speaker 04

  If you've got some extra sons.

• 1:22:33David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:34Speaker 04

  You send them to be midshipmen in the Royal Navy to learn to be officers.

• 1:22:38David Sims?

  And if they, they'll rise and all that, but you know.

• 1:22:40Speaker 04

  And they're so young.

• 1:22:42David Sims?

  But yeah, exactly. Ben, the absolute madness of like, a 12-year-old outranking these like salty-ass sea dogs.

• 1:22:49Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:22:50David Sims?

  And the, and the way, the whole like, microcosm of British class happening on this ship. Like, that there, that there's no, you know, like, as I said, the great subplot of where that, that does start to get fucked with a little bit with the Jonah. But generally, that like, those lines don't get crossed. And like, the boys do get to sit at the front, essentially, and, and, you know, order everyone around.

• 1:23:11Speaker 04

  And they get to wear those little hats, and everyone's gotta touch their hats. And Blakeney and Callamy, well, Blakeney's gotta be 12 or 13. Calum is maybe 16. Calum is older. He's a midshipman.

• 1:23:23David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 1:23:23Speaker 04

  And he's a real loser.

• 1:23:24David Sims?

  He sucks.

• 1:23:24Speaker 04

  Cause he's 36 or something.

• 1:23:26David Sims?

  Yeah, he's just, he's like.

• 1:23:27Speaker 04

  You know, his, his, his, his rating mate are all 16, 15, 14, 13 years old. He's just never passed that.

• 1:23:35David Sims?

  He's never gotten to jump right to a higher command or whatever.

• 1:23:38Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:23:38David Sims?

  A number of historians hired to consult on the movie said that Crowe could actually use his Australian accent, that that would basically be acceptable, considering like what British people talk like at the time and things like that. Crowe doesn't agree.

• 1:23:50Speaker 04

  Cause the Australian accent is sort of a throwback to some time.

• 1:23:53David Sims?

  I think that's sort of the idea, right? Like, it's like, you know, that's around when we're starting to fucking send British people out to Australia anyway.

• 1:23:59Speaker 04

  When did England stop putting shrimps on the Barbie?

• 1:24:03David Sims?

  They call them prawns in England mostly.

• 1:24:05Speaker 04

  They do in Australia too.

• 1:24:06David Sims?

  Yeah. Um, so, uh, Crowe decides that'll just feel unnatural. So he goes to this kind of British accent, you know, this like solid upper class, you know, you know.

• 1:24:15Griffin Newman?

  That does feel like a fascinating version of even if it's accurate, 99% of the audience is gonna go, oh, so Russell Crowe was too lazy to do a British accent?

• 1:24:24David Sims?

  Uh, I maybe.

• 1:24:25Griffin Newman?

  You're not gonna be able to fight the notion of like, is this guy cheating by using his real voice?

• 1:24:30David Sims?

  I feel like he was, he was pretty well regarded for his accent.

• 1:24:33Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:24:33David Sims?

  Cause like the LA Confidential performance is so good.

• 1:24:36Griffin Newman?

  I'm sure like he, that's part of the juice for him.

• 1:24:39David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:39Griffin Newman?

  You know, he's at this point, a very like studious, obsessive actor.

• 1:24:44Speaker 04

  It was 2003, so not as many people were eating shit online. There weren't that many commenters who were gonna get up in there and start.

• 1:24:51Griffin Newman?

  It was starting though.

• 1:24:52Speaker 04

  Creating a narrative saying that he was too lazy or whatever.

• 1:24:55Griffin Newman?

  Sure.

• 1:24:55Speaker 04

  But it's still, I gotta say, I hate this phrase, but it would have taken me out of it.

• 1:24:58David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:59Speaker 04

  I would have been wondering why he's talking.

• 1:25:00Griffin Newman?

  You question it.

• 1:25:01David Sims?

  They made the right call.

• 1:25:02Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:25:03David Sims?

  Weir is initially resistant to Bettany because of the Beautiful Mind thing.

• 1:25:06Griffin Newman?

  Oh, sure.

• 1:25:07David Sims?

  He's like, is that too obvious? Do we need like a fresh combo? He also thinks Bettany is too tall. Like, he's like, Matern is supposed to be the physical opposite of Aubrey. Like Bettany's pretty burly.

• 1:25:17Griffin Newman?

  I was looking at the Wikipedia and then the sort of people complaining, uh, the book fans complaining at his casting at the time. And the other thing that in the books, he's a spy.

• 1:25:27David Sims?

  Yes.

• 1:25:27Griffin Newman?

  And they remove that element?

• 1:25:28David Sims?

  Well, they don't remove it because they they nod to it.

• 1:25:31Griffin Newman?

  Okay.

• 1:25:31David Sims?

  There's a moment early on when he says like they have their spies everywhere and Aubrey's like,

• 1:25:35Griffin Newman?

  Got it.

• 1:25:36David Sims?

  Because yes, often Maturin goes on spy missions because he's the greatest.

• 1:25:39Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 1:25:40David Sims?

  He's spy, cellist, naturist, surgeon.

• 1:25:43Griffin Newman?

  I like, you don't gotta tell me on.

• 1:25:45David Sims?

  Self surgeon.

• 1:25:46Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:25:46Speaker 04

  Auto surgeon.

• 1:25:47Griffin Newman?

  But it sounds like in the books, he is described as looking like Timothy Spall.

• 1:25:52Griffin Newman?

  That he's a little gargoyle-esque.

• 1:25:55David Sims?

  Obviously, that was never gonna happen. Heath Ledger was considered, which makes a lot of sense.

• 1:25:59Griffin Newman?

  It does.

• 1:26:00David Sims?

  Although then you got double Ozzy.

• 1:26:01Speaker 04

  Double Burley.

• 1:26:01Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:26:02Speaker 04

  Too, I think.

• 1:26:02Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:26:04David Sims?

  Bettany, though.

• 1:26:05Speaker 04

  Because even though, even though Bettany's kind of a, a bigger guy than you think of. In the, in the face.

• 1:26:11Griffin Newman?

  He, he's played delicate.

• 1:26:12Speaker 04

  He's got a, he's got a fine, a fine bone structured face.

• 1:26:16Griffin Newman?

  You're right.

• 1:26:16Speaker 04

  Compared to the big hunk of like Easter ham.

• 1:26:20Griffin Newman?

  You're right.

• 1:26:21Speaker 04

  The crow has for his head.

• 1:26:23David Sims?

  Everyone in the cast, you know, does a boot camp, right? They do a sort of like, you're gonna learn how to sail. Bettany is like, no, thank you. And instead learns about like amputations and how to cut up fish. Russell Crowe says that everyone, every actor should sew their character's name into their T-shirts, according, colored according to rank. You know, as, as part of like a sort of, you know, like, let's get into this.

• 1:26:42Speaker 04

  A bonding experience?

• 1:26:43David Sims?

  Right. Bettany refuses to do it. Bettany, he's consciously like, I want to feel apart from everyone. I want everyone to feel a little weirded out by me. You know, because Maturin is kind of an oddity on the boat. Bettany says like, nonetheless, like we all bonded, you know, not in a testosterone-y way, but you're really looking after each other. It's like 20 actors, they shoot this mostly in Mexico or off the coast of like Baja California and stuff like that.

• 1:27:06Speaker 04

  That's where the tank was.

• 1:27:07David Sims?

  Right.

• 1:27:08Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:27:09David Sims?

  Max Perkis was found at Eaton College, Britain's fanciest school.

• 1:27:13Speaker 04

  He's a fancy lad.

• 1:27:14David Sims?

  He's a fancy fancy lad.

• 1:27:15Speaker 04

  Playing a fancy lad and he vibes fancy.

• 1:27:18Griffin Newman?

  I was curious, Sims, he doesn't seem to still be working for embankment, but I was like, what films has he worked on? And that announcement of him being hired to.

• 1:27:26Speaker 04

  Malibu's Most Wanted.

• 1:27:28Griffin Newman?

  Okay, so he's hired in 2016. Do you know what the first film embankment does under his watch is, David?

• 1:27:33David Sims?

  What's that?

• 1:27:33Griffin Newman?

  The Wife.

• 1:27:35David Sims?

  Oh, what if there was one?

• 1:27:37Griffin Newman?

  One of our greatest running bits. He was the one who asked the question. What if we bankrolled the wife?

• 1:27:47David Sims?

  I mean, it's one of those movies where the product, there's like 14 production companies. Like that's a classic Tiff movie where you're like, I can arrive 10 minutes late. The various logos will still be playing of like Jim's films.

• 1:27:59Griffin Newman?

  That's a great way of putting it. Jim's films.

• 1:28:03David Sims?

  If you're at the premiere, there's like 10 people like, yeah, whatever.

• 1:28:08Griffin Newman?

  I found the screen in daily screen international news item about him getting hired at embankment. And it has this whole thing, you know, we nabbed one, nurtured one of the brightest. We're convinced that he's an industry star of the future. Embankment co-founder Hugo Gruber and I vividly recall first meeting him and thinking, we've seen that guy before somewhere. Turns out he was amongst the lead actors in Peter Weir's Master Commander. It's funny in what is otherwise a pretty staid kind of press release to be like, and we were thinking,

• 1:28:40David Sims?

  I gotta say, when you Google him.

• 1:28:41Griffin Newman?

  He's got the same face.

• 1:28:42David Sims?

  He's got a baby face. Yeah, he still looks like that.

• 1:28:44Griffin Newman?

  I mean, did he grow his arm back? Yeah, he does.

• 1:28:47David Sims?

  I mean, the cast rocks. The cast is, I mean, James Darcy, who I adore is a great like British.

• 1:28:52Speaker 04

  Yeah. By, by the way, I just got to say with regard to that, Ben, I mentioned to you, the boat is called the HMS Surprise. Okay. It's a smaller boat of the ships of the line. The Victory, which was the flagship Admiral Nelson's boat, was about 250 feet long. Now, the surprise, which was a real boat, 120, 126 feet long. Now, I don't know if that's the length of the hull, Ben, or if that includes the bow sprit, the big, long thing at the front, but it's much shorter boat. You see what I mean? Its beam is only 31 feet. It's got a draft of 14 feet and a half inch.

• 1:29:26David Sims?

  You are reading these off Wikipedia right now.

• 1:29:29Griffin Newman?

  His eyes roll back into his head like Stephen McKinley Henderson in Dune.

• 1:29:33Speaker 04

  What's surprising about the surprise for a boat that size? It's got not one, but two Jarvis's on it.

• 1:29:39David Sims?

  It's a good point. Thank you for setting that up.

• 1:29:41Griffin Newman?

  I was gonna.

• 1:29:42David Sims?

  James Darcy.

• 1:29:43Griffin Newman?

  It's the original Jarvis.

• 1:29:44Speaker 03

  It was kind of beautiful to watch that.

• 1:29:46David Sims?

  Wind up and Jarvis.

• 1:29:49Griffin Newman?

  I'm ready to go.

• 1:29:50David Sims?

  And you know what? He's really fun in that show.

• 1:29:52Griffin Newman?

  He is.

• 1:29:53David Sims?

  You know what else James Darcy is fun in? Pretty much everything. Anytime that guy shows up. Amazing in Cloud Atlas.

• 1:29:58Griffin Newman?

  But yes, he was, he was original human Jarvis in Agent Carter, and then they brought him back in Endgame.

• 1:30:03David Sims?

  He was recently in Oppenheimer as the guy who's not nice to Oppenheimer. And Oppenheimer almost poisons his apple.

• 1:30:09Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 1:30:10David Sims?

  Which I think Oppenheimer really did.

• 1:30:12Griffin Newman?

  It is this funny thing of like, I, I think of him as a guy who did not emerge until the 2010s. And I feel like you often have these discoveries, watching movies.

• 1:30:20David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 1:30:21Griffin Newman?

  Where like the young supporting cast of recent drama school graduates are guys who are a decade away from finally breaking through.

• 1:30:27David Sims?

  He's a classic.

• 1:30:28Speaker 04

  They're all Coronation Streets or Neighbors.

• 1:30:31Griffin Newman?

  But like Andrew Scott being in like Band of Brothers. Where you're like, isn't this way too early for Andrew Scott to be in a thing?

• 1:30:36David Sims?

  But they do a lot of BBC costume dramas and stuff. And like Darcy, I feel like is also one of those guys who was always on the Doctor Who list.

• 1:30:44Griffin Newman?

  Oh, sure.

• 1:30:44David Sims?

  Like every time it came up.

• 1:30:45Griffin Newman?

  Makes a ton of sense.

• 1:30:46David Sims?

  He rocks. Obviously it's so nice to see Billy Boyd. I feel like this is Billy Boyd's like other big movie, basically.

• 1:30:53Griffin Newman?

  Yeah. So I remember.

• 1:30:54David Sims?

  Great.

• 1:30:55Griffin Newman?

  Dominic Moynihan doing an interview saying that this was like the peak of his depression. And I think his drinking.

• 1:31:01David Sims?

  Boyd or Monahan?

• 1:31:03Griffin Newman?

  Monahan.

• 1:31:03David Sims?

  Right.

• 1:31:04Griffin Newman?

  Because he was like, I have this like double act with Boyd. We make these three movies together and then I couldn't book a gig for two years. So the movies are coming out, winning Oscars and making tons of money and Boyd's off on a fucking pirate ship. Not a pirate ship.

• 1:31:19David Sims?

  It's not a pirate ship.

• 1:31:19Griffin Newman?

  Ship of the line. Yes. But he was like, I was like, he's going to keep booking and I'm stuck. And then basically right after this, it flips and Boyd.

• 1:31:28David Sims?

  Gets lost, right?

• 1:31:29Griffin Newman?

  A little disappears a little bit. And then, uh, yeah, Moynihan's on lock.

• 1:31:33David Sims?

  Yeah. I mean, it's not like Boyd stopped having credits, but I do feel like, you know, you don't really, you don't really see him too much.

• 1:31:40Speaker 04

  I gotta say, it was hard. It was, this was a thing that took me out of the movie.

• 1:31:45Griffin Newman?

  You kept being like.

• 1:31:46Speaker 04

  To see him.

• 1:31:46Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:31:46Speaker 04

  Steering that ship.

• 1:31:47Griffin Newman?

  What's Mary doing here?

• 1:31:48Speaker 04

  He did a terrific job.

• 1:31:49David Sims?

  He's, you know what I mean? I disagree with you and I think you should apologize.

• 1:31:53Speaker 04

  Sure. Okay.

• 1:31:53David Sims?

  All right. Thank you.

• 1:31:55Speaker 04

  I don't want to get flogged.

• 1:31:57David Sims?

  The great Robert Pugh, who's the, you know, the, uh, who's, um, Alan, you know, one of the other officers. Like, uh, there's just Lee Ingleby is really good. Like all the, all the, these are all British guys.

• 1:32:09Griffin Newman?

  Who's the guy who jumps?

• 1:32:11David Sims?

  Oh, the Jonah?

• 1:32:12Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:32:13David Sims?

  Um, that the guy's name is Lee Ingleby. Yeah, it's Ingleby.

• 1:32:16Griffin Newman?

  Oh, that's Lee Ingleby. Okay, okay.

• 1:32:18David Sims?

  He's, yeah, he's in, um, he's in one of the, oh yeah, he's in, uh, in Azkaban. Harry Potter Prison of Azkaban. He's the guy who drives the night bus.

• 1:32:26Griffin Newman?

  Or is he the guy?

• 1:32:27Speaker 04

  Driver, the conductor?

• 1:32:29David Sims?

  Yeah, he's standing on a bike. Yeah, no, they wrecked us. The driver is, I can't remember who the driver is.

• 1:32:33Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:32:34David Sims?

  Peter Weir made his first four films or no, four of his early films though with Russell Boyd.

• 1:32:39Griffin Newman?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:32:39David Sims?

  Uh, picnic, uh, wave, glibly, dangerously. Then John Seal has been his guy for a while, right? I forget who shoots Truman Show. Who shot Truman Show?

• 1:32:48Griffin Newman?

  That's a really good question.

• 1:32:49David Sims?

  Thank you. Such a good question, might be Peter Bees- Beesew.

• 1:32:52Griffin Newman?

  Interesting.

• 1:32:53David Sims?

  Who shot Life of Brian and a lot of, yeah.

• 1:32:57Griffin Newman?

  Oh, that's the thing that kept striking me while watching this movie. One of the guys on the boat looks so much like Eric Idle and looks like Eric Idle in makeup, playing an older.

• 1:33:07David Sims?

  Yeah, Killik.

• 1:33:08Griffin Newman?

  Boatman.

• 1:33:08David Sims?

  You're talking about, yeah, that's David Threlfall.

• 1:33:10Griffin Newman?

  Okay.

• 1:33:10David Sims?

  You know who he is?

• 1:33:11Griffin Newman?

  Who?

• 1:33:12David Sims?

  He is William H. Macy in the original British Shameless.

• 1:33:17Griffin Newman?

  Ah.

• 1:33:18David Sims?

  Which back, the British one is about, is set in Manchester and is also about a loudish father who can't stop drinking and his four billion children.

• 1:33:27Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 1:33:28David Sims?

  And every time like one of the kids ages up and is like, I want to be a movie star and leaves the show. They're like, we found another fucking kid. There's so many kids under couch cushions in this house. But he's the, yeah, he's, he's a great British actor.

• 1:33:38Griffin Newman?

  He looks a lot like Eric Idle in this. He looks like Eric Idle.

• 1:33:41Speaker 04

  I keep expecting him.

• 1:33:42Griffin Newman?

  In, in a sketch.

• 1:33:43Speaker 04

  Nudge, nudge or something.

• 1:33:44Griffin Newman?

  And then at the end of this movie, when they come across the French, I was like, this really feels like the rude, taunting Frenchman.

• 1:33:49David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 1:33:50Griffin Newman?

  From.

• 1:33:50Speaker 04

  And he's wearing these weird bandages on his head that look comedic.

• 1:33:54David Sims?

  Yes. Um, one day purely by accident, uh, Russell Boyd is on an airplane going to Los Angeles.

• 1:34:01Griffin Newman?

  Okay.

• 1:34:02David Sims?

  And they sit side by side, Peter Weir and he, they hadn't worked together in many years. He wonders if we arranged it. He didn't realize it was going to happen. And he starts saying.

• 1:34:10Griffin Newman?

  On the plane.

• 1:34:13Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:34:13David Sims?

  No, he starts saying like, I'm making this boat movie at Fox.

• 1:34:16Speaker 04

  9 11. So you could bring, you could bring your naval cutlass on the plane at the time.

• 1:34:19David Sims?

  It's Master and Commander. He starts explaining it's, you know, scene by scene and Boyd's like, that sounds great. And he's like, let's get dinner tomorrow. I'll drop you to the script. And then like, you know, Boyd comes back on board. This is the first time they worked together. And of course, Russell Boyd won the Oscar.

• 1:34:34Speaker 04

  Had there been an estrangement?

• 1:34:36David Sims?

  I don't think so. It's just like, he started using John Seal, who was the assistant on some of the earlier stuff. And then, you know, he went to Hollywood.

• 1:34:43Speaker 04

  Russell Boyd takes good pictures.

• 1:34:45Griffin Newman?

  Also, I'm looking at Russell Boyd's 90s and it's like, White Man Can't Jump, Operation Dumbo Drop, Tin Cup, Liar Liar, Dr. Dolittle. None of those movies are poorly shot.

• 1:34:55David Sims?

  No.

• 1:34:55Griffin Newman?

  But I could see that guy being like, I want to fucking challenge.

• 1:34:58Speaker 04

  Not known for their visual beauty necessarily.

• 1:35:00Griffin Newman?

  No, no.

• 1:35:01Speaker 04

  And then probably there's right.

• 1:35:02Griffin Newman?

  Cool stuff to see if you were to rewatch. And the early Weir films were challenging productions that probably activates a guy like this.

• 1:35:09David Sims?

  Exactly. That's like, you hear about Picknick and Hang Rock and stuff of him like figuring out how to do stuff with no money. Right? Yeah.

• 1:35:16Speaker 04

  Okay. Well, I just watched that last night in advance of this. And I was like, one of the most visually interesting movies I've ever seen.

• 1:35:23David Sims?

  It's so gorgeous.

• 1:35:24Speaker 04

  And then the Year of Living Dangerously is one of the most completely different, but so spectacularly shot.

• 1:35:30David Sims?

  The air, you know, the way, you know, any movie that can make the air feel dense. Yeah. Peter originally wants to do a Waterworld thing. He wants to like shoot the whole thing.

• 1:35:40Speaker 04

  He's also one of, one of history's wettest directors.

• 1:35:43David Sims?

  Petey Weir.

• 1:35:43Speaker 04

  He is true.

• 1:35:44David Sims?

  Yeah. I mean, Last Wave.

• 1:35:45Griffin Newman?

  He gave us The Last Wave.

• 1:35:47David Sims?

  Truman Show.

• 1:35:49David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 1:35:49Speaker 04

  They ultimately. The rain and the green car department.

• 1:35:52David Sims?

  True. Deadpool Society is set entirely underwater.

• 1:35:55Speaker 04

  Kelly McGill is taking a bath.

• 1:35:56David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 1:35:56Speaker 04

  That's.

• 1:35:57David Sims?

  Yep. That's true. I mean, she's, you know, gotta take a bath.

• 1:36:00Griffin Newman?

  They, they ended up getting.

• 1:36:01David Sims?

  Running around all day.

• 1:36:02Griffin Newman?

  10 days on the actual seas.

• 1:36:04David Sims?

  Well, here we go. So I'm going to tell you, like, he wants to shoot entirely on the water. And they're like, look, that's Waterworld. We need a floating ship trailing with you.

• 1:36:10Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 1:36:11David Sims?

  If you're gonna do a reverse shot, everyone's gotta wait while the ship like moves, you know, like, it's like.

• 1:36:16Griffin Newman?

  The entire industry learned our lesson on that movie. Like, everyone took notes from that.

• 1:36:22David Sims?

  And so Weir's like, fine, maybe we should build a set, you know, in a tank. And like, I wonder who would know anything about that. James.

• 1:36:32Griffin Newman?

  This is the thing, the other kind of miracle of this movie is just being close enough to Titanic.

• 1:36:38David Sims?

  Correct.

• 1:36:38Griffin Newman?

  James Cameron had done the legwork to build out the system to be able to basically shoot this on a gimbal in a tank.

• 1:36:46David Sims?

  Ridley Scott had made both fourteen ninety-two and White Squall, I think, in a tank in Gibraltar. But that tank was in disrepair, like only a few years between like Titanic and White Squall. But like, it's enough.

• 1:36:59Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:36:59David Sims?

  Fucked up. Then they're like, are we gonna have to build a tank? And Weir's like, I don't want to build a tank. And then James Cameron's like, we, Mexico.

• 1:37:06Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:37:07Speaker 04

  I have a Titanic.

• 1:37:08Griffin Newman?

  I have a tank.

• 1:37:09David Sims?

  In Baja. It has a deep channel where they could put the set on a big gimbal. So you can like move the boat around. It has shallow water. So you could put people waist deep if you need to. In Titanic, when the ship sinks, knows first that was on a gimbal.

• 1:37:23Griffin Newman?

  That's a spoiler.

• 1:37:27David Sims?

  So they had to fuck with things because of the, the way that Mexican tank was built for Titanic.

• 1:37:32Griffin Newman?

  But to your point, David, these things need a lot of maintenance and studios are not making like seven boat pictures a year.

• 1:37:39David Sims?

  Maybe they should, maybe just to keep these tanks usable, they should just make a boat picture every year. I guess there's Perfect Storm and that's crazy tank stuff.

• 1:37:48Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:37:48David Sims?

  Like, I don't know.

• 1:37:49Speaker 04

  That was a lot of CGI waves. I remember when that came out. They're great waves, but I, you know, like, I, I remember talking to a visual effects guy before that came out saying waves are the thing. When we can do waves, that would be the most amazing thing.

• 1:38:03Griffin Newman?

  And then they cracked it.

• 1:38:04Speaker 04

  And then they cracked it and that's all I could see.

• 1:38:06David Sims?

  Shooting, shooting inside the ship, right?

• 1:38:08Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, I was just gonna say, okay, sorry.

• 1:38:10David Sims?

  Go ahead.

• 1:38:11Griffin Newman?

  But I just think it's interesting hypothetical to entertain. Had the order flipped and Russell Crowe did beautiful or did a Cinderella man first, they probably would not have had a workable tank.

• 1:38:23David Sims?

  Possibly, might have gotten all fucked up.

• 1:38:24Griffin Newman?

  Difference of eighteen months, you know?

• 1:38:26David Sims?

  Yeah, I don't, but I will tell you that they didn't.

• 1:38:29Speaker 04

  Scum of algae on the top.

• 1:38:30David Sims?

  They didn't want to remove ceilings and walls. They wanted to use these cramp sets to their advantage. Like, let's actually have it be like, let's just shoot inside the ship. They bought a ship for a one point five billion dollars. They moved it out of, out of Bridgeport where it had been a tourist attraction. It had been designed to fight in the Seven Years' War. It was in a few existing vessels that they could use. Then they make it over new engine, sails, rigging decks. Then they build a full-size replica in the tank. That so like they had the real ship on the water. They had the replica in the tank.

• 1:39:02Speaker 04

  The real ship I understand to be the Rose.

• 1:39:06David Sims?

  That show up? The Rose. Yeah. 1.5 million dollars. Do you have 1.5 million dollars?

• 1:39:10Speaker 04

  No, I don't. But you know,

• 1:39:11David Sims?

  You can have it in 2003.

• 1:39:12Speaker 04

  I just learned that the, uh, the Merry Day, the two masted wooden sailing schooner that I, uh, trained on.

• 1:39:18David Sims?

  Sure.

• 1:39:18Speaker 04

  As a midshipman.

• 1:39:19David Sims?

  Is up for grabs.

• 1:39:20Speaker 04

  Sale for $550,000.

• 1:39:23David Sims?

  But then, then it's like, you gotta park it. It's like, you don't just buy a boat and then you're like, great, I have a boat.

• 1:39:28Speaker 04

  There may be some costs associated with maintaining an old wooden boat.

• 1:39:32David Sims?

  I mean, I was gonna say like, is it, if you bought like a fucking plastic speedboat, even that, it's like, you gotta fucking put it somewhere, right?

• 1:39:38Speaker 04

  No comment. But, uh, I don't have a plastic speedboat either. But, uh, yeah, the good, the good news is, uh, gas is cheap because it doesn't have it.

• 1:39:45David Sims?

  Sure. You got the only gas you need.

• 1:39:48Speaker 04

  You got air gas.

• 1:39:49David Sims?

  Uh, I think this movie was a little bit, uh, hard to make.

• 1:39:52Griffin Newman?

  Yeah. Um, what? I just want to follow up quickly and you saying that if John had, uh, 1.5 million dollars in 2003 money, he could own the Rose. Do you know where the Rose is today? It was purchased in 2007 by the Maritime Museum of San Diego and officially re-registered as the HMS Surprise. So it exists permanently as the Surprise.

• 1:40:15David Sims?

  You can, oh, fuck, I gotta get to San Diego.

• 1:40:17Griffin Newman?

  You do, my man.

• 1:40:19David Sims?

  I'm gonna.

• 1:40:19Speaker 04

  I think that Patrick O'Brien, I had read somewhere, had been on the Rose. And he said, this is essentially the same ship as the Surprise. Both historically and in his novels, because it was a real ship that he sort of adopted to put into the novels. And they immediately, he said, the only thing different is a, is a coat of paint. And they immediately repainted it as to look like the surprise back then.

• 1:40:45Griffin Newman?

  Uh, it does say on the Wikipedia, by 2024, the ship was in a worn condition with deteriorating paint and timbers.

• 1:40:52David Sims?

  Well, we gotta go spruce up.

• 1:40:54Griffin Newman?

  Yeah. Also, they, uh, cast the ship in Pirates of the Caribbean four.

• 1:40:59David Sims?

  But it's probably it's like some fucked up boat.

• 1:41:01Griffin Newman?

  The HMS Providence. Yeah. But otherwise it's at the museum.

• 1:41:06David Sims?

  Film has 700% has 700 plus effect shop, but Peter Weir did not want the film to look like the perfect storm. He wanted to use miniatures and stuff mostly for the, you know, storms and all that.

• 1:41:16Griffin Newman?

  Weta built a bigature, right? Like a giant miniature ship, I believe. I saw the Weta.

• 1:41:21David Sims?

  That sounds awesome. I can tell you, according to Nathan McGinnis from Asylum, another VFX company, there's not one piece of ocean in that storm sequence that isn't real.

• 1:41:30Griffin Newman?

  Wow.

• 1:41:31David Sims?

  CGI water is obviously more controllable, but I thought, you know, this is the more believable solution. So while they're in post-production, fear begins to circulate around the studios. They realize the film has no villain. They realize the film has no romance. They could have read the script.

• 1:41:49Speaker 04

  Those are usually things that are in a movie.

• 1:41:52David Sims?

  It is fair to say that this film begins with them getting their shit rocked. Then lots of things happen, but there is no more real action. The storm in the middle is an action sequence, but there's no real battles. And at the end, there's an awesome battle.

• 1:42:04Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:42:05David Sims?

  But it is like, it is defying, I would say, some Hollywood, you know, kind of like plotting sort of mechanics.

• 1:42:12Griffin Newman?

  It also feels like Tom Rothman maybe consciously played goalie to prevent people from noticing this earlier.

• 1:42:19David Sims?

  Right, right. And then like the movie's like deep in post-production, the bills are getting sent and they're like, you're telling me there's no woman at all in the movie. It's like, well, a Brazilian lady has an umbrella for five seconds.

• 1:42:29Griffin Newman?

  Yeah. And, and.

• 1:42:30David Sims?

  They say hi to her.

• 1:42:31Griffin Newman?

  Yeah. He smiles. He's like, oh, she smiled at me.

• 1:42:33David Sims?

  That shot is in the trailer, which is hysterical.

• 1:42:36Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:42:36David Sims?

  Like they clearly were like, can you put it in the trailer?

• 1:42:38Speaker 04

  There's, there is, uh, there's gonna be a colonial romance.

• 1:42:53David Sims?

  The film was gonna come out in June.

• 1:42:55Griffin Newman?

  Yes, I remember this.

• 1:42:56David Sims?

  We wanted more time for effects, so they pushed it to November. That does mean that their lunch gets eaten by Pirates of the Caribbean or whatever.

• 1:43:02Griffin Newman?

  Right, which comes out in July.

• 1:43:03David Sims?

  Although that was obviously another film that the studio was like, why the fuck did we make this boat movie? We're about to be in so much trouble.

• 1:43:10Griffin Newman?

  Like, there was this, I remember in the lead up to that movie, it.

• 1:43:14Speaker 04

  Pirates?

• 1:43:15Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:43:15Speaker 04

  There was, it was a curse of pirate movies.

• 1:43:17Griffin Newman?

  Well, beyond just, are they really fucking gonna make movies out of rides now? We had no idea how bad things were gonna get.

• 1:43:24Speaker 04

  Yeah, right.

• 1:43:24Griffin Newman?

  That things would be based off of, movies would be based off things that had even less of a narrative.

• 1:43:27Speaker 04

  Naively sniffy about shit at the time.

• 1:43:30Griffin Newman?

  But there was also this, like Disney spending $150 million on a pirate movie? Every pirate movie has flopped for the last 40 years. And I remember trend pieces that were like, here's everyone who has tried and failed to make a pirate movie since the 50s. This is a losing effort. So the fact that then Pirates of the Caribbean, this is where I argue the movie got a little fucked by it. Is that the fact that Pirates of the Caribbean overperformed so wildly? Then made people go like, oh, the boat curse is gone.

• 1:44:00Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:44:00David Sims?

  Yeah, I mean.

• 1:44:01Speaker 04

  But a rising tide did not raise all ships in this case.

• 1:44:04Griffin Newman?

  Right. I think this movie would have been viewed as more successful had Pirates of the Caribbean not raised the tide, the stranger tide.

• 1:44:10David Sims?

  Definitely, because it makes 93 domestic, 211 worldwide, and it gets 10 Oscar nominations, which I'm sure Fox was fairly happy about.

• 1:44:18Griffin Newman?

  It wins best director at the BAFTAs.

• 1:44:20David Sims?

  Is that right?

• 1:44:20Griffin Newman?

  Here we are one.

• 1:44:21David Sims?

  Is that so?

• 1:44:22Griffin Newman?

  Yep.

• 1:44:22David Sims?

  Is that so?

• 1:44:23Griffin Newman?

  He beat Jackson.

• 1:44:24Speaker 04

  I'm not steeped in the financial business of Hollywood. But I would imagine that at that box office, given the amount of investment and the difficulty of making the movie, everyone except Tom Roth and felt like, fuck, we just escaped by the skin of our teeth.

• 1:44:40David Sims?

  I think a little bit.

• 1:44:41Griffin Newman?

  And we did it, let's move along.

• 1:44:43David Sims?

  I think the Oscar noms made it a kind of like, well, look, we made a prestigious, well-received movie, so like, okay. But no, no one is like, yeah, you're right, he wins best director.

• 1:44:53Griffin Newman?

  I was surprised to see that.

• 1:44:54David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 1:44:55Griffin Newman?

  This movie also had like, an incredibly, uh, well-selling DVD.

• 1:45:00David Sims?

  No, that's the thing.

• 1:45:01Griffin Newman?

  Even as much as the cult grew over time.

• 1:45:04David Sims?

  No, no, no.

• 1:45:05Griffin Newman?

  There was that like a made, immediate two-disc kind of, this is one of those film school in a box DVD releases with every detail about the making of the movie that sold incredibly well. But I think, yes, it was sort of like, Tom, we let you do this one time. It did not make fuck you money where the, the argument is over.

• 1:45:23Speaker 04

  It would have taken fuck you money to continue making these movies.

• 1:45:27Griffin Newman?

  The other part of it is, right, everyone had a difficult time making it and, and Peter Weir and Russell Crowe notoriously were always kind of butting heads.

• 1:45:34David Sims?

  Uh, I think, I mean, there's nothing in the research about that, but I have heard occasionally that Russell Crowe has a bit of a strong personality.

• 1:45:41Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:45:42David Sims?

  And of course, right, Hawk, Ethan Hawke did say later in life, like, I think working with Jim Carrey and Russell Crowe, like, really, like, broke Peter's back a little bit.

• 1:45:51Griffin Newman?

  Uh, and Johnny Depp's the other one on Shantaram, which doesn't happen.

• 1:45:55Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:45:55Griffin Newman?

  But that he did two years of development on Shantaram.

• 1:45:57Speaker 04

  Oh, that Ethan Hawke quote.

• 1:45:58David Sims?

  Shantaram.

• 1:45:59Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:46:00David Sims?

  So the year is.

• 1:46:01Griffin Newman?

  I, I would say, no, a couple of people who've worked on this movie have off the record, uh, sent DMs to myself and other people involved at the podcast. And have shared Russell Crowe anecdotes that I'm not going to share here, but just a lot of like, have you heard that story about this fight they got on? He, it feels like they were just constantly locking horns. And this is a moment where Russell Crowe feels unstoppable.

• 1:46:21David Sims?

  He's his apex in terms of that power.

• 1:46:24Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:46:24David Sims?

  Because like this movie, like Beautiful Mind doing so well.

• 1:46:27Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:46:28David Sims?

  It's like, wow, can this guy do anything?

• 1:46:30Griffin Newman?

  Did he almost win two best actors in a row?

• 1:46:32David Sims?

  He almost did.

• 1:46:33Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:46:33David Sims?

  And then like Master and Commander does like, good, but okay. Cause and like the, the posters, his face.

• 1:46:39Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:46:39David Sims?

  You know, then Cinderella Man similarly was like definitely a hit.

• 1:46:43Griffin Newman?

  But not a mega hit.

• 1:46:44David Sims?

  They wanted.

• 1:46:45Griffin Newman?

  He also never gets an Oscar nomination again. And this year, people were like, he's on the bubble. He might make it to the five on the strength of the movie. Didn't happen. Cinderella Man, it was like, he maybe gets in there just because everyone loves Russell Crowe and he got all these precursors. Doesn't get in, never gets close to an Oscar.

• 1:47:01David Sims?

  I would say he never got even close again. I mean, his best performance after this is obviously Nice Guys, which he's so incredible.

• 1:47:08Griffin Newman?

  But it's also the turning point where you look and it's like Noah's 2014 and 2016. He shows up in the nice guy looking like a grizzly bear and it's like, this is who he is now.

• 1:47:17David Sims?

  That's who he is now.

• 1:47:18Griffin Newman?

  Noah is 2014.

• 1:47:19Speaker 04

  2014.

• 1:47:20Griffin Newman?

  And Noah. So much later than I remember.

• 1:47:22David Sims?

  That's his last proper, like Russell Crowe starring in a big hit movie.

• 1:47:28Griffin Newman?

  And it's, it's the. End of the four of what we're talking about of him being the last of kind of the old school epic movie stars.

• 1:47:34David Sims?

  Hundred because like the year after Nice Guys is the Mummy where it's like you are second banana to Cruz here like at best. And then like he just enters the phase he's in now, which begins really when he plays Jor-El in Man of Steel.

• 1:47:47Griffin Newman?

  Which is the year before now. Yeah.

• 1:47:48David Sims?

  But like of like, yeah, you played dad's mentors villains. If you're the lead, it's a trashy movie like unhinged or the fucking exorcist one or the other exorcist.

• 1:47:58Speaker 04

  I never saw the Pope's exorcist.

• 1:48:00David Sims?

  Yeah, the Pope.

• 1:48:01Speaker 04

  Yeah, I figured he probably hires a good one.

• 1:48:05David Sims?

  He's a little, those things are a little different. It's kind of like when the Pope needs a really, really nasty exorcist.

• 1:48:10Griffin Newman?

  Is the other one called The Last Exorcist?

• 1:48:12David Sims?

  It's just called The Exorcism.

• 1:48:14Griffin Newman?

  He did another exorcist movie like within two years of The Pope's Exorcist. That's about him playing a guy who plays an exorcist in movies, an actor.

• 1:48:24David Sims?

  Correct.

• 1:48:24Griffin Newman?

  And then gets drawn into a real exorcism. He needs to make a third now. He can't just stop at two.

• 1:48:33Speaker 04

  It's not the same character though. It's not.

• 1:48:34Griffin Newman?

  No, it's not.

• 1:48:35David Sims?

  It's not all part of a different relatively forgotten movies. He's a guy who works all the damn time.

• 1:48:43Griffin Newman?

  Yep.

• 1:48:44David Sims?

  It's like, it's not like Hollywood's forgotten about Crow and it's not like Crow's forgotten about movies.

• 1:48:47Griffin Newman?

  No.

• 1:48:47David Sims?

  He works constantly.

• 1:48:49Griffin Newman?

  And he still will be in big things. It still kind of means something to be like, and Russell Crowe in a movie.

• 1:48:55David Sims?

  Right.

• 1:48:55Speaker 03

  Shall we set the sails?

• 1:48:57David Sims?

  Yeah, no. Okay. So the year is 1805. Napoleon is master of Europe. Only the British fleet stands before him. Oceans are now battlefields. This is not important to the movie really, but like this is set basically at the sort of peak of Napoleonic power. 1805, like it is possible that Napoleon is going to conquer essentially the world.

• 1:49:22David Sims?

  If you know what I mean, like, you know,

• 1:49:24Griffin Newman?

  Conquer Europe and by colonial extension, the world.

• 1:49:28David Sims?

  Right. Uh, like this is Napoleon being like, I'm going to conquer the United Kingdom. And he loses at the Battle of Trafalgar and that's sort of like-

• 1:49:37Griffin Newman?

  That was kind of his Waterloo, right?

• 1:49:38David Sims?

  Well, his Waterloo is actually the Battle of Waterloo.

• 1:49:40Griffin Newman?

  That's the joke I was setting. I just want some credit for Scottie Pipening you on that one.

• 1:49:44David Sims?

  Great joke.

• 1:49:45Griffin Newman?

  Thank you.

• 1:49:45David Sims?

  Um, the, the Napoleon, of course, continued for 10 years. Like they keep fighting and all that. But like, this is sort of the moment where it's kind of like, is this it? You know, is Britain finally going to get conquered? Because Britain had stood unconquered for 700 years, basically. We're on about-

• 1:50:01Speaker 03

  28 guns, 197 souls.

• 1:50:04David Sims?

  This is true. I-

• 1:50:05Speaker 03

  They are in the northern coast of Brazil.

• 1:50:07David Sims?

  They sure are.

• 1:50:09Griffin Newman?

  It sounds like a lot of guns and souls, Ben.

• 1:50:11David Sims?

  It's actually kind of a small ship.

• 1:50:13Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:50:14David Sims?

  The surprise, obviously, is supposed to, uh, is pursuing the privateer Akaron, the French privateer.

• 1:50:20Speaker 03

  The privateers are kind of shady.

• 1:50:23David Sims?

  They're pirates, basically. They've been contracted by governments.

• 1:50:25Speaker 03

  Licensed pirates. Unfortunately, I think I might have been a privateer if I was alive in these days. I have to admit it.

• 1:50:33Griffin Newman?

  I think, John, with all respect to your skills and your experience-

• 1:50:38David Sims?

  Such as they are.

• 1:50:39Griffin Newman?

  As a boatsman.

• 1:50:40David Sims?

  As a, as an able seaman.

• 1:50:42Griffin Newman?

  I do think Ben would do the best of the four of us if dropped into this time.

• 1:50:48Speaker 03

  Oh, I agree.

• 1:50:49David Sims?

  Oh, yeah. I mean, I'd be-

• 1:50:51Speaker 03

  What, what, what do we have to do?

• 1:50:52David Sims?

  I'd be grabbing a cannibal, cannonball and running to the side immediately.

• 1:50:56Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 1:50:56David Sims?

  I would know immediately.

• 1:50:57Griffin Newman?

  I'm, I'm thanking a little kid for always being nice to me and then jumping off the side of a ship. That's what I'm doing.

• 1:51:02David Sims?

  I'm like-

• 1:51:02Speaker 03

  Immediately.

• 1:51:03David Sims?

  I'm like, point me in the direction of the fucking cannon.

• 1:51:07Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:51:07David Sims?

  I'm ready to go.

• 1:51:09Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 1:51:09David Sims?

  Right. I would not want to be near cannons.

• 1:51:11Speaker 03

  Job you would want?

• 1:51:12David Sims?

  Cannon man?

• 1:51:13Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:51:13David Sims?

  Cannon man?

• 1:51:15Speaker 04

  What would you like? You wanna light it or do you wanna shove the things down?

• 1:51:18Speaker 03

  I wanna light that fucker.

• 1:51:20Speaker 04

  Yeah, right?

• 1:51:20Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:51:21Griffin Newman?

  I think if a wormhole opens and Ben gets dropped onto a ship in this era, he is, within six months, the king of a country.

• 1:51:32Speaker 04

  Probably so. Probably so.

• 1:51:34David Sims?

  Oh, you think he would rally the men?

• 1:51:36Griffin Newman?

  I, I think he could rally anything he fucking wanted. I think he would know how to talk to these people in a way that we would fail.

• 1:51:44David Sims?

  We're on the boat.

• 1:51:45Speaker 03

  Just throw a dirty joke out.

• 1:51:48David Sims?

  I just wanna say something like, we see Kilik getting an egg out of like these little pens that clearly have the chickens in them.

• 1:51:56Speaker 04

  Well, this is what Peter Weir does so incredibly.

• 1:51:59David Sims?

  This guy, we see these two boys.

• 1:52:01Speaker 04

  Sets some fucking tables in his movie.

• 1:52:04David Sims?

  You know, it's the middle of the night, so the, you know, the midshipmen are in charge of like Aubrey's taking, you know, taking some rest.

• 1:52:10Speaker 04

  Taking his rest.

• 1:52:10David Sims?

  You know, so we've got Hollum and Kilik and the, you know, the kids.

• 1:52:14Griffin Newman?

  Can we talk about the creaks and groans?

• 1:52:16David Sims?

  The, the sound of the film is unbelievable.

• 1:52:19Griffin Newman?

  Mr. Hodgman, this film gets 10 Academy Award nominations.

• 1:52:22Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:52:22Griffin Newman?

  Unfortunately, this is the same year as Lord of the Rings, Return of the King.

• 1:52:26Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:52:26Griffin Newman?

  Which was just, everyone basically decided.

• 1:52:29Speaker 04

  That's right.

• 1:52:30Griffin Newman?

  We have to reward the trilogy. We're giving this.

• 1:52:32Speaker 04

  They spilled their Abel semen over that movie.

• 1:52:34David Sims?

  It's a clean sweep as Steven Spielberg.

• 1:52:36Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:52:36Griffin Newman?

  It dominates basically all categories.

• 1:52:39Speaker 04

  Bad luck for the surprise. There's a Jonah Award.

• 1:52:42Griffin Newman?

  This wins cinematography and sound mixing because those are two of the only categories Lord of the Rings isn't nominated in.

• 1:52:49David Sims?

  Oh, really?

• 1:52:49Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:52:50David Sims?

  I still don't know why it wasn't nominated for sound editing because Lord of the Rings has very good sound editing. I don't really know the answer to that question.

• 1:52:57Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:52:57David Sims?

  But, uh, this did win that.

• 1:52:59Griffin Newman?

  Um, the sound in this is unbelievable.

• 1:53:02David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 1:53:03Griffin Newman?

  It jumped out to me really fucking hard watching it this time.

• 1:53:06David Sims?

  It's vital.

• 1:53:06Speaker 04

  Well, one of the reasons I think it is so impressive, and in the sense that it leaves an impression, is that these boats have no engines. And so it is the balance of silence and sound and the alien feeling of hearing those sounds, because it is not something that most people have experienced, being on a ship of that size.

• 1:53:31David Sims?

  It is also.

• 1:53:31Speaker 04

  Making those little sounds.

• 1:53:33David Sims?

  It is also very important because the reason Harlem is being summoned to the, you know, front of the ship at the start of the movie is the other, the, the watchman is like, I think I heard a bell.

• 1:53:43Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:53:44David Sims?

  He thinks you heard a ship's bell. Like he didn't even see a ship.

• 1:53:47Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:53:47David Sims?

  He just heard something and they're kind of like, you know, all right, what is this? He says, the lead, if you please, what's the lead?

• 1:53:55Speaker 04

  So Ben, the lead is literally a big hunk of lead at the end of a very long line. And there's a depression in the bottom of it. So imagine like, um, it looks like this can of cold brew coffee and there's a little depression in the bottom of it. And when you want to know what the surface below you is like, you drop the lead, it hits the bottom of the ocean floor, wherever you are. It tells you how deep it is. And when you pull it up, the condition of the floor is like, it picks up dirt.

• 1:54:27David Sims?

  Right.

• 1:54:27Speaker 04

  You like dirt, right?

• 1:54:28David Sims?

  Sure.

• 1:54:29Speaker 04

  This is ocean dirt.

• 1:54:30David Sims?

  Wow.

• 1:54:31Speaker 04

  And it might, it might be gravel. It might be mud and shells. This is when you're anchoring, you need to know what the condition of the sea floor is. So that you know, first of all, how deep it is. So you know how much anchor road to pay out?

• 1:54:44David Sims?

  The answer is five fathoms.

• 1:54:46Speaker 04

  Just five fathoms in this case. And a fathom, I think is six feet.

• 1:54:49David Sims?

  I couldn't tell you. I mean, I love that they show you them calculating knots later on, like.

• 1:54:53Speaker 04

  With knots.

• 1:54:53David Sims?

  The fucked up way they had to do that, where it's like, there's three, there's the, the, the rope with the knots tied and then the guy doing this.

• 1:55:00Speaker 04

  Rope work in this movie is crazy.

• 1:55:02David Sims?

  It's messed.

• 1:55:03Speaker 04

  It's incredible.

• 1:55:04David Sims?

  It is perhaps the most impressive rope work.

• 1:55:06Speaker 04

  Guys.

• 1:55:06David Sims?

  Ever done.

• 1:55:07Speaker 04

  What's the left and what's the right?

• 1:55:09David Sims?

  Port and starboard.

• 1:55:10Speaker 04

  Excuse me, at this time, it would have been starboard and larboard.

• 1:55:13David Sims?

  Oh, is that so?

• 1:55:14Speaker 04

  Yeah, that's kind of.

• 1:55:15David Sims?

  That's kind of stupid.

• 1:55:16Speaker 04

  They changed it to port because they're like, we don't know what, we can't hear what you're saying.

• 1:55:19David Sims?

  And help me out here, um, forecastle, but how did they say foxel?

• 1:55:23Speaker 04

  Foxel.

• 1:55:23David Sims?

  Foxel, like the way, like, what, what, why, why, why they, why they doing that?

• 1:55:27Speaker 04

  Why they do it, I do not know. But yes, the, the front of the boat is called the.

• 1:55:31David Sims?

  It's called the forecastle, but you spell it F O apostrophes, C apostrophe S apostrophe L E.

• 1:55:38Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:55:39David Sims?

  Which is sort of pronounced foxel.

• 1:55:40Speaker 04

  Or, or sometimes they spell it forecastle, but you still pronounce it foxel and the top, and the top top mast is called the top gallant, but they call it the gallant.

• 1:55:48David Sims?

  Now, is the.

• 1:55:49Speaker 04

  The stunt sail is called a stuntel.

• 1:55:51David Sims?

  Is the poop deck what I think it is?

• 1:55:53Speaker 04

  No.

• 1:55:54David Sims?

  It's one of my favorite Simpsons lines.

• 1:55:57David Sims?

  When, when Homer joins, he's like in a submarine. Remember that episode? It's kind of like when the Simpsons is starting to get stupid.

• 1:56:03Griffin Newman?

  Right. Homer can do anything.

• 1:56:04David Sims?

  Right, exactly. But he says, is the poop deck what I think it is? And like the admiral guy is like, I like the cut of your jiff. And Homer's like, that's a jiff.

• 1:56:13Griffin Newman?

  May I say a thing about the sound?

• 1:56:15David Sims?

  Of course.

• 1:56:16Griffin Newman?

  Uh, when, when Ben, Marie and I went to Los Angeles last summer, uh, for the American Cinematheque, friend of the fest, we went to the academy museum. That has a room to try to explain to you the art of sound in movies. Where they show you like a 15 minute featurette with Peter Weir shot like two or three years ago. It's using behind the scenes footage from the time of filming, but it's him speaking more recently. And all of his team explaining the art of sound design in a movie using this film. It is a thing that I think is exclusive to the academy museum was made for them. And they have all these signs saying like, you can only see this here.

• 1:56:56Griffin Newman?

  But the thing he said that has stuck with me was, uh, he had his team, uh, you know, they went to the books. They looked through all the books and anytime a sound was described and said, like, that's what we got to replicate, right? Let's really get into the specifics of what he is trying to evoke of these noises. They sort of put together a, a test sample, kind of, here's sort of what we're thinking. Thinking is the soundscape for this movie and they show it to him and he's like, that's fucking great. I love that. Keep going. Awesome. And then they work on it and they refine it and they bring it back to him and they show it to him. And he's like, I think the last version was better. And he said, the realization he made was that they had with the extra time and giving it, you know,

• 1:57:41Griffin Newman?

  doing the real version had worked really hard to justify every single specific sound. They looked at every element on screen and they were like, we have to account for that and that and this and the timing and this and that. Versus the rough pass version they did was just sort of like, these are the kind of sounds we want to have like circulating around. And he was like, when it became too justified and you were trying to account for everything, it was cacophonous and it didn't work.

• 1:58:06Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:58:06Griffin Newman?

  There was something kind of expressionistic to the feeling of what they showed me the first time. And I was like, literally just go back to that version, delete this new file, go back to that and do the rest of the movie that way. So it's kind of freestyled a little bit as much as it's like based in a lot of research. And with intentionality, he was like, don't worry about completely matching on screen action.

• 1:58:30Speaker 04

  Yeah. And you know, like, again, this is an completely world is pretty alien to our experience in this year. And in a sense, you have to be impressionistic because a lot of the sounds that they might've been larding up the, the soundtrack with, would be sounds that the sailors had stopped hearing long ago because it's idle background chatter to them. Whereas the sound of a bell in the distance.

• 1:58:56David Sims?

  You hear the bell.

• 1:58:56Speaker 04

  This is one of the.

• 1:58:57David Sims?

  He comes out, Harlem can't defend himself. He's into early example of him not having a bit of a backbone where he's like, well, I saw a shape maybe over there. And Aubrey's like, okay, well, you did, you beat to quarters, but did the right thing. Everyone's winding down and then like Aubrey does the one, like one last look, you know, right? You know, you like, he's almost done and he's like, mm. And then you just see the sail for like one second because it's being lit up by the cannon.

• 1:59:26Speaker 04

  And it's like, you don't hear the cannon, which is such an incredible.

• 1:59:30David Sims?

  That's in the books a lot. He really talks about like the, in the books, like the sound, the way the sound would hit after the cannon fire.

• 1:59:36Speaker 04

  Tends to travel faster than sound. So you see the muzzle flash in the fog and it's just so. It's such an incredible way to open a movie where you're learning so much.

• 1:59:48David Sims?

  Right.

• 1:59:49Speaker 04

  In such a, in such a.

• 1:59:50David Sims?

  Let's see them all go to action now.

• 1:59:52Speaker 04

  Yeah. And you know, you're learning so much about how this world works in a completely non intrusive and non screenplay-y way. Not only learning about who Harlem is immediately, but the, the efficiency in the economy, which we are introduces and guides the eye in a way that is not.

• 2:00:08David Sims?

  To give you an example, some things.

• 2:00:10Speaker 04

  It is really sweet.

• 2:00:11David Sims?

  You see guys start to man the cannons, right? You get that. You see the guys in red coats. Now, Ben, have you noticed that there are some guys and Griffin, everyone, you know, in red coats on the ship? That's the army. They live on the ship too.

• 2:00:24Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 2:00:24David Sims?

  But they're not in the Navy and they're kind of their own thing on the ship. They're right, Marines. Yeah. You know what I mean? Like they're for, for fucking invading shit, you know, for the battle.

• 2:00:35Speaker 04

  So the most, most of the crew on a ship like this would be gunners, your pals. Cause it takes three or four guys to operate a single cannon and there are 28 of them. So they're all sleeping in those hammocks above their cannons because it's, the ship was just packed with these guys. And then there are the sailors, but they're not.

• 2:00:56David Sims?

  Like deal with the sails.

• 2:00:57Speaker 04

  Yeah, they're, they're in the Navy, but they're, they're not trained hand to hand combatants necessarily.

• 2:01:02David Sims?

  The Marines.

• 2:01:03Speaker 04

  The Royal Marines.

• 2:01:04David Sims?

  Are the guys who have the, you know, bayonets and you're.

• 2:01:06Speaker 04

  They're the, yeah. And then, and they're the ones who literally beat to quarters. When you call beat to quarters, one of the Royal Marines bangs a drum. He beats the drum and quarters describes the rhythm that he beats, which alerts the whole ship that they're going to battle stations.

• 2:01:20David Sims?

  Uh, Aubrey, you know, he's like run up our colors. One of the kids is like, yes, sir. Yes, sir. You know, they're putting up a, and then Kilik, I love this, gives him his hat. Where it's like, okay, we're going from like, we heard a sound mode to hat mode.

• 2:01:35Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:01:35David Sims?

  You gotta put hat on now.

• 2:01:37Speaker 04

  Fucked up moments on the ship. Yeah. Ship happens.

• 2:01:39David Sims?

  And then the guy goes like this.

• 2:01:43David Sims?

  And what's on his hands?

• 2:01:44Speaker 04

  So the, oh.

• 2:01:45David Sims?

  The tattoo. Hold fast.

• 2:01:47Speaker 04

  What is that? Who is that guy? That he's.

• 2:01:49David Sims?

  Who's that guy?

• 2:01:49Speaker 04

  He's the guy who gets the dent in his head and then gets a coin and becomes the dread prophet of the ship.

• 2:01:54David Sims?

  Correct.

• 2:01:55Speaker 04

  What's his name?

• 2:01:56David Sims?

  I forget his name. Uh, he's obviously my husband and best friend.

• 2:01:59Speaker 04

  Right.

• 2:02:00David Sims?

  But I don't know his name, but.

• 2:02:01Speaker 04

  Why don't you get that tattooed on your fingers, David?

• 2:02:04Griffin Newman?

  That's a really good question.

• 2:02:05Speaker 03

  Yeah, that should be your first tattoo.

• 2:02:07Griffin Newman?

  If you were ever gonna get a tattoo, I feel like it would be.

• 2:02:08David Sims?

  I think it might be a little bit stolen valor, given that I am not a naval person.

• 2:02:13Speaker 04

  That's hey.

• 2:02:14David Sims?

  I don't think I really have enough of a sort of sea, you know, history.

• 2:02:19Griffin Newman?

  It's a general enough term.

• 2:02:20David Sims?

  You can say you naval.

• 2:02:22Griffin Newman?

  You did it for a different reason.

• 2:02:23Speaker 03

  A little saltier.

• 2:02:24Griffin Newman?

  You can just say, I like holding things quickly.

• 2:02:27Speaker 04

  You know, I'm gonna scam you up to Maine one of these days.

• 2:02:30David Sims?

  I love to.

• 2:02:30Speaker 04

  The point is, you know, the, the ocean is a metaphor.

• 2:02:34David Sims?

  I'm trying to, uh, well, this ship is England, of course.

• 2:02:37Griffin Newman?

  And I also heard that oceans are now battlefields.

• 2:02:40Speaker 04

  I think this ship is England is technically a metonym.

• 2:02:44David Sims?

  Right, right.

• 2:02:45Speaker 04

  I'm out.

• 2:02:47David Sims?

  So they get their ship rocked and it's like very, they're shipped and their ship rocked. And it's very intense battle sequence. People get bloody, people die. Obviously, you know, boy loses a limb, all this, right? All this insane stuff happens. Uh, we're introduced to Maturin where he basically like clears all this shit off the table. Cause it's like, I'm gonna be operating a people, put sand on the floor.

• 2:03:11Speaker 04

  So you're not slipping around on the blood.

• 2:03:13David Sims?

  So fucking crazy.

• 2:03:14Speaker 04

  And also the water.

• 2:03:15David Sims?

  And yet there's also this kind of like, everyone's kind of calm. Like, you know, like, you know what I mean? Like.

• 2:03:22Speaker 04

  I'll tell you, I was not calm.

• 2:03:23Griffin Newman?

  I mean, this is just their, this is their daily life.

• 2:03:25David Sims?

  This is their life.

• 2:03:26Griffin Newman?

  Their job. They train for this moment.

• 2:03:28David Sims?

  This is bad.

• 2:03:29Speaker 04

  It's not their daily life.

• 2:03:31David Sims?

  But it is bad.

• 2:03:32Speaker 04

  They're weekly or maybe they're monthly or maybe they're yearly life. And one of the things that I love about this movie is that unlike any other ship movie that I've ever seen. Whether that is a sailing ship or a motorship or a spaceship.

• 2:03:48David Sims?

  A friendship.

• 2:03:49Speaker 04

  When you're in space or at sea in that ship, the world is small. You're constantly running into other ships.

• 2:03:54David Sims?

  Sure.

• 2:03:55Speaker 04

  There are aliens coming this way or that, whatever. And this, this movie really captures the vastness of the ocean. And frankly, the absurdity of their mission.

• 2:04:05David Sims?

  And that a lot of times it's just gonna be another day on a creek and ship.

• 2:04:09Speaker 04

  Like their, their mission is to find the, what do they call it in English? The Acheron?

• 2:04:14David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 2:04:15Speaker 04

  And then it's Acheron in French or whatever. But it's like this, this French privateer has been harassing ships. Go get them.

• 2:04:22David Sims?

  Yeah. He's basically up and down the coast of Brazil.

• 2:04:25Speaker 04

  Right. You know how big the Atlantic Ocean is?

• 2:04:27David Sims?

  I don't know, like 20 to 30 feet?

• 2:04:28Speaker 04

  It's like, yeah, maybe, maybe 50. The idea that you're gonna find this thing is in itself insane. And if it turns out that the Acheron hadn't been looking for them too, apparently, or at least spotting them and wanting to get them.

• 2:04:43David Sims?

  The idea is that, as, as they sort of allude to, is like the Acheron knew where they were gonna be essentially, right? Like that's what they're kind of guessing at. And he's like, they came upon us in the fog.

• 2:04:53Speaker 04

  Right, right. It's incredible. And the, and the, the idea that they're even gonna find each other, never to even bother to having this battle is like, it could take weeks or months before it ever happened. And those slow speed chases, it's like it conveys not only the size and the isolation of this wooden world they live on, but also I think all of this humanity, this is what I was thinking of is those cannonballs were coming through, right? All of this human ingenuity that goes into building the ship and manning the ship and sailing the ship and everything, it's all packed into this microscopic dot on the ocean.

• 2:05:31David Sims?

  The way they portray the maintenance of it too.

• 2:05:33Speaker 04

  Yeah, no.

• 2:05:34David Sims?

  It's so interesting and not a thing I've, I really have ever thought about.

• 2:05:38Speaker 04

  And you look at this ship and it's like every, every inch of it is this amazing piece of human craft work. The molding in the captain, in the captain's day cabin is like, and it's all getting blasted to shit by these cannonballs.

• 2:05:51David Sims?

  Really rude.

• 2:05:51Speaker 04

  All this work has gone into making.

• 2:05:53David Sims?

  This thing.

• 2:05:54Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 2:05:54David Sims?

  And only French people do that.

• 2:05:55Griffin Newman?

  Human ingenuity and murderous intent.

• 2:05:57David Sims?

  British Navy, they would just say, could you please stop? And people would, you know, they never fired cannons at anybody.

• 2:06:03Griffin Newman?

  I was thinking this during Gallipoli too.

• 2:06:04David Sims?

  Nine dead, 27 wounded, just to tell you, is the, is the count. Uh, what happens in Gallipoli?

• 2:06:09Griffin Newman?

  No, just that, like with the, the senior officers who you see at like the top of the hill, watching the young boys do the basic training. You're like, the ornateness of their uniforms, this sort of like lost notion of the military has to look really fucking fancy.

• 2:06:25David Sims?

  Sure.

• 2:06:26Griffin Newman?

  Like there's, there's the battle we're waging, but also it's like, we want to impress people with our class.

• 2:06:31David Sims?

  Yeah, you gotta have nice uniforms.

• 2:06:32Griffin Newman?

  We want to beat their asses while also seeming more sophisticated and cultured.

• 2:06:38David Sims?

  Place, the, the whole fast guy's name is Place, uh, cause it's when they're looking at the casualties after, you know, you know, we're in casualty mode now. They drag the boat essentially away with rowboats.

• 2:06:48Griffin Newman?

  What, what is casualty mode mean?

• 2:06:49David Sims?

  I just mean like, it's just like after the fact, like they're, they're counting, you know, you see the guy who's like pumping water out of the.

• 2:06:54Griffin Newman?

  You're counting the casualties.

• 2:06:56David Sims?

  Yeah. Um, nine people are dead. Maturin walks Aubrey around and he's like, you know, Place has got a fucking skull fracture or whatever. He probably will die. Turns out he doesn't. They go see Blakeney, uh, Max Perkis, who's, who's hand, his arm is messed up. And Maturin says like, I know you know this boy's father.

• 2:07:14Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 2:07:14David Sims?

  Like I'm doing everything I can. Like I don't.

• 2:07:16Griffin Newman?

  Does this character show up in the books later? Is this a character from the books, Blakeney? In your memory of it?

• 2:07:22David Sims?

  I do not want to mess up anything here. I know, I'm sure there are, and there is, and there is of course a Maturin, Aubrey and Maturin wiki that I can consult for this. So let me check. William Blakeney. Yes. He is in, uh, the movie. That's it. He's created for the movie.

• 2:07:40Griffin Newman?

  He's created for the movie.

• 2:07:41David Sims?

  That's what I thought. I mean, I think there's a lot of characters like this.

• 2:07:44Griffin Newman?

  Well, good job.

• 2:07:45David Sims?

  I.

• 2:07:47David Sims?

  Don't know the full extent. I think the O'Brien fans generally think positively of this movie because imagine how bad an adaptation could have been. But I'm sure if you are ner- you know, intensely nerdy about the books, the movie is, it only can do so much for you. Matern is never does any spy stuff in it, blah, blah, blah. You know, they never go to shore. You never understand the complex nature of being in the Navy and how your, your money, the money you made was based on like the boats you captured and the treasure you got, basically.

• 2:08:15Speaker 04

  That's why they keep talking about the prize.

• 2:08:16David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 2:08:16Speaker 04

  The prize that we're gonna get if we capture the action.

• 2:08:18David Sims?

  It's not about like making a salary. It's all like you earn your keep by like fucking up other ships and stuff. Like it's such a crazy system.

• 2:08:25Speaker 04

  You're cannoning on commission, Ben.

• 2:08:28Speaker 03

  But you're getting rum, too.

• 2:08:30David Sims?

  Yeah, but you know why they drink rum?

• 2:08:32Speaker 03

  Cause they get fucked up?

• 2:08:34David Sims?

  Well, that's true.

• 2:08:35Speaker 04

  Cause it's fucking boring.

• 2:08:36David Sims?

  Cause like you could keep fruit in it and stuff. So like it would be, you know, it's sort of nutritionally good, but I think also like it would last, right? Like isn't that, isn't that the whole thing with rum? I'm not a rum guy, I will say.

• 2:08:47Speaker 03

  I like a tiki.

• 2:08:48David Sims?

  I'm rarely getting a rum. Yeah.

• 2:08:49Speaker 03

  Cocktail from time to time, but I'm.

• 2:08:51Griffin Newman?

  That's the only context in which I have rum.

• 2:08:53Speaker 03

  Kind of the same.

• 2:08:54Speaker 04

  Who was the ship's maxologist on the surprise?

• 2:08:57David Sims?

  I mean.

• 2:08:57Griffin Newman?

  It's the guy with the wax.

• 2:08:59David Sims?

  I feel like.

• 2:08:59Griffin Newman?

  We're both going to the same.

• 2:09:01David Sims?

  I feel like these days.

• 2:09:03Griffin Newman?

  The guy dressed like Ryan Reynolds in If.

• 2:09:05David Sims?

  Imagine if you were like, what's your drink? And you were like, rum. Like, I would just be like, what do you mean rum?

• 2:09:10Griffin Newman?

  Straight rum?

• 2:09:12David Sims?

  Yeah. What do you ever write rum on the rum?

• 2:09:14Speaker 03

  That's a good point, too.

• 2:09:15Speaker 04

  There's rum and Coke. Sure.

• 2:09:16David Sims?

  That's so, that's like, that's like the sugar. It's so gross.

• 2:09:19Griffin Newman?

  That's what I was gonna say. It's the same with tiki drinks where you're like, anyone who's drinking rum is combating rum with so much sugar and fruit.

• 2:09:26David Sims?

  Right. I mean, like, if I'm at poolside, I guess I'll, I'll take a rum drink.

• 2:09:31Griffin Newman?

  But do people, I'm sure the answer is someone, yes. But like, how many people sit at a bar and go like, can I have four fingers of rum neat? I mean,

• 2:09:39David Sims?

  Maybe I should. Maybe I should see what happened.

• 2:09:41Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, there's straight rum.

• 2:09:42David Sims?

  And there's like spiced rum and all that stuff. That's like, that stuff's not.

• 2:09:45Griffin Newman?

  Well, we should, of course.

• 2:09:46Speaker 04

  Should we pop over to Sunken Harbor after this?

• 2:09:48David Sims?

  They certainly, they're keeping the cardio business open.

• 2:09:53Griffin Newman?

  It's easy to go yo ho ho mode over there at the Sunken Harbor Club.

• 2:09:56David Sims?

  So then everyone gathers and it's basically, they're basically like, look, we rock, we love, you know, we love to be on the HMS Surprise, but like the ship that just beat us is a better ship. It's bigger, it's faster, it's more powerful. Like, we cannot try to like engage this ship. It's very important, I think, to this movie because it like lays out Aubrey and Matern's relationship immediately where Matern's the only one who's kind of like, I mean, pardon me, but like, are we not on something of an aged ship?

• 2:10:27Speaker 04

  Oh, boy, does Russell Crowe get mad at that?

• 2:10:30David Sims?

  It is the best, it should be Crowe's Oscar clip for the Oscar he should have won for this film, because obviously this film should have won every single Oscar, including Best Actress.

• 2:10:38Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:10:39David Sims?

  They should have given it to the Brazilian umbrella lady.

• 2:10:41Griffin Newman?

  Well, Anna Paquin, whose role is impactful, even though she doesn't speak.

• 2:10:44Speaker 04

  Or the boat, right?

• 2:10:45David Sims?

  Or the boat, yeah, the HMS Surprise, who, you know, he says, would you call me an aged man of war doctor? And Matern's like, oh, he's like, surprise is not old. No one would call her old. She has a bluff bow, lovely lines, she's a fine sea boat. I want to say all this weatherly stiff and fast, very fast if she's well handled. Then he touches it, touches the boat, says, no, she's not old. She's in her prime. It's the best line ever delivered by an actor.

• 2:11:12Griffin Newman?

  Is this your version of the he loves to pull the cork monologue?

• 2:11:16David Sims?

  Absolutely.

• 2:11:17Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:11:17David Sims?

  Just like the love, he like touches like a sort of mantle and then he kind of picks at one of the wounds.

• 2:11:23Griffin Newman?

  Well, that's the thing.

• 2:11:24David Sims?

  There's like the fireplace has been shattered.

• 2:11:26Griffin Newman?

  Hand carved mantelpiece has been, just had a fucking cannonball shoved through it.

• 2:11:32David Sims?

  But it's just that like where everyone's kind of like, I think we need to refit. I think we need to go to a port and chill out. And Aubrey's like, yeah, I mean, Matern's like, yeah, isn't this boat old? And Aubrey's like, this boat is not old and neither am I. Like, and we can do whatever we need.

• 2:11:44Speaker 04

  And he's worked on this boat for many years.

• 2:11:48David Sims?

  The, you see that he carved his name into it when he was a midshipman or whatever. And he says, his blood is in the boat.

• 2:11:54Griffin Newman?

  Or 14 or.

• 2:11:55David Sims?

  Right, right.

• 2:11:55Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:11:56David Sims?

  The idea would have been like, he's been on other boats. He's like served other commands and all that stuff. And he's, but he's come back to it because yes, he loves this boat. In the books, I believe that's how it goes. See, the HMS Surprise is his main boat. It's not the only boat. That he's on.

• 2:12:10Speaker 04

  Then.

• 2:12:10Griffin Newman?

  Oh, really? He's got a couple side boats?

• 2:12:13Speaker 04

  Yeah, that's right. Well, you know.

• 2:12:14David Sims?

  And sometimes he'll like capture a foreign boat and then he has to run that boat for a bit.

• 2:12:18Griffin Newman?

  Really?

• 2:12:19David Sims?

  Yeah, I mean, that happens in this movie where like they capture the Acheron and then James Darcy gets put in charge of it. Cause then you would just be like, now we're gonna call it the fucking HMS British sausage.

• 2:12:28Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:12:29David Sims?

  You could just change it.

• 2:12:30Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:12:31David Sims?

  And just be like, it's our boat now, bitch.

• 2:12:32Griffin Newman?

  Call it the banger.

• 2:12:33David Sims?

  Yeah, exactly. The HMS Pie and Mash.

• 2:12:36Griffin Newman?

  Should people be allowed to do that with Chipotle? Should people be allowed to do that with cars now?

• 2:12:41David Sims?

  HMS Bovril, okay, with cars. What do you mean?

• 2:12:44Griffin Newman?

  If you beat someone in a fight.

• 2:12:46David Sims?

  Get your car.

• 2:12:47Griffin Newman?

  Then you're just like.

• 2:12:48Speaker 04

  He sees the surprise.

• 2:12:49Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, and you get to call it, you get to rename it whatever you want.

• 2:12:52David Sims?

  Wouldn't people just be fighting each other all the time?

• 2:12:54Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, maybe that's better than what we have right now.

• 2:12:56David Sims?

  Is it?

• 2:12:57Griffin Newman?

  Maybe. I guess I'm just describing a Mad Max wasteland society.

• 2:13:02David Sims?

  It would be real might versus right situation would break out pretty.

• 2:13:06Griffin Newman?

  Lot of me to suggest this, the man without a driver's license. Why am I trying to will this into existence?

• 2:13:12David Sims?

  I don't know. You want all of America's bullies to get cars?

• 2:13:15Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:13:17David Sims?

  Then you have Blake Knie's arm getting amputated. Tough stuff.

• 2:13:20Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:13:21David Sims?

  But.

• 2:13:21Griffin Newman?

  You're the bravest patient I've ever had.

• 2:13:23David Sims?

  I love that. And I just love that it is routine.

• 2:13:25Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:13:26David Sims?

  It sucks, but it's like Nelson, you know, it's part of the thing why they keep talking about Nelson is Nelson didn't have one of his arms. And I think one of his leg, like Nelson.

• 2:13:33Griffin Newman?

  He got chewed up.

• 2:13:34David Sims?

  He beat Napoleon, I think with one arm and one leg and a peg leg. And then the other arm was just this, you know, the sleeve.

• 2:13:41Griffin Newman?

  No hook?

• 2:13:42David Sims?

  Maybe he had a hook for, you know, Eaton.

• 2:13:44Griffin Newman?

  I'd get a hook.

• 2:13:46David Sims?

  I would have like a fork.

• 2:13:46Speaker 04

  Not only did Nelson defeat Napoleon.

• 2:13:49David Sims?

  Yes.

• 2:13:50Speaker 04

  With one arm, but he kept the arm that had been amputated and tied it to his back.

• 2:13:56Griffin Newman?

  Is that true?

• 2:13:57Speaker 04

  So he defeated him with one arm tied behind his back.

• 2:13:59Griffin Newman?

  Okay, there we go.

• 2:14:01Speaker 04

  I'm just locked in on Ben on this one.

• 2:14:03Griffin Newman?

  He was playing it so straight the first half.

• 2:14:05Speaker 04

  Just for Ben.

• 2:14:06Griffin Newman?

  And then he gave it up with a grin as the punchline came in. But I was really buying the performance at first. I kept thinking about, uh, just because of my broken brain. Uh, Hodgman, do you remember the Steve Martin medieval barber SNL sketch?

• 2:14:19Speaker 04

  Oh, very, very vaguely.

• 2:14:20Griffin Newman?

  The Dora of York, maybe is what it's called.

• 2:14:22Speaker 04

  He had a funny haircut.

• 2:14:23Griffin Newman?

  Yes, he had a funny haircut and the bit is that no one fucking understood medicine in medieval England. And so he's the barber, but he's also the doctor and people come over and he's like, time to amputate, you know? Throw some leeches on it. It's the same four things where someone's like, I got a headache and they're like.

• 2:14:38Speaker 04

  I got the sniffles, let's amputate.

• 2:14:40Griffin Newman?

  Time to amputate. And I, I was thinking about this during this movie, but especially in this amputation scene, where I think they do such a good job of characterizing and a lot of it's in Bettany's performance as well, that this guy is a very good doctor. This is the best guy you could possibly have.

• 2:14:56Speaker 04

  I mean.

• 2:14:57Griffin Newman?

  Tending to you even at a time where so much is unknown and the technology is limited.

• 2:15:02David Sims?

  Cause Griffin, the following scene is the, the brain surgery scene. And that's when all of the, you know, the guys are gathered and they say like, he wouldn't look at you for under 10 guineas on land. Like this is, we got a real guy here. He's not some surgeon.

• 2:15:14Speaker 04

  But isn't he a vet?

• 2:15:15David Sims?

  Well, and if you should know, he's a, a naturist.

• 2:15:18Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 2:15:19David Sims?

  So he's a surgeon, but also he's very into Charles Darwin and stuff, you know, type stuff of like cataloging animals.

• 2:15:25Griffin Newman?

  Just studying, yeah, species.

• 2:15:27David Sims?

  It's a separate hobby.

• 2:15:28Speaker 04

  I don't know who he is in the books.

• 2:15:30David Sims?

  He's also like a polyglot. He speaks like every language.

• 2:15:33Speaker 04

  Yeah. The, the impression that I got from his character in the movie is that he's a naturalist and he is using this opportunity to travel the world.

• 2:15:42David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 2:15:43Speaker 04

  And to see shit and to catalog.

• 2:15:44Griffin Newman?

  And that's how he sort of earns his keep on the ship.

• 2:15:47David Sims?

  But that's the, the core tension between him and Aubrey and it comes up in the movie over is Aubrey's like, I serve the fucking king.

• 2:15:53Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:15:53David Sims?

  No, but it's like, I'm, you know, his majesty's navy. And Maturin's like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. When can I please look at more beetles? And Aubrey's like, our orders are to kill the French. And he's like, there'll always be Frenchmen to kill, but this beetle is only here.

• 2:16:09Speaker 04

  Yeah, but Maturin does also make the case that it's like, well, yeah, but

• 2:16:15Speaker 04

  maybe you shouldn't do this anyway, not just because I want to go see stick bugs and turtles.

• 2:16:20David Sims?

  There's a crucial moment in the movie that we'll get to.

• 2:16:22Speaker 04

  We're gonna get our ass.

• 2:16:22David Sims?

  Where he says, like, are you being too prideful? And that's the classic, you know, any fucking Star Trek has that too of like, there's the one guy who can say like, Captain, we all follow your rank. We'll do whatever you ask. But like, are you being, you know, you're taking this too personally?

• 2:16:37Speaker 04

  But there's a relationship between Maturin and Aubrey that is different from Kirk and Bones.

• 2:16:42David Sims?

  It's, and it's different from anyone else on this ship.

• 2:16:45Speaker 04

  They had a marriage.

• 2:16:46David Sims?

  They have a marriage. And that's when they're playing the cello and violin together. That's their, you know, that's their whatever lovemaking.

• 2:16:54Griffin Newman?

  Do you know what's really interesting about you making that comparison point? Miklas Sol.

• 2:16:59Speaker 04

  All of it?

• 2:17:00Griffin Newman?

  Yes. Miklas Sol of the San Francisco Chronicle at that time, gave this film one of its most negative reviews because it was pretty widely acclaimed. His whole angle was on his protectiveness of the books.

• 2:17:13Speaker 04

  Sure.

• 2:17:14Griffin Newman?

  And he specifically was like, by removing the Maturin spy thing or not making it deeply textual.

• 2:17:20Speaker 04

  Feminizing him, I think is, I read that review too.

• 2:17:23Griffin Newman?

  Well, even beyond that.

• 2:17:24Speaker 04

  The same conclusion, I think that you're getting at.

• 2:17:26Griffin Newman?

  This was his exact wording. Their interaction takes on a preening quality reminiscent of the interaction of the Star Trek characters four or five movies down the line.

• 2:17:38Speaker 04

  Yeah, but I took that to mean a little bit sort of like too cutesy, like when Scotty is speaking into the Macintosh mouse and he goes, computer, like that kind of.

• 2:17:48Griffin Newman?

  One of the funniest things ever happened.

• 2:17:50Speaker 04

  I know, I agree, but I just kind of feel like.

• 2:17:52David Sims?

  How does he say nuclear again? What is it?

• 2:17:54Griffin Newman?

  Oh, Jesus.

• 2:17:55David Sims?

  He says it funny.

• 2:17:56Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:17:57David Sims?

  And he doesn't matter. Don't worry about it. That is Voyage Home is a movie. I showed it to a friend recently.

• 2:18:01Griffin Newman?

  Nuclear, nuclear, it's a lot of W's. Sorry, Voyage Home.

• 2:18:06David Sims?

  No, I want to look it up now.

• 2:18:07Griffin Newman?

  Yeah. I'll look it up while you're saying.

• 2:18:08David Sims?

  No, it's right. It's nuclear vessels. It's, it's, it's vessels.

• 2:18:12Griffin Newman?

  I knew there was a W.

• 2:18:13David Sims?

  That's just one of those where you, you show it to a friend who's like seen Star Trek, but maybe not it. And you're like, and they're like, and what's this one about? And I'm like, oh, there's some Klingons. Oh, there is? Well, actually, no, not really. They're on a Klingon ship. What do they have to do? They travel through time. Oh, okay. To fight Klingons, fight. Well, you have to save the whales.

• 2:18:28Griffin Newman?

  Meet a lady and save some whales.

• 2:18:30Speaker 04

  But mainly, we just gotta get these characters back to vibe with each other. And that's about the end of the movie. Like, you know?

• 2:18:35Griffin Newman?

  I mean, we did these on Patreon, Deepest, Darkest Pandemic, but it is fascinating to look at the box office spike on four. Because it was the one movie where they could just market it and be like, you don't need to have seen any fucking Star Trek.

• 2:18:47David Sims?

  Totally.

• 2:18:47Griffin Newman?

  You get it. You know, the cultural osmosis of these characters.

• 2:18:50David Sims?

  And you get a fish out of water thing.

• 2:18:51Griffin Newman?

  And if they show up in San Francisco in the 80s comedies and comedy.

• 2:18:54Speaker 04

  Semi literally fish out of water.

• 2:18:56Griffin Newman?

  They'll pull that whale up. This is true.

• 2:18:59David Sims?

  Okay. So you see, like, there's all this stuff that you have to watch the movie a million times to really care about. But like, when they start playing the violin and cello for the first time, that's, the ship has been healed. You see Kilik also cooking. He's making these like kind of grilled cheesy things. Look really nice.

• 2:19:13Speaker 04

  They look really good. He's got that shafing dish.

• 2:19:15David Sims?

  Right. And he goes like, they go scrape, scrape, scrape, you know, but like that to me is like, like basically him acknowledging like, all right, they've made up like there. And then the boat is, the boat is, the sails are fixed. The boat starts moving again.

• 2:19:29Speaker 04

  The statue is repaired.

• 2:19:30David Sims?

  Their statue is repaired. Blake, he, he gives, he survived the amputation. He gives in the book with the Nelson stuff. And he's like, I fought in one of these, you know?

• 2:19:39Speaker 04

  Order has been restored.

• 2:19:40David Sims?

  Right. And you see Aubrey writing a letter to his bride, fiance, Josephine, you know, like somebody.

• 2:19:47Griffin Newman?

  They both have.

• 2:19:47David Sims?

  You see a little, like, they both got ladies.

• 2:19:49Griffin Newman?

  Core ongoing love interest in the book.

• 2:19:51David Sims?

  Right. You know, you see a little picture.

• 2:19:53Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:19:54David Sims?

  It's not really remarked upon after that. That's when the boys come in and say, we saw the astronaut being built. We've knocked together a little model for you.

• 2:20:01Speaker 04

  And what a knocked together model that is.

• 2:20:03David Sims?

  It is pretty good. They get an extra astronaut for that.

• 2:20:06Speaker 04

  Even though it was intended for Salute and Day.

• 2:20:08Griffin Newman?

  That's right.

• 2:20:09David Sims?

  We'll drink wine for Salute and Day.

• 2:20:11Speaker 04

  We'll drink wine.

• 2:20:12Griffin Newman?

  Do you guys have Salute and Day plans this year? Or do you try to just kind of play it by ear?

• 2:20:17Speaker 04

  I've stocked up rum because I don't want to have to drink wine again.

• 2:20:19David Sims?

  What if Trump was like, we're bringing back saluting day. Not enough saluting in America these days.

• 2:20:24Griffin Newman?

  David, the chances, and we're not recording this episode very far in advance. The chances that will happen before this episode is released, 50 50.

• 2:20:31David Sims?

  Just saw Mastering Group, why aren't they saluting all the time?

• 2:20:35Speaker 04

  We're gonna make oceans battle.

• 2:20:36David Sims?

  This is when the film's incredibly compelling, Oscar winning actress, lady with umbrella makes her appearance.

• 2:20:42Griffin Newman?

  Woman. This movie has woman. We all ask, who is woman?

• 2:20:45David Sims?

  That really awesome. It is a cool sequence though, where it's like, right, they're kind of in paradise. Like they're in South America. People are like paddling up and trading like mangoes.

• 2:20:54Speaker 04

  They're off the coast of Brazil.

• 2:20:56David Sims?

  Um, like I would be 100% Ben, you would do this. You would buy a monkey.

• 2:21:02Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:21:02David Sims?

  Right? Like some trader comes up and he's like, I got, I would have been like, how much for the monkey?

• 2:21:05Griffin Newman?

  Definitely.

• 2:21:06David Sims?

  I'll give you, you know, what do you want? Like a bag of rice? Like, what, you know, what have we got around here? Whatever. What they?

• 2:21:11Speaker 04

  He has a little vest, right? Cause monkeys have little vests.

• 2:21:14David Sims?

  Give him a little vest.

• 2:21:15Griffin Newman?

  This might've been pre vest for monkeys.

• 2:21:17Speaker 04

  That's the story of the, you know, the bounty, right? The HMS bounty is like, they reach, they reach the South Pacific island. They're like, what the fuck are we doing on this boat? Like we are so, and you know, we are so far away from everything we know of civilization. Why should we continue to follow these horrible rules and be flogged? And that's the other reason that there were Royal Marines on the boat too, which was to prevent mutinies.

• 2:21:39David Sims?

  Ben sent us, there were six saluting days a year, at least at this time, it seems, for the Queen's birthday. To, to mark the restoration. So the King Charles the second, so the, the, you know, the resumption of the British monarchy. The King's birthday, to mark the King's coronation. Jesus. To mark the King's accession.

• 2:21:58Griffin Newman?

  Jesus.

• 2:21:59David Sims?

  And then just for November the 5th, remember, remember the 5th of November.

• 2:22:02Griffin Newman?

  Gunpowder plot.

• 2:22:03David Sims?

  Yeah. After this, after the trading, you have, in my opinion, the greatest sequence in any film ever shot, except for it's tied with all the other sequences in this film. Right? Tied to number one, to wives and sweethearts, may they never meet. It's the dinner. They're having dinner. Just, just, just, what movie does this?

• 2:22:21Griffin Newman?

  A lesser of two.

• 2:22:22David Sims?

  A dinner scene? Every, just, oh, it's like-

• 2:22:24Speaker 04

  My Dinner with Andre.

• 2:22:26David Sims?

  True.

• 2:22:27Griffin Newman?

  Mouse Hunt actually has, cause he's a chef, there's a good amount of-

• 2:22:30David Sims?

  Well, that's a pretty gross dinner, there's a cockroach in it.

• 2:22:32Griffin Newman?

  This, Jeff, you rewatched Mouse Hunt recently?

• 2:22:34David Sims?

  Not recently, but I remember, that scene is burned on my brain, cause as a kid, I was so grossed out by it.

• 2:22:38Griffin Newman?

  Wow.

• 2:22:39David Sims?

  It's good, I mean-

• 2:22:39Griffin Newman?

  It's a great sequence, yes, you're right, that's kind of a nightmare dinner.

• 2:22:42Speaker 04

  Green Card too, with BB Newhurst.

• 2:22:44David Sims?

  Well, we definitely have seen Green Card-

• 2:22:46Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, that's a really good dinner scene.

• 2:22:47David Sims?

  That's a Peter Weir movie.

• 2:22:47Speaker 04

  That's what I'm saying.

• 2:22:48David Sims?

  Oh, right.

• 2:22:48Speaker 04

  I'm just saying.

• 2:22:49Griffin Newman?

  Discreet charm of the boardroom.

• 2:22:49Speaker 04

  No, there is something very beautiful about this dinner scene.

• 2:22:52David Sims?

  Just, just beautiful about this movie. They have a big battle sequence, then they play the cello and the violin, and then I feel like Hollywood would be like, alright, can there be a sword fight or something? He's like, no, shush, they're gonna tell jokes at dinner.

• 2:23:05Griffin Newman?

  Aubrey's gonna make a Chekhov joke.

• 2:23:06David Sims?

  Exactly.

• 2:23:08Speaker 04

  Well, I mean, I think it also speaks to the fact that in their, their, the pace of their lives was very different than we could ever possibly imagine now, which was, there's a lot of time sitting around.

• 2:23:18Griffin Newman?

  They can't even binge watch.

• 2:23:19David Sims?

  They can't, they can't Netflix and chill at all.

• 2:23:22Griffin Newman?

  They don't have a single streaming service.

• 2:23:23David Sims?

  No, wait, wait.

• 2:23:25Griffin Newman?

  They don't-

• 2:23:25David Sims?

  Well, no, no, no, Peacock?

• 2:23:26Griffin Newman?

  No, they don't have Peacock. They don't even have Peacock with ads. They couldn't even dream of getting the supersized fan edition episodes of The Office.

• 2:23:34Speaker 04

  Can they watch Dick Town on Hulu?

• 2:23:35Griffin Newman?

  No, John, no, it's still available.

• 2:23:38David Sims?

  On land, they could, right?

• 2:23:41Griffin Newman?

  I hate to tell you this, they couldn't, and this is, this is gonna scare you even more.

• 2:23:46Speaker 04

  What's that?

• 2:23:47Griffin Newman?

  They didn't have the option to read or listen to Vacation Land in any format, not even in paperback. Not even in paperback, not even hardback, no, David, they didn't have hardback, they didn't have fucking medallion status.

• 2:23:59Speaker 04

  What about the audiobook?

• 2:24:00Griffin Newman?

  No, that's why I said, or listen to.

• 2:24:03David Sims?

  But what if they opened a time tunnel and John read them the book through the time tunnel?

• 2:24:07Griffin Newman?

  They'd be thrilled.

• 2:24:08Speaker 04

  Why do you think I was out on that schooner, looking for a time tunnel?

• 2:24:11David Sims?

  Uh, this is when the youngest, you know, cause like, basically, it's like-

• 2:24:15Speaker 04

  The hold was packed with copies of Vacation Land in paperback.

• 2:24:17David Sims?

  Aubrey said to Blakeney, I served with Nelson, right? So then the second youngest boy, you know, I forget his name.

• 2:24:24Speaker 04

  Callum.

• 2:24:25David Sims?

  Uh, is like, can you please tell me about that? And, uh, I just think Crow rocks this so hard. The way he like, you know, says, like, the first time he spoke to me, I'll never forget his words. And he said, you know, he like builds it up and he says, he leans across the table and he says- Could I trouble you for the butter or whatever?

• 2:24:44Griffin Newman?

  The salt.

• 2:24:45David Sims?

  The salt. Yeah. Aubrey, may I trouble you for the salt? It's so funny. They all love it. I love it. I'm sitting here laughing.

• 2:24:52Speaker 04

  I'm gonna say something.

• 2:24:53David Sims?

  The day I'm on, she's probably like, you know, put a blanket on. She's just got that sleeping cap. She's asleep. I'm fucking Nelson in The Simpsons, watching Hank Williams, right?

• 2:25:04Griffin Newman?

  I do genuinely love how long of a walk it is to Lesser of Two Weevils.

• 2:25:08David Sims?

  It's such a long walk because then he tells the serious Nelson story about like, how Nelson said like the zeal of, you know, service kept him warm on a cold night. And you see Maturen going like, give me a fucking break. And he's like, I know, I know. It sounds absurd, you know, from another man, you would call it pitiful stuff, but like with him, I believed it.

• 2:25:26Griffin Newman?

  Hey, you know what? To Nelson.

• 2:25:28Speaker 04

  To Nelson.

• 2:25:28David Sims?

  To Nelson. Horatio Nelson, the greatest.

• 2:25:30Griffin Newman?

  Hodge, I feel like you were about to say.

• 2:25:31Speaker 04

  Well, I was just gonna say the Lesser of Two Weevils joke deserves its own conversation.

• 2:25:35David Sims?

  And then he's like.

• 2:25:37Speaker 04

  That's a long walk.

• 2:25:38David Sims?

  Then he's like, weevils.

• 2:25:39Speaker 04

  In the style of Two Jarvis's.

• 2:25:42David Sims?

  And Maturen's like, they're the same. They're a fucking weevil.

• 2:25:45Griffin Newman?

  He's a friggin dork who loves animals.

• 2:25:48David Sims?

  He gives the Latin name for them. He's like, you have to choose.

• 2:25:51Speaker 04

  Curly Q.

• 2:25:53David Sims?

  Curcule. Yes. And then, and then Maturen puts on his legendary, country little glasses. Perhaps the countryest little glasses ever worn in a movie ever.

• 2:26:02Griffin Newman?

  He originates.

• 2:26:03David Sims?

  He might have. They're so small. They're like comically tiny.

• 2:26:07Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:26:08David Sims?

  They're so good. And he's like, I'll.

• 2:26:11Speaker 04

  Mine gets small.

• 2:26:12David Sims?

  I picked the big one. And it's, I mean, the way, if you watch Crow, this scene should be just studied second by second.

• 2:26:20Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:26:21David Sims?

  Is laughing like, because he's like, I've got, he turns to someone, he's, and then he's like, there I have you. You're completely dished. I should say that to you all the time.

• 2:26:30Speaker 04

  Completely dish.

• 2:26:31David Sims?

  Can I ask? Not owing the service, you must, one must always choose.

• 2:26:34Griffin Newman?

  May I ask for something from our community of listeners?

• 2:26:36David Sims?

  Of course.

• 2:26:37Griffin Newman?

  Can someone please make a supercut of this Lesser of Two Weevil scene with the crowd response from Bernie Mac's Def Jam?

• 2:26:44David Sims?

  It's, I mean, everyone also does freak out.

• 2:26:47Speaker 04

  Cut it into when, when Anthony Mackie shows up in Endgame.

• 2:26:53Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 2:26:53Speaker 04

  You know, when everyone starts, when he says Avengers assemble or whatever.

• 2:26:55Griffin Newman?

  I want the raucous laughter. When he puts the glasses on, they start tittering, but it doesn't explode until, don't you know, we must always choose the lesser of two weevils. What is the preparation on these weevils? They just live in the ship's biscuits.

• 2:27:10David Sims?

  Yeah, they're in the biscuits.

• 2:27:11Griffin Newman?

  Sure.

• 2:27:12David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 2:27:12Speaker 04

  They're not being served as food. Is that what you mean?

• 2:27:15Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, yes. The biscuits, I guess, are what I'm kind of fixated.

• 2:27:19Speaker 04

  The hard tack?

• 2:27:19Griffin Newman?

  Yes. Tell me about this.

• 2:27:21Speaker 04

  It's basically flour and water and salt and it's dehydrated and it lasts forever.

• 2:27:26Griffin Newman?

  It looks aggressive.

• 2:27:27David Sims?

  A big fry.

• 2:27:28Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:27:28David Sims?

  I would say hard tack. I've never had hard tack. I feel like sometimes if you go to those like naval museums or whatever, they'll be like, you can try hard tack. Have you ever had hard tack?

• 2:27:38Speaker 04

  I've never had hard tack.

• 2:27:39David Sims?

  It kind of makes matzah look, you know, like very moist. Yeah, you know what I mean?

• 2:27:45Speaker 04

  I hear it's a little more palatable when topped with some weevils.

• 2:27:49Griffin Newman?

  Oh, sure.

• 2:27:49Speaker 04

  And then soaked in some rum.

• 2:27:51Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:27:51Speaker 04

  I share your admiration for this scene, David, and I would say if I were Peter Weir watching Russell Crowe's performance, I would say to myself, I'm glad Richard Burton's dead.

• 2:28:03David Sims?

  A hundred percent. Yes.

• 2:28:04Speaker 04

  I don't think Richard Burton.

• 2:28:06David Sims?

  I love Richard Burton. Yes, I mean, I mean, I've seen many, but he's good. He doesn't quite have the humor like.

• 2:28:12Speaker 04

  He doesn't have the humor.

• 2:28:13David Sims?

  Crowe is such a sweetie in this movie, but not in a way that feels like too cutesy or anything.

• 2:28:18Griffin Newman?

  Do you know what else I would say if I were watching this scene be shot? I'd say, Jesus cock, that's a hot hard tack.

• 2:28:23Speaker 04

  Hey, thanks for the callbacks.

• 2:28:24Griffin Newman?

  You're welcome.

• 2:28:25Speaker 04

  I mean, he's, the humor is exactly right and the warmth and the, and the childishness.

• 2:28:30Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 2:28:31Speaker 04

  He's a 40 year old man, which is old at the time.

• 2:28:33David Sims?

  A bunch of boys.

• 2:28:34Speaker 04

  But he's still a child.

• 2:28:35Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, he's a troop leader.

• 2:28:37David Sims?

  All he do is fucking hang out. These boys, they gotta entertain each other with evil jokes.

• 2:28:41Griffin Newman?

  All they do is fucking hang out. They don't fuck and hang out.

• 2:28:44David Sims?

  No.

• 2:28:45Griffin Newman?

  There's.

• 2:28:45Speaker 04

  Well, wait a minute.

• 2:28:47David Sims?

  I think they did a lot of that. I mean, famously, so Nelson died at the Battle of Trafalgar. He was shot by a sniper.

• 2:28:52Speaker 04

  He was, oh, I thought he was fucking.

• 2:28:54David Sims?

  Well, famously, maybe you don't know this, his last words were kismet, Alfred. Kismet, of course, being the word for, you know.

• 2:29:01Speaker 04

  Love.

• 2:29:03David Sims?

  More fate, I would say.

• 2:29:04Speaker 04

  Right. Fated love.

• 2:29:06David Sims?

  But most people think that he actually, sorry, not Alfred Hardy. I had, that's what I was double checking. Hardy, he was, he was talking to Captain Thomas Hardy. Most people think he said, kiss me, Hardy.

• 2:29:18Griffin Newman?

  Hmm.

• 2:29:19Speaker 04

  Oh.

• 2:29:20David Sims?

  And that.

• 2:29:20Speaker 04

  That's why Alfred was so mad because he wanted to kiss him?

• 2:29:23David Sims?

  No, that like that the words got changed to kismet because at the time no one wanted to acknowledge that of course all these men have.

• 2:29:29Speaker 04

  Well, you know, I was thinking.

• 2:29:30David Sims?

  Very like these, these relationships.

• 2:29:32Speaker 04

  Whether we're or someone put in the picture of that moment when, when Aubrey is writing to his female acquaintance and they show the picture just to sort of in a backward way, tell the audience, don't worry, this guy's not gay. Their relationship with his relationship with Maturin is not a real marriage. It's a sea marriage, but sea marriages were real and they were often quite intimate. And again, it speaks to the isolation of the wooden world that they were in because they were beyond. This is why there were so many superstitions because it was so dangerous to be on board. But also you were moving, I just read a little novel called Moby Dick.

• 2:30:14David Sims?

  Sure.

• 2:30:15Speaker 04

  And that.

• 2:30:15David Sims?

  It's pretty good.

• 2:30:15Speaker 04

  That novel really conveys how the crew of the Pequod, which is a much smaller crew because they don't have gunners on it. It's a whaling boat and they'll be out for years and they are so far beyond the reach of civilization. They're outside of the eyes of God and they become a society that is completely different. And so all kinds of taboos on land were, were broken at necessity or pleasure, whether it was cannibalism or male intimacy or whatever.

• 2:30:43David Sims?

  Imagine, yeah, you're sleeping in a hammock.

• 2:30:45Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:30:46David Sims?

  With 40 other guys.

• 2:30:48Speaker 04

  Cool.

• 2:30:48David Sims?

  Having a jacket. This sucks.

• 2:30:51Griffin Newman?

  Do you think they just had like a jacket corner?

• 2:30:53David Sims?

  Jack and booth.

• 2:30:54Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:30:54David Sims?

  I would hate to be the bottom bunk.

• 2:30:56Speaker 04

  Yeah, they called it the head.

• 2:30:57David Sims?

  Or hate to be like the, the 24th guy in the Jack and booth that night.

• 2:31:01Griffin Newman?

  Oh, sure.

• 2:31:01David Sims?

  It's like waiting your turn to go in the Jack and booth.

• 2:31:03Griffin Newman?

  The booth is like filled to the brim.

• 2:31:05David Sims?

  Come on, aim out to the sea, Jesus. Fill it. Have a little window or something. I don't know.

• 2:31:12Griffin Newman?

  Go Mitch style, you know?

• 2:31:14David Sims?

  Into the shower.

• 2:31:15Speaker 04

  Yeah. And I think that the, and I think the clear marriage that is very coded, you know, sort of.

• 2:31:22Speaker 04

  Hyper traditionally hetero normatively, you know, husband and wife between the two of them.

• 2:31:27Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:31:29Speaker 04

  Aubrey's the warrior and Maturin's the caring nurturer of the sun and blah, blah, blah. I think it could have made a, if not the Chronicle reviewer, but other reviewers, a little confused and uneasy. And I'm not saying that that's a reaction that I had or think, but it came into focus a little bit more like why those, some of the people who love the books be like, you gotta have that guy do his spycraft. Cause otherwise he just seems like a nagging wife.

• 2:31:54Griffin Newman?

  And I need to know that he docks and when he docks, he docks.

• 2:31:58Speaker 04

  Right. Exactly. But I think it's such a beautifully portrayed relationship.

• 2:32:02Griffin Newman?

  I agree.

• 2:32:02Speaker 04

  Of, of friendship and something deeper than friendship.

• 2:32:05Griffin Newman?

  I mean, you just invoked a, a great novel that you've been reading and how it.

• 2:32:10Speaker 04

  Dune Messiah?

• 2:32:12Griffin Newman?

  Well, I, Moby Dick is the one specifically I was talking about. And, and how it kind of illustrates the way these ships become their own contained worlds where the rules of social interaction are rewritten. It reminds me of another serious sober work of seafaring that I look to often, Muppet Treasure Island, in which they are on the ship for so long, they catch cabin fever.

• 2:32:34Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:32:34Griffin Newman?

  And it forces them to do like a kind of flamenco number. They all suddenly get like.

• 2:32:40David Sims?

  That is what I saw in theaters.

• 2:32:42Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:32:42David Sims?

  I don't think I've seen since.

• 2:32:44Griffin Newman?

  Great movie.

• 2:32:44David Sims?

  I do remember the cabin fever number.

• 2:32:46Speaker 04

  I'm sorry. I can't play with you on this road to two weevils that you're taking me on.

• 2:32:51David Sims?

  Are you gonna be left out of shipping or ship related movies? Cabin Boy.

• 2:32:58Speaker 04

  Another example.

• 2:32:59David Sims?

  A highly realistic film.

• 2:33:00Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:33:01David Sims?

  They capture it.

• 2:33:03Griffin Newman?

  We're studied a lot.

• 2:33:04Speaker 04

  In addition to the like 12, 13 year old officer cadets that were the midshipmen, they also had literal boys.

• 2:33:12Griffin Newman?

  Well, that's the joke of Cabin Boy, much like Get a Life is like, what if an adult man was doing this thing?

• 2:33:17Speaker 04

  Right. You didn't see them in this though, I don't think.

• 2:33:20Griffin Newman?

  No. Sims, what were you about to ask?

• 2:33:21David Sims?

  Can't remember. The Akron surprises them. It's fine.

• 2:33:26David Sims?

  And, uh, you know, so they, they get sent to sort of, you know, ambush in a way.

• 2:33:31Speaker 04

  Surprise is surprise.

• 2:33:32David Sims?

  He doesn't like that, but then they, they pull the whole maneuver.

• 2:33:35Speaker 04

  French means irony.

• 2:33:37David Sims?

  No, it doesn't.

• 2:33:37Speaker 04

  No.

• 2:33:38David Sims?

  The Asherons like the river of woe or whatever. It's like from antiquity. I don't know. You know, but then like, then they kind of maneuver around. They do the thing where they, they put the little fake boat out.

• 2:33:50Griffin Newman?

  They create the illusion with, with like a miniature version, but using the lantern.

• 2:33:55David Sims?

  Right.

• 2:33:56Speaker 04

  Because even though, even though they're separated by great distance.

• 2:33:59David Sims?

  Right.

• 2:34:00Griffin Newman?

  Yep.

• 2:34:00Speaker 04

  And even though they're both moving probably at about 10 miles per hour would be the top speed that they could get. 10 knots, 11 miles per hour.

• 2:34:09David Sims?

  They get up to 12.

• 2:34:09Speaker 04

  They're inexorably gonna catch up. The Asheran has longer guns that can shoot farther.

• 2:34:14David Sims?

  Right.

• 2:34:15Speaker 04

  And so they're gonna die until Aubrey has the smart idea. What if we pretend that the, the poop deck is actually further back than it is?

• 2:34:23David Sims?

  Good shit.

• 2:34:24Speaker 04

  That's good shit from the poop deck.

• 2:34:26David Sims?

  And then they catch them. Then they have them. Then they have the drop on the Asheran and they're gonna get them, but they get, then the storm happens, which like, I guess this is the other major action sequence of the movie and it is awesome and super intense. It just has no gun work. It's all waves.

• 2:34:41Griffin Newman?

  And also to your earlier point, this movie doesn't have a villain.

• 2:34:46David Sims?

  No.

• 2:34:46Griffin Newman?

  Even in like an abstracted way, a sense of like, I gotta get revenge on this guy.

• 2:34:50David Sims?

  Which I love.

• 2:34:51Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 2:34:52David Sims?

  Because that's life. It's like, they wouldn't really know who are on these ships. I mean, I do like that Aubrey has that moment where he's like, did I kill this guy's kid or something like, why does he hate me?

• 2:35:01Griffin Newman?

  Sure.

• 2:35:02David Sims?

  But like, but he's obviously just imagining. He's like, I don't know.

• 2:35:05Speaker 04

  To me, you're saying people were complaining or nervous about the fact that there wasn't an antagonist. And what makes this movie special is that the antagonist is a complete mystery.

• 2:35:15David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 2:35:16Speaker 04

  And it's like, it's, it's accurate to like the idea.

• 2:35:19David Sims?

  There's a bit of a.

• 2:35:19Speaker 04

  Obviously there's a big twist at the end.

• 2:35:21David Sims?

  There's a nice, well, I would say it's a little twist. It's a saucy little twist.

• 2:35:24Speaker 04

  It's a saucy, it's a cheeky little.

• 2:35:25David Sims?

  Zesty twist.

• 2:35:26Speaker 04

  It's a cheeky little twist. It's a soused head cheese of a twist.

• 2:35:29David Sims?

  There's this moment, uh, which it is how Sals talks, face her. There's a moment where a maturen says like, he fights like you, Jack. A kind of like, you're not so different moment. Right? But obviously like when they're, they're pursuing him, the storm gets them. They have to give up because they had like, the fucking mask gets drawn. You know, like they have to cut the mast off because it's like turning into an anchor. There's the whole sequence there.

• 2:35:51Speaker 04

  Right.

• 2:35:52David Sims?

  You know what I'm talking about.

• 2:35:52Speaker 04

  Well, yeah, because the, all right.

• 2:35:55David Sims?

  Well, that's where we're at.

• 2:35:56Speaker 04

  I know. Okay.

• 2:35:57David Sims?

  The guy dies. He can't swim back.

• 2:35:59Speaker 04

  Yeah. What's his name again?

• 2:36:00David Sims?

  Can't remember.

• 2:36:00Speaker 04

  Rawley or something? He's that beautiful guy. He's one of the two guys who pop in and get the extra rations of rum for showing the, the model of the Asheron. And he is, he is in charge of the, of the top mizzen mast.

• 2:36:13David Sims?

  Yes. You see the other, it's Warley, I think is his name.

• 2:36:16Speaker 04

  Warley.

• 2:36:16David Sims?

  You see the other guy crying and like putting away his stuff and all that.

• 2:36:20Speaker 04

  But so Ben, the top mizzen mast. So there are three masts on this boat. It's a three masted sailing ship, square rigged, not fore and aft, Ben. It only really gets speed when it's direct, the wind is directly behind you. And their first mast is the foremast, the, the, the middle mast is the main mast. The aftmost mast is the mizzen mast. He's on the top mizzen mast. He's standing on what's called the fighting top. Or maybe he's talking on the, the cross rails, but he's on a platform way up there. And he's trying to bring in the sail because that sail is how you move the ship. But in bad winds, that becomes dangerous. And he can't get it up, so to speak. And that's why Halle has to climb up and help him and fails to do so.

• 2:37:04Speaker 03

  And does he, is he kind of, he's cowardly. Does he sabotage and really actually lead to that, that sailor's death?

• 2:37:13David Sims?

  He thinks he's responsible. I guess so. I mean, he didn't sap, like, he should have been up there, right?

• 2:37:19Speaker 04

  Scared to get up there. And you know what? It's scary.

• 2:37:22David Sims?

  It's fucking scary. I wouldn't go up there.

• 2:37:23Speaker 04

  I have not, I did not.

• 2:37:24David Sims?

  This is how quickly I wash out of the British Navy. They're like, all right, welcome. You're the fourth son of some lord. I'm like, hello. And they're like, go up that thing. And I'm like, I'm not going up there. What are you talking about?

• 2:37:32Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:37:33David Sims?

  Do you have like a chair I can sit in?

• 2:37:34Speaker 04

  I mean, conceivably, if he had gotten up there, he would have, he would have been able to help. What's his name again? Warley?

• 2:37:41David Sims?

  Yeah, sure.

• 2:37:41Speaker 04

  Help Warley furl, get, you know, get rid of that sail. And so the wind couldn't take it and pull the mast apart, which is what ends up happening.

• 2:37:49David Sims?

  The mast off. So after that is when Matern sits down with Aubrey and is like, are you, are you being too intense?

• 2:37:55Speaker 04

  Can I tell Ben one more thing about the mast?

• 2:37:57David Sims?

  Yes.

• 2:37:57Speaker 03

  That's a really good instinct, by the way, to deliver all this to Ben. I think it's really smart.

• 2:38:01Speaker 04

  Thank you.

• 2:38:02David Sims?

  It's like you're trying to sell Ben on going on a boat.

• 2:38:05Speaker 04

  Well, he may be the only one of the two, the three of you that I could probably, no question. press gang into coming to Maine because you've got these children and you've got this life. You've got a life. Do I? Do I though?

• 2:38:17David Sims?

  But I'm up that way often.

• 2:38:19Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:38:19David Sims?

  Yeah, with my wife's family.

• 2:38:20Speaker 04

  There we go.

• 2:38:21Griffin Newman?

  This is true.

• 2:38:21Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:38:22Griffin Newman?

  I would love to come visit you. The boat, the boats may be the bigger ass.

• 2:38:24Speaker 04

  You climb up to climb up, you climb up, you know, that thing that looks like a ladder that's, you know, so the mast is held up and held in place by stays. So two long lines that go from the top to the, to the front and back to the stern and the bow, and then shrouds, which are lines that come down to the sides. That's how it stays up in tension. And the, and the shrouds on the sides are, they have ladders built into them called rat lines because you climb up like a little rat. And then you get to the fighting top, which is a platform about two thirds up the way of the mast where the sharp shooters would stand and shoot. But to get onto that platform, you have to climb around it. And sometimes the boat is tipped over and you're basically upside down. It's really dangerous. There's a trap door to go

• 2:39:05Speaker 04

  through more safely, which is called the lubbers hole. And if you climb through that.

• 2:39:10David Sims?

  Right.

• 2:39:10Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, I'm definitely.

• 2:39:11David Sims?

  I mean, I like boats. I like being on the water. I'm not opposed. It's just, I'm more of a sort of like, everyone else do that. Is there, where's the, you know, portable DVD player, you know?

• 2:39:21Griffin Newman?

  Right. I would say I do not like being on boats and I do like portable.

• 2:39:24David Sims?

  There's a reason. I could make drinks for people.

• 2:39:26Speaker 04

  Yeah, that's why, that's why Kilik, Kilik is his name. The, yeah, that's why he's one of your favorite characters, right?

• 2:39:31David Sims?

  I fucking love that guy.

• 2:39:32Speaker 04

  A very specific job.

• 2:39:33David Sims?

  He likes grilled cheese and sous house hog space and all that. So then like, Maturin calls Aubrey out. Aubrey admits, like, I have at this point exceeded my orders. My orders were to try to catch the thing off the coast of Brazil. We've, you know, we've been chasing it longer than I need to.

• 2:39:48Speaker 04

  And they're faster too. And they're gonna, and they're gonna make it around the Cape to the Pacific.

• 2:39:52David Sims?

  So then he's like, all right, you know what? Kilik, make a delicious map of the Galapagos Islands out of jelly or whatever the fuck. What is it? Who knows?

• 2:40:01Speaker 04

  Yeah. I mean, it's some kind of astic.

• 2:40:03David Sims?

  Boiled jellies.

• 2:40:03Speaker 04

  Yeah, it's like a jelly.

• 2:40:05David Sims?

  And essentially it's like, we're, we can go to the Galapagos Islands. We have a whaling fleet there. I think the French will be heading there anyway. We can try to regroup and good news to you, Mr. Maturin. Maybe you can look at some animals.

• 2:40:17Griffin Newman?

  That's all.

• 2:40:18David Sims?

  Galapagos Islands.

• 2:40:18Griffin Newman?

  That's why he's in the business.

• 2:40:19David Sims?

  There's penguins and shit.

• 2:40:21Speaker 04

  This is alluded to in the movie. But I'll ask Ben, do you know why whaling ships? And? And ships of the line and warships love to go to the Galapagos.

• 2:40:36Griffin Newman?

  Something to do with the stream?

• 2:40:37Speaker 04

  Well, you could get fresh water there for sure. You could re-provision there.

• 2:40:40Griffin Newman?

  Or I guess I'm saying the like, the stream of the ocean.

• 2:40:43Speaker 04

  No, they wanted to go, there, there, there's a specific reason, which is, um, tortoises. Tortoises were good food on these ships.

• 2:40:52Griffin Newman?

  Oh, sure.

• 2:40:52Speaker 04

  Yeah, because you could, you could keep, you could take a bunch of tortoises off an island.

• 2:40:57Griffin Newman?

  I guess they don't spoil.

• 2:40:58Speaker 04

  They don't spoil and they don't drink water and they don't eat.

• 2:41:01Griffin Newman?

  Okay.

• 2:41:02Speaker 04

  And so unlike that goat and cow you have on board.

• 2:41:05Griffin Newman?

  Got it.

• 2:41:05Speaker 04

  For milk, you saw that in the table setting in the beginning, you could take a stack of tortoises and put them down there and just kill them as you, as you went.

• 2:41:14Griffin Newman?

  And they're kind of fun. They're like funny. More that they're just less annoying to.

• 2:41:19Speaker 04

  I personally.

• 2:41:20Griffin Newman?

  They didn't eat up your resources.

• 2:41:21David Sims?

  I personally think that hundred year old tortoises taste great, but that's just kind of my taste. And I think I should be allowed to eat as many as I want.

• 2:41:28Griffin Newman?

  Soup. That's why you're constantly.

• 2:41:30David Sims?

  It's nasty. But no, no, it's true. You're right. I mean, look, they were.

• 2:41:33Speaker 04

  That's why, that's why the whaling fleet would go by there.

• 2:41:36David Sims?

  They were not ecologically conscious.

• 2:41:37Speaker 04

  And then the privateers would, were going after the whaling fleet because they were packed up with very, very valuable sperm.

• 2:41:45David Sims?

  So this is the moment, I already alluded to it, they're about, like, Maturo is dolled up. He's got his housecoat. He's got his straw hat. He's got his little like.

• 2:41:54Speaker 04

  Have you ever dressed like that for Halloween?

• 2:41:56David Sims?

  Uh, no, I probably should, although I think I might just be, you know, escorted to an insane.

• 2:42:01Griffin Newman?

  Weirdly, David does dress like that for sleep. Those are his versions of pajamas.

• 2:42:05Speaker 04

  The birds. I want to see those chops.

• 2:42:08Griffin Newman?

  Baby.

• 2:42:09David Sims?

  And they pick up some guys, right? Who are like, you know, who have information, right? Like they.

• 2:42:14Speaker 04

  They're whalers. They're, they're the survivors of a whaling ship that was captured by the Asharon, the albatross.

• 2:42:20David Sims?

  And Jack's like, we gotta fucking go. Let's go get it. And they have this fight, which I really like because like, Maturo's sort of right of like, you're, you know, you're, you're too crazy. You know, you're, you're, you're too obsessed with the Acheron and we don't need to do this. But Maturo's also totally selfishly like, I want to stay on the Galapagos Islands. I want to look at penguins and stuff. And it's very emotional and well played. It is mature and kind of, it, he does kind of act like his wife is yelling at him. Like it is kind of the vibe where he's like,

• 2:42:54David Sims?

  you know, duty, please, you know, we must. Um, and so, uh, that's, but he does get to, oh, right, right, right. That's when Blake knee gets in the beetle. He's like, if nothing else, I found a cool beetle. Can we like catalog?

• 2:43:06Speaker 04

  And that's sort of the beginning of their bond.

• 2:43:08David Sims?

  Yes.

• 2:43:09Speaker 03

  I like all the, uh, shots where it's the perspective of the telescope.

• 2:43:15David Sims?

  Yes.

• 2:43:16Speaker 03

  And seeing the different animals. And the discovery of the iguana that can swim. The way that all just plays out, basically alluding to evolution.

• 2:43:27Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:43:27Speaker 03

  It's awesome.

• 2:43:28David Sims?

  Right. And the iguanas, the swimming iguana where he's like, they don't swim all these fucking iguanas.

• 2:43:32Speaker 04

  I think it's one of the few non documentary films to ever shoot at the Galapagos.

• 2:43:38David Sims?

  Indeed, they shot at the Galapagos, which have a very weird terrain.

• 2:43:41Speaker 04

  Well, David, I wouldn't know, cause I've only ever seen it in the movies. And this is like, oh yeah, remember when the movies used to take you places?

• 2:43:47David Sims?

  Yeah, it's true. Well, maybe we should go.

• 2:43:51Speaker 04

  Wait, you can't come to Maine and now you're pitching a Galapagos expedition?

• 2:43:55David Sims?

  Well, we can go to Maine, get on your boat, sail to the Galapagos. Where are they? You know, you gotta go all the way around America, the continent.

• 2:44:02Speaker 04

  You're the captain. I get it. Requirements of the service is just huh.

• 2:44:06David Sims?

  But then we have, then we have the Jonah plot, right? Then they're, their, their wind is gone. It's hot, they're not moving, they can't get into action. And the boys start being mean to, um, Harlem. Uh, because they consider him the, the, he's sort of cursed the ship.

• 2:44:23Speaker 04

  Well, and also he may or may not have been directly responsible for the death of Warley. The, and it's the Warley's best friend who particularly takes a hatred to Harlem and refuses to salute him.

• 2:44:34David Sims?

  And at one point, you know, Aubrey like punishes someone who's not nice to Harlem, right?

• 2:44:38Speaker 04

  It's that guy, it's that guy. He doesn't, in fact, he kind of checks him.

• 2:44:42Griffin Newman?

  As far as where they're at, the storm was around the Horn.

• 2:44:46David Sims?

  Yes, they've gone around South America. They're on the other side.

• 2:44:49Griffin Newman?

  They really are. They're, they are now on the other side.

• 2:44:51David Sims?

  They're on the far side of the world. Cause the North America islands are off the coast of Ecuador, although by off the coast, I mean, hundreds of miles off the coast of Ecuador. There's this great fight that he has with Maturin. I love their fights where Aubrey's like, I have to preserve against a mutiny. And Maturin's like, these fucking guys are, are in this like wooden prison. They've been like pressed against their homes. And he's like, you can talk to me that way, but I really hate it when you talk about the service that way. Like Aubrey's like, you know, I really like being in the Navy. I know you think it sucks and just want to look at birds, but like it does rock and.

• 2:45:25Speaker 04

  And they're both right and they're both wrong.

• 2:45:27David Sims?

  Yes.

• 2:45:27Speaker 04

  Cause he is absolutely chasing the Asharan for pride.

• 2:45:30David Sims?

  Men must be governed, often not well, I, you know, admit, but like they must be governed. And Maturin's like, you know, that's what every sort of, you know, dictator says. It's a great fight. I just love that the movie has room for all of this.

• 2:45:43Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:45:44David Sims?

  The, the, the Jonas subplot like is the first thing you'd be told to lose. I feel like you're telling me the movie stops two thirds of the way, like the action stops. And we just focus on like a side character having like a psychodrama, basically like.

• 2:45:59Speaker 04

  Yeah, it becomes a psychological thriller.

• 2:46:01David Sims?

  Uh, and it ends like so perfectly and so sadly with him just like, does he grab a cannonball to go down?

• 2:46:07Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:46:07David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 2:46:08Speaker 04

  And just holds it all the way down.

• 2:46:09David Sims?

  You've always been nice to me anyway.

• 2:46:12Griffin Newman?

  I find it emotionally affecting that things sucked so hard in this time that basically you would learn to become the best doctor alive in order to get on a boat in the hopes that like once a year.

• 2:46:26David Sims?

  Right.

• 2:46:27Griffin Newman?

  They'd let you go look at lizards for two hours.

• 2:46:30David Sims?

  Yeah, man.

• 2:46:31Griffin Newman?

  And the fact that he does become this good of a doctor and clearly take so much pride in it. I mean, who knows the fucking order of his study.

• 2:46:39David Sims?

  No, no, he's good. He's, he's.

• 2:46:39Griffin Newman?

  But I'm saying that the, the naturist thing feels like his real driving passion.

• 2:46:44David Sims?

  Passion. Totally. Yes.

• 2:46:45Griffin Newman?

  Yeah. But me invoking the fucking SNL sketch earlier, it was the, the thing in the, in the amputation scene is without acting like meta textual or like he's a fucking time traveler. I think Betany somehow portrays the delicacy of like, looking at this kid and being like, it sucks that this is the only way I can do this. It sucks that all I can offer you is a stick to bite on. You know, I'm kind of the best there is and none of these options are great. Yeah. This is always going to hurt. And if I see like 20 of my men injured, I might only save three of them. And that's a pretty good ratio.

• 2:47:24David Sims?

  Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Then Jonah dies. Okay. Time for action to begin again, right? No. Matron gets shot.

• 2:47:32Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:47:33David Sims?

  By a guy trying to shoot an albatross.

• 2:47:35Griffin Newman?

  An accident. Truly. And kind of an, I mean, I hope he did eventually shoot that albatross and put it around his neck.

• 2:47:41David Sims?

  Yeah. It's kind of a Dick Cheney situation, right? Where he's like, fuck, I didn't mean to shoot you.

• 2:47:45Griffin Newman?

  It's embarrassing. Um, and, and worst of all, a little bit of shirt got stuck in the wound.

• 2:47:50David Sims?

  That's, that's the fucked up part. There's this great moment when Aubrey's like, you know, because they spot the, the Akaron, they could try to catch it. And Aubrey makes the decision like, no, we're going to stay here. We have to take him to the stable ground to do the surgery. But he's staring at the cello. Like, there's a shot where he just looks at the, the cello standing there. It's like, he can't operate without Matron. Like, he knows, like, I am not going to survive if he dies. Like, essentially, like, I need my other half. I need my sort of better temper, all that stuff.

• 2:48:19Speaker 04

  I would, I would argue that the, you know, I don't think this is his primary motivation, but the crew kind of also need a doctor too.

• 2:48:26David Sims?

  Well, this is the thing, because the other guy, the assistant, is basically like, yeah, I'm pretty good at operating. I do barf at the sight of open wounds and stuff.

• 2:48:33Griffin Newman?

  Yeah. The fact that Matron has a pretty shaky hand.

• 2:48:36Speaker 04

  Essentially, you see him checking, watching a YouTube about how to perform surgery.

• 2:48:40David Sims?

  How to remove bullets with with shirt?

• 2:48:43Griffin Newman?

  With shirt. Mitchur knows the only way he's gonna survive is for him to do the procedure himself and no one fights him on it. The fact that he says it and everyone's like, yeah, you're right.

• 2:48:52David Sims?

  This is the, I can't believe Bettany was an Oscar nominated thing. Where it's like, you're telling me in the middle of the movie, he does surgery on himself with a mirror.

• 2:49:02Griffin Newman?

  But as you pointed out, this was a weird supporting actor.

• 2:49:05David Sims?

  It was. Like, the Oscars were also just dumber back then. I feel like they're more lenient to newer actors and performing, you know, I don't know.

• 2:49:12Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:49:13David Sims?

  But good news. What does this mean, John?

• 2:49:16Speaker 04

  Oh, he gets to go to the Galapagos.

• 2:49:17David Sims?

  They're on the fucking islands.

• 2:49:18Griffin Newman?

  He gives them the gift. And that's a really beautiful scene of Crow fucking trying to act like he's not a softie and being like, no, we were gonna stop here anyway. I didn't do this for you.

• 2:49:29David Sims?

  Right.

• 2:49:29Griffin Newman?

  I just chose to tell them.

• 2:49:30Speaker 04

  I didn't actually wanna capture that boat.

• 2:49:32Griffin Newman?

  Bring you out in a fucking stretcher and walk you around one time.

• 2:49:35David Sims?

  It's all good. It's all good.

• 2:49:35Speaker 04

  Do you think that Aubrey got a little pissed off like three days after they stopped chasing the Asheron? And he's just got a bullet out of his own belly that he's getting up and walking around all the time? Maybe I'll be like, okay, maybe we should get back on the ship.

• 2:49:49Griffin Newman?

  I wouldn't have done this whole ceremony.

• 2:49:51David Sims?

  No, but it's.

• 2:49:52Speaker 04

  I thought you were injured.

• 2:49:52David Sims?

  It's the weird fate of it, though, because that's how he finds the Akaron.

• 2:49:55Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 2:49:56David Sims?

  Cause he's on the Galapagos.

• 2:49:56Speaker 04

  That's such an amazing.

• 2:49:58David Sims?

  He's measuring tortoises and he's got his like, I like, he has this like, a box that he looks into the ocean with, right? Like the sort of like spy box that he can use to look at fish and shit. This is, I've got the time cut. It's an hour forty. Like, what Fox support? Rothman, I assume, is watching again, like me, like Nelson, watching.

• 2:50:15Speaker 04

  Rothman's out there going, can we stretch it out?

• 2:50:18David Sims?

  Do we need the Iguana measuring sequence? Is there not a boat for them to fight?

• 2:50:25Speaker 04

  Well, I mean.

• 2:50:26David Sims?

  I hear that Jack Sparrow like fences with every member of the cast if I were to the Caribbean.

• 2:50:31Griffin Newman?

  And also like, well, certainly, you know, it's a slow burn, but it's gonna lead much like the Weevils walk.

• 2:50:37David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 2:50:37Griffin Newman?

  Into an awesome showdown with him and the other captain. No, he boards the ship, the guy's dead.

• 2:50:42David Sims?

  But he's not.

• 2:50:43Griffin Newman?

  Oh, sure.

• 2:50:43David Sims?

  But, but yes, no, you're right. I mean, like, the final sequence is very intense and rocks in a theater and all that, but like, it is not, right? Aha! Like, Captain Frenchman and then like a big sword fight. Across the deck of a boat or whatever, you know, all that stuff.

• 2:51:00Speaker 04

  I mean, I'll just say this real quick about, you know, and revisiting Peter, weird movies.

• 2:51:05David Sims?

  Sorry, one more thing.

• 2:51:06Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:51:06David Sims?

  In the Galapagos, they find the Akaron. What else do they find, John? A stick insect.

• 2:51:11Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:51:11David Sims?

  Which gives Aubrey the idea to disguise his boat. And that's how they capture the Acheron.

• 2:51:16Speaker 04

  How they get him.

• 2:51:17David Sims?

  See, it all like you need this is a, this is a breathing organism. This, this ship, all these people with these different needs and interests.

• 2:51:24Speaker 04

  World, it's not a prison, it's a world.

• 2:51:25David Sims?

  If he wasn't listening to all of them, he wouldn't be making like the evolved decisions.

• 2:51:29Speaker 04

  Because they're privateers and they're greedy. Cause they're not just engaging with other, you know, naval ships. They're also going after private citizens.

• 2:51:38David Sims?

  A hundred percent. They'll raid anything that looks like a prize.

• 2:51:41Speaker 04

  Right. One of the things I've noticed re-watching some of these Weir movies and seeing some of them for the first time. That he isn't like, it's, yeah, Tom Rothman is like, yeah, more, more Galapagos, please, or whatever.

• 2:51:52David Sims?

  Right.

• 2:51:52Speaker 04

  But Peter Weir is so patient as a director.

• 2:51:55Griffin Newman?

  In all his films.

• 2:51:56Speaker 04

  Yeah. It's just, and, and there are definitely moments in Witness, certainly in Hanging Rock, where you're just like, oh yeah, I guess nothing's gonna happen.

• 2:52:05David Sims?

  Right.

• 2:52:05Speaker 04

  And then all of a sudden, something will happen.

• 2:52:07David Sims?

  And you're involved.

• 2:52:08Speaker 04

  And, and again, the beauty, the beauty of it is that he's not sitting there and all of a sudden the Acheron comes around the corner and it's huge.

• 2:52:15David Sims?

  Sure.

• 2:52:15Speaker 04

  He sees it and it's tiny, but it's close enough.

• 2:52:19David Sims?

  And that he can go into battle hair mode.

• 2:52:22Speaker 04

  That's right. Oh, look at that.

• 2:52:23David Sims?

  Hmm. Let the locks flow.

• 2:52:25Griffin Newman?

  You bring up the patience. It is one of those things that I often think about and we are choosing to kind of just like step away. Right. And even that his last film becomes an independent film and one where he needs foreign financing. This is the last time he works with the studios. Is I, I think he just sort of saw like, they're not gonna let me do this anymore. Even if it's not, I'm making a hundred million dollar epic, which he was one of these guys who liked being able to level up and work with those resources. It's also just like, no one lets studio films have this kind of patience anymore. And it's a patience that runs across his small intimate dramas to his giant epics.

• 2:53:07Speaker 04

  And maybe one of the reasons that people don't think about, oh, Pete, Pete, like Peter Weir all the time, or like the Peter Weir style movie is, and this is not a discredit to his talents, but he wasn't all that uncommon in commercial filmmaking at the time.

• 2:53:22Griffin Newman?

  Sure.

• 2:53:23Speaker 04

  Like the opening sequence of, you haven't covered, well, you have covered green card by the time this comes out.

• 2:53:29Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 2:53:30Speaker 04

  But you know, like that opening sequence with the kid drumming in the, in the subway.

• 2:53:34Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:53:34Speaker 04

  Has nothing to do with the plot.

• 2:53:36Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:53:37Speaker 04

  It's just a creation of a mood and a world.

• 2:53:39Griffin Newman?

  Mm hmm.

• 2:53:40Speaker 04

  He does it in this movie too, where it's just like little building moments of like, here's what life is like in little tiny five to seven second vignettes.

• 2:53:49Griffin Newman?

  And they're really.

• 2:53:50Speaker 04

  We used to see that kind of stuff in movies all the time.

• 2:53:52Griffin Newman?

  He was always.

• 2:53:53Speaker 04

  There would just be a sequence of like, here's New York City. Here's a guy hailing a cab.

• 2:53:56Griffin Newman?

  I mean, it's opening a dog day.

• 2:53:57Speaker 04

  Exactly.

• 2:53:58Griffin Newman?

  But right, and now it's the Netflix thing of like, every movie has to open with a helicopter overhead shot of the city and then immediately into either an action sequence or some kind of big comedic set piece or the beginning of the plot. You know, that mean they have all this fucking data that's like, if something huge doesn't happen within the first 90 seconds, everyone's going to flip away. And even in theaters where it's not like the risk is someone walking out of the fucking theaters, the thing they're concerned about, you do feel like that concern dictating the edits of these things, even if it's just inevitably this thing's going to go on to fucking streaming. You saying he's not, is, is he, was he less unique in the moment than it feels like he was now?

• 2:54:40Speaker 04

  I think he's a master of that.

• 2:54:41Griffin Newman?

  I think also.

• 2:54:42Speaker 04

  But I also think it was not unusual.

• 2:54:43Griffin Newman?

  No, his uniqueness was his consistency, I would say.

• 2:54:47Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:54:47Griffin Newman?

  And also the versatility of genre, of size, of tone.

• 2:54:53Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:54:53Griffin Newman?

  There are very few people who I think made this transition into the studio system and just basically stayed true to their standards and their ethos and didn't slip. Cause you compare it to like Wolfgang Peterson, who like goes from making like his very serious movies to making like top level popcorn to then making shitty popcorn. Like the arc from like Das Boot to Perfect Storm to Poseidon is what often happens to these guys. At some point, they're just fucking picking up the checks.

• 2:55:29Speaker 04

  Yeah, we were maybe saw it coming and got out of the way.

• 2:55:31Griffin Newman?

  Maybe.

• 2:55:31Speaker 04

  To tie it back to a moment to Master and Commander, a movie that I believe David likes.

• 2:55:36Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, I've heard that.

• 2:55:37Speaker 04

  I think that what's, one of the things that's very beautiful about it is that the natural patient pace of a Peter Weir movie marries so quickly with the necessary patient pace of sailing a ship in the Napoleonic.

• 2:55:50Griffin Newman?

  But.

• 2:55:50Speaker 04

  Like it has a completely different mood than we would think.

• 2:55:53Griffin Newman?

  What happens when they engage in battle?

• 2:55:55Speaker 04

  Shit pops off.

• 2:55:57Griffin Newman?

  It's what I like the cra.

• 2:55:58David Sims?

  Craziest part of all this, it's like so much of your life is what you're talking about is the careful like how do we maneuver. And then it's like when we're next to them, everyone has to go insane.

• 2:56:07Speaker 04

  Right.

• 2:56:07David Sims?

  Get you see Kilik going insane like during the battle like there's one of the other chefs is like beating someone up with a pot. Like it's like hitting someone over the head with a pot. Obviously already mentioned, yeah, you know, you see Blakeney, a little 12 year old Blakeney just boarding with a gun.

• 2:56:24Speaker 04

  Well, isn't his mission to.

• 2:56:26David Sims?

  First he's in charge.

• 2:56:27Speaker 04

  The whalers.

• 2:56:28David Sims?

  Yeah, but first he's.

• 2:56:29Speaker 04

  That's Calum, the other ones. Oh, sorry.

• 2:56:30David Sims?

  No, first he's in charge of the boat. Remember he's like, oh, I don't get to be in the boarding party. He's like, no, you're gonna be like in charge of the surprise because we're all, which is an honor. But then there's that moment where they're so close and they both start pointing like both boats are pointing the cannon right at each other. And Blake, he's like, we have to fire first. Like, you know, we, you know, they're gonna blow our hole in us.

• 2:56:49Speaker 04

  He's a good commander of the surprise.

• 2:56:51David Sims?

  And then he says, arm yourself, we must board them. He's a little child and you see Maturin like grab a gun and cock it. And I'm watching it right now. It's so exciting.

• 2:57:00Speaker 04

  And I love what I love that Blakeney says that because A, he appreciates that it's necessary because he's smart.

• 2:57:05David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 2:57:05Speaker 04

  But B, he gets what he wants to do anyways. Like, yeah, you know what? I am gonna fucking board that boat.

• 2:57:09David Sims?

  The the assistant doctor guy, the cowardy, he's not a coward, but the grossed out doc. He has that moment where he stops a cannon from being fired by putting his hand in between the fuse and the like the trigger.

• 2:57:20Speaker 04

  Oh, and it hurts.

• 2:57:21David Sims?

  That's so.

• 2:57:22Speaker 04

  It's only sort of one.

• 2:57:23David Sims?

  He's like.

• 2:57:24Speaker 04

  Almost slap sticky moment.

• 2:57:25David Sims?

  It's so good.

• 2:57:26Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:57:27David Sims?

  Maturin picks up a sword and starts fucking with it. It's so exciting. It's the greatest thing that's ever happened. Like I said, it's tied with all the other scenes for a greatest scene in a movie.

• 2:57:36Speaker 04

  But yeah, Calum is sent is tasked with going and rescuing.

• 2:57:41David Sims?

  Yeah, getting the other whalers out of the brig.

• 2:57:45Speaker 04

  Right. That will put the odds in their favor.

• 2:57:47David Sims?

  It gets more guys on their side and that's when it's over. And then Aubrey sees the surgeon, who is actually the captain, pretending to be the surgeon, operating on the captain, who's probably just some dead guy. They put a coat on. And he says, he told me to give you this sword.

• 2:58:03Speaker 04

  Yeah, that's what happens.

• 2:58:05David Sims?

  Uh, and it's great. You don't know the twist for a while, obviously. There's the what's his pants dies, the sweet boy.

• 2:58:12Speaker 04

  Callum dies.

• 2:58:13David Sims?

  And he doesn't sew through the nose for him because he's asked for that. Or remember the Blake, he asked Blake, or Blake, he asked him earlier.

• 2:58:19Speaker 04

  He gets sewn, they get sewn up in their own hammocks.

• 2:58:22David Sims?

  Also, the guy who looks like a blobfish dies. Love that guy so much. The master.

• 2:58:26Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:58:27David Sims?

  You know, he gets shot in the head. Yeah.

• 2:58:28Speaker 04

  The master of sale.

• 2:58:29David Sims?

  Love him. Um, it's great. It's just, you know, just the right balance of like triumph and misery, right? Like it's sort of like, this is life at sea. They bury everyone. They say their names. They sing a little song, right? All that stuff. Would you want to be buried at sea?

• 2:58:46Speaker 04

  No.

• 2:58:47David Sims?

  Okay, fine. Uh, he gives James Darcy.

• 2:58:50Speaker 04

  Okay, great.

• 2:58:50David Sims?

  Really? Ben?

• 2:58:51Speaker 04

  I don't know.

• 2:58:53Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:58:54David Sims?

  Cool.

• 2:58:54Speaker 04

  He's decided, we're deciding for all of us?

• 2:58:56David Sims?

  Yeah, sure. Uh, yeah, we all, now we all have to do it.

• 2:58:58Griffin Newman?

  We're giving Ben power of attorney.

• 2:59:01David Sims?

  That he gives James Darcy the, the Akaron.

• 2:59:03Speaker 04

  Right.

• 2:59:04David Sims?

  He's like, take that to Portsmouth.

• 2:59:05Speaker 04

  Jarvis, take the Akaron to Valparaiso.

• 2:59:09David Sims?

  And then we have the moment I already freaked out about, which is Aubrey realizes like, oh shit, no, the captain's still on the ship.

• 2:59:16Speaker 04

  Right.

• 2:59:16David Sims?

  We have to go get them. We can't stay at the Galapagos. Sorry.

• 2:59:21Speaker 04

  Sorry, once again.

• 2:59:21David Sims?

  Your bird flightless, not going anywhere.

• 2:59:24Speaker 04

  Funny line.

• 2:59:24David Sims?

  Right? Billion dollar gross, right? Yeah, the greatest thing that's ever happened. And then they, they fucking start playing their song.

• 2:59:31Griffin Newman?

  Then they jam out.

• 2:59:32Speaker 04

  Cause what else are they gonna do while they're going there? It's gonna take time.

• 2:59:35Griffin Newman?

  I was gonna make a joke that the, the mid-credit tease was that they're building a white maturing.

• 2:59:43Griffin Newman?

  And then I remembered that in the section where he's been shot, he basically does become white maturing.

• 2:59:48David Sims?

  Kind of white vision.

• 2:59:48Griffin Newman?

  He gets, yeah, gray tea mode. Yeah.

• 2:59:51Speaker 04

  That's funny.

• 2:59:52Griffin Newman?

  Thank you.

• 2:59:53Speaker 04

  David, how do you feel about this movie?

• 2:59:54David Sims?

  It's my favorite movie ever. I love to watch it. I try not to watch it too much because I do, as with all my favorite movies, I try to kind of like, let it be special every time. Yeah. So it's like every year or so.

• 3:00:05Griffin Newman?

  How many times do you think you've seen it? Like 20?

• 3:00:07David Sims?

  Sure. 15, 20.

• 3:00:08Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 3:00:08David Sims?

  Right? Like a good amount.

• 3:00:10Griffin Newman?

  You don't ever put it into an Assassin's Creed style rotation.

• 3:00:13David Sims?

  I don't think I do that. That's a Ben thing.

• 3:00:15Speaker 04

  I was hearing about that.

• 3:00:16David Sims?

  In college, I did that. In college, I would have the movies to fall asleep to a little bit more.

• 3:00:21Griffin Newman?

  I try to cycle through them. I don't know if you do this as well. It sounds like you didn't with this. But certain, in the same way that I like held off on rewatching this because I was like, I should make it fresh for when we do the episode.

• 3:00:31David Sims?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 3:00:32Griffin Newman?

  There were certain movies I look at where I'm like, I'd love to watch that, but there's a good chance we cover that in the next two years.

• 3:00:39David Sims?

  I definitely do that.

• 3:00:39Griffin Newman?

  And it would be nice to make that feel a little more special.

• 3:00:42David Sims?

  I'm never gonna be.

• 3:00:43Speaker 04

  I arrived as Griffin finished watching the movie.

• 3:00:45Griffin Newman?

  I, look, my memory at this point.

• 3:00:47Speaker 04

  You're fresh.

• 3:00:48Griffin Newman?

  I'm fucking Dory.

• 3:00:49David Sims?

  You usually try to do it pretty soon.

• 3:00:51Griffin Newman?

  Shit seeps out of my brain so quickly.

• 3:00:52David Sims?

  Right.

• 3:00:53Griffin Newman?

  That I feel like the specificity of thought, I, I need to be as, as close to have just finishing the movie as I can.

• 3:01:00David Sims?

  Um, we mentioned the box office.

• 3:01:03Griffin Newman?

  We did.

• 3:01:04David Sims?

  Play the game in a second.

• 3:01:05Speaker 04

  Can I ask you a question before the box office came? I know you're going somewhere.

• 3:01:09David Sims?

  No, I'm going to the box office.

• 3:01:10Speaker 04

  And you're leading, and you're captaining the ship. So I don't want to take us off course.

• 3:01:13David Sims?

  No, what's your question?

• 3:01:14Speaker 04

  My Galapagos Islands. The, the overall question is, what's the new thing you've seen in it since you've seen it so many times? And then the, the prompt might be, like, how does this depiction of war compare to the depiction of war in Gallipoli?

• 3:01:30David Sims?

  That's interesting. It's got the similar thing in Gallipoli of it's about like a brotherhood of man a little bit, right?

• 3:01:35Griffin Newman?

  And that you don't really know or see your enemy.

• 3:01:37David Sims?

  But like, right. But in Gallipoli, I feel like it's a little bit more like, you know, watching it, if you have even the barest understanding of history, like, these boys have no idea what they are in for. They have been drafted into a war that is pointless. They are being drafted into a, uh, you know, battle that is the famously worst thing that anyone ever tried in World War One, basically.

• 3:02:00Speaker 04

  Right.

• 3:02:00David Sims?

  Like one of the biggest disasters.

• 3:02:02Speaker 04

  Right.

• 3:02:02David Sims?

  So you kind of have this kind of like innocence is dying here. I don't find that with Master and Commander at all.

• 3:02:07Speaker 04

  No, not at all. I mean, that's.

• 3:02:08David Sims?

  This is like, you know, it's not something maybe somebody would be proud of, but like, this is part of the lifeblood of this, you know, of this empire, right? It's like these people.

• 3:02:15Speaker 04

  I mean, obviously, World War One was a not, was a particularly. Modern war in a way that people didn't understand, even when they were joining it because of the kinds of guns they were using. Basically, it was just much more fatal war, even though this, the brutality of war is depicted to a degree in this movie as well. But it's also like the, as you mentioned, the triumph is there too.

• 3:02:39David Sims?

  Right.

• 3:02:39Speaker 04

  So it's kind of, it's, it's a romantic film when it comes to this.

• 3:02:43David Sims?

  Hugely romantic.

• 3:02:44Speaker 04

  And

• 3:02:45David Sims?

  In that way.

• 3:02:46Speaker 04

  There is no reason to necessarily go after the Acheron after it.

• 3:02:49David Sims?

  No, what? This is not some movie about like, I mean, he gives the great speech where he's like, do you want Napoleon to be your king? Like where they're all fired up about it. And it's like, yeah, sure. In the broad sense, Britain didn't want to lose to France.

• 3:03:00Speaker 04

  Yeah, but this isn't even a French naval ship. This is a, this is a, they're contractors.

• 3:03:06David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 3:03:06Speaker 04

  You know, they're not going to invade, they're not going to invade England. The Acheron is not going to invade England, nor are they going to continue hunting for the surprise necessarily, unless they disguise themselves.

• 3:03:18Griffin Newman?

  Hodge, I got a question for you. Turn about his fair play. I know you've done a great job of explaining and selling Ben on the specifics of life on the seas and boating.

• 3:03:28Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 3:03:30Griffin Newman?

  And obviously your experiences with boating are different than what is depicted in this film.

• 3:03:36Speaker 04

  Slightly.

• 3:03:37Griffin Newman?

  Are there specific things in this movie that you feel like, wow, this gets it right in a way I haven't seen before?

• 3:03:44Speaker 04

  I'm in no way a truly able seaman.

• 3:03:46Griffin Newman?

  Not even like on technical details, but like on feelings and experiential and yeah.

• 3:03:50Speaker 04

  I mean, I think that it is profoundly creepy to be sleeping on a boat that makes no motor noise.

• 3:03:59Griffin Newman?

  This is a reason I don't trust boats.

• 3:04:01Speaker 04

  That I think it captures very well. I mean, the, the depiction of what you do in order to make a boat like this go.

• 3:04:10Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 3:04:10Speaker 04

  Is to the best of my understanding, experience and reading, very accurate. I think that's very cool. Cause it required a lot of intelligence and ingenuity and that sort of thing. That thing where they have to escape into the fog and they don't have enough wind. So they get out the boats and they pull.

• 3:04:26Griffin Newman?

  You've been there?

• 3:04:27Speaker 04

  That was how you would, no, but that is how you would maneuver one of those boats. You know, like particularly a square bent, so a square rigged boat.

• 3:04:35David Sims?

  Okay. All right. I'm, I, no.

• 3:04:37Speaker 04

  I'll tell you.

• 3:04:38David Sims?

  I'm getting so hungry and we got to play the podcast.

• 3:04:41Speaker 04

  I understand. But thank you for, thank you for letting me talk a little bit about it.

• 3:04:44David Sims?

  But if I may.

• 3:04:45Griffin Newman?

  Please.

• 3:04:47Speaker 03

  We've reached the end of our discussion of this film.

• 3:04:51David Sims?

  Oh, yes. Oh, Jesus.

• 3:04:52Speaker 03

  It's not appropriate to honor.

• 3:04:54David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 3:04:55Speaker 03

  It's appropriately. Safe and sound at home again. Let the waters roar, Jack. Safe and sound at home again. Let the waters roar, Jack. Long we've tossed on the rolling main. Now we're safe ashore, Jack. Uh. Don't forget your old shipmate. Folly rody rody rody rody, yo. Take it solo, David.

• 3:05:24David Sims?

  Me? No, I don't know. No, no, no, no.

• 3:05:26Speaker 03

  It's got your name all over it.

• 3:05:28David Sims?

  I don't.

• 3:05:28Griffin Newman?

  That's pretty good, but we were not prepped for that. There was no editing. We just jumped into it.

• 3:05:32David Sims?

  Did they say this other part? I don't remember this other part.

• 3:05:35Griffin Newman?

  Oh, yeah. No, it goes on and on.

• 3:05:37David Sims?

  The self same gun.

• 3:05:38Speaker 03

  Quarter deck division. Sponge your iron loader you through the whole commission. Long we've tossed on the rolling main. Now we're safe ashore, Jack. Don't forget your old shipmate. Folly rody rody rody rody, yo.

• 3:06:00David Sims?

  Did you look this up? This is, uh, it's called Don't Forget Your Old Shipmate, this naval song.

• 3:06:07Griffin Newman?

  Do you know what makes Ben best in the biz?

• 3:06:08David Sims?

  I mean, everything, but go ahead.

• 3:06:10Griffin Newman?

  Nine out of a hundred producers would have just texted that to us and Ben printed it out.

• 3:06:15David Sims?

  And I think it mattered. I think we locked in right away.

• 3:06:18Griffin Newman?

  Absolutely.

• 3:06:19David Sims?

  Do you think it's mean when they're a little mean about the nice singing voice of Holm?

• 3:06:24Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, I think it's mean when they're mean.

• 3:06:26David Sims?

  I feel like it's a little mean. I mean, they're not like that mean, but they're kind of like.

• 3:06:29Speaker 04

  There's a moment before he sings. So this is when he joins in on farewell and adieu, old Spanish ladies.

• 3:06:35Griffin Newman?

  And they go, you're a little pitchy, dog.

• 3:06:37Speaker 04

  Yeah, that's, yeah. But right before that, the, the cruise thing, before he joins in, you see him sort of gamely tapping his, his hand to the beat and he's really offbeat and it's just so touching.

• 3:06:49David Sims?

  Yeah, he just.

• 3:06:50Speaker 03

  Anyway.

• 3:06:50Griffin Newman?

  All of the characters are real people.

• 3:06:52Speaker 03

  Thanks for playing along with that.

• 3:06:54Griffin Newman?

  Thank you very much.

• 3:06:55Speaker 04

  Griffin, an extra ration of grog for Ben.

• 3:06:58David Sims?

  It's November 14th, 2003.

• 3:07:00Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 3:07:00David Sims?

  Master Commander is opening to $25 million, number two at the box office.

• 3:07:05Griffin Newman?

  Now, I do know what is number one because the Wikipedia entry, there was a sub-entry of accolades and awards received by Master and Commander. I was just trying to look up the, the award situation. In the opening paragraph, it says, "The movie was considered disappointment coming in number two behind Elf." Is this the second weekend of Elf?

• 3:07:24David Sims?

  How much has Elf dropped from its first weekend?

• 3:07:26Griffin Newman?

  It went up, did it not?

• 3:07:28David Sims?

  It did not go up.

• 3:07:29Griffin Newman?

  Okay.

• 3:07:29David Sims?

  At least according to the numbers, which everything feels a little unreliable.

• 3:07:33Griffin Newman?

  I remember it having a miniscule, well, I remembered it going up, but it's like-

• 3:07:38David Sims?

  It goes up in its fourth.

• 3:07:40Griffin Newman?

  There we go. I knew it went up.

• 3:07:41David Sims?

  It has dropped 15%.

• 3:07:42Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, crazy.

• 3:07:43David Sims?

  So Elf is number one at the box office with 26 mil. Master and Commander, right behind it, 25 mil. Right behind that is a movie that has dropped drastically. Also is a movie we've covered on this show.

• 3:07:55Griffin Newman?

  Uh, it's dropped drastically.

• 3:07:58David Sims?

  It opened against Elf.

• 3:07:59Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 3:07:59David Sims?

  Elf has now taken number one. It has dropped to number three. It opens number one. It is an action sci-fi sequel.

• 3:08:05Griffin Newman?

  Oh, it's The Matrix: Revolutions.

• 3:08:08David Sims?

  Whereas Reloaded had done so well, Revolutions opens big but drops out very fast.

• 3:08:12Griffin Newman?

  Elf was so fucking huge. There's something that feels representative of it being like the thing that Master and Commander has to open against in that that was just like, we got Russell Crowe doing Gladiator on a boat. Isn't that like automatic 40 million opening weekend, like adult fucking entertainment? And it came in soft at the same time that Elf came in so much hotter than anyone was predicting.

• 3:08:39Speaker 04

  I'll say, I first watched Master and Commander with our son. I don't know if he remembers ever seeing the movie. But our son and my wife is a whole being in her own right. We'll watch Elf every day together if they are allowed to.

• 3:08:54Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, I mean Elf is a I watch it every year movie. It has stood the test of time.

• 3:08:58Speaker 04

  Every day, I'm saying.

• 3:08:59Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, yeah. It's it's the only I would argue it's the last holiday film that basically has been canonized.

• 3:09:07David Sims?

  Uh, yes, absolutely.

• 3:09:08Griffin Newman?

  It's good. It's good. It's an excellent movie. And now John Favreau is bringing us The Mandalorian and Grogu.

• 3:09:15David Sims?

  Uh, and I cannot wait to meet those two guys. Number three is Matrix Revolutions. Number four is Disney animated film. I believe you've never seen it.

• 3:09:24Speaker 04

  Three.

• 3:09:24Griffin Newman?

  Oh, it's Brother Bear. It's one of only two I haven't seen. Brother Bear and Wish.

• 3:09:29David Sims?

  Mm hmm. Number five, and as we may return to this box office game one day, it's a film we will cover. It is new this week. It is opening to $9 million, which is not good. It is a fun movie.

• 3:09:40Griffin Newman?

  It's Looney Tunes back in action. I could have gotten it with fewer clues.

• 3:09:44David Sims?

  Is this where to put this movie? It feels like a summer, not a November.

• 3:09:48Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 3:09:48David Sims?

  I guess they're hoping for a Thanksgiving family thing, but like it just kind of feels like everyone's like, we'll just see Elf.

• 3:09:54Griffin Newman?

  Right. I think they had no idea Elf was gonna be that big.

• 3:09:56David Sims?

  No.

• 3:09:56Griffin Newman?

  It is crazy that it's also Elf was new line and this is Warner Brothers. Like they opened against themselves. I just think the expectations for Elf were really low, where it was like, if that movie makes $50 million, we're gonna be thrilled. And instead it opened to 40 and then had like those those tight spandex legs. Cause Elf ends up at like 170, 180?

• 3:10:19David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 3:10:20Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, no, I think they fucked up on the release of this, but it also like Warner Brothers treated that movie with resentment.

• 3:10:26Speaker 04

  Well, yeah, Master and Commander had a Jonah on board. Let's just say.

• 3:10:30Griffin Newman?

  Yes, truly.

• 3:10:30Speaker 04

  It was it was char- it's so charmed, but it is so cursed at the same time.

• 3:10:34Griffin Newman?

  Joe Dante has talked about this, where like he would get into studio like note meetings on the Looney Tunes movie and they'd be like, now Bugs says this line, what's up, Doc? What does that mean? Does he need to say that?

• 3:10:47Speaker 04

  Oh, boy.

• 3:10:47Griffin Newman?

  Where he was like getting noted by people who didn't understand why they were even bothering to make a Lumineers movie?

• 3:10:53Speaker 04

  Better for creativity than people justifying their jobs.

• 3:10:55Griffin Newman?

  The movie is kind of about that in a lot of ways. It's like a movie of like development execs being like, does this suck? Now, do we fucking hate the Lumineers?

• 3:11:02Speaker 04

  Now I will never see it.

• 3:11:03Griffin Newman?

  No, it's really good. It's him.

• 3:11:05Speaker 04

  I will not, I will not see a movie about movies ever again.

• 3:11:08Griffin Newman?

  It is a movie made-

• 3:11:10Speaker 04

  Sentimental value was the one exception.

• 3:11:12Griffin Newman?

  It is a movie made with contempt for an industry that is, uh, overthinking everything and not understanding the value of these characters.

• 3:11:22Speaker 04

  I'm officially in my weird dad phase. If it's not about sleeper trains.

• 3:11:26David Sims?

  Sure, we hear you.

• 3:11:27Griffin Newman?

  I think you would love Back in Action. They go to Area 51 and it's Joan Cusack and she has all the great robots on the side.

• 3:11:33David Sims?

  Number six of the box office is Love Actually.

• 3:11:35Griffin Newman?

  A movie that is a war crime?

• 3:11:37David Sims?

  It's not good, but it is-

• 3:11:38Speaker 04

  That is a movie that our daughter makes us watch every Christmas.

• 3:11:41David Sims?

  Yeah, horrible every time.

• 3:11:42Speaker 04

  She has extremely good taste in movies and television.

• 3:11:44Griffin Newman?

  That is emotional abuse.

• 3:11:45Speaker 04

  But she really loves that movie.

• 3:11:46David Sims?

  A lot of people love that movie.

• 3:11:48Griffin Newman?

  A lot of people love that movie. A lot of people voted for Trump, not accusing your daughter of voting for Trump.

• 3:11:53Speaker 04

  Oh, no, she's, she's a MAGA.

• 3:11:54Griffin Newman?

  Oh, sure.

• 3:11:55Speaker 04

  MAGA and Maha. Thank God.

• 3:11:56David Sims?

  Number seven of the box office is Scary Movie Three, uh, which has made a hundred and two million dollars.

• 3:12:01Griffin Newman?

  Was a big hit?

• 3:12:01David Sims?

  Yep. Number eight is the, uh, definitely not embarrassing movie, Radio?

• 3:12:05Griffin Newman?

  No.

• 3:12:06Speaker 04

  Whoa.

• 3:12:06Griffin Newman?

  Everyone walked out of that with their heads held high.

• 3:12:09David Sims?

  Number nine is, uh, new this week is the Tupac resurrection movie, which is a sort of like-

• 3:12:14Griffin Newman?

  It was an MTV documentary.

• 3:12:15David Sims?

  Documentary, right, you know, kinda-

• 3:12:17Griffin Newman?

  I, I think briefly had the highest grossing documentary crown or was close to it. And then obviously the next year Fahrenheit nine 11 comes out.

• 3:12:25Speaker 04

  Hey, Ben.

• 3:12:25David Sims?

  Yeah. He's just went to the bathroom and-

• 3:12:26Speaker 04

  When he comes back from the bathroom, I'm gonna teach him how to anchor.

• 3:12:29David Sims?

  Number 10 of the box-

• 3:12:30Griffin Newman?

  Well, he's about to anchor in that toilet.

• 3:12:31Speaker 04

  That's right.

• 3:12:32David Sims?

  Is Mystic River-

• 3:12:33Speaker 04

  He might do it wrong. Mystic River, I never saw it.

• 3:12:35Griffin Newman?

  What's it up to at this point?

• 3:12:36David Sims?

  Which has made forty five million dollars on its way to ninety.

• 3:12:39Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 3:12:40David Sims?

  So it's gonna have a very long run. Yeah, it's light. That's, well, the thing about it is they save everything for the Blu-ray, but they are great. Oh, my God. All those scenes are so funny. Is that my daughter in there? Oh, I fell over. I don't know.

• 3:12:52Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 3:12:52David Sims?

  Um, that's the box office. We will, I guess, yeah, do this again one day when we do Joe Dante, uh, cause right, that's a-

• 3:12:59Griffin Newman?

  We gotta do it.

• 3:12:59Speaker 04

  I'm about to, I'm about to get keel-hauled by David, but I just gotta say this one thing.

• 3:13:03Griffin Newman?

  Please.

• 3:13:03David Sims?

  I'm, now I'm done, so you guys can just chat.

• 3:13:05Speaker 04

  Just, what, you know, I have a better answer for you vis a vis.

• 3:13:10Speaker 04

  My experience on the seas.

• 3:13:12Griffin Newman?

  Sure, sure.

• 3:13:13Speaker 04

  And what I think that this movie captures, and I think is part of what the movie is all about, is the powerlessness, literal and figurative, of being on a sailing boat.

• 3:13:22David Sims?

  Totally, right. You have some control, but you have a lot of no control.

• 3:13:26Speaker 04

  And how much, how much control is overcompensated in, in, you know, uniform and in ritual and in everything else, because they know that it will fall apart if there isn't discipline, right? But also, you are at the mercy of truly unseen forces, the wind.

• 3:13:43Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 3:13:43Speaker 04

  And if someone else has the wind advantage, they're gonna win the battle. And if it dies, you're becalmed and it's you, it's this collision of a sense of control and complete lack of control. It is very tense, even if there isn't a love interest or an antagonist, traditional antagonist.

• 3:14:00Griffin Newman?

  That is an excellent point, beautifully expressed, and you have finally given me words to explain why I don't like being on a boat. You just described exactly why I don't like it. Powerful and powerless in that you have a bunch of fucking responsibilities and rituals to maintain, which to me, sounds like a nightmare. And also, you don't ultimately have that much

• 3:14:19Speaker 04

  If you ever wanted, and Ben, I'm inviting you as well.

• 3:14:22Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 3:14:23Speaker 04

  The wonderful comedic actor and improviser, and just straight up great actor, Mark Evan Jackson, he also has the same bug.

• 3:14:33Griffin Newman?

  Oh, sure, the boating bug.

• 3:14:34Speaker 04

  The boating bug. And he, and he is a partner in another 120-year-old wooden sailing schooner called the Grace Bailey.

• 3:14:43Griffin Newman?

  Wow.

• 3:14:43Speaker 04

  Jesse Thorne and I are going aboard in June for four nights to lead a Judge John Hodgman sailing cruise.

• 3:14:50Griffin Newman?

  Truly.

• 3:14:51Speaker 04

  It's, I think, sold out, but, but the Grace Bailey is an amazing experience.

• 3:14:55Griffin Newman?

  This is interesting.

• 3:14:56Speaker 04

  To sail on. Mark is on it sometimes. I'll be going back on it eventually.

• 3:14:59Griffin Newman?

  I'm not refusing the experience, to be clear.

• 3:15:01Speaker 04

  It's really, really great. And, you know, I would invite David. If you want some master and commander type experience, this would be a really fun experience. The Grace Bailey, Sail Grace Bailey.

• 3:15:10Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 3:15:10Speaker 04

  Now Ben, here's what you do. What's that?

• 3:15:12Speaker 03

  Do they have cannons?

• 3:15:13Speaker 04

  They do not have cannons.

• 3:15:14Speaker 03

  I'll still go though.

• 3:15:15Speaker 04

  But you'll like this because the, these schooners, particularly the Merry Day is a, was purpose built for passenger travel in the sixties, but the Grace Bailey and a bunch, and five or six other ones, they date back to the late 19th century when schooners were the tractor trailers of the east coast. There were no roads, there were no railroads. So you wanted cargo moved around. You would fill up a schooner and move it along the coast, up and down, et cetera. So it'd carry tar, rum, coal, paperback copies of Vacation Land or whatever. And if you wanted to stop the schooner, here's what you do. Any kind of boat, first of all, you drop the lead to see what the quality of the seabed is. Then you drop the anchor, right? And if you know that it's five fathoms deep, for example, you're going to want to let out

• 3:16:00Speaker 04

  at least three times and up to seven times that amount of what's called anchor road. The closest to the anchor, it's all heavy chain because it's not the anchor that keeps you down, it's the chain.

• 3:16:11Speaker 03

  I love it.

• 3:16:12Speaker 04

  But you gotta pay it out longer because there are tides.

• 3:16:14Speaker 03

  Cause if it was too short, it would potentially, it would break. You would, there would be too much tension.

• 3:16:19Speaker 04

  It's, you put the anchor down and then you lay, essentially you're laying the chain down along the seabed for a length of time. And it's that weight that keeps you. If you were just holding on to the anchor, it'd pull right out.

• 3:16:31Speaker 03

  That makes total sense. Yeah. But yeah, I love when you see, there's like one in, um, in Long Island City, there's a huge anchor, but then there's also the chain with it, which is so impressive. It's fucking massive.

• 3:16:45Speaker 04

  Yeah. And that's how you do it, Ben.

• 3:16:47Speaker 03

  So cool.

• 3:16:48Griffin Newman?

  Uh, what's a coxswain?

• 3:16:50David Sims?

  Coxswain sits when you're, uh, it's a rowing thing. That's for, the coxswain is the little guy who sits at the front of the boat.

• 3:16:56Griffin Newman?

  So I could be a coxswain.

• 3:16:57David Sims?

  Yes, you could. You are the actual perfect build for a coxswain. You have to be really loud. You have to yell.

• 3:17:02Griffin Newman?

  Oh, famously I can't do that.

• 3:17:05David Sims?

  I think you can do it.

• 3:17:05Speaker 04

  Billy Boyd.

• 3:17:07Griffin Newman?

  He's the coxswain?

• 3:17:08Speaker 04

  He's the coxswain.

• 3:17:08Griffin Newman?

  That makes sense.

• 3:17:09Speaker 04

  It's also the steer, the steersman of the boat. And like a, like a coxswain in, in, uh, when you're rowing, when you're, you know, What, what is it? Crew?

• 3:17:17Griffin Newman?

  Sure.

• 3:17:18Speaker 04

  You know what I mean? They usually choose little, you know, smaller people.

• 3:17:22Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 3:17:22Speaker 04

  To sit in the back of the boat and call out the strokes.

• 3:17:25Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 3:17:25Speaker 04

  That's what a coxswain is.

• 3:17:26Griffin Newman?

  And do bits and stuff.

• 3:17:27Speaker 04

  And similarly, in Napoleonic War times, you wanted a, a smaller coxswain to steer the boat. And that's why they had hobbits to it.

• 3:17:35Griffin Newman?

  Got it. Okay. So I'll be your coxswain sometime.

• 3:17:38Speaker 03

  I definitely think the worst job is the crank guys.

• 3:17:42Griffin Newman?

  Well, the worst job is peg boy, but we're not even going to get into that. It's kind of, that's, there's not even an argument there.

• 3:17:49Speaker 04

  Ben, the other way they would move the boat, if they didn't have wind, you're going to love this. They had a smaller anchor and they would put it in one of their side boats. And they would row it way out in front of the ship. And then they would drop that anchor way out in front of the ship. And then the ship, they would, those crank boys would crank the capstan around and pull the ship to that anchor. That was another way you would move if you had no wind.

• 3:18:14Speaker 03

  Sure. Which they, I think at one point have to do that at the first battle scene.

• 3:18:20Speaker 04

  Yeah, they, they have the boats tow it. But in this case, it's like, it would be like throwing a grappling hook and then pulling yourself along.

• 3:18:26Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 3:18:26Speaker 04

  Or they would tie themselves to a tree and then pull themselves up.

• 3:18:30Griffin Newman?

  Sure.

• 3:18:30Speaker 04

  If they're, if they're near land or whatever.

• 3:18:32Speaker 03

  So cool.

• 3:18:33Speaker 04

  You understand how fore and aft sails work?

• 3:18:36Speaker 03

  What?

• 3:18:38Griffin Newman?

  Thank you all for listening. Please remember to rate, review and subscribe. Hodgman, anything you want to plug?

• 3:18:43Speaker 04

  Well, the fore and aft sail is something I'd like to plug. It's an incredible means of propulsion that uses the Bernoulli principle of differentiating the, uh, air vacuum. Essentially it works like an airfoil.

• 3:18:56Griffin Newman?

  Mm hmm.

• 3:18:56Speaker 04

  So in the, never mind.

• 3:18:59Griffin Newman?

  Uh, also I would recommend plugging any, uh, leaks in the hull of your ship.

• 3:19:03Speaker 04

  There you go.

• 3:19:03Griffin Newman?

  There we go.

• 3:19:04Speaker 04

  Uh, I'll tell you what, I'll plug my Substack, hodgman.substack.com.

• 3:19:08Griffin Newman?

  Well, look at that.

• 3:19:09Speaker 04

  Because, uh, you get news and little musings from me.

• 3:19:13Griffin Newman?

  Mm hmm.

• 3:19:13Speaker 04

  But you also get me reading Moby Dick aloud in a terrible main accent, chapter by chapter. I've been going, I'm, I'm only about halfway through. So the good stuff is yet to come.

• 3:19:23Griffin Newman?

  And if, and obviously I, you know. I don't want to get people's hopes up too high for something that may never happen. But if, for example, Vacation Land ever were released in paperback, I assume that Substack is somewhere where it might be announced.

• 3:19:36Speaker 04

  Yeah, you would learn about that probably at hodgman.substack.com. You also get to listen to me read Moby Dick aloud in a terrible main accent. It's not a joke.

• 3:19:44Griffin Newman?

  Perfect.

• 3:19:44Speaker 04

  It's a long project that I enjoy.

• 3:19:46Griffin Newman?

  Tune in next week for The Way Back. We're finishing Peter Weir with our buddy Alex Ross Perry, who comes in calm, civil, balanced.

• 3:19:58David Sims?

  I honestly, I remember that being a fun episode, but can't say I remember what, what happened.

• 3:20:03Griffin Newman?

  I can't remember anything.

• 3:20:05David Sims?

  Yeah, like, I mean, I guess we probably litigate a bunch of stuff with Alex because like, that's usually how it goes.

• 3:20:11Griffin Newman?

  Right. He explains how there only ever been two good movies in history.

• 3:20:15David Sims?

  And they're both Super Mario Galaxy.

• 3:20:18Griffin Newman?

  God, he was coming in hot with those galaxies.

• 3:20:21David Sims?

  He really was like, yeah, he was, yeah, I think he was trying a little hard, but.

• 3:20:26Griffin Newman?

  No, I think it was natural. It was easy and organic. Anyway, tune in for that next week. And as always, what's the number one boat fact that you didn't get to share? That you came in locked and loaded with today, John?

• 3:20:41Speaker 04

  Talk about hedging and talk about anchoring.

• 3:20:44Griffin Newman?

  Hedging is when you like, get really close to steering the ship, but you.

• 3:20:47Speaker 04

  That's right.

• 3:20:48Griffin Newman?

  Cool.

• 3:20:48Speaker 04

  It's, uh, there's a knuckle term called gooning.

• 3:20:52Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, sure.

• 3:20:53Speaker 04

  And glazing.

• 3:20:54Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 3:20:54Speaker 04

  And, uh, only the ablest of semen are capable of all three.

• 3:20:58Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 3:21:00Griffin Newman?

  And it creates some more semen in the process.

• 3:21:03Speaker 04

  Yep, that's how, that's how it happens.

• 3:21:04Griffin Newman?

  That's how it happens.

• 3:21:06Speaker 03

  And that's how we end our episode.

• 3:21:07Griffin Newman?

  Yep.