The Odyssey

Sing in us, O Muse, and let us tell the story of four cunning podcasters, wanderers who gained entry into three different large format screenings of Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey across three cities and two continents. This week, we defied the gods to record an episode with missing King of Ithaca himself, Griffin Newman, as he continues his own mythical journey of trying to survive this European heat wave. Join us for a sensible two-and-a-half-hours gushing about this incredible cinematic event, breaking down our favorite set pieces and performances, and discussing previous attempts to bring The Odyssey to the screen. That Christopher Nolan really can't seem to bounce a check these days, can he? Read Richard Nilsen’s review of the 1997 Odyssey miniseries. https://www.newspapers.com/article/arizona-republic-the-odyssey-1997-22/197984894/ Check out the Picture House in the UK if you are there. https://www.picturehouses.com/ Check out Mile End Kicks. https://www.netflix.com/watch/82622289?source=35 Read the classic tweet /post. https://www.tumblr.com/classically-lit-memes4u/669871057231020032/rip-to-everyone-killed-by-the-gods-for-their Read Bilge’s article about the making of the Odyssey. https://www.vulture.com/article/christopher-nolan-on-making-the-odyssey-feel-intimate.html Read David’s review. https://www.theatlantic.com/culture/2026/07/the-odyssey-movie-review-christopher-nolan/687913/ Sign up for Check Book https://blankcheckpod.substack.com/welcome, the Blank Check newsletter featuring even more “real nerdy shit” to feed your pop culture obsession. Dossier excerpts, film biz AND burger reports, and even more exclusive content you won’t want to miss out on. Join our Patreon for franchise commentaries and bonus episodes. http://www.patreon.com/blankcheck Follow us @blankcheckpod on Twitter https://x.com/blankcheckpod?lang=en, Instagram https://www.instagram.com/blankcheckpod/?hl=en, Threads https://www.threads.net/@blankcheckpod?xmt=AQGzctAh4mbWTwYzCV1pzNT6AMV9o99EOfymi8TLR5mTde0 and Facebook https://www.facebook.com/blankcheckpodcast/! Buy some real nerdy merch https://kinshipgoods.com/blankcheck Connect with other Blankies on our Reddit https://www.reddit.com/r/blankies/s/gpcOkQr8Sv or Discord https://discord.gg/Q6YGSR3JrA For anything else, check out BlankCheckPod.com https://www.blankcheckpod.com/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

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

• 0:02Griffin Newman?

  David?

• 0:03David Sims?

  Yep.

• 0:03Griffin Newman?

  We did a live show.

• 0:04David Sims?

  Yeah, remember?

• 0:05Griffin Newman?

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

• 0:12David Sims?

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

• 0:15Griffin Newman?

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

• 0:18David Sims?

  Yeah, hey.

• 0:18Speaker 02

  Hey, everyone, or should I say, oh?

• 0:20David Sims?

  Oh.

• 0:22Griffin Newman?

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

• 0:31Speaker 03

  So just a few more days.

• 0:33David Sims?

  Yes.

• 0:33Speaker 03

  You can get it at dynasty.tv.

• 0:36David Sims?

  Dynasty.tv.

• 0:37Speaker 03

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

• 0:43David Sims?

  Oh, yeah. I was moving things around.

• 0:45Griffin Newman?

  Laptop was on.

• 0:46Speaker 02

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

• 0:48Griffin Newman?

  You were thrilled. You were like a picky chick.

• 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.

• 1:42Speaker 04

  Excuse me. I am but a simple beggar. Is this the Kingdom of the Czech Republic? I've heard that your co-host has been journeying on an odyssey across Europe and there is an opening to co-host the podcast. And once again, I'm just a simple beggar and nothing more. Unsheath?

• 2:06Speaker 02

  Ah!

• 2:08Griffin Newman?

  I draw a bit into my bit bow.

• 2:12Speaker 02

  The bit bow.

• 2:13David Sims?

  Right, yeah, you're.

• 2:14Griffin Newman?

  And then here's my bit bow.

• 2:15David Sims?

  Your joke arrow.

• 2:18Griffin Newman?

  Defy the pods.

• 2:20David Sims?

  Oh, that was defy the pods. That's funny.

• 2:23Griffin Newman?

  Defy the pods cast.

• 2:25Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 2:26David Sims?

  Um, that was so great.

• 2:27Speaker 02

  That was really good.

• 2:28David Sims?

  Yay. And you have authentic facial hair, much like Matt Damon.

• 2:33Griffin Newman?

  I do. I have, how would I describe this?

• 2:35David Sims?

  I'm describing it as you look like Seth Bullock in Deadwood.

• 2:38Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 2:39Griffin Newman?

  I, I do, I've been saying conquistador, but you're right. I feel a little Don Quixote. It's a little, maybe that's because I've been in Spain.

• 2:47Speaker 03

  Well, so we should explain for the listeners, basically Griffin, he's always been rocking a mustache, but now he's got a pretty full soul patch.

• 2:56David Sims?

  He's got the patch.

• 2:57Griffin Newman?

  I'll say this. So the mustache has become more and more of an emphasis in how I conduct my face.

• 3:02Speaker 03

  I'm a fellow stash man. I get it. I love it. We look great.

• 3:06Griffin Newman?

  We're secret stashers. Thank you. I'm filming a TV show. I'm working on a TV show, which I should, I'm gonna say, sometimes I think people should make.

• 3:15Speaker 03

  And I'm gonna say, Griffin, humble brag.

• 3:18Griffin Newman?

  Thank you. This TV show was very well run, but I am coming in late into a season, and there's a big wall in the hair and makeup trailer of like the 70 speaking roles in this season.

• 3:28David Sims?

  Yes.

• 3:29Griffin Newman?

  And I'm introduced like 60 out of 70.

• 3:32David Sims?

  There you go.

• 3:33Griffin Newman?

  And they're like, you need to have a facial hair design that is different than what anyone else has. So it's like so many of the things have been claimed and variations. And I came in just sort of unshaved. I hadn't shaved anything in like a month or two going into this. And they were like, we're keeping the mustache and we're emphasizing the flavor saver.

• 3:55Griffin Newman?

  So even right now, you're seeing me, I'm a couple of days off from filming. The rest of my face has been squeaky clean. I got a little stubble back now, but I've been squeaky clean outside of mustache and flavor saver.

• 4:06David Sims?

  You're squeaky.

• 4:07Griffin Newman?

  And you're right. I look exactly like Matt Damon in The Odyssey.

• 4:11Speaker 02

  Well, I was gonna ask you, like, how long of a beard can you grow?

• 4:16David Sims?

  Oh, like if allowed.

• 4:18Speaker 02

  Matt Damon's beard, the length of it is really impressive.

• 4:21Speaker 03

  Yeah. I mean, if you can grow facial hair, you can grow a long beard.

• 4:26Griffin Newman?

  You can. It's about commitment.

• 4:27Speaker 03

  It's about time. It might be years.

• 4:30Griffin Newman?

  If I have too much beard, I start like picking at it as like a nervous tick.

• 4:34Speaker 03

  Exactly, right.

• 4:35Griffin Newman?

  And then I start like pulling out and futzing with it. So then I usually don't let it get past a certain point. I heard that Matt Damon grew for a year.

• 4:43David Sims?

  He said a year. He said he had a beard for a year, I guess is how he put it.

• 4:46Speaker 03

  A beard for a year. Looking beard.

• 4:49David Sims?

  Yes, because in Greek antiquity, they didn't have fake beards, I guess. So no one was like, no fake beards.

• 4:54Griffin Newman?

  Well, and we know that this is a movie that is 100% historically accurate, and that's why no one is angry about it.

• 5:00David Sims?

  Exactly.

• 5:00Speaker 03

  Wait, people are already angry about it?

• 5:02David Sims?

  Oh, don't worry about them, Ben. Don't worry about those guys. We're here to celebrate.

• 5:07Speaker 03

  It's guys? You're saying it's angry guys? What if it was all girls?

• 5:12Griffin Newman?

  Ben, if I told you that one multi, multi, multi billionaire was angry about this movie, who would you guess it was? One very online.

• 5:21Speaker 03

  Well, let me think. Are they, are they normal, though?

• 5:25Griffin Newman?

  The most normal.

• 5:26Speaker 03

  Okay, then Elon Musk.

• 5:27Griffin Newman?

  Perfect sense of humor. Yes, exactly, exactly.

• 5:30David Sims?

  Okay, what's this podcast called?

• 5:33Griffin Newman?

  This is called The Poticy. It's called Blank Check with Griffin and David, but today we're going on a poticy.

• 5:38David Sims?

  We are going on a poticy to, uh, Ithaca and I guess, uh, Troy and.

• 5:46Speaker 02

  A bunch of other unnamed islands with scary stuff on them.

• 5:49Griffin Newman?

  Upstate New York City, yeah.

• 5:50Speaker 03

  Right, yeah, a bunch of other, right.

• 5:53David Sims?

  That's so true.

• 5:54Speaker 02

  Have you guys been to Ithaca?

• 5:56David Sims?

  Of course, my mother is a Cornell alum.

• 5:58Speaker 03

  The thing that's really scary about Ithaca as far as walking around is the gorges and you have to go over these bridges and you just look down and it's just.

• 6:08David Sims?

  It's quite hefty.

• 6:09Speaker 03

  It's just.

• 6:09David Sims?

  It's quite a drop to drop.

• 6:11Speaker 02

  I visited Cornell and Ithaca on like a little college tour and the, the one thing that everyone talked about was like, oh yeah, lots of people just like fling themselves off into the gorges.

• 6:21Speaker 03

  My cousin went to Ithaca College and just casually mentioned like, yeah, people just will commit suicide.

• 6:28Griffin Newman?

  Because it's too gorgeous.

• 6:29David Sims?

  It's very small. Look at the island. Like, god, everyone's fighting over this. That big.

• 6:33Speaker 02

  Yeah, but like, you know, it's home.

• 6:35David Sims?

  It looks like it has some nice beaches.

• 6:36Speaker 02

  It's home.

• 6:37David Sims?

  I know. It's home. It's home. But, you know, Pattinson's coming all the way out just to try and get this little like, why not this island? Look at this island. This island's huge. Cephalonia, right next door.

• 6:47Speaker 02

  I don't know. Maybe there are fucking monsters on it. The thing about it's the cup.

• 6:49David Sims?

  Yeah, god, all these islands have monsters on them.

• 6:51Speaker 02

  There are no monsters on there. They're just, they're just like.

• 6:55David Sims?

  There's, yeah, there's men. There's petty men.

• 6:57Speaker 02

  Right, men are the monsters. But you don't have like giant Bill Irwin like butt naked with one eye eating you.

• 7:03Speaker 03

  See, my, my read on it was just the smaller island is maybe more strategic.

• 7:09David Sims?

  Maybe, yeah.

• 7:09Speaker 03

  It's just maybe safer.

• 7:11David Sims?

  I think easier to govern too. It's just kind of like, hey, you know, got some sheep.

• 7:15Griffin Newman?

  I want to front load this. The, the Cyclops sequence in the movie is the highlight of the film for me.

• 7:21Speaker 02

  Interesting.

• 7:22David Sims?

  I would not say that's true for me, but it makes sense that it is for you because it, it, it have big monster, which you do love a big monster.

• 7:29Griffin Newman?

  I love Big Monster. I also love Bill Irwin.

• 7:32David Sims?

  We love Bill Irwin.

• 7:33Griffin Newman?

  It genuinely was one of the first times in a long time that I watched a sequence in a movie and went, I have no idea how the fuck they did this.

• 7:40David Sims?

  I had the same, I, I certainly, obviously, I was trying to give myself over to the movie, but I was constantly kind of like, I guess there's some forced perspective stuff, but I'm not totally sure how they pulled this off.

• 7:51Griffin Newman?

  But then it, it's that great movie magic thing where you watch one shot and you go, okay, I think I figured out how they did this.

• 7:57Speaker 02

  Right, and then switch it up on you.

• 7:59Griffin Newman?

  The next shot completely breaks whatever your sense was. And part of it is that he's, he's pulling things back to basics so much.

• 8:06David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 8:07Griffin Newman?

  That any over complicated process that you would just assume or hand wave away, you're ruling out.

• 8:14David Sims?

  Yeah, I don't know. It's, uh, it was very cool when he pick up guy and eat him.

• 8:18Speaker 02

  Yeah, that was scary. I did, I got scared.

• 8:21Griffin Newman?

  Step on him with foot.

• 8:23David Sims?

  And step on him with foot.

• 8:24Speaker 03

  And squeeze him like a toothpaste.

• 8:26David Sims?

  I know.

• 8:27Speaker 02

  You know what's so cool about The Odyssey is I wouldn't be surprised if all of us had a different favorite section of the movie.

• 8:35Griffin Newman?

  Okay, let's go around. Let's do this. Let's go around the horn. David, favorite section.

• 8:39David Sims?

  I think, I think Maria and I have the same favorite section, though.

• 8:41Speaker 02

  Well, I have two favorite sections.

• 8:43David Sims?

  My favorite section is certainly Cersei and the pigs. I mean, that was.

• 8:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, Cersei, Cersei was a big standout for me, but I also was really, really moved by the flashback to.

• 8:57Speaker 02

  Odysseus's experience of carnage in Troy.

• 9:04David Sims?

  That was, that was very, yes, I was very impressed by the narrative thing he was doing in the third act. Certainly. Yes, that is fair. Ben?

• 9:13Speaker 03

  Okay, I'm gonna attempt to say the name of these people and I'm sure I'm gonna butcher it. The last Dragonians.

• 9:23Speaker 02

  The big guys.

• 9:23Speaker 03

  The big fucking crazy knights.

• 9:27David Sims?

  You like a big guy.

• 9:27Speaker 03

  Oh my god, it was so sick.

• 9:30Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 9:30David Sims?

  Yes.

• 9:31Speaker 02

  And that was crazy when it was like, who's that man? And then it turns around, it's a giant kid.

• 9:35Speaker 03

  Sure.

• 9:36Speaker 02

  And he's laughing.

• 9:36Griffin Newman?

  Well, that was great. It's weird that Ben liked the sequence with the taunting child and the giant brute army. And I liked the sequence with the emotionally wounded monster, just in a fetal position in a cave, played by one of America's finest clowns.

• 9:53Speaker 02

  I didn't know it was Bill Irwin until after the fact.

• 9:55David Sims?

  Yeah, I had to tell you.

• 9:57Griffin Newman?

  It's such a good performance.

• 9:59David Sims?

  Very cool.

• 10:00Griffin Newman?

  This is Blank Check with Griffin and David. It's a podcast about filmographies, directors who have massive success early on in their careers, such as making a Bartman movie and are given a series of blank checks to make whatever crazy passion projects they want. Those checks have not run out for one Christopher Nolan.

• 10:16David Sims?

  They keep getting bigger.

• 10:18Griffin Newman?

  On an uninterrupted run of checks being handed to him for now 21 years.

• 10:24David Sims?

  Yeah?

• 10:26Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 10:26David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 10:27Speaker 02

  Are we count, what are we counting as the?

• 10:29David Sims?

  Batman Begins, right?

• 10:31Speaker 02

  That was 21 years ago?

• 10:32David Sims?

  Yeah, it was 2005.

• 10:33Griffin Newman?

  That's what's crazy.

• 10:34Speaker 02

  Oh my god.

• 10:35David Sims?

  I was but 19, maybe 20 years old, yeah.

• 10:38Griffin Newman?

  You could say the Batman Begins was guarantor, but I think the circumstances around Batman were so weird at that point in time that they basically gave him a blank check because they were like, we got no better ideas.

• 10:48David Sims?

  But we already said this with him. He, he constantly has guarantors. He said about this movie like, this is my biggest budget movie ever and it's because Oppenheimer did so well. Like, it's like, it keeps.

• 10:59Speaker 02

  But you don't get to make a movie like Oppenheimer at Oppenheimer's budget without that being a bit of a blank check as well.

• 11:06David Sims?

  Of course.

• 11:06Speaker 02

  So it's like, I have no idea what he does from here.

• 11:10David Sims?

  Can do whatever he wants.

• 11:11Griffin Newman?

  Either. I think he has to go smaller. And I think he's even sort of talking about that now, but we covered him many years ago. His success has only grown since we covered him. At the time, he already was arguably the filmmaker of his generation. And with every successive film, he's only become more and more important. And now he's making what feels like the biggest movie you could possibly imagine.

• 11:35David Sims?

  Yeah, sure.

• 11:36Griffin Newman?

  I mean, we had this conversation after Oppenheimer, all of us. We were just like, the fuck does he do next? When Oppenheimer, which on paper was a one for me, makes nearly a billion dollars and wins every Oscar and performs as high as most of his films have ever achieved, then what is there even left for this guy to cash in? And there were all the rumors that he was doing Blue Thunder.

• 12:01David Sims?

  That's made up. Is that a helicopter cop movie?

• 12:05Griffin Newman?

  Those are code word things. Oh, is he doing a horror movie? Is he doing a this?

• 12:10David Sims?

  He has said he wants to figure out a horror movie, which is, which is interesting.

• 12:16Griffin Newman?

  But do you remember, we were all in the office together. I can't remember what episode we had just recorded or were about to record. And I went, holy shit. And I showed you, there was a tweet. And it was Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey filmed entirely in IMAX coming summer 2026. It was just all at once. Suddenly, the announcement was out there. We had known the cast. The cast had been starting, been growing, had been pinned to the board, but we didn't know what it was. And then we just went, holy shit, of course, he had to do this. It was either The Odyssey or the Bible. It was the only move for him to do next.

• 12:50David Sims?

  As he's pointed out, there's no Hollywood version of The Odyssey ever.

• 12:55Griffin Newman?

  That's what's wild. And that's why it had to be this.

• 12:58David Sims?

  No one had ever tried this. Obviously, there's, there were a couple of sort of Italian, you know, versions.

• 13:04Speaker 02

  Amane DeSante.

• 13:06David Sims?

  That's a TV movie.

• 13:08Speaker 02

  I tried watching that on YouTube last night. I turned it off after 30 seconds.

• 13:11David Sims?

  Do you want to see what the Cyclops looks like in it? Someone posted it to my work Slack.

• 13:15Speaker 02

  Oh. You know, he looks kinda good. He looks like a big baby.

• 13:19Griffin Newman?

  Let me see this guy. I like this. I like this guy a little.

• 13:22David Sims?

  He looks pretty good.

• 13:23Speaker 03

  That's some Griffin shit right there.

• 13:24David Sims?

  It's a little bit dinosaurs vibe, you know?

• 13:26Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 13:27David Sims?

  Little early Holland there.

• 13:29Griffin Newman?

  Did the Jim Henson Creature Shop work on this at all?

• 13:32David Sims?

  I mean, one assumes, right? I mean, let's find out.

• 13:35Griffin Newman?

  They did a lot of those TV movies.

• 13:36David Sims?

  I was gonna say, that was their, that was how they kept the lights on, right?

• 13:40Griffin Newman?

  Exactly. There's like the Ted Danson Gulliver's Travels around that time.

• 13:43David Sims?

  Oh, that was huge. Remember the Ted Danson Gulliver's Travels?

• 13:46Griffin Newman?

  Remember how big he was?

• 13:47David Sims?

  He was big. He was. And you know what, Griffin?

• 13:50Griffin Newman?

  And the Willaputians were small.

• 13:51David Sims?

  I can confirm for you that the creature effects for this miniseries were provided by Jim Henson's Creature Shop. They had a talking animatronic pig roasting on a spit.

• 14:00Speaker 02

  That's cool.

• 14:01Griffin Newman?

  Love that.

• 14:01David Sims?

  Uh, they had a rod puppet sea slug sea monster, and they had, you know, a cyclops.

• 14:08Speaker 02

  Well, maybe I'll try, I'll give it another shot, but I'll just fast forward to all the cool, uh...

• 14:12Griffin Newman?

  To the puppet stuff.

• 14:12Speaker 02

  Puppet stuff. Last night for research, I was like, I wanna watch some stuff to like get me in the Odyssey mood again. Cause we saw the movie, what, like, three days ago? Uh, so I watched the, uh, episode of Arthur where DW retells the Odyssey.

• 14:30Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 14:31Speaker 02

  And I watched the episode of Wishbone.

• 14:33Griffin Newman?

  I was gonna say, Wishbone must have spun that tale.

• 14:36Speaker 02

  But it's very, very interesting because, okay, in the Arthur version with DW, there's none of the like, what's happening back at Ithaca stuff. It's just DW on a boat encountering monsters.

• 14:48David Sims?

  Uh, sure.

• 14:49Speaker 02

  And then in the Wishbone version, barely any of the monsters. It's all back at Ithaca.

• 14:54David Sims?

  I really hope Christopher Nolan's listening right now as we talk about this.

• 14:58Speaker 02

  I just think it's, I think it's crazy that children's media used to do this shit.

• 15:04David Sims?

  Well, yeah, well, they, you know, they still do it. I'm sure Gabby's Dollhouse has done an Odyssey episode.

• 15:08Speaker 02

  Is Gabby's Dollhouse an Odyssey episode?

• 15:10David Sims?

  Maybe not yet. I'm not sure. I'm not sure if she's gotten there yet. I, I just have to read this, uh, review for the 1997 miniseries that's cited on Wikipedia because it's so... It's such a good burn, uh, by Richard Nielsen of the Arizona Republic. "Even though the made-for-TV movie is only four hours long, I wasted a fifth hour stewing over how god-awful it was."

• 15:32Griffin Newman?

  That's pretty bad.

• 15:33David Sims?

  He's saying, "This is, this shit was so bad, it ate into further time in my life." "It ruined an additional hour of my life."

• 15:41Griffin Newman?

  That mini-series had its own controversy at the time because they cast Baby Sinclair to play Helen of Troy. Cause they had him kicking around the creature shop and people got really upset.

• 15:51David Sims?

  And that's, and that's a Muppets reference?

• 15:53Griffin Newman?

  Not the mama.

• 15:54Speaker 02

  That's a dinosaur, not the mama.

• 15:55David Sims?

  I didn't know his name was Baby Sinclair.

• 15:58Speaker 02

  You didn't know his name was Baby Sinclair?

• 15:59Griffin Newman?

  But people thought he didn't have a face that would launch a thousand ships. That was the argument. I think he's handsome.

• 16:05David Sims?

  He's iconic. I mean, I don't know if I'd call him handsome, but like, who knows the baby?

• 16:10Griffin Newman?

  He is literally the moment.

• 16:12David Sims?

  You think he's currently the moment?

• 16:14Griffin Newman?

  I think, I think Baby Sinclair has never been more relevant, as proven by how quickly all three of you understood the joke I was making.

• 16:23Speaker 02

  I didn't like the joke, but...

• 16:24David Sims?

  They're called the Sinclair, why are they called the Sinclair's?

• 16:27Speaker 02

  Because they're just a normal family.

• 16:28David Sims?

  They should have had like a pun name.

• 16:30Speaker 02

  I agree.

• 16:31David Sims?

  You know?

• 16:32Speaker 02

  Wait, isn't there like a Sinclair oil or like a gas station called Sinclair with a dinosaur on it?

• 16:37Griffin Newman?

  Oh, I think you're right.

• 16:38David Sims?

  That sounds a little, that sounds like a stretch though.

• 16:41Speaker 02

  No, see, look, Sinclair Oil Corporation.

• 16:43Griffin Newman?

  Fossil fuel.

• 16:44David Sims?

  Yeah, the name is a reference to Sinclair, okay.

• 16:46Griffin Newman?

  This is funny, this is really good, it's a really good show.

• 16:49Speaker 02

  I am so smart.

• 16:49David Sims?

  That's too sophisticated. Okay, let's talk about...

• 16:54Griffin Newman?

  The Odyssey.

• 16:55David Sims?

  The Odyssey and our screening experiences.

• 16:57Speaker 02

  So, we have three different screening experiences.

• 17:00David Sims?

  Three different experiences, three different experiences.

• 17:03Griffin Newman?

  Cities, three different major cities.

• 17:05David Sims?

  Three cities, wow.

• 17:07Griffin Newman?

  Much like The Odyssey the movie, this is an episode that spans multiple countries, multiple cities.

• 17:13Speaker 02

  Multiple formats.

• 17:14David Sims?

  Uh, multiple formats, cause yes, okay, so, alright, well, Maria and I saw it at the AMC IMAX Lincoln Square.

• 17:22Speaker 02

  70mm IMAX.

• 17:23David Sims?

  70mm IMAX, where I guess you can't get like a seat at like the 3am screenings in August right now? Like, it's like, sold out for the rest of time?

• 17:32Speaker 02

  We are checking our privilege. It was, I feel enormously blessed to have had the opportunity to not only see this film the, in the, you know, the director-preferred format.

• 17:45David Sims?

  Big old theater.

• 17:46Speaker 02

  But also in the best seat in the house.

• 17:48David Sims?

  Of course, we had my, my favorite seats in the back of the house, near the secret bathroom.

• 17:52Speaker 02

  Yes, which I really took advantage of. Yes, on the IMAX screen.

• 17:56Griffin Newman?

  Yes, okay.

• 17:57David Sims?

  Uh, but it was 70 and you know, the, the film, like the, the picture, there were little, little spots and, and pops and a little guy, oh yeah, it was very cool.

• 18:06Griffin Newman?

  Texture.

• 18:07David Sims?

  Exactly.

• 18:07Griffin Newman?

  I like the imperfections.

• 18:08David Sims?

  Now, Ben, Ben, where did you see this film?

• 18:10Speaker 03

  I was in Chicago.

• 18:12David Sims?

  The windy city!

• 18:12Speaker 03

  Visiting and I went to an AMC theater in downtown Chicago and saw this film in 70 millimeter.

• 18:24David Sims?

  And, and at that theater, there's no ketchup and it's all, it's like a Jardiner, right? And a big pickle in your popcorn. I'm doing a Chicago bit.

• 18:34Speaker 03

  Yeah, there was celery salt.

• 18:36David Sims?

  You saw it inside the bean, right?

• 18:38Speaker 03

  I did, and the perspective was a little weird.

• 18:40David Sims?

  Right, right. It was a little, the picture was a little warped.

• 18:43Griffin Newman?

  What's, what's the deep dish version of a movie theater? Is it that the chairs are behind the screen?

• 18:48Speaker 03

  It's like the whole theater is kind of like a conversation pit.

• 18:51David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 18:51Speaker 03

  But it just goes way down.

• 18:53David Sims?

  Funny.

• 18:54Griffin Newman?

  Or it's maybe, maybe it's like Ben's original pitch of like the underwater upside down movie theater.

• 18:59David Sims?

  Right, right. That would be good, especially for that. Anyway, okay. So yeah, you, you were in Chicago, Chicago. And so you went to a press screening there?

• 19:09Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 19:09David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 19:10Speaker 03

  And unfortunately IMAX not available.

• 19:12David Sims?

  They don't have an IMAX in Chicago.

• 19:14Speaker 02

  I just learned this today. I am shocked.

• 19:16Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 19:17Griffin Newman?

  For such a major market.

• 19:18David Sims?

  I go, or I guess if they do have one, they don't do press screenings there. I don't really know.

• 19:23Griffin Newman?

  Do, do you know what format you saw, Ben? Was it 35?

• 19:25Speaker 03

  Seventy.

• 19:26Griffin Newman?

  Was it a digital? You saw in seven, okay. So you saw in a gentleman's 70.

• 19:30Speaker 03

  A gentleman's 70, yeah.

• 19:31David Sims?

  Obviously, most people around this country will not be able to see the film in like fancy fancy IMAX. Obviously, there's, you know, digital IMAX out there and there's 70 out there. There's a lot of formats.

• 19:41Speaker 02

  I'm going to see it on 35 on Saturday.

• 19:43David Sims?

  Where?

• 19:44Speaker 02

  Nighthawk.

• 19:44David Sims?

  Wow. Crazy.

• 19:45Griffin Newman?

  I, I saw, I think the number is there's somewhere between 40 and 50 screens on the planet that show it in the kind of complete preferred Nolan format. Now, I have been in Spain filming.

• 20:01David Sims?

  Griffins in Spain!

• 20:02Griffin Newman?

  In the entire country of Spain, there are only two IMAX screens, both of which are digital.

• 20:07David Sims?

  Wow.

• 20:08Griffin Newman?

  I had purchased tickets for one of them at midnight. So I was gonna see this movie at midnight on Thursday, record with you guys the next day. And then my buddy, right, let's say friend of the podcast, he came through in a major way here. Sam Clements, who works for the Picture House chain in the UK, the great movie theater chain. I was texting with him and he said, "I might be able to get you into the press event." Which was at the BFI South Bank IMAX.

• 20:32David Sims?

  A big fancy theater in Waterloo, very, very large.

• 20:35Griffin Newman?

  One of the biggest IMAX screens.

• 20:37David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 20:37Griffin Newman?

  And he pulled off a miracle. Uh, his buddy David at Organic Publicity got me in. I had a handful of days off from filming. Uh, I in fact have more than a handful of days off from filming.

• 20:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, it seems like you're barely filming.

• 20:50Griffin Newman?

  A little bit, a little bit. I've been doing a lot of siesta-ing, but a little bit of work, a little touch of work on the side. Uh, a kind of pinchos amount of work, just small topus work. Um, how many other phrases can I appropriate here? But I got to see it at the South Bank in 70 IMAX, which was a quite a treat. It is, it's a, it's a fucking big ass movie.

• 21:13Speaker 02

  It really is.

• 21:14Griffin Newman?

  And this is, Nolan's been working on this project for a decade of how much more, more than a decade, almost 20 years now, because I guess it starts with Dark Knight 18 years ago, of how much IMAX can I get into a commercial release film? And this is the first movie where he's gotten it up to 100%, right? Every single shot in this movie?

• 21:36David Sims?

  I gotta say, this movie's epic.

• 21:39Griffin Newman?

  It is quite epic.

• 21:40Speaker 02

  Pretty epic.

• 21:41Griffin Newman?

  Regardless of what format you see it in, the actual fidelity of the image that has been captured is pretty fucking astonishing.

• 21:49David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 21:49Speaker 02

  Uh, David Erlich, run of the pod, uh, friend of my life, was at the same screening as us seeing the movie for the second time. He saw it in IMAX for the first time, and then for the second screening, he saw it in 70. Um, and he said he preferred it in seventy, which we were like, hmm, interesting. Uh, we think you're just making stuff up.

• 22:10David Sims?

  You know, the, the first screening of a movie like this where it's all hyped, you're all, you're so like, you know, buzzed up watching it and it's hard to concentrate even, you know, the second screening, you can focus more at what he's doing. Maybe that was part of it.

• 22:21Speaker 03

  And if he's listening right now, he should throw a wallet at himself.

• 22:24Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 22:25David Sims?

  Yeah, he should actually. Yeah, that's right.

• 22:27Griffin Newman?

  I'll say this, we've, we've all seen it one time.

• 22:30Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 22:30Griffin Newman?

  We've been fortunate enough to see it one time before release in order to get this episode out quickly. I don't think I had any like adjustment to how high my expectations were or the hype. I felt pretty settled into meeting the movie where it was at. It does feel like a lot of movie to absorb on one viewing.

• 22:47David Sims?

  Yes.

• 22:47Griffin Newman?

  Like, I feel like I'm struggling even two days later.

• 22:50David Sims?

  Wow.

• 22:50Griffin Newman?

  To get my head around some of it. I think the movie's excellent.

• 22:53David Sims?

  I'm strong as hell. Strong.

• 22:55Griffin Newman?

  Strong as hell.

• 22:55David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 22:56Griffin Newman?

  You feel like you got a complete take.

• 22:57Speaker 03

  He was saying before we started taping, like, he's got the names locked down.

• 23:02Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 23:03Griffin Newman?

  He's got the names?

• 23:04Speaker 02

  I was saying, like, I'm not gonna remember all of the names. And he was like, don't worry about it. We're just gonna say the actors' names. And I was like, okay.

• 23:11David Sims?

  John Leguizamo.

• 23:15Griffin Newman?

  Can I say he's my MVP in this movie?

• 23:17David Sims?

  Well, of course he is, Griffin. Of course he's your MVP. He's so good. He's so good.

• 23:21Speaker 02

  He's the Crumholtz of the movie. I personally, and I don't know, maybe David, you'll agree with me on this. I think Samantha Morton is the, like, standout performance.

• 23:32David Sims?

  I mean, I, I really think that everyone in this movie is very well cast and used, but it was so nice to see people like Morton and Leguizamo, who Nolan's never worked with before, where Nolan clearly immediately was like, that is the person. I don't need to identify, like, whatever, a bigger star here or what, you know, what, like a glitzier, like, he matched the actor so perfectly. Leguizamo in The Odyssey, you're like, that, what? Like, that doesn't automatically, and then you see it and you're like, I understand this completely. Morton makes total sense. That, you know, that was not.

• 24:05Griffin Newman?

  I, I think, I think they're the two MVPs. Morton, you know, we've talked about Morton a lot this year and on the more In the late 90s and the early 2000s, she was seen as like one of definitively the great actresses of her generation and she's receded a little bit. And this just feels like Nolan wanting to remind everyone how good she is and how powerful she is. Leguizamo, I don't feel like I've ever seen him used like this before.

• 24:32David Sims?

  It's interesting. I was trying to think about this. Yeah.

• 24:34Griffin Newman?

  Unlocking new chambers for me because he's like kind of the heart of the movie.

• 24:39Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 24:39David Sims?

  He is. Yeah.

• 24:40Griffin Newman?

  The emotional spine of the thing who all the other characters are filtered through.

• 24:44David Sims?

  I for some reason kept thinking about John Wick because Odyssey does have a John Wick vibe of like he's coming back and he's mad.

• 24:52Speaker 02

  Which I feel like maybe John Wick has an Odyssey vibe.

• 24:55David Sims?

  Of course, absolutely.

• 24:57Griffin Newman?

  Odyssey is calling him and being like, do you still have my car?

• 25:00David Sims?

  Yeah, right. I mean, it was a little bit that where it's like Leguizamo is just playing the guy where it's like everyone agrees that this guy is reliable and wise.

• 25:08Griffin Newman?

  Yes, as hell.

• 25:10David Sims?

  Like that is what we turn because I'm looking at Leguizamo's, I mean, he works like Leguizamo is always working. But like, what's the last time he was, it might be John Wick, like that he was in something where I was like, oh, it's so, what a great use of him like.

• 25:26Griffin Newman?

  I didn't see Bob Trevino Likes It, which everyone said he was really excellent in.

• 25:30David Sims?

  I should see that, I guess. He's the lead of that, right?

• 25:32Speaker 02

  He's Bob Trevino?

• 25:34Griffin Newman?

  It's him and Barbie Ferrera. Yeah.

• 25:36David Sims?

  And Barbie Ferrera, by the way, she's having a hell of a year.

• 25:40Griffin Newman?

  She is.

• 25:40David Sims?

  I'm loving Barbie Ferrera. No? Everyone? No?

• 25:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, she's great.

• 25:45Griffin Newman?

  Our buddy Chandler Levick's great film.

• 25:47David Sims?

  That movie is so good. Chandler.

• 25:49Griffin Newman?

  It's so good. Yes.

• 25:50David Sims?

  Are you listening? Chandler? I liked your movie.

• 25:52Griffin Newman?

  The Canadian film explosion of 2026 is to me the big story.

• 25:56David Sims?

  That's so true. Yes, Canada's everywhere right now. Let's see, he's in the new Exorcist, Leguizamo.

• 26:02Griffin Newman?

  Okay.

• 26:03David Sims?

  I bet you he plays like a priest who's like, I don't like the looks of this.

• 26:06Griffin Newman?

  We gotta get this team out.

• 26:08Speaker 02

  You're right. That sounds very good. I can see it.

• 26:11Griffin Newman?

  I bet he talks out of the center of his mouth exclusively.

• 26:15David Sims?

  Right down the center of his mouth.

• 26:18Griffin Newman?

  Those front teeth getting a lot of exposure.

• 26:21David Sims?

  Is he like, you know, has he done like, should we throw him like a glitzy mini series?

• 26:26Speaker 02

  I mean, he was.

• 26:27David Sims?

  Grab an Emmy or something?

• 26:28Speaker 02

  He was, he was in an Apple TV series called Smoke, which wasn't very good, but he was, he was in it.

• 26:34David Sims?

  He was in it.

• 26:35Griffin Newman?

  It feels like he's primed, though. That's a good point, David.

• 26:38David Sims?

  You know what I mean?

• 26:38Griffin Newman?

  We got Legazamo in like, third position on an FX series. He's like, winning every award.

• 26:46David Sims?

  Yeah, like, who doesn't, who's not happy to see Legs?

• 26:50Speaker 02

  Johnny Legs.

• 26:51Griffin Newman?

  Well, King Koopa.

• 26:53David Sims?

  Well, that's true. Although, actually, I don't really know that King Koopa registered Luigi as a threat, did he? I mean, I can't really remember.

• 27:00Griffin Newman?

  You know, I haven't watched that film in a little while.

• 27:02David Sims?

  Do they do battle even? Like, I don't really.

• 27:04Griffin Newman?

  If King Koopa doesn't register Luigi as a threat, I would say that's a narrative shortcoming. I would say if King Koopa does not recognize one of the two Mario Brothers as a threat at any point, that movie might have some script issues.

• 27:16David Sims?

  Um, I, I do think, I've seen the Super Mario Brothers movie several times in my life. I, I think one could accuse it of having script issues. I think that's fair. I think everyone would, would bear that accusation with grace and respect.

• 27:30Griffin Newman?

  Oh, my God, what do I say here? Putting my finger up behind my ear.

• 27:33David Sims?

  Um, so here we are. We saw The Odyssey. So Griff, you saw it at the BFI. Was that nice? That's a lovely theater. I haven't been there in a long time, but it's very cool. It's a big old circle.

• 27:42Griffin Newman?

  It's in a circle. You gotta go a little bit underground in a tunnel.

• 27:45David Sims?

  Cool. Yeah, because it's in like, in the middle of a, of a giant roundabout. Like, it's like, there's cars going around.

• 27:50Griffin Newman?

  It's in the middle of like a, like a traffic circle. Yes. And so you gotta take an underpass to go into the secret chamber.

• 27:57David Sims?

  Cool. That's great. See any pals there?

• 28:00Griffin Newman?

  Uh.

• 28:01David Sims?

  Any of our Brit pals?

• 28:02Griffin Newman?

  Honey Ross, friend of the podcast.

• 28:04David Sims?

  Okay.

• 28:05Griffin Newman?

  Uh, and Sam, Sam Clements was there with me. I don't think I saw anyone else.

• 28:08David Sims?

  Fair enough.

• 28:09Griffin Newman?

  But I was, I was immediately taken aback by, and I think I wasn't reading early responses. You guys had gone with Marika Brownlee. Ben was seeing at the same time that I was vaguely. I'd gotten general thumbs up from people I knew, but I wasn't reading anyone's deep. Thoughts and I was taken aback immediately because I was Sam Sam helped me get into the screen, but he'd already seen the movie and there was a whole kerfuffle with me being his plus one, where they wouldn't let me in without him. So he said, I'll come and I'll sit through the first like 30 minutes again, and then I'll leave. And I said, is like the opening particularly good? I was wondering, like, does it have one of these classic Nolan, sort of James Bond style,

• 28:54Griffin Newman?

  Dark Knight, Tenet, you open with something kind of just so fucking insane.

• 28:58David Sims?

  Right.

• 28:58Griffin Newman?

  And he was like, the opening's great, but it's not like that. And the movie starts and immediately it was just like, this is not where I thought this film would start. This is not how the first hour I imagined would progress. And the structure of this movie, for a guy who likes to play around with structure, is so different than I was expecting, because he doesn't diagram it. Usually when he does funny structure tricks, it's like really set up and explained. And this movie almost immediately reminded me so much of Thin Red Line.

• 29:29David Sims?

  Okay, yeah.

• 29:30Griffin Newman?

  And that it feels like it's editing based on emotions.

• 29:34David Sims?

  Um, that's interesting, Grace. So, you know, I will say, The Odyssey, I'm gonna, am I the only reader of The Odyssey in the room right now? Not to, not to Odyssey mog anyone.

• 29:44Speaker 03

  I mean, I studied it in school.

• 29:46David Sims?

  Sure, okay. So you read it?

• 29:48Speaker 03

  I have no memory of it really, but I have brushed up a little bit in just watching some YouTube guides.

• 29:57Speaker 02

  I, I bought a, a graphic novel version of it with pictures.

• 30:01Griffin Newman?

  Who did, who did this graphic novel?

• 30:03David Sims?

  It would be a disaster if the graphic novel didn't have pictures. That would be a huge misstep.

• 30:07Speaker 02

  Big bummer. Uh, Gareth Hines.

• 30:10David Sims?

  I've, I've seen this. I think my wife has used this as a teaching aid because she teaches The Odyssey.

• 30:14Griffin Newman?

  Your wife teaches The Odyssey?

• 30:15David Sims?

  She does, she does. Um, but like, you know, the, the first four books of The Odyssey are from Telemachus's perspective. They do have this kind of prologue-y kind of like, where's Odysseus? You know, like-

• 30:28Speaker 03

  Son of Odysseus, we should say.

• 30:29David Sims?

  Telemachus is the son of Odysseus and he is played by Tom Holland in the film. Guys notice that? Yes. Peter Parker. Peter Parker himself. Uh, Nathan Drake himself.

• 30:42Speaker 02

  Uh, did you guys see the video of Tom Holland and Matt Damon doing a like junket thing where they had to guess?

• 30:50Griffin Newman?

  Make a pizza?

• 30:51David Sims?

  I did not see the one where they had to make pizza. What did they have to guess?

• 30:54Speaker 02

  They have to guess which of their films by just the colors of the frames. You ever see the movie let's thing or whatever?

• 31:01Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, yeah, that's a fun game. It's tough to put those two filmographies next to each other.

• 31:06Speaker 02

  Well, that was what was really fucking funny.

• 31:08David Sims?

  Right, Damon has like eight masterpieces.

• 31:10Speaker 02

  Okay, so is this movie the Departed, Interstellar, or Good Will Hunting?

• 31:15David Sims?

  One of the 14 Soderbergh movies I made and Tom Holland's like, is this chaos walking?

• 31:19Speaker 02

  Well, no, for Tom Holland, they gave him, they gave him three Sp- his three Spider-Man movies and he had to guess.

• 31:26David Sims?

  That's so lame.

• 31:27Speaker 02

  They all fucking looked the same. I wouldn't be, it was so sad. I felt so bad for him.

• 31:32David Sims?

  Is this the best? I mean, I think The Lost City is he is my favorite movie that he's ever written.

• 31:36Griffin Newman?

  Love that film, yeah.

• 31:37David Sims?

  Uh, but then I think this is a, this is a huge challenger. I don't see anything else in his filmography that I would really vault up the list here.

• 31:47Griffin Newman?

  It is wild that, I mean, obviously, No Way Home was so fucking humongous and was, you know, one of the first in a series of movies that saved Hollywood after the pandemic, right? And it got a little erased by Top Gun and Maverick and, uh, Top Gun Maverick and Barbie and Oppenheimer.

• 32:05David Sims?

  Yeah, but it was a phenomenon, yeah.

• 32:08Griffin Newman?

  Humongous. It's one of the 10 highest grossing films of all time. And he's been a little silent. And I think there's been a couple of years for all of us to stroke our chins and be like, is he juiceless? Like, where the fuck does his career go at this point? Especially because everything he tried to do outside of Spider-Man really didn't work. And yet, he's about to be the undisputed king of the summer box office.

• 32:28David Sims?

  It's true.

• 32:29Griffin Newman?

  He's about to have a humongous fucking summer.

• 32:31David Sims?

  He's gonna have a huge, it's just July. King, he's the king of July.

• 32:35Speaker 02

  I thought-

• 32:36Griffin Newman?

  Sully could have only dreamed of the kind of July he's having.

• 32:39David Sims?

  That's so true.

• 32:40Speaker 02

  I, uh, I think he was very well cast in this movie.

• 32:44David Sims?

  Yeah, I thought he was well deployed in this movie. I think he's, you know what? I'm gonna give him his flowers. I think he's good in the film. I know some people are like, "Ah, no, I just sort of felt like Tom Holland to me." But no, I think he-

• 32:54Griffin Newman?

  No, I think he's good.

• 32:54David Sims?

  I think he really unders- he's really, he's good at playing someone who needs to learn, like-

• 33:00Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 33:00David Sims?

  And mature and grow. Like, and I'm not saying that as a-

• 33:03Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 33:04David Sims?

  As a neg on him.

• 33:05Griffin Newman?

  No, the problem with him is gonna be the, can he ever age into anything else?

• 33:09David Sims?

  I'm not sure.

• 33:10Speaker 02

  Uh, yeah.

• 33:11David Sims?

  I don't know. I saw him saying in an interview, like, "I think this will be the last time I'm kind of playing a kid." And I was like, "Maybe."

• 33:17Speaker 02

  Like, it is pretty like, I know, I know that he is 30.

• 33:21David Sims?

  He is 30.

• 33:21Speaker 02

  I cannot believe that he is 30.

• 33:23David Sims?

  He do, he do have a baby face. But it reminded me a lot of his Lost City as Ed performance. Like, it did, you know, like, yeah.

• 33:30Griffin Newman?

  There's that John Mulaney joke of, "I'm sober," which I know is surprising to people because I look like someone who hasn't done anything before.

• 33:36David Sims?

  Right, that he's just been sitting in a room eating crackers. Yes.

• 33:39Griffin Newman?

  Right. A lot of this Odyssey Spider-Man promo tour has been Tom Holland pushing Bureau, his non-alcoholic beer alternative.

• 33:46David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 33:46Griffin Newman?

  And that's another thing where you're like, "I can't believe you're old enough to be sober now."

• 33:51David Sims?

  I'm happy for him that he-

• 33:53Griffin Newman?

  I'm so happy for him.

• 33:54David Sims?

  He's got whatever equilibrium he desires or whatever, but yes, it is, it is interesting.

• 33:58Griffin Newman?

  But he reads as perpetually 16.

• 34:01Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 34:02David Sims?

  He does. He does. Which is why he's in this role, in which literally the point is that he is not of age yet.

• 34:09Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 34:10David Sims?

  The point of the Odyssey is like, "You are Odysseus's son, you're a strong young man, but you cannot inherit his throne yet, so I gotta keep weaving this fucking thing until he comes back."

• 34:21Griffin Newman?

  Can I say Hollywood, "Thank you for your service, how about you sit here in the corner and you do your thing, and we're just gonna wait on Matt Damon to come back."

• 34:40Griffin Newman?

  David?

• 34:40David Sims?

  Yes.

• 34:41Griffin Newman?

  Moooo.

• 34:44David Sims?

  Is that the C S cow?

• 34:45Griffin Newman?

  The C S cow is back.

• 34:46David Sims?

  Haven't heard from her in a while.

• 34:48Griffin Newman?

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

• 34:53David Sims?

  Okay.

• 34:53Griffin Newman?

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

• 34:58David Sims?

  Wow.

• 34:58Griffin Newman?

  The cow likes chicken.

• 35:01David Sims?

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

• 35:07Griffin 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.

• 35:19David Sims?

  Yes.

• 35:19Griffin Newman?

  One of my favorite movies of the year.

• 35:20David Sims?

  Absolutely.

• 35:21Griffin Newman?

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

• 35:27David Sims?

  That is a line in the movie.

• 35:29Griffin Newman?

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

• 35:31David Sims?

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

• 35:35Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 35:35David Sims?

  Great friend.

• 35:36Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 35:37David Sims?

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

• 35:42Griffin Newman?

  Uh huh.

• 35:43David Sims?

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

• 35:46Griffin Newman?

  Friend of the show.

• 35:46David Sims?

  Friend of the show, Zach Cherry.

• 35:48Griffin Newman?

  Zach Cherry.

• 35:48David Sims?

  Also in it.

• 35:49Griffin Newman?

  This is true.

• 35:51David Sims?

  Such a cool movie, one that queer Paul McCann, if you haven't heard about this movie, I don't know what's going on with you, but like it obviously has, it was out in theaters this summer and now it's on MUBI.

• 36:01Griffin Newman?

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

• 36:15David Sims?

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

• 36:19Griffin Newman?

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

• 36:31David 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.

• 36:44Griffin Newman?

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

• 36:49David Sims?

  Damn right.

• 36:55Griffin Newman?

  David.

• 36:55David Sims?

  Hmm.

• 36:56Griffin Newman?

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

• 37:03David Sims?

  Lisa.

• 37:04Griffin 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.

• 37:12David Sims?

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

• 37:18Griffin Newman?

  Mm hmm.

• 37:18David Sims?

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

• 37:25Griffin Newman?

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

• 37:29David Sims?

  No.

• 37:29Griffin Newman?

  Nope.

• 37:30David Sims?

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• 38:17Griffin Newman?

  David.

• 38:18David Sims?

  Yes.

• 38:18Griffin Newman?

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

• 38:22David Sims?

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

• 38:28Griffin Newman?

  I love that. It's very convenient.

• 38:29David Sims?

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

• 38:36Griffin 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.

• 38:45David 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.

• 39:08Griffin Newman?

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

• 39:42David Sims?

  So, The Odyssey, uh, it is a film directed by Christopher Nolan and it does begin with Travis Scott. Uh, the great Travis Scott, a friend of Christopher Nolan's, right? They're best buds, right? Don't they like send each other gifts and shit like they're like-

• 39:57Speaker 02

  They are friendly, yes.

• 39:58David Sims?

  Because Travis Scott had a song in Tenet. I feel like that was their, um, that was their initial-

• 40:04Griffin Newman?

  And he's got the end credit song in this.

• 40:06David Sims?

  And, and you know, it begins with him trying, you know, he's gonna sing the song of Odysseus. He's, and it's clearly Nolan like taking you by the shoulders and being like, you have to understand that this storytelling form exists now and has just evolved. Like, it has just changed and like, but he's like, it's a real mission statement moment for him where he's just like, this is still what we do. We tell like stories through verse to each other. It's so good. I was so startled by it.

• 40:34Speaker 02

  The first five minutes of the movie played in front of another movie, is that true?

• 40:39David Sims?

  Oh, no, no, no, no. The prologue which I saw is the Trojan sequence, which is much later in the movie.

• 40:44Speaker 02

  Okay, because I really tried not to see a ton of marketing for this movie. Like I saw the teaser trailer, whatever it was where Tom Holland was like, my dad's coming home or whatever. And I saw that and I was like- This doesn't look good to me, but I'm, so I'm not gonna watch anything else because I trust Christopher Nolan and-

• 41:04Griffin Newman?

  You wanna see it in context?

• 41:05Speaker 02

  I wanna see it in context. But then I, I know that, I, I don't know what movie they put it in front of in IMAX, but some people did get to see the prologue.

• 41:14David Sims?

  You could see it if you bought a ticket to an IMAX. So I saw, I bought a ticket to the Sinners re-release just to watch it.

• 41:19Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 41:20David Sims?

  It was also in front of One Battle, I think, you know, or what, I can't remember. Like, it was, it was the fall of, it was like a little sizzle reel, basically.

• 41:27Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 41:27David Sims?

  But it was not like the first fight, it wasn't like Dark Knight Rises where it was truly just like, let's watch the opening.

• 41:32Speaker 02

  Because I too was genuinely shocked that the movie, the first shot of the movie is Travis Scott.

• 41:37David Sims?

  Yes.

• 41:38Speaker 02

  Saying, "Sing, O Muse." And so I was like, "Oh, peop-, did people know this was coming if they saw the preview?"

• 41:43David Sims?

  Oh.

• 41:44Griffin Newman?

  I'll also say, uh, Sam Clement's of Picture House aforementioned goes to like the European equivalents of CinemaCon. And he said that a month or two ago, they showed what they said was the opening of the movie, and it was very different than this. It was constructed differently. So it feels like they've been, the editing of this movie feels very free-flowing. I could see this being a thing that he kept iterating on until the last second. But to your point of the Travis Scott thing and the stupid controversies that existed around this movie, which Nolan very wisely didn't really weigh in on, until recently he had to do the press tour, and then I thought he put it perfectly, which is, you know, a lot of people were complaining that there were things in the trailers and the posters and fucking whatever,

• 42:28Griffin Newman?

  that seemed too modern, or too casual, or didn't seem historically accurate. And this is partially a trap of Nolan's own making in that his fans have come to build this sort of mythology around him of being like, the guy who takes everything the most seriously. Whereas, that has never been his thing. There's always been silliness in his movies, there's always been flights of fancy and stylization in his movies. He is a literal-minded guy in a certain kind of way, but it doesn't mean that he's a guy who just is like, "Nothing but the facts, ma'am." And he said, you know, "So much of what people consider to be accurate in these types of movies, is based on iteration of theatrical traditions of how we tell these stories."

• 43:10Griffin Newman?

  These things like that we like to think of of people speaking in Shakespearean accents in a certain language is like a theatrical form that we use to connote seriousness that is put on epics like this. And as you said, this movie is starting out and being like, this is the tradition that this is in, and we're going to translate this into something that feels urgent to you right now, a modern audience, rather than trying to gloss it up in some sort of sense of seriousness.

• 43:39David Sims?

  Right.

• 43:40Griffin Newman?

  And then you you almost immediately go to the beaches with the horse, right?

• 43:44David Sims?

  Well, you sort of do. It's basically like he's starting to tell the story and you see Elliot Page getting pinned to the horse. But then, what is it, Penelope and Hathaway is like, no, I don't want to hear the fucking story. Because the point is, it's like,

• 43:57Griffin Newman?

  I hate that story.

• 43:58David Sims?

  Enough of this. We've been singing the song of Odysseus for so long, but where is he? If we heard he did this, where then why hasn't he come back if they won?

• 44:07Speaker 02

  Other guys came back. Where's my husband?

• 44:09David Sims?

  Right.

• 44:10Griffin Newman?

  The other guys came back.

• 44:11David Sims?

  And meanwhile,

• 44:12Griffin Newman?

  Well, Farrell and Mark Wahlberg came back.

• 44:13David Sims?

  Odysseus is on a beach with Charlize Theron and, you know, send help vibes, obviously.

• 44:20Griffin Newman?

  Nice work if you can get it vibes.

• 44:22Speaker 02

  I love when she wears that little like fishnet thing.

• 44:25David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 44:25Speaker 02

  And I was like, ooh, that's so couture.

• 44:28Griffin Newman?

  She's the catch of the day.

• 44:29Speaker 02

  She really is.

• 44:31Griffin Newman?

  David, she's the catch of the day.

• 44:33David Sims?

  I understand what you're saying. I would say Odysseus actually is the catch of the day. She caught him.

• 44:39Griffin Newman?

  Well, then maybe he should put that fucking net on.

• 44:40Speaker 03

  She's been feeding his ass lotus.

• 44:43David Sims?

  I know. He really likes that lotus flower. It doesn't look that, it's very pretty. It didn't look appetizing to me.

• 44:49Speaker 02

  But it's not about how it looks, it's about how it feels.

• 44:51David Sims?

  Yeah, I understand.

• 44:53Speaker 03

  I could use some lotus sometimes. Definitely lately.

• 44:57Griffin Newman?

  Well, I mean, Once in a while, you got a lotus night.

• 44:59David Sims?

  Yeah, I mean, you know, I'll tell you.

• 45:01Griffin Newman?

  He needs to pull a pedal.

• 45:02David Sims?

  Yep.

• 45:02Speaker 03

  Or two.

• 45:03David Sims?

  Mike White, he could use the lotus.

• 45:06Griffin Newman?

  He could use, I think he's got more than enough. He should share the lotus.

• 45:09David Sims?

  He should, you're right. He should share the lotus. I don't know. I was trying to figure out a white lotus joke.

• 45:13Griffin Newman?

  Can Mike White share the lotus, please?

• 45:15David Sims?

  Just share the lotus, Mike White.

• 45:17Griffin Newman?

  Just share the lotus, Mike White.

• 45:18David Sims?

  Did I just, I just saw something that he wrote. What was it?

• 45:22Speaker 02

  Despicable Me 4. Yeah.

• 45:24Griffin Newman?

  Okay.

• 45:25David Sims?

  He has writing credit on that one.

• 45:27Griffin Newman?

  And on three, maybe? He's got it on two of them. Am I wrong?

• 45:31David Sims?

  Uh, let's find out.

• 45:32Griffin Newman?

  He also wrote Migration. He's quite literally written a couple-

• 45:35David Sims?

  He has no other minion credits, but of course, he wrote the Emoji Movie.

• 45:41Griffin Newman?

  That's, okay, there we go. Which is not Illumination, but I lump in, in my mind.

• 45:46David Sims?

  And he did write Pitch Perfect 3 and no others.

• 45:50Griffin Newman?

  Yes, weird. We both were watching through all the Despicable Me and Minions movies in anticipation of minions and monsters simultaneously.

• 46:00David Sims?

  Yes.

• 46:01Griffin Newman?

  And it was very funny for you and I to check in with each other and be like, "Yep, still don't like these very much."

• 46:05David Sims?

  Not too much. I like the minions.

• 46:07Griffin Newman?

  Two more to watch.

• 46:08David Sims?

  Right, yeah. No, but they never really got me those, those earlier ones.

• 46:12Griffin Newman?

  See, you were like way out on Gru and really in on the minions, and I'm a little bit in on Gru, and I'm not that in on the minions, and both of us were just like, "Not my cup of tea. Some stuff I like." Anyway-

• 46:24David Sims?

  I don't like Gru. I'm sorry. I'm sorry to Gru.

• 46:27Griffin Newman?

  I kind of like her. And you know who I really like?

• 46:29Speaker 02

  Gru's mom?

• 46:31Griffin Newman?

  No, Gru's wife, Lucy, who is her own person, who has a lipstick taser, and I think is quite fetching.

• 46:40David Sims?

  Uh, yeah, she's okay. Played by Kristen Wiig. I'm glad she's cashing the checks. I'm glad everyone's cashing their checks, you know?

• 46:46Griffin Newman?

  Direct deposit on that one, right? No one's taking the time to run those to the bank.

• 46:50David Sims?

  No.

• 46:50Griffin Newman?

  They're doing mobile deposit, or at worst, they're taking the photo on their phone.

• 46:56Speaker 02

  Do you think that, um, the Cyclops in Christopher Nolan's version of The Odyssey would have been harmed by stepping on a Lego in the way that the Cyclops in the Minions version of The Odyssey was?

• 47:10Griffin Newman?

  It's, I mean, that whole sequence would be over in two minutes if Odysseus had thought to carve a Lego block. That's all he needed to do. The minions had the answer. Henry and James. I wanted to bring up that we see Elliot Page, whose character is Sinon. Sinon?

• 47:28David Sims?

  Yes.

• 47:29Griffin Newman?

  Uh, and the horse so early, because this movie feels very haunted by the horse. The horse is very forward in the marketing. It's on the poster. They've been putting the horse up outside of theaters. There's a horse popcorn bucket. And I assumed, oh, there's probably a big horse set piece. But that's not the main story that Nolan wants to tell, is just the hide and in the horse. But this movie keeps cutting back to the horse as like this thing that fucking haunts Odysseus.

• 47:56David Sims?

  Yes.

• 47:57Griffin Newman?

  That the thing that he's most known for, what is seen as his greatest triumph, he can kind of never get over what feels like the dishonesty of it.

• 48:05David Sims?

  Yes. So this is, I would say, the brilliant conceit of this movie. And it's clear that Nolan, you know, is like, okay, I'll do the Odyssey. He's sitting in his chair, drinking a cup of tea, not having a smartphone. He's like, perhaps the Odyssey. But like, the Odyssey is, is the, the, the original great tale of Western storytelling or whatever, but like, it is not something that you can locate emotion in easily. Uh, and, but it is, if you read the Odyssey, it is obsessed with hospitality. Like, that's a huge part of the poem.

• 48:44David Sims?

  The idea, the ancient Greek notion of hospitality. And, you know, they call it Zeus's law here, you know, the sort of like, be kind to, you know, welcome a stranger to your home and like, you know.

• 48:56Griffin Newman?

  And any simple beggar might actually be your co-host in disguise over Zoom from London.

• 49:01David Sims?

  And might have wonderful Seth Bullock-esque facial hair and all that. And it's a simple idea, because like, both the Iliad, which is also

• 49:12David Sims?

  By Homer, quote unquote, you know, we don't really, you know, and the Odyssey. Those things are not like, and we really fucked Troy over. Like those things are like, it rots when we smash Troy to pieces. And you're like, great, you know, you're so, but like, it's very simple for Nolan, but it's very clever for him to be like, it's kind of fucked up.

• 49:29Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 49:30David Sims?

  You know? Yeah. We, we, we, you know, kind of lied our way in there and then we sacked the city and.

• 49:36Griffin Newman?

  Oh, you think it was a lie to put a bunch of soldiers in a horse?

• 49:39David Sims?

  And to make this, this sort of like notion of like Odysseus, right? Is weighted with the guilt of like, we did kind of defy the gods by doing that. Yeah. And like, we are the ones who maybe have contributed to the feeling that society is ending around us. And makes the film feel contemporary without it feeling didactic to me. Like, I was just kind of like.

• 50:01Griffin Newman?

  The social contract.

• 50:02David Sims?

  I kind of can't believe he pulled that off.

• 50:05Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 50:05David Sims?

  In this movie, much like Oppenheimer is the same way, right? Where it's very haunted by like, the world we live in now. Oppenheimer made the terrible world we live in now. He didn't mean to. He was just smashing bits together in his, his particle accelerator or whatever, right? You know, and fucking everyone's wives.

• 50:23Griffin Newman?

  Nolan movies, because he has become the guy at the top of the mountain. He has become the person who represents filmmaking globally, sort of as an idea. And certainly as an industry, and now is literally also the president of the DGA. A guy at his level of career rarely takes on an elected position like that. Except it feels like he's like, there's too much at stake and my people need me and I have to fight for them. All of his movies have increasingly become about two things. One, I am the only one who can do this. The burden is heavy on me, but I must do this for everyone else. Two, what have I done? Oh, sweet Jesus, what have I done? And this is a movie about a guy who's like, I need to do this for everybody else.

• 51:06Griffin Newman?

  And the final shot of the movie is literally the shadow of the Trojan horse. It's like, he cannot get out from under that shadow. It's one of the first things we see in the shadow. The silhouette is the last thing we see.

• 51:20David Sims?

  Um, you know, it's, it's beautiful stuff. Do you guys know about the sea people theory of Bronze Age collapse? Can I very briefly?

• 51:31Speaker 02

  The sea, that's like what they were talking about.

• 51:33David Sims?

  This is what I'm saying.

• 51:34Speaker 02

  The sea people that were ruining everything.

• 51:37David Sims?

  You know, so sort of during the late Bronze Age, all of the major civilizations in the Mediterranean basically collapsed and no one knows why, because it was so fricking long ago. So we can't really, we're talking like the 12th century B.C. or whatever. And.

• 51:54Speaker 03

  But it led to the first dark age.

• 51:56David Sims?

  Right. Not, not the lovely dark age. We like to think about, which is like, you know, whatever, like the eighth century and people rattling, you know, I don't know, carts and stuff. What, what do people do in that dark age? Wearing big.

• 52:08Griffin Newman?

  Rattle carts.

• 52:09David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 52:09Speaker 03

  Coffin, blood into a tissue.

• 52:12David Sims?

  Rats everywhere, you know, but like the, right, the old, old dark age. And one of these notions is like the, the sea people, like it's like an academic theory that like these kingdoms were done in by invaders and no one knows who or even why or except for, but like, and I just love Nolan picking on, on that and having that be this like looming threat in the movie. And then of course at the end, it's like, well, no, we are, we're the.

• 52:38Speaker 02

  We're the sea people.

• 52:39David Sims?

  You know, we're the ones who ruined civilization, like going to do a stupid war that sucked for no good reason, and then returning home to like, you know, like places, you know, our homes were in turmoil and like with civility gone and everyone at each other's throats and getting stabbed. Right?

• 52:58Griffin Newman?

  I also think, yes, and with, within that framework, you realize that the big set pieces of the Odyssey as a story are mostly about them being bad guests. It's like, we just gotta get home and they land in a different place and come across a different creature and just kind of are shitty house guests over and over and over again.

• 53:19David Sims?

  There's that early moment where they show up on some beach and the guys have like burned their houses and are in a bad mood. And Pemish Fratell is like, "We're Greeks, like, we're not threatening." Like, you know, and then like even though he's like in armor and has his sword. "Why are you scared of us?" And the guy's like, "Oh, fuck you. See people, leave me alone."

• 53:40Griffin Newman?

  Let's clarify, they pull up, their whole town is on fire. He's like, "Why?" He's like, "We saw people coming. We thought we'd just get this over with. Like, rather than let you burn us to the ground, we'll burn ourselves down." Like, that's the level of paranoia and exhaustion everyone's at.

• 53:57David Sims?

  Uh, yes. Um, but okay, so let me, let me try and unpack the, uh, the flow of the story here. So, the first bit, obviously, is just we're in Ithaca, we're with Telemachus. Penelope is in a bad mood.

• 54:12Speaker 02

  I was, I was really impressed by how cunty Anne Hathaway was in this role.

• 54:18David Sims?

  She's great in this movie.

• 54:19Griffin Newman?

  David, what did you text about Anne Hathaway the other day? I thought you worded this very well.

• 54:25David Sims?

  Uh, someone, someone was noting what a busy year she's having.

• 54:29Griffin Newman?

  Six movies.

• 54:31David Sims?

  Is it six?

• 54:33Griffin Newman?

  Mother Mary, Devil Wears Prada 2, The Odyssey, Verity.

• 54:38David Sims?

  Oak Street.

• 54:39Griffin Newman?

  Oak Street, and I believe there's one more that I'm forgetting.

• 54:42David Sims?

  No, it's just five, just five.

• 54:44Griffin Newman?

  It's just five?

• 54:45David Sims?

  There's a movie called Alone at Dawn that's a Ron Howard movie.

• 54:49Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 54:50David Sims?

  With Anne, Adam Driver, but I'm not sure if we know when that's coming out. It'll, it'll, it'll come out eventually.

• 54:56Griffin Newman?

  Well, now that I know it's only five, she seems like a slacker.

• 54:59David Sims?

  I said Anne Hathaway is a gift to Hollywood that we should always be thankful for, and I certainly believe that.

• 55:06Griffin Newman?

  The range of just even the three movies she's had out so far is pretty astonishing.

• 55:11David Sims?

  Well, it's also interesting because like, it's not like Anne Hathaway had, she's been working, like, she, she didn't like go dark. But it was sort of like-

• 55:20Griffin Newman?

  The size of the movies had shrunk a little bit.

• 55:23David Sims?

  Yeah, and like, after Ocean's Eight, which she's great in, but even that's a supporting role or whatever. You know, she's got that weird Serenity, The Hustle, Dark Waters year, where like, we love Serenity, but it's, it's a weird one. The Hustle was filmed like, seven years prior.

• 55:40Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 55:41David Sims?

  Dark Waters is a wonderful movie, but she's kind of just showing up to help it along the lines, right?

• 55:46Griffin Newman?

  Yes. As you said, that was a tax deductible role.

• 55:49Speaker 02

  Last Thing He Wanted, Disaster.

• 55:52David Sims?

  Right. Last Thing He Wanted is one of those movies where you're like, did they forget to finish it? Like, sorry to that movie.

• 55:58Speaker 02

  The Witches.

• 55:58David Sims?

  The Witches, obviously, was five stars, A+, we loved that one on Blank Check.

• 56:02Griffin Newman?

  Like, all these movies are in one of two categories. She tried something smaller and more interesting, and it worked or it didn't, or a real failed attempt at a major movie. So, the stuff she's doing that's good is not really at the center of the culture. And the stuff that's attempting to be at the center of the culture is not working.

• 56:18David Sims?

  But then like, you know, Locked Down, we're gonna give everyone a pass on that one. The pandemic made everyone-

• 56:24Griffin Newman?

  That didn't happen.

• 56:24David Sims?

  Right. Uh, Armageddon Time, again, she's great, but it does it a little bit, again, kind of like, I'm here to help this movie along, I'm not. And then Eileen I did like, but it didn't really go anywhere.

• 56:36Griffin Newman?

  So good.

• 56:37David Sims?

  She's excellent in that.

• 56:38Speaker 02

  She's great in Eileen.

• 56:38David Sims?

  I did not see the Rebecca Miller film She Came to Me.

• 56:42Speaker 02

  Me neither.

• 56:42Griffin Newman?

  No, which is her and Dinklage and who's the other guy?

• 56:45Speaker 02

  Marisa Tomei?

• 56:46Griffin Newman?

  Oh, Marisa Tomei.

• 56:47David Sims?

  Right. Uh, and then-

• 56:50Griffin Newman?

  And then there was The Mother's Curse, or whatever that movie's called.

• 56:52David Sims?

  Right, her, her very kind of like, trashy 2024 of Mother's Instinct and the idea of you.

• 56:59Speaker 02

  The idea of you is good.

• 57:00David Sims?

  No, it's not.

• 57:00Speaker 02

  Yes, it is. It is good.

• 57:02David Sims?

  She's good in it, and I respect her, that movie is not good.

• 57:05Speaker 02

  Uh, that movie, that movie is good.

• 57:07David Sims?

  True.

• 57:07Speaker 02

  The boy band in it, good.

• 57:09Griffin Newman?

  Was a streaming hit.

• 57:11David Sims?

  It was a big streaming hit. I don't think Michael Schell Walter is capable of- Of telling a story like that with sincerity.

• 57:19Griffin Newman?

  You don't think he knows how to put on a show, Walter?

• 57:21Speaker 02

  I, you know what, I found it-

• 57:22David Sims?

  Sometimes he does.

• 57:23Speaker 02

  I found it very sincere. I liked when they were in their hotel room, uh, kinda like kissing and dancing to, um, Dance Hall Days.

• 57:33David Sims?

  Yeah, there you go.

• 57:35Griffin Newman?

  But you were saying, basically, last year she was quiet, cause a lot of her 25 movies got pushed back to 26.

• 57:40David Sims?

  Right, Mother Mary got pushed to early, yeah, right.

• 57:42Griffin Newman?

  And Oak Street got pushed.

• 57:44David Sims?

  Yeah, can't wait for whatever the heck that is.

• 57:47Griffin Newman?

  I know, this is kinda her big center stage year, and I love that it's such an array of even different sized roles and different styles of performance. She's so kinda stripped down in this. Like, she's really just sorta laser focused.

• 58:02David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 58:03Griffin Newman?

  And she's not doing any of the theater kid stuff that people sometimes bristle at, and I think it's, it's why she's so good, and why, as you put it, she's a gift to Hollywood, because it's like, she's like an old school movie star who can do any type of thing.

• 58:16David Sims?

  She really is, and, you know, like, the scenes she has, the flashbacks with Damon before he goes to war are really like, simple and beautifully done, and get all the emotion across very fast, right?

• 58:31Griffin Newman?

  Also, fucking sexy.

• 58:32Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 58:33David Sims?

  A little sexy.

• 58:34Griffin Newman?

  But like, you have very little time to establish a sense of genuine chemistry between those two characters, and you're doing it late into the film, and immediately you're like, there's heat here. There's a reason why she's not remarrying.

• 58:47David Sims?

  Yeah, no, for sure. I mean, look, Robert Pattinson is a handsome fellow, okay? I wouldn't fucking marry this asshole, right, would you?

• 58:56Griffin Newman?

  This guy, this guy's an asshole. Are we, are we, can we say he's an asshole?

• 59:00Speaker 02

  He's an asshole.

• 59:01David Sims?

  He is so good. I just love that he is always game, like, you know, that he's not, like, whatever, like- Looking for the sympathetic role or looking for the, you know, like, he just wants to play little slimy freaks and he's so good at it.

• 59:15Griffin Newman?

  They just announced that Batman is being pushed back another six months and people are wringing their hands over it. And I'm like, there is no better outcome than Robert Pattinson having six years in between Batman movies to do whatever weird shit he wants to do. Batman's the ultimate hammock. In between, he's just given latitude to do whatever because they go like, as long as you promise you're gonna put that cowl back on, we'll let you play your worms.

• 59:40David Sims?

  He's got, he's got five movies in this year too. He's got, he's having a crazy year.

• 59:45Griffin Newman?

  Okay, wait, so it's this?

• 59:46David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 59:47Griffin Newman?

  It's prime time.

• 59:48David Sims?

  Yeah, which I hear is great.

• 59:50Griffin Newman?

  It's the drama.

• 59:51Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 59:53Griffin Newman?

  And then the other two are...

• 59:57Griffin Newman?

  Have, neither of them have yet to come out, right?

• 59:59Speaker 02

  Correct. One, we just got a trailer for, yeah.

• 1:00:02Griffin Newman?

  Dune part three. And then what's the fifth movie?

• 1:00:05David Sims?

  It's the Fernando Marrell film, Here Comes the Flood with him and Denzel Washington. That's a Netflix thriller, but does sound very cool, yeah.

• 1:00:13Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:00:14David Sims?

  Yeah, so he's all over the place and he's doing different voices and he's having fun, being a little sicko. And he is, yeah, he's the lead suitor here. He likened the character to James Woods' character Lester Diamond from the 1995 film Casino.

• 1:00:29Griffin Newman?

  Which we will be talking about soon. I, just a classic Robert Pattinson pull to like read the Odyssey and go like, you know what this character's like? James Woods in Casino.

• 1:00:39David Sims?

  Uh, you've also got the great, uh, Corey Hawkins is like, those are the, like, the main two suitor jerks, I feel like, right?

• 1:00:46Griffin Newman?

  He's sort of the right-hand man, yeah. Uh, I think he's just a total fucking gem.

• 1:00:50David Sims?

  He's always good. Love, love to see Corey Hawkins.

• 1:00:53Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:00:54David Sims?

  Yeah, he's not working enough.

• 1:00:56Griffin Newman?

  No. Uh, and then Logan Marshall Green and Mia Goth.

• 1:01:01David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:01Griffin Newman?

  Are the two kind of grimma worm tongues. Of the palace.

• 1:01:06Speaker 02

  She is like this. She's the servant to Penelope.

• 1:01:10David Sims?

  Yes, I think it's unspoken in the movie, but they are twins. They're siblings, Logan Marshall Green and Mia Goth.

• 1:01:16Speaker 02

  Ah, okay.

• 1:01:17David Sims?

  In the myth of the Odyssey.

• 1:01:19Griffin Newman?

  Yes, they're working together.

• 1:01:20David Sims?

  They're the bad servants. They are not being, they're not, you know, tending to Odysseus' flock. Now, who is? Leguizamo.

• 1:01:28Griffin Newman?

  Leguizamo.

• 1:01:29David Sims?

  Holding a stick, being blind.

• 1:01:32Griffin Newman?

  He can see more clearly than everyone.

• 1:01:35David Sims?

  There is a bit of a, you know, there's an irony there.

• 1:01:38Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:01:38David Sims?

  It's true.

• 1:01:39Griffin Newman?

  It's a real irony.

• 1:01:40Speaker 03

  So a little rude for him to throw a dog off a cliff. Right at the top of the movie.

• 1:01:46Speaker 02

  Uh, David and I were concerned, one of the first things we said after we got out of the movie was we were worried how Ben was going to take the, the dog violence in this film.

• 1:01:53Griffin Newman?

  It's the kind of thing that does turn Ben off completely.

• 1:01:56Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 1:01:56Griffin Newman?

  Sometimes.

• 1:01:57Speaker 03

  But I think because he did it like so early in the film, it felt like just pulling the Band-Aid off. And then, of course, they treat the other dog, Odysseus' dog, really well, even though he's like old and sad. And waiting for Odysseus to return home.

• 1:02:14Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:02:14Griffin Newman?

  I think they also, the, the inhumanity of how the animals are treated is used as a dramatic storytelling tool for the rot of society.

• 1:02:25Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:02:26Griffin Newman?

  It is, is not something that is done callously. It's not using it just to shock you.

• 1:02:30David Sims?

  No, no, not at all. No, it's, it's, you're, I think all the stakes of the, they're like, because yes, there's the argument for like, shouldn't we shoot this movie out of a cannon? Shouldn't we start with something really exciting? And it's like, now you just sort of, it's not just that he wants to go home, you're like, his home is like ruined without him. Like, it's like, he's.

• 1:02:48Griffin Newman?

  You're starting with the feeling of his absence.

• 1:02:50David Sims?

  Missing and it's just like, yeah, it's, it's ruining everything.

• 1:02:53Griffin Newman?

  What the story is really about is the fact that this guy's fucking gone.

• 1:02:57Speaker 02

  There are like two main sort of narrative or storytelling devices, I guess. The first is Tom Holland hearing stories about his father.

• 1:03:08David Sims?

  Sure.

• 1:03:09Speaker 02

  As he is on his.

• 1:03:11David Sims?

  He's never met, essentially.

• 1:03:12Speaker 02

  He was a baby.

• 1:03:12David Sims?

  A wee baby when he left.

• 1:03:13Speaker 02

  When he left. So he is traveling and hearing stories from other people, most notably John Bernthal.

• 1:03:22David Sims?

  Bernthal. Let me tell you something. He does. He's a great cool guy.

• 1:03:25Griffin Newman?

  Like the fifth season of Serial and pull enough stories together from his dad to get a good narrative going.

• 1:03:29Speaker 02

  And then the other, on the other end, we have Matt Damon with Calypso, played by Charlize Theron. And she is kind of goading him to remember how he ended up. How did I get here? What happened to my men?

• 1:03:49Griffin Newman?

  But also being like, do you really want to remember?

• 1:03:51Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:03:52Griffin Newman?

  Doesn't remember and you suck.

• 1:03:53Speaker 02

  Doesn't it suck here? Have some more Lotus, baby.

• 1:03:56Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, it takes some Lotus.

• 1:03:58David Sims?

  We're right. We're, we're sort of like trying to put the pieces together of like, okay, what happened? Where are his men? What happened? Why did he, why hasn't he come home? And then I feel like the first, then we, we do find, you know, okay, what do you remember? We do finally get to them, like getting on the boat. And I guess is the first place they go to the, to, you know, the Cyclops, right? Like that's the first sort of major sequence.

• 1:04:22Griffin Newman?

  First major set piece in Odysseus's journey.

• 1:04:24Speaker 02

  But we also establish what life was like back on Ithaca before Odysseus left. We meet young Robert Pattinson and young Elliot Page.

• 1:04:36David Sims?

  That's true.

• 1:04:37Griffin Newman?

  I was gonna say, yes, this is set up very early on.

• 1:04:40Speaker 02

  You know, a very upsetting dynamic of.

• 1:04:43Griffin Newman?

  What is Pattinson's character's name again?

• 1:04:46David Sims?

  Uh, it's like Antonius or whatever, Antonius. Uh, he's, yeah.

• 1:04:51Speaker 02

  Yes. And.

• 1:04:53Griffin Newman?

  But the, the volunteering Marie.

• 1:04:54Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:04:55David Sims?

  And, and Tineus, Antineus maybe.

• 1:04:57Griffin Newman?

  Antineus.

• 1:04:58David Sims?

  I don't know. I don't know. I'm really like, what do I know?

• 1:05:02Speaker 02

  Every time, every time I watch something where it's like little boys going off to war. This also happens in, uh, Horatio Hornblower and in, um, Master and Commander. I just get very upset.

• 1:05:15Griffin Newman?

  I think it shouldn't happen.

• 1:05:17David Sims?

  But they're drawing sticks and. They're drawing lots, yeah, like a short stick gets you on the boat. And Odysseus cousin, Sinon, draws.

• 1:05:27Speaker 02

  Elliot Page.

• 1:05:28David Sims?

  Elliot Page draws whatever the stick that means that he has to go to war. Right.

• 1:05:33Griffin Newman?

  They say there's a lottery draft going on. They need to build an army. It's a lottery draft and Sinon gets picked, who is a very small child.

• 1:05:40David Sims?

  Yes, right.

• 1:05:41Griffin Newman?

  And the Pattinson character sort of volunteers to go in instead, not just out of some generosity, but also because of, I think, an ego of wanting to be a big, tough boy. He's a little older. He's a teenager and Odysseus puts his foot down and goes like, it's gotta be who's chosen and also says to the Pattinson character.

• 1:05:57David Sims?

  No, no, no, no, no. Antony, you know, it's Pattinson draws the short stick. Sinon is put in his place.

• 1:06:04Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:06:05Griffin Newman?

  Oh, okay.

• 1:06:05David Sims?

  Yeah, yeah, the whole point is that Antonius ducked the draft.

• 1:06:08Speaker 02

  Correct.

• 1:06:08David Sims?

  That's why him giving the lot back to him is like, this is your shame. I misread that.

• 1:06:12Griffin Newman?

  See, I also didn't get that.

• 1:06:14David Sims?

  Right, like it's like, Antonius is the, I think, you know, the richer, he, cause he is like one of the big wigs or his family, right, on Ithaca, I want to assume. That's why he's like a cheap suitor.

• 1:06:27Speaker 02

  The littler guy.

• 1:06:28David Sims?

  And like.

• 1:06:28Speaker 02

  To take his place.

• 1:06:29David Sims?

  They're saying that Odysseus basically kind of knew what was happening and overlooked it or, or like, didn't put his foot down because like he knows, like he doesn't want to wound the pride of the parents, like they, they say. And this will all be helpful on rewatch, I will say, cause like this information, it's the classic Nolan thing of this information is being like hydraulically delivered to you in voiceover and flashback and you're like, okay, okay, okay, okay. And you can tell like it's the Nolan thing where he's like, this will matter later. Like you need to know all the context.

• 1:06:59Griffin Newman?

  I mean, that happens in like the first 10 minutes.

• 1:07:01David Sims?

  Very early on.

• 1:07:01Griffin Newman?

  You barely met the characters.

• 1:07:03David Sims?

  We have not met the characters and I did not even totally track that, you know, that Sinon had become, you know, Elliot Page had grown up to be, right?

• 1:07:11Griffin Newman?

  Cause like Azamo says something to the effect of, you know, he, he needed to do things to help the ego. And basically Odysseus says this thing of, no, it's actually good if you stay because you need to watch after your family and watch after my family as well, which kind of poisons him with the idea of, oh, I have a responsibility to watch your family. I should probably fuck your wife if you disappear.

• 1:07:35Griffin Newman?

  That's kind of the implication, is it not?

• 1:07:37David Sims?

  I mean, you know.

• 1:07:38Griffin Newman?

  That that's, he goes, message received. I got it. So if you're gone for like five years, I should start trying to fuck your wife?

• 1:07:43David Sims?

  I may, maybe Greek law should have some rules on this, okay? Maybe there should be time limits.

• 1:07:48Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:50David Sims?

  But, okay, so, but no, no, we're with Odysseus and it's post-Troy. We still haven't really seen the sack of Troy, but we've seen little glimpses of the horse and all that. Uh, and-

• 1:08:00Speaker 03

  God, the horse looks so good.

• 1:08:01Speaker 02

  The horse looks really good.

• 1:08:03Speaker 03

  Really awesome.

• 1:08:04Griffin Newman?

  It's awesome.

• 1:08:05David Sims?

  And he sees, you know, Agamemnon, played by Benny Safdie, in this crazy imposing armor. Uh, Nolan wanted him to ha- he has, what's it called? It's called black bronze and sulfur in his armor, which Nolan was like, these were like the most expensive sort of materials back then, so we wanted him to have this.

• 1:08:21Speaker 03

  Motherfucker's got a gold spine on the back of his helmet.

• 1:08:24David Sims?

  Dude. It is so funny that it's Benny Safdie. Not, not that he's not good, he is good.

• 1:08:30Speaker 02

  We never see his face in the movie.

• 1:08:32David Sims?

  Beautiful hair.

• 1:08:33Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:08:34David Sims?

  I mean, we see his face through a slit. We see the, yeah, the-

• 1:08:37Speaker 02

  It is interesting, though, that that was the main, like, one of the main posters for the film.

• 1:08:43David Sims?

  Right, was the back of his-

• 1:08:43Speaker 02

  Was the back of Agamemnon's head with the helmet.

• 1:08:47Griffin Newman?

  I wonder how much he kind of just likes that imagery and how much it is that, like, much like the shadow of the horse, the sort of, like, image of Agamemnon's armor without ever seeing the guy inside represents this force that's pushing everything along.

• 1:09:03David Sims?

  Right. I mean, and, uh, you know, I interviewed Benny Safdie last year. I told you this, Marie.

• 1:09:10Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:09:10David Sims?

  And he had just finished The Odyssey. And I was like, who are you playing? And I just, I just assumed he was gonna be playing some weirdo. Like, I was like, of course Safdie's gonna play, like, I don't know, yeah, like a, a weird little trickster or, you know, right? Like, uh,

• 1:09:25Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:26David Sims?

  A, a mean suitor. And he was like, I can't tell you, but I, we were just in Iceland, like, shooting on this, like, black beach is where he gets to end. And obviously, that's the, like, afterlife sequence. That's so cool.

• 1:09:37Speaker 02

  That was another favorite sequence in the movie, actually.

• 1:09:39David Sims?

  This is really great. Um, but, uh, yeah.

• 1:09:41Griffin Newman?

  You basically never see his face. It's like the idea of him looming- So large and most directors, I think, would go, oh, so then what you should cast in this role is either a stunt performer, because this is mostly going to be physical. It's going to be who fills the suit. Or cast a guy with a voice like Clancy Brown, because it's mostly going to be booming voice. If you're not going to see their face. And as you say, it's so funny that he cast Benny Safdie, who's such like a presence energy guy.

• 1:10:08David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:09Griffin Newman?

  And is also like a sensitivity guy.

• 1:10:12David Sims?

  But Safdie is, I will say, he's very tall. He's like six one. And he has this great hair and maybe Nolan just kind of liked the physicality.

• 1:10:19Speaker 02

  I appreciate it. I think, you know, you guys bring this up. You brought this up a lot in the Peter Weir series, the casting for the final color.

• 1:10:27Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:28Speaker 02

  Thing.

• 1:10:28David Sims?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:10:29Speaker 02

  And I do think that when we get the backstory of what happened to him. And when he is in Hades and he is speaking from the, you know, from the dead.

• 1:10:43David Sims?

  Right.

• 1:10:44Speaker 02

  There is like a pathos to it.

• 1:10:46Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:10:47Speaker 02

  That it really got to me and.

• 1:10:50Griffin Newman?

  You need to be able to unravel this guy. You need to be able to strip away the sort of imagery and the mythology of him to get to a sort of broken person inside eventually.

• 1:10:59Speaker 02

  So I, um, I'm not really a big ancient Greece person. And I was asking David Sims on the subway home from the movie. I was like, I want to keep living in this world. So like, what movies should I watch next?

• 1:11:16Griffin Newman?

  Oh, I wasn't even thinking movies. I was going to suggest The Time Machine.

• 1:11:19Speaker 02

  That seems a little expensive, uh, but.

• 1:11:22Griffin Newman?

  Sure.

• 1:11:22Speaker 02

  You know, I, I did pay $4.99 to rent Troy on Amazon Prime.

• 1:11:29Griffin Newman?

  I, I want to talk about this briefly. I'm very confused by this recent holding up of Troy as the gold standard.

• 1:11:36Speaker 02

  Griffin, Griffin, I'm, we gotta get into it. That movie is fucking dog shit. I hadn't seen it until like this week when I read, watched it after The Odyssey, which is a masterpiece. And there is, you know, it's a, the, the Iliad is part one, The Odyssey, part two, you know, so it's like a prequel. A lot of the same characters are in there. What the fuck? What's going on there?

• 1:11:58Griffin Newman?

  It's a very hollow movie in my memory.

• 1:12:00David Sims?

  Right. I hated it when it came out. I thought it was a bomb. People didn't like it when it came out. It got bad reviews. It made money.

• 1:12:07Speaker 02

  It made a lot of money.

• 1:12:07David Sims?

  It was a hit, but it got no-

• 1:12:09Griffin Newman?

  But it was not taken seriously.

• 1:12:10David Sims?

  Yeah, it got no Oscar attention. After, like, you know, in the warm-up, because of movies like Gladiator, people were like, maybe this will be epic, you know? And I pointed out to you, it is the same year as Alexander. There were two, like, giant budget swings that, like, great, well, if Gladiator wins Best Picture, what other, like, epics can we do? And they did the most obv- they did the Iliad and they did Alexander the Great. Like, they did the most obvious ones possible. Both of those movies are flawed. Troy made a lot of money, but sucks. Alexander didn't make enough money, but is very interesting, in my opinion.

• 1:12:43Griffin Newman?

  And then they both have the director's cut DVD re-edited legacies.

• 1:12:47David Sims?

  Where they're like, "I fixed it," and you're like, "No."

• 1:12:50Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:12:51David Sims?

  Not sure that you did. I mean, the big problem with Troy, it's the ultimate pit thing of, like, he sucks at this. He's so good at playing squarely weirdo. He's actually not good at playing-

• 1:13:01Speaker 02

  The hero.

• 1:13:02David Sims?

  The alpha. Like, that's not what he likes.

• 1:13:05Griffin Newman?

  It's also, that's his Cat in the Hat. That's, he has to make that movie because he pulled out of the fountain. Warner Brothers were like, "You fucking owe us a movie," and he was like, "Ugh, do I have to do some movie star shit?"

• 1:13:17Speaker 02

  He's really blonde in it.

• 1:13:19Griffin Newman?

  I remember him looking great.

• 1:13:21Speaker 02

  I wasn't into it. Yeah. But the thing that was really sending me, like, watching it immediately after The Odyssey, was that Brian Cox is playing Agamemnon.

• 1:13:33David Sims?

  He is Agamemnon.

• 1:13:34Griffin Newman?

  Yes, very similar to Benny Safdie.

• 1:13:37Speaker 02

  And I'm just like, wow, these are two very, very different interpretations of this character.

• 1:13:43David Sims?

  Brendan Gleeson plays Menelaus.

• 1:13:45Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:13:46Griffin Newman?

  And who plays Odysseus?

• 1:13:47David Sims?

  Sean Bean.

• 1:13:47Speaker 02

  Sean Bean.

• 1:13:48David Sims?

  He's the best part of the movie.

• 1:13:49Speaker 02

  Yeah, Sean Bean's fine.

• 1:13:51Griffin Newman?

  See, I don't even remember it that well. But I just remember it being like, it's all surface level. It feels like an impression of a type of movie, a type of epic that actually has ideas within it. And it's only absorbed the aesthetics.

• 1:14:06Speaker 02

  The ideas that are in Troy are not ideas about, like-

• 1:14:13Speaker 02

  Man and psychology, they're more like mapping like political and historical ideas of war onto a myth, which is not that interesting to me.

• 1:14:27Griffin Newman?

  I agree with you.

• 1:14:28Speaker 02

  I'm more interested in the interiority, which is what the Odyssey is. It's like, it's such a psychological story while also being really epic visually.

• 1:14:41Griffin Newman?

  It's why I, I related this to Thin Red Line is A, your perspective character is changing a lot throughout the movie. And B, it feels like you're often kind of editing laterally through the characters, memories and thoughts and feelings. It is so much trying to find a way to put you in the inner life of these people, uh, rather than zooming out and turning it into mythology.

• 1:15:05David Sims?

  Right.

• 1:15:06Speaker 03

  So Dave, I gotta ask, since we're talking about the Iliad and, and how that story then relates to the Odyssey, how do you feel about them not really including a lot of the gods? In this story, in this film? We really only get mention of, of Zeus and his law.

• 1:15:30David Sims?

  They talk about the gods on Poseidon.

• 1:15:32Speaker 03

  And Poseidon.

• 1:15:33Griffin Newman?

  Mention Poseidon.

• 1:15:34Speaker 03

  But I'm saying, we only really see Athena.

• 1:15:38David Sims?

  So the thing in the Odyssey, the story is, for example, one of the, uh, important moments in the Odyssey is that, uh, Odysseus is stuck on the island of Calypso. In this movie, he has this emotional realization of like, right, I'm ready to go home. I'm accepting the loss of my men, right? You know, it's this big. In the Odyssey, Hermes, the messenger god, shows up and is like, hey. Time to go.

• 1:16:03Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:16:04David Sims?

  And this is like, oh, fuck. Okay. He's like, come on, boat's this way. That happens a lot in the poem. The gods show up and they're like.

• 1:16:11Speaker 03

  Totally. I mean, even the reason that Helen ends up in Troy is because of intervention from the gods.

• 1:16:17Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:16:17David Sims?

  And so obviously that's a little dramatically not gonna, you know, that won't work.

• 1:16:22Speaker 03

  I think it totally makes sense that he, you know, he made that choice. It's just when you go back to the source material, I mean, especially in the Iliad, it's like the, the like,

• 1:16:32David Sims?

  They're there, they're walking among us.

• 1:16:34Speaker 03

  You know, are all kind of connected and.

• 1:16:37David Sims?

  Zeus sees a lady and is like.

• 1:16:40Speaker 02

  Kid.

• 1:16:41David Sims?

  He's like, I wanna fuck this lady.

• 1:16:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, I'm gonna turn into a swan, fucker.

• 1:16:44Speaker 03

  She, she has eggs and that one of the children that come out of the eggs is Helen.

• 1:16:50Griffin Newman?

  Uh, can I do a tiny little merch spotlight? Look at what they were giving out at the screening.

• 1:16:53Speaker 02

  Oh, you got the pin?

• 1:16:54David Sims?

  Oh, you got the Athena pin?

• 1:16:55Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:16:56Griffin Newman?

  I got the Athena pin.

• 1:16:57Speaker 02

  Oh, we didn't get pins.

• 1:16:58Speaker 03

  I got the Athena.

• 1:17:00Griffin Newman?

  You got the Athena? They had the Athena and the horse, but you could only take one. I tried to take two and I got yelled at very loudly.

• 1:17:06Speaker 02

  Well, the Athena pin feels like that would be my pick because the pin itself is such a, it's such an important part of the movie.

• 1:17:13Griffin Newman?

  It was before the movie, but I had a feeling this is closer to the movie object, which I always like in my merch.

• 1:17:19Speaker 03

  Penelope gives this pin to Odysseus as a way of remembering her, but also as a symbol, uh, to prove that it is him.

• 1:17:29Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:17:30Griffin Newman?

  I, I saw, uh, Interstellar again last week, David, uh, cause it was just playing in 70 millimeter in Spain.

• 1:17:38David Sims?

  They're, they're just rolling out the, the classics, right?

• 1:17:41Griffin Newman?

  Yes. Um, and you said, that's a smart rewatch. I have a feeling these two movies are gonna be really paired together.

• 1:17:48David Sims?

  Voyage home, yeah.

• 1:17:49Griffin Newman?

  I mean, Nolan loves his, I feel so bad for leaving. How do I get back home?

• 1:17:55David Sims?

  That's the thing.

• 1:17:55Griffin Newman?

  Kind of movie.

• 1:17:56David Sims?

  Yep.

• 1:17:56Griffin Newman?

  Um, uh, I, I need to get back to my family. I need to get back to my wife. I need to get back to my child.

• 1:18:02David Sims?

  He's so tormented by it.

• 1:18:03Speaker 02

  But he works with his wife.

• 1:18:05Speaker 03

  I know, but I just feel like he had, it's like clearly this thing that Ren, you know, because like so many of his movies have that.

• 1:18:12Speaker 02

  Well, yeah. I think it's less about the way that he runs his life as an adult, a husband and as a father, but more of what he experienced as a child when his family was split up.

• 1:18:20Griffin Newman?

  I think it's 50% that, and I think informed by that, it is his worst nightmare. It's the reason he works with his wife and he makes everything a family production is because he can imagine no worse fate than being stuck on a shoot for six months away from his family. Like, he is just such an ultimate wife and family guy that he needs that unit around himself. And so if he's writing an emotional story of a challenge, it's the biggest challenge he can imagine in so many ways, which is why, you know, people go, why is he so obsessed with the dead wife thing? I like that he has moved away from dead wives and has found a way to tell stories about men longing for their wives that did not require them to be dead. But that scene is so fascinating because the dialogue, even though it's a very different

• 1:19:04Griffin Newman?

  scene where she hands him the pen, feels so similar, having watched it recently, to the final child Murph scene of like, I'm coming back, I'm coming back. When are you coming back? I can't tell you, but I'm coming back. I just promise you that I'm coming back.

• 1:19:18David Sims?

  Yeah, I mean, I think Christopher Nolan is by and large a charmed man who leads a wonderful life, and he knows that, like, he's got a great thing going on. But that's clearly the fear that drives him a little bit, or whatever, keeps him up at night, I guess. I mean, he's just, he's very similar to Shyamalan, in my opinion, in this regard. He's just so concerned with like, the world relieving our children, with like, what the future's gonna look like for his family, and he can blow it out, you know, to big epic scale, but it's, you know, it's what, what makes these movies tick.

• 1:19:55Griffin Newman?

  The key difference between him and Shyamalan is obviously that Nolan is not very concerned with what if the devil was in an elevator? Other than that, I do think they're very...

• 1:20:04Speaker 02

  Not yet. We're saying he wants to do a horror movie.

• 1:20:06David Sims?

  What if he's like, I'm remaking Devil, the M. Night Shyamalan-produced thriller?

• 1:20:12Griffin Newman?

  That would be the greatest movie in the history of movies.

• 1:20:14David Sims?

  I saw Logan Marshall Green on the set of The Odyssey, and we started talking about Devil, and I said, who has the rights to Devil? And he said, I have them, they cost $1. You can have them right now for one whole dollar. Uh, who directed Devil? Cause it wasn't Shyamalan.

• 1:20:28Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 1:20:28David Sims?

  John Eric Dowdell.

• 1:20:30Griffin Newman?

  What else has he done?

• 1:20:31David Sims?

  Uh, he did the remake of the Spanish film Rec.

• 1:20:35Speaker 02

  Quarantine?

• 1:20:36Griffin Newman?

  Oh, sure. Yeah.

• 1:20:38David Sims?

  He did the Poughkeepsie tapes, which is one of those like fucked up tiny budget horror movies that everyone talks about.

• 1:20:43Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, that kinda never got a proper release.

• 1:20:45David Sims?

  Right, and then he did As Above So Below.

• 1:20:48Griffin Newman?

  Oh, sure. That's the catacombs movie?

• 1:20:50David Sims?

  Yeah, and then something called No Escape.

• 1:20:51Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, that's like, that is like, uh, Owen Wilson is stuck in a country that is having like some sort of like political uprising.

• 1:20:58David Sims?

  Yeah, uh.

• 1:20:59Griffin Newman?

  It's Owen Wilson trying to do Behind Enemy Lines again. It's like straight survival action movie.

• 1:21:05David Sims?

  Yes, yeah, Pierce Brosnan is there, yeah.

• 1:21:07Griffin Newman?

  Um, the Athena pen is handed to Odysseus as a, if I can't stop you from leaving, then let Athena watch after you. Which does feel like, talking about Nolan imagining his worst nightmares, it's like handing him a smartphone. It's saying, if you're gonna leave and be away for a really long time, at least take this pen so Athena can pop in and talk to you all the time. It is such an incredible display of Christopher Nolan's clout. That you're like, what does Zendaya play in this movie? Zendaya plays Athena, Athena the god watching over Odysseus. She shows up at certain times over his shoulder and gives him a look and says like one line.

• 1:21:45Speaker 02

  Zendaya, as an actor, is really, really good at doing like disappointed face.

• 1:21:50Griffin Newman?

  Unbelievable at it.

• 1:21:52David Sims?

  Yes.

• 1:21:52Speaker 02

  When she makes that face, I'm like, oof, I feel bad.

• 1:21:55Griffin Newman?

  You don't want her silent judgment. But this is the kind of role where you go, oh, it's pretty small. You can't shoot her out three days because she has to be in 20 different countries.

• 1:22:06Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:22:06Griffin Newman?

  She has to keep showing up on different ships.

• 1:22:09David Sims?

  Yeah, I mean, she's obviously like in the movie probably for five minutes total, but, uh.

• 1:22:15Speaker 02

  She makes an impression.

• 1:22:16David Sims?

  She makes a huge impression and she must have been, yeah.

• 1:22:19Speaker 02

  I mean, every, every.

• 1:22:20David Sims?

  I don't know.

• 1:22:21Speaker 02

  Every small part in this movie is played by someone. That has a Wikipedia page.

• 1:22:27David Sims?

  Yes.

• 1:22:28Speaker 02

  Like,

• 1:22:28David Sims?

  Yes.

• 1:22:28Speaker 02

  Our, our mutual acquaintance, Griffin Shiloh Fernandez is in this movie.

• 1:22:33Griffin Newman?

  Yes, somewhat briefly?

• 1:22:35Speaker 02

  He plays one of the soldier, one of the Trojan soldiers who I think approaches Elliot Page in the beginning of the movie. Never takes his mask off. But it is crazy that like even those guys are played by guys.

• 1:22:52Griffin Newman?

  Totally.

• 1:22:53David Sims?

  Right. I mean, who wouldn't want to be on these sets, right?

• 1:22:57Griffin Newman?

  The beggar in the beginning is James Remar.

• 1:23:00Speaker 02

  Yeah, I, I asked David and I didn't know who it was.

• 1:23:02Griffin Newman?

  I believe it's James Remar.

• 1:23:04David Sims?

  No, no, no. Griffin, James Remar is the prophet.

• 1:23:07Griffin Newman?

  Is he Hades?

• 1:23:09David Sims?

  Yeah, like a terrorist, yes, or whatever his name is. But yeah, he's, he's the guy buried in the sand.

• 1:23:14Speaker 02

  I recognize, I recognize the bottom of his.

• 1:23:16David Sims?

  Yes, while I was trying to pay attention to that scene where he kept being like, is that Richard from Sex and the City? And I was like, be quiet.

• 1:23:25Speaker 02

  I was just really excited that it was him.

• 1:23:27Griffin Newman?

  One of the two cloaked guys. I don't know who the guy was at the beginning, but he seems so familiar.

• 1:23:33Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:23:34Griffin Newman?

  By the time this episode comes out, we're gonna find out.

• 1:23:36David Sims?

  Maria and I were trying to figure out who that was.

• 1:23:38Speaker 02

  We, we couldn't figure it out, but I, I'm sure we will know in a bit.

• 1:23:43Griffin Newman?

  It speaks to the, the Nolan mystery box kind of thing. There's still so many actors for this movie with unlisted characters on IMDb. Like the cast has been announced, but it was not really told who was playing what other than the top 10 people.

• 1:23:58David Sims?

  Right, right.

• 1:24:08Griffin Newman?

  David?

• 1:24:09David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:09Griffin Newman?

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

• 1:24:26David Sims?

  It is an iconic video.

• 1:24:27Griffin 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.

• 1:24:50David Sims?

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

• 1:25:02Griffin 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.

• 1:25:11David Sims?

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

• 1:25:13Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:25:14David 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.

• 1:25:21Griffin 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.

• 1:25:35David Sims?

  I'm something of an expert in cryptozoology.

• 1:25:37Griffin Newman?

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

• 1:25:38David 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.

• 1:25:55Griffin Newman?

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

• 1:26:11Griffin Newman?

  David?

• 1:26:11David Sims?

  Yes?

• 1:26:12Griffin 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.

• 1:26:33David 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 Peeta. To get letters, diary entries, and chilling testimony to hunt the predator stalking those she loves, only to discover Dracula's already hunting her.

• 1:26:52Griffin Newman?

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

• 1:27:08David Sims?

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

• 1:27:43Griffin Newman?

  David?

• 1:27:43David Sims?

  Yes?

• 1:27:44Griffin Newman?

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

• 1:27:53David Sims?

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

• 1:27:58Griffin Newman?

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

• 1:28:00David Sims?

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

• 1:28:03Griffin Newman?

  Quince.

• 1:28:04David Sims?

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

• 1:28:14Griffin 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.

• 1:28:29David Sims?

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

• 1:28:33Griffin Newman?

  I love those.

• 1:28:34David 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?

• 1:28:47Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:28:47David Sims?

  Jacket, sweater, shirt.

• 1:28:49Griffin Newman?

  David, you know what I love?

• 1:28:50David Sims?

  What?

• 1:28:50Griffin Newman?

  The ultimate commuter pants.

• 1:28:52David Sims?

  Oh.

• 1:28:53Griffin Newman?

  Cause I'm commuting constantly.

• 1:28:55David Sims?

  Beep beep.

• 1:28:56Griffin Newman?

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

• 1:29:02David 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.

• 1:29:31Speaker 02

  Let's just talk, because the movie is a bit of like an episodic structure. Let's just talk about the scene.

• 1:29:35David Sims?

  Okay, so all right, Cyclops. Cyclops is the first big thing. They go, they go to island. They follow some sheep, as you do.

• 1:29:42Speaker 02

  Mm hmm.

• 1:29:43David Sims?

  Yep. Into a cave.

• 1:29:45Speaker 02

  There was a nasty moment where Odysseus just sees like giant bags of cheese.

• 1:29:50David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 1:29:50Speaker 02

  Hanging on the walls of the cave and just eat some.

• 1:29:53Griffin Newman?

  Just.

• 1:29:53David Sims?

  They're hungry. They're tired.

• 1:29:55Speaker 02

  I guess. I don't know if I would eat cave cheese.

• 1:29:58David Sims?

  I don't know that I would eat random cheese hanging in a cave in a sack.

• 1:30:04Griffin Newman?

  Where cheese comes from.

• 1:30:06David Sims?

  Well, it is in fact. Usually it's been for me inspected by a government, one assumes, or at least by somebody like a merchant.

• 1:30:13Griffin Newman?

  Fair enough.

• 1:30:14David Sims?

  A trader.

• 1:30:15Griffin Newman?

  If there was a stamp on the bag of Agamemnon giving the thumbs up, would you feel okay if that was the inspection?

• 1:30:21David Sims?

  Of course. Or if it was like, you know, Cyclops, you know, polyphemus is, you know, beloved homespun cheese cave, you know, he had a little sign.

• 1:30:31Speaker 02

  Some sort of branding, you know?

• 1:30:33Griffin Newman?

  I, I will admit this because it was a special screening, the BFI South Bank, the concessions was not open.

• 1:30:39David Sims?

  Oh, that's too bad.

• 1:30:40Griffin Newman?

  And I, I really wanted a popcorn and a soda, the whole movie, especially because it's a long film. So when he goes over to the bags of cheese, I went like, that's disgusting. Is he really going to eat this? And then the more he started eating it, I started getting jealous of him.

• 1:30:53David Sims?

  Like, kind of go for a bag of cheese, right? Do they sell cheese bags? I had to, Griffin, they, they had popcorn going at the IMAX, but they, they had shut down all the other things. So I had to go downstairs. Talk to the ticket taker and be like, hey, I need to go buy some food because I'm gonna like faint if I don't eat something during this three hour movie. And she was like, yeah, whatever.

• 1:31:14Speaker 02

  So you got chicken nuggets, nachos and popcorn?

• 1:31:18David Sims?

  That's right. Is that a problem?

• 1:31:19Griffin Newman?

  That's a three course to hell.

• 1:31:21David Sims?

  I also got orange soda and the freestyle machine kinda spat some like orange, you know, like the sort of concentrated stuff on me and it looked like I had robbed a bank and like a dye pack.

• 1:31:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, it was very, it was very good time.

• 1:31:37Griffin Newman?

  I did feel borderline faint towards the end of this movie. I was talking to you guys before we recorded, just how fucking hot it has been in Europe.

• 1:31:44David Sims?

  Yes.

• 1:31:44Griffin Newman?

  And halfway through every day, I get exhausted just from taking steps.

• 1:31:48David Sims?

  And I think Europe has like one air conditioner per country, right? They kinda just like pass it around.

• 1:31:54Griffin Newman?

  Right. So this, this week I think Spain has it and sadly I'm in London.

• 1:31:58David Sims?

  Right.

• 1:31:59Griffin Newman?

  I, I do, you know, it, it was bad timing to take a Euro trip, you know, for some amount of work, right when a heat wave is hitting the entire continent. On the other hand, I feel great that I left the United States and New York in particular, at the time that the diarrhea wave is hitting.

• 1:32:18David Sims?

  There is, one of my friends has it. Yeah. There is some, there's some diarrhea out here.

• 1:32:21Speaker 02

  Didn't your sister have it?

• 1:32:22Griffin Newman?

  Everyone has the diarrhea.

• 1:32:23David Sims?

  Your sister had it?

• 1:32:24Griffin Newman?

  I don't know if we want to announce that on the podcast.

• 1:32:25David Sims?

  Well, she, she posted on social stack about it.

• 1:32:28Griffin Newman?

  Oh, she, she stacked it?

• 1:32:29David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 1:32:29Speaker 02

  She stacked it and she grammed it.

• 1:32:31Griffin Newman?

  She grammed the Ria?

• 1:32:33Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:32:35David Sims?

  No, it is fun. No, Griff, I think you're wrong. You would be thriving right now because basically the government is like, you can only eat the most processed food imaginable. Do not touch a vegetable. Leaves are not for you.

• 1:32:48Griffin Newman?

  Look, everyone, everyone's complaining about how bad it is. I go, yeah, welcome to my world. Now you know what it feels like for a minute.

• 1:32:54Speaker 03

  Griffin, you're also missing the wildfires is causing a lot of residual smoke down here. So you also can't really, or you're not supposed to go outside, which is perfect for a Griffin Newman.

• 1:33:05Speaker 02

  There's also like the Legionnaires outbreak on the Upper East Side. So you wouldn't be able to visit your grandma.

• 1:33:11Griffin Newman?

  That's a good point. My grandmother does live on the Upper East Side to dox her. I also say, I mean, Ben, if, if the wildfires from Canada are brushing over into New York City, I imagine it wouldn't be a good time to barbecue. Any smoking I would try to do would get intercepted by the smokes that were not in my control.

• 1:33:28Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:33:29Griffin Newman?

  I'm very particular. You know, I'm fruit woods only.

• 1:33:32Speaker 02

  Have you been trying any of the barbecue in Europe?

• 1:33:35David Sims?

  It's not really a barbecue hub, that continent.

• 1:33:38Griffin Newman?

  I've been trying to make my own.

• 1:33:40David Sims?

  Of course.

• 1:33:41Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:33:41David Sims?

  You lugged a Weber green egg or whatever, all the way on the plane.

• 1:33:47Speaker 02

  Some hamon, some smoked hamon.

• 1:33:48Griffin Newman?

  I'm smoking some hamon.

• 1:33:49David Sims?

  Right, I mean, they smoke meat well there, but, uh, yeah.

• 1:33:52Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, I am smoking meat well here.

• 1:33:57David Sims?

  So, so, so why do you like the Cyclops? Cause he big boy. We did talk about this a little bit, right? It's quite scary.

• 1:34:03Griffin Newman?

  I think the sequence is a marvel. I think it is something so uncanny to just make him a guy. I think it gets to, what's the opening title at the beginning of this film? It's something like-

• 1:34:14Speaker 02

  It is a time of, of magic, something like that.

• 1:34:16David Sims?

  I can't remember.

• 1:34:17Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:34:18David Sims?

  Fucked up.

• 1:34:18Griffin Newman?

  Uh, and this is obviously a fantastical story that asks you to believe that centuries and centuries and centuries ago, magical things happened and at some point they just disappeared from the world, right?

• 1:34:31David Sims?

  That is true. It's all true, actually.

• 1:34:33Griffin Newman?

  Okay, it's all true.

• 1:34:34David Sims?

  Sorry, the, the opening title is, "It is a lawless time. Crime syndicates compete for resources, food, medicine, and hyperfuel. On the shipbuilding planet of Corellia, the foul lady Proxima forces runaways into a life of crime in exchange for shelter and protection."

• 1:34:49Griffin Newman?

  And Coaxium, you can, you can smoke that, right? You can keep it hot?

• 1:34:52David Sims?

  Coaxium needs to be cool as hell, so we gotta keep it away from Madrid right now.

• 1:34:56Griffin Newman?

  Oh, yeah, absolutely. Not, yeah. In Paris, they got no AC.

• 1:35:01David Sims?

  Oh, right, right. Yeah, it is funny, the Paris, they're just like, "No, no, no, the cigarettes have no filters. The apartments have no air conditioners."

• 1:35:10Griffin Newman?

  Yes, no air conditioners, but we're gonna smoke all the time.

• 1:35:13David Sims?

  Right, and they take some damn naps.

• 1:35:15Speaker 02

  They do.

• 1:35:16Griffin Newman?

  They, they do.

• 1:35:17David Sims?

  Have you been taking siestas?

• 1:35:18Griffin Newman?

  Napping. Oh, yeah, you get me.

• 1:35:22David Sims?

  He's siesta maxing out there?

• 1:35:25Speaker 02

  Um, sorry, I, I know we were making jokes, but I did look up the actual, uh, opening prologue line. It's-

• 1:35:32Griffin Newman?

  Please.

• 1:35:32Speaker 02

  "It is a time of apparent magic."

• 1:35:35David Sims?

  Oh, that's cool.

• 1:35:36Griffin Newman?

  There we go.

• 1:35:36David Sims?

  Love that. Yeah.

• 1:35:38Griffin Newman?

  This is a thing I like about the realization of the Cyclops tied to that is it feels like you're witnessing something that could, they make him a scale that clearly becomes magical.

• 1:35:52David Sims?

  Right.

• 1:35:53Griffin Newman?

  But other than that, you're like, am I just looking at a person with facial differences? Am I looking at something that could have been misinterpreted? And through the oral tradition of the story being told and retold and reprocessed, got more and more extreme.

• 1:36:08David Sims?

  Right. They don't, I mean, you know, in the story, he talks to the Cyclops more because the whole thing is the, he tricks him into thinking his name is nobody.

• 1:36:18Speaker 03

  He also gets him drunk.

• 1:36:19David Sims?

  He does.

• 1:36:20Speaker 03

  And that's how he ends up falling asleep.

• 1:36:21David Sims?

  Right. And, you know, that's when the Cyclops is asked, like, who did this to you? He's like, nobody did this to me. You know, like, it's the trick, you know, it's the classic Odysseus, the cunning guy, right? And Nolan has said, like, I just couldn't figure out how to make that work. Like, it's just a different movie, I guess, if it's just like, he's talking, you know, like, he wanted it, I guess, to feel more primal, which it does. He does talk, he makes noise and he says beside him.

• 1:36:47Speaker 02

  And it made me so sad.

• 1:36:48David Sims?

  It's very, it's quite effective.

• 1:36:50Griffin Newman?

  This is the other thing, it's that it makes the character more sad because you're sort of like, is, is he almost being bullied by these guys?

• 1:36:57David Sims?

  Right.

• 1:36:58Griffin Newman?

  They treat him like he's not, you know, intelligent at first. They're dealing with him like he's a wild animal. And then the realization that he has the ability of speech, which implies obviously, like, deeper internal thoughts, has come after they've already fucked with him a bunch.

• 1:37:14Speaker 03

  He also crunched a bunch of them.

• 1:37:17David Sims?

  He did, that's true.

• 1:37:19Speaker 02

  He do be crunching.

• 1:37:20Griffin Newman?

  There's some self-defense of crunching.

• 1:37:22Speaker 02

  I liked that the aesthetics of-

• 1:37:24Speaker 03

  They went in his cave and ate his cheese.

• 1:37:26Speaker 02

  Bayes' Law says you should offer your cave cheese to anyone who shows up.

• 1:37:29Speaker 03

  They made a nice fire for him.

• 1:37:31David Sims?

  Yeah, that's true.

• 1:37:33Speaker 02

  I thought the aesthetics of the Cyclops design really reminded me of 90s, like-

• 1:37:40Speaker 02

  I could have seen him in like the Madonna Bedtime Stories music video.

• 1:37:44David Sims?

  That's, that's a Marie thought right there. I like that his, I like that his eye is sideways.

• 1:37:49Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's kind of vaginal.

• 1:37:51Griffin Newman?

  A little bit.

• 1:37:52Speaker 02

  And that's another Marie thought right there.

• 1:37:54Griffin Newman?

  A little bit. Well.

• 1:37:55David Sims?

  Anyway, he burns his friggin' eye. He does.

• 1:37:59Griffin Newman?

  He does. He lights the sword on fire and he, they, what, they poke him to wake him up and then stab him in the eye.

• 1:38:06David Sims?

  Yeah, and they, and then they, you know, they have the hay and they.

• 1:38:09Speaker 02

  Pretend to be sheep.

• 1:38:09David Sims?

  Pretending to be the sheep, which is, you know, that is classy.

• 1:38:12Speaker 02

  In the Arthur version of The Odyssey, um, because they don't want to really show violence, uh, the Cyclops is embodied by Buster, the rabbit. And, uh, D W just ties his ears around his eyes, his eye.

• 1:38:29Griffin Newman?

  Is the, is the, uh, Odyssey episode of Arthur from the Steven Crowder era, or was he not voicing Brain at that time?

• 1:38:35Speaker 02

  Um, I, uh, have to admit that I am not super familiar with the cast and crew behind the show, Arthur.

• 1:38:45David Sims?

  He, he only voiced the Brain for two seasons, Griffin, out of 25. So it's hard to, hard to, you know, narrow it down here.

• 1:38:52Griffin Newman?

  I think he did do Jekyll, Jekyll, Hyde, Jekyll, Hyde, Hyde, Jekyll, Jekyll, though, if I'm not mistaken. Uh, someone will check that.

• 1:38:58David Sims?

  I'm a little lost here, but that's.

• 1:38:59Speaker 02

  I'm assuming that's an Arthur episode.

• 1:39:01David Sims?

  There's so many goddamn.

• 1:39:02Griffin Newman?

  Well, it's a musical number. Yeah.

• 1:39:04David Sims?

  Memes about children's entertainment and it's hard to keep up. So they escape.

• 1:39:09Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:39:10David Sims?

  They do escape, but.

• 1:39:11Griffin Newman?

  Odysseus.

• 1:39:12David Sims?

  Odysseus does fire a little parting shot out of anger.

• 1:39:16Speaker 02

  Shouldn't have done that.

• 1:39:17David Sims?

  Should have done that. In the story, in the poem, it's, he just says his name triumphantly. And that's what gets them in trouble. But it's the same basic idea of like now they've invoked the gods. Now, I think that Nolan keeping the gods at a distance is good because it keep, it keeps the men's sort of opinions like kind of up in the air too. You know, where they're like, no, no, the gods have cursed us.

• 1:39:38Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 1:39:39David Sims?

  And I, but I like the idea that it's like, well, maybe you cursed yourselves just by, you know, the way you've behaved over the years, like. Without it not having magic. Cause Odysseus has hubris. Kind of throughout the story.

• 1:39:51Griffin Newman?

  Let's call out another thing here. One of, I think it's maybe our, our true introduction to Odysseus in the movie, but in that first 30 minutes where we're getting so much information in different times thrown at us, we're watching Tom Holland train with Mentor, who of course is Ryan Hurst, our friend from The Ladykillers, who played Lump.

• 1:40:12David Sims?

  He's got a real, he looks like he just walked off like the set of Sons of Anarchy or Vikings or whatever. Like, he's looking great.

• 1:40:18Griffin Newman?

  David, would you be surprised to hear that in fact, he was on Sons of Anarchy?

• 1:40:21David Sims?

  Yes, yeah.

• 1:40:22Griffin Newman?

  And of course, next is playing Kratos in the God of War series that everyone think looks perfect.

• 1:40:27David Sims?

  Oh, everyone's grumpy about that one, which is the first time that video game fans have had some objection to an adaptation of their material.

• 1:40:34Griffin Newman?

  Um, what I was gonna say is we're, we're introduced, Tom Holland is training with Mentor and they're sort of explaining the way that his father used to fight and his rules and everything. And then there's like a flashback within a flashback. And, um, Odysseus is explaining his whole method of stringing his bow, which is sort of his like milner test of no one can take the throne unless they can string his bow, a thing that only he can do. But also that he loves to pluck the bow.

• 1:41:01Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:41:01Griffin Newman?

  To sort of play the musical note before, because he thinks it's the honorable thing to do to alert whatever he is about to shoot at, that he's engaging them in battle.

• 1:41:11David Sims?

  Whether prey or opponent.

• 1:41:14Griffin Newman?

  That hunting is, is the same.

• 1:41:16Speaker 02

  Yeah. You know what? He doesn't, he, the Trojan horse is the complete denial of the warning.

• 1:41:24Griffin Newman?

  But even here with, with the Cyclops, you know, he like tricks him and then he turns around and yells like, another one.

• 1:41:31Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:41:31Griffin Newman?

  And just fucking like.

• 1:41:32David Sims?

  He does, he does briefly slip into Khalid mode and he regrets it the rest of his life.

• 1:41:37Griffin Newman?

  And he brings out like 20 guest acts.

• 1:41:40David Sims?

  Yeah, right.

• 1:41:42Speaker 02

  While we're.

• 1:41:42David Sims?

  Himashpatel!

• 1:41:45David Sims?

  That guy you've seen in a lot of movies playing heavies. What's his name again?

• 1:41:50Griffin Newman?

  Can we shout out Himesh Patel for a second, who we were introduced to, obviously.

• 1:41:53Speaker 02

  Shout out to Himesh Patel.

• 1:41:54David Sims?

  Andrew Howard is who I'm mentioning there.

• 1:41:56Griffin Newman?

  Okay.

• 1:41:56David Sims?

  Yeah, and Will Young Lee. But yeah, no, Himesh Patel, who's in Tenet.

• 1:42:00Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:42:01David Sims?

  Uh, and is wonderful in Tenet.

• 1:42:03Griffin Newman?

  Plays kind of an Adam Goldberg gum chewing annoyed asshole in that.

• 1:42:08David Sims?

  Yeah, he's, he's in the one set piece, basically. I guess he's in two. He's, but you know, he's like a helper guy.

• 1:42:13Griffin Newman?

  You want me to do what? Like, he's that kind of guy.

• 1:42:16David Sims?

  Crash a plane into a freeport?

• 1:42:18Griffin Newman?

  Right. And then yesterday, he's obviously like doing a Hugh Grant thing, I think incredibly well. And then in this, in this, he's just playing like ultimate straight arrow right hand man who's increasingly questioning, what, what is this mission we're on?

• 1:42:33Speaker 02

  I got, I got.

• 1:42:33Griffin Newman?

  Like, can I trust this guy?

• 1:42:34Speaker 02

  Yeah, I got a bone to pick with Wikipedia for the Odyssey in parentheses 2026 film. They list Himesh Patel as Odysseus' second in command and incompetent brother-in-law. Perhaps in this, again, I have not read the poem.

• 1:42:52David Sims?

  Yeah, in the poem, he is, he is cowardly. He is, he's a fool. He's sort of like the emblematic thing of like, the men just not listening, not like heeding the signs and, and going into.

• 1:43:03Speaker 03

  Isn't he one of the characters in the original poem that, um, he's, you know, gifted that bag that controls wind? And then like he and some of the other crew members think there's gold hidden in it.

• 1:43:16David Sims?

  Yeah, cause they're, they're like petty, you know, silly men.

• 1:43:19Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:43:20David Sims?

  Uh, and.

• 1:43:21Griffin Newman?

  I think in this, he is hyper competent. I think he is portrayed as hyper competent.

• 1:43:26Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:43:26Griffin Newman?

  In order to cast more doubt on Odysseus, right? In, in order for Odysseus to doubt himself more.

• 1:43:34Speaker 02

  I also think him being such a like earthy, reliable character makes the ultimate loss of him.

• 1:43:44David Sims?

  Right. He's the one you're, you're really attached to among the men.

• 1:43:46Speaker 02

  Really, really, uh, really sting.

• 1:43:50Griffin Newman?

  You need one of those guys to really be kind of delineated and, and fleshed out in that sort of way.

• 1:43:56David Sims?

  Yes.

• 1:43:56Speaker 02

  Um, well, sorry, just to rewind a bit, when we're talking about the Matt Damon bow trick.

• 1:44:02David Sims?

  Hmm.

• 1:44:03Speaker 02

  Uh, not the plucking of the bow, but the stringing of the bow.

• 1:44:06David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 1:44:06Speaker 02

  Um, I'm just gonna come out and say this. I've never really been a Matt Damon is hot girly.

• 1:44:15David Sims?

  Sure. Matt Damon's reliable. He's good. He's handsome.

• 1:44:18Speaker 02

  He's a cutie pie.

• 1:44:20David Sims?

  Cutie pie.

• 1:44:21Speaker 02

  But like, I've never been like, ooh, Matt Damon.

• 1:44:26David Sims?

  Takes the roles in things like Ford vs Ferrari or Air or whatever. It's like, well, he's the kind of doughy, you know, middle of the road guy. Like, he's not the sexier guy.

• 1:44:36Griffin Newman?

  A little America's dad. We were talking about this in our True Grit episode with Stavi, that like, it's funny that Matt Damon had this big action star run with Jason Bourne and it feels like he's firmly settled into his, I am dad mode. And then we remembered, oh, right, his next movie is The Odyssey. Like, he's doing his one last seemingly, I'm gonna get fucking swole as hell.

• 1:44:57David Sims?

  He got, he's ripped, yeah.

• 1:44:59Speaker 02

  But he's ripped in a really attractive, like,

• 1:45:03Griffin Newman?

  Realistic.

• 1:45:04Speaker 02

  Realistic way?

• 1:45:05Griffin Newman?

  Earthy.

• 1:45:06Speaker 02

  Where I was just like, ugh, ugh.

• 1:45:09David Sims?

  I think they should have put the bodysuit from live action Moana on him. I think that would have worked better. Don't you think? Yeah.

• 1:45:16Griffin Newman?

  My problem with Odysseus in this movie is that he had nipples. And I wish we could just take those off and just have smooth, rubbery pecs. Have you seen it yet, David? Are you seeing it?

• 1:45:27David Sims?

  No, I won't be seeing it.

• 1:45:27Speaker 02

  No, none of us are seeing, well, unfortunately, Ben had to see it.

• 1:45:31Speaker 03

  Did see it.

• 1:45:32David Sims?

  Why?

• 1:45:33Speaker 02

  Because he's on Critical Darling's.

• 1:45:35David Sims?

  Oh, sure, sure, sure. Right. So you had to, you had to, uh, to help out there. But, uh, no, no, my daughter-

• 1:45:41Speaker 03

  I should mention, it sucks so hard.

• 1:45:45David Sims?

  Not good?

• 1:45:46Griffin Newman?

  It sucks on ice.

• 1:45:46Speaker 03

  Yeah. When I saw it, the theater smelled like vomit, which felt really right.

• 1:45:51David Sims?

  Which theater? Which theater was it?

• 1:45:53Speaker 03

  Oh, Alamo.

• 1:45:54David Sims?

  I've been walking around vomiting in theaters recently just to kind of like, you know, mark my territory. No, my daughter has seen the trailer for it multiple times and is always just kind of like, that's grown up Moana. And I'm like, yeah. And she's like, hmm. You know, she's not like, I can't wait to see that. And so I haven't even suggested it. We were opening Weekend Minions and Monsters. We were right there. And she was, it was like fucking Bernie Mac at Def Comedy Day for her. She was just like pointing at the screen and screaming at like everything the minions did.

• 1:46:24Speaker 02

  Good.

• 1:46:25David Sims?

  I mean, as were many other children in the audience.

• 1:46:27Speaker 02

  End of top, like Marie Barti Selena.

• 1:46:30David Sims?

  I was not, I was just like very touched by that movie. I was just watching it kind of with like my hand to my chest going like, this is so sweet. They love the movies.

• 1:46:38Griffin Newman?

  You got reclamped.

• 1:46:39David Sims?

  I love James.

• 1:46:40Speaker 02

  I love James. James is an artist.

• 1:46:44Griffin Newman?

  I've quoted before Robert Downey Jr. Saying that his performance in Jodie Foster's Home for the Holidays is the most relaxed performance in the history of cinema because of how much heroin he was on. I, I think The Rock's performance in live action Moana would make him jealous.

• 1:46:59David Sims?

  Yes.

• 1:47:00Griffin Newman?

  I want to know what he's taking so I can use it to fall asleep at night.

• 1:47:04David Sims?

  Griffin, do you think, how about this theory though? I'm gonna throw this at you. Dwayne Johnson, as we all know, actually loves independent cinema. He made The Smashing Machine. You know, he's out here supporting artists.

• 1:47:15Griffin Newman?

  He's saying he's making another movie with Benny Safdie, an adaptation of a Daniel Pinkwater book. We'll see if that happens.

• 1:47:20David Sims?

  It'd be cool if it did. I mean, I think the issue there might be no one will give them the money, but we'll see.

• 1:47:24Griffin Newman?

  Possibly.

• 1:47:25David Sims?

  He brought down the Snyderverse. Okay? He did it himself.

• 1:47:29Griffin Newman?

  The hierarchy power did change.

• 1:47:31David Sims?

  Exactly. He has now brought down possibly Disney live action remakes. Is he a man on the inside? Is he actually doing God's work?

• 1:47:40Griffin Newman?

  Yes, yes.

• 1:47:41David Sims?

  You know what I mean?

• 1:47:42Speaker 02

  I mean, I love this conspiracy.

• 1:47:43Griffin Newman?

  I've been viewing him as the enemy for a while and yet I loved his performance in Smashing Machine. You and I both like that movie.

• 1:47:50David Sims?

  I do. I like it a lot.

• 1:47:51Griffin Newman?

  And he has been successfully killing the things I hate the most in modern American cinema.

• 1:47:57David Sims?

  I think he might be just like here to help. This is all I'm saying. Like, I just think, now, is this perhaps, you know, challenged by things like he's in Jumanji 3 this year, which is hard to get excited about.

• 1:48:10Griffin Newman?

  But is, I'm trying to remember, did Belatar direct Jumanji 3?

• 1:48:16David Sims?

  Yeah, he directed that and it killed him.

• 1:48:18Griffin Newman?

  Yes, it's his final film. It's his Eyes Wide Shut.

• 1:48:21David Sims?

  Yeah, and you know, I did get served up that interview recently. Did you see this grif that was going around from the Black Adam time? Where the guy is like, so which Joker would be in Black Adam? Like Jared Leto, or Joaquin Phoenix, or Barry Keegan? And he's like, Barry Keegan. And they talk about it seriously for two minutes where he's like, what he's doing is... And I'm just like, are you guys... Oh my god! What are you guys talking? They're all, it's like, it's the ultimate, just like, how everyone just went insane about multiverses and didn't know what they were talking about anymore. And he was acting like Black Adam could just like bring all the worlds together.

• 1:48:57Griffin Newman?

  I know, I know we've already made this joke within this conversational circle, but I just need to underline it. There is nothing funnier in the world than a year-long marketing campaign that was all framed around the hierarchy of power in the DC Universe will change. And he conclusively did do that.

• 1:49:16David Sims?

  Yes, it's not...

• 1:49:18Griffin Newman?

  Not in the way he intended. He fully lived up.

• 1:49:21David Sims?

  Maybe he didn't intend it. Maybe he's a force of good. Anyway.

• 1:49:24Griffin Newman?

  Moana's dog piss?

• 1:49:26David Sims?

  Yeah, I believe you. I won't be seeing it, ever. Um, so...

• 1:49:31Speaker 02

  Okay, we talked about Cyclops.

• 1:49:32David Sims?

  Cyclops, okay, so then...

• 1:49:34Speaker 03

  So Poseidon friggin' pissed.

• 1:49:37David Sims?

  Poseidon mad.

• 1:49:38Speaker 03

  Cause they fucked with his son.

• 1:49:39David Sims?

  So they get driven to another island.

• 1:49:42Speaker 02

  Cyclops is dead.

• 1:49:43David Sims?

  Which is where they meet the, the large men, Ben, that you were...

• 1:49:46Griffin Newman?

  Oh, sure, big guys.

• 1:49:48David Sims?

  You approved of so much.

• 1:49:51David Sims?

  And I do, the nightmare of the, the kid who's like laughing and...

• 1:49:55Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:49:55Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 1:49:55David Sims?

  That, that...

• 1:49:56Speaker 03

  Little stinker.

• 1:49:57Griffin Newman?

  He's got kinda wilder energy, yeah.

• 1:49:59Speaker 03

  What's that? Oh, sure, yeah.

• 1:50:01Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, your arch nemesis.

• 1:50:02Speaker 03

  Right, right, right. The ten-year-old that I'm feuding with.

• 1:50:07David Sims?

  And so they're driven...

• 1:50:08Griffin Newman?

  The ten-year-old who has your number.

• 1:50:10David Sims?

  Nolan is so good at this like stark nightmare stuff.

• 1:50:13Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:50:13Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:50:15David Sims?

  But the, when they go to the other side of the island and they're just seeing the animals, you know, like the tiger in the li- you know, like the weird...

• 1:50:21Speaker 02

  Oh, that's on Cersei's island.

• 1:50:23David Sims?

  That's, it's same island.

• 1:50:24Speaker 02

  Oh, it's the same island?

• 1:50:25David Sims?

  Yeah, same island, yeah. And, and they, right, and they encounter Cersei. And this is, I mean, it was just like, I know, so I know that Cersei will turn them into pigs, right? And I know that Christopher Nolan... Really tries not to use CGI, obviously. I mean, I'm sure he used a little bit in this grift because he's, you know, he's making the guys big. There's the big whirlpool. Like, there's stuff.

• 1:50:48Griffin Newman?

  There's the creature when they have to make the bargain, the rock creature with the

• 1:50:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's, yeah.

• 1:50:53Griffin Newman?

  That's the one thing that felt conclusively CGI.

• 1:50:56David Sims?

  Right. Where it's like, what are you gonna do? I mean.

• 1:50:58Griffin Newman?

  Right. Some of this has to be, I know so much of it for him is he doesn't want these stages in the process that will degrade the film. That when you run these things through optical printing and then you have to, right. Or rather, unless you do optical printing, if you're running them through a computer and then you're sort of outputting it again onto film, you're losing fidelity. And so I know he tries to keep those things to an absolute minimum, but it is just sort of striking to just see guys who are big and not 80 feet tall big.

• 1:51:30David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 1:51:30Griffin Newman?

  Right. But just big enough to be unsettling.

• 1:51:32David Sims?

  Just a little too big!

• 1:51:33Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:51:34David Sims?

  But the way they so simply have her just like stretching the faces to turn into pig.

• 1:51:41Griffin Newman?

  Oh my god.

• 1:51:42David Sims?

  And just the grossness of the like

• 1:51:44Speaker 02

  What the?

• 1:51:45David Sims?

  Entrail soup that they're eating.

• 1:51:47Speaker 02

  Oh my god, it's so gross!

• 1:51:48Speaker 03

  Because it starts forming this like waxy kind of like weird icicle coming out of their throats.

• 1:51:54Speaker 02

  I might wanted to throw up because

• 1:51:55Griffin Newman?

  Did it not remind you all of Spirited Away?

• 1:51:57David Sims?

  Of course! Well, Spirited Away is referencing that. I mean, that's, you know, that's, this is, this is the first time anyone told these tales.

• 1:52:06Speaker 02

  So the TV version of The Odyssey that we were talking about was being really bad. Do you know who plays Cersei in that, Griffin?

• 1:52:14David Sims?

  Tell me. Or tell Griffin.

• 1:52:15Griffin Newman?

  Fran Sinclair from the TV show Dinosaur?

• 1:52:18Speaker 02

  Close. Bernadette Peters.

• 1:52:20David Sims?

  Oh, which does sound cool!

• 1:52:21Griffin Newman?

  Yes!

• 1:52:23Speaker 02

  I, as soon as I found that out, I was like, oh, I could see her just like feeding slop to pigs. Like, you know, just be like, all right, eat, you know. Eat my slop! Eat my slop! Oh my god!

• 1:52:33David Sims?

  She looks pretty hot. God, Bernadette Peters, a babe.

• 1:52:36Speaker 02

  We love her.

• 1:52:37David Sims?

  We do love her.

• 1:52:38Speaker 02

  I, I, but yeah, Cersei's sequence

• 1:52:43Speaker 02

  Incredible.

• 1:52:45David Sims?

  But again, like, so, okay, so in the poem, Odysseus does fuck Cersei and have a couple of kids.

• 1:52:52Griffin Newman?

  He sure does.

• 1:52:53David Sims?

  Lives there for like a year. They cut all that out.

• 1:52:55Griffin Newman?

  Good.

• 1:52:56David Sims?

  But I just love that, again, this sort of simplicity of how he solves this problem of like, understanding that there's something like wounded and dark about her. Grabbing the bird, like realizing it's important to her. And then the way Nolan solves that puzzle so simply of like, she's just like, I like her better as a bird. It's her sister.

• 1:53:19Speaker 03

  And it's, but it's also that he breaks off from his crew.

• 1:53:22David Sims?

  He does.

• 1:53:23Speaker 03

  Go hunting.

• 1:53:24David Sims?

  Well, also because they don't like him.

• 1:53:25Speaker 03

  They're already kind of doubting him and thinking that the gods have smited him and they, they have.

• 1:53:31David Sims?

  The gods have smited him.

• 1:53:32Griffin Newman?

  They're questioning his leadership.

• 1:53:33David Sims?

  You know, and, but, but he might be the first to defy the gods and successfully and maybe prove the gods wrong. Uh, what's that tweet? I'll look up the tweet. But yeah, he shoots a deer and it turns into a very, very handsome naked man.

• 1:53:45Speaker 02

  Yes. I saw some.

• 1:53:46Griffin Newman?

  Tight little tushy.

• 1:53:47Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:53:47David Sims?

  Exactly. This is, this is the famous tweet, R I P to everyone killed by the gods for their hubris, but I'm different and better, maybe even better than the gods. I'll send it along to you.

• 1:53:57Griffin Newman?

  And that's from Senator Ted Cruz?

• 1:54:00Speaker 02

  While we're, while we're talking about Samantha Morton.

• 1:54:03Griffin Newman?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:54:03Speaker 02

  The great. Do we think that she is in the supporting actress Oscar conversation?

• 1:54:12David Sims?

  Sure. This isn't the everything Oscar conversation right now, baby. Right?

• 1:54:16Griffin Newman?

  I, I think, I think this is such a kind of reemergence for her. And such a scene stealing role. And even in the way that Nolan's been talking about her performance in the movie, he's been really spotlighting her in interviews.

• 1:54:28Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:54:28Griffin Newman?

  Even though she's not part of the core like press team that they're pushing out there. And she's, he said, like, there are two times.

• 1:54:35David Sims?

  He compared her to Heath Ledger's. Oh, sorry. I'm stepping on your thing. Okay.

• 1:54:38Griffin Newman?

  No, he said, there are two times in my filmmaking career where an actor has done something that when I called cut, the crew broke into applause.

• 1:54:45David Sims?

  Wow.

• 1:54:46Griffin Newman?

  And it was Heath Ledger, I think during the pencil trick scene.

• 1:54:49David Sims?

  Right.

• 1:54:49Griffin Newman?

  And, and this.

• 1:54:51David Sims?

  And when John David Washington said, I ordered my hot sauce an hour ago. That was the third.

• 1:54:56Griffin Newman?

  Well, but to be fair, they applauded the hot sauce. That's actually what they were applauding.

• 1:54:59David Sims?

  And when it was with Dibiki opened a car door with her foot, even though she was on the other side of the car.

• 1:55:05Griffin Newman?

  Remember that.

• 1:55:06David Sims?

  Yeah, when she height maxes, when she leg maxes.

• 1:55:09Speaker 02

  I gotta watch Tenet again.

• 1:55:10David Sims?

  You gotta watch Tenet every single day of your life.

• 1:55:12Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, you should watch it yesterday.

• 1:55:14Speaker 02

  I don't have that much time.

• 1:55:18Speaker 02

  I don't know if you noticed, but there was applause in our audience when her name came up in the credits.

• 1:55:23David Sims?

  Oh, that's nice. I did not notice that.

• 1:55:25Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:55:26Griffin Newman?

  My, my crowd had one guy, like the not another teen movie guy, who was trying so hard to get applause breaks happening throughout the movie. And the movie's a little too contemplative and moody.

• 1:55:39David Sims?

  Yeah, our only applause breaks were for the, the moment where Cory gets the arrow to the throat upon saying, you're Odysseus, which rocks.

• 1:55:49Griffin Newman?

  Correct. That is the only time it successfully happened in my theater. This guy truly tried 10 times.

• 1:55:55David Sims?

  Right.

• 1:55:55Griffin Newman?

  There were 10 times where you would hear.

• 1:56:00David Sims?

  Maybe he was trying to turn on a light and he had a cock.

• 1:56:03Griffin Newman?

  He was clapping.

• 1:56:04David Sims?

  You think it could have been that?

• 1:56:06Griffin Newman?

  He was clapping on.

• 1:56:07David Sims?

  Clap on.

• 1:56:10Griffin Newman?

  I wanna say about the Cersei sequence.

• 1:56:12David Sims?

  Cersei, yeah.

• 1:56:13Griffin Newman?

  That much like the, the village that burns themself down preemptively, her whole rationale is, I know men, they were gonna do something, right? That Odysseus is like, why did you do this to them? They didn't do anything to you. And she's like, I know where it's going.

• 1:56:28David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 1:56:28Griffin Newman?

  That there was a time of such incredible distrust happening, that, that people have started defying the gods, that they've started defying each other, that they're defying the laws of like behavior, uh, and that everyone is just on the defense all the time.

• 1:56:45David Sims?

  Yes, like, she can't trust anything anymore, as we have said already, you know, everyone's speaking of these invaders from the sea who don't follow Zeus's law. And, yeah, I mean, could she have maybe asked five to 10 questions before she served them pig soup? Maybe. I don't know. She's gone a little mad up there on her, by herself.

• 1:57:02Speaker 03

  She's also just got pig soup on, on a back burner all the time.

• 1:57:07David Sims?

  They are like, oh, you have food? And she's like, yep, slop it up, sloppies.

• 1:57:13Griffin Newman?

  It's so gross looking.

• 1:57:14Speaker 02

  It was so disgusting.

• 1:57:15David Sims?

  So she is the one who says, you're gonna have to go to hell, Hades. Sorry, you know, and he's like, nobody ever does that. And she's like, I don't know what to tell him, man. You're gonna be the first. You're gonna pull it off. And so they go to the underworld. Pretty rad of them. Oh, my God, it's so sick. In the Black Beach? The Black Beach.

• 1:57:34Speaker 02

  The Black Icelandic Beach.

• 1:57:36David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 1:57:36Speaker 02

  Oh, I need to go to Iceland.

• 1:57:39David Sims?

  It's beautiful and it's a four hour flight.

• 1:57:41Speaker 02

  I know. That, I'm gonna do it. I've been, yeah, it's been on my list for years.

• 1:57:45David Sims?

  They have hot dogs.

• 1:57:47Griffin Newman?

  Oh, good. Okay. That was the only thing holding me back. I'm glad to know they have hot dogs.

• 1:57:51David Sims?

  Yeah, pop over there for an Icelandic hot dog.

• 1:57:53Griffin Newman?

  Okay, perfect. That's great news.

• 1:57:55David Sims?

  And yes, and this is James Remar. First he inquires as to like, did Samantha ever show up? And it's just like that and just like that. And Damon's like, yeah, but it was weird. They clearly just kind of shot it separately and she just kind of like has a one sided phone call. And it wasn't really satisfying for anyone.

• 1:58:14Griffin Newman?

  He tells Odysseus to meet him at the top where the air is crisp. That's a Girl Next Door reference.

• 1:58:19David Sims?

  Cannot.

• 1:58:20Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 1:58:21Griffin Newman?

  Remar cooks in that movie.

• 1:58:23David Sims?

  He's always cooking. I mean, the guy cooks, apart from Mortal Kombat Annihilation, where the stove was broken, I guess.

• 1:58:31Griffin Newman?

  The gas was cut.

• 1:58:33David Sims?

  And Marie did remind me on the subway ride home of the other, the other Next Door movie. What's the Jennifer Lopez movie?

• 1:58:39Speaker 02

  The Boy Next Door?

• 1:58:40David Sims?

  The Boy Next Door.

• 1:58:41Griffin Newman?

  Oh, sure.

• 1:58:41Speaker 02

  Where someone, either, either she gifts the boy next door or the boy next door gifts her a first edition of The Odyssey.

• 1:58:49David Sims?

  Yes, a first edition of The Odyssey. Yes, iconic.

• 1:58:53Griffin Newman?

  Could we do a Next Door Patreon series?

• 1:58:58David Sims?

  Well, okay, are we doing movies with the title Next Door in them?

• 1:59:02Speaker 02

  The something Next Door.

• 1:59:03David Sims?

  Kind of a lot of like fucked up neighbor movies. You know what I mean?

• 1:59:07Griffin Newman?

  Boy Next Door, Girl Next Door.

• 1:59:09David Sims?

  Okay, he's, he's on the Next Door.

• 1:59:11Speaker 02

  Next Door, okay.

• 1:59:13David Sims?

  We've also got.

• 1:59:14Speaker 02

  Girl Next Door, Boy Next Door.

• 1:59:16David Sims?

  We've got a 2020, oh no, that's a TV mini series. I'm out on that. Um.

• 1:59:21Griffin Newman?

  Are there any other good ones?

• 1:59:23David Sims?

  The Girl Next, there's two Girl Next Doors.

• 1:59:26Griffin Newman?

  The Spy Next Door.

• 1:59:28David Sims?

  Okay.

• 1:59:28Griffin Newman?

  Jackie Chan, The Spy Next Door.

• 1:59:31David Sims?

  Uh huh. I'm not seeing a lot of good stuff here. I think you would have to more do a neighbor series, right?

• 1:59:37Speaker 03

  Like Rear Window?

• 1:59:38David Sims?

  Well, that, but you know.

• 1:59:40Speaker 03

  Kind of thing, right?

• 1:59:41David Sims?

  Yeah, exactly. Like, what's the one where Samuel L. Jackson's the cop?

• 1:59:44Griffin Newman?

  I like that. Is there white? Like Futurist.

• 1:59:47David Sims?

  Like Futurist, you know?

• 1:59:48Griffin Newman?

  That's an insane Neil of U.

• 1:59:50Speaker 02

  Pacific Heights, which is really fun.

• 1:59:52Griffin Newman?

  Pacific Heights, I love.

• 1:59:53David Sims?

  Any movie where people are like, kind of peeking through blinds?

• 1:59:56Griffin Newman?

  Blinders, yeah.

• 1:59:57David Sims?

  And then like, ah, like something happens that makes them go, ah!

• 2:00:00Griffin Newman?

  Wasn't there like a racist Dennis Quaid Bad Neighbor movie recently?

• 2:00:05David Sims?

  Yes, where, again, it's like-

• 2:00:07Griffin Newman?

  The Intruder?

• 2:00:09David Sims?

  The-

• 2:00:10Speaker 02

  Dennis Quaid plays the racist?

• 2:00:11Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:00:12David Sims?

  Yeah, cause it's Michael Ealy and Megan Good move next door. And he's like, hi, I'm your neighbor.

• 2:00:19Griffin Newman?

  In a transformative performance, Dennis Quaid plays like a somewhat unhinged reactionary?

• 2:00:24Speaker 02

  Well, this is the Dennis, the Dennis Quaid thing is so funny. It was this thing in The Substance 2 where I'm like, you're in this movie playing a character that is like satireizing the kind of guy that you associate yourself with politically. So like-

• 2:00:37David Sims?

  It's fascinating. He's got some self-awareness.

• 2:00:39Speaker 02

  Are you self-aware?

• 2:00:39David Sims?

  Arlington Road, what if your neighbor was possibly a terrorist?

• 2:00:43Speaker 02

  Another fun one?

• 2:00:44Griffin Newman?

  I've never seen that one, yeah.

• 2:00:45Speaker 02

  You've never seen Arlington Road?

• 2:00:46Griffin Newman?

  I've, I gotta see Arlington Road.

• 2:00:48David Sims?

  I do think Rear Window is the, the king and origin of it, Ben. Like, I think you're right.

• 2:00:53Griffin Newman?

  Well, yes.

• 2:00:54David Sims?

  Like, that's-

• 2:00:54Griffin Newman?

  Rear Window, I would say, is the best one.

• 2:00:57David Sims?

  I, I don't know. Have you seen, have you seen The Intruder?

• 2:00:59Speaker 02

  Disturbia?

• 2:01:01David Sims?

  Disturbia, which is just Rear Window.

• 2:01:02Speaker 02

  Which is Rear Window with Shia LaBeouf.

• 2:01:03Griffin Newman?

  Which is just Rear Window. That Simpsons episode, Bart of Darkness, is that what it is?

• 2:01:07David Sims?

  That's a great episode. Love that episode. Um, that's the one where Milhouse tries to write Milhouse, but he wants to go to the pool, so he writes Milpool.

• 2:01:17Griffin Newman?

  Milhouse rules.

• 2:01:18Speaker 02

  David just smacking the table laughing.

• 2:01:21David Sims?

  Milhouse is some funny shit.

• 2:01:22Griffin Newman?

  So good. Everything's coming up Milhouse, I think about once a day.

• 2:01:27David Sims?

  Of course, yes.

• 2:01:28Speaker 02

  Uh, The Simpsons did an Odyssey.

• 2:01:31Griffin Newman?

  They did.

• 2:01:32David Sims?

  Did they?

• 2:01:33Griffin Newman?

  Yes, Homer told the Odyssey.

• 2:01:34David Sims?

  I wonder what season's that?

• 2:01:36Griffin Newman?

  It's one of those anthology episodes where it's three stories in one, right?

• 2:01:40David Sims?

  Oh, yeah, sure.

• 2:01:41Griffin Newman?

  I sent this gif to one of our group texts the other day, David, I think it was Blank Dough, but of the lineup of the suitors who are coming for Marge in their version of the Odyssey. Cause I remember that being the best section is just like Disco Stu and Moe and everyone courting Marge.

• 2:01:56David Sims?

  Oh, I see. Yes, it was called Tales From The Public Domain.

• 2:02:00Speaker 02

  Which is really funny.

• 2:02:00David Sims?

  The Odyssey is the first and then they have a...

• 2:02:03Speaker 02

  Lisa Simpson is Joan of Arc.

• 2:02:05David Sims?

  Lisa's Joan of Arc and then a Hamlet episode called Do The Bard Man.

• 2:02:11Griffin Newman?

  Really funny. And I believe the final joke in that episode is he finishes telling the story of Hamlet. And he goes, "And of course, it was adapted into a movie called Ghostbusters." And then they play the Ghostbusters theme and Homer dances to the Ghostbusters theme for one straight minute over the end credits.

• 2:02:28Speaker 02

  That sounds really funny.

• 2:02:30Griffin Newman?

  Marie is laughing.

• 2:02:31Speaker 02

  I'm laughing. The title of, uh, of the Odyssey section is Dough Brother, Where Art Thou?

• 2:02:38David Sims?

  Yeah, which is, that's pretty good.

• 2:02:39Speaker 02

  That's pretty good.

• 2:02:40David Sims?

  That's good. But still, it's like a season 14 episode. I'm skeptical that this was very funny.

• 2:02:45Speaker 03

  It's so funny that I have to keep bringing these back to the friggin homework ass.

• 2:02:50David Sims?

  Ben, you're doing great.

• 2:02:52Speaker 03

  Thank you.

• 2:02:53David Sims?

  People have been saying lately on the Reddit or whatever, like, wow, Ben's really like, he's become kind of the taskmaster. No, Ben is doing his job.

• 2:03:01Speaker 02

  Ben's doing his job.

• 2:03:02David Sims?

  And that mood will persist on this episode. He is the producer of this show and he is keeping us somewhat on, uh, on track.

• 2:03:09Griffin Newman?

  They just trying to help out. Come up to Ben, tears in their eyes, and they say, "Thank you for producing."

• 2:03:26David Sims?

  So, yes, the sequence on the beach, speaking to the blind prophet. Beautifully done.

• 2:03:29Speaker 02

  Tyrese. Speaking to Elliot Page.

• 2:03:33David Sims?

  Right, so like Elliot Page kind of emerging as like the heart of the movie as the sort of avatar of the men Odysseus sacrificed for what exactly?

• 2:03:44Speaker 02

  And the betrayal, because basically what happened with Sinon is that...

• 2:03:51David Sims?

  They convinced Sinon they actually did lead. Like Sinon did not know about the Trojan horse.

• 2:03:57Griffin Newman?

  In order for the trick to work, Sinon needed to be tricked as well, so they believed it.

• 2:04:01David Sims?

  And Odysseus defends himself of like, "Look, I needed you to believe it. I needed it to be real. You, yes, you died, and I heard you die, and I was sad about it, but it meant others didn't have to die." But you can tell he knows like this is a bit of a, because it's like, so for what? So that we could pillage a city?

• 2:04:21Speaker 02

  And the whole reason of the Trojan War is like literally the dumbest thing.

• 2:04:25David Sims?

  It's trade routes or whatever, you know, come on, bring up Jar Jar Binks.

• 2:04:29Speaker 02

  It was the, it's some guy's wife.

• 2:04:32David Sims?

  Well, okay, the stated reason, obviously, yes, is that Paris of Troy stole Helen from Menelaus.

• 2:04:40Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:04:41Griffin Newman?

  Her face too pretty.

• 2:04:42David Sims?

  Right, and brought her. But they say in this, it's like Agamemnon would, like, even if we got Helen back, like Agamemnon wants to disrupt Troy's like control over the trade.

• 2:04:53Griffin Newman?

  It's what the fucking Republicans do. They blame it on some other thing.

• 2:04:56David Sims?

  Wait, the Republicans? I thought that was like a stand-up party founded by Abraham Lincoln that's never done anything wrong, Griffin.

• 2:05:01Griffin Newman?

  Oh, you're right. I'm sorry. They were actually the good ones all along.

• 2:05:05Speaker 03

  We see Agamemnon, he has been murdered.

• 2:05:09David Sims?

  Yes, this is right. So then we're right, we're moving over to Telemachus, who goes to see Menelaus, played by Jon Bernthal.

• 2:05:17Speaker 03

  Brother of Agamemnon.

• 2:05:18David Sims?

  Right, very good Bernthal.

• 2:05:20Griffin Newman?

  When is he bad? Only when he hosts a podcast.

• 2:05:23David Sims?

  I would say sometimes Bernthal can...

• 2:05:26Speaker 02

  Did any of you guys see?

• 2:05:27David Sims?

  Hit the gas a little too heavy.

• 2:05:28Speaker 02

  Did any of you guys see Dog Day Afternoon?

• 2:05:29David Sims?

  No, I did not, because I heard it was bad.

• 2:05:32Griffin Newman?

  This is what I heard as well. I heard some very loud rumors that it was not good.

• 2:05:36Speaker 03

  Someone told me that it... Opened and people were laughing and they had not anticipated that. And so then they leaned into it.

• 2:05:46David Sims?

  That doesn't sound good to me.

• 2:05:49David Sims?

  But I.

• 2:05:50Griffin Newman?

  Burnthall is excellent in this.

• 2:05:51David Sims?

  He's excellent. And it's like Telemachus is seeing in Burnthall. Burnthall's like, yay, I won. Now I'm here. Shit's mad. Helen doesn't like me. You know, her face is all scarred.

• 2:06:04Speaker 02

  Yeah, my hot wife isn't even hot anymore.

• 2:06:06David Sims?

  Right, and then.

• 2:06:07Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, she's only gonna launch 500 ships now.

• 2:06:09David Sims?

  Yeah, right. And Helen's like, and don't forget what happened to Agamemnon. I was like, I don't want to talk about that. We're not even gonna talk about that. But it's another thing that we had been seeded. It's seeded very early in the story where Odysseus tells Penelope like Agamemnon like sacrificed his daughter for favorable winds or whatever. And Penelope's like, what? And like, Odysseus is like, I don't, you know, this is spoils, you know, it's war. What are you gonna do? And like, the minute Agamemnon comes home a champion, like, his wife is still mad about that and murders him.

• 2:06:40Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:06:40David Sims?

  And but both roles, of course, played by Lupita Nyong'o.

• 2:06:44Griffin Newman?

  The great.

• 2:06:44David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 2:06:46Griffin Newman?

  We also get at some point around here, the fuller sequence of the Trojan horse attack.

• 2:06:52Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:06:52Griffin Newman?

  We see that before they go to the underworld, right? Because we've seen sort of like Senon's sacrifice more in full.

• 2:06:59David Sims?

  Oh, sure.

• 2:07:00Griffin Newman?

  We also see, I like that this movie answers some of the practical questions I have had about the Trojan horse.

• 2:07:05Speaker 02

  It was stinky in there. They were just shitting, pissing, puking.

• 2:07:09David Sims?

  It reminds me of Dunkirk.

• 2:07:11Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:07:12Griffin Newman?

  Yup. Mm hmm. I also love that they show that anytime the horse is like turned over, that all the guys inside.

• 2:07:20Speaker 02

  Uh huh.

• 2:07:20Griffin Newman?

  Need to like reconfigure their bodies.

• 2:07:23Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:07:24Speaker 03

  At one point, the Troy soldiers are stabbing the horse and one guy gets stabbed and they all like cover up his mouth.

• 2:07:31Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:07:32David Sims?

  The guy's just drowning at the bottom of it.

• 2:07:34Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:07:34David Sims?

  Don't, you don't want to be at the bottom.

• 2:07:35Speaker 02

  Bunch of guys dying at the bottom of the horse.

• 2:07:37David Sims?

  You don't want to be near like the head.

• 2:07:38Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:07:38Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:07:38David Sims?

  Get me near the head of the horse, please.

• 2:07:41Speaker 03

  Very jackass.

• 2:07:41David Sims?

  Not the ass.

• 2:07:42Speaker 03

  Very jackass of them.

• 2:07:43Griffin Newman?

  Very jackass, a great jackass.

• 2:07:44David Sims?

  Yes. I'm Odysseus and this is Jack.

• 2:07:51David Sims?

  Then it's just like, the horse.

• 2:07:53Griffin Newman?

  It's the wooden horse.

• 2:07:56Speaker 02

  Oh, man. And there would be one point where like Preston Lacey would fall on top of Wee Man inside the horse.

• 2:08:01David Sims?

  Sure.

• 2:08:02Griffin Newman?

  That would be really funny.

• 2:08:03Speaker 02

  Yeah. What I was gonna say is that Jon Bernthal, another thing that was like very much out of context in the teaser for this movie of him just being like, hey, you wanna hear about my brother? Like, just talking like Jon Bernthal or whatever. And that was another thing in the trailer. I was like, all right, you got Tom Holland whining about, let my dad's coming home. And then Jon Bernthal just talking like Jon Bernthal. And I was like,

• 2:08:29Griffin Newman?

  But it's all, it's removing the distance from these things. And I was also talking to a friend who was saying that like, you know, there are a million different translations of these things. And some of them are like, no, the wording is something more casual than father.

• 2:08:42Speaker 02

  It totally works for me in the context of the movie. The characterization of these charac- like, the way that these characters are portrayed makes absolute sense and ultimately makes the story really relatable for, you know, contemporary audiences, but not in a way that feels forced.

• 2:09:02Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:09:02Speaker 02

  Um, but, you know, I was,

• 2:09:04Griffin Newman?

  They're not saying hello fellow kids.

• 2:09:06Speaker 02

  Right. I just, I just rewatched Amadeus last week, which, you know, perfect movie. But again, that to me is like the classic version of we're going to apply sort of like modern sensibilities to it.

• 2:09:20Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:09:21Speaker 02

  Um, to, uh, you know, historical story, but it just, it just works.

• 2:09:27David Sims?

  Um, to, to, to wrap the, uh, yes, the, the, the, the Black Sand Beach, like the scale, Come out of the sand. Right. When they all come out of the sand and start charging, or it's like all the shades want is like news of people who are alive, right? Like, uh, this is where it's sort of seeded for Odysseus of like, you're gonna need to pay tribute to the men you lost. Like, you, you know, you haven't been honoring their deaths enough. And then Telemachus, I feel like from Anilaus is getting the sort of, the information of like, you can't just walk back to your house and think everyone's gonna be happy to see you. Odysseus will need to.

• 2:10:03David Sims?

  Survey the landscape when he arrives, you know?

• 2:10:06Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 2:10:07David Sims?

  Yeah, and you've got, you know, you've got the intrigue of like Pattinson and Corey and all these guys are like, maybe we should kill Telemica, you know, whatever. That's all a little bit of kind of like, that's, that's screenplay chaff or, you know, like.

• 2:10:17Griffin Newman?

  But, but Pattinson's big seduction scene is pretty excellent.

• 2:10:21Speaker 02

  Yeah, yes. He does a good job of toeing the line between being actually really convincing, but also winking at the audience.

• 2:10:30Griffin Newman?

  He plays the character as a fairly good actor.

• 2:10:33Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 2:10:34Griffin Newman?

  Which is hard to do, to show that he's almost pulling it off.

• 2:10:38David Sims?

  Uh.

• 2:10:39Griffin Newman?

  And then what happens next?

• 2:10:40David Sims?

  Well, so he gets the prophecy and he knows, Odysseus knows what's to come.

• 2:10:44Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:10:45David Sims?

  But he does not tell his men, which is that they will come across a whirlpool as well as this, I don't even know how to describe the monster. It's like a spider.

• 2:10:53Speaker 02

  A bunch of different arms.

• 2:10:55Griffin Newman?

  It's a spider creature.

• 2:10:56David Sims?

  It's called Scylla, you know, and it's a man-eating monster of, you know, it's, sometimes it's depicted as like a maiden with like dog heads coming out of her body, which is kind of a Ben.

• 2:11:09Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:11:09David Sims?

  Notion, I would say.

• 2:11:11Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, punch that turns into a bite.

• 2:11:13David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 2:11:13Griffin Newman?

  He cools up.

• 2:11:15David Sims?

  Um, but it's, you know, Odysseus keeps being told by people like Cersei and, uh, the, the, what, Teresius, Teresius?

• 2:11:25Griffin Newman?

  Teresius.

• 2:11:26David Sims?

  Like, your men are going to die.

• 2:11:28Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:11:28David Sims?

  And Odysseus is like, no, you know, they don't, you're telling me how we can avoid that. And they're like, that's true. And you will live, but they're not gonna, it's not gonna work.

• 2:11:38Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:11:38David Sims?

  And like their ultimate fallibility is like, they make it to this island where they're like, don't eat those juicy.

• 2:11:43Griffin Newman?

  That's the thing.

• 2:11:44David Sims?

  Juicy cow.

• 2:11:45Speaker 02

  And those cows look good, dude. Those cows are good. They belong to the sun god Apollo.

• 2:11:50David Sims?

  Apollo, so you can't fucking eat them.

• 2:11:51Speaker 02

  Fucking eat the cows.

• 2:11:52David Sims?

  But it's just like a marshmallow test of like, but the minute you're here, you can't leave, the winds die down and you're just gonna get hungry or hungry until you're like, well, maybe we have to eat the cows. And then, you know.

• 2:12:03Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:12:03David Sims?

  They all get struck down in the, in the, in a storm.

• 2:12:06Griffin Newman?

  They go in their little barbecue hole, Griff.

• 2:12:09David Sims?

  They do go in a secret barbecue hole.

• 2:12:11Speaker 02

  They smoke those cows.

• 2:12:12David Sims?

  Yeah, that is true.

• 2:12:13Speaker 02

  Um, we also see the sirens.

• 2:12:16David Sims?

  We do, we do. Uh, and again.

• 2:12:20David Sims?

  You know, Nolan connects this to like Odysseus is like longing for what is lost. Like versus just like he's so horny for these hot ass singers. Which is sort of the classic sirens thing of him being like, let me at him. I want to get there, you know? Instead, he's just wailing and crying like.

• 2:12:37Speaker 02

  A great performance moment from Damon there.

• 2:12:40David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 2:12:40Griffin Newman?

  Oh, incredible shit. When he says the thing of like, it's like the tastiest itch. And when you go to scratch it, you realize it's under the skin is so evocative.

• 2:12:49David Sims?

  It's good shit. I, it's, this is some good shit. I think he pulled off some good shit here, Nolan. I'm going to tell him that in a typed note.

• 2:12:58Griffin Newman?

  Ben, I assume that you believe if you listen to the sirens, everything would turn out okay and marry all of them.

• 2:13:04David Sims?

  They would just be like, you're so chill. You rock. Now you can go. Here's a bunch of money.

• 2:13:17Griffin Newman?

  They give you money.

• 2:13:18David Sims?

  Yeah, of course. Here are our wallets. Um, and so, yes, uh, what, you know, uh, what else?

• 2:13:27Speaker 03

  Oh, I wanted to ask about the boat stuff. What do you think of the boat stuff? Cause they shot on a frigging real ass boat, man.

• 2:13:33David Sims?

  I think like the oldest available boat is what they used. It's like a Viking boat.

• 2:13:38Speaker 03

  Vilga's piece for New York Mag. It's, uh, the boat is called the Draken, 115 foot boat from Norway.

• 2:13:49David Sims?

  Right. I guess it's a, it's a modern built boat.

• 2:13:52Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:13:52David Sims?

  Cause obviously you're not, I guess you're not allowed to take like, uh, items of antiquity out to the open ocean.

• 2:13:59Speaker 03

  They just go by some like London museum and they're like, can I have that?

• 2:14:04David Sims?

  But it's a, it's imitating obviously like an ancient Viking longship or whatever. And, uh,

• 2:14:10Speaker 02

  I would have thrown up.

• 2:14:11David Sims?

  Yeah. I mean, I think a lot of people did. I read some story about Nolan being like, do you mind if I shoot you throwing up?

• 2:14:17Speaker 02

  Yeah, I read that too.

• 2:14:18Griffin Newman?

  Cool.

• 2:14:20David Sims?

  Which is cool. Uh, yeah. I mean, rowing seems relaxing. I don't know. It does not seem relaxing.

• 2:14:27Speaker 03

  I could get into the groove of it, I'm telling you.

• 2:14:29David Sims?

  Oh, sure.

• 2:14:30Speaker 03

  Like, just a kind of like repetitive thing.

• 2:14:32David Sims?

  You know, put on some ambient music in the, in the AirPods.

• 2:14:35Speaker 03

  Toss some Afex Twin on and let's go.

• 2:14:37Griffin Newman?

  He just listens to the sirens.

• 2:14:39Speaker 03

  That's true.

• 2:14:40David Sims?

  Yeah, right.

• 2:14:41Griffin Newman?

  Good rowing music.

• 2:14:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, I would, I think I would have died at Troy. No, I would have died before we even got to Troy. Like, I wouldn't have made it that far.

• 2:14:50David Sims?

  Right, I wouldn't have made it that far, right, exactly. They would have eaten me.

• 2:14:52Griffin Newman?

  Let's be honest, in this time, I would have died in the cradle.

• 2:14:55David Sims?

  Yeah, exactly. Die right away.

• 2:14:57Griffin Newman?

  I would have died of like air allergy or some shit.

• 2:15:00Speaker 02

  Maybe, maybe I would have been sacrificed. Cause I am like a firstborn child, you know?

• 2:15:07Griffin Newman?

  They would have tried to sacrifice me and the gods would have rejected me.

• 2:15:10David Sims?

  Yeah, they'd be like, no, thank you.

• 2:15:12Griffin Newman?

  What am I supposed to do with that shit?

• 2:15:15Speaker 02

  Um, okay. Uh, also throughout this whole time, we keep flashing, we keep, you know, cutting into Odysseus with Calypso. She keeps being like, remember more, what happened to your men? What happened to your men? And finally, he breaks up.

• 2:15:30David Sims?

  Yes, finally Calypso, right. And he is mad at Calypso, but she's kind of like, look, man, you needed to. Again, like, I feel like traditionally, Calypso is just a trickster. Like, Calypso literally means like.

• 2:15:42Speaker 03

  Steel drum?

• 2:15:44David Sims?

  Right, yeah.

• 2:15:46David Sims?

  She who conceals. You know, like, that she's like a liar, right? You know, but like, she's just kind of like, if you wanted to go, you would have remembered. Like, you're only remembering now because you're finally ready.

• 2:15:56Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:15:56David Sims?

  To sort of.

• 2:15:57Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 2:15:57David Sims?

  Accept the emotional truth. Now, like, would Penelope be thrilled to hear this?

• 2:16:02Griffin Newman?

  No.

• 2:16:02David Sims?

  No, but, um, and so, yes, he goes home.

• 2:16:06Speaker 02

  In disguise as a beggar.

• 2:16:07David Sims?

  God bless Nolan. Like, he is very true to the tale of the Odyssey, which is like, the last part of it is Odysseus disguised as a beggar, hanging out in his house, being like, hmm, you know?

• 2:16:18Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, I loved all the beggar stuff. I also love that, uh, Legazamo gets to shine so much in this section.

• 2:16:24David Sims?

  So much more like.

• 2:16:25Griffin Newman?

  Because he becomes the one ally, uh, one ally he has.

• 2:16:28David Sims?

  Right. What is that nice old lady?

• 2:16:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, who noticed this is leg scar?

• 2:16:34Speaker 03

  Also, the dog.

• 2:16:35Speaker 02

  The dog.

• 2:16:38Speaker 02

  What's the dog's name? Argos?

• 2:16:39David Sims?

  Argos.

• 2:16:40Speaker 02

  I'm so sad.

• 2:16:41Speaker 03

  Poor boy.

• 2:16:42Speaker 02

  Apparently, it's very controversial that in this film, he touches the dog.

• 2:16:48Griffin Newman?

  It's controversial that he touches the dog?

• 2:16:50David Sims?

  It doesn't sound that controversial to me.

• 2:16:51Speaker 02

  I don't know. People are like, he's not supposed to touch the dog.

• 2:16:55Griffin Newman?

  I did find it so funny in that interview that they were asking Nolan, like, are you worried about this backlash at all? And he was like, one, I don't consider backlash from people who have not seen the film yet. Two, everyone forgets that I worked on Batman movies for a decade.

• 2:17:09David Sims?

  I don't think people forget that, but he's right.

• 2:17:11Griffin Newman?

  No, but he was just like, I dealt with fucking nerds for a decade. I don't give a shit.

• 2:17:17Speaker 03

  So, uh, by the touching the dog, Tom Holland recognizes, this is my dad.

• 2:17:22David Sims?

  Yes, that is when Telemachus puts it together. Thank God, because Telemachus would seem really dumb otherwise, I think, at a certain point.

• 2:17:28Griffin Newman?

  Sure.

• 2:17:29David Sims?

  Where this guy's like, no, I'm not Odysseus, but I know him, and he's coming this way soon.

• 2:17:36Speaker 02

  Okay, sorry. So, the dog, the thing with the dog is the, the dog is what potentially gives him away?

• 2:17:46David Sims?

  Yes.

• 2:17:46Speaker 02

  His identity. So the question is, does Odysseus kill the dog, or does the dog die?

• 2:17:53David Sims?

  Dog dies.

• 2:17:54Speaker 02

  The dog does die in the movie, but some people are like, actually, it should have been Odysseus killing the dog.

• 2:17:59David Sims?

  Name an important or learned person who has said that. You cannot simply cite randos on Twitter. Is there a real person who has talked about this?

• 2:18:09Speaker 02

  Uh, probably not.

• 2:18:10David Sims?

  No, it is a bunch of comments from, and I will say this confidently, fools.

• 2:18:18Speaker 03

  So Penelope has set up this test. For all of the suitors, which is the trick we see Odysseus do way earlier in the film, where they line up a bunch of axes. It's basically like this incredible like target trick.

• 2:18:33David Sims?

  It's a party trick he would do, yes.

• 2:18:34Griffin Newman?

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:18:35David Sims?

  Uh, he would string his bow and then he would fire the arrow along the axes and it would be really cool. And everyone would say, "Odysseus, you're the best. Never leave."

• 2:18:41Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 2:18:42Griffin Newman?

  Fucking rules.

• 2:18:43Speaker 03

  And so now all these suitors are lining up. They can't even get this bow strong.

• 2:18:47David Sims?

  It's so good. It's a-

• 2:18:49Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, they're fools.

• 2:18:50Speaker 02

  Well, we, we, we gotta go, uh, back a bit.

• 2:18:52David Sims?

  No, we don't.

• 2:18:53Speaker 02

  Yes, we do, because we have the whole scene when he talks to Penelope through the screen and that's-

• 2:18:57David Sims?

  Yeah, sure.

• 2:18:58Speaker 02

  Because that's before-

• 2:18:59David Sims?

  Uh, this is around, it's all, you know, it's, this is all happening in this final act.

• 2:19:04Speaker 02

  It's before the trial, but that sequence when it's finally revealed what actually he witnessed at Troy and that-

• 2:19:11David Sims?

  Right. That is the, right. And we've talked about it a little bit already, but right, that's the emotional thing Nolan's getting at. This is what he can't get over.

• 2:19:18Speaker 03

  And he's not revealing himself to her. He's, he's using a fake me.

• 2:19:22David Sims?

  Yeah, again, he's going kinda like, "Yeah, what if a guy who knew Odysseus knew that he felt really shitty about the sack of Troy?"

• 2:19:29Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:19:29David Sims?

  Because he had been kind of gnarly and bad.

• 2:19:33Speaker 02

  I, I had, uh, I had tears in my eyes during that sequence.

• 2:19:36David Sims?

  Oh, no. It's so good. The revelation of Zendaya, like, that really just crushed me. That worked for me so well.

• 2:19:42Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:19:42David Sims?

  Like, the use of her in the sack of Troy, you know, like, and then, then him looking at Athena, quote unquote, you know, yeah.

• 2:19:49Griffin Newman?

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:19:50Speaker 03

  Uh, because Zendaya basically was just some peasant woman who gets struck down, but then kind of embodies Athena then throughout the rest of the film.

• 2:20:01David Sims?

  Right. Like, his guilt, his-

• 2:20:02Speaker 03

  That's the story, yeah.

• 2:20:03David Sims?

  And the sequence is exciting. Like, it's also genuinely thrilling to watch.

• 2:20:07Speaker 02

  Yeah. I, I mean, I think with the, these stories get passed down and by virtue of them being passed down, you lose some of maybe the more unsavory elements. Like, the fact that there is an, uh, an adaptation of The Odyssey on the show Arthur, that, you know.

• 2:20:26David Sims?

  Yes. I think that is, of course, the peak of-

• 2:20:29Speaker 02

  Of the telling of the story.

• 2:20:30David Sims?

  And Homer was happy about it.

• 2:20:32Speaker 02

  But there-

• 2:20:32Griffin Newman?

  The cruelty of tying Buster's ears together is something that Nolan Derrant depict.

• 2:20:37David Sims?

  Right.

• 2:20:37Speaker 02

  But there, there is so much emphasis on the heroic moments and the moments of valor that, like, maybe some of the other- Aspects of what happened don't get passed out.

• 2:20:52David Sims?

  Yes, but it's also a movie that's so explicitly about guilt that I think it it's not like it's

• 2:21:01David Sims?

  whitewashing the character, you know?

• 2:21:03Speaker 02

  No, no, no, no, I'm not saying it's whitewashing the character. I'm saying that like when there's I think of like, I'm tired of hearing these stories about Odysseus or other people that are like really, really great when it doesn't really like like mirror the feeling of the loss and the guilt and the tragedy. And finally, we get to see that part of the story and it breaks you.

• 2:21:27David Sims?

  Yes.

• 2:21:28Speaker 02

  Like.

• 2:21:30David Sims?

  It's be good.

• 2:21:31Speaker 02

  It's really good.

• 2:21:32David Sims?

  Look, Iliad and the Odyssey, the poems are about triumphant victories over barbarians. Like they he is he is putting this in a completely modern context. This is not something that, you know, he is like borrowing from Homer. He's but he's putting it in very well, I think.

• 2:21:48Speaker 03

  We should shout out that a big influence for him was a somewhat recent adaptation by Emily Wilson, which is a kind of it's important distinction just mentioned. It's the first time that this poem was ever translated by a woman.

• 2:22:01David Sims?

  Right, which I don't approve of, to be clear. I think I think she should be translating raw food into cooked food in the kitchen. Sorry, that's a joke. Actually, the lead of my review was, which I think is very, for one, I couldn't think of a fucking lead, so I used this instead, but like Emily Wilson, you know, famously, the Odyssey usually kind of begins like, tell me of Odysseus, like the man of twists and turns, right? Like, that's the sort of Greek translation of and she renders it much more simply as like the complicated man. And like, I think that's what Nolan is responding to of like, this is not just a person who had twists and turns that he navigate like this is the, you know, there is something introspective we can find in this man.

• 2:22:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, no, there is.

• 2:22:45Griffin Newman?

  The other thing this movie reminded me of a lot, and I don't know if I just, I haven't been reading or watching a ton of interviews with Nolan, so I don't know if he's already called this out a bunch. Reminded me a lot of Excalibur in sort of the vibe of it being this kind of like earthy dreaminess. Even just the way he uses fog and smoke throughout the movie. And sort of finding this way to make a tactile version of magical ideas.

• 2:23:10David Sims?

  To me, he's cited Last Temptation of Christ. And that to me is also what you're talking about a little bit. That moment where he stands up and he's got like bits of the beach on him, on his back. That felt very cra- what are some other thing? I feel like he's been talking about some other movies.

• 2:23:24Speaker 02

  I, Andre Rublev.

• 2:23:26David Sims?

  Sure, hey.

• 2:23:27Griffin Newman?

  Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 2:23:28Speaker 02

  Ron.

• 2:23:29David Sims?

  Right, right. That felt like, you know, anytime we're zooming out to a bunch of guys running on the beach, that felt very like Lake Karasawa to me.

• 2:23:37Griffin Newman?

  Uh, Girl Next Door, I've seen him call that out a couple of times.

• 2:23:41David Sims?

  Well, because of the fact that she's next door and James Remar.

• 2:23:44Griffin Newman?

  And also, is the juice worth the squeeze is kind of a common refrain in this movie.

• 2:23:49David Sims?

  That's the Elisha Cuthbert movie?

• 2:23:50Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 2:23:51David Sims?

  Right. And Timothy Olyphant is there?

• 2:23:53Griffin Newman?

  He would, I would put him on the supporting actor ballot for that.

• 2:23:55David Sims?

  Right. He's the, he's the kind of like the Joey Pants who shows up late and he's like.

• 2:23:59Speaker 02

  All I remember is that Paul Dano and Emile Hershaw in that movie.

• 2:24:03David Sims?

  They're in it, right.

• 2:24:04Griffin Newman?

  Yes. He's, he's like the Ray Liotta in Something Wild.

• 2:24:07David Sims?

  Right, right. He's the spark plug at the third act, right.

• 2:24:10Griffin Newman?

  He's really good, yeah.

• 2:24:11David Sims?

  Okay.

• 2:24:12Griffin Newman?

  He makes the five.

• 2:24:15David Sims?

  So yeah, so he does the trial, reveal himself.

• 2:24:18Speaker 02

  None of those other men can string that fucking bow. He can string the bow.

• 2:24:22David Sims?

  Pattinson is like, I won't even play the game. Like, he's trying to take the kind, he's like, I won't fall for your trick. I know what you're trying to say here, but he ain't coming back. So you just gotta pick one of us anyway. And that is, I feel like, around when Odysseus do shoot Corey Hawkins.

• 2:24:39Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:24:39Griffin Newman?

  He do.

• 2:24:39David Sims?

  Uh, in the throat, and his last words are, you're Odysseus. It just, it just.

• 2:24:43Speaker 02

  It was really cool.

• 2:24:44David Sims?

  It just made me very happy.

• 2:24:45Speaker 02

  Uh, and it was really fun to see Matt Damon go apeshit.

• 2:24:51Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:24:51David Sims?

  Dude, that fight sequence is incredible.

• 2:24:55Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:24:55David Sims?

  Quiet.

• 2:24:55Griffin Newman?

  It does feel like this is the last time he's gonna go action star mode, right?

• 2:25:00David Sims?

  I mean, probably, except for maybe Odyssey 2? To Odyssey 2 Furious?

• 2:25:05Griffin Newman?

  I just feel like Damon is not a guy who's like desperately holding on to his ego of being a certain type of leading man.

• 2:25:11David Sims?

  No, I mean, when's the last time he made an action movie?

• 2:25:14Griffin Newman?

  Exactly. Born, The Last Born, right?

• 2:25:17David Sims?

  Well, actually, The Rip, which I guess was this year.

• 2:25:20Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, but that's a different kind of thing.

• 2:25:21David Sims?

  That's more of like a thriller, that movie, but it has some action in it.

• 2:25:25Speaker 02

  Gun action is different from this action.

• 2:25:28Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, right.

• 2:25:29David Sims?

  And I guess The Instigators, which everyone remembers so well.

• 2:25:33Griffin Newman?

  Jesus Christ, it took me a second to even pull what you were talking about.

• 2:25:37David Sims?

  That was kinda capery, like, there's like cars.

• 2:25:40Speaker 02

  He spends a lot of them, like, his character is, they take his, like, therapist, played by Hong Chow, hostage with them.

• 2:25:46David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 2:25:46Speaker 02

  So it's a lot of, like, him talking to his therapist while other people do stuff.

• 2:25:52Griffin Newman?

  I do think gun heist stuff is different.

• 2:25:54Speaker 02

  It's different.

• 2:25:55David Sims?

  It is. I mean, and then obviously even like The Last Duel or whatever, like...

• 2:26:00Speaker 02

  A movie that I love.

• 2:26:01David Sims?

  A great movie, and it does have, you know, action in it, but it's brutal and kind of, you know, and he's... I mean, he's playing a guy who has to go to court to argue he gave his wife an orgasm. What?

• 2:26:13Griffin Newman?

  I'm sure he will do action sequences again, but I'm saying I think this feels like

• 2:26:17David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 2:26:18Griffin Newman?

  his, his final, like, big action hero movie.

• 2:26:22David Sims?

  Although, I don't know anything about this Daniels movie.

• 2:26:26Speaker 02

  Yeah, no one does.

• 2:26:27David Sims?

  That is his next project. Like, what is that?

• 2:26:30Griffin Newman?

  The rumors I have heard do not make it sound like that's what it is. And in fact, I think a lot of why there was such a musical chairs of which A-list star was gonna play that role is that that role is a little secondary to the narrative. That he's in a lot of the movie, but he doesn't get to, like, have the big wins.

• 2:26:48David Sims?

  I feel like that's something Damon is happy to do.

• 2:26:50Griffin Newman?

  Exactly. That's what I'm saying. I think he's happy to, like, surrender that and go like, "I'll let the younger cast sort of drive the story and I'll just service the plot."

• 2:27:00Speaker 02

  Wait, I'm so sorry. I just clicked on the Reddit. Did you fucking see this?

• 2:27:05David Sims?

  Yeah, I was...

• 2:27:06Griffin Newman?

  The Mary Brownstein?

• 2:27:06David Sims?

  The highway sign?

• 2:27:07Speaker 02

  Yes! Do you know there's a... A highway exit in Georgia that just says Griffin Newman?

• 2:27:14David Sims?

  No, no, but it's...

• 2:27:15Griffin Newman?

  What?

• 2:27:15David Sims?

  It's... No, Noonan.

• 2:27:19Speaker 02

  Griffin Noonan. But from far away, it literally just says Griffin Newman.

• 2:27:24Griffin Newman?

  Why is this happening? Is that the name of a town or something?

• 2:27:28Speaker 02

  It's very, it's, it's really upsetting. I feel like I'm witnessing some sort of glitch in the fabric of reality.

• 2:27:35David Sims?

  It's a little backwardsy, I'll say.

• 2:27:37Griffin Newman?

  Okay. And you know the best thing about it, about that sign? You can eat it too.

• 2:27:42David Sims?

  Uh, yes. Here, I will tell you the answer. It appears to me that there are two separate places. Griffin, Georgia and Noonan, Georgia. And I guess you can access them both from this exit?

• 2:27:53Speaker 02

  That is wild. Alright, well we-

• 2:27:55Griffin Newman?

  I should move to that intersection.

• 2:27:56David Sims?

  I think you need to move there.

• 2:27:58Speaker 02

  We gotta go there, maybe when we drive eventually to Disney World.

• 2:28:02Griffin Newman?

  Live show in, in Griffin Noonan.

• 2:28:05Speaker 02

  Live show on-

• 2:28:06David Sims?

  Let me get in touch with the bookers down there.

• 2:28:08Speaker 02

  The Griffin Noonan sign. Okay, sorry. Back to the Odyssey.

• 2:28:12David Sims?

  Yeah, he kill everyone.

• 2:28:13Speaker 02

  He kill everyone and, you know, there, there's some, it's just like a fun sequence where you got Tom Holland and, uh, what's his fucking, what's his name? The guy who, who used to, Logan Marshall Green.

• 2:28:26David Sims?

  Logan Marshall Green.

• 2:28:26Speaker 02

  Like the three name guy. Three name guy who used to look like Tom Hardy.

• 2:28:29David Sims?

  Right, I was gonna say, when Tom Hardy and Christopher Nolan have not worked together in a while, you can at least get Logan Marshall Green.

• 2:28:35Speaker 02

  Uh, I think that role was supposed to be Cosmo Jarvis and Cosmo Jarvis probably had to go film, uh, Shogun.

• 2:28:41David Sims?

  Go to Japan, right?

• 2:28:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, um, but, uh, you know, they're upstairs and there's a hole in the, the floor slash ceiling.

• 2:28:50Speaker 03

  They removed all the weapons before the suitors showed up, so now-

• 2:28:53David Sims?

  But then he goes and he tries to put him through the hole, right?

• 2:28:55Speaker 02

  So, yeah.

• 2:28:56David Sims?

  There's that moment where Patton just goes, "Spears, spears!" Because he's not even doing anything.

• 2:29:01Speaker 02

  Patton in that scene is so funny. He's so funny.

• 2:29:05David Sims?

  He's so good at playing this kind of like desperation and this like fafishness, you know?

• 2:29:10Speaker 02

  I cannot wait to see him play, uh, Chris Hansen. I, I just think it's like such genius casting. I'm really excited for it.

• 2:29:18David Sims?

  He's really cool, I wanna see it.

• 2:29:19Speaker 02

  Um, but, uh- Yeah, and Odys- Odysseus, it's like him versus like 60 guys. And when he finally is victorious at the end of the battle, he's just got spears poking out of his body.

• 2:29:38David Sims?

  He does get a couple, yeah, well, a couple pokes there.

• 2:29:40Griffin Newman?

  He doesn't make it through Scott Free. He takes, he takes some, some Ls.

• 2:29:44David Sims?

  No one has a little bit of fun making you think like, maybe he's gonna die.

• 2:29:47Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:29:47Griffin Newman?

  Right, but he's not a superhero.

• 2:29:49David Sims?

  No, no, we're gonna do Dark Knight Rises. It's like what we talked about. We're gonna fucking retire. We'll go off.

• 2:29:55Speaker 02

  He's gonna, he and Anne Hathaway are going to go off into the sunset together.

• 2:29:58David Sims?

  We'll make Telemica's king. He's proved himself. He's done great. And then when he gets on the boat is when he might finally reveal like, "By the way, I did spend eight years on the island with Charlize Theron. Anyway, let's go!"

• 2:30:09Speaker 03

  And we might have hooked up a little bit.

• 2:30:12Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:30:13Speaker 03

  Just over the clothes stuff.

• 2:30:15David Sims?

  Yeah, no, totally. She always had her fishnet thing hat on, like, and, and it was, it was the Lotus. Look, what can I tell you? It was all Lotus.

• 2:30:22Speaker 03

  Blame it on the Lotus.

• 2:30:24Speaker 02

  I feel like back in ancient Greek times, there was like an understanding that like sex is different.

• 2:30:29David Sims?

  I think you're right.

• 2:30:30Griffin Newman?

  Over the jeans doesn't really count.

• 2:30:32David Sims?

  Yeah, I mean, they had so many jeans then. It was such a denim-y society.

• 2:30:36Griffin Newman?

  This is such a dungary movie. It is funny. It's the last thing I expected for it to be so heavy on the Levi's product place.

• 2:30:42Speaker 03

  Although the costuming is awesome.

• 2:30:44David Sims?

  It is. It's very interesting.

• 2:30:46Speaker 03

  It's not like corny, like sandal and sword, like over the top.

• 2:30:51David Sims?

  No, it's, it's very like simple and kind of rough-hewn.

• 2:30:54Speaker 03

  Like, Damon literally wears like a cutoff t-shirt at one point. But it's just like, you don't need the over-the-top robes and all the nonsense.

• 2:31:03Speaker 02

  You know, you know what movies costuming is dog ass? Uh, fucking dog ass, Troy. Nominated for an Oscar.

• 2:31:10David Sims?

  They, they made all of the costumes out of dogs' asses. That was the issue.

• 2:31:14Griffin Newman?

  That's why it was impressive.

• 2:31:15Speaker 02

  They got Brad Pitt wearing crop tops, like cerulean blue crop tops and sarongs.

• 2:31:22David Sims?

  It was Devil Wears Prada era.

• 2:31:24Speaker 02

  Where does this come from in history?

• 2:31:27Griffin Newman?

  What do you mean? It's actually before. They beat them to the cerulean punch.

• 2:31:31Speaker 02

  I was, I was researching ancient Greece crop tops. I could find nothing.

• 2:31:37David Sims?

  Oh, oh, yeah? You couldn't find anything when you Googled that?

• 2:31:39Speaker 02

  I could find nothing, so like...

• 2:31:41Speaker 03

  Although it is funny how in Bushwick right now, Caesar haircuts and crop tops, I mean, are so popular.

• 2:31:46Speaker 02

  Yes, yes.

• 2:31:47Griffin Newman?

  Hot Odyssey summer.

• 2:31:48David Sims?

  Yeah. Yeah, there you go.

• 2:31:50Griffin Newman?

  I remember Troy being a very naval forward movie.

• 2:31:54David Sims?

  Yeah, a lot of boat, a lot of boat.

• 2:31:55Griffin Newman?

  No, no, I meant like belly buttons.

• 2:31:58David Sims?

  Oh, yes, you're right. You're right. It does have, it's both naval with an A and naval with an E.

• 2:32:02Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 2:32:03David Sims?

  Yes. I'm not sure if you see Eric Bana's cute little innie or outie. I'm not sure what.

• 2:32:08Griffin Newman?

  I wish. I'd love to tickle that.

• 2:32:09David Sims?

  I'm a little worried about Googling Eric Bana belly button. I don't know what, what, what that'll do to my algorithm. Looks like an innie. Looks like a classic innie.

• 2:32:19Griffin Newman?

  Okay, a classic innie.

• 2:32:21David Sims?

  That was just one of those movies where everyone, I think, was just like, I need biggest arms on this set. You know, like everyone's just like hitting the gym constantly.

• 2:32:29Speaker 02

  No, they're not that bulky. Like, they're not that bulky. Like, you see, uh, what's it, Orlando Bloom, like, naked a lot, and it is, it is peak twenty.

• 2:32:38David Sims?

  Look at this, look at this.

• 2:32:39Griffin Newman?

  Very male model.

• 2:32:40Speaker 02

  Yeah, Bana looks good.

• 2:32:41David Sims?

  Bana looks.

• 2:32:42Speaker 02

  Bana looks good.

• 2:32:43David Sims?

  He's the heftiest.

• 2:32:43Griffin Newman?

  Bana looks good.

• 2:32:44Speaker 02

  Um.

• 2:32:45Griffin Newman?

  Final thoughts on Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey.

• 2:32:48David Sims?

  Very good.

• 2:32:49Speaker 02

  Really fucking good. Um, I can't wait to see it again.

• 2:32:53Speaker 03

  I, I just, I'm like, there's so much more to just unpack and notice.

• 2:32:59David Sims?

  I think it'll be a very rewarding second viewing.

• 2:33:01Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 2:33:01Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:33:02Speaker 02

  Um, I, you know, I, I think it kinda had a little bit of everything.

• 2:33:08David Sims?

  Sure.

• 2:33:09Speaker 02

  You know, a little, a little bit of this, a little bit of that. Really firing on all cylinders. I thought it was well-paced. I was never bored.

• 2:33:16David Sims?

  No, same with Oppenheimer, just kinda moves like crazy.

• 2:33:19Griffin Newman?

  Tight 250.

• 2:33:20David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 2:33:20Griffin Newman?

  Uh, David, your wife wants the bucket.

• 2:33:24David Sims?

  She does. How do I get that fucking bucket? God, the horse.

• 2:33:27Griffin Newman?

  I'm keeping my eyes on the orders. If it goes back in stock anywhere, I'll send it to you.

• 2:33:30Speaker 02

  I am so, I am really looking forward to your wife's review of the film.

• 2:33:35David Sims?

  I'm really excited for her to see it, cause she's been somewhat skeptical. She's not like a diehard Nolan fan anyway, but I'm, we're gonna go see it.

• 2:33:42Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, and her review will be on a Patreon tier that doesn't exist and will never exist.

• 2:33:46David Sims?

  Right, but we haven't, we haven't come up with a tier that high.

• 2:33:48Griffin Newman?

  Yes, yeah.

• 2:33:50Speaker 02

  Maybe.

• 2:33:50David Sims?

  The bucket is huge.

• 2:33:52Speaker 02

  The bucket's really big.

• 2:33:53David Sims?

  It's really large.

• 2:33:53Speaker 02

  It's really big.

• 2:33:54Griffin Newman?

  And then there's also the IMAX camera bucket.

• 2:33:57David Sims?

  Yeah, which is cool. So I think that one, one of them is Regal and one of them is AMC.

• 2:34:01Speaker 02

  I want both of them.

• 2:34:03Griffin Newman?

  Can we say quickly, they had to, I mean Nolan basically threw the challenge down to IMAX. They've been refining the technology to help him make these movies, not just in terms of the filming, but even in terms of the projection, because there was a time limit on how long an IMAX movie could be.

• 2:34:19David Sims?

  Right, there's sort of a three hour cap, right, yeah.

• 2:34:22Griffin Newman?

  Right, but it, he helped them work up to three. I think it used to be two something.

• 2:34:27David Sims?

  Right.

• 2:34:28Griffin Newman?

  But they finally made the smallest version of an IMAX camera possible for this movie.

• 2:34:33David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 2:34:33Griffin Newman?

  And they also developed what they called the blimp, which is a case that goes around the camera that suffocates the sound.

• 2:34:40David Sims?

  Yes, because everyone says it's so goddamn loud, you can't hear yourself think.

• 2:34:43Griffin Newman?

  The dialogue scenes, that's why usually he only shoots the more visual scenes in IMAX and the dialogue scenes aren't. And this because he was going to do the whole thing, they had to blimp it up.

• 2:34:52David Sims?

  It was all, it was all IMAX.

• 2:34:54Speaker 02

  I'm, I'm.

• 2:34:54David Sims?

  That aspect ratio never changed.

• 2:34:56Speaker 02

  I'm very curious, because I am seeing it in 35 millimeter. Like, it really did feel like he was using the entire IMAX frame.

• 2:35:05Griffin Newman?

  I'm curious. I mean, there've been the infographics that have been going around of the different formats and some people complaining that if you don't see it in a perfect square, is the framing all gonna look weird?

• 2:35:15David Sims?

  No, to me that only looks bad if you're watching them next to each other.

• 2:35:18Speaker 02

  It only looks bad if you know what you're missing, but if you don't know what you're missing, you don't know what you're missing.

• 2:35:22David Sims?

  I'm sure it works, yeah.

• 2:35:23Speaker 02

  So I'm sure, I'm sure it'll, it'll, great.

• 2:35:26David Sims?

  It would be funny if it's like, you don't see Damon's eyes. Like, it's horrible. Like, they did no work thinking about it.

• 2:35:34Griffin Newman?

  His head is out of frame.

• 2:35:35David Sims?

  Just like jaws talking to each other. No, it's very good.

• 2:35:38Speaker 02

  I think it's gonna make a ton of money.

• 2:35:40David Sims?

  I think it'll do very well.

• 2:35:42Speaker 02

  My father-in-law has texted me, you know, being like, you heard of this? And I'm like, oh, I've, I've seen it, man. I've seen the movie and it is phenomenal. You should, you should go.

• 2:35:52David Sims?

  I know, Griff, do you have a box office predictions? I mean, we assume Moana will jump 100%, so it'll be number one and then Odyssey number two. With eighty?

• 2:36:00Griffin Newman?

  No, I think people are assuming that this is gonna open over a hundred.

• 2:36:04David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 2:36:04Griffin Newman?

  Right? I mean, Oppenheimer opened to eighty against Barbie.

• 2:36:07David Sims?

  Yes.

• 2:36:07Speaker 03

  Cause we should mention, we're recording this Thursday afternoon.

• 2:36:11Griffin Newman?

  We're recording this, yes. The, the night it's coming out, basically. Um, but I think it's probably gonna open to like a hundred, a hundred ten. The thing with these format forward movies is the opening weekend cannot be totally humongous because a lot of people wait until they can get the ticket they want.

• 2:36:29David Sims?

  Yeah, yeah, people will see it in the big format.

• 2:36:30Griffin Newman?

  A lot of people who are gonna wait two or three weekends, which means this thing's gonna hold incredibly well. But I think it's probably gonna open to like a hundred or a hundred ten would be my guess.

• 2:36:39Speaker 02

  Two hundred worldwide?

• 2:36:41Griffin Newman?

  Uh, I think it ends up at like, yeah, yeah. I'm guessing it ends up around three fifty domestic.

• 2:36:48David Sims?

  I don't know.

• 2:36:48Speaker 03

  I bet this plays well in Greece.

• 2:36:49Griffin Newman?

  A billion worldwide?

• 2:36:50David Sims?

  Yeah, it'll, it'll play well in Greece. Yeah, I think that's true.

• 2:36:54Griffin Newman?

  We should demerit, you know, offer some demerits for this film casting neither. No Stavi, no Zoukas.

• 2:37:01David Sims?

  Right.

• 2:37:01Griffin Newman?

  No Stamos. The big three.

• 2:37:04Speaker 03

  No Stamos. Who does Stamos could have, he could have been one of the suitors.

• 2:37:09David Sims?

  Yeah, exactly. He's in there. Um, and you know, who are the other guys from Full House? Oh, well, Bob Saget isn't with us anymore. Who's the third?

• 2:37:17Speaker 02

  Uh, Joey.

• 2:37:17Griffin Newman?

  Dave Coulier is suffering health problems.

• 2:37:20Speaker 03

  Yeah, he could have had a puppet.

• 2:37:22Griffin Newman?

  Lori Loughlin, convicted felon.

• 2:37:25David Sims?

  Yeah, geez, wait, what's going on with Full House, actually?

• 2:37:27Griffin Newman?

  It's bad. It's bad over there.

• 2:37:30David Sims?

  Uh, house too full. I mean, and Penelope does have a full house. It's a good, right? That's, that's a point.

• 2:37:35Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:37:35David Sims?

  That house has too many people in it.

• 2:37:37Griffin Newman?

  Sometimes you remind us that you're the film critic, that you're the one real professional in this field. That is a great point.

• 2:37:44David Sims?

  Penelope does have, as I'm being like taken out of my office by security with like, you have been fired. I'm like, no, no, no, let me, let me.

• 2:37:51Griffin Newman?

  My friend, I think you finally found your lead.

• 2:37:53David Sims?

  I think it'll be Odyssey, Moana, Minions. I don't know what else is out there. Evil Dead.

• 2:37:58Griffin Newman?

  I would not be surprised if there is a Moana drop that is so significant that Minions or Toy Story are actually ahead of second week in Moana.

• 2:38:07David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 2:38:07Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 2:38:08David Sims?

  Uh, the invite has been growing quite nicely. I think that might, that might continue to do well.

• 2:38:12Speaker 02

  Have you seen that one yet, Griffin?

• 2:38:13Griffin Newman?

  I, no, it is not playing in Spain. I think it maybe doesn't come out for another month or two. I'm trying to see it while I'm here in London. So I may go see it after this record, or I may go see it tomorrow.

• 2:38:22Speaker 02

  I really, I really enjoyed it.

• 2:38:24David Sims?

  You should just watch The People Upstairs, the Spanish film that it's based on in Spain.

• 2:38:28Griffin Newman?

  This is true, but I mean, which should I watch first? I don't know which one I should watch first.

• 2:38:34David Sims?

  I don't think it matters. I think you're fine no matter what.

• 2:38:37Griffin Newman?

  Well, well, well.

• 2:38:39David Sims?

  Well, well, well. Uh, yeah, let's wrap it up. I mean, you know, you can't be cooking in there forever in that London studio.

• 2:38:45Griffin Newman?

  This is one of the most relevant films of 2026. It's one of the biggest films of 2026. It will certainly go down in history as one of the films that represents this year, which of course means that next week we're talking about In the Blink of an Eye.

• 2:38:58David Sims?

  No, yes, yes, yes, that's true. That is true. But hey, my brother's on that episode. I remember us having a lot of fun.

• 2:39:06Griffin Newman?

  Your brother Joey Sims is cooking.

• 2:39:07David Sims?

  Yeah, yeah, we, we have a good time on that app. Maybe not talking about In the Blink of an Eye that much.

• 2:39:12Griffin Newman?

  A 2026 Hulu release that you might be hearing about for the first time right now.

• 2:39:17David Sims?

  Yeah, right.

• 2:39:17Speaker 02

  I'm excited to watch it.

• 2:39:19David Sims?

  Are you?

• 2:39:20Speaker 02

  No.

• 2:39:20David Sims?

  Okay.

• 2:39:22Griffin Newman?

  I, I like one of the three sections in that movie a lot, and I'm curious when you watch it.

• 2:39:27Speaker 02

  Don't tell me which one.

• 2:39:27Griffin Newman?

  I'm not gonna tell you, but I'm curious when you watch it, if you have the same response. I think you will.

• 2:39:31David Sims?

  Um, uh, and, uh, yeah, so we've got two more Stanton films, right, to fill out that little mini. So we got In the Blink of an Eye and Toy Story 5. Two films he directed in 2026. Uh, and then over on.

• 2:39:43Griffin Newman?

  Let's also, no, I was just gonna call out you, you, uh, say the Patreon, David.

• 2:39:48David Sims?

  Yeah, on Patreon, we've got the final Robocop entry, which is Robocop 2014, five stars, if someone I remember.

• 2:39:54Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:39:54Speaker 03

  Uh, illegal. It shouldn't be. Yeah.

• 2:39:56David Sims?

  Right. No suicide is contemplated on that episode or anything like that. I'm kidding, kidding.

• 2:40:02Speaker 03

  Um.

• 2:40:03Griffin Newman?

  I was just gonna call out, we, we have announced our John Carter screening, which sold out

• 2:40:09Speaker 03

  That's

• 2:40:09Griffin Newman?

  really fast, in which Andrew Stanton is going to be doing a Q and A with us.

• 2:40:16Speaker 03

  What a fool he is.

• 2:40:17Griffin Newman?

  We are not sure if we will be able to record and/or release that, but we are going to be doing a sit down with him in studio.

• 2:40:26Speaker 03

  That's

• 2:40:26Griffin Newman?

  So that will be coming later and we will figure out the deal with the Q and A.

• 2:40:30Speaker 03

  Sure.

• 2:40:30Griffin Newman?

  But for a number of factors that we can talk about later, we're not totally sure what form that will have down the line.

• 2:40:36Speaker 03

  But look forward to a release on the main feed as just a bonus episode.

• 2:40:43Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, so it'll be a kinda old school Thursday bonus, I think, is the plan.

• 2:40:47Speaker 03

  And on that note, Griffin, oh, sorry, please.

• 2:40:49Speaker 02

  Wait, no, there was one thing, Griffin, before we started recording, you said you had a big joke you wanted to make. Did you make that joke?

• 2:40:55Griffin Newman?

  It was the joke about how funny is it that I left New York and everyone has diarrhea now. I made the joke.

• 2:40:59Speaker 03

  Very good.

• 2:40:59Speaker 02

  Oh, that was the joke. Okay.

• 2:41:00Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:41:01Speaker 03

  You.

• 2:41:01Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 2:41:01Speaker 02

  Thank God, we got that in there. Cause you did tell us to put a pin in that and so often we put pins and things that never get unpinned.

• 2:41:08Griffin Newman?

  I wanna start a new segment called the Corkboard, in which anytime we, we say we're gonna put a pin in something, Ben, you write it down and at the end, we check the corkboard. What do you think about that?

• 2:41:17Speaker 02

  That's a good idea.

• 2:41:18Griffin Newman?

  That's a good idea, right?

• 2:41:19Speaker 02

  I also see that working as a fun, like, social media asset, too.

• 2:41:22Speaker 03

  I'll write down corkboard for the corkboard idea.

• 2:41:24Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:41:25Griffin Newman?

  Corkboard for the corkboard. So we're announcing the corkboard. Unfortunately, the next two months of episodes have largely been recorded. Get ready for a bunch of episodes that don't have the corkboard in them.

• 2:41:33Speaker 03

  No, and probably have a lot of unfinished tangents, let's be honest. There are a bunch of Martin Scorsese episodes. Well, tell us what to add. Anything we miss in the upcoming episodes.

• 2:41:41Griffin Newman?

  Throw it on the corkboard and be polite. And for all the Arthur talk in this episode, I must say, and as always, Jekyll, Jekyll, Hyde, Jekyll, Hyde, Hyde, Jekyll, Jekyll, Jekyll, Jekyll, Hyde, Jekyll, Hyde.

• 2:41:55Griffin Newman?

  Three people will be so happy.

• 2:42:02David Sims?

  I'm gonna get a seltzer, one sec.

• 2:42:05Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:42:05Griffin Newman?

  David, can you get me a seltzer too?

• 2:42:07Speaker 02

  David, can you grab Griffin a seltzer?

• 2:42:10Speaker 02

  He almost did it. He did a double take.

• 2:42:12Griffin Newman?

  Okay, good.

• 2:42:13Speaker 03

  Now, can you just? Can I do a little? Pour towards the camera?

• 2:42:18Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, if you pour it into the soundboard, it'll come through my headphones.

• 2:42:23Speaker 03

  Blank Check with Griffin and David is hosted by Griffin Newman and David Sims. Our executive producer is me, Ben Hostly. Our creative producer is Marie Bardis Salinas. And our associate producer is AJ McKeon. This show is mixed and edited by AJ McKeon and Alan Smithy. Research by JJ Birch. Our theme song is by Lain Montgomery and the Great American Novel, with additional music by Alex Mitchell. Artwork by Joe Bowen, Holly Moss, and Pat Reynolds. Our production assistant is Minnick. Special thanks to David Cho, Jordan Fish, and Nate Patterson for their production help. Head over to blankcheckpod.com for links to all of the real nerdy shit. Join our Patreon Blank Check Special Features for exclusive franchise commentaries and bonus episodes.

• 2:43:08Speaker 03

  Follow us on social at Blank Check Pod. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter, Checkbook, on Substack. This podcast is created and produced by Blank Check Productions.