Casino with Emily Yoshida

It's not just the Bach playing over the title credits - 1995's Casino is Baroque as hell! Mother of Blankies Emily Yoshida returns to the podcast this week to talk about Scorsese's Vegas epic, and we're betting big on this being a great episode. Between Joe Pesci's facelift tape, Robert De Niro's enormous sunglasses, and Sharon Stone's go-for-broke performance, we've got much to discuss this week. Is this Scorsese's greatest use of voiceover narration? Should Ben get into running card cheat scams? Can we put an equal amount of blueberries into every single muffin? Read about Emily working on Point Break. https://deadline.com/2026/09/point-break-series-greenlit-amc-france-canal-1237099164/ Listen to the Girls in Hoodies Finale. https://www.podchaser.com/podcasts/girls-in-hoodies-174921/episodes/the-girls-in-hoodies-finale-7571954 Read about the hook and eye system. https://ew.com/article/1992/04/24/stars-remove-wrinkles-without-surgery/ Listen to BC Take AC Episode. https://www.patreon.com/blankcheck/posts/bc-takes-ac-29875863 Listen to Bob talk about his performances being turned into memes. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P8PVvi7SryY Read about Tupac’s case being closed. https://www.fox5vegas.com/2026/10/31/duane-keffe-d-davis-convicted-tupac-shakurs-killing-transferred-nevada-state-prison/ Watch Point Break in 2027. Watch Kennedy on Netflix https://www.netflix.com/tudum/articles/kennedy-series-plot-release-date-newsin May. Watch Shogun Season 2 when it comes out. 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://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.

• 0:18Speaker 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 02

  So just a few more days.

• 0:33David Sims?

  Yes.

• 0:33Speaker 02

  You can get it at Dynasty.TV.

• 0:36David Sims?

  Dynasty.TV.

• 0:37Speaker 02

  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 03

  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 03

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

• 1:07Griffin Newman?

  If that gets you off.

• 1:09Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 1:10Speaker 02

  So once again, that's at Dynasty.TV.

• 1:39Griffin Newman?

  Listen to me very carefully. The three ways of podcasting around here. The right way, the wrong way, and the way that I podcast. You understand?

• 1:49David Sims?

  I feel like actually not like, this isn't a quotable movie on the level of Goodfellas or whatever, but there are so many runs that you could do.

• 1:57Griffin Newman?

  It's got good lines. Yeah.

• 1:58David Sims?

  And just like the way they fucking talk to each other. It's just, I could listen to them talk to each other all day. These, you know, I hate to bring him up so quickly. He really reminds me of Donald Trump.

• 2:09Griffin Newman?

  This character?

• 2:10David Sims?

  Just, just the way they talk.

• 2:11Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 2:11David Sims?

  The way they talk where I'm like, I think you got your point across. And he's like, I'm gonna repeat it six more times before the sentence is over. You know what I mean?

• 2:19Griffin Newman?

  Well, also everyone's-

• 2:19David Sims?

  And it's a lot of like, he's a big guy. This guy sees a big guy and he's big and he's a guy and he's a big guy and he's coming for you. And when he comes for you, he'll come right at you and he's gonna come at you real hard. And you're like, uh huh, okay.

• 2:31Griffin Newman?

  There's a lot of people reasserting-

• 2:33David Sims?

  Of course, that's how Trump like communicates like domestic policy versus, you know, mobsters running a casino.

• 2:40Griffin Newman?

  There's a lot of people reasserting how strong and how tough and how smart they are.

• 2:44Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:45Griffin Newman?

  Verbally.

• 2:46Speaker 03

  I mean, also, I, I feel like people often say that this administration has run like-

• 2:52David Sims?

  Like a mob outfit?

• 2:54Griffin Newman?

  Well, well, well.

• 2:56Speaker 03

  I really came to that conclusion on my own while watching this movie again for the 15th time or whatever. It was like, it's true, what they say.

• 3:04Griffin Newman?

  You know, sometimes I watch the news and I say, who directed this? Martin Scorsese? Except not the one who did Age of Innocence or Last Temptation of the Monster and Doom.

• 3:13David Sims?

  The mobster one.

• 3:14Griffin Newman?

  The mobster one. The reductive one.

• 3:17Speaker 03

  Killer's of the Flower Moon.

• 3:18David Sims?

  This guy could fuck up a cup with coffee is one of my favorite lines.

• 3:21Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 3:22Speaker 03

  Yeah. What are the, what are the choice quotes? What was, what, what else? I feel like I always ask this. What were the runners up? First quotes?

• 3:29David Sims?

  Let's see.

• 3:30Griffin Newman?

  I mean, the, tempting to do like the opening or closing monologues, but they're really long.

• 3:36David Sims?

  They're really long.

• 3:37Griffin Newman?

  They're really long.

• 3:38Speaker 03

  I mean, the, the monologue about the, the new era of corporate podcasts, like-

• 3:43Griffin Newman?

  Yes. Yes. The closing. Yeah.

• 3:46Speaker 03

  Uh, guys, I love this movie.

• 3:49David Sims?

  I love it too. I really, I, I've had a long kind of like, sort of like tempestuous girlfriend relationship with this movie where I'm like, I don't know, you're a lot. And then I'm like, ah, but you're so interesting. I keep coming back to you.

• 4:01Griffin Newman?

  It is-

• 4:02David Sims?

  You're so wild.

• 4:03Griffin Newman?

  So watchable and not to sound like Mr. Bill Simmons.

• 4:07David Sims?

  Yeah, please.

• 4:08Griffin Newman?

  But this is the kind of movie almost designed to play on cable television.

• 4:12David Sims?

  And you just like dip in for an hour and then you're like, okay, okay, whoa, whoa.

• 4:15Speaker 03

  With ads, it's probably like five hours.

• 4:18Griffin Newman?

  It's probably five hours long.

• 4:19Speaker 03

  How you spend your afternoon, like-

• 4:21Griffin Newman?

  It's a lazy Sunday.

• 4:22Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 4:23David Sims?

  It's so long for a movie where the plot is he ran a casino and then after a while the vibes got bad.

• 4:29Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 4:30David Sims?

  Like that is the plot of the movie.

• 4:31Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 4:32David Sims?

  The movie ends with like, and I'm like, oh, what intricate shit happened? It's like, no, no, everyone just got sick of each other.

• 4:37Griffin Newman?

  Because when you see the poster, you almost wonder the first time, is the movie about the creation of the first casino? Is this movie about how Vegas founded?

• 4:45David Sims?

  As she like makes the first dice. Right, exactly. Yeah.

• 4:49Griffin Newman?

  You know, it's like Scorsese is making a casino movie. You imagine it has to be the ultimate casino movie and you're like, no, it's the story of one casino. And basically the story of like two guys.

• 5:00Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 5:00Griffin Newman?

  Two guys, a gal and a gambling place.

• 5:03David Sims?

  Two guys, a gal and Don fucking Rickles just frowning in the background.

• 5:08Griffin Newman?

  Billy Sherbert.

• 5:09Speaker 03

  There's so many reasons this movie should not work. And I was really watching it with that hat on, the like writer hat, like what, what's needed in a movie? Like, you know, so many of the preceding like mob gangster movies, which I, I rewatched in, in preparation for this episode. Just make them fresh. So I watched Mean Streets and Goodfellas, um, which are, you know, all obviously kind of riffing on same themes in different ways. But those feel so like, you know, chef's kiss of construction, of character development, all that. Like making you invest in these different people. And this one shouldn't work on, on those, you know, levels, this, this movie shouldn't work.

• 5:49Speaker 03

  Like we are introduced to a pretty stoic guy who just seems to have it all from minute one. And there's not like the, oh, I came up from, you know, shine and shoes or whatever. Like he's just arrives fully formed and the boss of everything, which should not be compelling, but it is because it's of the world and-

• 6:10Griffin Newman?

  Kind of crazy how much this movie doesn't explain that much, how he gets to the starting point.

• 6:16Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 6:16David Sims?

  The, the book explains more. The movie is just kind of like, you need to understand, no one was more ready to run a casino than this fucking guy.

• 6:23Griffin Newman?

  That's how the movie starts. Yeah.

• 6:25David Sims?

  This guy was born gambling.

• 6:27Griffin Newman?

  The concept of casinos.

• 6:29David Sims?

  Yes.

• 6:30Speaker 03

  Like just two scenes of, in, you know, sepia toned Chicago of him doing, running some odds. And it's like, yep, that was the guy.

• 6:37Griffin Newman?

  You need to understand that in 1972, there were empty casinos waiting for Ace Rothstein.

• 6:42David Sims?

  Ace Rothstein, AKA Lefty Rosenthal.

• 6:45Griffin Newman?

  Correct.

• 6:46David Sims?

  Yes, yes. Ace Rothstein's a good name though.

• 6:48Griffin Newman?

  It is.

• 6:49David Sims?

  That's a good, that's a solid casino mob boss in the seventies name.

• 6:54Griffin Newman?

  I mean-

• 6:54David Sims?

  If you ask me.

• 6:55Griffin Newman?

  Ace Rothstein.

• 6:56David Sims?

  Yep.

• 6:56Griffin Newman?

  Ginger McKenna.

• 6:57David Sims?

  Love it.

• 6:58Griffin Newman?

  Lester Diamond. Billy Sherbert, of course, my favorite character name. Maybe my favorite character name ever. To point to Don Rickles and go, this is Billy Sherbert. Is one of the best things to ever happen in movies.

• 7:11David Sims?

  Billy Sherbert. One assumes that's a made up name. All the names-

• 7:15Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 7:15David Sims?

  Are trend, you know, are not-

• 7:17Speaker 03

  Kinda.

• 7:18David Sims?

  Right.

• 7:19Speaker 03

  But the, I mean, they really made Lester Diamond sound cooler than he is because it's still, it's like, I don't know, Landon or something. But it's not like Diamond is a sick last name for, you know, a pimp, like groomer.

• 7:34Griffin Newman?

  It's also such a, I mean, it, this only gets more extreme as we go later into his career. And I feel like Wolf of Wall Street's the most extreme version of this.

• 7:43David Sims?

  Right.

• 7:43Griffin Newman?

  But Scorsese being so powerful.

• 7:45David Sims?

  Yes.

• 7:45Griffin Newman?

  That it's like, this guy's like a James Woods type. And you're like, but this role's a little too small for James Woods.

• 7:51David Sims?

  Just call him.

• 7:52Griffin Newman?

  I said it was a James Woods type. And the second he comes on screen and you're like, oh, so it's James Woods with a mustache? Bad news. Got it.

• 8:00David Sims?

  This is also, and we'll talk about it, and then we should introduce our show and our guest. It's just the movie where Scorsese's like, oh, you like what I do? How about I do like the most of it?

• 8:09Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 8:09David Sims?

  Oh, you like, you're cool with like a narrator? We're gonna have like eight narrators.

• 8:13Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 8:13David Sims?

  You like musical montages? The whole fucking movie is that. The first 20 minutes definitely is that. And the last 20 minutes is just like pop music.

• 8:21Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 8:21David Sims?

  With montages and shit happening.

• 8:23Speaker 03

  It's, it's a Baroque documentary.

• 8:25David Sims?

  And like, you can handle, uh, anti-heroic character? You can handle characters that maybe aren't on the up and up? Great. No one in this movie is likable. No one is good. You're not rooting for anyone like as a, a hero. We don't know any cops. We don't know any like law enforcement guys.

• 8:43Griffin Newman?

  Is this the point though, for people who are late Scorsese doubters, where he goes off the rails? If you think that late Scorsese has like lost his focus, this is the start of like, I'm putting everything on the pizza. No movie will be shorter than three hours long.

• 9:00David Sims?

  Right.

• 9:01Griffin Newman?

  I'm gonna just give you as many interesting scenes as I can think of.

• 9:04David Sims?

  And because like Bringing Out the Dead is two hours.

• 9:06Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 9:07David Sims?

  And that is obviously like for late Scorsese restrained, but that movie is so punishing. I remember the two hours feeling long.

• 9:14Griffin Newman?

  But on paper, it's sort of a return to classic Scorsese.

• 9:18David Sims?

  New York.

• 9:18Griffin Newman?

  Trader.

• 9:19David Sims?

  Street level.

• 9:20Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 9:21David Sims?

  But yeah, I mean, apart from that, it's like Gangs of New York is like three hours plus.

• 9:27Griffin Newman?

  Totally.

• 9:28Speaker 03

  I feel like that's the peak of that.

• 9:29David Sims?

  250.

• 9:30Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 9:31David Sims?

  Departed is 240 or, you know, two and a half. Shutter Island is a, a, he's 218. That's fucking so short.

• 9:39Griffin Newman?

  I mean, that's like his most streamlined movie at this point.

• 9:41David Sims?

  Hugo is 2.6.

• 9:43Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 9:43Speaker 03

  Wow.

• 9:43David Sims?

  But that's for children.

• 9:44Griffin Newman?

  Hugo being 2.6 is like a normal movie being five hours.

• 9:48David Sims?

  Right. Wolf of Wall Street, three full hours. Silence is two hours 40. Irishman, of course, that's where he's real. This, you know, that's casino plus because he's like, it's like this plus sleepy.

• 9:59Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 9:59David Sims?

  Two, that's, that's three hours and 29 minutes long.

• 10:03Griffin Newman?

  You know, the-

• 10:03David Sims?

  Flower Moon is three hours and 26 minutes long.

• 10:06Griffin Newman?

  Okay.

• 10:07Speaker 03

  A brisk 326, I would say.

• 10:09Griffin Newman?

  You know, the concept of the Irishman plus, right?

• 10:12David Sims?

  Um, go ahead.

• 10:13Griffin Newman?

  When we were doing the George Lucas livestreams, George Lucas Talk Show livestreams during the pandemic, Connor decided at some point that our format was called The Irishman Plus, which meant every livestream had to run at least one minute longer than The Irishman. And if we raised enough money during the livestream, because all of those were for charity, or for some business that was struggling during the pandemic or something. If we raised enough money, then we would watch The Irishman after we reached an Irishman plus. So then it would become a double Irishman with an Irishman watch.

• 10:45Speaker 03

  A double Irishman.

• 10:46Griffin Newman?

  I'm just saying.

• 10:47Speaker 03

  Got hammered on some double Irishman's last night.

• 10:49Griffin Newman?

  You said Casino Plus, and I had to respond to that.

• 10:53David Sims?

  Right.

• 10:53Griffin Newman?

  It was an activation phrase.

• 10:55David Sims?

  I love it. I think he should, we should pitch that to him. I don't think we'll be got thrown out with our heads as the battering ram for the door.

• 11:03Griffin Newman?

  The Irishman plus. Yes.

• 11:05David Sims?

  No, Marty, it's a great idea. Big guy is just coming.

• 11:10David Sims?

  I just love it. He's like, specifically throw him out headfirst and his door hits the, his head hits the door. You understand me?

• 11:15Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 11:16David Sims?

  You don't open the door and throw him out.

• 11:18Griffin Newman?

  There's a very specific nature in which I want this man to be thrown out.

• 11:21Speaker 03

  I always laugh out loud when I say it's just so silly.

• 11:25Griffin Newman?

  Scorsese always makes this joke that like Departed was the first movie he ever made with a plot.

• 11:29Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 11:29Griffin Newman?

  And he's like, and that's why they finally gave me the Oscar. I made a movie with a plot, right? But this is the start of this era where like, even the movie doesn't have a story as much as it has like a subject.

• 11:40Speaker 03

  A subject, yeah.

• 11:41Griffin Newman?

  And he's just gonna let you like luxuriate in this world and the scenes don't have narrative build in a conventional sense upon each other.

• 11:48Speaker 03

  Well, this is my, my super hot take on this movie is that, you know, I never say this about anything. Usually it's the other, other way around where it's like, oh, this show should have been a movie. This movie kinda should have been a show. Like if it, if, if this idea was pitched by Scorsese now or in the last 10 years, it would be, you know, a 10 part.

• 12:08Griffin Newman?

  Never would have been a movie. Yeah.

• 12:10Speaker 03

  Yeah. And, and it would be, I think it would be well served by that. Like I think that all of these little vignettes in it that, like, I've seen this movie so many times, but every time I, I watch it, I'm sort of like, oh, this part comes next. Cause sometimes it doesn't necessarily feel like A leads to B leads to C.

• 12:27David Sims?

  Yeah, you are trying to untangle, right? Like when is, when are the peaks and valleys here? Yeah.

• 12:32Speaker 03

  There's so many like flashbacks and you know, you're, you're in, in switches and perspective like, and I feel like all of these little vignettes are like, could be full episodes. It would be really great. But I, and I, I just wanna say, I don't ever argue for anything to be TV instead of movies, but this, I was like, be a good show.

• 12:50Griffin Newman?

  But Emily, you work in television.

• 12:51Speaker 03

  I do.

• 12:53Griffin Newman?

  Often.

• 12:53Speaker 03

  I do.

• 12:54Griffin Newman?

  Movies are getting adapted into TV shows.

• 12:56Speaker 03

  It's true.

• 12:56Griffin Newman?

  Some of them you have worked on in the past, some of them you might be working on now.

• 12:59Speaker 03

  With that, yeah.

• 13:01Griffin Newman?

  Does it not feel like you could see this being announced any fucking day?

• 13:05Speaker 03

  Totally. Yeah.

• 13:06David Sims?

  It screams out for.

• 13:08Speaker 03

  It would be so expensive though. Like I don't.

• 13:12David Sims?

  But they fucking did Cape Fear.

• 13:13Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 13:14Speaker 03

  Yeah. I mean, it would have to be Scorsese producing it. Like, I don't know. But I, you know, we're not in the, the golden era of vinyl anymore. Like, I don't know. We could even command that.

• 13:25David Sims?

  That is what vinyl was. Vinyl was, the pitch was like, can we do the same thing for the music industry?

• 13:31Griffin Newman?

  But you know that vinyl started as a three hour movie.

• 13:33David Sims?

  Right.

• 13:33Griffin Newman?

  Vinyl had to be a three hour movie to be like, I wanna explain how the record industry rose and fell.

• 13:41Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 13:42Griffin Newman?

  And, and then they decided it was too unwieldy to contain as a film.

• 13:46Speaker 03

  Were they gonna take it all the way to Napster or what? Like?

• 13:50Griffin Newman?

  No, it was called Vinyl.

• 13:51Speaker 03

  I, I know, but then like, that's the end of the show.

• 13:53Griffin Newman?

  It wasn't called.

• 13:54David Sims?

  It'd be funny if like, Cannavale's in like old age. She's like, fucking Napster! Kill that Sean Parker! We need to put a hit out on him.

• 14:03Speaker 03

  Sean Parker gets whacked.

• 14:04Griffin Newman?

  I think the plan was like, go from the seventies to some point in the eighties.

• 14:07David Sims?

  Makes sense.

• 14:08Griffin Newman?

  Maybe, maybe it would have gone to the nineties and he's like, this fucking hippity hop.

• 14:12David Sims?

  You know, or he hears like Pearl Jam and like, takes 20 Quaaludes or whatever.

• 14:17Griffin Newman?

  There was gonna be something he was disgusted by.

• 14:22David Sims?

  Vinyl.

• 14:23Griffin Newman?

  It is still the hardest I've ever laughed. I'll save this. We're gonna do an episode on vinyl.

• 14:27David Sims?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 14:27Speaker 03

  Oh.

• 14:28Griffin Newman?

  We're gonna combine Vinyl and Boardwalk Empire, the two pilots.

• 14:31Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 14:31Griffin Newman?

  Which, which together are seven hours long.

• 14:34David Sims?

  Boardwalk Empire, well, might be two hours.

• 14:36Griffin Newman?

  I think they're two, two hour pilots.

• 14:38David Sims?

  The second one definitely is.

• 14:39Griffin Newman?

  Yeah. Uh, but I'll save a story. I will say, one of the hardest times I've ever laughed in my life was a thing on the set of Vinyl. Uh, but that's not what we're talking about today. Today we're talking about Casino on Blank Check with Griffin and David.

• 14:51David Sims?

  Wow.

• 14:51Griffin Newman?

  Griffin.

• 14:52David Sims?

  I'm David.

• 14:53Griffin Newman?

  It's a podcast about casinos.

• 14:55David Sims?

  That's true.

• 14:56Griffin Newman?

  Directors who are given a lot of chips early on in their career. I'm not, I'm gonna, I'm gonna abandon this. It's a podcast about filmographies, directors who have massive success early on in their careers and are given a series of blank checks to make whatever crazy passion projects they want. And sometimes those checks clear and sometimes they bounce, baby.

• 15:15Speaker 03

  They crap out.

• 15:16Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 15:16David Sims?

  There you go.

• 15:17Griffin Newman?

  You could say that sometimes they got the backing of the casino and sometimes they don't.

• 15:21Speaker 03

  Sometimes they get a $62.5 million check, uh, to open the Tangiers.

• 15:28Griffin Newman?

  I'm always just, it, it, that is quite a blank check project.

• 15:31Speaker 03

  It is. Yeah. Well, it, it, I think in real life, and now I'm kind of mixing up the movie and the book, but like, it, it was existent already. I think it was just like, that was the money to kind of update it and turn it into like the first, like, mega casino. Yeah. Like what we think of as a modern casino in Vegas, but.

• 15:52Griffin Newman?

  This is a mini series on the films of Martin Scorsese.

• 15:54David Sims?

  It was the Stardust.

• 15:55Speaker 03

  It was a Stardust.

• 15:56Griffin Newman?

  It was previously the Stardust.

• 15:57Speaker 03

  It's based on Stardust.

• 15:57Griffin Newman?

  What it really is is.

• 15:58Speaker 03

  Yeah, it was based on this.

• 16:00Griffin Newman?

  Okay.

• 16:02Griffin Newman?

  The series is called Podcast Fellas, cause that's what we are, or a couple of Podcast Fellas. And today we have a podcast mommy with us.

• 16:10David Sims?

  God. Disgusting.

• 16:13Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 16:15Griffin Newman?

  A mother of blankies. To talk about the film Casino, our friend Emily Oshida returning to the show.

• 16:21Speaker 03

  Oh, thank you so much for having me.

• 16:24Griffin Newman?

  We're not allowed to say what you're working on right now.

• 16:26Speaker 03

  No, we can talk about it. I think it will be, it's, I think they're literally announcing it today.

• 16:30David Sims?

  November 8th.

• 16:31Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 16:32David Sims?

  So I assume the news will be out.

• 16:33Speaker 03

  Yeah. And it's, uh, I think it's gonna be out in late 2027. I'm working on, I'm working on Point Break.

• 16:39Griffin Newman?

  A film covered on this very podcast.

• 16:42Speaker 03

  It's true.

• 16:43Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 16:43Speaker 03

  No, I, I was very, you know, when I started working on it, I had to tell you guys.

• 16:47Griffin Newman?

  You did.

• 16:47Speaker 03

  I was just, you know, very, felt like a full circle moment.

• 16:51Griffin Newman?

  It really was.

• 16:52Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 16:52Griffin Newman?

  It is, it continues to be.

• 16:54Speaker 03

  Yeah. One long wave.

• 16:58Griffin Newman?

  So you're gonna sustain one long wave for 10 episodes? Is that the plan?

• 17:02Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's really weird. It's a really weird show. Um.

• 17:07David Sims?

  I love Point Break.

• 17:08Speaker 03

  It's a good movie.

• 17:09Griffin Newman?

  It's really good.

• 17:10Speaker 03

  Did you see the, the 4K, uh, you know, they were in theaters for a while. They put it, I think.

• 17:15Griffin Newman?

  They re-released it?

• 17:16Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 17:16Griffin Newman?

  Got the, got the steelbook.

• 17:18David Sims?

  I do have the steelbook, I think.

• 17:20Speaker 03

  Fun to watch.

• 17:20David Sims?

  Did we say her name?

• 17:22Griffin Newman?

  I said her name.

• 17:23Speaker 03

  Podcast mommy.

• 17:24David Sims?

  I get, we get so lost.

• 17:25Griffin Newman?

  Podcast mommy.

• 17:26Speaker 03

  I don't know if you actually did say my name.

• 17:28David Sims?

  Did we say?

• 17:29Griffin Newman?

  I did. I said Emily Oshida.

• 17:30David Sims?

  Emily Oshida's here. It's nice to see you, Emily.

• 17:32Speaker 03

  Oh, it's so great to see you guys.

• 17:33David Sims?

  Welcome to New York.

• 17:35Speaker 03

  It's been waiting for me.

• 17:37David Sims?

  As of course, our, our favorite citizen, Taylor Swift once said.

• 17:40Speaker 03

  You know, when I moved to New York, when I first came here, that, that song was literally in the air. Like that was the song.

• 17:46David Sims?

  On the last episode of Girls in Hoodies, they played it for you. You started crying, you know, possibly in horror, but you did.

• 17:52Speaker 03

  No, cause I love that song so much.

• 17:53David Sims?

  Of course.

• 17:53Griffin Newman?

  It's so beautiful. You have said that, that that episode made you cry.

• 17:57David Sims?

  That was a really nice emotional episode. I remember actually listening to, I was driving, I was in like South Brooklyn. I was listening to it in my car and I was like, this is so sweet. And I texted you something along those lines. R I P Girls in Hoodies.

• 18:08Speaker 03

  Yeah, it was a good run we had there.

• 18:10David Sims?

  Welcome to New York is a song that is used in the Secret Lives of Pets, I believe.

• 18:16Griffin Newman?

  Has your daughter gotten into this?

• 18:17David Sims?

  Um, she's seen the movie. Uh, and she went to a sort of, one of the summer campy things she went to.

• 18:23Griffin Newman?

  Okay.

• 18:23David Sims?

  You know, every week they do a new movie or book or something. And one week they did Secret Lives of Pets. And I was like, what the fuck, like, performance are they gonna do for this? And they did a dance to Welcome to New York.

• 18:33Griffin Newman?

  Okay.

• 18:34David Sims?

  And I was like, hey, good job, guys.

• 18:36Griffin Newman?

  Yeah. Uh, yeah, no, they do use that song maybe twice.

• 18:40David Sims?

  Yeah. That movie stinks.

• 18:41Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, I think that movie is not.

• 18:43David Sims?

  I watched most of it with her and I was like, ugh.

• 18:45Griffin Newman?

  Well, it's also just Toy Story with dogs.

• 18:46David Sims?

  Yeah, it's really annoying.

• 18:48Speaker 03

  Is it different than Hotel for Dogs or whatever?

• 18:51David Sims?

  Hotel for Dogs is live action, right?

• 18:53Speaker 03

  Oh, is Hotel for Dogs live action?

• 18:54David Sims?

  I believe so.

• 18:55Speaker 03

  Oh, I mean, so.

• 18:56David Sims?

  Hotel for Dogs expert.

• 18:57Griffin Newman?

  Hotel for Dogs is live action and it is humans who make a hotel for dogs. And Ben is beaming. Ben is glowing. Just at the mere thought, he's really ready to shed a tear.

• 19:07David Sims?

  I've seen the movie.

• 19:07Speaker 03

  Was it your hotel?

• 19:08Griffin Newman?

  I wish. I would, I would be a great manager of a dog hotel.

• 19:13David Sims?

  Right. Casino, who knows? Dog hotel, you're on it.

• 19:16Griffin Newman?

  Yep.

• 19:17David Sims?

  But then what if there's like a Pesci dog who's like, and you're like, oh God, I gotta deal with the pet. He's got like, kind of a funny hairdo.

• 19:23Griffin Newman?

  Pesci would have been good in Secret Life of Pets.

• 19:26David Sims?

  Did Joe Pesci never voice a dog in his life?

• 19:28Speaker 03

  That's crazy if he didn't.

• 19:30Griffin Newman?

  Is there a Pesci animated role?

• 19:32Speaker 03

  Is he in like, not, this isn't dogs, but is he in, uh, what's it called? Shark Tale?

• 19:37Griffin Newman?

  He's not.

• 19:38Speaker 03

  He's not.

• 19:38David Sims?

  Sava, the heart of the warrior, is the only Pesci. He was.

• 19:44Griffin Newman?

  In what?

• 19:44David Sims?

  I forgot about, no, no, he's in.

• 19:45Griffin Newman?

  That's the title of the project?

• 19:46David Sims?

  Yeah, it's some fucking like profit money laundering thing.

• 19:49Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 19:50David Sims?

  The only, he was the original voice for Mushu in Mulan.

• 19:55Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 19:56Speaker 03

  Wow.

• 19:56Griffin Newman?

  I knew there was something.

• 19:57David Sims?

  But clearly there was some conversation like, this isn't quite right. No, no, no, no. Eddie Murphy's the answer. Who should voice the Chinese dragon who is the emissary of the ancestors? Eddie Murphy?

• 20:10Griffin Newman?

  I just assumed that Disney spent all of the nineties trying to get Eddie Murphy to play an animal sidekick. So it makes sense that there was one that didn't pan out.

• 20:19David Sims?

  My favorite thing about Mulan, which my, that is the one my daughter is fucking obsessed with. Right now we have to watch it every single day.

• 20:24Griffin Newman?

  It's pretty good.

• 20:25David Sims?

  Yeah, Mulan's solid. Like Mulan is fine to watch, but, um, is I looked this up, like Eddie Murphy gets offered the role. And he's like, I gotta go all the way to fucking Burbank or wherever the hell you record this shit. I'm not doing that. And they were like, no, no, no, no, you can record it in your basement. We will, whatever is best for Eddie.

• 20:43Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 20:43David Sims?

  We're going to, we'll come to you. So, uh, they moved Heaven and Earth for Eddie.

• 20:47Griffin Newman?

  In New Jersey, was it?

• 20:48David Sims?

  New Jersey, in Englewood, New Jersey.

• 20:50Griffin Newman?

  What they call the Bubble House or something like that?

• 20:52David Sims?

  Bubble Hill Mansion.

• 20:53Griffin Newman?

  Bubble Hill Mansion.

• 20:55Speaker 03

  That's his, that, that's what, I didn't, I had no idea that he lived in New Jersey.

• 20:59Griffin Newman?

  Of Eddie Murphy's New Jersey set, Graceland. I think he finally has moved out of there. I think he's now in the LA area.

• 21:05David Sims?

  I'm sure this has been mentioned already, like by many people have also, it is also just so weird that Beattie Wong doesn't get to sing in Mulan.

• 21:11Griffin Newman?

  It is the strangest thing.

• 21:13David Sims?

  He can sing. He's a Broadway actor.

• 21:15Griffin Newman?

  The world. I remember.

• 21:16David Sims?

  And they have fucking Donny Osmond singing it.

• 21:17Griffin Newman?

  I remember that being a thing in those movies. Cause I was a kid, I, you know, the new Disney movie comes out, I scan the cast. I'm obsessed. I learned so many adult actors from Disney, like James Woods.

• 21:29David Sims?

  Like.

• 21:29Griffin Newman?

  Right. That's how I found out who James Woods was. I was like, who's the voice of Hades? Give me a sense of what his cultural context is.

• 21:36Speaker 03

  Well, Hades was a real James Wood type.

• 21:38Griffin Newman?

  He is. He's kind of a Lester Diamond.

• 21:40Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 21:41David Sims?

  Allegedly. Allegedly, sometimes James Woods's behavior resembles that of Hades, the god of the Greek underworld. And I wanna make clear that we are saying that's allegedly true.

• 21:50Griffin Newman?

  Alleged.

• 21:51David Sims?

  I do love it anytime on Twitter and anyone's like, I know James Woods is crazy, but he's so fucking good. It's like, he still pops up. I know why they still use him for like.

• 21:58Griffin Newman?

  That's what's so funny is Disney's like, James, come back into the studio.

• 22:03David Sims?

  But what were you gonna say?

• 22:04Griffin Newman?

  Um, no, there would be things like Pocahontas and I'd like look at the voice cast and I'd be like, oh, John Smith, Mel Gibson's singing voice for John Smith. And I'd go like, I got it. Mel Gibson can't sing. I'm learning things here. And then I had the exact same experience with Mulan and then I saw BD Wong on Broadway and I was like, the fuck are you talking about?

• 22:24David Sims?

  I don't know why they robbed him of that opportunity.

• 22:26Griffin Newman?

  It's so bizarre. Donny Osmond.

• 22:28Speaker 03

  Donny Osmond is his singing voice.

• 22:30Griffin Newman?

  Correct.

• 22:32David Sims?

  He sings one song, which is I'll Make a Man Out of You.

• 22:33Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 22:34David Sims?

  I mean, Mulan only has like four songs.

• 22:36Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 22:36David Sims?

  It's, it's that weird kind of where they're like, we're not, not a musical, but we're kind of backing away from it a little bit.

• 22:41Griffin Newman?

  It's more of an action movie.

• 22:42David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 22:43Speaker 03

  I've seen it like once.

• 22:44Griffin Newman?

  Doesn't have a song.

• 22:45David Sims?

  Who doesn't have a song?

• 22:46Griffin Newman?

  Mushu.

• 22:46David Sims?

  No. There's just Reflection and I'll Make a Man Out of You and.

• 22:50Griffin Newman?

  Um, A Girl Worth Waiting For. I like that number.

• 22:53David Sims?

  That's pretty good.

• 22:54Griffin Newman?

  Yeah. Harvey Firestein, they let Harvey sing.

• 22:56David Sims?

  Yeah, well.

• 22:57Griffin Newman?

  What do we want?

• 23:00David Sims?

  Uh, yeah, it was, Emily, it was never one of my, we're the same age basically and we were a little too old for it, I feel.

• 23:04Speaker 03

  Well, but I feel like in that era though, like I'm one year older than you, I think.

• 23:11David Sims?

  One rank on me.

• 23:12Speaker 03

  Something like that. But that in, when you're like 12 or however old we were, that like, that's like an eternity. It's like, oh yeah, I, I was into like Pocahontas last year, but like, I'm too old for this shit now or whatever.

• 23:25Griffin Newman?

  Everything's changed.

• 23:26David Sims?

  That Pocahontas to Tarzan era is where I'm like, oh, I guess I'll go, but I don't really care.

• 23:31Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 23:31David Sims?

  So yeah, yeah. My daughter being into Mulan, I'm like, huh, I've never seen this. And I'm like, huh, looks kind of good.

• 23:37Griffin Newman?

  Just discovered through the carousel on Disney Plus?

• 23:39David Sims?

  No, no, they, uh, her camp did Mulan Week.

• 23:42Griffin Newman?

  This is.

• 23:42David Sims?

  She played the role of Mulan beautifully.

• 23:44Griffin Newman?

  She's going to film school? What is this camp?

• 23:47David Sims?

  It's like pretend camp. It's a very, I mean, it's very chillish. She had a great summer. I would not say she was intellectually stimulated perhaps, uh, but that's fine. They're really nice people.

• 23:59Speaker 03

  Is that what camp is for these days?

• 24:00David Sims?

  No, after, by the end of summer, I was like, hmm, I'm feeling the need from you, like the desire from my daughter. So maybe do a little bit more than just kind of run around playing all night, you know, like as much as it's fun to run around and play. Um, but, uh, Mulan, yeah. So Mulan's cool.

• 24:17Speaker 03

  This is a podcast about Mulan.

• 24:18David Sims?

  This is a podcast about Mulan. Uh, no, Mulan, but she's cool. I did, I did, it was funny when I was like, and how did China receive this? And I Googled and China was basically like, this is offensive. And then she was like, sorry.

• 24:30Griffin Newman?

  Okay, Casino.

• 24:31David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 24:32Griffin Newman?

  So David, can you set up this bit?

• 24:35David Sims?

  Oh.

• 24:35Griffin Newman?

  Where you think.

• 24:36David Sims?

  Oh, well, I'm watching Casino.

• 24:37Griffin Newman?

  It's not a bit, it's a truth.

• 24:38David Sims?

  Yeah, it's a truth.

• 24:39Speaker 03

  I'm watching Casino here.

• 24:40David Sims?

  I have it on.

• 24:41Griffin Newman?

  You're right.

• 24:41David Sims?

  And of course my wife is like trying to do work and then occasionally like, you know, someone's hand is getting broken with a hammer and she's like, and I'm like, sorry. Two or two and a half hours to go.

• 24:52Griffin Newman?

  Yeah. And this is the cold open, basically.

• 24:55David Sims?

  But then occasionally I'm just like, I crush running a casino. Don't you think I do a good job? My wife's like, no. And I'm like, okay, okay, but what if I had the help of the mob?

• 25:04Griffin Newman?

  Now, can I share something, David?

• 25:06David Sims?

  Go ahead.

• 25:07Griffin Newman?

  I think I would be pretty good at a small time, as a small time hustler.

• 25:10David Sims?

  You could do. Oh, a small time hustler. So you want to run some like little sort of.

• 25:15Griffin Newman?

  You want to be the guy with the motor on the leg?

• 25:17Speaker 03

  With the little, doing the Morse code on your leg?

• 25:19Griffin Newman?

  Exactly.

• 25:20Speaker 03

  You know what happened to that guy?

• 25:22David Sims?

  His hands got fucked up.

• 25:24Speaker 03

  I don't know what, no matter what you do, your hand get fucked, gets fucked up.

• 25:27Griffin Newman?

  They're the two guys. There's the guy who gets his head, his hand hammered.

• 25:30David Sims?

  Yes. And then there's the vice.

• 25:32Griffin Newman?

  Who goes, I'll leave, right?

• 25:33David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 25:34Griffin Newman?

  Uh, do you know who that guy is?

• 25:35David Sims?

  Who's that?

• 25:35Griffin Newman?

  His name is Joseph Reedy. He is Martin Scorsese's longtime first AD.

• 25:40David Sims?

  Love that.

• 25:41Griffin Newman?

  Legendary AD, kind of king of the New York ADs, but Scorsese puts him in the movies a lot and he's always really fucking good.

• 25:49Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 25:50David Sims?

  Scorsese is so good at that.

• 25:52Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 25:53David Sims?

  At just kind of meeting a guy and being like, your camera's gonna love you for five minutes.

• 25:56Griffin Newman?

  The energy is just what I need to come across for five seconds. Yes.

• 26:01Speaker 03

  You know, the, his, his lawyer in this is actually Frank Rosenthal's lawyer.

• 26:06David Sims?

  See, I love that. And it's like, I feel like that happens all the time with Scorsese where he meets some guy to consult on, okay, tell me how this, and then he's just like watching.

• 26:15Speaker 03

  It's you, obviously.

• 26:16Griffin Newman?

  You'd be great. You'd be great. We should put you, you know, like. Bo Deedle is in a lot of.

• 26:20David Sims?

  Bo Deedle.

• 26:20Griffin Newman?

  Yes. I don't know if you folks are familiar with Bo Deedle?

• 26:23David Sims?

  I'm very familiar.

• 26:24Speaker 03

  No.

• 26:25Griffin Newman?

  Bo Deedle was the former, was he the police chief? No.

• 26:29David Sims?

  He was, um, an NYPD police detective, uh, and I don't think he ever, um.

• 26:36Griffin Newman?

  Rose to higher ranks.

• 26:37David Sims?

  Ranks, but he became Jordan Belfort's head of security.

• 26:40Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 26:41David Sims?

  Which is, I believe, but he's in Goodfellas. So like, Scorsese's known him for forever.

• 26:46Griffin Newman?

  Well, there's, here's the other thing with Bo Deedle. Bo Deedle is allegedly, allegedly, allegedly James Woods, allegedly the inspiration for the bad lieutenant. When asked about this, Bo Deedle goes, yeah, it's true, but only the good parts.

• 27:01David Sims?

  Bo Deedle is also.

• 27:01Griffin Newman?

  Which is an interesting statement to parse.

• 27:03David Sims?

  You know, he's one of those guys who's like, I'm gonna run for mayor. My policy, hey, fuck you, you know, whatever. And he goes on Fox News and says like eight racist things and then like, you know, Scorsese will put him in on the people, people will be like, why is he putting in, in Scorsese clearly? It's just like, he's so fucking funny. Like, he's just ridiculous, this person, you know? He's one in a million. There's no character like him, right?

• 27:25Griffin Newman?

  Bo Deedle also, uh, made his own film, you know, oh, oh, what? You're gonna make a movie out of me? Make me the bad lieutenant? I'll show you who I am. He made a movie, I think it was called A Good Cop.

• 27:38David Sims?

  Uh, oh.

• 27:38Speaker 03

  For real? That's so funny.

• 27:42David Sims?

  And, and was that title ironic or?

• 27:44Griffin Newman?

  I'm not sure what the exact title is.

• 27:46Speaker 02

  One Tough Cop.

• 27:47Griffin Newman?

  One Tough Cop.

• 27:48Speaker 02

  Starring Steven, Steven Baldwin.

• 27:50David Sims?

  I, that's a tough guy.

• 27:52Speaker 03

  Wow.

• 27:53David Sims?

  Steven Baldwin, that's a tough guy.

• 27:54Griffin Newman?

  I was confusing one, a, a tough cop with one good cop, which is the terrible, excitable Michael Keaton movie.

• 28:00David Sims?

  Detective Bo Deedle in this movie. They didn't even call him like Bob Deedle.

• 28:07David Sims?

  Poorly received by critics on some, interesting.

• 28:11Griffin Newman?

  But he loves, yes, he loves collecting guys like this.

• 28:13Speaker 03

  Yeah. No, and I feel like that's the right, like, are you talking about like, you know, the weird shadow of a vague Trumpism over these characters? It's like, that's the correct like format for that, you know, personality type.

• 28:26Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 28:27Speaker 03

  They should be bit characters in a Scorsese movie, not, uh.

• 28:31David Sims?

  Exactly. That's right. That's how you should be making your money.

• 28:35Griffin Newman?

  There's a lot of hypotheticals that we're constantly entertaining in our modern hellscape.

• 28:39Speaker 03

  Uh huh.

• 28:39Griffin Newman?

  If Scorsese had given Donald Trump a one scene role in the 1980s, would he not be president today?

• 28:47David Sims?

  There are so many off ramps that weren't taken. Who knows? I will just, I want to add great news for you, Griffin.

• 28:52Griffin Newman?

  Please.

• 28:52David Sims?

  The Boardwalk Empire pilot is only 73 minutes long.

• 28:55Griffin Newman?

  That's wild.

• 28:55David Sims?

  The vinyl pilot is 113.

• 28:58Griffin Newman?

  It's 113?

• 28:59David Sims?

  So it's under two.

• 29:00Griffin Newman?

  I thought it was two. Wow. Okay.

• 29:01David Sims?

  You know, almost two hours.

• 29:02Speaker 03

  I believe that at least the Boardwalk Empire pilot feels like it's two hours, but.

• 29:07David Sims?

  I do remember, and we'll talk about it on that episode, but like, I was so hyped. Yeah, next year.

• 29:12Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 29:13David Sims?

  And then I was like, that was, that was pretty good. They had a whole boardwalk. Like, I was not like, oh my God, like this is the next event series of my life.

• 29:22Griffin Newman?

  Pilot, I believe, cost 20 million dollars.

• 29:25David Sims?

  Sure.

• 29:26Griffin Newman?

  And the vinyl pilot, I believe, cost 30 million dollars.

• 29:29David Sims?

  An issue with Borro is that they landed on Marvin Gardens and it had a hotel.

• 29:33Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 29:33David Sims?

  So that inflated the budget a lot. And then, you know, they, they, guys, it's Atlantic Cities.

• 29:39Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I got it.

• 29:40David Sims?

  I'll do more of those jokes. You know what? TBD, more Monopoly jokes next year and you have to laugh at them.

• 29:46Griffin Newman?

  We're plugging one Patreon episode so hard here. Do you want to know my favorite thing about Casino?

• 29:51David Sims?

  Okay.

• 29:52Griffin Newman?

  My single favorite thing about just the entirety of the film Casino, the way Joe Pesci is holding the two dice on the poster.

• 30:00Speaker 03

  That's your favorite thing?

• 30:01Griffin Newman?

  And I think this is an excellent movie. I don't mean that backhandedly. It's more a statement to how much I love the way he's holding the two dice. He's holding snake eyes.

• 30:10David Sims?

  I think I've said this on this podcast, like when I was a kid, I was like, is this movie about board games?

• 30:15Speaker 03

  I think I just listened to the episode. You said that about, I was like, Casino, they're having fun. They're playing games, right?

• 30:21David Sims?

  This looks great. He's got these awesome red dice. Now, he does have a bit of an expression on his face that suggests he's a little mad at you.

• 30:29Griffin Newman?

  He's also got flesh colored tape pulling his eyes and cheeks back.

• 30:34Speaker 03

  Ah, Hollywood facelift.

• 30:36David Sims?

  He looks fucking insane in a different way on the poster where it's like airbrushed, like versus how he looks in the movie where he also looks insane.

• 30:43Griffin Newman?

  Yoshida, do you know this? Cause we were talking about this a lot in the Blank Check group text. He is not recently recovering from a facelift in this movie.

• 30:52Speaker 03

  No, yeah, yeah. He's just doing the Hollywood facelift.

• 30:56Griffin Newman?

  Yes, yes, yes. Okay. I wanted to make sure we were using the same terms here.

• 30:59Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 31:00David Sims?

  For the, the audience that doesn't know.

• 31:02Griffin Newman?

  This is like a classic Hollywood technique. We will share this article. There is a Entertainment Weekly article about my cousin Vinny, which is shortly before this movie, but the same technique is being used here that was often used for aging actresses of the 50s and 60s. Where they were like, this is what Lucille Ball did in Mame. And they use like flesh colored tape and pull it at their like wrinkly areas, back around their head and attach wires to it and tighten it and then put a wig over that.

• 31:32David Sims?

  It's all hidden in the hairpiece, says Carmen Willis, one of Vinny's makeup technicians. We attach tabs and then we tighten it through a hook and eye system.

• 31:41Griffin Newman?

  Hook and eyes. I know when they're saying hook and eye, they just mean like that's the type of fastener.

• 31:47Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah.

• 31:47David Sims?

  And it was constantly like snapping.

• 31:49Griffin Newman?

  It sounds so great.

• 31:50Speaker 03

  Some Brazil shit.

• 31:51David Sims?

  And they'd be like, cut, cut, cut, cut. His fucking face broke.

• 31:55Griffin Newman?

  This is.

• 31:56David Sims?

  Reset the hooks and eyes.

• 31:57Griffin Newman?

  This is conjecture on my part, but if you watch Cousin Vinny in HD today.

• 32:01David Sims?

  Oh, it looks crazy. No, no, no. Yeah. It's, I mean, you just, it looks crazy.

• 32:06Griffin Newman?

  You see the tape and you see that they've just kind of put concealer over the tape.

• 32:10Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 32:11Griffin Newman?

  But you see the lines. In this, it's much more subtle, even though his face looks so insane.

• 32:16Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 32:16Griffin Newman?

  Where I think they actually created like prosthetic pieces of like fake, more minimal crow's feet to put over the tape.

• 32:25Speaker 03

  That's so funny.

• 32:25Griffin Newman?

  Cause I kept pausing and looking and it's like, they've done such a good job covering it up, but you see the tension.

• 32:31Speaker 03

  Yeah. Oh, weird. I did not notice that part, the prosthetic.

• 32:35David Sims?

  I think so. Just supposed to like, because he's a scarier character.

• 32:40Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 32:40David Sims?

  It just doesn't bother me in the same way.

• 32:42Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah.

• 32:43David Sims?

  In my cousin Vinny, where he's like, what? I'm a Brooklyn lawyer. I'm a normal guy. Like in Casino, I'm like, that's what some fucking crazy mobster might look like, right?

• 32:49Speaker 03

  Well, that guy moves to Vegas and is like, oh, I'm in the West. There's, you know, a plethora of plastic surgeons. They've just invented a new thing called plastic surgery. We're still working out all the kinks, but I think I'm gonna go under the knife.

• 33:02David Sims?

  Looks fun.

• 33:03Griffin Newman?

  Like literally Brazil yanking his face back.

• 33:06Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 33:06Griffin Newman?

  It's just so funny to me that like at this era, Joe Pesci got this vein as like, you know, a what? Like 50 year old character actor, Oscar winning character actor, um, that he needed to do this. Uh, but you're right. No, the tension of his face does kind of work for this. It's funny that the justification he gave for my cousin Vinny was that they cast Marisa Tomei as his girlfriend. And she's like, well, she's so much younger than me. I gotta look younger. And I'm like, yeah, cause that guy would never have a fucking

• 33:32Speaker 03

  Right.

• 33:33Griffin Newman?

  20 years younger girlfriend. What are you talking about?

• 33:36David Sims?

  I mean, okay, so.

• 33:37Griffin Newman?

  I'm supposed to be 30 in this movie.

• 33:39Speaker 03

  I mean, it's interesting that he doesn't actually get plastic surgery though.

• 33:42Griffin Newman?

  No.

• 33:43Speaker 03

  Like that he won't cross that bridge, which feels also like totally.

• 33:48Griffin Newman?

  And you look at him now and he looks old. Like he clearly is, he's aging in a way that shows a lack of work at any point, I would say.

• 33:57David Sims?

  He's 52 when he makes this, or 51. You know, he's in his early 50s.

• 34:02Griffin Newman?

  He's older than De Niro, right?

• 34:04David Sims?

  He's older than De Niro by six months. They're the same age, basically. But I, what I wanna, the guy he's playing died at the age of 48. I mean, this is so true in all these movies.

• 34:18Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 34:19David Sims?

  Where these mobsters all died young because, you know, they got shot and shit.

• 34:23Griffin Newman?

  Sure.

• 34:25David Sims?

  So like, he, obviously he's sort of a, he's a stretch in the early parts of Casino.

• 34:31Griffin Newman?

  Well, his face is a stretch.

• 34:33David Sims?

  But it doesn't bother me at all.

• 34:35Speaker 03

  Right. But I, what I would say also, like an actual, uh, period accurate mobster 48 in the seventies probably is closer to like a 60.

• 34:45Griffin Newman?

  A hundred percent.

• 34:46Speaker 03

  And the 90s.

• 34:46David Sims?

  The mug shots, yeah. They don't look youthful.

• 34:49Speaker 03

  He actually looks so much like the real guy.

• 34:53David Sims?

  They smoke like four billion cigarettes a day. Like, right? Like they just ate, what did they eat? Like steaks and baked potatoes? I don't know.

• 35:00Griffin Newman?

  Bacon sandwiches. Uh, it's, it's crazy. You're right, Emily. I watched, there's a, there's like a vintage nineties TV special, The Story Behind the Story, that's on the, the 4K of this movie, or it's on the Blu-ray disc at least. Um, that, uh, is like Pelleji telling the story with reenactments, but also showing photos and stuff.

• 35:21Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 35:21Griffin Newman?

  And you're like, I bet after fucking Goodfellas and Raging Bull, they were just like, look, it'd be fun to just do it with Pesci again, even if Pesci's not really a match for the real guy. And everyone's like, this guy was so fucking short.

• 35:34Speaker 03

  He was, yeah.

• 35:35Griffin Newman?

  This guy was so diminutive.

• 35:36Speaker 03

  He was called The Ant. Like.

• 35:38David Sims?

  Now, his name was Anthony, I believe. Yes, but yeah.

• 35:42Griffin Newman?

  Can you imagine how excited they were?

• 35:44Speaker 03

  Convenient.

• 35:45David Sims?

  Tony the Ant, I believe is what they called him.

• 35:46Griffin Newman?

  When they read this book and they get to the description of this guy and they're like, oh, we can just cast Joe.

• 35:50David Sims?

  It's just like, what is he? 1-800-PESHI?

• 35:52Speaker 03

  Well, it's just funny because like, like De Niro looks nothing like Frank Rosenthal. But Pesci already looks like him a little bit. And then you can see like down to like the little streak he does in his hair. Like he is just doing a one-to-one of this dude and it works. It's, yeah.

• 36:08Griffin Newman?

  And even Pesci doing the Midwestern accent very subtly.

• 36:12David Sims?

  I'm a Chicago guy.

• 36:13Griffin Newman?

  Dender. He's got a little bit of that Dender.

• 36:16David Sims?

  Deep dish.

• 36:17Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, deep dish.

• 36:17David Sims?

  The beam. Wrinkly field. You should just do this.

• 36:21Speaker 03

  The bears.

• 36:24David Sims?

  Casino. So Casino is a film by Martin Scorsese, written by Marty and Nicholas Pelleji, based on the book by Nicholas Pelleji, which is called Casino Love and Honor in Las Vegas, which is sort of his follow-up to The Bookwise Guy, which he wrote in the eighties and in a similar style, I feel.

• 36:40Griffin Newman?

  Mm-hmm.

• 36:41David Sims?

  Uh, having read both. And, uh, that got turned into Goodfellas. It is a run back of a formula that had worked very well, right? Would we all agree?

• 36:49Speaker 03

  Mm-hmm.

• 36:49Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 36:50David Sims?

  Like, you know, the, the package I saw, I'll look at the research in a second, but the package is kind of like, you're like the Goodfellas.

• 36:55Griffin Newman?

  If I'm not mistaken, and JJ will clarify this in a moment, this was a case where Pelleji comes to Scorsese and goes, I think I got my next subject.

• 37:03David Sims?

  Right.

• 37:03Griffin Newman?

  And the movie and the book are basically being developed concurrently.

• 37:06Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah.

• 37:07Griffin Newman?

  Where there was even a thing where Scorsese wanted the book to be published after the movie.

• 37:12Speaker 03

  It was, wasn't it?

• 37:13Griffin Newman?

  I think they flipped it.

• 37:15Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 37:16Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 37:16Speaker 03

  It was about the same time though.

• 37:17Griffin Newman?

  But it was basically, all of this was happening at the same time because like one of the ways that they got the real Lefty to agree to collaborate on this.

• 37:24David Sims?

  The book came out a month before the movie.

• 37:26Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 37:27Speaker 03

  Okay, yeah.

• 37:27Griffin Newman?

  Um, one of the ways they got Lefty to agree to start sharing with them was Pelleji was like, I think De Niro wants to play you. And he's like, oh, if De Niro wants to play me, I'll do the book.

• 37:37David Sims?

  Cause at that point, De Niro's just like, you know, it's the ultimate respect, I guess.

• 37:42Griffin Newman?

  He also was like, I love Goodfellas. You're telling me you wanna make Goodfellas about me?

• 37:46David Sims?

  It's the whole thing with the mobsters that you always hear is they are like, oh, well, that's not how it happened, but they love the movies.

• 37:52Griffin Newman?

  They love the movies.

• 37:53David Sims?

  And like, yeah, sorry.

• 37:54Speaker 03

  That's like the beautiful romantic thing, I think, about that brand of criminal at the end of them. This is a total tangent, but like I always say that about like people taking somewhat dirty money to make films still to this day. You know, these kinds of guys, like they're still at least not like private equity because at the end of the day, they wanna go to Cannes and they wanna hang out with movie stars cause it's cool. Like, and it's fun. And like, they're right about that.

• 38:20Griffin Newman?

  What, what's the worst type of financial criminal? I mean, this is like, you know, the one who doesn't even care about the arts at all.

• 38:26Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah.

• 38:28Griffin Newman?

  The, the, the last 15 to 20 years of Scorsese's career have basically been bankrolled by guys like this.

• 38:35Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 38:35Griffin Newman?

  Who are just like, if you're telling me I get to smoke one cigar next to Leonardo DiCaprio, I will give you 40 million dollars.

• 38:43Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 38:43Griffin Newman?

  And Scorsese stacks like 10 of those guys up and makes a picture.

• 38:47Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 38:48David Sims?

  Uh, Emily, your relationship to Martin Scorsese, before I open the, uh, the dossier, is there anything particular you want to speak to?

• 38:54Griffin Newman?

  You have multiple pages of notes in front of you.

• 38:56Speaker 03

  Uh, no, one of his, one is just a list of outfits. Um, I, so I have a, a funny history with Martin Scorsese, I would say. I, you know, I, when I was in high school, around the time I started realizing I wanted to go into film, uh, you know, it was just obviously like he was one of the top, like one of the main guys. And I think.

• 39:20Griffin Newman?

  He's mentioned as the shorthand guy.

• 39:21Speaker 03

  Yeah, the guy. And there were two things happening though, which was that I felt just like contrarian from the jump about that. Like I was like, you can't tell me that's the guy. Even though I did, I really liked Goodfellas, but that was, I watched Goodfellas cause like I liked The Sopranos. And I was like, I wanna see what it's referencing.

• 39:40David Sims?

  Sure.

• 39:42Speaker 03

  Um, but, uh, but yeah. And then at the same time, I would say that's still not, that's maybe my least favorite era of Scorsese. Like I'm not a Gangs of New York person. I'm definitely not an Aviator person. And so it was kind of convening at this time when I didn't love the new stuff.

• 39:59David Sims?

  Right.

• 39:59Speaker 03

  So I really was not what I would call a fan of his for a while. And then I don't know where it turned exactly, but like, I think, I think I got into this movie a lot, like in my, my late twenties, I would say. Like, I feel like it was one of these things that was on Netflix streaming early on, uh, all the time. And, uh, and I don't know. I, I think this and Age of Innocence was, which was the other one I sent to you guys is like, you know, the ones I would do an episode on. They like, they kind of opened up to me the Baroque emotionality of Scorsese that I think goes under discussed, especially

• 40:40Speaker 03

  when you're talking about these crime movies and stuff. And that to me, like it's so operatic. It's like, you know, it's like maximum movie and it serves me and my interests more, I would say. And so I found like, I kind of found my way into like really loving him and admiring him a lot. Um, but it was later. It was like after film school and all that. I was very resistant before that.

• 41:04David Sims?

  And there's so many ways in with him.

• 41:06Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 41:06David Sims?

  So as you're saying, right? You know, so it's like, even if he is sold as the like, you must.

• 41:12Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 41:12Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 41:13David Sims?

  Acknowledge this is the greatest American director, you know, like, and then it can be a little overwhelming.

• 41:18Griffin Newman?

  You watched this movie in the crib, David?

• 41:22David Sims?

  Who, me?

• 41:23Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 41:24David Sims?

  Uh, why do you say that? Cause I love gambling?

• 41:26Griffin Newman?

  No, I just feel like this movie is very imprinted on your soul.

• 41:29David Sims?

  Is it? I mean, I guess it is. I really do like this movie. Um, I find it very upsetting. The end really bums me out.

• 41:36Speaker 03

  Oh, it's dark as fuck at the end.

• 41:39David Sims?

  Not in like a bad mood after I watch it, but I was really like, Jesus. You know, like, and even though I'm like, can't wait for the cornfield. And then I'm like, God, it's so awful.

• 41:47Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 41:48Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 41:48David Sims?

  Um, I mean, uh, when did I first see this movie? Probably whenever I was, you know, doing my Marty thing, right? And like, I went to some Saul Bass exhibit when I was a teenager that I remember like having a big impact on me. And like, this is one of his last title sequences.

• 42:06Speaker 03

  It's so beautiful, too.

• 42:07David Sims?

  And it's such a cool title sequence. And I remember like, cause I think, I think my early impression of Casino is I was like, well, okay. Well, that's like Goodfellas, but not quite as good, right? Like that was, that was sort of my teenage take on it.

• 42:19Griffin Newman?

  I can tell you my exact first impression, which is I'm, I'm flipping through channels on TV. I believe I'm at my grandparents' house. My dad walks in. He goes, oh, Casino. Martin Scorsese's Casino. I go, is this good? He goes, it's kind of just him doing Goodfellas again, except Sharon Stone's really good in it. And then my dad says, and I don't even like Sharon Stone, but she's good in this.

• 42:40Speaker 03

  That's the, one of the main things I would say puts this movie above, above Goodfellas for me in the end is that, you know, fucking Ginger, amazing character.

• 42:48Griffin Newman?

  It's an amazing character, but, but that's how I was introduced to this film is very much like its cultural reputation for a very long time that I think has now balanced out finally in the last 10 years.

• 42:59David Sims?

  Yeah. But I mean, it'll never be on.

• 43:01Griffin Newman?

  But it was just, he tried to do Goodfellas again. It's not as good, but Sharon Stone's a standout.

• 43:06David Sims?

  That was certainly how like the Academy Awards reacted to this movie.

• 43:09Griffin Newman?

  It's lone nomination.

• 43:10Speaker 03

  Mm hmm.

• 43:19Griffin Newman?

  David?

• 43:20David Sims?

  Yes.

• 43:21Griffin Newman?

  I think it's time we say bonjour to MUBI.

• 43:23David Sims?

  Hello.

• 43:23Griffin Newman?

  No, no, say bonjour.

• 43:25David Sims?

  Bonjour.

• 43:26Griffin Newman?

  Cause MUBI is a global film company, bringing great cinema to the world and to you, curating and elevating visionary filmmaking. All handpicked, always. And I got a very specific suggestion of something exciting on MUBI right now.

• 43:39David Sims?

  Making Marie Antoinette.

• 43:41Griffin Newman?

  Eleanor Coppola's final film. Yes.

• 43:43David Sims?

  In 2005, Eleanor Coppola filmed her daughter, Sophia, directing Marie Antoinette at the Palace of Versailles. The first production that was ever granted access to that palace. And for two decades, this footage has gone unseen.

• 43:56Griffin Newman?

  No longer.

• 43:57David Sims?

  Yes. Um, obviously Eleanor Coppola passed away, but in fulfillment of her mother's wishes, the footage has become a film of its own through the help of Sofia Coppola. And it follows the making of this movie. Melina Canararo's incredible costume work, what it took for Sophia to direct such a big thing at the age of 34 and being watched by her own mother, intimate look at the creative process, right?

• 44:20Griffin Newman?

  Across generations.

• 44:21David Sims?

  Um, obviously Eleanor Coppola made Hearts of Darkness about the making of Apocalypse Now. So, you know, this was, this was something she was very good at.

• 44:29Griffin Newman?

  A less chaotic production.

• 44:31David Sims?

  It is streaming on MUBI from November 6th. 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. You're going to see all kinds of great stuff.

• 44:43Griffin Newman?

  All handpicked, always.

• 44:45David Sims?

  But yeah, you know, all their cool movies right now and get Miasma and.

• 44:49Griffin Newman?

  We love Miasma.

• 44:50David Sims?

  That Garth Jennings Pope movie I want to see.

• 44:52Griffin Newman?

  Oh, that's exciting.

• 44:53David Sims?

  Documentary about the band Pope. Yeah. Anyway, so MUBI.com slash blank check.

• 44:57Griffin Newman?

  MUBI.

• 45:05Griffin Newman?

  David?

• 45:05David Sims?

  Yes.

• 45:06Griffin 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.

• 45:27David 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, uh, vanishes in Transylvania, Mina pieces together letters, diary entries, and chilling testimony to hunt the predator stalking those she loves, only to discover Dracula's already hunting her.

• 45:46Griffin 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.

• 46:02David Sims?

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

• 46:36Speaker 04

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• 46:39Speaker 05

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• 47:14David Sims?

  I'll open the dossier and I'll tell you that while Martin Scorsese is working on the screenplay for The Age of Innocence, which is a film that was out before Casino, he's also working on a long gestating, uh, George Gershwin biopic called Mine.

• 47:30David Sims?

  Um, he's working on Silence, which is a long gestating product.

• 47:33Griffin Newman?

  We'll get there.

• 47:34David Sims?

  He's working on Gangs of New York, which is.

• 47:36Griffin Newman?

  Get there.

• 47:37David Sims?

  And he's working on something else with Pilegi called The Neighborhood, which he never made.

• 47:42Griffin Newman?

  This I want to see him make now.

• 47:44David Sims?

  I know, which is like, he's basically like, it's the story of my family. Like it is the courtship of my parents. It goes right to the war in the early sixties. It's a story of like immigration and like Sicily, nothing city in Little Italy.

• 47:56Griffin Newman?

  Back to his grandparents in Sicily.

• 47:58David Sims?

  We're going to go back to Sicily and then like, you know, it's like Italians, Italian Americans, American Italians, right? You know what I mean? Like it's charting the whole generation. It's really long. He thought about doing it as a mini-series. Nothing has ever come of it.

• 48:12Griffin Newman?

  I want him to circle back to this. I feel like everyone needs to do their fablemines, their I was born but.

• 48:18David Sims?

  Right.

• 48:19Griffin Newman?

  Their, I'm ready to tackle my childhood and my parents movie.

• 48:22David Sims?

  Now, there's some other insane shit that he got like, you know, briefly attached to. There's a movie called Ocean of Storms, which was like an aging astronaut love story that was going to star Warren Beatty and Annette Bening.

• 48:36Griffin Newman?

  That sounds so fucking cool.

• 48:40David Sims?

  Eventually died out.

• 48:41Griffin Newman?

  In 1995, you know who else I bet was going to be in that movie? Gary Shandling in space.

• 48:46David Sims?

  Sure.

• 48:48Griffin Newman?

  Anytime Warren Beatty and Annette Bening did something together, you're like, get, get our friend Gary over here. Yeah.

• 48:53David Sims?

  Well, it's just funny because Beatty and Annette, of course, did do Bugsy, uh, which is another story of Vegas that is bad, in my opinion, a really boring ass movie.

• 49:03Griffin Newman?

  But quite Tobacchian.

• 49:04David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 49:06David Sims?

  Not Tobacchian enough, perhaps? I don't know.

• 49:08Speaker 03

  Toback touch.

• 49:09David Sims?

  Marty was attached, Marty was attached to Clockers.

• 49:12Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 49:12David Sims?

  You know, which eventually gets given to Spike Lee wisely. He's attached to a remake of High and Low, which had like, of course, was eventually made by Spike Lee in a different way. His next actual project is a personal journey with Martin Scorsese through American movies, which is the best.

• 49:28Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 49:28David Sims?

  I highly recommend it. A four hour documentary where he's just talking about movies. Um, it's so cool. Uh, he did it with the BFI, but Casino is his next fig. And we'll talk about that later, I think.

• 49:39Griffin Newman?

  We're not going to do a designated episode on it. It will come up in conversation. It's a little hard to talk about.

• 49:44David Sims?

  Um, so Casino, basically it's like Cape Fear and Goodfellas, like do so well that Universal is, you know, much more interested in him as like a financial prospect, right? He is no longer cursed by like the Last Temptation bombing.

• 50:04Griffin Newman?

  Right. Cape Fear was his biggest hit and that was, he had done that for Universal. And that was right. Exactly. The trade off of them agreeing to do Last Temptation.

• 50:12David Sims?

  And at this point, he's kind of like doing a one for me, one for them thing of like, I'll do Goodfellas, Age of Innocence, Kundu, No, There's a Passion Projects, Cape Fear, you know, that's more than Casino to him is, he says, a little more of a commission. You know, he done Cape Fear with Universal. They wanted another film. Pilegi brings him this newspaper article about, you know, the new, the initial newspaper article is about when the cops came to the house, when Sharon Stone's trying to get, you know, when Ginger's trying to get, you know, about like the breaking up this fight, you know, charting this like 10 year journey to this moment where they're fighting in the front yard. Cause like the FBI are taking pictures of it. The cops are trying to deal with them. Like what the fuck is all this?

• 50:54David Sims?

  So, you know, Pilegi lays out the story for him. These are all real characters and it's kind of, it's kind of a lost world Jurassic Park. Where it's like, okay, go, you go write a book and we'll work on the screenplay and everything will come out together. Then they actually write the screenplay before the book. Because Scorsese backs out of Clockers, comes on to Casino and is like, let's just write it. The book does come out before the, a month before the movie, but yeah, they, they get the screenplay down and then, have you read the book?

• 51:28Speaker 03

  Uh, yeah, I didn't finish it, but I read a lot of it. Yeah.

• 51:32David Sims?

  Pilegi's thing, and it's like, Wise Guy, he has some parts where he writes.

• 51:37Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 51:37David Sims?

  But it's just blocks dialogue.

• 51:39Speaker 03

  I mean, I was just thinking this wouldn't, I mean, obviously it's all edited and you choose what to put in and everything, but I don't think it was necessarily like a huge lift writing wise as, as like some other things.

• 51:51David Sims?

  Research and interviewing.

• 51:52Speaker 03

  Doing all the interviews, like taking the time to talk to these guys, like.

• 51:55David Sims?

  The Wise Guy book, it works so well because you're like, yeah, this is all these fucking guys did all day was yak. With the Casino book, you're a little bit more like, can you explain?

• 52:03Speaker 03

  Yeah. Yeah. I get lost so often because they will just continue just dropping names like, and then Milwaukee Phil was there. And I'm like flipping back, being like, was I supposed to know who Milwaukee Phil? Okay. It's okay. It's fine. It's, it's, he's a guy from Milwaukee named Phil, I, I suppose.

• 52:21David Sims?

  Scorsese admits it's a bit of an ambitious story. He's like, you could make 10 movies from these guys' stories. Like, there's so many different characters that are interesting.

• 52:31David Sims?

  When this gets announced, I think there's a little bit of a like, how many more mob movies is this guy gonna fucking make?

• 52:38Griffin Newman?

  At this point-

• 52:38David Sims?

  You know, cause it's like Age of Innocence is this thing where it's like, god damn, he can do anything. And he's like, but, next mob movie.

• 52:44Speaker 03

  But people didn't like Age of Innocence when it came out.

• 52:47David Sims?

  It was very polarizing.

• 52:48Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah.

• 52:48David Sims?

  Yeah, it's true.

• 52:49Griffin Newman?

  I, I think, I, I wanna use this as the term now. It's a bit of a vervolf.

• 52:55David Sims?

  Oh, excuse me?

• 52:56Griffin Newman?

  Vervolf.

• 52:56David Sims?

  Robert Eggers' vervolf. Right.

• 52:59Griffin Newman?

  Where we have our movie group text and the day that got announced, oh, on Christmas Day, Focus Features will release Aaron Taylor Johnson and Willem Dafoe in Robert Eggers', like, historically accurate, period, monster movie. We were just like, come on, man, this is what we would say to make fun of you.

• 53:17David Sims?

  And it's like, well, I'm like, well, I'm sure he'll, I can picture the movie. I'm sure he'll do a good job. He knows what he's doing.

• 53:23Griffin Newman?

  That sells itself.

• 53:24David Sims?

  But you're not like, oh my god, like, wow, like, him taking a crack at that is so cool.

• 53:28Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 53:29Griffin Newman?

  I think that's the exact-

• 53:30David Sims?

  Is he gonna do Frankenstein?

• 53:33Griffin Newman?

  Frankenstein?

• 53:36Griffin Newman?

  I know, for the listener at home, I know-

• 53:38David Sims?

  It'll all be in like Bavarian German.

• 53:40Griffin Newman?

  I know it's called Werwolf and not Vervolf, but I will forever call it Vervolf.

• 53:45Speaker 03

  Vervolf.

• 53:46David Sims?

  Vervolf.

• 53:47Griffin Newman?

  It, it's, if you're a studio executive and they come in and pitch this and they go, hey, you know that movie that was just a hit? What if I take two of the principal actors and pick a parallel subject matter and release it around the same time? They're gonna go, yeah, obviously, I can see that movie, that's an easy sell. To audiences, and especially to movie-obsessed people like ourselves, it feels too easy to visualize, which is what feels lazy about it.

• 54:10David Sims?

  Here's Marty's defense.

• 54:12Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 54:12David Sims?

  I don't know what to say, I can't defend myself, I can't defend myself. I'm attracted to the same territory, I'm attracted to characters, cause they play right on the edge, there's life and death in every decision they make. And then his other defense is, look, Hitchcock made the same movie every single time. You know, a guy who seems innocent, looks guilty, how does he get out of it? Like, he kept doing the fucking movie.

• 54:30Griffin Newman?

  My other thing is, Goodfellas is like the greatest shit on earth.

• 54:34David Sims?

  That's true.

• 54:35Griffin Newman?

  If, the offer is, hey, do you want the second best meal of your life? Charitably. Like, why are we being assholes about this?

• 54:44Speaker 03

  But it's like, it is literally like, the Vegas of that movie. It is like, if, if, if, if Goodfellas is, is New York City.

• 54:53Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 54:53Speaker 03

  Like, yeah, casino is New York, New York, the casino. Like, it's like, it's the overblown fantasia of it, that like, has so many more resources and-

• 55:03David Sims?

  Different landscape, you know, like, he, it's all about the prom of the dream of Vegas, right? You know, and the, you know, it's, it's totally different. And, what, now, this might shock you, having seen the film. What might surprise you is that one appeal, this Scorsese, was the idea of excess.

• 55:22Speaker 03

  No way.

• 55:22Griffin Newman?

  No limits.

• 55:23David Sims?

  Yes.

• 55:24Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 55:24David Sims?

  Uh, everything being heightened.

• 55:27Griffin Newman?

  That's the other place where this movie feels like a, a turning point to me.

• 55:31David Sims?

  He doesn't care about gambling, like, he's not interested in casinos, he doesn't really like the games or whatever, but he likes that vibe.

• 55:39Speaker 03

  Me watching Casino, writing down on my notepad, excess.

• 55:43Griffin Newman?

  What were you about to say, Emily?

• 55:44Speaker 03

  No, Camp My Ass, I was making a Camp My Ass my reference. Yeah, I mean, my, my other ulterior motive in coming here to talk about this movie today is to just talk about Las Vegas, which is one of my favorite things-

• 55:54Griffin Newman?

  A place you love.

• 55:54Speaker 03

  To talk about, and places to go, and, you know, things to think about.

• 55:58David Sims?

  Now, when you started going to Vegas, I'm assuming that's sort of in the mid 2000s?

• 56:03Speaker 03

  I think I went, I was trying to remember if it was 06 or 07. One way I could, yeah, remember it would be that I went to the Frontier Casino in its last year of existing. Like, they still had slot machines that had tokens, that had coins that came out, Mr. Jackpot style. And, uh, there was like a shitty buffet, there was like, you know, it was, it was a real crusty former era, one of the last ones remaining. And, yeah, they, they imploded it like the next year. Um, and that, and then I think the Riviera was shortly after. Like, the whole process that they're talking about at the end of, of Casino, like, I kinda went at the end, the very end of that process of moving out, this whole-

• 56:48David Sims?

  Right.

• 56:48Speaker 03

  Previous era.

• 56:49David Sims?

  But I feel like the era of Vegas that you are falling in love with is now, people are now also like, and now that era is long gone, and it's in this newer, even more corporate era or whatever, more sort of-

• 57:01Speaker 03

  Well, yeah.

• 57:01David Sims?

  Kid-friendly or tourist-friendly in a different way.

• 57:04Speaker 03

  Well, I think that what we liked about it, I actually, I went to, I went to Vegas for the first time with, uh, the late Harris Whittles. I was friends-

• 57:12David Sims?

  R.I.P. Harris.

• 57:13Speaker 03

  Yeah, my, my roommate was, uh, dating him at the time, so, and we were all friends, uh, it's a group of comedy people. And, uh, so, it was a comped room that we all like crashed on together. And it was at the Excalibur, I remember, and I was not 21 yet. I, so I couldn't gamble legally, I couldn't like, order drinks legally, but just sitting at a slot machine at the Excalibur, I was doing both of those things and nobody, like, and they'd come and bring me like a Midori Sour or something, like, um, for free. And that was the appeal of Vegas at that time.

• 57:50Speaker 03

  It was like, the way low-rent version of what they're talking about in this movie, which is like, Vegas is all about like, taking care of the customer and like, making sure they just feel like happy and, you know, welcome, and everybody's nice to them, and you get some free stuff so that you just keep sitting down and, and spending your money.

• 58:08Griffin Newman?

  You trick Mr. Nobu into playing forever.

• 58:11Speaker 03

  Yeah. That was basically me then, I like just flew in on my, on my jet. Um, uh, but yeah, I, I think, uh, being able to go as like a 20-something kid, just driving in from LA and like, spending very little money, but just being in this like kind of crappy Disneyland of like excess and Americana was just so compelling to me.

• 58:34Griffin Newman?

  Crappy Disneyland's a really good way of putting it. I mean, I, I, you know what I find interesting? They play EO 11 in this movie, as one of, let me check my notes here, 8,000 songs played across the running time of the film. But that's the song from Ocean's Eleven, the Sammy Davis Jr. song.

• 58:52David Sims?

  A, a great movie.

• 58:54Griffin Newman?

  Well, sorry, a movie we watched and is profoundly boring.

• 58:58David Sims?

  We, I mean, we, it was on, I don't know how much I actually watched it.

• 59:01Griffin Newman?

  We, uh, engaged with-

• 59:04David Sims?

  Something.

• 59:05Griffin Newman?

  Being in the same room, is it?

• 59:06David Sims?

  Right.

• 59:06Griffin Newman?

  Uh, Dante Ferretti, who did the production design in this movie, which is fucking incredible, um, uh, and was like a Fellini, uh, protege. He said that Scorsese asked him to do it and he was like, I know nothing about Vegas, I know nothing about casinos, and he's like, just learn.

• 59:22Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 59:23Griffin Newman?

  And he, he made him watch Ocean's Eleven.

• 59:27David Sims?

  Sure.

• 59:27Griffin Newman?

  And beyond the fact that like the original Ocean's Eleven spawns the better remakes and sequels, I'm also like, there is some value to that movie just existing as a time capsule of that era of Vegas.

• 59:41David Sims?

  The only good thing about it is, right, the visual of like, here's Vegas, yes.

• 59:45Griffin Newman?

  Cause Scorsese basically was just like, this is the best document we have, just study this and recreate this. And that feeling of just the endless lights and the whirring and the sounds, this is what my brain feels like. Is just endless rows of slot machines.

• 1:00:02Speaker 03

  I love the sound so much.

• 1:00:02David Sims?

  And Don Rickles.

• 1:00:03Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:04Speaker 03

  It's the-

• 1:00:05Griffin Newman?

  What the fuck you doing? Don Rickles is constantly telling me off in my own brain. This is the same year as Toy Story.

• 1:00:13David Sims?

  I, I was gonna bring that up.

• 1:00:15Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:00:15David Sims?

  It was a good year for Rickles.

• 1:00:16Griffin Newman?

  You think anyone suggested a split Best Supporting Actor Prize?

• 1:00:19David Sims?

  I'm sure someone did.

• 1:00:22David Sims?

  Another thing I note, uh, you know, is that much like this, this movie, much like Goodfellas, and obviously much like Mean Streets, like, is about the middle of the mob mostly. Like, it's like, he has no interest in the top of the mob.

• 1:00:34Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:00:35David Sims?

  And like, obviously you see the boss in here, and you see Paul Verrio in Goodfell- but like-

• 1:00:40Griffin Newman?

  It's not about the crime families.

• 1:00:41David Sims?

  He's like that, like, The Godfather doesn't interest me, like, I'm not interested in the highest level, I'm more interested in the incremental stuff, like, I like, you know, Lefty keeping his trousers in the closet, cause he doesn't wanna ruin the, uh, the crease.

• 1:00:53Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, incredible detail.

• 1:00:54David Sims?

  Like, I like these little details, like, I never, you know, like, so, and like, of course, that's what Marty is bringing to the gangster movie, after The Godfather. Like, that is why the Goodfellas in this are so important, um, because I think the mid-level mobster is, you know, it's what The Sopranos does too. Like, you know, he's not the boss when The Sopranos begins.

• 1:01:12Speaker 03

  Well, I mean, it's interesting to, like, you can still tell that story of the mid-level mafia guy and have them literally running a casino, like, one of the like biggest cash cows ever, but they're still not the top.

• 1:01:26David Sims?

  Up there.

• 1:01:27Speaker 03

  Yeah, like, they're still kind of, you know, at the beck and call of somebody else and, you know, some, back at some shitty grocery store in Kansas City. Like, and that, that's, I think that's like a really fun part of it.

• 1:01:38David Sims?

  He also found a biblical angle, can you believe this?

• 1:01:42Speaker 03

  No way.

• 1:01:42David Sims?

  A religious angle. He's like, it's an Old Testament story, gaining paradise, losing it through pride and greed, like, thinking you can reform Ginger or can, you know, control her or whatever.

• 1:01:52Griffin Newman?

  No one stays at the top forever.

• 1:01:53David Sims?

  No one stays at the top forever, it's a great poster, it's a great tagline, so.

• 1:01:57Griffin Newman?

  The dice.

• 1:01:58David Sims?

  The way they start their relationship, I don't think it really starts in a great place.

• 1:02:04Speaker 03

  You could kind of predict, yeah, that I think it's not gonna end well.

• 1:02:07Griffin Newman?

  You don't think it's great if you propose to someone and their response is, I don't love you?

• 1:02:11Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:02:12Griffin Newman?

  And yet it ends with an engagement? You don't think that's a healthy start?

• 1:02:15Speaker 03

  You don't think it's cool if you get married to somebody and then you find them on the phone with like, the guy who groomed her as a teenager and she's weeping and she's like, no, no, I'm fine.

• 1:02:24David Sims?

  On your wedding night?

• 1:02:25Speaker 03

  Yeah, on their wedding night.

• 1:02:25David Sims?

  No, I think that's a bad thing.

• 1:02:27Speaker 03

  You think that's a red flag?

• 1:02:28Griffin Newman?

  And that guy's played by James Woods?

• 1:02:29Speaker 03

  Yeah, the guy is James Woods also.

• 1:02:30Griffin Newman?

  That's kind of shorthand for James Woods.

• 1:02:32David Sims?

  Now that you mention it, okay, I feel fine about it.

• 1:02:34Speaker 03

  I mean, I, we could talk forever about Ginger. I love her so much. I love Sharon Stone's performance.

• 1:02:40David Sims?

  Yes.

• 1:02:41Speaker 03

  I, and what I think is fascinating about, I mean, I guess, I guess there's the thing about pride and not, and you know, thinking that you can control Ginger, but I feel like from her perspective, like it's the story of like, I, I love money. I'm a Vegas lady. I'm a, I'm a hustler and a call girl.

• 1:03:00David Sims?

  Right.

• 1:03:00Speaker 03

  I, I live for the dollars and this guy is offering me everything on a platter. Like the life that I dream of, like all the comfort and luxuries and everything. But it's still not enough to buy me because I have something deeply fucked up about me that is emotional, that is human and messy, that trumps any, you know, capitalistic impulses that I also have, like obviously, like it's, it's, it's weirdly beautiful in a way, even though it's also very dark. It like, there's some, some sort of glimmer of hope in that and that like money can't do it all.

• 1:03:38Griffin Newman?

  The most fucked up type of love persevere, right?

• 1:03:40David Sims?

  She could, right, in theory, you're like, hey, Ginger, like this guy's rich.

• 1:03:45Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:45David Sims?

  You don't need to be, you know, like the sort of hustler that you were. Why don't you just like sit in this nice house and like wear nice clothes? And she's like, you know, I just lit a mat.

• 1:03:56Griffin Newman?

  Sparked a lighter.

• 1:03:57David Sims?

  Lit the lighter and looked through the flame.

• 1:03:59Speaker 03

  He's got a prop, he's got a prop, yeah.

• 1:04:00David Sims?

  Robert De Niro and Joe Pesci are cast in the film.

• 1:04:04Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:04:05David Sims?

  Sounds good. Sharon Stone, however, more, slightly more interesting. Obviously Basic Instinct is 92.

• 1:04:11Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:04:12David Sims?

  So after that, she's at the point where she's producing her own stuff, Quick in the Dead, which we've covered on this show. You know, that's like a Stone project more than anything else, right?

• 1:04:21Griffin Newman?

  A hundred percent. And as we talked about in both of those episodes, Sharon Stone is this classic example of a humongous movie star who is immediately kind of mocked and criticized incessantly.

• 1:04:32Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:04:33David Sims?

  Right. This is definitely like her prestige sort of leap.

• 1:04:39Griffin Newman?

  This is the big play.

• 1:04:40David Sims?

  Like she's never been in a movie like this before, I feel like.

• 1:04:44Griffin Newman?

  In, in the crassest way possible, this is, quote, Sharon Stone proves she can really act, which is bullshit because I think in both of the movies you just mentioned, she's phenomenal, but like.

• 1:04:56David Sims?

  But it is a little bit like, well, she's a big movie star. She's good at being a movie star, but can she do something more demanding? I guess, like, you know, um, I mean, it's her only Oscar nomination, obviously. Susan Sarandon wins for Dead Man Walking.

• 1:05:10Griffin Newman?

  Okay.

• 1:05:12David Sims?

  Which is a little bit, I mean, that's a good performance, but I think it's also a little bit of like, it's your moment, Susan. She did win the Golden Globe, so she was in there.

• 1:05:21Griffin Newman?

  Stone famously worked the Globes hard.

• 1:05:25David Sims?

  Yes.

• 1:05:26Griffin Newman?

  The, the rules got changed because of how hard Stone worked the Globes. Like Stone got a lot of Globe nominations. Let me actually clarify this to make it, to make it very clear.

• 1:05:37David Sims?

  I think just the old fashioned, you know, dinners and gift bags or whatever, I don't know.

• 1:05:42Griffin Newman?

  They nominated her for The Muse.

• 1:05:44David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:45Griffin Newman?

  The Albert Brooks movie. She, I don't think she won for The Muse, but she got nominated.

• 1:05:49David Sims?

  Not a bad movie.

• 1:05:49Griffin Newman?

  But it came out that she had given every member of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association a very expensive watch.

• 1:05:55David Sims?

  Look, it, it's like 98 members.

• 1:05:58Griffin Newman?

  That's the thing. You could buy every member of the Hollywood Foreign Press. It's a, it's a manageable number.

• 1:06:03David Sims?

  That was one of their issues, I would say, is they were easily bought.

• 1:06:06Griffin Newman?

  I don't mean that she worked them euphemistically. I just mean that she would like hit those parties hard. She would glad hand every single person. She would shower them with gifts. She got nominated for the mighty, I think.

• 1:06:18David Sims?

  She did, which she's, she's good in that movie, although a stretch, I think, to nominate her, but uh, she's very sweet in that movie. It's a sweet movie. Um, it's a, it's a powerhouse five. It's, this is the Golden Globe five.

• 1:06:31Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:31David Sims?

  For drama actress, which might be the, it actually might be the five Oscar nominees. Yeah. But it's, it's, it's her. It's Susan Sarandon. It's Elizabeth Shue for Leaving Las Vegas, another Las Vegas movie that involves substances and yelling.

• 1:06:52David Sims?

  Emma Thompson for Sense and Sensibility and Meryl Streep for Bridges of Madison County.

• 1:06:55Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, that is the five.

• 1:06:56David Sims?

  And I believe that's the five Oscar nominees too. Yes, it is.

• 1:07:00Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:01David Sims?

  So what was going on in comedy? Nicole Kidman in To Die For, Admetting An American President, Toni Collette in Muriel's Wedding.

• 1:07:07Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:07Speaker 03

  Wow.

• 1:07:08David Sims?

  Sandra Bullock in While You Were Sleeping, great performance. Then Vanessa Redgrave in A Month By The Lake, whatever the fuck that is. That sounds a little bit more like I've watched.

• 1:07:19David Sims?

  A month by the lake.

• 1:07:23Speaker 03

  I am seated.

• 1:07:24Griffin Newman?

  That's, that's a fake movie. That's a fucking fake Samuel Goldwyn production.

• 1:07:27David Sims?

  It sounds mildly fake. It's got Edward Fox and a young Uma Thurman.

• 1:07:32Griffin Newman?

  Okay.

• 1:07:33David Sims?

  Chicago Tribune said sexy, funny. That's on the poster.

• 1:07:37Speaker 03

  Was it sexy, dot, dot, dot?

• 1:07:39David Sims?

  No, it's sexy exclamation point, funny.

• 1:07:41Griffin Newman?

  Wow.

• 1:07:41David Sims?

  Which is funny to imagine like someone sitting down.

• 1:07:47Speaker 03

  Man. The golden age of film criticism.

• 1:07:50David Sims?

  But I mean, like, you know, Kidman and Toni Collette and everybody, you know, like, damn, this was a, you know?

• 1:07:56Griffin Newman?

  It was a real lineup. Yeah. No, a hundred percent.

• 1:08:00David Sims?

  But uh, yeah, she and De Niro really loved each other. Apparently they knew each other already. De Niro said she's like, she's such a good actor. Scorsese said it's such a scary role, like, you know, when she's taking coke in front of the kid, when she's wearing the crazy, he really likes the David Bowie type Gold lame outfit she wears for the last third of the picture. He's, Scorsese was like, she was trying to look fucked up. Like, and we, like, you know, she was like really paying attention to looking as bad as she could when the wheels are coming off, you know?

• 1:08:28Griffin Newman?

  I mean, it's, it is an overused term, especially when actresses tend to work around sexual material. But it's like, she is, her superpower is being kind of fearless, right? That Sharon Stone just fucking goes for it.

• 1:08:45Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:08:46Griffin Newman?

  Which we need in this role.

• 1:08:47David Sims?

  It is quite a fearless performance. Um, I agree. Rickles, of course, is a bit of a connection, I would say, to Old Vegas in that he knew Frank and Dean and Sammy.

• 1:09:00Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:09:00David Sims?

  What I liked about Vegas at that time, even though it was controlled by, for lack of another word, the mob. I think that's the right word, Don.

• 1:09:08Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:09David Sims?

  Was that there was one boss. It wasn't like corporations today. Now you need five guys to get a permission for a cup of coffee. In those days, you went up to the main office and you saw the boss, so to speak. It's so funny that Rickles is like, just flatly to the press, to the Los Angeles Times, like, it was better when the mob was in charge.

• 1:09:27Griffin Newman?

  Rickles maintained that until his death. I have watched and read.

• 1:09:30David Sims?

  And he died recently.

• 1:09:31Griffin Newman?

  So many interviews where he said the same thing, where he was arguing for the, the better status of the mob run casino.

• 1:09:39David Sims?

  I'm trying to imagine like the mayor of Vegas being like, I'm proud to announce the mob is back. We will be partnering with the mafia to run casinos.

• 1:09:48Griffin Newman?

  But, but this raises a good point. I think this is the other reason that Scorsese likes to cast people like Bo Diddel and whatever. And obviously Don Rickles is a real actor and a real performer.

• 1:09:57David Sims?

  Sure, he's a real performer, but like he doesn't do a ton of it.

• 1:09:59Griffin Newman?

  He's done a lot of acting.

• 1:10:00David Sims?

  Yeah, yeah. But obviously like, this is one of his more substantial roles.

• 1:10:04Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, but it, but, but in the 50s and 60s, he had like a real acting role.

• 1:10:07David Sims?

  He could be on camera with these.

• 1:10:08Griffin Newman?

  He's in X, The Man With The X-Ray Eyes and he's in Kelly's Heroes. Is that what it's called? The Clint Eastwood movie and he had his own sitcom and whatever. I think he likes having guys on set who like can testify to these things and be bullshit detectors and can also just lend like immediate authenticity.

• 1:10:26Speaker 03

  I don't think that it's the craziest claim to make that it, that the mob run Vegas was better experientially than the current iteration of it.

• 1:10:34David Sims?

  His take also seems to be though, that like, it was great. You could go talk to the boss and I'm like, well, you may. I'm not sure everyone had that experience.

• 1:10:42Griffin Newman?

  It was great. You could walk up to the boss and call him a hockey puck. Like, that's, I think that's a little bit limited to your own world.

• 1:10:49David Sims?

  The film was shot largely in the Riviera.

• 1:10:51Speaker 03

  In the Riviera.

• 1:10:52David Sims?

  Which was open until 2015.

• 1:10:54Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:10:55David Sims?

  The primary tower used in the film was built in 1975, according to Scorsese. It was one of the rare local haunts that had basically not changed and obviously they were willing to shut it down. They could only have the casino in the middle of the night. So for six weeks, six nights a week, they did a military invasion at midnight, redressed it and had to clear out by like 10 a.m. Like that's how they shot.

• 1:11:17Griffin Newman?

  The shot at the end of the movie where the old people come in in the morning.

• 1:11:21David Sims?

  Right.

• 1:11:21Griffin Newman?

  He said like every morning, 6 a.m., 7 a.m.

• 1:11:24Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:11:24Griffin Newman?

  There'd be the rush of the senior citizens. Yeah.

• 1:11:27Speaker 03

  Man.

• 1:11:29Griffin Newman?

  But this is another.

• 1:11:30Speaker 03

  I did go to the Riviera once before it closed as well.

• 1:11:32Griffin Newman?

  How was it?

• 1:11:34Speaker 03

  It was cool. It was very rom- I had very much romanticized the Riviera.

• 1:11:37David Sims?

  The Riv, they called it.

• 1:11:38Speaker 03

  The Riv. Uh, you know, I didn't, I mean, the thing there was the, was the showgirls. That was like the, and I think they were still doing a.

• 1:11:47Griffin Newman?

  The ones from Paris?

• 1:11:48Speaker 03

  Like, yeah, the, the real, the, the gals from Paris.

• 1:11:52David Sims?

  What is your favorite place to go in Las Vegas?

• 1:11:55Griffin Newman?

  Great question.

• 1:11:57Speaker 03

  Place to go in Las Vegas now.

• 1:11:59David Sims?

  Casino, whatever.

• 1:11:59Speaker 03

  Casino, I mean, the thing is that I don't have any real like emotional attachment to any of them other than like the Venetian, um, because the Venetian is while enormous and stupid and casino, it's still, it's tacky in a way that I like. Uh, it's so, you know, it's like the closest thing to Liberace Vegas that exists on the strip now. And I mean, I guess the Bellagio is sort of that too, but I don't feel, I feel nothing when I walk through the Bellagio, whereas like I do.

• 1:12:32David Sims?

  Nothing.

• 1:12:33Speaker 03

  I feel, when I walk, uh, you know, across those canals with the eternal blue sky over me, I'm like, Vegas, baby.

• 1:12:41David Sims?

  I've never been to Las Vegas.

• 1:12:42Speaker 03

  I know, and that's insane. I'm always asking you to go to Vegas.

• 1:12:46David Sims?

  Well, the reason I've never been is.

• 1:12:47Speaker 03

  You have to get on a plane.

• 1:12:48David Sims?

  Well, no, it's because I didn't live in this country and I wouldn't have been able to do much there anyway. My parents are poor gambling. Like they were not like, we're going to Vegas.

• 1:12:57Speaker 03

  Well, I never went to Vegas as a kid. Yeah.

• 1:12:59David Sims?

  In LA, like you get, and then like I moved here and I never had any fucking money. So like if I was like, I'm going to Vegas, I think everyone in my life would have been like, David.

• 1:13:08Griffin Newman?

  Physically restrained.

• 1:13:09Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:13:10David Sims?

  David, you have about 500 bucks when you pay your rent. Like I, I don't think you should be planning any Vegas trip. I've been to Atlantic City, obviously. I've been to like Foxwoods and Mohegan Sun or whatever.

• 1:13:20Speaker 03

  We famously been to Atlantic City.

• 1:13:22David Sims?

  All of us went to AC together. I went there recently for my 40th birthday. I had a great time. Um, but, uh.

• 1:13:29Griffin Newman?

  And he won. He won some money.

• 1:13:31Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:13:32David Sims?

  Yeah, I won like 800 bucks.

• 1:13:33Speaker 03

  Hell yeah. Like where you playing Jack? Blackjack or craps?

• 1:13:36David Sims?

  Uh, mostly craps, uh, some blackjack, some roulette. I love roulette.

• 1:13:40Griffin Newman?

  It was dangerous though. He bet three future mini series. He put that down on the table and I said, David, you don't have the authority.

• 1:13:47David Sims?

  I put Guillermo del Toro and there was a little statue of him, but I'd push it in.

• 1:13:53Speaker 03

  You can afford to lose him. It's okay. It's just, it's not like it's a kid's college fund or anything.

• 1:13:57David Sims?

  Um, Jesus. Uh, so, you know, uh, they shot it in a casino. It was great.

• 1:14:03Griffin Newman?

  I, I was gonna say, this is, the other thing is like, this is the starting point of Scorsese being like, I get everything I want.

• 1:14:10Speaker 03

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:14:11Griffin Newman?

  We're not gonna build a casino sets. We're gonna use a real casino. We're gonna have just endless production value.

• 1:14:18David Sims?

  Right, exactly. And, but I mean, like, it's so much work, clearly.

• 1:14:21Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:14:21David Sims?

  Doing that. And it's such a strain, but they do it. Uh, the houses, that was difficult for them too. Like there were very few like 50s Vegas houses still standing, cause it's such a city of like endless renewal and kinda like, no, everything's gotta be, you know, so.

• 1:14:37Griffin Newman?

  They renovated a real home. They like put a family up in a hotel for months and like tore down walls and reconstructed it.

• 1:14:44Speaker 03

  For, for his house, the, the golf course one? Wow. Yeah.

• 1:14:47David Sims?

  The costumes, uh, they had 52 costume changes for Robert De Niro, just for De Niro.

• 1:14:52Griffin Newman?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:14:53David Sims?

  Um, they chose all the colors very carefully. Every morning they would narrow down, choose shirt, choose tie, choose jewelry.

• 1:15:01Speaker 03

  Designer, anybody?

• 1:15:01David Sims?

  Rita Ryac and John Donne. And Ryac says like, as he's getting more power, we wanted it to get more flamboyant. Like his jackets had like crazy loud linings that we'd never really see, but it was important for the actor, you know?

• 1:15:16Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:15:18Griffin Newman?

  Uh, Scorsese said that the outfits were toned down from what the real Lefty wore.

• 1:15:22Speaker 03

  I believe that, yeah.

• 1:15:23Griffin Newman?

  Uh, and that Lefty was, uh, present in every costume fitting.

• 1:15:27David Sims?

  It is.

• 1:15:28Griffin Newman?

  To prove that they would pass the sniff.

• 1:15:29David Sims?

  It is so vital when Pesci, like two hours into the movie is like, you look fucking insane. And De Niro's like, what? You know?

• 1:15:37Speaker 03

  I mean, it is, that, that was something.

• 1:15:38David Sims?

  It's a frog boiling thing where it's just like, you know, he's just adding a little bit every time.

• 1:15:43Speaker 03

  Meanwhile, Pesci looks super normal as we've established, but I, yeah, that is the thing in the book where, where like, he was so obsessed with this. Like his, he didn't drink really. He didn't really have that many vices.

• 1:15:55David Sims?

  This was his money thing.

• 1:15:56Speaker 03

  Yeah, it was the suits. And it was like, there's some quote of like, he would walk into a tailor's shop, cause he would get everything tailored like 10, 10 times. And like, the tailor would shrivel in fear every time he would walk in the door, cause it was just gonna be another like, you know, multi-hour session of him like being so exacting about what he wanted. Um.

• 1:16:14Griffin Newman?

  Another thing Marty said, knowing that the movie starts with the car bombing and that you're gonna circle back to that, but that's gonna be the first look you see. He and De Niro were like, let's just fucking lead with the peach colored jacket and shirt. Let's lead with something so garish and over the top and aggressive.

• 1:16:30David Sims?

  Right.

• 1:16:30Griffin Newman?

  No, but also just like, this is the color temperature of this movie. You have to get used to it now.

• 1:16:35Speaker 03

  Yeah. Do you know he was walking out of Marie Callender's in real life when that happens? Which is so funny. Like I'm at, like wearing a peach suit in a Marie Callender's in 1983.

• 1:16:47David Sims?

  It's so funny because the famous like, you know, New York mob hit, like Umberto's Clam House or Sparks or whatever, like where it's like, right, that restaurant's famous for like, someone got shot outside of it. And there's some Marie Callender's, like someone tried to blow up a mobster outside this Marie Callender. Super 35, it's the first time he's shooting on Super 35, which is a larger frame, you know, film stock. Uh, it's his first time working with Robert Richardson, who he's gonna work with again on Bringing Out the Dead, Aviator, Shutter Island, Hugo, Shine a Light, and the, uh, Living in the Material World. So they work together a lot. Right. Richardson was hesitant about 35. You have to have a reduced quality negative.

• 1:17:24Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:24David Sims?

  It's all optical. You like blow up the, the frame, but he likes how it looks. I mean.

• 1:17:29Griffin Newman?

  There's another thing going on.

• 1:17:31David Sims?

  Pretty fucking good.

• 1:17:31Speaker 03

  It's gorgeous, gorgeous.

• 1:17:32David Sims?

  I had my 4K steelbook. Watch, watch it.

• 1:17:35Griffin Newman?

  Ben watched the 4K steelbook. You cracked that steel, didn't you, Ben?

• 1:17:39Speaker 02

  No, I watched it on a, I wa, I watched a little bit.

• 1:17:43Griffin Newman?

  Okay.

• 1:17:43Speaker 02

  But yeah, I mostly finished it on my iPad at home.

• 1:17:46Griffin Newman?

  You watched, you broke it into.

• 1:17:47Speaker 02

  As it should be viewed.

• 1:17:49Griffin Newman?

  You broke it into two chunks.

• 1:17:50David Sims?

  I watched it on my Apple watch.

• 1:17:51Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:53Griffin Newman?

  I was going to say, uh, the reason they shoot it on Super 35 is cause this is peak VHS TV era where directors are getting so protective of, I can't let my shit get pan and scanned. And so Scorsese was like, I prefer anamorphic. I would have used anamorphic, but I'm going Super 35 because that way I can do the double framing in the monitor at the time and at least control that however people are seeing this movie, it reflects my vision. Uh, Richardson hated it and refused to use 35 until, again, until Kill Bill.

• 1:18:28David Sims?

  Wow.

• 1:18:29Griffin Newman?

  Because he said.

• 1:18:29David Sims?

  Crushed it on that one too.

• 1:18:30Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, but, uh, because digital intermediates had been introduced, he felt like he had more control over the final image at that point.

• 1:18:37David Sims?

  Thelma Scoob, maybe this is a great quote from the great Thelma. It's the first movie she digitally edits on Abbott.

• 1:18:43Speaker 03

  Oh, wow.

• 1:18:45David Sims?

  I made it on Casino and I was a very bad girl. I didn't wanna do it and the producer told me I had to do it and I was very grumpy. That is her quote.

• 1:18:52Griffin Newman?

  This is one of the most beautifully edited films I've ever seen.

• 1:18:55David Sims?

  She had to put a quarter in a jar anytime she said to her, like assistant editor or whatever, I could have done this better on film. They're like, Thelma?

• 1:19:05David Sims?

  Finally, she says, after about two weeks, I did finally lock in with it and it was, it is faster. Like I can do like four edits for Marty of a scene instead of one. Like there's cool things about it. So now I'm more fearless about like improvising and stuff. It does feel like one of those things where it's like, they handed fucking, you know, one of the like Rembrandt, like a computer to paint on or whatever. And he's like, this sucks. And then after a while, he's like, well, actually I could probably do like a 40 billion cool things with this. Cause like her editing after this, like goes bonkers.

• 1:19:38Griffin Newman?

  But I feel like this movie is bonkers. She's doing crazy experimental shit. Yeah.

• 1:19:42David Sims?

  I'm saying like, from this moment on.

• 1:19:44Griffin Newman?

  A hundred percent. Yes. Fully agree.

• 1:19:47Speaker 03

  But I always think of the edit, the first time that Pesci sees Sharon Stone, there's like the three, like it's almost like blinks of like going closer and closer. And it's like such a, it's such a flourish. Like I'm surprised, I mean, I, I think of the editing on Age of Innocence as being very, um, similar in.

• 1:20:04Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:20:04David Sims?

  It's a good point. And that was.

• 1:20:06Speaker 03

  Feeling, but that was still by hand. That's, yeah. Wild.

• 1:20:10David Sims?

  Uh, and then of course the film has a lot of voiceover. Uh, you might have noticed. It has, in my opinion, the greatest use of voiceover ever, which is Pesci being like, anyway, so then I went to the cornfield and everything was fine. Ow!

• 1:20:23Speaker 03

  It's so good. It's so good.

• 1:20:25David Sims?

  It is one of the cleverest tricks he plays on you. Cause you're just like, well, I'm in the hands of a voiceover, so I know like.

• 1:20:31Speaker 03

  He's telling me.

• 1:20:31David Sims?

  Yeah. It's so fucking crazy.

• 1:20:34Griffin Newman?

  A close second is Frank Vincent not having a single line in this movie until it cuts to his voiceover and he just goes like, this fucking piece of shit.

• 1:20:42David Sims?

  I fucking have to lie to the boss now. This is fucked up. Uh, Scorsese says, it lets you in on the secret thoughts of the characters. Yes, thank you, Marty.

• 1:20:50Griffin Newman?

  I did notice that. Yeah, I picked up on that.

• 1:20:52David Sims?

  Uh, it has this wonderfully comforting tone of someone telling you a story and then it has a kind of irony, especially the tirades by Nikki, where he's basically like bitching about his bosses. Um, yeah, it's really interesting. Uh, the MPAA gave it an NC 17 four times before finally they edited it enough on, to get an R. Uh, the vice scene, um, they had to make the flying eyeball, uh, a little more, leave that to the viewer a little more.

• 1:21:21Speaker 02

  And it's still so gnarly.

• 1:21:23David Sims?

  Yes.

• 1:21:23Griffin Newman?

  Uh, it's gross. Um, I, is that the only thing they mentioned specifically cutting out?

• 1:21:28David Sims?

  The vice, the vice thing is, but just the violence, uh, generally, uh, but I think the, the vice was the big problem. They had to like really massage that scene. Why? Are you thinking of other scenes? I mean, the baseball bats.

• 1:21:40Griffin Newman?

  This doesn't, I, I mean, maybe it speaks to how desensitized we have become by this point. This movie is very violent. I don't think of this as being like NC 17 level.

• 1:21:50David Sims?

  The, the extreme moments of violence, I think are, are the problem.

• 1:21:53Speaker 03

  It also feels so downstream from like Reservoir Dogs and stuff. Like, and you know, I, I still think it would have been shocking at the time, but I feel like it comes in context of like, okay, we're doing this.

• 1:22:03Griffin Newman?

  It's still shocking today. It just doesn't feel, uh, yeah, yeah. I guess, right.

• 1:22:08David Sims?

  The cornfield is just very, very brutal. It's, it's pretty high on the kind of like what the MTA could probably tolerate at this time.

• 1:22:16Griffin Newman?

  I think you're right though, that Tarantino is the correct comparison point. Like Tarantino running concurrently in the nineties is the sort of like, the language of film violence is changing a little bit. This feels almost classical.

• 1:22:27Speaker 03

  Yeah, but the, the, the violence in specifically in the cornfield, I think, is shocking because of its lack of like Tarantino-esque romanticization.

• 1:22:38David Sims?

  Exactly.

• 1:22:39Speaker 03

  It is just about like, oh no, this is actually what it was like every time these guys put a hit on somebody and they buried them in a hole in Vegas. Like, it was, it looked like this. Like there's no gloss of like, and, but it was kinda cool. Like it's just dark and brutal and horrible.

• 1:22:54David Sims?

  There are some, like, you know, in the sequence where the people are getting murdered, you know, some more classic kind of cool, you know, like the guy getting shot with the silencer where you're like, right, clean. And obviously the point.

• 1:23:06Griffin Newman?

  Alan King, you're talking about the death in the snow. Yeah.

• 1:23:09David Sims?

  Obviously the point of the baseball bat murder in reality was like to send this message of like, these guys fucked up beyond repair. Like you're, you know, this can happen to you. But Marty says like. Nicky's horrible. He's a terrible man, but there's something that happens for me watching him get beaten with bats and put in a hole. It's a tragedy. It's the frailty of being human. I want to push audiences' emotional empathy with these characters, like even though they are villains.

• 1:23:33Griffin Newman?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:23:34David Sims?

  And he's like, and I saw the pictures of like what they, you know, what the real guys looked like. Like, we shot that very straight. Like, we were not trying to sensationalize it or anything.

• 1:23:41Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:23:42David Sims?

  A lot of songs?

• 1:23:44Speaker 03

  Few songs.

• 1:23:44Griffin Newman?

  Two-disc soundtrack?

• 1:23:45David Sims?

  Yep.

• 1:23:46Speaker 03

  Guys, how do you feel about the Rolling Stones?

• 1:23:48David Sims?

  I love them. I got no beef with them. But I mean, like, he's got fucking Bach in here, you know, he's like Van Mar, I mean Fleetwood Mac, uh, they tried to keep it-

• 1:23:58Griffin Newman?

  Animals, The End, House of the Rising Sun.

• 1:24:01David Sims?

  Yeah, House of the Rising Sun is sort of like the, it's like this movie's Layla. Like, it's the, everything's fucking over song.

• 1:24:08Griffin Newman?

  Two different Devo tracks.

• 1:24:10David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:11Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:11David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:11Griffin Newman?

  You got, uh, With It and their Satisfaction cover.

• 1:24:15Speaker 03

  That's right.

• 1:24:15Speaker 02

  It's like the music and then Sharon Stone's outfits are really helping tell you where you are in, in, in time.

• 1:24:23Speaker 03

  Yeah, they mark the time, even if they're not doing a Chyron for every passing year, you kind of know from now what the music is and how she's dressed.

• 1:24:31Griffin Newman?

  Right, because they do the Chyron for where they are more than when they are.

• 1:24:34Speaker 03

  Yeah, you mean back home.

• 1:24:35Griffin Newman?

  Yes, back home is so good.

• 1:24:37Speaker 03

  I love back home every time it pops up.

• 1:24:39David Sims?

  And then, like Scorsese says, like, "I considered this my final curtain on the mob." Like, this was my last statement. I've said everything I need to say. He doesn't really make a mob movie again until, uh, Irishman. Departed is about organized crime.

• 1:24:53Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:24:54David Sims?

  But like, it's a little different, I guess. I mean, that's the other one where you could say, like, no, come on, Marty, like, you made it-

• 1:25:01Griffin Newman?

  It's the one that throws it off a little bit. I think when you have fucking Jack Nicholson beating people with a baseball bat, yeah.

• 1:25:07David Sims?

  But obviously, it's not about the mafia, I guess, in the same way.

• 1:25:11Griffin Newman?

  No, no.

• 1:25:12David Sims?

  Um, but, you know, I think that's one reason he was resistant to Irishman for a while.

• 1:25:17Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:25:18David Sims?

  Where De Niro is like, "I really want to do this," and Marty's like, "I think I, I think I said everything."

• 1:25:22Griffin Newman?

  Irishman does feel like a true goodbye, though.

• 1:25:25David Sims?

  Well, that's what I love about it. He finally figured out how to say goodbye. De Niro kind of talked him into it, yeah. Um, yeah, so that's what I have to tell you about Casino.

• 1:25:33Speaker 03

  Is there, have you guys gotten any insight? I don't know how far, if you're doing these out of order or what?

• 1:25:38Griffin Newman?

  We're in order.

• 1:25:39David Sims?

  No, we're pretty in order.

• 1:25:39Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 1:25:39Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:25:40Speaker 03

  Do you have any insight on who the, the Pesci was, and also the De Niro in Mean Streets? Like, that guy, that was like, a guy he continually comes back to, like, up until this point, this sort of like rabid dog that, like, somebody has to keep under control but still feels responsibility to. Is there a guy in his real life that was like this? Because it's such a type and it's so, like, specific.

• 1:26:05Griffin Newman?

  He's in the Rebecca Miller movie, if you've watched that.

• 1:26:07David Sims?

  If you want, is it called Mr. Scorsese?

• 1:26:09Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, Mr. Scorsese.

• 1:26:10Speaker 03

  Wait, which one?

• 1:26:11David Sims?

  There's a guy who's like that. There's the one guy who they're all, the rest of them are like, "He was fucking crazy," right? Like, you know, where they, I can't remember all their names.

• 1:26:16Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:26:17Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 1:26:17David Sims?

  Um, but like, it does seem like that, because that, and that is like Johnny Boy in Mean Streets.

• 1:26:22Speaker 03

  Yeah, the Johnny Boy.

• 1:26:22Griffin Newman?

  He's Johnny Boy more than he's the Pesci character.

• 1:26:24Speaker 03

  Okay, okay.

• 1:26:25Griffin Newman?

  I feel like the Pesci character is more a guy he would witness than a guy he knew.

• 1:26:29David Sims?

  Yeah, and Pileggi is obviously unearthing these. It is funny that Pesci, two times, like, in Raging Bull-

• 1:26:36Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:26:38David Sims?

  Pesci's a flawed character, but he's close to the moral center of the film, I guess, right? Like, and like, that's where they begin to collaborate. And then, like, in Goodfellas and Casino, it's just like, and then there was this one guy.

• 1:26:50Griffin Newman?

  This one fucking guy.

• 1:26:52Speaker 03

  I mean, it really does, like-

• 1:26:54David Sims?

  Obviously, in Goodfellas, he's playing a psychopath who even the mob couldn't really hit. In Casino, he is relatively put together for a while.

• 1:27:01Speaker 03

  Yeah, watching Goodfellas and Casino back to back, I was really actually reminded of, um, you know, in Twin Peaks: The Return, the little guy who runs around with an ice pick?

• 1:27:09Griffin Newman?

  I love that guy.

• 1:27:10David Sims?

  Yes.

• 1:27:11Griffin Newman?

  That's what's so normal.

• 1:27:12Speaker 03

  He is the descendant of Pesci in these movies, like-

• 1:27:16David Sims?

  It is obviously, also, as we have mentioned, just so crazy that, parallel to all this, he's like, "I'm a family movie star now."

• 1:27:23Griffin Newman?

  Yes, right.

• 1:27:24David Sims?

  Like, I mean, maybe by mistake almost, but like, that I knew who he was and I hadn't seen any Marty movies.

• 1:27:30Griffin Newman?

  The first Home Alone is the same year as Goodfellas?

• 1:27:32David Sims?

  Correct, 1990.

• 1:27:33Griffin Newman?

  That's just insane. That's insane to have a year where you're in the biggest hit film and you win the Oscar, and the two movies couldn't be further apart. And you're just like, everyone in America, illogically, loves Joe Pesci, little Joey Pesci.

• 1:27:48David Sims?

  And like, I guess, I feel like it really starts with Lethal Weapon 2, right? That's sort of like when he moves to comedic energy.

• 1:27:57Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:27:58David Sims?

  As like, like, yeah, he can play like a motor mouth, like a sort of guy who pops up in your movie, right? Like, all his other 80s stuff, yeah.

• 1:28:05Griffin Newman?

  After this, it's like Lethal Weapon 4, Ben's beloved, uh, Eight Heads in a Duffel Bag.

• 1:28:12David Sims?

  Yep.

• 1:28:12Griffin Newman?

  And then he basically goes into hiding.

• 1:28:14David Sims?

  Gone Fishing, don't forget Gone Fishing.

• 1:28:16Griffin Newman?

  I forgot Gone Fishing, I'm so sorry, never forget.

• 1:28:19David Sims?

  Joe Pesci, Danny Glover, I've gone fishing.

• 1:28:21Griffin Newman?

  But he doesn't make a movie between 98 and-

• 1:28:25David Sims?

  The Chicago Tribune said, "Big laughs!" Chicago Tribune was-

• 1:28:29Speaker 03

  Sexy, funny.

• 1:28:31David Sims?

  Horn up the quotes, just saying. Yeah, no, no, that's the end of it. That's when he-

• 1:28:37Griffin Newman?

  He makes the small appearance in Good Shepherd.

• 1:28:39David Sims?

  Yes, very good performance.

• 1:28:40Griffin Newman?

  And then he's in Love Ranch for HBO.

• 1:28:43David Sims?

  You can forget.

• 1:28:44Griffin Newman?

  But he doesn't have a significant role in a theatrical feature film until The Irishman, right?

• 1:28:49David Sims?

  Love Ranch was, I thought that was a theater.

• 1:28:52Griffin Newman?

  HBO, HBO movie.

• 1:28:53David Sims?

  No.

• 1:28:53Griffin Newman?

  Hackford?

• 1:28:54David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 1:28:55Griffin Newman?

  HBO.

• 1:28:56David Sims?

  No.

• 1:28:56Griffin Newman?

  You say no, I'm saying HBO.

• 1:28:58David Sims?

  Right, but it was released in limited US theaters on June 30th, 9/2010. I did not release in limited US theaters.

• 1:29:04Speaker 03

  It's not, no, it's HBO.

• 1:29:06David Sims?

  It's not HBO.

• 1:29:06Griffin Newman?

  Wow.

• 1:29:06David Sims?

  You're just making that up.

• 1:29:07Griffin Newman?

  Why was I so certain it aired on HBO?

• 1:29:09David Sims?

  Because it feels like it's a fucking HBO movie is why.

• 1:29:12Griffin Newman?

  It really does feel like it was an HBO movie.

• 1:29:13David Sims?

  But you, you of course are thinking of Cat House, the series, an HBO reality television series following the lives of sex workers at the Moonlight Bunny Ranch in Nevada.

• 1:29:21Griffin Newman?

  I know from Cat House, don't correct me on Cat House.

• 1:29:23David Sims?

  That's just what happened when I Googled Love Ranch HBO.

• 1:29:25Griffin Newman?

  Yes, okay.

• 1:29:26David Sims?

  Um, yeah, no, he, he calls it quits. I mean, it always feels with him, like, the story of obviously, like, how they cast him in Raging Bull where he's like, eh-

• 1:29:36Griffin Newman?

  I'm done.

• 1:29:37David Sims?

  I don't really want to do, like, it always feels like he was almost being strong-armed into acting.

• 1:29:41Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:29:42David Sims?

  He's very good. He's a good actor. He can do specific things.

• 1:29:48Speaker 02

  He's great at kicking people when they're on the ground.

• 1:29:51Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:29:51David Sims?

  He's going, "You fuck you!"

• 1:29:52Griffin Newman?

  Incredible at that.

• 1:29:53David Sims?

  He's really good at that.

• 1:29:54Griffin Newman?

  And it's also, we know that De Niro is bad at that.

• 1:29:57David Sims?

  Yeah, he's real bad at it. I mean, does Lefty, like, raise a, oh, sorry, um, Ace?

• 1:30:04Griffin Newman?

  Uh-huh.

• 1:30:04David Sims?

  Does he, like, raise a hand to anyone in this movie? Like, it feels like-

• 1:30:08Griffin Newman?

  Okay, can I throw out?

• 1:30:09Speaker 02

  I don't think he ever moves quickly at all.

• 1:30:12David Sims?

  I mean, when he's fighting with Ginger, maybe, like, they're kind of like pushing and shoving and stuff, but he's pretty still.

• 1:30:18Speaker 03

  But he never, like, hits her, I don't think.

• 1:30:19David Sims?

  No, it's like, it's more withdrawn than Jimmy Burke in Goodfellas. Like, you know, like, okay, go ahead.

• 1:30:24Griffin Newman?

  Can I throw out the big question?

• 1:30:25David Sims?

  Sure.

• 1:30:26Speaker 03

  Uh-huh.

• 1:30:26Griffin Newman?

  Okay.

• 1:30:26David Sims?

  The film's set in Casino, that's why it's called Casino.

• 1:30:28Griffin Newman?

  Thank you. That was the one answer I've been waiting for for an hour and 26 minutes.

• 1:30:32Speaker 03

  While we're done.

• 1:30:33Griffin Newman?

  Yeah. Um, I think De Niro is excellent in this movie.

• 1:30:36David Sims?

  Sure.

• 1:30:37Griffin Newman?

  However, when you read about the real guy, everyone's like, "He was so outside of this world. He was so heady. There was nothing scary about him. There was nothing physical about him."

• 1:30:48David Sims?

  He's just a weird gambling nerd, essentially, right?

• 1:30:50Griffin Newman?

  He needed a Pesci to manifest the physicalization and protect him in this world, because he was the last guy you could ever see getting into a fight.

• 1:30:58David Sims?

  This is what he looked like.

• 1:30:59Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:31:00Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:31:00Speaker 03

  That's even him playing up a mobster thing, like, he's doing the lip thing and everything.

• 1:31:05Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:31:05David Sims?

  But he looks like a bit of a dwarf.

• 1:31:07Griffin Newman?

  But he was sort of reedy-looking and he had blonde hair.

• 1:31:09Speaker 03

  He was kind of a weird, pale, skinny guy.

• 1:31:12Griffin Newman?

  Midwestern Jew.

• 1:31:13Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:31:13Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:31:14Speaker 03

  And I, I have had, you're taking the words out of my mouth, Griffin, this is, this is something I've been thinking about a lot, that I, I think, I don't think he is, I think he's great in it. It's far from my favorite part of the movie, though, and I, I really like thinking about who else in this year could have-

• 1:31:30Griffin Newman?

  Okay, so I got it.

• 1:31:31Speaker 03

  Oh, you got one, okay.

• 1:31:32Griffin Newman?

  And I'm stealing this from Connor Ratliff.

• 1:31:34David Sims?

  And obviously, the film-

• 1:31:35Griffin Newman?

  Gave me this nuclear take years ago.

• 1:31:36David Sims?

  Has to star Robert De Niro because of his involvement with Martin Scorsese and all this.

• 1:31:40Speaker 03

  Yeah, of course, yeah, but I, I think-

• 1:31:42David Sims?

  It's not like they talked to other guys and then Robert occurred to them.

• 1:31:45Griffin Newman?

  Right, but it's one of those things where, like, I think that, and, and that De Niro's a bit of a superpower in terms of even getting access to casinos in Vegas and whatever. He's the kind of movie star that opens doors in production and saves you money in weird ways.

• 1:31:59David Sims?

  Right.

• 1:31:59Griffin Newman?

  And, uh, Nobu wouldn't exist if not for this film.

• 1:32:02David Sims?

  That's so true.

• 1:32:03Speaker 03

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:32:03David Sims?

  What?

• 1:32:04Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:32:04David Sims?

  What do you mean?

• 1:32:05Griffin Newman?

  The, the big high roller who they tricked to cancel his flight to get him back to the table to lose his money is Chef Nobu.

• 1:32:13David Sims?

  Oh, wow.

• 1:32:13Griffin Newman?

  And that's how De Niro meets him, and the restaurant gets founded-

• 1:32:17David Sims?

  Crazy.

• 1:32:17Griffin Newman?

  -in Tribeca, which is now closed.

• 1:32:20Speaker 03

  The Tribeca one was the first?

• 1:32:22David Sims?

  The Tribeca Grill is closed.

• 1:32:24Griffin Newman?

  Oh, Tribeca Grill is closed, of course.

• 1:32:25David Sims?

  I think Nobu is still opening, and obviously, there's many other Nobu sort of things.

• 1:32:29Speaker 03

  Oh, but his first, I think his first restaurant, though, is Matsahisa in LA.

• 1:32:33David Sims?

  Yes.

• 1:32:33Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:32:34David Sims?

  Nobu, yeah, I mean, Tribeca Grill was De Niro's, you know, big spot in-

• 1:32:38Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:32:38David Sims?

  And then it finally closed.

• 1:32:40Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 1:32:40David Sims?

  Uh, rip.

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• 1:34:29Griffin Newman?

  I think every acting choice De Niro is making is excellent. I think he brings too much baggage of this guy belongs in this world. He makes sense in this kind of movie. Of course, he would be associated with these guys, which is removing the friction that everyone describes in the real situation. Conor Ralliff has long thrown out. If this movie was cast with Dustin Hoffman, does it not get any of the Goodfellas comparisons? Does this movie stand totally on its own if it's Dustin Hoffman in this era?

• 1:34:58David Sims?

  I think the Pesci involvement would, you know, would still brook some comparisons.

• 1:35:01Griffin Newman?

  But it would be a different dynamic between the two of them.

• 1:35:04Speaker 03

  I, I think, I think Hoffman is too good looking in this era. I think he, okay, so here's an interesting little butterfly effect thing.

• 1:35:12David Sims?

  Interesting take. Hoffman too much of a hottie in the 90s.

• 1:35:15Griffin Newman?

  Interesting take.

• 1:35:16David Sims?

  But carry on, carry on.

• 1:35:17Speaker 03

  Compared to that.

• 1:35:18David Sims?

  Sphere Hoffman's hot. But compared to, no, no, but Griffin's saying more like he has a slightly different energy.

• 1:35:24Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, like a little, he could be a nebbish a little bit more. Yeah.

• 1:35:27Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:35:28Speaker 03

  Um, what if, and I'm not saying that this was the right commercial uh, choice or ever would have happened, but if Buscemi was Ace?

• 1:35:39David Sims?

  Yeah, that is, I mean, obviously.

• 1:35:41Speaker 03

  Do we not have Boardwalk Empire then? Do we save ourselves all of that?

• 1:35:44David Sims?

  Buscemi's not like ready as a star or whatever. I mean, obviously, he'd be good, but like, you know, like.

• 1:35:49Speaker 03

  But I mean, this is the same, oh, no, it's like two years before Lebowski. I mean, he's like still been all these, these Tarantino's.

• 1:35:57David Sims?

  He's in Rest of Our Dogs.

• 1:35:58Griffin Newman?

  Goes the year after this?

• 1:35:59David Sims?

  Correct.

• 1:36:00Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:36:00David Sims?

  But obviously, like, what's interesting about Pesci, I mean, Buscemi in,

• 1:36:04Griffin Newman?

  Buscemi would be incredible.

• 1:36:06David Sims?

  In Boardwalk Empire, though,

• 1:36:07Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:36:08David Sims?

  was that like, he's so quiet in that movie, in that show. And he's so like, you know, he's doing this kind of thing. But in the 90s, the whole thing with Buscemi was like, hey, he never shuts the fuck up. Like, the motor mouth.

• 1:36:19Griffin Newman?

  Buscemi, we should correct ourselves, by the way. Yeah.

• 1:36:22David Sims?

  This is Hoffman in that, this is Hoffman in Sphere.

• 1:36:25Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:36:25David Sims?

  Sphere, Spheresman.

• 1:36:27Speaker 03

  I mean, to me, he's also just.

• 1:36:28David Sims?

  He's got this kind of like, I'm not young. I mean, I'm not, I'm still young.

• 1:36:30Griffin Newman?

  He was always doing the squinty sort of pouty look on the poster.

• 1:36:33Speaker 03

  But that's sort of also exactly what De Niro is doing in this movie as well. Like, yeah. I mean, I, but I think, yeah, you're right. He can play some different notes.

• 1:36:40Griffin Newman?

  If you give him whiter blonde hair.

• 1:36:41Speaker 03

  Yeah. But I do think, I think the point, though, that like he doesn't come off as enough of an outsider. Like, I think the real test for me is when he is in the era where it's all kind of going to shit and he starts his TV show.

• 1:36:54Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:36:55David Sims?

  And I really gotta watch some of that.

• 1:36:57Speaker 03

  I know.

• 1:36:58David Sims?

  Is that on Netflix or something? Can we watch that?

• 1:37:00Griffin Newman?

  It must be on Howdy.

• 1:37:01Speaker 03

  Scott, Howdy. I always forget about Howdy.

• 1:37:06Griffin Newman?

  Howdy.

• 1:37:07Speaker 03

  Howdy Original. Um, but that moment, like, should be, I think, the peak of the like, dark absurdist comedy of this, of this film. And to me, it doesn't quite get there, uh, just because the idea of Ace being flamboyant isn't exactly, like, the comedic idea with De Niro as Ace doesn't have that friction of like a bit.

• 1:37:35Griffin Newman?

  From the get-go.

• 1:37:35Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah. It's like, of course, he's the boss.

• 1:37:38David Sims?

  Reflected in the clothes, really. And he is so funny. And like, the movie plays the joke of like, now you gotta lay low. And he's like, yeah, yeah, yeah, sure. The left of the Ace Rothstein show. When you get to that in the book, you're like, what are you talking about? Like, you know, it is so crazy that he had a TV show that Sinatra was on.

• 1:37:57Griffin Newman?

  Yes, it's not.

• 1:37:58David Sims?

  That I assume was him just being like, and uh, um, you're a singer? And Frank Sinatra's like, yeah. You know, like, I think he was terrible on this show, right?

• 1:38:06Speaker 03

  He's not a telegenic presence. And that was the thing, like, his thing was he was a numbers guy and he was the best numbers guy. And all the other kind of Vegas stuff maybe didn't come to him as naturally as just being fucking amazing at gambling.

• 1:38:18David Sims?

  Right.

• 1:38:19Griffin Newman?

  You're, you're correct that he's quiet in this and he's more taciturn. And he's trying his hardest to shrink.

• 1:38:27David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 1:38:27Griffin Newman?

  To not feel powerful.

• 1:38:28David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 1:38:29Griffin Newman?

  But he just innately carries too much weight as a movie star.

• 1:38:33David Sims?

  Throws the fit so perfectly and he's just.

• 1:38:35Speaker 02

  I mean, the thing too is he's so good looking.

• 1:38:38Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:38:38Speaker 02

  That when Sharon Stone is with like her girlfriend being like this fucking guy. I'm like, you've got the good life.

• 1:38:44Speaker 03

  It's 1995 De Niro. Come on.

• 1:38:47Griffin Newman?

  You're, you're, look, Emily, your hot's for Dustin Hoffman aside. In that scene, I buy her turning him down a lot more. If it's Dustin Hoffman.

• 1:38:57Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, totally. That's true.

• 1:38:57Griffin Newman?

  Where she's just like, you're kind of weird.

• 1:39:00Speaker 03

  I mean, there's a, there's a scene in the book where, where Jerry, the real life Ginger is like, it's like one of the first times they sleep together. And she's like, they're like in bed and she's like, you've never slept with anybody who looks like me, have you?

• 1:39:12Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 1:39:12Speaker 03

  And he was like, yeah, she was right.

• 1:39:16David Sims?

  In the book, it makes more sense. Cause the whole, you know, the thing in the book is it's just like, right, this guy was so good at everything. And it's just like, but he and his fucking lady could not stop fucking each other up all the time. Like, that's the unstable element he can't control.

• 1:39:28Griffin Newman?

  Right. David, uh, who else is in Sphere?

• 1:39:29David Sims?

  Sharon Stone.

• 1:39:31Griffin Newman?

  Good call.

• 1:39:32David Sims?

  And do you know who else is in Sphere? Jerry, that's the alien, except it's not an alien twist. Watch Sphere to find out more.

• 1:39:39Griffin Newman?

  I've never seen Sphere.

• 1:39:39David Sims?

  Sphere rocks. And I pitched to someone.

• 1:39:42Griffin Newman?

  Please.

• 1:39:43David Sims?

  And this might be kind of a Queen Latifah.

• 1:39:46Griffin Newman?

  Wild card pick.

• 1:39:47David Sims?

  Yeah, go ahead.

• 1:39:48Speaker 03

  Queen Latifah.

• 1:39:49David Sims?

  She's in Sphere, she gets killed by Jolly Fish. Yes?

• 1:39:51Griffin Newman?

  Ben's got his Google search results of the real guy. So he's looking at photos of the real guy.

• 1:39:56Speaker 02

  And Jerry as well. And Sharon Stone really looks very close to her.

• 1:39:59Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's a good match.

• 1:40:00Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, it's a really good match.

• 1:40:02Speaker 02

  But I'm looking at this guy. What about Rodney Dangerfield?

• 1:40:05David Sims?

  That's exactly what I thought.

• 1:40:06Griffin Newman?

  He's got a Rodney vibe.

• 1:40:07David Sims?

  It's exactly what I thought. Now, the only problem.

• 1:40:09Speaker 02

  Could Rodney pull it off?

• 1:40:09Griffin Newman?

  He's skinny, he's very, he's like real thin, but otherwise he's got a little bit of.

• 1:40:13David Sims?

  He's got the Rodney sort of hair, like thing. The problem, I think, is that Rodney

• 1:40:18Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:40:19David Sims?

  might have some thoughts on the level of respect afforded him in the establishment.

• 1:40:24Speaker 03

  Yeah, that's true.

• 1:40:25David Sims?

  And it might take over the movie a little bit.

• 1:40:27Griffin Newman?

  Bring up the fact that respect was not being shown at the proper amount.

• 1:40:32David Sims?

  When Rodney is complaining about his wife.

• 1:40:34Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:40:35David Sims?

  I might, as a viewer, recall some of his routines.

• 1:40:39Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:40:39David Sims?

  If you know what I'm talking, you know, you know what I mean?

• 1:40:41Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 1:40:42David Sims?

  Like, some of Rodney Dangerfield's comedy, and you guys are not comedy nerds like me, so you might not know this, was about his wife.

• 1:40:48Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 1:40:49David Sims?

  And how she behaved around town.

• 1:40:51Griffin Newman?

  Well, here's another issue is here's a character who has to survive a car bombing. And I would be so worried if this guy had to leave the scene of the crime and check in with his Dr. Vinnie Boombots. I, the kind of advice that Dr. Vinnie Boombots would give him, I don't know if he would make it.

• 1:41:10David Sims?

  I haven't spoken to my wife in years. I don't want to interrupt her.

• 1:41:14Griffin Newman?

  He would show up there, third degree burns on his body.

• 1:41:17David Sims?

  I'm just imagining him doing this about Sharon Stone.

• 1:41:19Speaker 03

  On his TV show.

• 1:41:20Griffin Newman?

  He'd say to Dr. Vinnie Boombots, is my arm gonna make it? And he'd go, you're ugly. And he'd say, excuse me, sir, Dr. Vinnie Boombots, I want a second opinion. And he would go, you're stupid too.

• 1:41:33David Sims?

  My wife's jealous, he's getting ridiculous. She looked at my calendar and she wanted to know who May was. It's a good one. That's a thinker. It's a thinker. That's a Rodney joke.

• 1:41:44David Sims?

  Anyway, I've got some more here.

• 1:41:45Griffin Newman?

  Rodney's one of the greatest.

• 1:41:46David Sims?

  I told my wife, if a man is like wine, he gets better with it. She locked me in the cellar.

• 1:41:51Speaker 03

  That's good.

• 1:41:53David Sims?

  My wife was afraid of the dark, then she saw me naked. Now she's afraid of the light.

• 1:41:58David Sims?

  I'm not even doing it that good.

• 1:42:01Griffin Newman?

  You're doing it pretty well.

• 1:42:02Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's really good. Dangerfield Sims. I don't know.

• 1:42:06Griffin Newman?

  Dangerfield Sims?

• 1:42:07David Sims?

  I, one, like, of the easiest ways for me to just, like, calm myself down or cheer myself up is just Rodney. Just, just, just put Rodney into YouTube, you'll be fine. You'll be fine.

• 1:42:20Speaker 03

  I know this about you.

• 1:42:21David Sims?

  Oh, it's the best. Especially just, and just Carson, you know? And Rodney, like, you know, he had, like, the long, thin sock, socks under his, you know, and he's always, like, putting his leg up and kind of picking at the sock and, god, I love Rodney. Uh, he'd be great. So he should have cast Rodney.

• 1:42:37Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:42:38Speaker 02

  What, when is, when's the, what's the cartoon?

• 1:42:40Griffin Newman?

  River Dangerfield?

• 1:42:41David Sims?

  Yeah, when's that?

• 1:42:42Griffin Newman?

  A few years later.

• 1:42:43David Sims?

  Okay.

• 1:42:43Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, I know, my sex life is terrible. My wife put a mirror over the dog's bed. And actually, she did put a mirror over a bed. She said she likes to watch herself laugh.

• 1:42:51David Sims?

  That's pretty good.

• 1:42:52Griffin Newman?

  Thank you.

• 1:42:54Griffin Newman?

  I don't think the impression was good, but the joke is incredible. The fact that, the fact that the first joke is actually just a setup for the second joke. No one does it like Rodney.

• 1:43:03David Sims?

  Rodney is only in one film in 1995, and it is Casper, in which he is one of the faces, right, that he turns into or whatever.

• 1:43:10Griffin Newman?

  When Bill Pullman washes his face.

• 1:43:11David Sims?

  Right, he also turns into Clarence Wood and, I forget who else.

• 1:43:15Griffin Newman?

  You watched Casper recently?

• 1:43:16David Sims?

  No, me?

• 1:43:17Griffin Newman?

  Really?

• 1:43:18David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 1:43:19Griffin Newman?

  Someone shared your Letterboxd log for Casper. Is that old?

• 1:43:22David Sims?

  No, I have not, I have no Letterboxd log for Casper.

• 1:43:25Griffin Newman?

  Really?

• 1:43:25David Sims?

  It must be thinking of something else. I mean, I've seen Casper.

• 1:43:29Griffin Newman?

  Was someone trying to start a fight between you and I, or did I dream a one-star Letterboxd log for Casper?

• 1:43:36David Sims?

  I, I do have it logged with one star on it. No, I mean, like, I mean, like, I've assigned it one star.

• 1:43:41Griffin Newman?

  From memory?

• 1:43:42David Sims?

  Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah. Sorry to Casper.

• 1:43:45Griffin Newman?

  Might be time to spin that steel book.

• 1:43:46David Sims?

  Yep.

• 1:43:47Griffin Newman?

  Crack a steel on that bad boy.

• 1:43:48Speaker 02

  I think we need to, we need to have him revisit.

• 1:43:52David Sims?

  Yeah, reuse a Casper.

• 1:43:53Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:43:53David Sims?

  It's just like, it's crying out for a reboot, because that would be the perfect moment to, you know, check in with his friends and, what are the big ghosts called?

• 1:44:02Griffin Newman?

  Uh, the ghostly trio, uh, Fatso, Stinky and Stretch? They're his uncles. They're not his friends, they're his uncles, and they're quite mean to him.

• 1:44:10David Sims?

  I feel like there might be a modern update on some of those names.

• 1:44:16Griffin Newman?

  We Go V Stinky and Stretch?

• 1:44:18Speaker 03

  I'm just, like, guessing here that, that Casper was a movie that young Griffin imprinted on heavily, but.

• 1:44:26David Sims?

  It's about a special little boy?

• 1:44:27Griffin Newman?

  No, it's about a sad little boy who can't stop thinking about death.

• 1:44:31David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 1:44:31Speaker 03

  And Christina Ricci.

• 1:44:32Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, well, it's, it's very much about Christina Ricci. The thing I find fascinating about this movie, and we talked about the Ginger side of it.

• 1:44:40David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 1:44:41Griffin Newman?

  But the, uh, the Ace side of it, like, here's this guy whose character is, he knows more about betting than anybody. He is right all of the time. He is not driven by emotions, he is driven by logic, he's like gambling Spock. He doesn't make mistakes, right? It's my way or the right way. I fucked up the line that I already fucked up at the beginning of the episode. And yet, he sees Ginger and is like, this is trouble. I will never be able to quit this. Like, this is the worst calculation I could possibly make.

• 1:45:17David Sims?

  It's why Sharon Stone is ideal casting.

• 1:45:19Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:45:20David Sims?

  Because, like, she's someone, especially at that time, where you're like, yeah, any behavior I might overlook.

• 1:45:25Speaker 03

  Yeah, I'd ruin my life for this woman, yes.

• 1:45:28Griffin Newman?

  Like, he should not be falling for this type of woman, period.

• 1:45:31Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:45:31David Sims?

  Sure.

• 1:45:32Griffin Newman?

  And then when he finds out about her history with Lester Diamond, he should run for the hills.

• 1:45:36Speaker 03

  Yeah, the fact that she doesn't seem to like him that much too might also be.

• 1:45:40Griffin Newman?

  When she says no to his marriage proposal, he should say, fair enough, and walk away.

• 1:45:45Speaker 02

  He has to say, I can trust you three times until she says, yes, you can trust me.

• 1:45:51Griffin Newman?

  Right, right.

• 1:45:51Speaker 02

  That's not a good sign.

• 1:45:52Griffin Newman?

  He's trying to talk her into it. And, like, Pellegrini said that the way the real guy Lefty talked in life was just like, well, you work through an issue.

• 1:46:01Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:46:01Griffin Newman?

  You logic it out, you fix it. And he was like, she's got a drinking problem, we'll fix that.

• 1:46:05David Sims?

  No more drinking.

• 1:46:06Speaker 03

  Literally, I can fix her.

• 1:46:07Griffin Newman?

  Right, she'll, yeah, yes, yes.

• 1:46:10Speaker 02

  But he respects her hustle skills, too.

• 1:46:12Griffin Newman?

  That's a big part of it.

• 1:46:13David Sims?

  True, she's, she's accomplished, uh, in her way, and she knows Vegas so well in a way that he maybe even doesn't.

• 1:46:22Speaker 03

  Yeah, but I think, like, him expecting her to completely put all of that aside.

• 1:46:28David Sims?

  Right.

• 1:46:28Speaker 03

  Yeah, like, there's a point near the end, like, when she's really off the rails, where he's like, go inside and be a wife. And it's like, oh, yes, that's how that happens. You know, like, the, the, all the things you were attracted to about this woman, her hustle, her, you know, gregariousness, like, that's, you, you wish to own that and make it go away, like, it's.

• 1:46:46Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:46:47Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's, uh.

• 1:46:48Griffin Newman?

  It's, it's classic, uh, Madonna horror stuff.

• 1:46:51Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:46:51Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:46:52David Sims?

  Yeah, I do think when she locks her child to a bed.

• 1:46:57Griffin Newman?

  Ties.

• 1:46:57David Sims?

  Yeah, you know, handcuffs or whatever, you know, because.

• 1:47:00Speaker 03

  It's just like nylons, it's like, it's fine.

• 1:47:02Griffin Newman?

  It's so scarfed.

• 1:47:03David Sims?

  Because she was going out.

• 1:47:05Speaker 03

  To the Leaning Tower Italian restaurant.

• 1:47:07David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 1:47:08Speaker 03

  No, it's the same, but then it's like, that whole, I, I know we're skipping all over the place, but that, like I said, that's sort of how I experienced this movie, but it's like, when, even at that point, it's like, he doesn't get, you don't get a hot reaction out of De Niro, kind of until he's, like, sitting across from her at the restaurant, and even then, it's like,

• 1:47:27Speaker 03

  yo, she's like, could have killed your child, and like, it still seems muted for that. It should be end of discussion, like, we're not, but I, I think, like, that's sort of, I mean, it mirrors the Pesci relationship, obviously, but one thing that occurred to me, speaking of Nobu, is like, you know, he kind of holds up this whale as an example of how we're always, you know, the town's always gonna get you in the end, because a guy like me, like, you can come in, you can take all this money from us, but we'll just keep you seated long enough so you lose the money again.

• 1:47:56Griffin Newman?

  It's not your town.

• 1:47:57Speaker 03

  Yeah, and it's like, and it's, and he's telling us this at the top of the movie, where it seems like he's in control of everything, and it's like, yeah, like, this guy's smart, he knows how it all works, but it's like, that's essentially what happens to him.

• 1:48:08Griffin Newman?

  That's you.

• 1:48:09Speaker 03

  Ginger, yeah. It's just with a woman, so he doesn't recognize it as the same phenomenon, but it kind of is on his end.

• 1:48:16Griffin Newman?

  But it's also what happens with the cowboys, like.

• 1:48:19Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:48:20Griffin Newman?

  You know, I mean, what's that guy's name? He's so good. It's, um, the guy, uh, who directed Boy and His Dog.

• 1:48:28David Sims?

  LQ Jones.

• 1:48:30Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:48:31Speaker 03

  Like, the commissioner, state commissioner, or whatever.

• 1:48:34Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, but like, the guy who just feels like the fucking, the cowboy of Nevada.

• 1:48:38Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:48:39Griffin Newman?

  And is just like, you don't belong here.

• 1:48:42Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:48:42Griffin Newman?

  This is not your land.

• 1:48:43David Sims?

  It is what's so crazy about the mob taking over, and like, you know, just the history of the, of the city, of the sort of like, but they did answer to one ultimate force they could not control very well, which was these sort of odd hicks who'd lived here for a hundred years, essentially.

• 1:49:03Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:49:03Speaker 03

  You know.

• 1:49:04David Sims?

  The Nevada community of the 1950s, the political powerhouse that it was.

• 1:49:08Speaker 03

  Um, have you guys read, uh, E-Bird's review?

• 1:49:11Griffin Newman?

  No.

• 1:49:12Speaker 03

  It's really, it's good, and it's got some really good lines in it, but it really made me think.

• 1:49:16David Sims?

  Sexy, fun!

• 1:49:17Speaker 03

  Sexy, fun! Uh, it did make me, like, he has a line that's basically like, you know, the thing of if Vegas didn't exist, it would have to be invented.

• 1:49:24David Sims?

  And he says, same for the mafia.

• 1:49:26Speaker 03

  Same for the mafia, but I don't even think it's like, that the cowboys really control anything. I think the idea of what Vegas is, what it represents as an outlet for humanity, cannot actually be controlled by anybody. There, there are, like, caretakers at various times, and right now, it's like these, you know, corporate interests or whatever, but, but they don't even really own the kind of ginger-like, uh, untamability of the American id that is represented in, and I guess it's, now it's the world's id, because it's become, like, so totally international, but like, that that is just a, that's kind of just a force, it's like, it's like a supernatural force that exists in the desert.

• 1:50:08David Sims?

  Right.

• 1:50:08Speaker 03

  The various people try to harness at some point.

• 1:50:11Speaker 02

  It shouldn't exist.

• 1:50:12Speaker 03

  No, no, it definitely shouldn't exist.

• 1:50:14David Sims?

  I guess, yes. I don't know, it's pretty cool.

• 1:50:17Griffin Newman?

  Don't knock until you try it, David. You gotta go there first.

• 1:50:20David Sims?

  I'm from Vegas, I don't have a problem with it.

• 1:50:21Speaker 03

  I mean, when you are there, it is, like, it's funny, because you, you fly in, and like, once you've been there a couple times, and you know how vast all of these places are, and you see them small, and you think about all the sheets, and all the laundry, and every single, the monumental thing that goes into making this place where all the water that's pumped in, you look at it from afar, and to an extent, this is sort of how LA is too, and you're like, this is a bad idea, this shouldn't be here, and then you get in, and you're like, yay, it's awesome, I love it.

• 1:50:53David Sims?

  It's very stimulating. Uh, we should talk about Casino. So, Casino, all right. Ace Rothstein. Oh, well, we began with the car bombing, obviously, you know, which is so fun.

• 1:51:02Griffin Newman?

  And then you go into opera, do you not?

• 1:51:05Speaker 03

  It's, is that the Bach?

• 1:51:06David Sims?

  Yes.

• 1:51:07Speaker 03

  That starts with, yeah.

• 1:51:07Griffin Newman?

  Oh, it's Bach at the beginning, yes.

• 1:51:09Speaker 03

  Yeah, and, and it's like, and the thing of his body flying through the flames, you're instantly like, oh, we are so Baroque now.

• 1:51:16David Sims?

  Yes.

• 1:51:16Speaker 03

  Like, I, I hate to keep using that word, but I mean, you know, it's, it's Bachs.

• 1:51:21David Sims?

  Yep, for sure. No, and also, Scorsese, a very Baroque director, and we are entering his Baroque phase, which he has not quite exited.

• 1:51:28Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's, it's, but it's the, I, I don't know, it's like, the, yeah, the gilded version of it or something. Um, it's so exciting. I love that, that moment.

• 1:51:36David Sims?

  Um, and I love, say you're going in cold, thinking like, maybe this is being narrated from beyond the grave. Like, you know, they're, they're sort of setting you up for like, and then he fucking blew up and his body flew into hell.

• 1:51:48Griffin Newman?

  Right, right.

• 1:51:49David Sims?

  And he's just, now he will tell his story of like, I bet you're wondering, how I ended up.

• 1:51:54Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:51:55David Sims?

  In his on-fire car.

• 1:51:57Speaker 03

  Freeze spray.

• 1:52:01David Sims?

  Cause it is, I feel like Pellegrini probably is like, I think I'll write the book when he reads like, and then the car blew up and he did not die. Yes.

• 1:52:07Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 1:52:08David Sims?

  And you're like, okay.

• 1:52:09Griffin Newman?

  I can interview that guy now? And he was in a car bombing?

• 1:52:14David Sims?

  Yep.

• 1:52:16David Sims?

  So he is, I like, the first 20, 30 minutes of this movie are just pure, I could watch them anytime. Yep. Just the whole kind of like, here's how everything works.

• 1:52:27Griffin Newman?

  Well, it's especially, yeah.

• 1:52:28David Sims?

  Best gambler of all time.

• 1:52:30Griffin Newman?

  These are the rules. This is how it all works. This is the system. These are the players.

• 1:52:34David Sims?

  Here's the money room. Here's how the skim works. Here's how I can be in charge even though I don't have a gambling license.

• 1:52:40Griffin Newman?

  That's my favorite. Alan can't explain it to him.

• 1:52:42David Sims?

  We'll just change your job title every few years. Like, it'll be constantly in review. Yeah.

• 1:52:47Speaker 03

  It's, it's all a system story. It's like, they're talking about like bureaucracy and all of these, you know, how the system works. It's not a character story and yet I am so riveted by it. Like I, because it's like, okay, this is insane. And these are the people that choose to operate here. Okay. Like that's telling me something about the world that we're living in.

• 1:53:09Griffin Newman?

  A hundred percent.

• 1:53:09Speaker 03

  People who thrive on this shit.

• 1:53:11Griffin Newman?

  Do we want to try to in, in micro, explain the system of how he gets into power?

• 1:53:17David Sims?

  Um, sure. What, what do you mean?

• 1:53:20Speaker 03

  The skim?

• 1:53:20David Sims?

  Oh, the skim? Or what, what are you talking about?

• 1:53:23Griffin Newman?

  The whole, what's his name? Frank Green, the, uh, Kevin Pollak character.

• 1:53:28David Sims?

  Right. So Philip Green.

• 1:53:29Griffin Newman?

  Philip Green.

• 1:53:30David Sims?

  Played by Pollak, which is, who's good.

• 1:53:32Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:53:33David Sims?

  But he's kind of funny casting a Pollak where I'm like, Pollak is another kind of motor mouth. And he's like basically playing a guy who never talks, like, or like does anything. Right. Like he's the front man. Ace is the brains, I guess. And I guess Nikki is the muscle, although I feel like Nikki kind of just decides he's the muscle. Philip, Bill Green, who's Kevin Pollak.

• 1:53:54Griffin Newman?

  Right. Is given this humongous check by the Teamsters Union.

• 1:53:58David Sims?

  Right.

• 1:53:58Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:53:58Griffin Newman?

  To buy the casino.

• 1:54:00David Sims?

  The Tangiers.

• 1:54:01Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 1:54:01David Sims?

  Yeah, you know, and, and like the Chicago mafia are behind this.

• 1:54:06Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:54:07David Sims?

  And, but I feel like what's important sort of is that Nikki, uh, you know, Joe Pesci.

• 1:54:12Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:54:13David Sims?

  He's, it's, he hasn't been sent with the same level of authority.

• 1:54:17Griffin Newman?

  No.

• 1:54:17David Sims?

  They're not like, and you will be in charge of like, you know, security and enforcement or whatever. He's just kind of like, everyone's sick of me. I'm gonna go over there.

• 1:54:25Griffin Newman?

  He assumes the position.

• 1:54:26David Sims?

  Over there.

• 1:54:27Griffin Newman?

  And he also.

• 1:54:28David Sims?

  And if you have a problem with it, I've got this vice.

• 1:54:31Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 1:54:32David Sims?

  That I love putting heads in.

• 1:54:33Griffin Newman?

  Well, it's like, on one hand, it feels like there's a strategic level to, is there land to be grabbed here? Can I make a big power move? On the other hand, this guy just seems to love beating the shit out of people. And recognizes that there's less competition to do that if he goes to a new place.

• 1:54:51Speaker 03

  I mean, he's like a guy who moves somewhere like, say from New York to Los Angeles, just like for a change of pace. Gotta get, gotta get out of here. But like, refuses to assimilate at all to the culture, the local culture.

• 1:55:04David Sims?

  Indeed.

• 1:55:04Speaker 03

  You know, still complaining about how he can get, get a piece of pizza or something.

• 1:55:08Griffin Newman?

  Pretty quickly banned from all casinos permanently in the black book.

• 1:55:11Speaker 03

  It's, yeah.

• 1:55:12Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:55:13Speaker 03

  But he doesn't, like, he doesn't even show up and, and initially say he's gonna work for Ace. He's more like, I'm just gonna be here and do my thing, which is like, we're just gonna do robberies. Like, there's, there's a line in the book where it's like, or maybe it's in the movie. I can't remember, but it might be in both. But where he's just like, this is the land of free money. You can, you can do all sorts of scams to build people out of millions of dollars and you're robbing people's houses?

• 1:55:39Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:55:39Speaker 03

  Like, that's just love of the game at that point.

• 1:55:42Griffin Newman?

  Right, right. It is. No, he likes the doing.

• 1:55:45Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:55:45Griffin Newman?

  He doesn't like the power.

• 1:55:46David Sims?

  Which is of course why the mob eventually turns on him, because I love that whenever we see the mob, they're just so conservative.

• 1:55:53Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:55:53David Sims?

  Like, you know, the high level of the mob, especially back then, they're just like these guys who are like, I just don't want anyone to talk about anything or do anything like troubles. I wanna eat a sandwich. I wanna have some espresso. And I just wanna sit around this grocery store. Like, one of the most like chilling moments of the movie is when they decide to kill, what's his name? In the snow.

• 1:56:12Griffin Newman?

  Alan King.

• 1:56:13David Sims?

  Alan King, where everyone's just like, he's a good guy. He's not gonna talk. And everyone agrees. And then the boss is like, yeah, but you know, me and me, like, maybe we just.

• 1:56:25Griffin Newman?

  It's a worth the risk.

• 1:56:27David Sims?

  Yeah, exactly. And they're just like, okay, guess he's gotta die. Like, you know, just, that's, that's, that's the level they're operating on. And Pesci gets away with more because he's like, kind of in the family, but you know.

• 1:56:40Speaker 03

  Also, people just don't know what to do with him, I think. Like all the normal things.

• 1:56:43David Sims?

  Way back.

• 1:56:44Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:56:45David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 1:56:45Griffin Newman?

  But the pen scene is the big one where you're just like.

• 1:56:50Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah, yeah.

• 1:56:51Griffin Newman?

  Why is this guy going this hard?

• 1:56:52David Sims?

  Right.

• 1:56:53Griffin Newman?

  For someone who is meaningless.

• 1:56:54David Sims?

  Right.

• 1:56:55Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:56:56David Sims?

  He also is a little guy.

• 1:56:59Griffin Newman?

  He's a little guy.

• 1:56:59David Sims?

  He is so intimidating and he is like fucking with people who are way bigger than him.

• 1:57:04Griffin Newman?

  I mean, that's the Pesci magic.

• 1:57:05David Sims?

  But he's so intense.

• 1:57:07Griffin Newman?

  The Pesci magic is he's shorter than fucking Macaulay Culkin. And you're like, this is the scariest guy I've ever seen in my life.

• 1:57:14David Sims?

  He's, you know, I always, he's, yeah. And it's, and the weird facelift just makes him scarier. Like, he's.

• 1:57:20Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:57:21David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 1:57:21Griffin Newman?

  He looks like a gargoyle.

• 1:57:23David Sims?

  He looks, he looks a bit like a gargoyle. The only thing that's crazy is that Sharon Stone has sex with him. Not, you know, of course you understand what, the power play she's making, but that's crazy.

• 1:57:34Speaker 03

  I mean, yeah, I, I think the thing that's terrifying about a guy like that is, is the stature.

• 1:57:40David Sims?

  Right.

• 1:57:40Speaker 03

  Physical, because, and the fact, the combined stature and not giving a fuck. Cause it's like, you don't see the signs in front of you that other people would be like, oh, maybe I shouldn't fight this guy. Or maybe like, you know, this wouldn't be the best idea for me, but he doesn't care. And so he becomes the scariest guy in the room.

• 1:57:56Griffin Newman?

  This guy sees no walls.

• 1:57:58Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:57:58Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:57:59Speaker 03

  Yeah. I really do think of like my dog a lot, watching him in this movie.

• 1:58:04Griffin Newman?

  Your dog's a Pesci?

• 1:58:06Speaker 03

  My dog's gotten a few scrapes trying to take on guys that were, uh, bigger than him, but he doesn't win quite as frequently as Pesci does. I'll say that.

• 1:58:14Griffin Newman?

  But your, your dog stabbed a mastiff with a ballpoint bat?

• 1:58:17Speaker 03

  Well, he did, he did snap at a, a giant yellow lab and got his ass handed to him. Uh, so, yeah.

• 1:58:23David Sims?

  Got a chip on his shoulder. Nothing wrong with that.

• 1:58:25Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:58:26David Sims?

  So the first chunk of the movie.

• 1:58:30Griffin Newman?

  Trying to see when Ginger enters, what her first appearance is.

• 1:58:34David Sims?

  Oh, sure. Yeah. Uh, you know, it's just this kind of setup. You've got, uh, Frankie Marino, Frank Vincent, you know, is sort of like, the more, uh, whatever, the right-hand man for the bosses. Right, exactly.

• 1:58:48Griffin Newman?

  Silence. Yes.

• 1:58:51David Sims?

  And then, yeah, Ace falls for Ginger.

• 1:58:55Griffin Newman?

  She enters almost exactly 20 minutes in and it's, he's watching on the monitors as she's, what do they call it? Uh, uh, chip hustling, I think?

• 1:59:04David Sims?

  Yeah, where basically like, what? She sits next to you while you're gambling. You look like you have this awesome lady on your, you know, arm.

• 1:59:12Griffin Newman?

  You pocket some chips.

• 1:59:13David Sims?

  And then, right, like she's taking chips and then she expects you essentially to like, give her some of your winnings.

• 1:59:19Speaker 03

  I think she was already like doing a hustle with that guy. Cause the idea is that they were gonna split. Or there's gonna be some sort of split of what they made at the table. And then he only gives her like a little bit of money and, you know, she's like, fuck you. Where's my money? He's like, it's in your bag.

• 1:59:35David Sims?

  And De Niro sees this and is like, I like her gumption.

• 1:59:38Griffin Newman?

  Right, right. That's, that's the first warning sign is like, he's witnessing the kind of thing he exists to catch. And rather than catch it, he's like, I want to own this.

• 1:59:47Speaker 03

  Yeah. He's got like a, a league of guys in the rafters who are like looking out for this shit and is still like, no, let her through.

• 1:59:53Griffin Newman?

  This is alluring.

• 1:59:54Speaker 03

  I'm gonna marry this woman.

• 1:59:55Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:59:55David Sims?

  An ego thing of like, I can fix her, right? Yeah, yeah. That makes some sense to me.

• 2:00:03Griffin Newman?

  But you're interested in the idea of Lester like immediately. It's like, I knew this girl's history. There was this pimp she had a long history with. She couldn't quit him.

• 2:00:12David Sims?

  Pattinson, of course, Robert Pattinson, of course, based his Odyssey performance on James Woods in this movie.

• 2:00:16Speaker 03

  I did not know that. Really?

• 2:00:19David Sims?

  Yes. He said in interviews, like, I was thinking about like James Woods in Casino when I was going for like sleaze, sleaze, slimeball, suitor, you know, like.

• 2:00:28Griffin Newman?

  He should have had the mustache in the hair.

• 2:00:29David Sims?

  He should have.

• 2:00:30Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:00:31Speaker 03

  That's a, that's a scholar right there.

• 2:00:33Griffin Newman?

  Beggars out of here.

• 2:00:35David Sims?

  Somebody get these beggars out of here is one of the most golden memes we have been handed in a million. It works in like 50 different scenarios.

• 2:00:43Griffin Newman?

  At the first blush, I never would have guessed it had the legs.

• 2:00:45David Sims?

  It's all about the line reading. The line, like me saying it doesn't, you know, it's just the smirk and the kind of like, uh, you know, self-consciousness. Cause he knows his world is falling apart.

• 2:00:54Griffin Newman?

  Did you see, I think it was at, uh, Venice, the like press conference where Pattinson talked about this?

• 2:01:02David Sims?

  Go ahead.

• 2:01:02Griffin Newman?

  Where he was like, when I was growing up, we would like watch Jim Carrey movies and Mike Myers movies obsessively. And we would quote lines and we were obsessed with the way that things were said, not just what the lines were.

• 2:01:13David Sims?

  The cadence and all that. Cause that is, that's the magic of Carrie in those movies. It's just, you're like, I can't believe he said that word that way.

• 2:01:20Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 2:01:20David Sims?

  There's like eight syllables in it. How did he do that?

• 2:01:23Griffin Newman?

  Cause I think they were asking him like, are you like befuddled by these things becoming memes? And he's like, it's not like I try to create memes, but I think memes are the modern version of what used to be us doing impressions on the playground.

• 2:01:34Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:01:34Griffin Newman?

  And like, that is a thing I aspire to, and I think was missing from movies is like actors making big enough choices.

• 2:01:41Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:01:41Griffin Newman?

  That anyone can quote the intonation of the line.

• 2:01:45Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:01:46David Sims?

  Woods, uh, I'm trying to see like where, cause obviously like James Woods is like an Oscar nominated actor. Who can be the lead of your movie, although I would say if he's the lead of your movie.

• 2:01:58Griffin Newman?

  It's a smaller movie.

• 2:01:59David Sims?

  It's a smaller movie.

• 2:01:59Griffin Newman?

  It might be about vampires.

• 2:02:02David Sims?

  And how John Carpenter wants you to pay attention.

• 2:02:04Griffin Newman?

  Yes, he owns these vampires. Possessive.

• 2:02:07David Sims?

  Like, yeah, his, all right, wait, no, not selected credits. Give me the whole thing, baby.

• 2:02:12Griffin Newman?

  At this point, he has two NOMs?

• 2:02:15David Sims?

  He's obviously nominated for best actor for Salvador, which is an incredible performance in a pretty good movie.

• 2:02:20Griffin Newman?

  And supporting for Ghosts of Mississippi.

• 2:02:22David Sims?

  That is the next year.

• 2:02:23Griffin Newman?

  Got it.

• 2:02:24Speaker 03

  Salvador is, what, 92 or something?

• 2:02:26David Sims?

  No, it's 86.

• 2:02:28Speaker 03

  Oh, whoa.

• 2:02:29David Sims?

  The whole thing with Salvador that's crazy.

• 2:02:31Griffin Newman?

  Same year as Platoon.

• 2:02:32David Sims?

  Is it's the same year as Platoon.

• 2:02:34Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:02:34Speaker 03

  Right, right.

• 2:02:35David Sims?

  He's very good in Salvador and, but it is like, mostly he's a supporting actor. I mean, and like.

• 2:02:43Speaker 03

  The character guy.

• 2:02:44David Sims?

  Yeah, like he's in stuff like Immediate Family and True Believer where it's like, yeah, he's like a co-lead. There's that movie, the buddy cop movie he made with Michael J. Fox, The Hard Way, which is like an Insta-bomb.

• 2:02:56Griffin Newman?

  I have always been jealous of the premise of that movie.

• 2:02:58David Sims?

  What, which is?

• 2:02:59Griffin Newman?

  Have I ever admitted this?

• 2:03:01David Sims?

  You love James Woods and want to imitate his career exactly?

• 2:03:03Griffin Newman?

  When like the tick was about to come out and people were like, you should have a pitch for a movie in case the show's a hit. I thought I came up with an incredible pitch and then I realized it was the exact premise of The Hard Way.

• 2:03:13David Sims?

  And which is?

• 2:03:14Griffin Newman?

  It's an actor has to play a cop in a movie, so he goes undercover with a real cop to train.

• 2:03:20David Sims?

  Right.

• 2:03:20Griffin Newman?

  And it's like fancy, like soft-hand actor boy.

• 2:03:24David Sims?

  That's Michael J. Fox.

• 2:03:24Griffin Newman?

  Right, is teamed up with like real cop and sees real shit.

• 2:03:28David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 2:03:29Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:03:29David Sims?

  Great act, great, great premise.

• 2:03:30Griffin Newman?

  Great premise.

• 2:03:31David Sims?

  Kiss Kiss Bang Bang's kind of the perfect version of that.

• 2:03:33Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, agreed.

• 2:03:34David Sims?

  But that's, yeah, that's still, um, yeah, it's, I'm just like, I'm trying to wonder basically like, was Woods sort of doing a favor being in this movie a little bit?

• 2:03:45Griffin Newman?

  I think so.

• 2:03:45David Sims?

  But like, he's had a run of kind of bombs, I guess.

• 2:03:49Griffin Newman?

  Interesting.

• 2:03:49David Sims?

  So maybe it's like, and also it's Martin Scorsese, so you know, he's also in Nixon the same year. He's amazing in Nixon as Holman. And then the year after he has Ghosts of Mississippi, which is, you know, I've never seen it, but he's playing the old racist murderer.

• 2:04:02Griffin Newman?

  Plays the spirit of racism, basically, the ghost of racism, past, present and future.

• 2:04:07David Sims?

  He's got a bunch of makeup on and obviously that movie was not very well received, but it was one of those kind of like, you know, supporting NOMs where the Oscars are like, I don't know, you fucking yelled and shit, like take your nomination.

• 2:04:18Griffin Newman?

  Do you guys know what he looks like in Ghosts of Mississippi?

• 2:04:21David Sims?

  It's crazy.

• 2:04:21Griffin Newman?

  He, he looks like old Rose from the end of Titanic.

• 2:04:26Speaker 03

  No.

• 2:04:27David Sims?

  Trying to find a big picture, here we go. Yeah, I was a dish. I mean, like the premise of Ghosts of Mississippi is interesting of like, you know, these people who tried to prosecute these racist murderers who were in the Klan decades after the crime. You know, once it was like, everyone was like, everyone knows he fucking did it. Like, you know, this crime that happened 30 years, right? You know, like Byron, you know? And like, I think the movie, which I've never seen, so I can't, you know, it's Rob Reiner movie, like, you know, is just kind of a little too like treacly and obvious with sort of the hit on it, like, but I don't know, I don't know. I feel like this is the start of a really good supporting actor era for Woods.

• 2:05:09Griffin Newman?

  Oh, sure.

• 2:05:10David Sims?

  Cause it's like Nixon and then like Hercules and then like Contact he's amazing in. Vampires, I love the lead performance, but then like Virgin Suicides, he's amazing in. Any Given Sunday, he's so funny in. General's Daughter, that's a movie I've seen. I'm pretty sure he played a bad guy in that one.

• 2:05:26Griffin Newman?

  I would guess.

• 2:05:27David Sims?

  Sure.

• 2:05:27Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 2:05:29David Sims?

  What, what's real life?

• 2:05:30Griffin Newman?

  Is he ever nice?

• 2:05:32David Sims?

  Not, I just, I'm saying movies. No, I know what you're saying.

• 2:05:34Griffin Newman?

  Maybe that question might apply for his like life as well.

• 2:05:36David Sims?

  Virgin Suicides, he's playing a sympathetic character.

• 2:05:39Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:05:40David Sims?

  Like, I mean, like they don't know what, you know, that those parents are all fucked up.

• 2:05:43Griffin Newman?

  Right, you're like, did this guy fuck up his kids somehow? But he's not evil.

• 2:05:48David Sims?

  Does he play an out and out good guy?

• 2:05:52Griffin Newman?

  I, I really struggle to name one.

• 2:05:55David Sims?

  I'm like looking at all these things and I'm like, not once?

• 2:05:58Griffin Newman?

  Has he ever played a chill hang?

• 2:06:00David Sims?

  Has James Woods ever? Cause like in Salvador or whatever, he's a hero, but like, you know, a very flawed and cynical person. And then even stuff like that show Shark he did.

• 2:06:12Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:06:12David Sims?

  Which had a, you know, a great premise. You know, he's the good guy, sort of, but he, the idea is that he's a scumbag who's trying to be a good guy.

• 2:06:21Griffin Newman?

  I think the answer is no.

• 2:06:22David Sims?

  Shark.

• 2:06:23Griffin Newman?

  I remember Shark. Spike Lee directed Shark?

• 2:06:25David Sims?

  The pilot.

• 2:06:26Griffin Newman?

  Yeah. He didn't direct every episode?

• 2:06:28David Sims?

  Not that I know of.

• 2:06:30Griffin Newman?

  I mean, like, like is Videodrome the nicest guy he's ever played?

• 2:06:34Speaker 03

  I mean.

• 2:06:35Griffin Newman?

  Like possibly.

• 2:06:36Speaker 03

  Everyman, a real everyman.

• 2:06:38Griffin Newman?

  Possessed, but he's not evil in the same way. Like that's closest to everyman, truly, that might be.

• 2:06:45David Sims?

  He has so many credits and I certainly haven't seen all the movies he was in, so, you know, listeners weigh in. Like, when did John, James Woods play a relatively nice guy? In The Simpsons, he's very sympathetic as himself. I love that. That, that episode's really funny.

• 2:07:00Griffin Newman?

  Isn't he a recurring character on Family Guy as well? I think he is.

• 2:07:08David Sims?

  Anyway, and he's, uh, he's still around.

• 2:07:10Speaker 03

  Was he nice in Riding in Cars with Boys?

• 2:07:12David Sims?

  No, isn't he like the mean dad who yells at her?

• 2:07:14Griffin Newman?

  Don't ride in cars with boys.

• 2:07:17David Sims?

  I have one rule in my house.

• 2:07:19Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 2:07:20David Sims?

  I can't, I can't remember. I did see that when that came out. I don't, we'll watch it again one day.

• 2:07:25Speaker 03

  Do you know what the budget was on Riding in Cars with Boys?

• 2:07:28Griffin Newman?

  70 million?

• 2:07:29David Sims?

  Not quite that high.

• 2:07:31Speaker 03

  What if I told you it was just about the same as Casino?

• 2:07:33David Sims?

  It's crazy.

• 2:07:34Speaker 03

  Yeah, it was 47.

• 2:07:35Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, that's crazy.

• 2:07:36David Sims?

  Is that just like?

• 2:07:37Speaker 03

  It's crazy.

• 2:07:37David Sims?

  Everyone getting their quote post Charlie's Angels and like.

• 2:07:42Griffin Newman?

  I was looking up, cause at the, we're recording this the day that Practical Magic 2 comes out. And I was like.

• 2:07:49David Sims?

  9/11.

• 2:07:52Griffin Newman?

  Ben's been waiting all episode.

• 2:07:54David Sims?

  I'm sorry.

• 2:07:55Griffin Newman?

  He's been waiting all episode. He asked if we should start the episode with a moment of silence. I said, Ben, it's not coming out on September 11th. Yes, of course.

• 2:08:04David Sims?

  Recording this on the release date of Practical Magic 2.

• 2:08:09Speaker 03

  Most importantly.

• 2:08:09David Sims?

  Finish your thought.

• 2:08:10Griffin Newman?

  And I was like, that movie wasn't a huge hit at the time. It's thought of as like a cult hit, but it didn't cost that much. And then I was like, oh, it costs 75 million?

• 2:08:19David Sims?

  That movie was an underperformer. That's the whole thing. Yeah.

• 2:08:22Griffin Newman?

  75?

• 2:08:23David Sims?

  I mean, I think.

• 2:08:24Griffin Newman?

  97, 98?

• 2:08:25David Sims?

  Sandy got full quote.

• 2:08:26Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:08:26David Sims?

  And Nicole wasn't quite on her level, but she got, I'm sure, a hefty sum.

• 2:08:31Griffin Newman?

  Hollywood just, Quinn doesn't come for free.

• 2:08:35David Sims?

  He probably did.

• 2:08:35Griffin Newman?

  You don't get him at the bottom of a cereal box?

• 2:08:41David Sims?

  By, I, there was a tweet that I thought was very funny, David Haring, whoever he is. Hollywood, why aren't people going to the cinema anymore? Also Hollywood, Practical Magic 2 is 130 minutes.

• 2:08:53Speaker 03

  Insane.

• 2:08:54Griffin Newman?

  I mean, it's gonna open to like 50 million?

• 2:08:56David Sims?

  I'm seeing 40, but hey.

• 2:08:58Griffin Newman?

  Hey.

• 2:08:59David Sims?

  Anything for a movie where the reviews were bad, phoned in.

• 2:09:04Griffin Newman?

  Directed by Suzanne Beer? Like everything about it is strange.

• 2:09:08David Sims?

  It's, as a defender of Practical Magic, it wounds me.

• 2:09:12Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:09:12David Sims?

  Where, because they're like, we gave, we made a sequel and I'm like, oh, cool. I'm basically sold. And they're like, here's what it is. And I'm like, I will never see this movie, no thank you.

• 2:09:19Griffin Newman?

  Like sucking your teeth.

• 2:09:21David Sims?

  Apparently it sets up a third installment too.

• 2:09:23Griffin Newman?

  Oh, great.

• 2:09:24Speaker 03

  Oh, good.

• 2:09:27Griffin Newman?

  Do you know the popcorn bucket is a margarita blender?

• 2:09:30David Sims?

  No, they do drink a lot of margaritas in the first one.

• 2:09:33Griffin Newman?

  They put the lime in the coconut?

• 2:09:34David Sims?

  I just think that movie, the first, the Griffin Dunwin rocks because it's mostly just like so acidic, just like all his movies.

• 2:09:40Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:09:41David Sims?

  You know, and it's, yeah, whatever.

• 2:09:44Griffin Newman?

  The movie Casino.

• 2:09:46David Sims?

  Yeah, there's some practical magic going on in Casino.

• 2:09:48Griffin Newman?

  Tell me about it.

• 2:09:50David Sims?

  I do think it's crazy, I'm not sure how embellished this is, Emily, that he's the one who's like, well, we should have a sports book in the casino.

• 2:09:57Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, he's kind of credited with inventing the modern Vegas.

• 2:10:00David Sims?

  No one ever fucking thought of this?

• 2:10:02Speaker 03

  No, I mean, there were all these little like hole in the wall joints that, you know, you see, especially hanging out at.

• 2:10:06David Sims?

  Right, right. And because like, that shot, I mean, like that's the whole thing where you're saying about the budget. Like obviously this is a big budget movie and they spent their money well, but like that shot of the sports book, you're just like, like this is staggering. And I know he's using real locations and stuff. This is, he's really, it's like peak performance shit for Marty visually, this movie.

• 2:10:27Speaker 03

  I mean, well, but on the, on the sports book front, I mean, that's another really interesting thing about it right now. Because, you know, as we know, everything is betting now and on sports and other things, like that is just mainstream culture.

• 2:10:39David Sims?

  Right, I'm betting on the running time of this episode, right? I'm riding some Calci waves up and down.

• 2:10:43Griffin Newman?

  David's been trying to fix our episodes.

• 2:10:45Speaker 03

  Oh, is that what's happening?

• 2:10:47Griffin Newman?

  I want a taxi driver to be short. I had a hard out.

• 2:10:51David Sims?

  We had another episode to record that day.

• 2:10:53Griffin Newman?

  I find out.

• 2:10:54David Sims?

  The bone chilling reveal at the end of that episode.

• 2:10:58Griffin Newman?

  But I find out that David has a prop bet for three hours and 57 minutes with ads?

• 2:11:04Speaker 03

  Were you guys, were you guys, did you take the over or were you?

• 2:11:10Speaker 02

  Griffin's talking, I'm like, more, more.

• 2:11:13Speaker 03

  Well, you took the over.

• 2:11:14David Sims?

  You're giving me the taffy pole gesture.

• 2:11:16Speaker 02

  And Tracy's like, and another thing. And I'm like, yes, one other thing.

• 2:11:19Speaker 03

  Oh, my God.

• 2:11:20David Sims?

  I took the under.

• 2:11:21Speaker 03

  You took the under.

• 2:11:22David Sims?

  The under.

• 2:11:23Speaker 03

  Sucker's bet.

• 2:11:24Griffin Newman?

  Yes, no, it is fascinating.

• 2:11:26David Sims?

  I was being hopeful, I don't know.

• 2:11:27Speaker 03

  But, I mean, it's also, and the book goes into such rich detail of it because it spends so much time before he actually starts working at the casino, but it's just like, the, the amount of research you did to be one of these guys. And it was the opposite of, of, of what the, you know, the modern, you know, FanDuel or whatever thing is or CalShe today, where it's like, a lot of times he just wouldn't put a bet down because there wasn't a good bet that you were gonna make any money on. But it was like, he had everybody, you know, at all of these practices for college basketball or whatever, coming in and giving him like, oh, this guy has a cold or whatever. And, you know, it's one of these things where when people talk about the fun of doing things, uh, rather than having like AI do them, for instance.

• 2:12:09David Sims?

  Sure.

• 2:12:10Speaker 03

  It's like, clearly, he just liked, like, in a very, you know, spectrum-y, like OCD way, probably. Like, he just loved knowing all this stuff, like gathering all this data and using it. Like, that was, you know, he's kind of a peculiar guy in that way, but that's what brought him joy. And, you know, that, that's sort of the last of this era of a guy, like a human doing that work, having all these relationships, getting, you know, the intel from the bakery about your muffins, for example, and like being the, the person who oversees everything. Yeah. I mean, it does also feel, in a way, like, you know, a little, not that everything needs to be a, a one-to-one about filmmaking, but it did remind me of that a lot of, like, when people get to a level, like, probably much

• 2:12:54Speaker 03

  like Marty was in when he made this film, where it's a huge mechanism at this point. You cannot have your hands on everything. You have to delegate, but it's like,

• 2:13:02David Sims?

  You still wanna be detail-oriented.

• 2:13:04Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah. And like, it brings you joy to be detail-oriented, but at a certain point, you can't. You can't be the person who's overseeing everything. And, you know, I don't know.

• 2:13:14Griffin Newman?

  It's interesting. It's also, it is, this guy's downfall is, he's got one employee who is so bad at the details.

• 2:13:22Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:13:23Griffin Newman?

  That he's just like, either you're dumb or you're in on it.

• 2:13:26Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:13:26Griffin Newman?

  Either you're fucking with me or you're incompetent, and either way, I can't handle this. And he finds out that this guy is the brother-in-law?

• 2:13:36David Sims?

  Yes.

• 2:13:36Griffin Newman?

  Of the cowboy gaming commissioner?

• 2:13:37David Sims?

  Of the gaming commissioner, yeah.

• 2:13:38Griffin Newman?

  Right. And he just takes the meeting with the guy and is like, I gotta fire him. And he's like, I beg you to reconsider. And he's like, there is no discussion here. I cannot abide by it. And that happens an hour and 20 minutes into the movie.

• 2:13:52Speaker 03

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:13:52Griffin Newman?

  For a movie that-

• 2:13:53David Sims?

  It's the ball rolling on his own destruction. It's his control freakery, you know, coming to, you know-

• 2:13:58Speaker 02

  But he's right.

• 2:13:59David Sims?

  Of course he's right.

• 2:13:59Speaker 02

  That guy's a fucking idiot.

• 2:14:01David Sims?

  Of course he's right.

• 2:14:01Speaker 02

  I'm Mr. Grease Palms, baby. It's Vegas, it's, but that's our- I totally understand, but it's like, every time I watch it, I'm always like, man, the, it's impossible for three people to win in a row like this. Are you really that fucking stupid? What a fucking yokel.

• 2:14:16Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 2:14:16Speaker 03

  But at the same ti- it's like, I think, I think, yeah, it's, he, he's blind at the moment to the relationship aspect of it, that like, yeah, okay, you, you lose a bunch of money on this day, but if you keep that guy around, you, you, you, you discipline him in some way or another, then you might still have your casino.

• 2:14:32Griffin Newman?

  I think, I think it's even bigger than that, Emily. I think it's that this guy's entire existence is based on being empirically correct at all times.

• 2:14:41Speaker 03

  Yes, 100%.

• 2:14:42Griffin Newman?

  Knowing all of the angles and being correct. And if he lets one thing slide, then it's like, then who the fuck am I?

• 2:14:49Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:14:49Griffin Newman?

  It's also why he refuses to give up on Sharon Stone, because he can't be incorrect about her.

• 2:14:53Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:14:53Griffin Newman?

  He is wrong about her.

• 2:14:55Speaker 03

  No, at a certain point-

• 2:14:56Griffin Newman?

  But he can't concede that.

• 2:14:57Speaker 03

  Yeah, he starts talking about her in terms of like, you're gonna embarrass me. And it's not like, embarrass me because we're gonna fight in public. It's like, you're going to, you know, it's going to be on the record that I couldn't control you.

• 2:15:07Griffin Newman?

  I bet on the wrong horse.

• 2:15:08Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:15:08Griffin Newman?

  Yes. Um, but, but it is like, that scene, I think, is so fascinating. The demeanor between the two guys is so wildly different. He keeps just trying to be like, don't you kinda know how it works here? I beg you to reconsider.

• 2:15:23Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:15:24Griffin Newman?

  And De Niro is just like, well, I understand, but I can't do it. And I'm sorry, this is the end of the conversation.

• 2:15:28Speaker 02

  He even kinda conceives, and he's like, just give him a shitty job.

• 2:15:31David Sims?

  Right.

• 2:15:31Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:15:32Speaker 02

  Like, you don't even have to give him the same job anymore.

• 2:15:33David Sims?

  He gives him a way out of the problem.

• 2:15:36Griffin Newman?

  And he's like, what's the lowest job? Like, can you put him in the trough? And he's like, this guy is so bad, I can't do it. I can't do it. I'm gonna fire him. Uh, and unlike Goodfellas, where it's the rise and fall, and the fall happens in like, a hyper-cranked-

• 2:15:51David Sims?

  Sure.

• 2:15:51Griffin Newman?

  20 to 30 minutes.

• 2:15:52David Sims?

  Right.

• 2:15:53Griffin Newman?

  60% of this movie is-

• 2:15:55David Sims?

  Just slow, slow loss of power. But also, like, it's just interesting that this and Good- so Goodfellas is like a guy who's like, I just wanted to be a mobster.

• 2:16:05Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, right.

• 2:16:06David Sims?

  And then he's a mobster, and then he's like, what the fuck?

• 2:16:09Griffin Newman?

  What do I do with myself?

• 2:16:10David Sims?

  Just because I sold coke and, and heroin and, you know, was insane and people died? Now I have to not be a mobster? Ah!

• 2:16:18Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:16:18David Sims?

  Whereas this is just like, Ace is at the end, he's just like, well, I'm still good at what I do, and I still do it. I'm just sitting here.

• 2:16:24Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:16:25David Sims?

  Miss Vegas, it rocked when we ran it. Now it's bad. Okay.

• 2:16:29Griffin Newman?

  I, I just think like, it's fascinating that this movie cuts out the rise. It starts with him being handed the thing.

• 2:16:35David Sims?

  Pretty much.

• 2:16:36Griffin Newman?

  Then it shows you how he sort of like establishes cruising altitude. And then there's an hour and 40 minutes that are like, now your best friend is gonna fuck your wife, your best friend is gonna fuck up everything, you're gonna be investigated by like, the feds, by the press.

• 2:16:53David Sims?

  Yep.

• 2:16:53Griffin Newman?

  By the gaming commission. Everything is just gonna spiral out of control.

• 2:16:57Speaker 03

  It's like death by a thousand cuts.

• 2:16:59David Sims?

  Bunch of money.

• 2:17:00Speaker 03

  Right.

• 2:17:00Griffin Newman?

  And it's gonna unwind over years.

• 2:17:02David Sims?

  The end is when they're just like, okay, you've been denied your thing.

• 2:17:07Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:17:07David Sims?

  You know, and he realizes like, there's nothing he can do. You know, he can't make his argument, he can't. But of course, that's in the middle of the movie, and then there's still-

• 2:17:15Speaker 03

  But it's so funny when that happens, because you realize, all of this has been taking place while his license was apparently under review.

• 2:17:23David Sims?

  Being processed.

• 2:17:24Speaker 03

  Over a decade or whatever.

• 2:17:25David Sims?

  Yes.

• 2:17:26Speaker 03

  And that's like how he was, like, then, but it sounds like that's how a lot of people ran their entire careers. You apply for the license.

• 2:17:32David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 2:17:33Speaker 03

  You make all your money. At some point, they're like, well, I guess we have to give you your license now. Uh, but, you know, it, but the fact that he, you know, just tripped over himself right at the wrong moment.

• 2:17:44Griffin Newman?

  He needed them to not look.

• 2:17:45Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:17:46Griffin Newman?

  Right. Like Alan King's whole argument is, the pile is so big, it takes forever. You're allowed to operate it while you're still under review.

• 2:17:53Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:17:53Griffin Newman?

  And he's like, and what if I finally come up for, like, top of the pile? And he's like, then we change your position, then we resubmit, then we start all over again. But the second they're paying attention to you, you're fucked.

• 2:18:03Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:18:03David Sims?

  Now, can I say, this, this scene that we're talking about, where, where the, you know, the, the license is denied, and Rothstein, uh, starts to be like, you know, were you not at the dinner? Where I was at the, you know, like, and he's like-

• 2:18:17Griffin Newman?

  With six mothers?

• 2:18:19Speaker 03

  That's such an amazing moment.

• 2:18:20David Sims?

  The real guy in that scene is Harry Reid, who is later Senator from Nevada.

• 2:18:25Griffin Newman?

  Oh, shit.

• 2:18:25Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:18:26Griffin Newman?

  Oh, wild.

• 2:18:27David Sims?

  You know, he was the Nevada Gaming Commissioner.

• 2:18:29Griffin Newman?

  Okay.

• 2:18:29David Sims?

  And he says, Frank Rosenthal is the only person, when I was Nevada Gaming Commissioner, and like, it was being leaned on all the time, that I was ever afraid of. Like-

• 2:18:39Griffin Newman?

  Wow.

• 2:18:39David Sims?

  And that Rosenthal, like, confronted him and started berating him and saying like, I have done you so many favors. You've been to lunch with me, you've, you know, and Reid, like, confessed to Rosenthal, like, yes, yes, you're right. Like, I, you've done me favors, you've like, covered up like undesirable news or whatever, like, and then there was like a bomb on his car, you know, which he assumed like the mob did. Like, it didn't go off, like, they caught it before, you know. But isn't that crazy?

• 2:19:08Griffin Newman?

  Wait, Harry Reid?

• 2:19:09David Sims?

  Yeah, in Harry Reid's car. Yeah, they tried to bomb him up.

• 2:19:11Griffin Newman?

  Crazy.

• 2:19:11David Sims?

  The whole thing about Harry Reid was that he was this kind of like reedy centrist, you know, who was like, you know, it's like, Harry Reid, why can't you get healthcare passed? And he'd be like, we're working our vest, you know. And then people were like, you know that guy who used to like fight with the mob in Vegas in the 70s? Like, there was one moment where like someone tried to bribe him while he was wearing a wire, while Reid was wearing a wire, and Reid is like, you're trying to fucking bribe me and start strangling him. And like FBI agents had to like pull them apart. It's just crazy. Anyway.

• 2:19:39Griffin Newman?

  He is cool, because he also is a UFO guy.

• 2:19:42David Sims?

  Yeah, he was one of those, like, there's more files and I'm gonna find them. Although, what I always say about those guys, when they rise to the top, they're like, I'm still looking. There's somewhere. I swear to God, they covered this shit up. Never seemed to find any. I don't know.

• 2:19:59Speaker 03

  Well, they do, but they're just not overlooking, you know.

• 2:20:00David Sims?

  It's always like a blob that does this.

• 2:20:03Speaker 03

  It's a blob. Yeah.

• 2:20:03David Sims?

  And people are like, I don't know, it seems weird.

• 2:20:04Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:20:05David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 2:20:05Speaker 03

  Pretty crazy.

• 2:20:14Speaker 04

  Verizon knows that holiday math can be complicated. Okay, let's see, we got the four kids, four gifts each, six teacher gifts?

• 2:20:23Speaker 02

  Wait, oh, what did we get? And Sandy and the dogs. Oh, can't forget the dogs.

• 2:20:28Speaker 04

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• 2:20:53David Sims?

  So that's where it all starts to fall apart. He starts hosting the TV show.

• 2:20:58Griffin Newman?

  Right, because he has to change his job position once again.

• 2:21:00David Sims?

  Right.

• 2:21:00Griffin Newman?

  And now he's head of entertainment.

• 2:21:02David Sims?

  Nikki starts to be crazy. So Ace starts kind of being like, Nikki, can you leave? Like, nobody likes you here. And so like, they're not friends anymore. I'm putting friends in quotes because I'm like, were they ever friends?

• 2:21:15Griffin Newman?

  They were childhood friends.

• 2:21:15Speaker 03

  Childhood friends, yeah.

• 2:21:17David Sims?

  And they like each other's company?

• 2:21:19Speaker 03

  But that's the thing I think that is missing a little bit, that the movie could benefit from, you know, another hour or so of their, you know, before Vegas times.

• 2:21:27David Sims?

  Chemistry.

• 2:21:28Speaker 03

  Yeah, they were, I mean, they were, they were like pals and worked together for, I, I, I think there was a lot of loyalty and like an actual emotional connection there in real life. And you don't get as much of a sense of that in this. It's more like, okay, my weird old coworker is coming, is moving to my town. Like, how am I gonna deal with this?

• 2:21:47David Sims?

  Yell at everyone.

• 2:21:48Speaker 03

  Yeah, he's just gonna be a little monster.

• 2:21:50David Sims?

  Because like Goodfellas really gets across that like fundamentally what Harry Hill wanted to do was sit around with these guys.

• 2:21:56Griffin Newman?

  He wants to.

• 2:21:57David Sims?

  And carouse. Right.

• 2:21:59Griffin Newman?

  Basically, today, he would have just started a podcast.

• 2:22:02David Sims?

  Of course. So there's so many of these mobsters now have podcasts.

• 2:22:05Griffin Newman?

  They do. It's crazy.

• 2:22:06David Sims?

  You watch like TikTok clips of like, now you would never cross John Gotti unless, and I'm just like, what is this?

• 2:22:13Griffin Newman?

  I get fed these clips of like mobsters, like 80 year old mobsters with hair that looks like it is applied. Like a cement mix.

• 2:22:25Griffin Newman?

  Chet Black, like dyed facial hair and eyelashes, just being like, and then I killed another guy. And I'm like, what, what is this?

• 2:22:33David Sims?

  But that's what just happened to the guy who shot Tupac.

• 2:22:35Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 2:22:35David Sims?

  Where he started doing podcasts because he was like, he thought he would, he'd made a deal like for immunity about something else. And he was like, I'm immune, right? And then so he goes on podcasts. He's like, so when I shot Tupac, I used to gun and I fired the bullets into his body. And the DA was like, this is a confession to a crime.

• 2:22:52Griffin Newman?

  He wrote a book entitled, How I Murdered Tupac So Hard.

• 2:22:58Griffin Newman?

  Do you know about this, Ben?

• 2:23:00Speaker 02

  I do.

• 2:23:00Griffin Newman?

  This is straight up what happened.

• 2:23:02Speaker 03

  Yeah. It's insane that like, after all these years, it was a fucking podcast.

• 2:23:06Griffin Newman?

  He truly was like, I thought podcasts didn't count. I had been led to believe that podcasts didn't count. And we know nothing counts more than podcasts.

• 2:23:16David Sims?

  And it was also just so disappointing after all the years of Tupac. It was like, so why'd you do it? And they're like, we were mad at him. He's like, why? It's like, this is like butts and crip shit. You're pissed off at him. Fuck him. And you're like, that's it? Like, that's okay. Shot in Vegas.

• 2:23:30Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 2:23:30Griffin Newman?

  He was.

• 2:23:31David Sims?

  On the strip.

• 2:23:32Griffin Newman?

  I, I, I went to record Gabris and Adam Pally's podcast, Staying Alive.

• 2:23:36David Sims?

  Yeah, I haven't listened yet.

• 2:23:37Griffin Newman?

  Uh, yeah, a thing I struggle to do. Uh.

• 2:23:40David Sims?

  Staying Alive? Now you're crushing it. Come on now.

• 2:23:42Griffin Newman?

  Hey.

• 2:23:42Speaker 03

  Is that what it's about?

• 2:23:43Griffin Newman?

  It's about trying to, yeah, that's what it's about. Um, but the producer was like, uh, you know, Biggie was shot.

• 2:23:49David Sims?

  Biggie was shot in LA, I will say.

• 2:23:51Griffin Newman?

  It just felt so lame that podcasts are recorded there now.

• 2:23:55Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:23:57David Sims?

  That is true.

• 2:23:58Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 2:23:59David Sims?

  That is true. Anyway, um, look forward to all these people being on our show. You know, we're gonna have the mobster guys that we're talking about and the Tupac guys.

• 2:24:07Griffin Newman?

  We're gonna have Biggie and Tupac. We're gonna get them back together on the show, Break Bread.

• 2:24:11Speaker 02

  Well, we're gonna have the AI generated version of Tupac on.

• 2:24:14Griffin Newman?

  The hologram. Excuse me. It was not AI generated. It was just a hologram.

• 2:24:17Speaker 03

  Pre-hologram.

• 2:24:19Griffin Newman?

  A pre-AI.

• 2:24:19Speaker 03

  Or pre-II, I mean.

• 2:24:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, but they've rolled out, you know, they've improved the technology.

• 2:24:24Griffin Newman?

  So he can talk now?

• 2:24:25Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:24:25Speaker 03

  I mean, it was just a pepper ghost solution.

• 2:24:27David Sims?

  Holly market, whatever. What would like an AI Tupac?

• 2:24:30Griffin Newman?

  It is so funny how much.

• 2:24:32David Sims?

  High energy drinks.

• 2:24:33Griffin Newman?

  When that happened, people were like, what the fuck? We're losing our minds. And you watch the clips now and he looks like a force ghost.

• 2:24:39Speaker 03

  So silly. I mean, I, did I ever tell you guys about the day I spent with a guy? Like, talk about mobbed up people who was in charge.

• 2:24:48Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:24:48Speaker 03

  Yes. Fucking psycho.

• 2:24:50David Sims?

  In charge of what? Of the hologram?

• 2:24:51Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah. He, he had made it his business. I mean, it was like his like 16th weird ass business venture. It was like.

• 2:24:57Griffin Newman?

  He started like a hologram theater on Hollywood Boulevard, right?

• 2:25:00Speaker 03

  It was in downtown LA and I went to it and that's where he was doing the, I believe, the Whitney hologram. And yeah, I don't think that lasted very long. But, um, yeah, I, I spent a day when I was at The Verge, shooting a video with him, just, you know, because I was just like, who is this guy? Let's go, let's go hang out with him. And it was one of those strangest days of my life. And then we didn't end up using anything from the video. So I just had memories.

• 2:25:25Griffin Newman?

  To, to quote Mike Carlson from Podcast The Ride, when you hear about guys like that and you're like, and then he lost $110 million on holograms, you're like, this is proof that money isn't real. That money is a lie that they used to oppress us. What are you talking about? He lost $110 million?

• 2:25:42Speaker 03

  It's, but like his whole operation was so janky though. Like, I think that's the thing is like, you hear about these volumes of money that people are throwing at these sort of weird, you know, supposed cash cows. And like, you go to their office and it's like pipe and drape and like a crooked signed autograph of like Travolta or whatever in the corner. And it's just all so low rent.

• 2:26:04Griffin Newman?

  They're doing like shadow puppet rabbits on the wall next to a hologram Tupac.

• 2:26:09Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's just so, I don't know. It's just, I, I really, I'm very compelled by that kind of shit.

• 2:26:14Griffin Newman?

  Scorsese should make a movie about that guy.

• 2:26:16Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah. Oh, God. What's his name?

• 2:26:18Griffin Newman?

  The King of Holograms.

• 2:26:19Speaker 03

  The King of Holograms.

• 2:26:20David Sims?

  Imagine if Scorsese was like, I want to do a Biggie and Tupac movie. Now, I'm doing it.

• 2:26:25Griffin Newman?

  I don't think that would go over super well either.

• 2:26:28Speaker 03

  Uh, well, oh, well, I will say that, you know, shortly after he meets Ginger, they are seen at the Pepper Mill, which is a wonderful place in Las Vegas. It still exists. You can go there. I go there every single time I go to Vegas. It's a diner, 24 hour diner with like this lounge with this sort of sunken fire pit.

• 2:26:46David Sims?

  This looks pretty fucking good.

• 2:26:48Speaker 03

  It's one of the vibiest places in the world.

• 2:26:50David Sims?

  It's very, uh, purple.

• 2:26:51Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah. It's all like pink and blue. Like, it's bisexual lighting before there was bisexual lighting.

• 2:26:56David Sims?

  Vegas invented bisexual lighting.

• 2:26:59Speaker 03

  But it rules and I'm always happy to see it in film. It's, it's in a lot of things.

• 2:27:03David Sims?

  Sure. Because it's such a, I mean, it's such a striking location.

• 2:27:07Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:27:08Speaker 02

  Yeah. Like, we haven't really talked about the part of the movie where we're seeing Pesci kind of get started in Vegas. Because we've talked a lot about the casino operation.

• 2:27:19David Sims?

  Yeah, and about Ginger.

• 2:27:20Speaker 02

  And about Ginger, but that's, that's a big chunk of it as well.

• 2:27:24Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:27:24Speaker 02

  And it's just all the different shady pies, you know, that he's got his fingers in.

• 2:27:31Speaker 03

  The Gold Rush Jewelry Shop, like, it's just, I mean, and again, and all the counter surveillance he was running, like almost from the jump too. Like, he just knew he was being watched by everybody and had, you know, just got the same, uh, spy shit that they, that the FBI was using on him to just watch the FBI back. It's so, like, I mean, one thing when I watch, you know, these movies is I just, I start to just feel really tired on their behalf. I'm like, this is no way to live.

• 2:28:02Griffin Newman?

  It's so exhausting.

• 2:28:02Speaker 03

  It would be so exhausting.

• 2:28:04David Sims?

  Every fucking night.

• 2:28:05Griffin Newman?

  I feel the opposite way. You feel like I could do this. I should do this. I just need to keep Pesci.

• 2:28:09David Sims?

  No, just the mob. I just, I would, I would enlist the mob to help me.

• 2:28:13Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:28:13David Sims?

  No, it's just funny that it's like, so complicated.

• 2:28:16Griffin Newman?

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:28:17David Sims?

  But the mob part is simple in a way where they're like, right, and in return, you'll skim some money off and we get it. And that's that. And then like, when they learn that someone, where it's like, yeah, and like some of the skim gets skimmed. They're like, this is an outrage. I'm like, you guys are stealing money.

• 2:28:37David Sims?

  You're shocked that other, like, some of the money falls out of the bag as it's being brought to Chicago? And they're like, oh, we, what the fuck? We need to kill everyone over this. I just, I mean.

• 2:28:48Speaker 02

  More hubris.

• 2:28:49Griffin Newman?

  More hubris.

• 2:28:49David Sims?

  Yes, I guess there's more hubris.

• 2:28:51Speaker 03

  The house always went.

• 2:28:53David Sims?

  Right. Uh, not when I go though. Thank you, Ocean.

• 2:28:58Griffin Newman?

  I do, I do think there is like the important note of otherness in this too, though, that gets lost with it being De Niro, which is like, this is a movie about being of, of one group and trying to step out into a different space.

• 2:29:12Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:29:13Griffin Newman?

  Like, there is a turf war here between like the cowboys and the mob and a Jew steps in the middle. And it's like, right, but what if I just do it better?

• 2:29:21Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah. What if this could be, you know, a meritocracy on, on skill and knowing how to do a good job instead of just like beating people over the head when you don't like, you don't like what they do?

• 2:29:30Griffin Newman?

  And it works as long as he's not pissing anyone off.

• 2:29:33Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:29:34Griffin Newman?

  But the moment he steps on the wrong toe, it's like, well, actually you never belonged here anyway. Know your place.

• 2:29:39Speaker 03

  Yeah. I mean, it's interesting because like in the voiceover narration, he, he clearly understands that aspect of Vegas. Like, and, and Ginger also represents this in a way of like the, the, the soft power of Vegas, of just the people's skills and, you know, remembering customers.

• 2:29:57David Sims?

  And having, yes, right.

• 2:29:58Speaker 03

  And slipping everybody a hundred every time you see him, like just keeping everybody happy. And.

• 2:30:03Griffin Newman?

  Greasing those palms.

• 2:30:04Speaker 03

  Yeah, greasing the palms. And, and, and yet he still doesn't, at the most critical moment, he doesn't abide by that, that kind of cardinal rule of Vegas.

• 2:30:14David Sims?

  Right.

• 2:30:16David Sims?

  No, he doesn't. Uh, he's too, you know, whatever, bad at person to person stuff. I guess is the way to put it. I could, I could say this more flippantly and it would, but yes. He just, he doesn't relate to people great. He relates to numbers great. That's Ace's problem. Uh, and Nikki has this problem where he's a violent sort of sociopath. So he's got that.

• 2:30:39Speaker 03

  But.

• 2:30:40David Sims?

  You know, hill to climb in the film.

• 2:30:42Speaker 03

  I think there is supposed to be some sort of magnetism though in Nikki. Like, I think that there's like, I think, I think, you know, I think they mentioned that when movie stars or something would come to Vegas, they'd want to hang out with Nikki because he owned a restaurant and he was sort of what everybody had in their mind, their imagination of a Vegas gangster was this guy. And it's like, you could go hang out with him at, you know, a club or whatever for the night and tell the story to all your friends back in LA. And I think that dichotomy is another thing that I think because of casting isn't as clear, but is a really interesting, it's like, you know, it's just such a ready-made kind of these mythic almost figures that represent these two sides of doing business in this time in Vegas.

• 2:31:24Griffin Newman?

  Counterpoint, though, is that not sort of the magic of Pesci?

• 2:31:27Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:31:28Griffin Newman?

  Like, you know, Crumholtz was saying, like, Pesci's the perfect example of this guy shouldn't be a movie star. And yet audiences keep going like, I don't know, there's something there.

• 2:31:37Speaker 03

  No, I don't think that he's not magnetic. I think it's just like, to me, like, De Niro is just this, you know, 100 pound gorilla. And it's like, you know, like, who, you're telling me they want to hang out with Pesci more than they want to hang out with Ace? Yeah, he's so cool. But I mean, but I understand that as a phenomenon. Like, he is, Nikki is the more colorful character. You would feel like you could go up and talk to Nikki, even if you were kind of afraid and you were taking your life in your own hands by doing so. Whereas I don't know if people necessarily felt like they could just walk up and start chit chatting with Ace or with Frank Rosenthal.

• 2:32:09Griffin Newman?

  I don't know if it extends to wardrobe, but I assume it must. But do you guys know that De Niro has a clause in his contract that he gets to keep any prop he touches for the archives?

• 2:32:21Speaker 03

  Is that true?

• 2:32:22David Sims?

  I'm not sure if that existed, like, then.

• 2:32:25Griffin Newman?

  I don't know when it started.

• 2:32:26David Sims?

  Because then he'd be rolling in it.

• 2:32:28Griffin Newman?

  I was gonna say, if he got to keep all the rings and watches from this movie. Because they rotate. They're different in basically every scene.

• 2:32:35David Sims?

  Right.

• 2:32:36Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:32:36David Sims?

  Uh, there's a famous, uh, thing of like, and I think it's in Goodfellas, though, where he was like, I don't like the fake money. I want real money. That doesn't feel as good. And so the prop guy had to give him like five grand.

• 2:32:47Speaker 03

  Oh, my God.

• 2:32:48David Sims?

  Like, fucking, anyway.

• 2:32:50Griffin Newman?

  He's particular.

• 2:32:52David Sims?

  Uh, you know, Ginger starts to get a little unpredictable, starts stealing money.

• 2:32:57Speaker 03

  Kidnaps their child to go hang out with Lester.

• 2:33:00David Sims?

  Right, is hanging out with essentially a pedophile or whatever we want to be calling Lester.

• 2:33:05Griffin Newman?

  A pedophile, drug dealing hustler, pimp.

• 2:33:06Speaker 02

  The relationship, the James Woods relationship. I get it, but it's just so hard to keep seeing her go back to him.

• 2:33:15Griffin Newman?

  Oh, it's brutal.

• 2:33:16David Sims?

  Yeah, it's brutal, but right. I mean, it's, and it's, and again, we met her in the middle.

• 2:33:21Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 2:33:21David Sims?

  But we can infer kind of everything by his inescapable.

• 2:33:25Speaker 02

  Yeah, that she's been groomed and programmed.

• 2:33:27David Sims?

  Right.

• 2:33:28Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:33:28Speaker 02

  But it's such a bummer.

• 2:33:30Griffin Newman?

  The moment of her doing coke in front of the daughter and saying, honey, this is bad. Don't do this.

• 2:33:35Speaker 03

  Still shocking, but also so funny. I'm sorry.

• 2:33:38Griffin Newman?

  But that's the kind of thing that, like, Stone just is gonna have no compunction about playing.

• 2:33:42Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:33:43Griffin Newman?

  Um, do you want to read your outfit list? Or did you do this more just so you could start searching for?

• 2:33:49Speaker 03

  Uh, I started writing them down and then I didn't, I didn't get through the skim through again, but I just, I.

• 2:33:55Griffin Newman?

  Call out some, some highlights.

• 2:33:56Speaker 03

  One thing for sure is, uh, the two-piece Paco Rabanne baby blue, uh, skirt suit, like a mini skirt and jacket. I think it's when they go to the bank together.

• 2:34:06Griffin Newman?

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:34:06Speaker 03

  Um.

• 2:34:06Griffin Newman?

  When they fill up the, the safe deposit box.

• 2:34:08Speaker 03

  Yeah. It's still super, like, it's, it's funny, like, her early looks and it's still kind of feel like the remnants of mod 60s.

• 2:34:17Griffin Newman?

  I was gonna say, almost like Jackie O.

• 2:34:19Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, a little. It's like, it's like the kind of curdled 70s version of Jackie O, like, a little more garish and, um, but, yeah. And then, and I mean, her first outfit that he's, you know, sees her in, like, all, all the sequin dresses and, and all of that is so, yeah, it feels like this sort of more, the Rat Pack version of, of Vegas. Like, it's slightly more genteel than what was to come.

• 2:34:43David Sims?

  Yeah, it's a little classier. I mean, whereas the costume designer said, right, by the 70s, the whole thing was like, space age fabrics are the best, right? We need to be wearing the least, uh, you know, the most synthetic shit at all times.

• 2:34:55Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:34:56David Sims?

  And so that sort of dominates the clothes at a certain point.

• 2:35:00Speaker 03

  I mean, the furs are also ridiculous.

• 2:35:03David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 2:35:04Speaker 03

  Yeah, Chilla. That's the only one that really calls to me. It looks so nice when she puts it on. I've never been a big fur gal myself, but, uh, but that looks really, really nice. But then when she's like, kind of in these abominable snowman type, uh, fur coats later on, it's, it's.

• 2:35:19Griffin Newman?

  When she becomes a snow bunny.

• 2:35:20Speaker 03

  Yeah. Just like the, you know, tearing across your own lawn in that coat, like, having a screaming fight with your hu- like, I don't know. There's something about that scene near the end and that coat specifically where I'm just like, I don't know why, because it's not like I'm at risk of any of this happening to me, but I still have a, like, don't let this be you.

• 2:35:41Griffin Newman?

  Oh, 100%. Yeah.

• 2:35:43Speaker 03

  It just feels like it's so burned in my brain. I was like, no ma- you know, things could get pretty crazy in a relationship. Don't be her. Like, don't do it.

• 2:35:52David Sims?

  She, she makes some errors.

• 2:35:54Speaker 03

  She makes a few errors.

• 2:35:55Griffin Newman?

  She makes a few errors.

• 2:35:55Speaker 03

  I will, I'm not here to say that Ginger did nothing wrong, uh, by any means.

• 2:36:00David Sims?

  Ginger makes mistakes, but Ginger is like, this like wounded sad creature when we meet her. And I think Stone is so good at communicating that while still being fabulous looking and still being crazy and still being so, you know, like electrifying in the scarier ways. But I think that's why it's such a good performance. And she's not an actress where I'm like, oh, Sharon Stone is appointment viewing for me. Like, I love everything she's, you know, like, I like Sharon Stone.

• 2:36:27Griffin Newman?

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:36:27David Sims?

  I love Quick and the Dad.

• 2:36:28Griffin Newman?

  You like to get stoned?

• 2:36:29David Sims?

  I like to get stoned. I, you know, obviously, like, Basic Instinct, never really one of my movies, but like electrifying performance.

• 2:36:35Speaker 03

  She's so great.

• 2:36:36David Sims?

  I like it, but it's like, I think I've seen Basic Instinct like two or three times, right? You know, it's not like, um, yeah, Sliver, Sliver's bad.

• 2:36:44Speaker 03

  Sliver's pretty bad.

• 2:36:45Griffin Newman?

  Never seen Sliver.

• 2:36:46David Sims?

  I've seen, I own, I own the, like, vinegar syndrome 4K with the greatest save by Beatrice.

• 2:36:50Speaker 03

  Vinegar syndrome of Sliver.

• 2:36:52David Sims?

  Of course I do. They, uh, I enjoy Sphere very much. I'm a hardy Sphere defender.

• 2:36:58Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:36:59David Sims?

  Um, yeah, it's, it's, yeah, you know what? You look at her career and it's so short.

• 2:37:05Griffin Newman?

  Yes, it really is.

• 2:37:06David Sims?

  You know, because like Sphere is 98 and then it's like Catwoman 04.

• 2:37:10Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 2:37:10David Sims?

  And obviously she had like.

• 2:37:11Griffin Newman?

  And Catwoman's like a comeback role after several years away.

• 2:37:14David Sims?

  Yeah, that's, um.

• 2:37:16Griffin Newman?

  On paper. I put comeback in quotes.

• 2:37:18David Sims?

  No, I know, yeah.

• 2:37:18Griffin Newman?

  For the listener.

• 2:37:19David Sims?

  Because the, the plot is she's an evil makeup, uh, woman.

• 2:37:22Griffin Newman?

  Well, she creates a skin cream that makes her skin.

• 2:37:25David Sims?

  Diamond hard.

• 2:37:26Griffin Newman?

  Diamond hard, yes.

• 2:37:27David Sims?

  Right.

• 2:37:27Speaker 03

  Cool.

• 2:37:28David Sims?

  Yeah, it's just so funny that there's, they were like, Catwoman's a girl, right? Should the villain be like a, a fashion lady or something?

• 2:37:35Griffin Newman?

  Cosmetics or some shit.

• 2:37:35David Sims?

  Girl, girl fighting?

• 2:37:38Speaker 03

  What's a scary girl thing? Skincare.

• 2:37:40Griffin Newman?

  A movie, neither written nor directed by women?

• 2:37:44David Sims?

  Teresa Rebecca has a credit on Catwoman, which really amuses me. It's a story credit.

• 2:37:48Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 2:37:49David Sims?

  And that it feels like something where Teresa Rebecca, who is obviously a celebrated playwright, but also, you know, she worked on Law and Order and she, then she wrote and created Smash, was fired from that one or pushed aside or whatever, like, she probably had a different take, is my guess with Teresa Rebecca. I'm not sure.

• 2:38:03Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 2:38:04David Sims?

  Uh, Broken Flowers, I really like her in. That's a, she's really good in that. Sort of a forgotten movie, but a pretty good movie. But yeah, I mean, like.

• 2:38:11Speaker 03

  I really want to read her, uh, memoir.

• 2:38:14David Sims?

  The beauty of living twice.

• 2:38:15Speaker 03

  Yeah. Uh, it's been on my list for a while, but.

• 2:38:18Griffin Newman?

  No, she'll show up in stuff briefly and be really good, but it feels like she, the, the actual proper comeback eludes her.

• 2:38:24David Sims?

  Right, like, everyone respects Sharon Stone, you know, like, or what, like, but yes, she never quite had the,

• 2:38:31Speaker 03

  Well, she.

• 2:38:31David Sims?

  The kind of like Demi Moore in The Substance type, like, hey, wow, like, you're back, you know?

• 2:38:36Speaker 03

  It's gonna, it has to happen. I think that there's, uh, I think maybe more so than Demi Moore, she had a reputation for being a pain in the ass on set, which, who among us, or I should say, who among them, as in like, male stars?

• 2:38:48David Sims?

  Right, she went producer mode.

• 2:38:50Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:38:50David Sims?

  And because she was a woman, it was like, can you believe it? She has like opinions on how to do the movies.

• 2:38:54Speaker 03

  It's a classic, that thing. It's like she flew too close to the sun, even though, you know, she's just doing her job and trying to get a buck. But, uh, I'm sure she was, I'm sure she was a pain in the ass on set.

• 2:39:06Griffin Newman?

  She also, like, had to be.

• 2:39:08Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:39:08David Sims?

  But I think Sphere is the classic where it's like, her and Dustin Hoffman are both maybe at their worst.

• 2:39:15Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:39:15David Sims?

  It's a movie where like, you really just have to sit down and remember it's about the sphere. It's not about me, it's not about you, not about money, not about ego, okay? The sphere rules all. We must obey the communications of the sphere.

• 2:39:26Griffin Newman?

  Sam Jack is the ultimate, like, just do the work.

• 2:39:29David Sims?

  I think Samuel Jackson was probably a little bit more like, my line is, I'm afraid of the sphere, I'll say it. I understand my responsibilities.

• 2:39:36Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:39:37David Sims?

  Great movie, great book. Um, yes, Casino. Uh, yeah, so then, you know.

• 2:39:45David Sims?

  The House of the Rising Sun, it's all over. I mean, are we forgetting anything here? I mean, the confrontation in the front yard where she's just completely melting down.

• 2:39:54Speaker 03

  Well, I mean, before the

• 2:39:56David Sims?

  And Ace has her.

• 2:39:57Speaker 03

  The stuff that starts to fall apart with Ginger is also like her going to Nikki for production and like eventually plotting to kill him.

• 2:40:04David Sims?

  Right.

• 2:40:05Speaker 03

  Which, you know, again, not what I would do.

• 2:40:08David Sims?

  I wouldn't do the phone call of like, let's kill him while he's there.

• 2:40:12Speaker 03

  While he's there, yeah.

• 2:40:13David Sims?

  I don't know if I would do that phone call. Would you?

• 2:40:15Griffin Newman?

  I wouldn't. There's a lot of things in this film I wouldn't do.

• 2:40:18David Sims?

  I also wouldn't plot to kill a mobster generally.

• 2:40:20Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:40:21Speaker 03

  No.

• 2:40:21David Sims?

  Bad idea.

• 2:40:22Griffin Newman?

  This whole movie for me is just three hours of, I would choose to take a nap.

• 2:40:27Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:40:27Griffin Newman?

  Instead of doing that.

• 2:40:29Speaker 03

  What if we slept?

• 2:40:30Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:40:30David Sims?

  Um.

• 2:40:31Speaker 03

  Well, especially like when Nikki's on till and they just start like going ham and not sleeping and just being up all night doing coke and like, you know, gunning down policemen and like for no reason. It's like, take a nap.

• 2:40:43Griffin Newman?

  She's just looking for a sponsor.

• 2:40:45David Sims?

  And those cops who shoot that guy thought he had a gun because he had a big hero sandwich.

• 2:40:51David Sims?

  Okay. And it was shiny.

• 2:40:55David Sims?

  It is crazy that like the big set piece for her at the end is she's just trying to get back in the house because she wants the safe deposit keys so she can get the money. And then it's like, it's a long extended sequence. It's so wrenching. The daughter's in the like neighbor's house watching through the door, right? You know, like

• 2:41:09Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:41:10David Sims?

  She gets in there, she gets the money and then he's like, yeah, and then, you know, she blew it on drugs and died.

• 2:41:15Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:41:15David Sims?

  Like, you know, that's it.

• 2:41:16Speaker 02

  That is the tragic thing.

• 2:41:17Griffin Newman?

  She got a bad dose.

• 2:41:18David Sims?

  Yeah. She got a whatever.

• 2:41:20Speaker 02

  But she's, she's an addict and it's like

• 2:41:23David Sims?

  Hanging out with worse and worse people.

• 2:41:24Speaker 02

  No plan.

• 2:41:26David Sims?

  No.

• 2:41:26Speaker 03

  No.

• 2:41:27Speaker 02

  It's, she's been saying, I gotta get my jewelry. She keeps coming back to that. She gets it and it leads to her demise.

• 2:41:34Griffin Newman?

  But, but I think, how does Ace word, he calls it a hot dose or something like that? There's a implication that it might've been a fixed thing.

• 2:41:42Speaker 03

  It's like hanging out with Hells Angels or something. Like, it's just like, yeah.

• 2:41:46Griffin Newman?

  And when you read about the real

• 2:41:48Speaker 03

  Jerry.

• 2:41:49Griffin Newman?

  Jerry.

• 2:41:50Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:41:50Griffin Newman?

  Uh, there, there was a lot of mystery surrounding her death of whether it was just an accident or whether it was the walls closing in on everybody.

• 2:41:58Speaker 03

  Yeah. But I think, I mean, yeah, the tragedy of hers that she was taught so young that what her power and value was. And like, we meet her at sort of the zenith of that, her ability to use her charm and her looks to like have beneficial relationships with people without having to either commit to anybody or have any sort of emotional intimacy with anybody, but also like not receive any herself. Yeah. Her metabolism for like, having any kind of healthy emotional life is just fucked from the start. It's like, there's no universe in which she's able to like, accept.

• 2:42:37Speaker 03

  You know, even if it was somebody less controlling than Ace, it's like, you could give her the best possible circumstances and she'd probably still reject them.

• 2:42:45Griffin Newman?

  It is the thing that's interesting about this movie presenting them to us as fully formed is that they just become almost like mythic cautionary tales.

• 2:42:54Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:42:55Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 2:42:55Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:42:56David Sims?

  Then, yes, Nikki gets beaten to death. In front of his brother, his brother gets murdered in front of him, which makes it worse. Even though his brother's like not a character we're particularly like familiar with.

• 2:43:06Griffin Newman?

  And to be clear, they don't beat him to death. They beat him.

• 2:43:08David Sims?

  Yeah, they beat him near death.

• 2:43:09Griffin Newman?

  He's still breathing and then bury him alive.

• 2:43:11Speaker 02

  Well, we should shout out the brother does spit into a sandwich and then give it to a cop, which I think is pretty funny. I think that's a good thing.

• 2:43:17Griffin Newman?

  You like that. You would do that.

• 2:43:19Speaker 03

  Should keep a running list of the things we would and wouldn't do from Casino.

• 2:43:24David Sims?

  There's just, you know, I think something like vaguely audacious, that is the brutal end of the movie, right?

• 2:43:31Speaker 03

  Well, it's like the whole like Order 66 ass like ending of, yeah.

• 2:43:37David Sims?

  It's all, it's all over. Right. Exactly. Like the mob just got saved.

• 2:43:39Griffin Newman?

  Lumina Rendule gets taken down.

• 2:43:41David Sims?

  Yeah. But like that Ace is just like, but I still provided service. So here I am. I've got my big ass glasses.

• 2:43:49Speaker 02

  Those glasses are huge.

• 2:43:50David Sims?

  They're big. Glasses.

• 2:43:52Speaker 02

  They get bigger as he gets more extravagant. The glasses are getting bigger and bigger until they're like sticking out like the final shot.

• 2:44:00Speaker 03

  Their goggles.

• 2:44:01Speaker 02

  Like way beyond his head.

• 2:44:02Speaker 03

  Oh.

• 2:44:03David Sims?

  But like for Marty to just sort of send you out on this kind of like, it's like not even a big bummer note. It's like a little bummer note. Just kind of like, yeah.

• 2:44:10Griffin Newman?

  What's the last line?

• 2:44:12David Sims?

  I mean, he's like, it used to be like Disney, I don't know.

• 2:44:14Speaker 02

  I think it's literally like, and that's that.

• 2:44:15David Sims?

  Yeah, right.

• 2:44:16Speaker 03

  Yeah, that is the last line of the movie.

• 2:44:18David Sims?

  And they just fucking roll the credits. And yeah.

• 2:44:20Speaker 03

  But yeah, you know, that whole montage at the end, like they hold on the, you know, the golden lion in front of MGM for a really long time. And like, it's just wordless. And it's just like this sort of robotic futuristic looking like idol in a way, like in front of this, you know, spotless green edifice. And it's just like, there's no soul here and you're kind of left to just look at that for a while and think about it.

• 2:44:45Griffin Newman?

  Electronic eyes.

• 2:44:46Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:44:46Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:44:46Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:44:47Griffin Newman?

  Um, and that's, that is the final line. And what, and subprime loans have now replaced the money.

• 2:44:52David Sims?

  Yeah. He's like, how did they build the new Vegas with fucking junk bonds? And now it's like Disney. And he's doing the whole sort of like, is it any better thing? But it's not even in some triumphant way. He's just like, I don't know.

• 2:45:02Griffin Newman?

  Yeah. I'll just sit here.

• 2:45:04David Sims?

  Gambling.

• 2:45:05Griffin Newman?

  Look at my books.

• 2:45:06David Sims?

  Yeah. I like, I like Boston.

• 2:45:08Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:45:09David Sims?

  Points and rebounds.

• 2:45:12David Sims?

  Uh, this film opened November, turkey time.

• 2:45:15Speaker 02

  I have one last thing I wanted to say about the movie. There is the news reports talking about Ace and it reminded me of our Showgirls episode.

• 2:45:26David Sims?

  Chip Smith.

• 2:45:27Speaker 02

  Of Chip Smith.

• 2:45:28Griffin Newman?

  It feels very Chip Smith.

• 2:45:29Speaker 02

  Yes. Ian, and that it's like, why is this local news report happening right now?

• 2:45:35David Sims?

  I'm sure Chip's, hey, man, being a local news reporter in Vegas, especially in like the seventies, that must've been a pretty wild job.

• 2:45:42Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:45:42Griffin Newman?

  Oh, sure. Can I call out two little moments I love?

• 2:45:45David Sims?

  Yeah, of course.

• 2:45:45Griffin Newman?

  Uh, I, it's towards the end and one of the things are starting to spiral, uh, when Pesci is paranoid about Ace becoming aware. And a guy walks by and Pesci interrupts himself to go, who the fuck is that guy? And it genuinely feels like it's a background actor.

• 2:46:04Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:46:05Griffin Newman?

  Or a background actor who walked at the wrong time.

• 2:46:08David Sims?

  Right.

• 2:46:08Griffin Newman?

  Or a civilian who walked through the frame.

• 2:46:11David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 2:46:11Griffin Newman?

  And he's so present as an actor that he was just like, this guy would call that out.

• 2:46:16David Sims?

  Yeah. That's really funny.

• 2:46:17Griffin Newman?

  It's not him like breaking character. It's actually the more honest thing to not ignore the guy. My favorite rhythm scene in this movie, just in terms of like classic Scorsese rhythm, is weirdly not any of the mob scenes, but is the first reporter who goes and speaks to Ace who's like, so you're the boss?

• 2:46:36Speaker 03

  Uh huh.

• 2:46:37Griffin Newman?

  And he's like, no, Green's the boss. And he's like, but when Green's gone, he goes, I run things.

• 2:46:42Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:46:43Griffin Newman?

  And he keeps getting him until you hard cut to when, when Green is gone, I am, I guess, functionally the boss.

• 2:46:50Speaker 03

  I guess I'm the boss.

• 2:46:51Griffin Newman?

  I guess I'm the boss.

• 2:46:54Speaker 03

  That's good.

• 2:46:55David Sims?

  Uh, this film opened November 22nd, 1995, 1600 theaters, the highest, uh, the widest opening Scorsese had ever received.

• 2:47:03Griffin Newman?

  Wow.

• 2:47:04David Sims?

  It opens to $9 million. So fifth place at the box office, somewhat disappointing, but it holds pretty well. Made $42 million, 116 worldwide. So broke even, maybe a little over. It was nominated for one Oscar.

• 2:47:21Griffin Newman?

  Mm hmm.

• 2:47:22David Sims?

  Uh, it's certainly like Goodfellas had broken through more, but I do feel like it is the peak era of Marty being like, I guess they just don't really like what I do.

• 2:47:31Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 2:47:31David Sims?

  You know, like, I know I'm celebrated. I get to make big movies, but I'm not really Oscar flavor.

• 2:47:36Griffin Newman?

  There's a ceiling to it. Yeah.

• 2:47:37David Sims?

  Yes. I get under people's skin. I make movies about irredeemable people, blah, blah. Ebert loved it. Maslin, he loves Marty. Maslin in the Times liked it. Todd McCarthy liked it. Rosenbaum, uh, didn't like it. Um, Scorsese, his final quote here, speaks to some people. Joe Pesci was playing golf and a couple of older men were on the same course afterwards. They all changed their street clothes and it turns out they're mon seniors, you know?

• 2:48:07Griffin Newman?

  Okay.

• 2:48:07David Sims?

  You know, men of the cloth. And they go to Joe and they say, we really like your work. Joe figures that he's, they're going to say like, we like Home Alone or whatever. And they're like, we really like Casino.

• 2:48:17Speaker 03

  Priests famously love Home Alone.

• 2:48:19Griffin Newman?

  They love Home Alone. Well, how often are they stuck Home Alone? They relate.

• 2:48:23David Sims?

  They say, we really like Casino. We really felt bad for how you died in the movie. We really felt for you in that sequence. And Joe's like, Joe then like tells Marty the story and is like, that's what you were going for, right? And Marty's like, yeah, I wanted you to wonder if he deserved his fate. Like even if he's like a nasty piece of shit. Anyway, just funny. Uh, so this film opens number five, Griffin, uh, November 24th, 1995. I'm pretty sure we've done this box office before, but because you, what's number one?

• 2:48:49Griffin Newman?

  Number one is Toy Story.

• 2:48:49David Sims?

  Toy Story. Opening this week.

• 2:48:51Griffin Newman?

  It's the first week. Wow. Yeah. So.

• 2:48:54Speaker 03

  So this was the counter programming for Toy Story.

• 2:48:57Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:48:57David Sims?

  They were like, Rickles fans will show up one way or another.

• 2:49:00Griffin Newman?

  Kind of the box office. Um, does that mean that Heat is already out or does Heat come out next weekend?

• 2:49:07David Sims?

  It is Christmas.

• 2:49:08Griffin Newman?

  Heat is Christmas.

• 2:49:09David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 2:49:09Griffin Newman?

  I just remember that Heat was still also being beaten by Toy Story, but Toy Story is the number one movie of the year. It runs the table for the rest of the, this is box office season.

• 2:49:17David Sims?

  Number two of the box office is an action film that we've covered on our Patreon.

• 2:49:22Griffin Newman?

  It's an action film.

• 2:49:22David Sims?

  Came out last week. It's a big hit.

• 2:49:24Griffin Newman?

  It's a big hit.

• 2:49:25David Sims?

  It's in the franchise of films.

• 2:49:27Griffin Newman?

  It's, and it's a pure action franchise, you would say.

• 2:49:29David Sims?

  I would certainly say it is the action franchise of all cinema.

• 2:49:34Griffin Newman?

  Uh, it's not, it's, it's, no, what number is it in the franchise?

• 2:49:40David Sims?

  16 or whatever.

• 2:49:41Griffin Newman?

  It's 16, so it's a Bond.

• 2:49:43David Sims?

  Yeah. I don't know what number it is.

• 2:49:44Griffin Newman?

  Is it, uh, GoldenEye?

• 2:49:46David Sims?

  GoldenEye.

• 2:49:48Griffin Newman?

  GoldenEye.

• 2:49:49David Sims?

  It is the 17th. Wow. It was close. I was dumb. The 17th James Bond film.

• 2:49:53Griffin Newman?

  It was impressive.

• 2:49:54David Sims?

  Uh, GoldenEye, great movie. And soon we'll have a new James Bond.

• 2:49:57Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 2:49:58David Sims?

  I predict an English actor or British of some sort, maybe Irish.

• 2:50:02Griffin Newman?

  Do you think James Bond will be announced by the time this episode comes out?

• 2:50:06David Sims?

  It does seem like it's brewing to the point of

• 2:50:08Griffin Newman?

  Would you like to make a final prediction on the table?

• 2:50:10David Sims?

  I think it's gonna be Jack Louden. I'll go with the obvious thing right now.

• 2:50:13Griffin Newman?

  Okay. So I'm going to take the weirdo pick and I'm going to pick that guy that they say is on the shortlist who I've never heard of.

• 2:50:18David Sims?

  Yeah. I mean, that's often a good way to go because you're like, how do you make the shortlist?

• 2:50:21Griffin Newman?

  Yes. What's it, Burton or something?

• 2:50:23David Sims?

  I don't know. Great name.

• 2:50:24Griffin Newman?

  His name is Great Britain?

• 2:50:27David Sims?

  Number three at the box office is a comedy sequel.

• 2:50:30Griffin Newman?

  It's a comedy sequel. It's not Father of the Bride Part Two?

• 2:50:33David Sims?

  No.

• 2:50:34Griffin Newman?

  Am I close?

• 2:50:35David Sims?

  Uh, you're close in that it's a similarly like, let's make a sequel fast.

• 2:50:40Griffin Newman?

  Uh.

• 2:50:41David Sims?

  But not close otherwise.

• 2:50:43Griffin Newman?

  Let's make a sequel fast.

• 2:50:44David Sims?

  I would, I would, I would.

• 2:50:45Griffin Newman?

  Is it, is it, uh, When Nature Calls?

• 2:50:47David Sims?

  It is Ace Ventura, When Nature Calls, which came out, I think like 18 months after the first Ace Ventura.

• 2:50:53Griffin Newman?

  I think the first Ace Ventura is January 94, February, and this is November. Yeah. Impressive.

• 2:50:59David Sims?

  It's impressive and it's an impressive film, of course.

• 2:51:01Griffin Newman?

  I like that film quite a bit.

• 2:51:03David Sims?

  I haven't seen it since.

• 2:51:04Griffin Newman?

  I think that film, dare I say it, is well directed.

• 2:51:08David Sims?

  It's Oda Kirk, right?

• 2:51:09Griffin Newman?

  It's Oda Kirk.

• 2:51:10David Sims?

  Yeah, take it over from Shadok.

• 2:51:11Griffin Newman?

  I've always been a fan of the cinema Oda Kirk.

• 2:51:13David Sims?

  The Thumbs.

• 2:51:14Griffin Newman?

  The Thumbs.

• 2:51:16David Sims?

  Ace Ventura, When Nature Calls. Any, uh, any take on Ace Ventura from you, Emily Ishida? Mother of blankies.

• 2:51:22Speaker 03

  I've never seen either of them.

• 2:51:24David Sims?

  Wow. You've never even seen the first Ace Ventura.

• 2:51:26Speaker 03

  No, I was not allowed to.

• 2:51:27David Sims?

  Are you aware that he says, do not go in there?

• 2:51:29Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:51:30Speaker 03

  Uh, yeah, yeah. It's about, um, it's about like a scary dog.

• 2:51:35David Sims?

  It's a shark.

• 2:51:36Griffin Newman?

  Yes. We all know that humans talk out of their mouths, but Ace Ventura dares to ask, what if sometimes I talked out of my butt?

• 2:51:43David Sims?

  He's a derriere, if you will.

• 2:51:46Speaker 03

  Yeah, no, it passed me by, and by which I mean, I wasn't allowed to see it as a child.

• 2:51:50David Sims?

  I think I've said it, but we were supposed to see Blank Check. It was sold out. My dad was like, eh, let's pivot to this thing. I think it was kind of like, that's why. I'm not sure, because it was a PG-13 movie.

• 2:52:01Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:52:02David Sims?

  You know, it was more risque.

• 2:52:03Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:52:04David Sims?

  And I was 94, I was eight.

• 2:52:05Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:52:06David Sims?

  And, but he was like, I think I was seven. I hadn't even turned eight.

• 2:52:09Griffin Newman?

  Wow.

• 2:52:09David Sims?

  But he was like, eh, you know, Jim Carrey, whatever. And I mean, it was just, I, I think probably the happiest I've ever been in my life.

• 2:52:16Griffin Newman?

  I love it.

• 2:52:17David Sims?

  I just, I really, I remember it was me, my dad and George Jetta. Shout out to you, George, wherever you are. Uh, out there in the big, this big blue marble we call Earth. And we were just like, this, this isn't legal, what this man is doing. This is the funniest thing I have ever seen.

• 2:52:31Griffin Newman?

  That's how I felt watching Austin for the first time.

• 2:52:34David Sims?

  Austin?

• 2:52:35Griffin Newman?

  Powers?

• 2:52:35David Sims?

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:52:36Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:52:36David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 2:52:37Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:52:38David Sims?

  Number four.

• 2:52:38Speaker 03

  That one hit bigger for me, I would say. Yeah.

• 2:52:41Griffin Newman?

  It's a pretty shagadelic film, if you think about it.

• 2:52:44David Sims?

  Number four at the box office is an action comedy film.

• 2:52:49Griffin Newman?

  Okay.

• 2:52:49David Sims?

  It's a buddy comedy.

• 2:52:51Griffin Newman?

  Buddy comedy is 95.

• 2:52:53David Sims?

  Two buddies who had already been buddies in another movie.

• 2:52:56Griffin Newman?

  Oh, I love this.

• 2:52:57David Sims?

  Yes. And they're just kind of being ported over to this one.

• 2:53:00Griffin Newman?

  Money Train?

• 2:53:00David Sims?

  It is Money Train.

• 2:53:01Griffin Newman?

  It's Money Train.

• 2:53:02David Sims?

  With Wesley and Woody. Get on the fast track.

• 2:53:04Griffin Newman?

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:53:05David Sims?

  That was the tagline.

• 2:53:06Griffin Newman?

  Their third film together.

• 2:53:07Speaker 03

  Wow.

• 2:53:07David Sims?

  Yes, what's the, what's the other one?

• 2:53:09Griffin Newman?

  Uh, I was about to call it Ladybugs, but it's not called that. It's called Wildcats. The one where Goldie Hawn.

• 2:53:13David Sims?

  Oh, yes.

• 2:53:14Griffin Newman?

  Manages a football team.

• 2:53:15David Sims?

  Never seen that.

• 2:53:16Griffin Newman?

  Both of them are in that.

• 2:53:17David Sims?

  White man can't jump. But yeah, like insanely a movie I've never seen, given that it revolves around the subway.

• 2:53:24Griffin Newman?

  And money, two of your favorite things.

• 2:53:26David Sims?

  And I love Wesley.

• 2:53:27Griffin Newman?

  Uh-huh.

• 2:53:28David Sims?

  And I love Woody.

• 2:53:28Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:53:30David Sims?

  But people don't like it that much.

• 2:53:31Griffin Newman?

  J-Lo, it's supposed to be quite bad.

• 2:53:32David Sims?

  But this is one of those movies where I'll throw it on now, probably be like, ah, crisp mise en scène.

• 2:53:37Speaker 03

  Beautifully shot.

• 2:53:39Griffin Newman?

  Who directed this? Oda Kirk?

• 2:53:40David Sims?

  Uh, Joseph Rudin.

• 2:53:42Griffin Newman?

  Okay.

• 2:53:42David Sims?

  Rubin, sorry, the director of Sleeping with the Enemy.

• 2:53:45Griffin Newman?

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:53:45David Sims?

  Seen that?

• 2:53:46Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:53:46David Sims?

  And The Good Son.

• 2:53:47Griffin Newman?

  Sure.

• 2:53:48David Sims?

  You know, kind of a.

• 2:53:49Griffin Newman?

  Who's a guy?

• 2:53:49David Sims?

  A stepfather, good movie. You know, solid trash guy. Do you like Money Train?

• 2:53:53Speaker 03

  I've never seen it.

• 2:53:54David Sims?

  You like Wesley or Woody?

• 2:53:55Speaker 03

  I love them both.

• 2:53:56Griffin Newman?

  J-Lo?

• 2:53:56Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:53:57David Sims?

  J-Lo, young J-Lo.

• 2:53:58Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:53:58David Sims?

  From the block?

• 2:53:59Speaker 03

  Jenny, yeah, when she was from the block, yeah.

• 2:54:02David Sims?

  Chris Cooper, I'm gonna guess, playing a villain.

• 2:54:04Griffin Newman?

  Hmm. Ice Mentor.

• 2:54:06David Sims?

  I don't think so. Uh, number five is Casino. Number six is The American President.

• 2:54:10Griffin Newman?

  Hmm.

• 2:54:11David Sims?

  Uh, which has only been out for a couple of weeks. Number seven is It Takes Two. I'm assuming that's with the Olsen Twins, right?

• 2:54:16Griffin Newman?

  Correct. And Gutenberg and Kirstie Alley.

• 2:54:19Speaker 03

  Believe I saw that in theaters.

• 2:54:21David Sims?

  I don't think I did. Right, they're under the wedding table, going like this.

• 2:54:27Speaker 03

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:54:27Griffin Newman?

  It takes both of them.

• 2:54:29David Sims?

  To do what?

• 2:54:30Griffin Newman?

  Get them married.

• 2:54:31Speaker 03

  Parents.

• 2:54:32David Sims?

  Right. I think, is it that the parents are divorced and the, he's getting married, but they're gonna get the parents?

• 2:54:38Griffin Newman?

  It's a parent trap, but it's close to the parent trap.

• 2:54:40Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's like a reverse parent trap, I feel like.

• 2:54:42Griffin Newman?

  Supposed to marry other people, maybe?

• 2:54:44David Sims?

  I think this tagline, by the way, is over explaining.

• 2:54:47Griffin Newman?

  Okay, explain it to me.

• 2:54:48David Sims?

  When it comes to making the perfect match, two heads are better than one, especially if they look exactly alike. We don't need, we can see their faces. You don't need to tell me they're twins.

• 2:54:59Griffin Newman?

  The film focuses on two lookalike girls who meet by chance in a summer camp. It's fucking parent trap.

• 2:55:05David Sims?

  It's just parent trap. I have seen this film.

• 2:55:07Griffin Newman?

  One is an orphan, the other is a wealthy heiress. They decide to ask, act as matchmakers.

• 2:55:11David Sims?

  But how do they explain that they look alike?

• 2:55:13Griffin Newman?

  I don't fucking know. Well, I guess because one of them's an orphan, there must be a twist.

• 2:55:17David Sims?

  They do some switcheroo shit.

• 2:55:19Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:55:19David Sims?

  You think there's a twist?

• 2:55:20Griffin Newman?

  I think there has to be a twist. Yeah. So it's a social worker gets paired up with a wealthy widower who owns the camp.

• 2:55:28David Sims?

  Great. Uh, number eight at the box office is Get Shorty. Wonderful movie.

• 2:55:33Griffin Newman?

  It's a, you could have called It Takes Two that.

• 2:55:36David Sims?

  Yeah, and you could have called Casino Get Shorty.

• 2:55:39Griffin Newman?

  It's true.

• 2:55:40David Sims?

  Because they do get him in a cornfield.

• 2:55:41Speaker 03

  In the end, takes three hours, but they do get him.

• 2:55:44Griffin Newman?

  Toy Story, you could have called Get Shorty. Get Shorty could have been the title of most films at the top 10 right now.

• 2:55:48David Sims?

  A lot of short actors in Hollywood. Number nine, new at the box, yeah, great movie. Um, great L.A. satire.

• 2:55:54Griffin Newman?

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:55:55David Sims?

  Hackman King in that movie.

• 2:55:56Griffin Newman?

  Unbelievable performance from Hackman. And Delroy Lindo is on fire.

• 2:56:00David Sims?

  Farina, unbelievable.

• 2:56:02Griffin Newman?

  The whole cast.

• 2:56:03David Sims?

  Whole cast. Renee Russo, never hotter, except for every other movie she's ever been.

• 2:56:07Griffin Newman?

  DeVito's monologue where he goes, I, I, that was the stem of the character.

• 2:56:10David Sims?

  Russo hotness rankings for me, like, the first movie she was in tied with all the other ones.

• 2:56:16David Sims?

  One for all of them.

• 2:56:18Griffin Newman?

  DeVito's got his monologue about, uh, how he plays the character where he says, that was the stem. I just had to wind him up and then I just let him go, man. I let him go. I think about it all the time. I probably misquoted it.

• 2:56:30David Sims?

  Nick of Time, number nine.

• 2:56:32Griffin Newman?

  Sure, Johnny Depp with the watch.

• 2:56:33David Sims?

  It's the movie where Johnny Depp looks like Charlie Sheen on the poster.

• 2:56:36Speaker 03

  Sure. I don't.

• 2:56:38David Sims?

  It's a political thriller directed by John Badham that takes place, Emily, in real time.

• 2:56:43Speaker 03

  Whoa.

• 2:56:44Griffin Newman?

  ticking clock.

• 2:56:45David Sims?

  Uh, Christopher Walken. I've never seen it. I should check it out. Um, number 10 at the box office is a movie I really like.

• 2:56:52Griffin Newman?

  No, that's the thing that sucks about that movie.

• 2:56:54David Sims?

  They fucked up.

• 2:56:54Griffin Newman?

  Seriously, his name is Gene.

• 2:56:56David Sims?

  Jesus.

• 2:56:56Griffin Newman?

  It's the dumbest shit in the world. It needs to be called Nick of Time.

• 2:56:59Speaker 03

  What the heck?

• 2:57:00David Sims?

  It makes no sense. Nick of Time than like Steven Seagal is in it or whatever, right? Like.

• 2:57:04Griffin Newman?

  It, it needed to be called Nick of Time, truly.

• 2:57:06David Sims?

  Uh, number 10 at the box office is the very good, uh, Jodie Foster-directed film, Home for the Holidays.

• 2:57:13Griffin Newman?

  Oh, yeah, that's a good movie.

• 2:57:14David Sims?

  Which I really like.

• 2:57:14Griffin Newman?

  Stack test.

• 2:57:15David Sims?

  With a fantastic Robert Downey Jr.

• 2:57:17Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:57:17David Sims?

  At his messiest.

• 2:57:18Griffin Newman?

  What he describes as the most relaxed performance in the history of cinema aided by heroin.

• 2:57:23David Sims?

  He had a little, little alley-oop there from heroin. So that's the box office. It's an interesting box office. It's a lot of hits.

• 2:57:30Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:57:30David Sims?

  Um, it's not one of those things where you're like, you know, goddamn, like.

• 2:57:35Griffin Newman?

  Well, American cinema is being redefined right up there at number one, so I don't know what you're fucking complaining about.

• 2:57:40David Sims?

  Are you a Toy Story girl?

• 2:57:42Speaker 03

  I mean.

• 2:57:42David Sims?

  You don't like Pixar. I know very much.

• 2:57:44Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, I do like some Pixar. I, I, I, you know, I saw Toy Story in theaters and it opened in a weekend, just like every other child.

• 2:57:52David Sims?

  Sure.

• 2:57:52Speaker 03

  That year, um, I don't know, it hasn't been my thing historically. At times I've been quite, I would say irritated by it. But I know I'm like in a church right now and I shan't speak ill of it.

• 2:58:05Griffin Newman?

  Let's just save space as I, uh, check my lily pads.

• 2:58:09Speaker 03

  I know.

• 2:58:10Griffin Newman?

  Um, uh, what is your favorite Pixar movie?

• 2:58:14Speaker 03

  Really good question.

• 2:58:15Griffin Newman?

  Right?

• 2:58:16Speaker 03

  I mean, I, I, I really liked The Incredibles a lot for a long time. I don't know how much, how well that has aged.

• 2:58:22Griffin Newman?

  I've seen you.

• 2:58:23Speaker 03

  For me, over time. Uh.

• 2:58:26Griffin Newman?

  But at the time, that was your favorite.

• 2:58:28Speaker 03

  Yeah, I think that kind of took the spot when that one came out. I mean, I hadn't been like, what, I wasn't like, it wasn't Cars. What was like the third, Bugs Life? No, I don't, yeah, I.

• 2:58:39Speaker 03

  There is another one I'm forgetting right now that's bugging me that I do.

• 2:58:42Griffin Newman?

  A good dinosaur.

• 2:58:43Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:58:43Griffin Newman?

  You love the good dinosaur.

• 2:58:44Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:58:45David Sims?

  Elemental.

• 2:58:46Griffin Newman?

  You like when fire and water hold hands.

• 2:58:49Speaker 03

  Yeah, I just, like, whoever.

• 2:58:50David Sims?

  This episode's three hours long. We just can't help ourselves.

• 2:58:52Speaker 03

  Whoever think that they would be able to hold hands?

• 2:58:55Griffin Newman?

  Well, and wait until they have to meet the in-laws.

• 2:58:58Speaker 03

  I guess, yeah, that's.

• 2:58:59David Sims?

  What are we talking about?

• 2:59:00Speaker 03

  Power of animation.

• 2:59:01David Sims?

  Oh, God.

• 2:59:02Griffin Newman?

  David, I mean, what did you expect?

• 2:59:03David Sims?

  I had nothing.

• 2:59:04Griffin Newman?

  It's an episode, because here, we're gonna go long. Mama's here.

• 2:59:06David Sims?

  I, I'm not even mad and it hasn't even felt like a slog. I just looked up and I was like, oh, wow, another casual three for us.

• 2:59:12Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:59:13David Sims?

  It's a dirty three.

• 2:59:14Speaker 03

  It's gotta at least be the length of the movie, I think.

• 2:59:17David Sims?

  You know what? This is an argument I see on the Reddit sometime. I reject it forcefully.

• 2:59:22Griffin Newman?

  I definitely, yeah.

• 2:59:23David Sims?

  I can't believe New York, New York wasn't as long as the movie. And I'm like, that's an issue everyone has with the movie.

• 2:59:29Griffin Newman?

  This is true.

• 2:59:29David Sims?

  That it's too long.

• 2:59:31Griffin Newman?

  If you want.

• 2:59:31David Sims?

  Why do you need us to match it?

• 2:59:33Griffin Newman?

  If you want that episode to be as long as the movie, here's what you should do. You should take every conversational point we make and repeat it six times in a row. You can do this in the edit.

• 2:59:43David Sims?

  And we're all just like yelling at each other, like.

• 2:59:45Griffin Newman?

  Just up the volume till it crackles.

• 2:59:48Speaker 02

  Well, we had actually the best part of the episode, uh, taken out.

• 2:59:52Griffin Newman?

  What was that?

• 2:59:53Speaker 03

  New York, New York?

• 2:59:54Griffin Newman?

  Oh, oh, you're joking. Yes. In, in three years, we'll release the director's cut of that episode. That has 15 minutes.

• 3:00:00David Sims?

  Lynn and I did a duet and it rocked. Yeah, it was great.

• 3:00:03Speaker 02

  And it was like, you guys just improvised the song too. It was so good.

• 3:00:07Griffin Newman?

  It turns out David has the voice of an angel, that whenever he's doing like, da, da, da, da, da, that's like him being funny, but when he really wants to sing and he connects to the lyrics.

• 3:00:16Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:00:16Griffin Newman?

  It's stunning. So in two years, you can hear those 15 minutes.

• 3:00:20Speaker 03

  And you had to take him out because of rights, right?

• 3:00:22David Sims?

  Oh, yeah, totally. No, it's because Lynn and I are gonna take it to Broadway, so we don't spoil.

• 3:00:26Speaker 03

  I don't know.

• 3:00:27David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 3:00:27Griffin Newman?

  Um, Emily, thank you for being here.

• 3:00:30David Sims?

  Wow.

• 3:00:31Speaker 03

  Thank you for having me.

• 3:00:32Griffin Newman?

  It had been too long, but we got you twice in one year.

• 3:00:34Speaker 03

  I know. I'm so, I'm so thrilled to have gotten in a, a Marty. I, like I said, it's, I've been on a journey with him as a viewer and I, I feel like I have, you know. I don't know, I ca, I, I, I came the long way. Everybody else just knew, like, instantly they loved him so much and I had to really work my way there, but it's like been so rewarding, I think, to become, you know, a big fan of his.

• 3:00:54Griffin Newman?

  He's good at making pictures.

• 3:00:55Speaker 03

  Also, like, I should say, we didn't, I'm sure you guys have talked a ton about Mr. Scorsese, uh, over the course of this, this season, but that was, like, that really knocked me backwards.

• 3:01:04Griffin Newman?

  It's so good.

• 3:01:05Speaker 03

  So good. It really made me mad, like, in a, in like a, in a satisfying way. I was just like, what, like, you know, in that kind of professional jealousy.

• 3:01:14David Sims?

  Yeah, I wish I had done something.

• 3:01:15Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's just so, yeah, anyway.

• 3:01:18Griffin Newman?

  I wish I was this little guy.

• 3:01:19Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah.

• 3:01:20Griffin Newman?

  Yeah. Uh, anything you wanna plug?

• 3:01:23Speaker 03

  Um, well, uh, Point Break, coming in 2027. Uh, I also, well, I mean, it's gonna still be a ways off, but, um, Kennedy on Netflix.

• 3:01:34Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 3:01:34Speaker 03

  Will be out in, in May, which I also wrote on, so.

• 3:01:38Griffin Newman?

  Which is about Jamie, right? It's a.

• 3:01:40Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 3:01:41David Sims?

  About the experiment.

• 3:01:44Griffin Newman?

  That was the working title.

• 3:01:48Speaker 03

  Yeah, that's, you know, it's about a family that nobody ever talks about or ever has any opinions about, so.

• 3:01:56Speaker 02

  I'm excited for it.

• 3:01:57Griffin Newman?

  I'm very excited.

• 3:01:58Speaker 02

  And Shogun, season two?

• 3:01:59Speaker 03

  Yeah, at some point, yeah.

• 3:02:03Speaker 02

  It takes a New York minute to make that one.

• 3:02:05Speaker 03

  Yeah, a New York minute.

• 3:02:10Speaker 02

  But that, and you guys will have already done the refocused film festival by this point.

• 3:02:15Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah. Yeah, when is this episode coming out?

• 3:02:17Speaker 02

  November 8th.

• 3:02:18Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah, well, it's just happened.

• 3:02:19Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 3:02:20Griffin Newman?

  Are you gonna join us on stage?

• 3:02:23Speaker 03

  If you'll have me.

• 3:02:24Griffin Newman?

  Please.

• 3:02:24Speaker 03

  If this is an invitation.

• 3:02:26Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 3:02:27Speaker 03

  Here on air. Yeah, I'm happy to. Well, I'll just plug it for next year then. The refocused film festival in Iowa City, Iowa, I am now on the board of advisors for it. So, yeah, we got them. We got Ben and Griff coming out, two thirds.

• 3:02:43Griffin Newman?

  It's focused on adaptation.

• 3:02:45Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 3:02:46Griffin Newman?

  And so I was asked by friend of the show, Rachel Yoder, what would you want to do? And my immediate answer, like, three beers in, but it was my immediate answer. I was like, well, obviously, the most interesting adaptation in American cinema is the Garbage Pail Kids movie.

• 3:03:00Speaker 03

  Mm-hmm.

• 3:03:00Griffin Newman?

  And so that's what we're gonna talk about.

• 3:03:02Speaker 03

  It's good to know that it was three beers in, because I'm sure soberly, you never would have thought to suggest such a film.

• 3:03:09Speaker 02

  It feels like if you're getting Griffin solo, if I'm not involved, that's a Griffin area of expertise, right? More than I.

• 3:03:18Griffin Newman?

  And I know Ben has fucked with the film as well.

• 3:03:19Speaker 02

  Right, for sure.

• 3:03:21Griffin Newman?

  Yes. You have seen it before, perhaps not in a sober state.

• 3:03:25Speaker 03

  I think I was probably stone cold sober when I saw it.

• 3:03:28Griffin Newman?

  Really?

• 3:03:29Speaker 03

  But I did have an intense, I remember having an intense feeling of rejection. My eyeballs didn't like it, and I got mad, and I think I left the room.

• 3:03:40Griffin Newman?

  Oh, you've never seen the ending?

• 3:03:41Speaker 03

  No.

• 3:03:41Griffin Newman?

  You've never seen Wendy Winston fart?

• 3:03:43Speaker 03

  I have seen Wendy Winston fart.

• 3:03:45Griffin Newman?

  They make that kind of the Chekhov's gun, his real big fart's the end of the movie.

• 3:03:49Speaker 03

  Oh, okay.

• 3:03:49Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 3:03:50Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 3:03:51Griffin Newman?

  Okay, fascinating. So I can't wait for this. This is great.

• 3:03:54Speaker 03

  I'm eager, you know, I'm eager to revisit it, and, you know, I'm tougher now than I was then. I think I was probably like 18 or something.

• 3:04:02Griffin Newman?

  Well, it's a tough movie, too. I think the movie might have challenged you at the time.

• 3:04:06Speaker 03

  I mean, it's really good that we're gonna be discussing this, like, you know, refocus runs concurrently with the Iowa Book Fair, you know, people, you know, from the literary community, some very, you know, fancy people writing books.

• 3:04:18Speaker 02

  They'll be involved, right?

• 3:04:20Speaker 03

  Yeah, they'll be, they'll all be in attendance.

• 3:04:22Griffin Newman?

  I'm gonna talk about my trading card movie.

• 3:04:24Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 3:04:24Griffin Newman?

  The most disgusting film ever made.

• 3:04:26Speaker 03

  It's really foul, I think.

• 3:04:27Griffin Newman?

  It's a foul fill. He's one of the characters, and he's got stinky breath. He's a baby.

• 3:04:31Speaker 02

  All right, you made it to three hours, guys.

• 3:04:34Griffin Newman?

  Oh, and Emily?

• 3:04:34Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:04:35Griffin Newman?

  An Emily card? There must be.

• 3:04:36Speaker 02

  Yeah. Okay, I have here, Emptied Emily.

• 3:04:41Griffin Newman?

  What if you look like?

• 3:04:42Speaker 03

  I mean.

• 3:04:43Speaker 02

  One of those Russian nesting dolls.

• 3:04:45Griffin Newman?

  That's fun. Hey!

• 3:04:46Speaker 02

  But it's full. Junk, garbage, guts.

• 3:04:50Griffin Newman?

  Oh, she's ironically not empty.

• 3:04:52Speaker 03

  I thought it was like, yeah, there was empty, like, soul wise.

• 3:04:55Griffin Newman?

  Feel dead inside.

• 3:04:56Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 3:04:57Griffin Newman?

  Thank you for being here. Thank you, of course.

• 3:05:01Speaker 02

  Love you, Emily.

• 3:05:01Griffin Newman?

  It's always an honor and a privilege. We love you.

• 3:05:03Speaker 03

  Hmm.

• 3:05:04Griffin Newman?

  Thank you all for listening. Please remember to rate, review, and subscribe. Tune in next week for...

• 3:05:10Speaker 02

  Kundune.

• 3:05:11Griffin Newman?

  Kundune, which is the last one I haven't seen.

• 3:05:14Speaker 02

  I liked it.

• 3:05:15Speaker 03

  Fun.

• 3:05:15Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, I'm excited to see it.

• 3:05:17Speaker 02

  Over on Patreon, we've recently just put out our final episode in the Resident Evil commentary series.

• 3:05:24David Sims?

  The Raccoon City.

• 3:05:27Griffin Newman?

  Welcome to Raccoon City.

• 3:05:28Speaker 02

  But, yeah, in a few days, November 11th.

• 3:05:31David Sims?

  Yes.

• 3:05:32Speaker 02

  We'll be releasing an episode about the Bob Dylan documentary.

• 3:05:37David Sims?

  The two documentaries.

• 3:05:38Griffin Newman?

  There's two documentaries, sorry.

• 3:05:39David Sims?

  No direction home and Rolling Thunder review.

• 3:05:41Griffin Newman?

  Which Sharon Stone is in.

• 3:05:43David Sims?

  Oh, cool.

• 3:05:44Griffin Newman?

  Has a prominent role. I have not seen it yet. People love this movie.

• 3:05:47David Sims?

  With the Rolling Thunder review.

• 3:05:48Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 3:05:49Speaker 02

  It's awesome.

• 3:05:50Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 3:05:51Speaker 02

  With guest, and I'll say it now, and then if it doesn't work out, then we'll cut it, but James Austin Johnson.

• 3:05:56Griffin Newman?

  James Austin Johnson.

• 3:05:58Speaker 02

  So, check that out.

• 3:05:59Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, king of the Dylan impression.

• 3:06:00Speaker 02

  Patreon.com/blankcheck.

• 3:06:02Griffin Newman?

  Yes. Check all that stuff out. And, what was that look, Ben?

• 3:06:09David Sims?

  No.

• 3:06:09Griffin Newman?

  Did I say it in a weird way?

• 3:06:10David Sims?

  I did.

• 3:06:11Griffin Newman?

  Okay, well, I say everything in a weird way.

• 3:06:13Speaker 02

  We've been here, we did this for three hours.

• 3:06:15Griffin Newman?

  My brain is dying, and as always, I would simply rather take a nap than run a casino.

• 3:06:29Speaker 02

  Blank Check with Griffin and David is hosted by Griffin Newman and David Sims. Our executive producer is me, Ben Hostly. Our creative producer is Marie Bardi Salinas, and our associate producer is AJ McKeon. This show is mixed and edited by AJ McKeon and Alan Smithy. Research by JJ Birch. Our theme song is by Lain Montgomery and The Great American Novel, with additional music by Alex Mitchell. Artwork by Joe Bowen, 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

• 3:07:11Speaker 02

  franchise commentaries and bonus episodes. Follow us on social, at Blank Check Pod. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter, Checkbook, on Substack. This podcast is created and produced by Blank Check Productions.