Die My Love with Alison Willmore

Our Lynne Ramsay series comes to a close with last year's Die My Love, which brings us to the realization - damn, have we really never talked about Jennifer Lawrence before? Join us and Vulture's Alison Willmore as we do a full career deep-dive on J. Law, and grapple with this film and Mubi's decision to purchase it out of Cannes for a buttload of money. Read the NY Mag profile of Darren Aronofsky from 2017 https://www.vulture.com/2017/09/darren-aronofsky-talks-the-metaphors-of-mother.html#:~:text=Say%20what%20you%20will%20about,for%20him%2C%20was%20the%20problem. Read Alison's work at Vulture https://www.vulture.com/author/alison-willmore/ Sign up for Check Book https://blankcheckpod.substack.com/welcome, the Blank Check newsletter featuring even more “real nerdy shit” to feed your pop culture obsession. Dossier excerpts, film biz AND burger reports, and even more exclusive content you won’t want to miss out on. Join our Patreon for franchise commentaries and bonus episodes. http://www.patreon.com/blankcheck Follow us @blankcheckpod on Twitter https://x.com/blankcheckpod?lang=en, Instagram https://www.instagram.com/blankcheckpod/?hl=en, Threads https://www.threads.net/@blankcheckpod?xmt=AQGzctAh4mbWTwYzCV1pzNT6AMV9o99EOfymi8TLR5mTde0 and Facebook https://www.facebook.com/blankcheckpodcast/! Buy some real nerdy merch https://kinshipgoods.com/blankcheck Connect with other Blankies on our Reddit https://www.reddit.com/r/blankies/s/gpcOkQr8Sv or Discord https://discord.gg/Q6YGSR3JrA For anything else, check out BlankCheckPod.com https://www.blankcheckpod.com/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

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

• 0:02Griffin Newman?

  David.

• 0:03David Sims?

  Yep.

• 0:03Griffin Newman?

  We did a live show.

• 0:04David Sims?

  Yeah, remember?

• 0:05Griffin Newman?

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

• 0:12David Sims?

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

• 0:15Griffin Newman?

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

• 0:18David Sims?

  Yeah, hey.

• 0:18Speaker 02

  Hey, everyone, or should I say, oh?

• 0:20David Sims?

  Oh.

• 0:22Griffin Newman?

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

• 0:31David Sims?

  So just a few more days.

• 0:33Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 0:33David Sims?

  You can get it at dynasty.tv.

• 0:36Griffin Newman?

  Dynasty.tv.

• 0:37David Sims?

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

• 0:43Griffin Newman?

  Oh, yeah. I was moving things around. Laptop was on.

• 0:46Speaker 02

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

• 0:48Griffin Newman?

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

• 0:50David Sims?

  I was locked in.

• 0:51Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, very locked in and you were funny.

• 0:53David Sims?

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

• 0:56Griffin Newman?

  Oh, thank you.

• 0:57David Sims?

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

• 1:02Griffin Newman?

  You might see me shine Marie's shoes.

• 1:04David Sims?

  Exactly.

• 1:05Speaker 02

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

• 1:07Griffin Newman?

  If that gets you off.

• 1:09Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 1:10David Sims?

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

• 1:39Griffin Newman?

  I'm stuck between wanting to do podcasts and not wanting to do podcasts at all.

• 1:47David Sims?

  That's great. What was that?

• 1:48Griffin Newman?

  That's my favorite line in the movie.

• 1:49David Sims?

  Okay.

• 1:50Griffin Newman?

  Which is when she's at the party with the neighborhood families.

• 1:54David Sims?

  Yes.

• 1:54Griffin Newman?

  And the woman asks her, what do you do?

• 1:55David Sims?

  Yeah, I'm a writer or whatever.

• 1:57Griffin Newman?

  No, no, that's not what she says.

• 1:58David Sims?

  She doesn't say that.

• 1:59Griffin Newman?

  In fact, what she says is the thing I just quoted. She said, I'm stuck between wanting to do something and not wanting to do anything at all.

• 2:07David Sims?

  Yeah, you're right. That's a good line. Been there.

• 2:09Speaker 03

  It's relatable, incredibly relatable.

• 2:11Griffin Newman?

  It's a real, you have captured something in words perfectly performed by one of our most powerful movie stars that I have never been able to quite get my hands around.

• 2:26David Sims?

  Jennifer Lawrence, is she one of our most, she is, I guess.

• 2:29Griffin Newman?

  I'm choosing the word powerful.

• 2:31David Sims?

  You can use the different.

• 2:32Griffin Newman?

  Just in terms of the power of what she does, like her work.

• 2:36David Sims?

  You remember how when Angelina Jolie was sort of the number one most famous actress of her age, right? Like was the, I guess consensus A-list movie star who is a woman.

• 2:47Griffin Newman?

  Of her generation? No question.

• 2:48David Sims?

  Right. And like, and you would, every so often people would be like, she's never been in a good movie or really like made a proper hit. And I would always push back on that. I would be like, no, no, no, you can look at her career and she took like assault or even a fucking Maleficent. And like, you can tell that she plus it, you know, box office wise, right? You know what I mean?

• 3:10Griffin Newman?

  Bullshit. It's bullshit. A good movie is an ongoing conversation.

• 3:13David Sims?

  This is what I'm saying. So does J Law have her beat? As J Law is sort of the, maybe the Jolie-esque, you know, okay, Alison.

• 3:21Speaker 03

  I would say yes, but also I think she has yet to really do the thing that Jolie did, which is to come into a movie and just like blow everyone else out of, off this, you know, like Girl Interrupted. I feel like in that movie, she just comes in and you're just like, who is that? Like she, you know?

• 3:35Griffin Newman?

  Right. I, I would argue that Winter's Bone was a version of that.

• 3:41Speaker 03

  I mean, she's great in that, but also it is like a role that is almost like built around, uh, I don't know, like a showcase for her in a way that is, I think, and it is an incredible one.

• 3:51Griffin Newman?

  I was gonna say Silver Linings Playbook does have that Girl Interrupted energy in it. The difference is that the rest of the movie is closer to her level than maybe Girl Interrupted. That is not a movie I think is perfect, but certainly at the time as it was received, it was like, that's a movie that got four acting nominations.

• 4:09David Sims?

  Have we never really discussed Jennifer Lawrence on the show?

• 4:13Griffin Newman?

  I don't think so.

• 4:13David Sims?

  I guess we haven't.

• 4:14Griffin Newman?

  Lot to talk about.

• 4:15David Sims?

  Because like, we've never wanted to do David O. Russell.

• 4:18Griffin Newman?

  No.

• 4:18David Sims?

  Who is her primary auteur. We've never wanted to cover the X-Men series on our Patreon. I wonder why.

• 4:23Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, let me just check the Epstein files quickly and see why we don't want to cover the X-Men movies.

• 4:27David Sims?

  And like, I mean, those are.

• 4:29Griffin Newman?

  Two of those directors are still clean. One, I don't know.

• 4:32David Sims?

  You know, I guess we could, we could do Mother one day.

• 4:36Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, although I would.

• 4:36Speaker 03

  It's a rich text.

• 4:37Griffin Newman?

  I would argue.

• 4:38David Sims?

  Is, is Darren kind of arguing his way out of being covered?

• 4:41Griffin Newman?

  I was gonna say, I think our chances of doing Mother one day have been greatly diminished by everything post-Mother.

• 4:48David Sims?

  Yeah, I like Mother, though. Still fond of Mother. It is a rich text.

• 4:51Griffin Newman?

  It is a movie I am eager to sort of revisit. I do feel like.

• 4:55David Sims?

  Joy Mother.

• 4:56Griffin Newman?

  I, I like this better as a showcase for that angle of J Law. I wonder if I re-watch Mother now, while I think it's a masterpiece. I was angry when I saw it.

• 5:08David Sims?

  I was a little dismissive when I saw it and then I re-watched and was like,

• 5:13David Sims?

  I think I respect the swing here. I, I kind of like this.

• 5:16Speaker 03

  I think there, there are some of his movies, I mean, uh, that where, where you just like, oh, he's on to something, even if it's not entirely coherent. And also, Mother does feel a lot to me like a maybe mostly inadvertent confession about why you should not date Darren Aronofsky, which is like, I think.

• 5:32David Sims?

  We projected all that onto it, but it's there.

• 5:34Speaker 03

  It's there. It's there. Yes. And I think that that is incredible.

• 5:38Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, I'll, I'll say this. I, um, this is not a Mother podcast, but the context in which I saw Mother was a screening at the Metrograph.

• 5:48David Sims?

  Yeah, we definitely talked about it because it was there, right?

• 5:51Griffin Newman?

  Yes, he was there and she was there. And I think it was the first time the movie was being screened anywhere outside of, they had done the big New York Magazine profile. Do you remember who wrote that? Whoever it was just kept talking about how they weren't allowed to talk about the movie, that the movie was shrouded in so much secrecy.

• 6:10David Sims?

  They wouldn't even tell you what it was about.

• 6:11Griffin Newman?

  No, and they were like, it has interesting metaphors in it. And you were like, what the fuck is this? And the whole profile was Darren Aronofsky being like, people are gonna be pissed at me and that's fine. We were like, the fuck is this? And he got up before the movie with a scarf, quite the scarf on, had a real air about him, introduced her as the greatest movie star in the world. There was an energy between the two of them that was a little like, is, is, is this the bourgeois dancing on a collapsing Paris kind of thing? And then he said, like, this was a movie about the most important mother in the world, Mother Earth, and how we've disrespected her. And I was like, you just told me the metaphor

• 6:53Griffin Newman?

  right before the movie started. And immediately I'm like, okay, yeah, I get it. I was so kind of set up to be pissed off from the moment it started. And I

• 7:04David Sims?

  Yeah, well, he's annoying.

• 7:05Griffin Newman?

  I respect it more in mine's eye. But yes, no, I mean, who else would we cover that she has worked with? Like, Granix unlikely, Frances Lawrence is unlikely.

• 7:16David Sims?

  Ah, we could do Frances Lawrence.

• 7:17Griffin Newman?

  We like Frances Lawrence. But like, are we gonna do him?

• 7:20David Sims?

  Sure, right now.

• 7:21Griffin Newman?

  Versus like, just doing her.

• 7:22David Sims?

  Stop this podcast.

• 7:23Griffin Newman?

  Okay, Ben, I'm sorry, stop the podcast.

• 7:24David Sims?

  What was his first movie?

• 7:25Griffin Newman?

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

• 7:28Speaker 03

  I would love to talk Constantine, by the way.

• 7:29Griffin Newman?

  Great movie.

• 7:30Speaker 03

  Whatever you want, I'm ready.

• 7:31David Sims?

  When I interviewed him, I interviewed him once, and I was like, truly like sucking his dick about Constantine. And I guess I am legend. And just kind of being like, man, you

• 7:39Griffin Newman?

  And he was like, I appreciate it, but also cradle the balls.

• 7:42David Sims?

  You know, I was just like, you actually make, you know, like, really fun Hollywood stuff. And like, I've just been a longtime fan of yours. And he was like, thank you. Like, he was very nice about it, but he was not like

• 7:52Speaker 03

  He was not like, thank God, finally someone's seeing my Wait, can I just go back and say one thing?

• 7:57Griffin Newman?

  Please, anything.

• 7:58Speaker 03

  Uh, when I did, uh, Requiem for a Dream Oral History.

• 8:01David Sims?

  You did? That's right?

• 8:02Speaker 03

  Yes, yes.

• 8:02David Sims?

  You talked to everyone.

• 8:03Speaker 03

  I did talk to everyone.

• 8:04David Sims?

  The Fridge?

• 8:04Speaker 03

  Uh, including The Fridge. Uh, The Fridge was very rude, by the way. I don't know The Fridge. Fridge, there's a reason The Fridge was canceled. Um,

• 8:11Griffin Newman?

  Also directed next month.

• 8:13Speaker 03

  Taran Aronofsky, uh, before we started, was like, jokingly, but also it was like, can you tell the Vulture editors to stop calling me scarf wearing guy? So

• 8:24David Sims?

  But they really like to make fun of the scarf.

• 8:26Speaker 03

  It was, and the thing is, like, do you see him in scarves now? No?

• 8:29Griffin Newman?

  No, no, it clearly, it's, it's his version of the Eddie Murphy laugh, where he's like, fine, are you happy? I stopped. And now his neck is so fucking cold.

• 8:38Speaker 03

  It's so cold all the time. What's going to happen to him?

• 8:40Griffin Newman?

  I love that that was his explanation at the time, where he's like, I, I have a very sensitive throat. Is that what he sounds like?

• 8:46Speaker 03

  Yeah, he did. He was like, I'm very susceptible to.

• 8:48Griffin Newman?

  That's not a bad impression.

• 8:49David Sims?

  I don't know what he sounds like. I don't.

• 8:51Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's like.

• 8:52Griffin Newman?

  It's like, I have some sort of throat.

• 8:54Speaker 03

  I guess. So did anyone watch his AI American Revolution series then?

• 8:59David Sims?

  Only to jerk off to it. No, I didn't watch it. I didn't.

• 9:02Griffin Newman?

  Alison, I didn't watch it. I absorbed it.

• 9:04David Sims?

  I sat my ass down and listened. Uh, so it's he used AI to make an, a Revolutionary War series.

• 9:13Speaker 03

  Like web series.

• 9:14Griffin Newman?

  That's like reenactments, but it.

• 9:16Speaker 03

  It's just like, imagine if we could see.

• 9:19Griffin Newman?

  Right. You are there.

• 9:20David Sims?

  Paul Revere or something like that. Be like, this is what AI is for. It's so that.

• 9:24Speaker 03

  Yes, bringing history to life.

• 9:25David Sims?

  Do large scale production quickly.

• 9:28Griffin Newman?

  And he's like.

• 9:29David Sims?

  Watching the trailer.

• 9:29Griffin Newman?

  I hire. Oh, good.

• 9:30Speaker 03

  It looks like spookily dead eyed in a Polar Express.

• 9:33David Sims?

  I mean, it looks like AI.

• 9:34Speaker 03

  It looks like a Polar Express kind of look.

• 9:36David Sims?

  I watch, uh, I look at TikTok all the time, right? And TikTok will serve you AI in the middle of like a person being like, look, my baby fell sideways. Like, which is what I'm there for.

• 9:48Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, yeah. Thank you, China.

• 9:50David Sims?

  We're still at the, in the place and maybe this will change when they were, you're just like, I know it's AI immediately. There's just a quality. You know it when you see it.

• 9:57Griffin Newman?

  That's, look, that's how I feel. And every time I see some fucker post something and go like Hollywood is cooked. This is what AI can do now. I'm like bullshit. It's not good enough. And then I'm also like, well, what, like six months from now? Maybe it is. And then I'm like, great. So reality doesn't exist anymore.

• 10:13David Sims?

  But no, my thing has always been like, the way I feel about video games where I'm like, yeah, cop that, you know, it got better and better and better, but you, it never got where we all, when we were younger, thought it was gonna get.

• 10:25Griffin Newman?

  I mean, it's the uncanny valley thing.

• 10:27David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 10:27Griffin Newman?

  I think it is true. Uh, and I.

• 10:30David Sims?

  Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe I'll be a fool.

• 10:31Griffin Newman?

  I don't, that's my worry.

• 10:32David Sims?

  From now.

• 10:32Griffin Newman?

  My worry is that you will be a fool. Have you seen, there's a one that keeps going around that's like. It took like thousands of people and hundreds of millions of dollars to make like friends. And this is what like Sora can whip up right now. And it's a supercut of like fake AI friends scenes.

• 10:52David Sims?

  Uh, I've seen this. Yeah.

• 10:54Griffin Newman?

  And you're like, oh, it is weird how real it looks, but also they are speaking gibberish.

• 10:59Speaker 03

  No.

• 10:59Griffin Newman?

  And it's like Chandler walks through the door and he's like, well, I got pizza.

• 11:03David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 11:03Griffin Newman?

  And everyone laughs.

• 11:04David Sims?

  It's very weird because right there.

• 11:06Griffin Newman?

  The lines don't make sense.

• 11:07David Sims?

  Right. They are speaking English, but not legible English. And they keep walking in and out of doors that aren't connected to anything.

• 11:13Griffin Newman?

  Uh huh.

• 11:13David Sims?

  And the doors keep moving around, you know, so it's great. It's like a melatonin nightmare or whatever. You're like, ah, this sort of is real.

• 11:20Griffin Newman?

  Cause you're like, whatever AI app is started to be like, okay, so like 30% of friends is people dramatically walking through doors into apartments. It must be about that. This must happen four times per scene. And they have everyone's like tone and the rhythm of everyone's joke delivery, right? But they don't understand how to build jokes through dialogue. And then like, none of them look exactly like them. All of them look like they're stand-ins, but they look like real people. And then the Phoebe will sit down and split into two people the second she hits the couch. Well, literally like asexually reproduced into two people on a cushion.

• 12:01Speaker 03

  I remember that episode.

• 12:02Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, it's a good one.

• 12:03Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 12:03Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 12:03Speaker 03

  Um, the, no, the, the video I got served, which I is stuck in my brain is like some guy who made an AI video as if he were visiting the set of a Dragon Ball Z movie.

• 12:13David Sims?

  I saw this.

• 12:13Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 12:13David Sims?

  And he's like hugging Goku.

• 12:15Speaker 03

  Yeah. So he's basically, it's like as if he had just gone on and everyone were forced to take a selfie with him. And it's all of these incredibly famous people that he has like fan cast as different characters.

• 12:24Griffin Newman?

  And people are like, Hollywood is cooked. And I'm like, I don't know, you just seem sad.

• 12:27Speaker 03

  Yeah. And I'm like, you know, the problem with this is also like, it's like your limit, your, the limits of your imagination are like.

• 12:35Griffin Newman?

  I wish they were my friends.

• 12:36Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 12:37Griffin Newman?

  What if, what if Goku thought I was cool?

• 12:42David Sims?

  What's our podcast?

• 12:43Griffin Newman?

  I tried entries and you didn't take the bait for once. I just want to let the

• 12:46David Sims?

  I'm so sorry. I missed it. What did you say?

• 12:48Griffin Newman?

  You said, let's stop right now and talk about Francis Lawrence. And I said, fine. This podcast was blank check with Griffin and David.

• 12:55David Sims?

  Oh, I didn't. Okay. Okay.

• 12:56Griffin Newman?

  It's pretty funny.

• 12:57David Sims?

  That is funny.

• 12:58Griffin Newman?

  Thank you.

• 12:59David Sims?

  You're welcome.

• 13:00Griffin Newman?

  I'm Griffin.

• 13:01David Sims?

  I'm David.

• 13:01Griffin Newman?

  It's a podcast about filmographies, directors who have massive success early on in their careers, kind of, and are given a series of blank checks, sort of, to make whatever crazy passion products they want. And sometimes those checks clear and sometimes they get bought for $20 million at hand and become kind of like, I don't know, a cautionary tale?

• 13:20David Sims?

  A little bit. I think a little bit of a cautionary tale, business wise. Yeah.

• 13:25Griffin Newman?

  Allison and I were talking about this the other day and you have not been introduced yet, Allison.

• 13:29David Sims?

  Could you introduce her?

• 13:30Griffin Newman?

  Hold on one second. This is more important. Allison and I were talking the other day about how it feels like in the flop fall kind of trend piecing of a bunch of A-list movie stars had sort of prestige dramas that were given wide releases that were supposed to hopefully cross over to some degree in the mainstream and also to Oscar results completely flatlined. And it feels like this was always included in that grouping of here's a list of five movies in the last eight weeks.

• 14:00David Sims?

  What being with the others being?

• 14:01Griffin Newman?

  Christie, Smashing Machine, Roof Man to a lesser degree. You know, I feel like there's one more. I'm the Springsteen movie, you could argue. Yeah. Those are five pure theatrical releases that all had.

• 14:17David Sims?

  What did all of those movies in? I'll tell you, not done my love, but like his reviews.

• 14:21Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 14:21David Sims?

  Really? It's like, none of those really count on with anyone.

• 14:23Griffin Newman?

  This is what's interesting to me is I feel like this is the one of those films that was well received.

• 14:29David Sims?

  It was well received. Maybe not rave, but it was well received.

• 14:33Griffin Newman?

  People liked it. Yeah. All the other ones, like even Christie, the strongest reviews were the like, it's weird that she's this good in this movie that is unpleasant to watch. And why did she make this? Right. The positive reviews all kind of had like flashing red lights that weren't really going to draw an audience in. I feel like this movie doesn't get, wasn't turned into a punchline as much despite it having like two A-listers and not converting into serious nominations anywhere. Uh, but it's sort of with distance, just part of the narrative of like, what was like? The weird movie 2025.

• 15:13David Sims?

  Sure. I mean, it was ludicrous to put this on. I don't think anyone could really be like, how dare Jennifer Lawrence not make this into a hit?

• 15:24Griffin Newman?

  No.

• 15:24David Sims?

  Like in a serious way.

• 15:26Speaker 03

  It is a very jagged, intentionally abrasive movie.

• 15:31David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 15:32Speaker 03

  And.

• 15:32David Sims?

  It's a little, it was, to me, it was a little bit more like, oh, movie, like, just because the substance broke through, doesn't mean you can do this with anything. Like, you silly goose.

• 15:43Speaker 03

  But you think, I mean, they also clearly were like, for this amount of money, in the very least, we're going to have bought a best actress nomination.

• 15:50Griffin Newman?

  I think that's what they thought. And the other part of what's interesting about this movie to me is I just feel like a lot of people I talk to just don't know this happened. And yet Jennifer Lawrence was like, as out there as she has been in many, many years.

• 16:04David Sims?

  She did get out there.

• 16:06Griffin Newman?

  And kept doing it, like, in the lead up to theatrical release, throughout the whole award season, she's not making precursor lists and she's still doing stuff. And all the stuff she was doing was hitting like classic Jennifer Lawrence, where people were kind of like, thank God she's back. You know what? I missed this. And yet, none of that energy went back over to the movie.

• 16:25David Sims?

  Cause it doesn't. It just doesn't. It doesn't go to the movies.

• 16:28Griffin Newman?

  No, that's, I think, the biggest lesson learned from 2025.

• 16:31David Sims?

  Like, you doing playing Operation with Robert Pattinson will not mean anyone sees the movie. They simply watched a fun clip.

• 16:38Griffin Newman?

  Right. It will.

• 16:39David Sims?

  You gave eyeballs to Variety or whoever.

• 16:41Griffin Newman?

  It will monetize that clip.

• 16:42David Sims?

  Yes.

• 16:43Griffin Newman?

  And it might sell copies of Operation. Like, actually doesn't get your movie anywhere.

• 16:49Speaker 03

  Well, I think especially when you're like.

• 16:51David Sims?

  And why should it?

• 16:52Speaker 03

  At best, right. At best, you're maybe, you're mentioning this movie to a bunch of people who maybe, maybe will remember to look it up and then go, oh, that doesn't look like something I want to watch.

• 17:02Griffin Newman?

  And that's like, you watch Jennifer Lawrence kill it on Hot Ones for like 25 minutes. And when she says like, through tears, my new movie is called Die My Love, it's in theaters, whatever.

• 17:10Speaker 03

  Right.

• 17:11Griffin Newman?

  That basically, I think for most listeners, is the equivalent of, thanks, thank you for watching, please remember to rate, review and subscribe. You know, it's just like white noise, you tune that part out. And I think the industry started thinking, well, this is the way to market, this is the way to break through to this audience. And what they don't understand is that those aren't marketing tools, those are their competition.

• 17:31David Sims?

  Who's our guest?

• 17:32Griffin Newman?

  Our guest today.

• 17:35Griffin Newman?

  From Vulture, from the new podcast, Critical Darlings, a Blank Check production, the great Alison Willmore.

• 17:43Speaker 03

  Hello. Hello.

• 17:45David Sims?

  Ooh, Remain just got pushed to February 2027.

• 17:48Griffin Newman?

  Wow, okay.

• 17:49David Sims?

  I'll take it off this spreadsheet.

• 17:51Griffin Newman?

  Alison, the seismic waves on our spreadsheet, the scheduling changes that just happened are insane.

• 17:57Speaker 03

  Wow.

• 17:58David Sims?

  It's gone.

• 17:59Speaker 03

  Here's a Jennifer Lawrence thing, an observation I would like to make. She, you know, she famously took a few years off, right? And kind of was like, I need to reset. I need to, uh, people are gonna get sick of me. And also like, clearly she was like, I need to figure out what my grown up career as a movie star looks like, right? And she has, this is what, like, her third essentially soft relaunch, right? At this point.

• 18:22Griffin Newman?

  Causeway is like an unbelievably soft relaunch.

• 18:26Speaker 03

  Yes, but like, but Causeway was like, she was also like, I'm a producer now, right? She was like, I am not just going to be in, you know, playing characters that are 10 to 20 years too old for me in David O. Russell movies, by God. Like, I am gonna take control of my career and like, pick interesting roles.

• 18:41David Sims?

  She has her, um, her producing, is it Justine Chiaracci?

• 18:45Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 18:45David Sims?

  Is that her second oldest friend?

• 18:46Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 18:47David Sims?

  Like, they met in the movie biz, right? I forget if she.

• 18:50Griffin Newman?

  Maybe not their oldest friend, but like, her closest movie.

• 18:51David Sims?

  She was like a crew, she was like her assistant on Hunger.

• 18:53Speaker 03

  Yeah, exactly, yeah.

• 18:54David Sims?

  And they basically come up together. They seem to have great taste.

• 18:58Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 18:58David Sims?

  The produce, the things they produced are Causeway, No Hard Feelings, and Die My Love.

• 19:02Griffin Newman?

  And I was gonna say.

• 19:02David Sims?

  Three movies I like.

• 19:03Griffin Newman?

  Right. Causeway, unbelievably.

• 19:05David Sims?

  And two docs that I don't know much about.

• 19:06Griffin Newman?

  Small movie, lost in the sort of post pandemic morass, does get a Best Supporting Actor nomination, but more than anything felt like, I think what you're saying, a proclamation of, here's phase two, I'm developing material, I'm finding people I want to work with.

• 19:21Speaker 03

  And, uh, doesn't get noticed much, but that's fine. Then she does.

• 19:25David Sims?

  But it got an Oscar, no?

• 19:26Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 19:27David Sims?

  It did.

• 19:27Speaker 03

  I know.

• 19:27David Sims?

  But it was like. I know.

• 19:29Speaker 03

  In that weird, like, also, like, pandemic-y era.

• 19:31David Sims?

  I know, but like, there's so many Apple projects, most of them starring Mahershala Ali. I feel like he was in, like, three.

• 19:38Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 19:38David Sims?

  You know, where you're like.

• 19:39Griffin Newman?

  Why hasn't Mahershala made anything in seven years?

• 19:41Speaker 03

  Yeah, and then you're like, he's made so many things. I know.

• 19:43David Sims?

  Right.

• 19:43Speaker 03

  And like, Cosway, not a bad movie.

• 19:45David Sims?

  Not like Cosway.

• 19:45Speaker 03

  Brian Tyree Henry, fantastic.

• 19:47Griffin Newman?

  Very good.

• 19:47Speaker 03

  And it, like, truly great in it.

• 19:48Griffin Newman?

  I was gonna say, it felt like part of the Phase Two thing, that all the press she was doing for that movie was kinda just pushing him. It felt like, I mean, they talked about that movie was written to be something very different, and he had a very small part. And they were, like, assembling an edit, and they were like, it feels like the only stuff that's working is our scenes together. And they went back and rewrote and reshot a lot of it, and she was like, this is a two-hander. And it felt like part of her, this is my next stage, is like, who do I want to work with? Who do I want to boost? And she uses all her power to basically get him a nomination for a movie that no one remembers.

• 20:20Speaker 03

  Yeah, and then she makes no hard feelings.

• 20:22David Sims?

  Which was good.

• 20:23Speaker 03

  It was good, but she is like, look at me doing, like, a hard comedy, right?

• 20:27David Sims?

  I know. There was this sort of a try-hard element to that whole rollout. And then I saw the movie and I was like, I think this movie's sort of a cut above. And I, I really like, like, the underlying themes of that movie. I like that it's about, like, trashy Long Island, like, true, like, Montauk lifer people being like, man, it fucking sucks here now. Like, all these rich people have moved here. Like, you know, like, that's like the undercurrent of that movie is good.

• 20:56Griffin Newman?

  I agree. I think that movie fucks up the ending.

• 20:58David Sims?

  And that movie's fun. The ending's a little blah.

• 21:00Griffin Newman?

  Yeah. Um, but, but that movie also has kind of a weird reputation because it's like, there was a lot of, is this the great white hope that brings back that theatrical comedy? Here's Jennifer Lawrence, one of her most powerful movie stars. She hasn't made a commercial film in over six years. Here she's back post-pandemic, doing a sex comedy.

• 21:19Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 21:19Griffin Newman?

  Is this gonna, like, light the world on fire? And it does well.

• 21:23Speaker 03

  But not the way people wanted it to.

• 21:24Griffin Newman?

  Immediately explodes way more on Netflix, and people were like, why wasn't this a biggest hit, bigger hit? But then you're like, guys, come on, she was right here.

• 21:33Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 21:33Griffin Newman?

  Like, support her when it's happening.

• 21:35Speaker 03

  Yeah, and then now we have. Have Die My Love, which is the movie that was going to be like, here she is, serious actress, like doing this like really like wrenching, difficult, real work, just going places you haven't ever seen her go before. And, and yet, and again, it does not really get there.

• 21:51Griffin Newman?

  No, and it's also fascinating because this is one of her best performances, I think.

• 21:55Speaker 03

  I think she's incredible.

• 21:56Griffin Newman?

  It's like arguable, it's her best performance.

• 21:58Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 21:59Griffin Newman?

  And yeah, it's arguable. I think it's in the conversation.

• 22:02Speaker 03

  I think it also like it.

• 22:04David Sims?

  It's sort of where it's how you think of Winter's Bone.

• 22:07Speaker 03

  Yeah. And I think it also, it's, it's so, it's such a deliberately difficult role, right? Like, it just is like both opaque, but also like so raw. Like she is both like letting you into these like incredibly dark, weird emotions, but also, and I think this is a bit of a Lynn Ramsey thing. You're like, you're kept at a distance from her, right? You can't entirely figure her out. And so, yeah, it's, I mean, she has to work with a lot of, I don't know, deal with a lot of different kind of like tensions, but I mean, she goes like, she just throws herself in it so wholeheartedly.

• 22:38Griffin Newman?

  Also possibly why Mubi went so like goo goo eyed at this movie where you're like, fuck, it's funny. Like she is so inherently funny and is able to make comedy out of odd, difficult things, Jennifer Lawrence, even just in her like oversharing press tour way, that you're like, fuck, if you map that onto a Lynn Ramsey movie, does this thing have enough kind of like weirdo laughs, like the substance, that there's a more commercial push for it? But then you're like, what's the movie about? And you're like, well, a woman collapses, completely deconstructs. It's, it's a fascinating case. And yeah, I, I think, you know, she's doing the Scorsese movie next. It feels like she's being very selective.

• 23:24Griffin Newman?

  There was this moment a couple of months back, David, where they announced like one weekend of filming that Taylor Russell was being recast in Michael B. Jordan's very expensive, starring and directed by Thomas Crown Affair remake.

• 23:39Griffin Newman?

  And in one of our group texts, we were like, okay, thought experiment. Who do you slot in there? If you're Michael B. Jordan and you're like one of the like kings of 2025, and this is your next directing project and your chosen female co-star doesn't work, and you need someone on set within like less than five days, and you presumably want someone who you can like go toe to toe with, right age level, you know, whatever it is. We were like, who does he pick? And we were throwing out names. And I at one point said, like, I mean, if you really fucking want to go for it, you cast Jennifer Lawrence. You cast Jennifer Lawrence in the Faye Dunaway Rene Russo part. But is he willing to cede that much ego? And beyond that, you said, no.

• 24:22Griffin Newman?

  And you also said, I think she's just firmly in her weirdo phase now.

• 24:26David Sims?

  A little bit.

• 24:26Griffin Newman?

  I think she doesn't really want to play that game. There's an argument that, you know, her reps would probably be like, please, Jennifer, can you just get paid $20 million to do this? And then make three more weirdo movies? And it feels like to her credit, she's like, kind of done with the game. Want to just use my power to make whatever I want to make and work with what I, who I want to work for and with. And I also think in talking about her like sort of disappearing for a couple of years and why there was so much energy and excitement for this movie. It's also like, she had two kids. She like focused on her family. She focused on her personal life. And Causeway and No Hard Feelings aren't tapping into that. No Hard Feelings is kind of pretending she hasn't gone through the growth that she

• 25:10Griffin Newman?

  has talked about in the press. And so when this movie's announced, it's like, oh, well, here's Jennifer Lawrence, who seemingly holds nothing back. And she's making a postpartum movie. What is she going to share with us?

• 25:22David Sims?

  Right, right. What, this is the problem with being a Jennifer Lawrence, Angelina Jolie style movie star, where it's like, every movie has to be like, okay, but what is it saying about you right now? Like, you know, what, what phase of life are you in? What era, what Taylor Swift era are you doing now?

• 25:39Griffin Newman?

  I think it's less that it's like, what is the comment you're trying to make? Or what is the statement? And with her, it's more, especially in her twenties, David O. Russell kept pushing her into these roles that were 10 years ahead of her in life experience. And you were like, I guess through sheer movie star power, I am vaguely buying this woman being widowed, having two children, all these things. And it just for someone who feels so emotionally intelligent, but was able to kind of render these things that she had no experience with. I think it was more like, is this about to be some level up moment in her ability with

• 26:21Griffin Newman?

  her being able to pull from life? Not what she's trying to communicate to us in the press, or how she's going to use this movie to talk about her own personal experiences, but more, does she have a new well to draw from?

• 26:34Speaker 03

  I think that's true, but I think it's also, I think we've all been waiting, you know, she is someone who has this very powerful and undeniable A-list actor. But like, he has spent so much of her career, either, yes, in these roles that didn't feel quite right for her, that she made work through sheer talent with David O. Russell, or in these giant franchises, right? Like, at the same time, she's playing a widow and a mother of two, she's playing this fighting teenager, right? You know, she's playing Katniss in The Hunger Games, and she's playing Mystique. There is this real sense that so much of her career, so much of the, so much of the path that made her this giant movie star was also like, never quite right. You know, like, she was always playing roles that were never quite, they didn't seem like something that were like, was kind of like defining her,

• 27:18Speaker 03

  or like that she really had a full, like, that fit her perfectly, you know?

• 27:22Griffin Newman?

  No, it's, it's odd. It is odd for someone who, you step back with some distance, and her, her 2010s is even more astounding, by how kind of anomalous it was at a time where the industry was like, maybe movie stars don't exist anymore. And she became pretty undeniable. And yet it was like they they milked that so hard and so fast. And the whole kind of like inevitable Jennifer Lawrence backlash, which she clearly in doing press for this movie, took very personally and was like, I'm too much, you know, I wasn't aware of how people were seeing me. It's also just like, you break down the years and you're like, she was making two or three movies a year.

• 28:05Griffin Newman?

  And it was basically every year she was alternating between an X-Men and a Hunger Games and a prestige movie.

• 28:13David Sims?

  Yeah. I just, it's interesting on this press tour with, now who was I listed? So I've listened to, she was on Poler's thing. She did that kind of like.

• 28:23Griffin Newman?

  Late?

• 28:24David Sims?

  What?

• 28:24Griffin Newman?

  No, late, I was saying, like, she did that fairly recently.

• 28:27David Sims?

  Well, I think Poler kind of doesn't care, it seems as much about like, you know, timing it to really, I don't know. She did that kind of like half hour chat with Leo, the actors and actors thing, which was like, you know, no one has quite gotten Leo to open up, but like she had her moments with him, you know, like.

• 28:47Griffin Newman?

  Like the closest I've seen.

• 28:48David Sims?

  Like a couple moments with him. But I'm trying to remember where she sort of acknowledged essentially to one of those. David O. Russell, I think, really taught me how to act. I know that's not the experience everyone has with him. You know, like, and she didn't say it in a dismissive way. She said it in a kind of like, I think it was quite helpful for me. I do know that like the way he works was not helpful for some people. She hasn't worked with him since Joy. I always found.

• 29:16Griffin Newman?

  An incredibly weird movie also.

• 29:18David Sims?

  I mean, that movie came out early in the history of this podcast. We talk about it a lot on one of our Force Awakens episodes with Emily Ishida, because we, I think I had just seen it, because it is indeed a really weird movie and it has all the problems that all the movies she made with him had, where she's fundamentally wrong for the role. She's kind of working it anyway. Like, she's kind of like, but then the movie that's happening around her is also kind of chaotic and stupid.

• 29:43Griffin Newman?

  I was thinking about-

• 29:44David Sims?

  Silver Lending is the best of those movies and I think that's like a really chaotic

• 29:48Griffin Newman?

  No, I agree. I agree. We, in the week we were recording this, the most recent episode of Critical Darling was talking about Begonia and Emma Stone and your ghost kind of getting into that David O. Russell, Jennifer Lawrence auto lock nomination, Oscar favorite state. And no one was pissed when Emma Stone was announced as a best actress candidate. I didn't feel that.

• 30:10Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, people were not like, oh, yes, that's like, you know, but no one was angry.

• 30:14Griffin Newman?

  But I can't remember if you or Richard said this, but the morning that Jennifer Lawrence made it into the Joy Five, there was a feeling of like, fuck that. And it's that kind of thing that Ben Affleck talks about of like, the weekend after Gilead being like, I'm in the worst state my career could possibly be in. I can sell magazine covers, but I can't sell movie tickets. Everyone wants to hear about how I'm fucking up in my personal life and no one wants to hire me. Everyone else can make money off of me. And there's that sort of feeling of like, okay, Jennifer Lawrence, you automatically get nominated every time. People now resent you for it. Which, just the moment that movie came out, it was just like, it happened one time too many. It's too late. Everyone wants you to go away now.

• 30:57Speaker 03

  Yeah. And I mean, so like after that, she did what, like Passengers?

• 31:02Griffin Newman?

  Mm hmm. A disaster.

• 31:03Speaker 03

  Yeah, a disaster. Like, just like a really incredibly unpleasant premise.

• 31:08Griffin Newman?

  One of the most miscalculated, like, star packaging. Yeah.

• 31:12Speaker 03

  Yes. And of course, a blacklist script. I think it's often a very cursed thing.

• 31:16Griffin Newman?

  I have often contended, you read that original script-

• 31:20Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 31:20Griffin Newman?

  And it's a really good Twilight Zone premise.

• 31:22Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 31:23Griffin Newman?

  And it was so buzzy and it was, it necessitated such high production value because of the space thing, that everyone in Hollywood thought it was meant to be romantic. That they they just interpreted it entirely wrong.

• 31:38David Sims?

  Yeah, right. I maybe there's a better version of that movie with what director? I don't know.

• 31:44Griffin Newman?

  I'm trying to remember who the director.

• 31:46David Sims?

  You know, like Fincher, like, you know, like, but I mean, like, why would he? I mean,

• 31:50Griffin Newman?

  There was, there was an earlier version of that movie announced. I'm trying to remember if there was a director ever attached, but I believe it was supposed to be Keanu Reeves and Rachel McAdams. And you're like, immediately that makes so much.

• 32:00David Sims?

  I mean, those are actors I vastly prefer. The problem is they are not, uh, you know, who Jennifer Lawrence and Chris Pratt were in 2015.

• 32:09Griffin Newman?

  At that point in particular, the that version of the movie died because it was pre John Wick Keanu. And it was like, he is worth negative money. Yeah, but you're like the sad haunted Keanu thing.

• 32:21Speaker 03

  Yeah, that would make so much more sense in terms of what that character does.

• 32:24David Sims?

  I know.

• 32:24Griffin Newman?

  Rather than Star Lord being like, I woke you up.

• 32:26Speaker 03

  Right, right. Like, aren't you psyched? Now we have to live our full lives together.

• 32:31Griffin Newman?

  And like Imagine Dragons plays.

• 32:35Griffin Newman?

  Passengers, yes.

• 32:35Speaker 03

  Passengers and then mother.

• 32:37Griffin Newman?

  Which was much like this, like a wide release, like out of the gates that bombed.

• 32:42Speaker 03

  Yes. And also, I mean, is this?

• 32:43David Sims?

  It's similar, right? Were there like 3,000 screens for this? And the audience is like, no, what?

• 32:48Speaker 03

  What, what are you doing? Also, like, I don't know, it has like weird undercurrents, you know, like their relationship, but also like so much of that movie is just like tormenting her. It is just like.

• 32:59David Sims?

  Yeah, yeah. That movie is her going, she's actively stressed. She's shouting her head off about the sink not being braced.

• 33:07Speaker 03

  Yeah. And then the baby, remember the baby?

• 33:10David Sims?

  They eat the baby.

• 33:11Speaker 03

  They eat the baby.

• 33:11David Sims?

  They eat the baby. As I happily tell people.

• 33:14Speaker 03

  It is in the eating the baby canon.

• 33:16David Sims?

  I hear they eat a baby. I'm into that.

• 33:18Griffin Newman?

  They eat a baby as many X-Men directors have done.

• 33:25Griffin Newman?

  Is that my new terminology? We have Normal and we have X-Men director. Go on, Allison.

• 33:31Speaker 03

  Well, um, and then, you know, you have like Dark Phoenix is not a movie.

• 33:34Griffin Newman?

  Disaster.

• 33:35Speaker 03

  Never happened.

• 33:35Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 33:36Speaker 03

  Uh, and then Don't Look Up.

• 33:37Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 33:37Speaker 03

  You know?

• 33:38Griffin Newman?

  When, when is Red Sparrow in there?

• 33:40Speaker 03

  Uh, Red Sparrow, I miss Red Sparrow. Red Sparrow is right before Dark Phoenix.

• 33:43David Sims?

  A movie I softly defend, but certainly have never like cared to revisit.

• 33:48Speaker 03

  I don't think I ever saw it. I, I always think of it as like her salt, right?

• 33:52David Sims?

  It's her salt. It is very obviously, and she has talked about it, a, about the sex crimes that were visited upon her. And her trying to kind of reclaim her naked body on screen and her sort of whatever, her sexuality, her like feminine.

• 34:08Griffin Newman?

  It's, it's, it's an ownership of sexuality.

• 34:10David Sims?

  Yes.

• 34:10Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 34:11David Sims?

  And it's also like a decent ish spy movie, but you are kind of like, this is like a Verhoeven movie. And I like Francis Lawrence, but he's no Paul Verhoeven and like, this is not quite nasty or freaky enough. But it is like an R rated sexy kind of violent spy thriller. And so I, you come away with kind of like, okay, you know, I ate a, I had an okay sandwich there. I, you know, I know that could have been better.

• 34:39Griffin Newman?

  But when you look at, what was it? Five Hunger Games movies? Uh, cause it's four books and five movies.

• 34:46Speaker 03

  Yeah, there were two, right? Mockingjay was.

• 34:48Griffin Newman?

  Yes. She makes four X-Men movies. The first three work commercially to some degree. And then the first two David O. Russell movies like soar past a hundred million, you know, 300 worldwide, whatever. That block was so fucking strong. And the fact that she's winning an Oscar, getting nominations in between, seen as supporting two franchises. The X-Men movies start to warp themselves around, right? We all remember that Mystique is the leader.

• 35:17Speaker 03

  Everyone, yes, the, the, the best known and, uh, most famous X-Men.

• 35:21Griffin Newman?

  Of course, the whole time. Like there's the insane thing when you watch Days of Future Past where they're like, this movie needs to have her as ostensibly the lead character. But also her scheduling is impossible because she's doing Hunger Games. So she needs to have the primary plot thread where she's also on her own and we can shoot her separate from everyone else.

• 35:42Speaker 03

  And then, but also they're like, we've got this incredibly famous actor. Um, and also this character is blue all the time. Like we need to figure out ways that she's not in like full body makeup.

• 35:52Griffin Newman?

  Barely.

• 35:53David Sims?

  Right. Did the. The fact that the first one is like, you need to be blue because that's like,

• 36:00Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 36:00David Sims?

  your true self.

• 36:01Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 36:02David Sims?

  And then in the other one, she's like, yeah, but I'm, I'm not gonna do that much.

• 36:07Griffin Newman?

  But like,

• 36:07David Sims?

  I'm mostly gonna like be seventies.

• 36:09Griffin Newman?

  I feel like the response at the time was like, yeah, smart. Build your movie around Jennifer Lawrence. People weren't like, oh, they're shoving her down our throats. And so then there's the thing of like passengers, like squeaks to 98 million or whatever.

• 36:22David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 36:23Griffin Newman?

  It is.

• 36:23David Sims?

  It was a flop.

• 36:24Griffin Newman?

  It is a flop.

• 36:25David Sims?

  It was sort of like, right, like less embarrassing than it could have been because it's sort of made, but you, I mean, it probably made international money.

• 36:33Griffin Newman?

  I think so too.

• 36:34David Sims?

  But you're just doing a Jennifer Lawrence thing.

• 36:36Griffin Newman?

  I think it's important. You get to a point there where they're like, okay, but if her in a turkey still gets to 90 something. And obviously that movie costs too much, then making Red Sparrow for 40 or 60, or making Mother for like 40 or 50, still makes sense. And I think there was this belief of like, is she just the one person that her audience will auto buy a ticket? They will follow her anywhere. And even if Mother isn't going to make a hundred million dollars, maybe it makes 50. And instead it's just like, no, she's making things that are like unpleasant to watch, you know? Often by design, it feels like that was the phase she was going through and testing it.

• 37:17David Sims?

  She's made one pleasant to watch movie. And like before that, you know, the movies she made were Hunger Games, David O. Russell movies and X-Men movies, none of which are light and, you know, fluffy.

• 37:30Griffin Newman?

  No, I mean, X-Men and Hunger Games are both.

• 37:33David Sims?

  She's made one.

• 37:34Griffin Newman?

  Franchise that's about oppression.

• 37:35David Sims?

  Fun movie in her entire career.

• 37:37Griffin Newman?

  You would say no hard feelings.

• 37:39David Sims?

  Right. Like I, obviously X-Men movies are fun, like Hunger Games movies. I mean, they are fun, I suppose, but like they're, they're pretty dark.

• 37:46Griffin Newman?

  They're dark. Yeah.

• 37:47David Sims?

  Like, I really think that's the, I mean, don't look up. Is a comedy, but it's a comedy that bugs you out.

• 37:53Speaker 03

  Also, just like, really not fun.

• 37:55Griffin Newman?

  She's like, the angry character in the movie, too. She's playing the least fun of anybody. I think that's why there was so much hope around No Hard Feelings is like, wait, you're telling me it's Jennifer Lawrence's press interview, the movie? That part of her power was this like, oh, my God, she's this powerhouse dramatic actress. She can do action and she can like, do the dialogue. And then we see her in interviews and she's funnier than comedians? You know, and people, I think, liked the contrast between the two. But then the hope was, if you let her be funny in a movie, is that just gonna explode the box office?

• 38:34Speaker 03

  But we hate comedy now. We just don't, we don't believe in it.

• 38:37David Sims?

  That's the problem. I think if, I think she's probably happy enough with No Hard Feelings. I think if she looked at Anyone But You, she might have the thought of like, oh, huh, should I have like, done a rom com with like a really sort of established handsome actor guy, rather than a silly guy.

• 38:55Speaker 03

  Also, I think she would have killed it.

• 38:57Griffin Newman?

  Can you fucking imagine? That's actually like upsetting to run the simulation.

• 39:01David Sims?

  But she should be happy with No Hard Feelings, which is a better movie than Anyone But You and did pretty good.

• 39:06Griffin Newman?

  I also contend, and I felt this way at the time, No Hard Feelings comes out like June, and then goes to Netflix very quickly. It's on the service by like September or October, and immediately kind of explodes on Netflix. And I do feel like Anyone But You got a bump from that. I was seeing so much social media FOMO of, oh, fuck, there was a good comedy three months ago and we didn't go. That Sony marketing, you know, both of those movies kind of capitalized upon, well, don't miss this one.

• 39:36Speaker 03

  I would like to see her in just a full romantic comedy.

• 39:40Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 39:40Speaker 03

  You know, I think that'd be interesting.

• 39:42Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 39:42Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 39:43Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 39:43Speaker 03

  She, I mean, she's kind of steered away, you know, in Causeway, she's her, that's, that's like a platonic romance almost, like her character is gay.

• 39:51David Sims?

  It's a sweet movie.

• 39:53Speaker 03

  Yeah. You know, and then No Hard Feelings is like, you know, kind of espoused.

• 39:58Griffin Newman?

  And, and once again,

• 39:59Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 40:00Griffin Newman?

  Lynn Ramsey's Die My Love on paper is offering, hey, do you want to just see Robert Pattinson and Jennifer Lawrence go insane?

• 40:07Speaker 03

  Right.

• 40:17Griffin Newman?

  David?

• 40:17David Sims?

  Yes.

• 40:21David Sims?

  Is that the Cineas cow?

• 40:22Griffin Newman?

  The Cineas cow is back.

• 40:23David Sims?

  Haven't heard from her in a while.

• 40:25Griffin Newman?

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

• 40:30David Sims?

  Okay.

• 40:30Griffin Newman?

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

• 40:35David Sims?

  Wow.

• 40:35Griffin Newman?

  The cow likes chicken.

• 40:38David Sims?

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

• 40:44Griffin Newman?

  Well, MUBI is a global film company bringing great cinema to the world and to you. Curating and elevating visionary filmmaking, all handpicked, always. That's what MUBI does. Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma.

• 40:56David Sims?

  Yes.

• 40:56Griffin Newman?

  One of my favorite movies of the year.

• 40:57David Sims?

  Absolutely.

• 40:59Griffin Newman?

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

• 41:04David Sims?

  That is a line in the movie.

• 41:06Griffin Newman?

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

• 41:08David Sims?

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

• 41:12Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 41:12David Sims?

  Great friend.

• 41:13Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 41:14David Sims?

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

• 41:19Griffin Newman?

  Uh huh.

• 41:20David Sims?

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

• 41:22Griffin Newman?

  Performances, friend of the show.

• 41:23David Sims?

  Friend of the show, Zach Cherry.

• 41:25Griffin Newman?

  Zach Cherry.

• 41:26David Sims?

  Also in it.

• 41:27Griffin Newman?

  This is true.

• 41:28David Sims?

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

• 41:38Griffin Newman?

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

• 41:52David Sims?

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

• 41:56Griffin Newman?

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

• 42:08David Sims?

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

• 42:21Griffin Newman?

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

• 42:26David Sims?

  Damn right.

• 42:32Griffin Newman?

  David!

• 42:32David Sims?

  Yes?

• 42:33Griffin Newman?

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

• 42:37David Sims?

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

• 42:42Griffin Newman?

  I love that. It's very convenient.

• 42:44David Sims?

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

• 42:51Griffin Newman?

  You get gifts for everyone on your list, or get yourself something a little merry and bright. Find exactly what you're looking for at shop.com.

• 43:00David Sims?

  Uh, got stocking stuffers, maybe. The sickest luxury items. Cookware, to kicks, toys to high-tech, even tinsel and tree toppers. Type in what you're looking for to instantly search every shop at once, okay? That's shop.com. You can just go, click around, find brands you love, search across all the stores, track every order in one spot.

• 43:23Griffin Newman?

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

• 43:54Griffin Newman?

  David!

• 43:55David Sims?

  Hmm.

• 43:55Griffin Newman?

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

• 44:03David Sims?

  Lisa!

• 44:04Griffin Newman?

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

• 44:11David Sims?

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

• 44:17Griffin Newman?

  Mm-hmm.

• 44:18David Sims?

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

• 44:24Griffin Newman?

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

• 44:28David Sims?

  No.

• 44:29Griffin Newman?

  Nope.

• 44:29David Sims?

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

• 45:18David Sims?

  Let's talk about that movie. Which is a movie I like. I know you like it, Griff. Allison?

• 45:23Speaker 03

  I like it. I think I feel like it feels unmodulated to me. It does feel like it starts at a place it's so high already, like, and then kind of like just keeps going. It just like it barrels right off a cliff, you know? But I do think she's incredible in it.

• 45:38Griffin Newman?

  I, I, it grew for me a lot on second viewing, and I think I struggled a little bit on the first time liking Not Loving, being like, I guess this has to be my default bottom Lynn, just because every other one has kind of totally knocked me out. And I think I, I don't know. I have a read on all of that that made it work a little more for me this time. I do want to, in this mini-series that we're now finishing on, Lynn Ramsey, called We Need to Pod About Caspin, introduce our producer Ben Hozley, because I feel there is a need to get this out of the way.

• 46:11Speaker 04

  What's up?

• 46:12Griffin Newman?

  From the moment I saw this movie in theaters, I was like, this movie has the number one scene designed to turn Ben Hozley off I have ever seen in a film.

• 46:21Speaker 04

  Yeah, it's when she shoots the dog.

• 46:23Griffin Newman?

  Yeah. I just could not think of a thing that would auto-block Ben more than lead character of the movie shoots a dog and you have to sit with it for the second half of the film.

• 46:32Speaker 04

  Yeah, it happens pretty early, too.

• 46:33Griffin Newman?

  Yep, like halfway through.

• 46:35David Sims?

  The way I feel about that and the same, you know, any movie that has violence against children or animals, is you're always kind of like, well, you really have to earn this. Like, I'm not mad.

• 46:47David Sims?

  Like on principle, you can, you can depict things. I understand. But I do have this kind of just sort of like, are you just trying to provoke me or put me in a mood?

• 47:00Speaker 04

  Now granted, the dog is incredibly annoying.

• 47:03Speaker 03

  Yeah, that's a real asshole of a dog. Yeah.

• 47:05Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 47:05Speaker 03

  But yeah, I know as a dog owner, it is difficult for me to, to watch that. I do feel like the thing that Robert Pattinson's character does, which is to show up and be like, I got a dog. You're going to take care of it is like one of the worst things you can possibly do to a partner.

• 47:20Griffin Newman?

  It is. I mean, I, yes. Yes. The movie is playing with something which is like, it is actually designing a perfect anti save the cat. Right? Like it is going against every rule.

• 47:31David Sims?

  But that's what I'm saying. Right? Like, are you just doing this to do that? To have like the spike in the movie that will kind of like really set me, you know, in a certain mood.

• 47:41Griffin Newman?

  I think so. I think it's less about like.

• 47:43David Sims?

  It's like when John Wick's dog dies, then I'm like, right. Well, he should kill all those people. It's different. You're like, he needs to kill all the people now.

• 47:49Griffin Newman?

  The rule is if you kill an animal, everyone's going to be upset unless that is used as motivation for vengeance. And the audience feels like there's catharsis and justice, right? Like, save the cat is less about like stupid imposed lines of like Hollywood thinking and more just like actually an understanding of human psychology of most people will just clock out of your movie after this point. And I think it is less that like, it does the shocking thing just to get a shock out of you and more does the shocking thing to say, and now like, what is your relationship to this character? Because we're not moving on from them and this is not a dream sequence. And you have to like live with this and to a certain degree, you're like held hostage by her in the same way that he is, right?

• 48:33Griffin Newman?

  If you're in a relationship and someone shoots your dog, you're like, I think we're breaking up.

• 48:41David Sims?

  Uh, yeah, I would, I mean, I have never had a dog, but yeah, I think I would have some, some notes for that person.

• 48:48Griffin Newman?

  I think it's a pretty short conversation.

• 48:50Speaker 04

  I think it's crossing a line for me.

• 48:52Griffin Newman?

  Uh huh.

• 48:52Speaker 04

  Where the fact that they then go on as she continues to cross so many more lines until someone finally intervenes.

• 49:00Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 49:01Speaker 04

  It's pretty wild.

• 49:02Speaker 03

  Yeah. I mean, I think this is the challenge of this movie is that it sits in her experience so thoroughly, right? And to the point where you're like, not sure what's real or what's not sometimes, right? Like, uh, the motorcyclist neighbor who shows up for a while, you're like, is that real? Like, is that really a person? Like before, and like before you see that he's like Keith, he's just like in a helmet, like a kind of like music video figure or something. Yeah.

• 49:26Speaker 04

  I thought it was like mental illness.

• 49:28Speaker 03

  Exactly.

• 49:29Speaker 04

  Like looming in the distance.

• 49:30Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 49:31Griffin Newman?

  Which to be fair, like, like Keith Stanfield as a figure does kind of represent that.

• 49:35Speaker 03

  But you know, like that, the way like that whole thread is handled, it, there's a long stretch where you're like, I cannot tell how much of this is just in her head.

• 49:43Griffin Newman?

  No, and even when you have the scene in the parking lot, you cannot tell what you're supposed to take away from that.

• 49:48Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 49:49David Sims?

  I mean, did we ever fully?

• 49:50Speaker 03

  No, no. But I think with the dog or with, with, with Robert Pattinson's character, his name, I'm forgetting. Does he, what is his name?

• 49:58Speaker 04

  Uh, his name is Jackson.

• 50:00Speaker 03

  Oh, Jackson. Okay. So with Jackson, and I think like the question you might have throughout of just like, why is he still around? And also, why does he, after a lot of these things happen, be like, let's get married. Um, you know, is that, I feel like we just never, we're so deep in her perspective that we don't actually get a sense of what she might be like from the outside, you know, like, like, like.

• 50:22Griffin Newman?

  See, yeah, this is interesting. I mean, A, I think, you know, what I was saying about like, uh, uh, uh, dog killing being a bit of a deal breaker in relationships. It's like this person has a child with this woman. So there is like a sense of.

• 50:41David Sims?

  You can't just be like, Jesus, you're too much enough. Yeah.

• 50:44Griffin Newman?

  Right, right. For, for a guy who is a character who certainly is not good at expressing himself or working through things, or feels like he's really good at engaging with the severity of things, there is like a struggle to calculate like, well, even if I perceive this woman to be like a physical threat to my child, what do I do? Is, is, you know, having her institutionalized the move is, is moving away from her the move? Like, all of these things have like a terminal ripple effects on the health of this child. Whether you remove her from the equation or keep her close, there's like pluses and minuses. And you're like, but now he has like witnessed her do a thing that he's never going to be able to get past, right? It is, it is an act that much like

• 51:26Griffin Newman?

  the way it stays with the audience, you're just like, he can't process that. He's never going to be like, well, that was a bad day, right? Like, there is like a core trauma there. He's never going to be able to move past. And I think in terms of like, where is this line? Why are they allowing it to happen? Why does he then decide to get married to her? There's a thing that I found very informative with this movie, which is like, it's based on a book. The book is very much about like, how much is in this person's head, psychosis in a postpartum depressive state.

• 51:56David Sims?

  It's also not set in Montana.

• 51:58Griffin Newman?

  No, France, right. But it's the idea of being isolated and losing a grip on reality. That character's not a writer. And yeah, there were a lot of changes made. We'll open the dossier in a moment and get into all of this. And it is offered to Lynn Ramsey and she goes like, I feel like I did my version of a postpartum movie with Kevin.

• 52:19David Sims?

  Sure.

• 52:20Griffin Newman?

  Do I want to repeat this?

• 52:21David Sims?

  She did that before she had children.

• 52:23Griffin Newman?

  Well, that's A. And B, I think she's like, okay, is there a different in for me on this story? And she keeps saying in interviews, I didn't see this as a postpartum movie. I saw this as an opportunity to make a mad love story. And when I read that, I was like, what is that? And what I think she's saying is literally that it is a movie about falling in love with someone who is severely mentally ill. It is a movie about getting in too deep in a Relationship with someone where, you know, in your twenties, a lot of things, people you know, who are really engaging and charismatic and have like exciting personalities, start to experience significant breakdowns in their late twenties and thirties. And you realize these are traits of latent mental illness.

• 53:08Griffin Newman?

  And the exact things that make someone like Jennifer Lawrence seem like this is the most exciting girl in the world. You keep wanting to excuse things. And the further the signs present themselves, the more there's a sunk cost fallacy of to accept this at this moment is to look back on everything and invalidate it. And this guy is just trying so hard to be like, what will reset her back to three years ago? You know, there's clearly a thing, and I think this movie's failing is it doesn't totally dramatize his character correctly. I think this movie would connect more if it could find a way to explain his point of view a little more.

• 53:49Griffin Newman?

  But I think it's just, how, how can I deny that I was wrong about this person? Or the sense that this person is gone? And what can I do to try to get them back?

• 54:04Speaker 03

  I think that that's a great point, though I think that.

• 54:06Griffin Newman?

  Especially now that there's a baby in the mix.

• 54:08Speaker 03

  Sure. So I think like the idea, well, like the idea of being like this, like telling that story, but telling it from her perspective is like what is so disorienting about this movie. Because it is like, to be like, this is a movie about loving someone who is like having, who is spiraling out in a way that they're probably not going to recover from. But also you're going to see it from the point of view of the person spiraling out. But also I think his character, and I understand why, because if he were too, too sympathetic or too responsible, you would just totally lose her, right? Like you can't just be like. Why doesn't he dump her? But like

• 54:42Griffin Newman?

  They talked about in the book, he's way more of an oaf.

• 54:45Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 54:45Griffin Newman?

  They were like, we wanted to make him more emotionally engaged, you know?

• 54:49Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 54:49Griffin Newman?

  Even if he's not 100% able to, yeah.

• 54:52Speaker 03

  At the same time, though, he like, he does, yeah, he comes, he's like, I got a dog. And then is like, and then, and then he's like, clearly, yeah, like, and then also, remember there's that scene where he's like, we need to talk. Leave the baby behind.

• 55:04Griffin Newman?

  Yes, insane.

• 55:05Speaker 03

  It like wrestles her into the car and drives her off like that, you know, like for all that you're like, there is a lot, there are legitimate reasons why some of these characters would worry about the baby. Though like that she is also like always very careful with the baby, you know, even when she is like walking off into the woods. She never, there's never a question like within our perspective that she is, she is like not caring.

• 55:28David Sims?

  There's the knife in the beginning.

• 55:30Speaker 03

  Right, but like that's like she's right.

• 55:32David Sims?

  I don't know, she gets quite close.

• 55:34Speaker 03

  I feel like she has never, even the movie also like, there's that point where she's like, the one thing that works is like the baby, right? Like that, like she even says as much at a certain point.

• 55:43David Sims?

  I sort of eventually realized, right, the baby was not really going to be

• 55:47Speaker 03

  In danger for her.

• 55:48David Sims?

  Problem in danger, yes.

• 55:49Speaker 03

  Yeah, but I

• 55:51David Sims?

  Not if the movie announces that. She's more a danger to herself. Nonetheless.

• 55:55Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 55:56David Sims?

  You know?

• 55:56Speaker 03

  Yeah, but yeah, like, I mean, it is interesting that like it puts in these scenes where Pattinson is the one who is like, Jackson is the one who is careless about childcare.

• 56:06David Sims?

  This is a problem I had with Night Bitch, a worse movie that nobody remembers.

• 56:10Griffin Newman?

  I, I

• 56:11David Sims?

  Mario Heller's Night Bitch.

• 56:12Griffin Newman?

  But a movie I was thinking about a lot during this rewatch, because there is so much overlap between the two of them and sort of the bigger ideas.

• 56:20David Sims?

  Um, exactly. Uh, did you see Night Bitch?

• 56:23Speaker 03

  I never saw Night Bitch.

• 56:24Griffin Newman?

  Night Bitch coming. That's a bit from two years ago.

• 56:27David Sims?

  It has the same sort of plot of like, we are with this mother who is struggling. Obviously, my bitch is very much a postpartum movie that's about her struggling with like how her body has changed and blah, blah, blah. But the husband's there.

• 56:42David Sims?

  And seems like not like a complete dolt, but also like kind of careless and like not very emotionally like.

• 56:49Griffin Newman?

  McHenry has a bit of a well intentioned back.

• 56:51David Sims?

  Where he's like, I want to play Xbox. And I was just kind of like, I think he has to be stupider or smarter. Like, I just think like, the guy you're showing me, I think would be a little more on like that his wife is turning into a dog. Like, he needs to be dumber, like, or something.

• 57:08Griffin Newman?

  I agree that it is the fundamental Achilles heel of this movie, Die My Love, is that exact problem, where the two times I've seen it, I'm like, Pattinson either needs to be significantly smarter or significantly dumber. And I have seen him play both incredibly well, many times. I know he has that range.

• 57:25David Sims?

  The problem is if he's.

• 57:27Griffin Newman?

  He's so interesting and so hot.

• 57:28David Sims?

  He is.

• 57:29Griffin Newman?

  That he needs to make a stronger choice.

• 57:31Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah.

• 57:32Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 57:32David Sims?

  The problem is that if he's too dumb, then it's about being married to a dumbass.

• 57:39Speaker 03

  Right.

• 57:39David Sims?

  And that's not what it's.

• 57:40Speaker 03

  Right. And then it just like, and then I think it becomes something.

• 57:42David Sims?

  And if he's too smart, then you're like, why the fuck isn't he just like?

• 57:45Speaker 03

  Yeah. Well, that's the movie doesn't want to. It kind of takes a lot of pains to reject the idea of being like, oh, it's so awful. Like, I'm trapped in this marriage to this, like, just to this.

• 57:53David Sims?

  Right.

• 57:54Speaker 03

  Slob, right? Like.

• 57:55David Sims?

  Yes.

• 57:56Speaker 03

  He is highly imperfect, but you have sympathy for him.

• 57:59David Sims?

  Right. It's also not a story about like, moving to Montana, making you crazy, but she, they have moved to Montana and she is going crazy.

• 58:07Speaker 03

  Yeah. And or about feeling like you can't express yourself creatively. I mean, we never really learn about her writing at all. Like, the writing is almost this like asterisk of being like, it symbolizes something she can't do anymore, potentially related to her, her mental health.

• 58:21David Sims?

  We see her write once in a very abstract way.

• 58:24Speaker 03

  Hmm.

• 58:25David Sims?

  Spreading some ink.

• 58:26Speaker 03

  Yeah. Oh, right.

• 58:27David Sims?

  Yeah, as well as some.

• 58:28Griffin Newman?

  Little some fluids.

• 58:29David Sims?

  Milk.

• 58:30Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 58:30David Sims?

  I mean, it's, it's, it's new. It's different.

• 58:33Speaker 03

  True.

• 58:33David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 58:34Speaker 03

  It's on the paper.

• 58:35Griffin Newman?

  Literally fresh. It's very fresh.

• 58:38David Sims?

  I'm sorry.

• 58:39Griffin Newman?

  No, no, I agree. I agree that that's the, the thing holding this movie back from like greatness for me. And the thing that puts it at the bottom of the pile for me is.

• 58:52Griffin Newman?

  You know, I think the passing character is kind of operating from a belief that this is a postpartum thing. I understand that I don't understand this. Maybe I just didn't know it was going to be this extreme. And this will end. We will get to the other side of it, right? And I think a lot of this movie is about the rejection of there is something larger here. Postpartum has possibly broken a dam of many, many issues. And, you know, all the women around her are sort of like going like, yeah, I had like a night bitch phase too. Anyway, now I know how to wear clothes. You know, like, I used to scream and throw knives. Anyway, now it's six months later and I'm a little bit okay. And you

• 59:36Griffin Newman?

  just gotta like shove it down. And everyone is sort of saying this kind of like Stepford YV like, yeah, you just suck it up and no men want to hear your problems and you get through it.

• 59:47Speaker 03

  And I think they're also kinder about it, right? Like, is like, can I help you? Like, can I please, like, do anything?

• 59:54Griffin Newman?

  We have to stick together because they don't understand what's going on with us. But also in saying that to her, they don't understand what's going on with her.

• 1:00:01Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:00:02Griffin Newman?

  And I think to her, that being communicated also feels like you're telling me there's more of this. You know, like, this is not reassuring.

• 1:00:19Griffin Newman?

  David?

• 1:00:19Speaker 04

  Yeah?

• 1:00:20Griffin Newman?

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

• 1:00:37Speaker 04

  It is an iconic video.

• 1:00:38Griffin Newman?

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

• 1:01:01David Sims?

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

• 1:01:12Griffin Newman?

  But we're also talking brand new 4K scans of the original film taken from the Patterson family archives that some historians have called the best rendering of the footage ever seen.

• 1:01:21David Sims?

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

• 1:01:24Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:01:24David Sims?

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

• 1:01:31Griffin Newman?

  There's also a companion podcast, the Capturing Bigfoot Podcast, which goes deeper into the legend and lore of Bigfoot and the Patterson Gimlin film, featuring weekly episodes with experts in cryptozoology, urban legends, and filmmaking.

• 1:01:45David Sims?

  I'm something of an expert in cryptozoology.

• 1:01:47Griffin Newman?

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

• 1:01:50David Sims?

  Yeah, this podcast, Capturing Bigfoot Podcast, is hosted by the director of the film, Mark Evans, and it's available for free on YouTube and Spotify with exclusive episodes and content available on Patreon to members of the Capturing Bigfoot Society.

• 1:02:06Griffin Newman?

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

• 1:02:23Griffin Newman?

  David?

• 1:02:23David Sims?

  Yes?

• 1:02:24Griffin Newman?

  Nobody likes bank fees. Why would you like them?

• 1:02:28David Sims?

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

• 1:02:38Griffin Newman?

  Chime. That's where chime comes in. Chime.

• 1:02:41David Sims?

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

• 1:02:54Griffin Newman?

  We love being fee-free. We love it.

• 1:02:56David Sims?

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

• 1:03:02Griffin Newman?

  My two favorite things.

• 1:03:03David Sims?

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

• 1:03:16Griffin Newman?

  Fee free?

• 1:03:17David Sims?

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

• 1:03:32Speaker 05

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

• 1:03:53Griffin Newman?

  David?

• 1:03:53David Sims?

  Yes?

• 1:03:54Griffin Newman?

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

• 1:04:15David Sims?

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

• 1:04:34Griffin Newman?

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

• 1:04:50David Sims?

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

• 1:05:26Griffin Newman?

  Can we crack open the dossier, Mr. Sims?

• 1:05:29David Sims?

  So you never really hear. Came out eight years prior, you know, once again, she has a long gap.

• 1:05:35Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:35David Sims?

  Between projects.

• 1:05:36Griffin Newman?

  There's, there's pandemic and such. There are many projects that come close to.

• 1:05:39David Sims?

  Well, I'll tell you some. One is a Civil War movie called Call Black Horse starring Casey Affleck.

• 1:05:47Griffin Newman?

  Okay.

• 1:05:48David Sims?

  Nothing else has ever surfaced about that one.

• 1:05:50Griffin Newman?

  Zero ways that could go wrong.

• 1:05:53David Sims?

  She says she wrote 160 pages of a script that is an epic environmental horror thing. Nothing's ever really come of that one either. She signed on with Village Roadshow at one point to direct The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon, which is a Stephen King novel, like a not, not Stephen with a P H.

• 1:06:16Griffin Newman?

  Not Stephen with a P H?

• 1:06:17David Sims?

  No, it is Stephen with a P H. So fucking JJ actually fucked up. Right. Wrote his name wrong.

• 1:06:23Griffin Newman?

  JJ walked into the burning woods.

• 1:06:25David Sims?

  Yeah. She apparently once George A. Romero had been sort of tasked with making that. She wrote a screenplay for that. It's about a hike on the Appalachian Trail. A girl listening to the radio. She gets lost in the woods. Sounds sort of interesting. Nothing has ever come up. The two big ones are a film called Polaris, which has long been in development, long attached to Joaquin Phoenix and Rooney Mara, about an ice photographer that's set at the turn of the century. She says it's a passion project. No, we don't know.

• 1:07:00Griffin Newman?

  That is, that is the one because I have sort of wanted to do her as soon as she made a new film. Most years until this year, there was a, maybe Polaris is filming in a couple of months?

• 1:07:12David Sims?

  There was an erroneous account in Variety that it had wrapped production.

• 1:07:16Griffin Newman?

  That was the thing that really fucked us up because then people were like, are there two Lynn Ramsey movies in the can?

• 1:07:21David Sims?

  That is simply just not true.

• 1:07:23Griffin Newman?

  No.

• 1:07:23David Sims?

  And it was just a mistake.

• 1:07:24Griffin Newman?

  But it always kind of felt like that was closest to happening. And then this movie leapfrogged.

• 1:07:29David Sims?

  The other thing was Stone Mattress, an adaptation of a short story from a Margaret Atwood collection.

• 1:07:37Griffin Newman?

  There was also erroneous reporting because she had been attached to Stone Mattress that

• 1:07:42David Sims?

  So that was gonna have Julianne Warren, Sandra Oh, and be set on a ship.

• 1:07:46Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 1:07:47David Sims?

  Yes.

• 1:07:47Griffin Newman?

  I feel like there was also a point where it came out in some interview, oh, Jennifer Lawrence and Lynn Ramsay are working something. And then people erroneously spread that it was Jennifer Lawrence has signed on to Stone Mattress.

• 1:07:59David Sims?

  Sure.

• 1:07:59Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:00David Sims?

  Um, they would have had to shoot it in Greenland.

• 1:08:04Griffin Newman?

  Okay.

• 1:08:04David Sims?

  Typical.

• 1:08:04Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:05David Sims?

  And they struggled to, I mean, it's hard to, you know, set a movie like that up. She also floated working on a TV show, that TV series that never happened. Anyway, as we know with Die My Love, what happens is Martin Scorsese, who has a book club, which has unnamed film directors who read books with their eyes towards adapting them. I don't know who's in this club.

• 1:08:27Griffin Newman?

  No. I'm guessing it's probably him and a couple X-Men directors.

• 1:08:32David Sims?

  He read.

• 1:08:33Griffin Newman?

  What does the term mean now? Griffins made it very flexible.

• 1:08:36David Sims?

  He read Die My Love.

• 1:08:36Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:37David Sims?

  Uh, written by Ariana Harwich, I think, Argentinian writer, found it to be a powerful mosaic of the mind and handed it to Jennifer Lawrence. Uh, he had liked Mother and he basically said, like, I think she can pull this off. Apparently, you know, he had a tap, uh, come to her once before, our friend Gio, who's on this, on this podcast, uh, in the profile, said that like, apparently Kate Chopin's novel, The Awakening, had been something Scorsese brought to Lawrence, but

• 1:09:06Griffin Newman?

  Okay.

• 1:09:06David Sims?

  nothing happened.

• 1:09:07Griffin Newman?

  It felt like, right, he's had his eye out for her. She's wanted to work with him, they're in communication, he will send her books that he thinks there's something in that could fit with her.

• 1:09:19David Sims?

  Lawrence decides that she's always wanted to work with Lynn Ramsey, said, I've wanted to work with her my entire adult life and sent her the novel directly. And they email for about six months about being moms and other things. Uh, Ramsey's a little, as you say, wary because she's kind of like, I already did, we need to talk about Kevin. But, you know, a major movie star is trying to work with her and is handing her something.

• 1:09:41Griffin Newman?

  Ramsey also was like, hey, I don't want to make that, I'd rather make this. And Lawrence was like, this is the movie I want to make.

• 1:09:47David Sims?

  Lawrence was persistent and so Ramsey had to be somewhat won over, but she kind of fucked with the story, turned into more of a love story.

• 1:09:55Griffin Newman?

  Mad love story.

• 1:09:56David Sims?

  According to Ramsey, yes.

• 1:09:57Griffin Newman?

  May I read this quote I found that I thought was interesting that Jennifer Lawrence gave to Indie Wire? She said, you know, Scorsese hands her the book, says, you should do this. And Lawrence's quote is, I sat with it for a while and then once it all clicked that it wasn't a literal adaptation, that it's more poetic, then I realized Lynn Ramsey was the only person that we could conceive of making it because she's the only poet I know of that makes movies.

• 1:10:21David Sims?

  There you go.

• 1:10:23Griffin Newman?

  And so part of wanting her to make it was being like, I want you to interpret this how you want. I think when Lynn is like, I don't know, is this too similar? This book, she's just like, you figure out your version of it. That's what I want to do. But it feels like there's a lot of empowering of, I want to be in whatever version of this you want to make.

• 1:10:44David Sims?

  So Ramsey says, I want to put humor in there. I want it to be a love story. She says something that I think is a little silly, which is the whole postpartum thing is just bullshit. It's not about that. It's about a relationship breaking down. It's about love breaking down and sex breaking down after having a baby. After having a baby is what postpartum.

• 1:11:01Griffin Newman?

  Yes, right.

• 1:11:02David Sims?

  So it is a postpartum movie, but okay, Lynn Ramsey.

• 1:11:06Griffin Newman?

  I think she just is probably reacting to how much that was like reduced to the log line of the movie.

• 1:11:12David Sims?

  Sure.

• 1:11:12Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:13David Sims?

  I think Jennifer Lawrence is very much like, this is my Jennifer Rollins movie.

• 1:11:16Griffin Newman?

  Yes, yes.

• 1:11:17David Sims?

  Like, this is me being cast of EDC, you know?

• 1:11:19Griffin Newman?

  Yeah. And an interesting thing, she has two children. She talks about, she's talked about a lot in the press for this movie, that she did not have a difficult postpartum experience mentally and emotionally after her first child.

• 1:11:32David Sims?

  She had a tough one after her second.

• 1:11:34Griffin Newman?

  When she films this movie, she is like less than three months pregnant, which is how they're able to do things like the breastfed, like lactation, like practically and, you know, by being in her early stages of pregnancy, she's physically more believable as someone who's like recently given birth. She's making this movie being like, this is pure just acting for me. This is like fucking Jennifer Rollins. This is going off. This is exploration. I'm not pulling for anything in my own experience. Then she wraps this film. She has a second child. She has a really tough postpartum experience there. Lynn Ramsey edits for a while. She goes to see the movie at Cannes and she like breaks down crying. And she's like, I was representing a thing I hadn't experienced that I'm now watching and is speaking to me.

• 1:12:19Griffin Newman?

  It's just kind of a fascinating. I don't know. Catching her at that moment.

• 1:12:23David Sims?

  It is interesting. It's interesting that she made this while she was pregnant. I think it was a pain in the ass.

• 1:12:27Griffin Newman?

  Probably.

• 1:12:29David Sims?

  Lynn decides to move the action to Montana.

• 1:12:33David Sims?

  I mean, she wasn't going to make it in France, right? Like, I guess that makes sense. And she never really met the author until after the movie was at Cannes. So she didn't really like, you know, delve with the author on what it's about.

• 1:12:43Griffin Newman?

  And she gets the Disco Pigs guy to adapt it.

• 1:12:46David Sims?

  So two people, Edna Walsh, who's a playwright. He's the guy who wrote Small Things Like These. Is he the Disco Pigs guy?

• 1:12:56Griffin Newman?

  I think so. Am I wrong about that?

• 1:12:57David Sims?

  I don't know. We'll look it up.

• 1:12:58Griffin Newman?

  Okay, well, let me look it up.

• 1:12:59David Sims?

  Yeah, yeah. He's the guy who wrote the Play Disco Pigs way back in the day.

• 1:13:04Griffin Newman?

  Which was Killian Murphy's launch pad. Yeah, as both play and movie.

• 1:13:08David Sims?

  And then Alice Birch, who wrote Lady Macbeth and then worked on Succession and stuff. Like basically was brought in as a script editor, like as they're in final weeks of prep. And Lynn was like, you did the work. You should have a credit too. So they all, there's why there's three credits. Patinson said the first draft was funnier maybe. And then like, and the husband was sort of just a device in the book. Like he's just useless. And my character was kind of like that in the first draft, but then like it's sort of beefed up with every draft. Sure. I mean, it did. I mean, he's got stuff to do.

• 1:13:46Griffin Newman?

  They got like 30 to 40% of the way there to a character is what I find frustrating.

• 1:13:53David Sims?

  Yep.

• 1:13:54Speaker 03

  Yeah. I mean, he's, he's just, we see him through her eyes so clearly. Like it's so clearly a subjective experience of him that it's hard to, yeah.

• 1:14:02Griffin Newman?

  There's a lot of stuff I can infer, but it's still hard to kind of make sense of what he's doing on a scene to scene basis. I can kind of like zoom out and go, anyway, go on.

• 1:14:14Speaker 03

  I mean, like the cheating, right? Like when you're like, how much of this is her? Channeling her own frustrations and her own feelings of like her like sexual frustration, her feelings about her body and how much of it is like, yes, there are condoms in there. And I'm like, I don't know.

• 1:14:28Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, yeah. And, and I mean, I feel like Ramsey makes a real choice to establish a pattern of him looking at women and looking at women who you have to imagine are similar to Jennifer Lawrence when he met her, you know, they're sort of the alternative girl who is the waitress at the diner and the two girls on the beach and sort of like, you know, who has this kind of like rough energy in their mid twenties that maybe he's now on the business end of and is longing for again. But right, you don't really get any larger allusions to, you know, he's, he's texting someone under the table or whatever.

• 1:15:10David Sims?

  No, and he's also hot. You would feel jealous and crazy because he's a good looking guy. Like you're just kind of like, well,

• 1:15:16Speaker 03

  Right. Who's on the road.

• 1:15:17David Sims?

  I'm sure people are interested in you.

• 1:15:18Speaker 03

  unspecified job.

• 1:15:19Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 1:15:20David Sims?

  You know, Lynn, she's, Lauren says Lynn is very emotionally led, not controlling, crazy, you know, they do these sort of rehearsals where you're kind of just like, you know, exploring the space and being weird and right. Like, you know, a lot of stuff comes out of that.

• 1:15:37Griffin Newman?

  Yeah. And, you know, Pattinson, like, who I think is fairly studious as an actor and trying to prepare.

• 1:15:44David Sims?

  Pattinson, I've been told, right, is like, is a very serious reheaser who struggles with, well, I mean, what, it was Eggers who told me long ago, this is the lighthouse with Willem Dafoe being more like, let's go crazy in this scene.

• 1:15:59Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 1:15:59David Sims?

  And Pattinson was like, oh, fuck, I like, but I like really got the voice down and like, you know, I've been like, working on this scene really hard.

• 1:16:04Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:05David Sims?

  But then I, I assume he's done a lot of work since then where I assume again, he had to kind of adjust, like.

• 1:16:10Griffin Newman?

  Lighthouse is an interesting comparison point because you're like, that's kind of in theory, what should be the juice of casting him here is placing him into an unstructured environment with an actor who is so famously instinctive, you know, instead of intellectual, and then having him struggle with an environment that he can't figure out the framework of. And I feel like Lighthouse gets that, like he channels his frustration into the character.

• 1:16:38David Sims?

  He's great in that.

• 1:16:38Griffin Newman?

  Which is the primary thing.

• 1:16:39David Sims?

  And he has the more tough role, so like.

• 1:16:41Griffin Newman?

  Exactly.

• 1:16:42David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:42Griffin Newman?

  Right. And, and they don't quite land on it here, but he tells the story about there being like a five-page dialogue scene that he worked really hard on, that he is like a real like fucking like notes in the margin of the page kind of guy. And they got to set and Lynn's like, I think we do this without words. And he was like, which part? And she was like, all five pages. And he was like, I guess this is just what this is.

• 1:17:05David Sims?

  Yeah, I guess this is the process here. I would be annoyed. Be bitter.

• 1:17:08Griffin Newman?

  Different people work different ways.

• 1:17:10David Sims?

  Pattinson had never really met Jennifer Lawrence before, but always wanted to work with her. They were chatting about something and she was like, do you want to be my husband in this Lynn Ramsey movie? This is how he puts it. Pattinson is notoriously someone who kind of like massages the truth on press tours because he gets bored.

• 1:17:30Speaker 03

  Unreliable narrator.

• 1:17:30Griffin Newman?

  What are you talking about? Didn't like a clown shoot his dad or something?

• 1:17:33David Sims?

  No, that's Shia LaBeouf.

• 1:17:35Speaker 03

  The cooking things, right? Where he invents like weird cooking things?

• 1:17:39David Sims?

  Yeah. Uh, yeah. Like he's, you know, but he claims that Jennifer kind of, you know, offered it to him somewhat casually because he was kind of like, why are there no cool jobs? And she's like, how about this? Um, makes sort of sense because it's like, this is not the kind of movie you package with two stars. It is a Jennifer Lawrence movie, you know, and he is certainly playing a supporting role. Um, but he seemed to have a good time. He's a very game actor.

• 1:18:05David Sims?

  I love him in so many things. I like him in this. I walked out with very little to say about Robert Pattinson.

• 1:18:12Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, he's good at playing kind of like slightly unreliable or disappointing like like that aura. I think he's good at conjuring, but yeah, it is like it is like you said, it is like 40% of a character.

• 1:18:24Griffin Newman?

  Here's what I think they're trying to get at with this character, right? I was like watching it a second time, the opening of the house, right? And then walking into it. And when the first thing he says is like, I could record music in here. And you're like, okay, so and he's talking about his childhood memories of the things that happened. They are inheriting his uncle's house. They are moving back to his hometown closer to his parents. His father played by, I don't know this actor. I didn't, I've never seen this guy before. He's kind of got just like a generic everyman vibe, voice.

• 1:19:00Speaker 03

  I think he's a non-professional. They just found him.

• 1:19:02Griffin Newman?

  They just found a guy. He's like a Kevin O'Leary, right? Nick Nolte on fucking fire in a tiny role, but I think he is like devastating in this movie. It is such an impactful, like two minutes or whatever it is.

• 1:19:14David Sims?

  Couple scenes.

• 1:19:15Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:15David Sims?

  Is it just one or no, it's a couple scenes?

• 1:19:17Speaker 03

  It's basically. Seen in the woods as well.

• 1:19:19Griffin Newman?

  The scene in the house that's extended and the scene in the woods.

• 1:19:22David Sims?

  How much Nolte has there been lately?

• 1:19:24Speaker 03

  Not much.

• 1:19:25Griffin Newman?

  Yeah. What's the last?

• 1:19:27David Sims?

  I mean, he was in two, he was a thing called The Golden Voice, which.

• 1:19:31Griffin Newman?

  I got a golden voice.

• 1:19:33David Sims?

  I can't say I know much about three. And then it's three years ago. He was in the Josh Demele movie, Blackout.

• 1:19:40Griffin Newman?

  Of course.

• 1:19:40David Sims?

  And two years before that. I mean, like, yeah, he's barely done anything.

• 1:19:44Griffin Newman?

  Yeah. Like. He is now, uh, do, do, do, do, do 85 years old?

• 1:19:54David Sims?

  That's old?

• 1:19:55Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:55David Sims?

  I mean, he's been around a long time, but I mean, like, I was trying to think of what's

• 1:19:59Griffin Newman?

  Poker Face. Poker Face is the thing. I knew there was something in the last couple of years I thought he was great.

• 1:20:03David Sims?

  TV that I loved. He was great.

• 1:20:04Griffin Newman?

  But he's got his spotlight episode of Poker Face.

• 1:20:06David Sims?

  And of course, we all enjoyed him in The Mandalorian, but I think that was just a voice.

• 1:20:09Speaker 06

  What are you talking about? I'm in the costume. I'm pulling a dwarf. I'm on my knees playing an ogre.

• 1:20:16Griffin Newman?

  Not.

• 1:20:17David Sims?

  I I love the Poker Face episode.

• 1:20:21Griffin Newman?

  Where he was very good. He plays Phil Tippett, basically. And have you have you watched that episode?

• 1:20:25Speaker 03

  No, I don't think so. I've watched a lot of Poker Face, but I kind of like.

• 1:20:29David Sims?

  He plays a stop motion animator who's like, you know, career is over. That it's a very obvious homage to Phil Tippett.

• 1:20:37Griffin Newman?

  Consciously, and I think Brad Johnson's friends with Phil Tippett, but Phil Tippett talks about like his own mental health journey and the kind of breakdown he had when CGI replaced stop motion. And it's very much an oldie playing the recovered version of that.

• 1:20:49David Sims?

  But he is also a murder victim. Like, he's not in it too much.

• 1:20:52Griffin Newman?

  He's heartbreaking. He's great. Yeah, it's a really great performance.

• 1:20:54David Sims?

  But like, yeah, what's like the last, I mean, A Walk in the Woods is, I feel like, the last time he was like on the poster in a real movie that came out in theaters.

• 1:21:05Griffin Newman?

  I believe he is like.

• 1:21:06David Sims?

  And that's 2015.

• 1:21:07Griffin Newman?

  The and an angel has fallen.

• 1:21:09David Sims?

  He is an angel has fallen.

• 1:21:10Griffin Newman?

  Where he's revealed to be Gerard Butler's dad, which totally makes sense.

• 1:21:14David Sims?

  He, you're, you're, you're right.

• 1:21:16Griffin Newman?

  Yes, of course you are.

• 1:21:17David Sims?

  Oh, let me, and this is so crazy. He plays someone who lives in the woods.

• 1:21:20Griffin Newman?

  Oh, weird. Yes, he's definitely, they're like, where did you come from, Angel? And he's like, well, it's a long story. And then it cuts to Nick Nolte being like, I make wood guns.

• 1:21:31David Sims?

  Haven't seen that. That's the third one.

• 1:21:33Griffin Newman?

  I'm the Secret Service agent for the trees. That's the third one. Right. Cause the, the first one, it's the president is taken. The second one is the prime minister is taken. And the third one is he is taken, I think.

• 1:21:48Griffin Newman?

  I don't know. Yeah.

• 1:21:49David Sims?

  Well.

• 1:21:49Griffin Newman?

  I believe you.

• 1:21:50David Sims?

  Nick Nolte Ramsey said, I just thought of him for the role and I asked to meet, he asked to meet me in person. I went to Malibu. And she says, look, his face is Ms. Merrick and you can't take your eyes off him. And, you know, so it's like, I don't know. It's not like she had to go hunting for him. I guess he just doesn't work much, but like, he makes sense here. Sissy Spacek is great, obviously. Yeah. She's just a great actor. Lawrence, she's in Causeway. So Lawrence had worked with her.

• 1:22:19Griffin Newman?

  Okay, okay. Right. I forgot about that. Yeah.

• 1:22:22David Sims?

  I also, I confess, I also forgot about that. And then like you, Stanfield.

• 1:22:28David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:28Speaker 03

  And barely in a role.

• 1:22:30David Sims?

  Barely in it. It strikes me as the kind of thing where he's just kind of, he's the kind of savvy arty actor who probably is like, I'll definitely work with Lynn Ramsey. And she says in the interview, I'd love to do like something bigger with him.

• 1:22:41Speaker 03

  I, I wondered like if that, if there were more there that just got chopped down to like this kind of weird vestigial storyline.

• 1:22:48Griffin Newman?

  It's not Terrence Malick levels, but I do feel like she's a filmmaker where like you sign up for the movie and you're like, there's a version where you're in the whole thing, or maybe you have no dialogue. It does feel like, even though it's a little distracting because he's famous enough that you keep expecting him to do more. The movie is asking him to do a thing that is so tied to his innate energy and presence. That it does feel like it is effective shorthand casting in a way. But you are also like, did they really just get like Keith Stanfield to show up and like kiss her twice in the woods?

• 1:23:26David Sims?

  I think they may.

• 1:23:27Speaker 03

  And then get for that horrified look when he had that encounter in the parking lot where he was like, oh no.

• 1:23:31Griffin Newman?

  Right. The idea with the Pattinson character, right? That this is where he grew up. His father is in a pretty extreme state of late stage dementia, it seems. And his mother is a very fragile woman. It feels innately forever. And his uncle has died and then there, you can infer that there was some sort of, well, there's this house. We could move there. We could live for free. The cost of living is so much lower. Maybe if we want to have kids, isn't that a better place to raise kids?

• 1:24:01Speaker 03

  Right. Also, it's implied she's pregnant already, right? Like, I mean, in that first, like, kind of like montage where they're kind of dancing and cleaning. It cuts to her being pregnant almost immediately. So I presume that part of the emphasis was like, if we're going to have kids, let's go. We can have a whole house.

• 1:24:16Griffin Newman?

  Yes, right. It feels like even if she doesn't know she's pregnant when they enter the house, it is a thing that they are trying to make happen.

• 1:24:25Griffin Newman?

  And, but yes, when he talks about like, I could record music here. It's like, there's a sense of they must have met in some cooler college town. They both left wherever they grew up and were like hip, young, artistically activated kids together who stayed together. And now they're at this inflection point where he's presenting to her, well, my dad's sick, this house is free, we want to have kids. Isn't that a better place to raise kids? And when he gets back there, he kind of resets back to who he was growing.

• 1:24:55David Sims?

  That's her fear, that he sort of, right?

• 1:24:57Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 1:24:58David Sims?

  Shedding his.

• 1:24:58Griffin Newman?

  That's where I think there's almost a character here.

• 1:25:02David Sims?

  Right, right.

• 1:25:02Griffin Newman?

  That it's like this guy is surrendering his cool energy.

• 1:25:05David Sims?

  You kind of have to read it in, but yeah.

• 1:25:07Griffin Newman?

  To what degree did he just always kind of want to drive a truck? And that was like a dalliance to be like, I make music and shit.

• 1:25:14Speaker 04

  He puts down the IPA and he picks up the Budweiser.

• 1:25:17Griffin Newman?

  Exactly, exactly.

• 1:25:18Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:25:18Griffin Newman?

  And, you know, this is what's comfortable to him. He's so like activated, the most excited I would argue he is the entire movie is in the opening, pointing out to her in the house, that's where I chip my tooth. Like, he's like, I've returned to my core self and can I get over this like performative, social jockeying, especially if we're together, because I know this is the person I want to be with. And to her, it's like, well, I don't know, like, if writing is my core identity, but certainly if someone like this is a writer, people go like, you know, she's like a writer, she's all crazy and she does crazy stuff. But if she stops writing, then they're like, what's your deal? He wants to keep saying, I'm gonna do music, but he seems to have no ambition to express himself creatively in any way.

• 1:26:01Speaker 03

  He just, he likes guitars.

• 1:26:03Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 1:26:03Speaker 03

  He's just so offended when she's, she's like, I hate guitars.

• 1:26:06Griffin Newman?

  Right, right.

• 1:26:07Speaker 03

  It's just like, that's a great thing to just say to someone out of the blue to like, yeah.

• 1:26:11Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:26:12Speaker 03

  Exactly, but.

• 1:26:12Griffin Newman?

  Who hates guitars?

• 1:26:15David Sims?

  That it represents something to her.

• 1:26:17Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:26:17David Sims?

  Yes, yeah.

• 1:26:18Speaker 03

  Yeah. You understand what she's feeling at that point, and she also just wants to make him mad and she's coming out with that. But I think also, you know, you get that flashback early on of her, I think it's like, like the Nolte scene where I think it's like Thanksgiving dinner, maybe. And it's like, all of the women are at the table and all of the men are, the men are in the other room. And you're like, you can sense her being like, oh, is this my future? Like this kind of like, we're in the kitchen or we're at the table and we're talking about women's stuff. And like this, like really traditional gender split and these kind of like gender roles. Like you can watch him becoming more, I mean, there's a point where the point where, I mean, she's obviously acting out at the pool party, but like he has like a panic attack over that, right? Like that kind of like, he is already settling into this more kind of like socially

• 1:27:02Speaker 03

  conservative pattern that he grew up in.

• 1:27:05Griffin Newman?

  And it doesn't feel like that's the first time he's had that reaction. It feels like he constantly lives in fear of, you know, the thing with her, sometimes she has her moods, you know?

• 1:27:15Speaker 03

  Right, right. And like suddenly she has gone from being like, they're both like arty, kind of like, like wild and crazy kids to being like, she is the crazy one.

• 1:27:24Griffin Newman?

  Right. And here is kind of like, you know, her coming out party to the neighborhood in a kind of way. It's like, we fixed her, we're a happy family. And now like, meet the other housewives. And I think you're right, that like, even the scene with Sissy Spacek, where she goes to visit her and Sissy Spacek holds her up a shotgun out of fear that someone's breaking into her house, is kind of like Sissy being like, welcome to the club, you're on the other side, here's how we swallow pain. And that is just fucking terrifying to her. The idea that there is now an expectation of normalcy, or at least keeping up appearances, that it feels like what Sissy Spacek is saying to her is, yeah, we all feel insane. We're

• 1:28:08Griffin Newman?

  all miserable. All of this is difficult. Here's how you handle it. And that is not a thing she's interested in doing at all. And I think it's so telling, the moment when Nick Nolte is struggling to tie his shoes, and she goes over to him. I think it's maybe the single best moment in the film. And it's key to my reading of what does work in this film, is you're like, this guy's off in the corner, struggling so deeply with such a simple task. And it is that like sadness of the elderly, feeling the frustration of their loss of ability to handle a thing like that, and not knowing what the right way to relate to them is in that moment, to not be condescending, to be helpful, while

• 1:28:51Griffin Newman?

  also not feeling like you are robbing them of any power or ability. And she just starts like communicating with him through like.

• 1:29:00Griffin Newman?

  Faces like expressive sort of like, you know, like fucking like Comedia Delarte versions of emotions.

• 1:29:07David Sims?

  Uh, right. Like hold up the like, are you happy? Are you sad? Like medical chart?

• 1:29:12Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:29:13David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 1:29:14Griffin Newman?

  And you just see him find a moment of comfort with her where it's like, fuck, we speak the same language. There are very different things going on in their respective brains, but there is a similar, I can't engage with what's happening over there at that table. And what's happening between us is not verbal. And he has this moment of peace and focus and he helps her or she helps him. And then like, you know, 30 seconds later, he freaks out not knowing where he is and who's alive and who's dead and why they're in his brother's house and what year it is.

• 1:29:47Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:29:48David Sims?

  People say she's been alive.

• 1:29:49Speaker 03

  You know what?

• 1:29:50Griffin Newman?

  This year, right?

• 1:29:51Speaker 03

  Yes. My favorite scene is the one, um, he's driving her back, I think from a hospital, maybe, or like, this is after a little, she's like thrown herself through the.

• 1:30:02David Sims?

  She, she do throw herself through window.

• 1:30:05Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 1:30:05Griffin Newman?

  Right. Her relationship to the woods is very similar to Forky's relationship to trash.

• 1:30:10Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 1:30:10Griffin Newman?

  Where she, he's just, I gotta get back.

• 1:30:12David Sims?

  At all costs, be I nude, be it on fire. I must be in the woods. Yes.

• 1:30:18Speaker 03

  But so she's thrown herself through the window. She, he's taken her to, uh, the emergency room. They're back. She's like, her face is like covered in scab still. And she's like, when's the last time we had sex? Do you know?

• 1:30:29David Sims?

  I really like this.

• 1:30:30Speaker 03

  Yes. And, and, and kind of demands that he say that he desires her and then starts being like, are we gonna have sex tonight? Are we gonna have sex when we get home? What if we have sex in the car? Like, right? And it's just, it's so, I think there is this way in which she kind of like revels, she's still obviously Jennifer Lawrence and like one of the most beautiful people on the planet, but like revels in like these moments of kind of like grotesquerie almost in the same way.

• 1:30:52David Sims?

  And she's being like a little rabid squirrel.

• 1:30:55Speaker 03

  Exactly.

• 1:30:55David Sims?

  Like, which she's good at.

• 1:30:56Speaker 03

  Yes. And it's like, it's really funny and he's so uncomfortable and he's so trying to be like, no, I'm into it. Like I'm, I love this. Like, yes. Like let's, let's have sex in the car with my mom in the house right there watching our baby. Like, it's. So it's so good. I think like, like those scenes are where I really enjoy that performance.

• 1:31:15David Sims?

  Right. The thing I liked, there's lots of things like, like I do buy that she's like, why won't you fuck me?

• 1:31:21Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:31:21David Sims?

  And he's like, no, no, I will, I will. But he probably doesn't want to. Partly because she do be throwing herself through windows all the time, I suppose. But like partly because of normal postpartum kind of thing.

• 1:31:32Speaker 03

  Clearly very stressed.

• 1:31:34David Sims?

  And, right?

• 1:31:34Griffin Newman?

  And even though he's looking at other women.

• 1:31:37David Sims?

  You know, right? That, that, that'll turn your house into a Polanski movie eventually, right? Like, everyone will be crawling up the walls.

• 1:31:44Griffin Newman?

  He's looking at other women, but it doesn't feel like this movie is doing a thing that I think a worse film would, which is sort of implying that it's like, well, now that she's had a baby, you know, she's not quite the same anymore. And I just, I'm not really attracted to her anymore. It is like, everything else going on with her is overriding his animalistic instincts towards her, which seemed by the naked dancing at the beginning of the movie, clearly used to be their language.

• 1:32:09David Sims?

  Right. Or, or that's how she feels about their old relationship, right? Like, even if you want to just be in her mind's eye, it's like, yes, we used to have this.

• 1:32:17Griffin Newman?

  Right. And when she's like, why won't you fuck me? You used to fuck me in the car. She gets really like graphic in the description of like the process of physical maneuvering to have sex in the car. And he's just like, I don't know what, first of all, if you're intellectualizing it in this way, we're, we're past the point of spontaneity, which is what you really want. And also, our life has too many responsibilities to be that spontaneous in that way, is what he like, does not say to her. But it is why he's like, I know, I do, I guess I do want to fuck you, but not right now.

• 1:32:51David Sims?

  And then, isn't it the mom's right there?

• 1:32:54Speaker 03

  Yeah, she's babysitting. So, yeah, yeah.

• 1:32:56Griffin Newman?

  And in my memory also, that scene is pretty shortly after the dog.

• 1:33:01Speaker 03

  Yeah. I mean, I think it's like, she throws herself through the window.

• 1:33:06Speaker 03

  And then like, I think there's like a few more scenes after that. And then yeah, this is so.

• 1:33:12Griffin Newman?

  Right. Cause there's like a feeling of when they have these confrontations, it being like, the to do list of things we need to talk through is now like six items long. We still haven't really wrestled with the dog thing, you know, to some degree. The scene where he's like, uh, driving her, uh, I think he's driving her after she's killed the dog and he's just looking at her like, I, do I know this person? But he's also trying to like combat his fear and disdain with like,

• 1:33:48Griffin Newman?

  should I be worried about her? Like, what does this say about what's going on? And what do I need to do to get through to her? That is the sort of like mad love story part of it of I, I cannot fully divorce my emotions from this poor person who I now can't really understand.

• 1:34:04David Sims?

  Yeah. She's transformed in some way. She is, again, I keep thinking of no hard feelings. And mother, I guess. I'm trying to think of like her most feral other performances. And there's like roots of it in the David O. Russell movies where she's, you know, quote unquote, she's sort of being crazy in like this seventies throwback way that feels fake and stupid to me.

• 1:34:27Speaker 03

  I mean, you know what, like, Ruffey, this, like, this one made me think about is melancholia. You know, like very much beyond, like, the wedding scene also is very much like, it starts off and, and it just, it feels like it encompasses a whole years versus drama, worth of drama and also just falls apart so spectacularly, but also like the, the depiction of depression, you know?

• 1:34:50David Sims?

  Well, I think melancholia is a very powerful depiction of depression. Right. And like, I am kind of here and there on Lars von Trier. And that's a movie that I saw at the time and liked a lot, but wasn't even like, some people were like, best movie of the decade.

• 1:35:05Speaker 03

  Yeah, I love that movie.

• 1:35:06David Sims?

  I think that sounds incredible. Right. And then, but then it let it quickly kind of like stuck with me.

• 1:35:11Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:35:11David Sims?

  Where I was like, I think I might've also just been feeling really bad after I saw that movie, because it's about feeling bad and it worked. Like, like it did a good job conveying the feeling of feeling bad.

• 1:35:24Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:35:25David Sims?

  Whereas this doesn't to me. This more rattles me, this movie, like, and like, that's fun. Like, it got, it gets a rise out of me in that way, but it didn't really, I didn't feel in her head, maybe in the same kind of profound way.

• 1:35:39Speaker 03

  That's a Lynn Ramsey thing also, I think.

• 1:35:41Griffin Newman?

  Right. And you were saying this movie is so much from her perspective. I think this is like weirdly the least protagonist perspective centered film in her oeuvre, which her work is so intimate inside the head that that still makes it feel more sort of singular through this one character's eyes than most movies. But I, I think it is a little zoomed out. She's not doing, you know, the main device of the book is how much of this is real, more repulsion style, where is the line kind of stuff.

• 1:36:14David Sims?

  Sure. Right. Right. Yeah. Yeah.

• 1:36:16Griffin Newman?

  And I, I think part of that is that, and, and partially some of this is the framing and probably why like Ramsey is pushing back on the postpartum thing. Not to say that isn't part of the soup, but just like to frame it that way makes a depression movie and does this movie work as a depression movie versus, I feel like when we get to the scene where she is committed to the hospital and she's in the sort of like group therapy environment. And for the first time, we get like backstory from her. And it is in, in a worse film and a worse piece of material, the scene where it's like, oh, and now she breaks down crying and here's the core trauma.

• 1:36:53David Sims?

  She's smoking a cigarette and she tells you, right, that her mommy never loved her or whatever.

• 1:36:57Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 1:36:57Speaker 03

  And then it's solved and then she can move forward.

• 1:36:59Griffin Newman?

  Right. And instead she like kind of very bluntly, offhandedly explains to this therapist, I said group therapist, but it's a one-on-one scene, right? I can't remember now. Yeah. She says to this guy, like, yeah, my parents and here was the dynamic and my parents were unhealthy. And it was, you know, an emotionally unstable household and both of them died in a plane crash. And she's sort of presenting it as like, but that like, doesn't have anything to do with me. And there's a sense of like, there is something that has been unacknowledged in horror family for a while. Uh, you know, there is something that has just been treated with a kind of like white knuckle, get through it attitude, perhaps.

• 1:37:41Griffin Newman?

  Uh, and that then can be manifested and like owned as being a spark plug and being like wild and being creative and all these sorts of things.

• 1:37:50Speaker 03

  I think also, I mean, I think there are multiple possible element, right? Like her, her childhood and, you know, her attachment issues and postpartum and other depression, you know, but like, she rejects all of them, right? Like she does not latch on to any of them.

• 1:38:05Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:38:06Speaker 03

  And I feel like part of like, I think the power of this movie comes for me from her just being like, it doesn't actually matter which of these things it is because I, I cannot get a hold of it. And I think like the, a lot of the great parts of her performance are the ones where she's just conveying someone who is like, like almost just like impossibly restless and unhappy in her own skin. You know, like when she does, she does this thing where she like, kind of like drops over from the waist, like her, like, like, you know, her strings have been cut. Like she's a, you know, a puppet who's strings have been cut. And then, or she makes those weird faces when she's in the car, like she, you know, looks at her own body.

• 1:38:40Griffin Newman?

  The lower jaw thing.

• 1:38:41Speaker 03

  Yeah, the lower jaw thing. She looks at her body in the mirror in ways that are almost like clinical, you know? Like, I think there is this really, I think she, she does a lot to convey this idea of someone where you're just like, what? If you can barely stand to inhabit, not even in disgust, but just like you are, you barely can stand and inhabit your own body in your own.

• 1:38:57Griffin Newman?

  Right. And everyone is constantly trying to point to things that are circumstantial. Well, it's tough moving. This is a big culture shock for you.

• 1:39:05Speaker 03

  And you're like, those are things possibly all contributed, but they are not helpful for her.

• 1:39:09Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 1:39:09Speaker 03

  As like solutions.

• 1:39:11Griffin Newman?

  There's a, there's a talking around the thing that feels not just about everyone around her, but also about her and her parents. And who knows how far back this goes, you know, if it is like, uh, kind of, um, Acquired trauma from behavior, or if it's a chemical or what.

• 1:39:32Griffin Newman?

  But yes, they're sort of like, to a certain degree, like postpartum is the red herring of this movie. And I feel like the woods thing is her just naturally being drawn to the idea of going back to some natural state. Right? It is literally like, can I be a naked animal in the woods? Can I be night bitch? I just want to fucking stop pretending. I want to stop being told there is a way to behave. I want to like, get on all fours and eat leaves. Like, what is all of this? You know, like, the idea of the pool party is just like, just feels like fucking theater to her that she cannot maintain for more than two minutes. And it is so heartbreaking to me because you have this arc of her going in there.

• 1:40:16Griffin Newman?

  You see her settled in the hospital, you know? Her temperament has certainly calmed down, even though she doesn't seem happy. You were like, there is a mania that has lowered. And now it's like, has she? The first time watching this, I was like, is this movie a kind of tragedy of some part of her getting doled off in order to survive? And instead, she just rejects it within three minutes. She has to like, tell this woman off to her face and rip her clothes off. And what makes sense to her is to like, look at the young cashier at the gas station and be like, why the fuck are we talking? Which is another one of the best scenes of the movie.

• 1:40:53Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:40:53Speaker 04

  Unfortunately, I relate to that scene.

• 1:40:57Speaker 03

  You hate small talk?

• 1:40:59Speaker 04

  Yes, I do. And I, over the pandemic, briefly spent some time in New Hampshire, rural New Hampshire. And having grown up in New Jersey, you know, tri-state area, I lived in New York. Like, I'm so used to social interactions being brief.

• 1:41:19Speaker 04

  And Kurt and maybe some people would interpret it as rude. I actually really prefer the quick, just you don't even need to make eye contact with me.

• 1:41:32David Sims?

  It's, yes.

• 1:41:33Speaker 04

  And so being

• 1:41:34David Sims?

  Northeast thing.

• 1:41:35Speaker 04

  Yeah, whatever. Being out in this rural setting and someone just being like, how about the weather, huh? Like chit chatting with me. I definitely had these moments where I was so tempted to be like, enough, just give me the thing, man. Just ring me up. Like, I really get it.

• 1:41:52Griffin Newman?

  Well, and look, it's a thing that melancholia gets as well, which is like, that movie is all based on this, the idea of melancholia, the idea of this planet crashing in and possibly pretending an apocalypse being a metaphor, but also being real, which is the power of that movie, which is just like, when you are at a deep, deep stage of depression or mania or any other number of things, you are catastrophizing everything, but also it, you might be right. You know, there is, there was a degree of like broken clock four times a day kind of thing. Like maybe, maybe this clock has like multiple correct overlap moments and she's

• 1:42:38Griffin Newman?

  just kind of like seeing things clearly at times, you know? There is, and that also then makes you want to, I think as a person in like a Robert Pattinson position, go, well, she was good yesterday, you know? Like yesterday, she was normal. We actually had like a conversation. You want to believe that there's an understanding there, but then you see a situation where you're like, what is the point of you asking me questions about my baby? Nothing is accomplished by this. I cannot pretend. Doesn't she make the joke too of like, what's his name? And she's like, I don't know. We haven't really like.

• 1:43:14Speaker 03

  We never, we decided not to name him. Yeah.

• 1:43:17Speaker 04

  Yeah. And yet she has no friends.

• 1:43:19Speaker 03

  Right.

• 1:43:19Speaker 04

  We learned she has no family.

• 1:43:21Speaker 03

  Yeah. No one in her life at all.

• 1:43:22Speaker 04

  Yeah. She's so isolated.

• 1:43:25Griffin Newman?

  You get the sense that I think they were really relationship people. And now it's not like he seems to have a lot of friends on the side. He just wants to like, go drive his truck by himself.

• 1:43:37Speaker 03

  He also just slips back into his old life, like it's like a, you know, comfortable shoe. Like it's just.

• 1:43:43Griffin Newman?

  What you kind of imagine his father must've been like, like a kind of stoic man. Who was like sweet at times, but mostly just wants to go on like long rides.

• 1:43:52Speaker 03

  Right. And then comes back and is like, why is the house so dirty?

• 1:43:54Griffin Newman?

  Right. And that scene where he calls her from the diner and she goes, you're eating lunch? Or you're eating a cheeseburger? This feeling of like, you can just go and do that? Like you're doing things without me. I'm here listening to fucking Hey Mickey 20 times in a row, which I also think is such a good capturing of a certain kind of like mental anguish of just like, I don't know, I just need to keep fucking listening to this song.

• 1:44:21Speaker 04

  He's got the car.

• 1:44:23Griffin Newman?

  He's got the car.

• 1:44:23Speaker 04

  They have, they have one car.

• 1:44:24Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:44:25Speaker 04

  And there's, there's something too about seeing her throughout the movie, pushing the baby carriage on dirt roads, along a highway. It makes me nervous to see it happening.

• 1:44:37Speaker 03

  And the only place she has to go beyond the gas station store is like her mother-in-law's house. There, you know, there's really nowhere to go otherwise.

• 1:44:45Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, she doesn't dislike, but she clearly cannot find a shared language with.

• 1:44:48Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:44:49Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:44:49Speaker 03

  Though I, I do love, there is an expression in Sissy Spacek's face towards the very end where she does that toast to like, maybe we all die out. That like expression on her face is so wonderful because it is so like, I understand you precisely in this moment.

• 1:45:01Griffin Newman?

  That's why I think the Spacek casting is so good because you can tell Spacek is a person who always feels so emotionally vulnerable, that she cannot be someone who is just putting a brave face on something and not showing you any of how she actually feels. And I think Lawrence is terrified about the idea of being someone like that who isn't numb, but is spending that much active energy suppressing and suppressing for outward appearances, suppressing to not make other people uncomfortable.

• 1:45:30Speaker 03

  Yeah. I mean, I think one of the, the best aspects of this film is that it does acknowledge all of the ways in which the women get a raw deal. Right? Like from like, yes, being stuck at home with, you know, doing what is not considered work. Right? Like even though like childcare is obviously like requires so much from you and is difficult. Uh, and then, uh, and yeah, kind of being expected to just like take care of the house as like part of this, like, uh, or, um, yeah, the like the ways that all of the women are like, yeah. Isn't it amazing how you just like lose the thread for like six months to a year after having a child? Like, like, like, that's just part of it. It's really hard.

• 1:46:05Griffin Newman?

  Don't tell me that.

• 1:46:05Speaker 03

  Yeah, like all of those things. It, it, or, or even like Sissy SpaceX's character having kind of molded her entire life around this kind of coexistence with her husband to the fact that she cannot conceive of a way to even like cook for one person, you know, like, I think there are ways, acknowledges all of those things, but also is like, I reject that as like the reading of this movie, right? Like, like, like Lawrence's character keeps being like, but that's not the answer for me. Maybe, yes, it is maybe accurate, but also that you cannot solve me that way. This is not just about the hardship of being a woman and being a mother. This is about me, my specifics, which are no one can quite grasp.

• 1:46:43Griffin Newman?

  Right. And I think it's, it's part of what's amplifying everything innately in her is the biological phenomenon of, you know, being postpartum. And the other part of it is she is almost pushing past and acting out further beyond the more everyone tries to tell her, yeah, well, yeah, we know what this is.

• 1:47:06Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:47:07Griffin Newman?

  Like, the more people try to kind of tag her and put a box around it as an experience, the more she's pushing up against it.

• 1:47:25David Sims?

  I mean, I guess what we're, what I'm alighting on is my problem with this movie, which is, I like the atmosphere of it, and I like the performance a lot, but I felt like I had to be doing a lot of the deeper reading into it, kind of. Which is, I mean, which maybe that's fine. And maybe that's kind of the Lynn Ramsey experience, because that's sort of true with all of her movies.

• 1:47:53Speaker 03

  Mm hmm.

• 1:47:54David Sims?

  Right? Like with Marvurn and with You Never Really Hear. I mean, there's stuff, there's little bits of context you get about these characters.

• 1:48:02Griffin Newman?

  She doesn't like to explain.

• 1:48:03David Sims?

  Like piecemeal flashback-y kind of ways.

• 1:48:06Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:48:07David Sims?

  And Kevin is all that.

• 1:48:09Speaker 03

  Yeah, no, they're all designed to be opaque. Yeah.

• 1:48:11David Sims?

  They all have that approach. And so I guess I'm wondering why.

• 1:48:18David Sims?

  Or last year, I was wondering why a Lynn Ramsey movie that was good was kind of like more of a top 25 movie for me than a top 10 one. Right? Like, you know, I wait and like, like, you know, like, what, like, what was the difference here? Like, what, what sort of kept it from?

• 1:48:40Griffin Newman?

  I think it is.

• 1:48:42David Sims?

  The highest list of movies I enjoyed in a good movie year.

• 1:48:44Griffin Newman?

  I think it is the Pattinson character. I think I need to shake out my final 10, but it's like, does this make it in or not is a question for me. And, and I think that's the thing it needs to really kind of be firing on all cylinders. Like, you don't want to tell the movie from his perspective, but you kind of need this character to be able to, his character to be able to communicate what's going on with him better. Because I think the movie is structured in a way where you're engaged enough to do the work about her. And doing the work to fill in his character feels a little annoying. And, and I think it is. It's also just what we're saying of like,

• 1:49:26Griffin Newman?

  he's just a little too innately interesting as an actor. That if things aren't fully fleshed out, you can't buy it. You can't buy blankness from him, you know? There needs to be like specificity. He's so odd. That you can't just be like, I get it. They cast some boring dude. The dude doesn't matter. You know, I mean, you like talking about like Night Bitch, like Scoot McNairy is a great actor and can do-

• 1:49:52David Sims?

  He's a good actor.

• 1:49:53Griffin Newman?

  Super like electrifying, wiry character actor work. But also like casting him as the husband who doesn't quite get that his wife's turning into a dog. In Night Bitch is casting, the same as casting him as the dad who doesn't quite understand why the crocodile is singing in Lyle Lyle Crocodile.

• 1:50:09David Sims?

  And is that who he plays?

• 1:50:10Griffin Newman?

  That's who he plays.

• 1:50:11David Sims?

  I haven't seen that.

• 1:50:12Griffin Newman?

  There was a shade of him that works as a kind of milquetoast, like, I'm sorry, what's going on here? And, and that he can also do more interesting stuff.

• 1:50:20David Sims?

  Was he mad to have not made the above the title billing of Lyle Lyle Crocodile?

• 1:50:25Griffin Newman?

  Do they only offer three?

• 1:50:26David Sims?

  They only have the three.

• 1:50:27Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:50:28David Sims?

  He's on the poster.

• 1:50:29Griffin Newman?

  He is.

• 1:50:30David Sims?

  Going like this.

• 1:50:32Griffin Newman?

  He's-

• 1:50:32David Sims?

  Gesturing with his thumb at the crocodile. End it, happy airbar dam.

• 1:50:36Griffin Newman?

  It, no, his performance is real. What am I gonna do about this?

• 1:50:41Griffin Newman?

  So what's "And the Voice of Shawn Mendes"?

• 1:50:43David Sims?

  It's, have you ever been in Constance Wu and Shawn Mendes is Lyle?

• 1:50:47Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:50:48David Sims?

  Yeah, the kid's not getting, oh, is that, which Fegley is it? One of the Fegleys?

• 1:50:51Griffin Newman?

  It's the lower, the younger Fegley. It's a Fegley. That's from tip to toe, that's a Fegley.

• 1:50:56David Sims?

  We'll get you a Fegley. That's what they, so they said it.

• 1:50:58Griffin Newman?

  How many Fegleys do you want?

• 1:50:59David Sims?

  Two?

• 1:51:00Griffin Newman?

  You want a double Fegley or just one?

• 1:51:01David Sims?

  Can you get the, get the tongs and pull a Fegley out of the?

• 1:51:05Griffin Newman?

  Oh, fuck, we're out of Fegleys. Would you be okay with a jupe? Can I give you a jupe?

• 1:51:10Speaker 03

  Oh, the jupe's are kind of high value these days, so they're, they're stored separately.

• 1:51:14Griffin Newman?

  Oh, so you think that it's, maybe you get a Fegley if the jupe's are sold out?

• 1:51:17Speaker 03

  Yeah, I think that's the case. Yeah. Um, yeah, I think for me, the reason this is a lower tier Lynn Ramsey movie is just because it feels so, yeah, like, unmodulated. Like, it does feel like, you know, even that, that, that very first scene of her kind of like, post the dance, you know, setting up the house montage, when they have the baby is like her crawling in the grass with the knife. You know, you're already like, you're starting at a place of like splintering, and I feel like it, it doesn't, I mean, it goes up and down a bit, but it, it feels like a movie that is like operating at a kind of, a scream throughout for me, and I feel like that after a while loses effectiveness.

• 1:51:55Griffin Newman?

  I think that's a strategic decision to try to make it clear that whatever's going on with her didn't start here, right? That this goes far, far back. But I do, I, the other movie I was thinking about a lot while watching this, a movie I did not like, was, uh, Together?

• 1:52:14Speaker 03

  Oh, I thought about Together as well. Yeah, I mean, it is about moving out to, uh...

• 1:52:17Griffin Newman?

  That part of it, where it's like, here's a hip artsy couple, and one of them kind of wants to try a more rural life, and the other one feels like they're suffocating. And that is a movie that is like so thuddingly literal with what is happening psychologically, not just the metaphor that then turns into the heightened horror, but also like the character constantly explaining exactly what he's grieving and what he's processing. And that's a movie that does it so fucking much, and also I think it's a little murky with its supernatural rules, to a de- Where I'm like, you pushed me away. You're not letting me do any of the work. You keep going and you get it, right? In a way that like really turns my brain off. And this movie's doing the opposite where I'm like,

• 1:53:02Griffin Newman?

  you maybe need to tell me five to 10% more directly.

• 1:53:06Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, there's that point where you're like, am I reading into the film or am I just filling in? Because I need like, I'm coming up with my own material here.

• 1:53:14Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, and I, yes, yes. And the rubber meets the road with him, you know? And I think the scene of her with the therapist and explaining basically her parents not wanting her. I mean, this feeling that they did not know how to deal with her.

• 1:53:32David Sims?

  They'd been handed something they weren't really right prepared for.

• 1:53:35Griffin Newman?

  Right. And it's still elusive enough where it's interesting to sort of try to parse. Was that her from birth existing in a natural state that was more that they could handle? Speaking to the extremity of the child, or is that a reflection on them? And a path that she is continuing, she obviously is trying to exist in opposition to her parents because she is, despite sometimes dancing naked with a knife around a baby, I think very invested in the idea of being present in this baby's life. And yet she cannot fucking figure out how to do this. You know, I think part of her, seemingly intentionally getting pregnant before they are even married, and making this big commitment is she does like the idea of like, what if I could be the opposite parent? That is me filling in a lot, right?

• 1:54:20Griffin Newman?

  But she's also sitting there going like, yeah, but that's not anything. And they're like, and what happened to your parents? Died in a plane crash. As if like, right, that's like a normal thing. I have no problem with the fact that both of my parents died in a plane crash after having a terrible relationship to them. That's just one of those things.

• 1:54:37Speaker 03

  Here's my question.

• 1:54:38Griffin Newman?

  Please.

• 1:54:38Speaker 03

  Did you assume she was telling the truth there?

• 1:54:41Griffin Newman?

  I did, but I do think it's an interesting question.

• 1:54:42Speaker 03

  Yeah, because there are other times where, I mean, when she says like, we decided not to give the baby a name. There are other times where she kind of like just to, or I hate guitars, you know, she's like testing people. And there was this moment when she says it where I'm like, it's possible her parents are still around and she just hates them, you know?

• 1:54:56Griffin Newman?

  It's totally possible. This character is the Joker. She could be telling you five different stories of like how she got her scars. But in that moment, I believe it because she is not being antagonistic with him. She is trying really hard to take any weight off of what she's saying. And she also has gone into that environment seemingly going like, I get it. I need to fucking work on this. This is like hit a breaking point after the wedding in particular, you know? Which is also so interesting as a contrast to melancholia. We're like, that whole movie is basically built out of the wedding.

• 1:55:32David Sims?

  And you, you put your character in a big, a big white dress, you know? It's gonna set a mood.

• 1:55:36Griffin Newman?

  And you, you have this core kind of like betrayal moment in the wedding of melancholia, where you're like, well, that's a point of no return. Like, that's gonna fucking break everything.

• 1:55:45David Sims?

  Who, who's she marrying in that one?

• 1:55:46Griffin Newman?

  She's marrying.

• 1:55:48David Sims?

  Or is it Skarsgård?

• 1:55:49Griffin Newman?

  She's marrying Alexander Skarsgård.

• 1:55:51David Sims?

  And Kiefer's the dad?

• 1:55:52Griffin Newman?

  Kiefer's.

• 1:55:53David Sims?

  I remember Kiefer being really weird in that movie.

• 1:55:55Griffin Newman?

  Yeah. Am I wrong in thinking that Kiefer's her boss? And, and that Stellan Skarsgård is his dad? Or did they cast Stellan and Alexander not as father and son?

• 1:56:06David Sims?

  Alexander is, is indeed, you know, the, the husband. Stellan is the boss.

• 1:56:12Griffin Newman?

  So then Kiefer's the dad?

• 1:56:14David Sims?

  And Kiefer is, uh, John Clare's husband. And so, yeah, yeah, right? He's the dad because Clare is Charlotte Gainsbourg.

• 1:56:21Griffin Newman?

  Well, yeah, yeah.

• 1:56:23David Sims?

  Who is, oh, no, no, right. It's.

• 1:56:26Griffin Newman?

  Isn't Skarsgård the boss and the dad?

• 1:56:28David Sims?

  No, no, it's, uh, yeah, maybe, but Claire, Claire is her sister.

• 1:56:32Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 1:56:32David Sims?

  So Kiefer's her brother-in-law?

• 1:56:34Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 1:56:35Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:56:35David Sims?

  The larger one more pass on this.

• 1:56:37Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:56:37Speaker 03

  Kiefer's married to Charlotte.

• 1:56:38David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 1:56:39Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:56:40David Sims?

  Right. I have two questions. One, did you know that Angelina Jolie made a movie in 2024 called Without Blood?

• 1:56:48Griffin Newman?

  No.

• 1:56:49Speaker 03

  No.

• 1:56:49Griffin Newman?

  What is this movie?

• 1:56:50David Sims?

  War drama. It was at TIFF.

• 1:56:51Griffin Newman?

  I'm hearing this for the first time. I'm holding one finger behind my ear.

• 1:56:55David Sims?

  Like Seamus.

• 1:56:55Speaker 03

  She directed it.

• 1:56:56David Sims?

  She directed it. I'm looking at Seamus McGarvey's recent credit. He shot this movie.

• 1:57:00Speaker 03

  This does sound familiar to me, actually.

• 1:57:02David Sims?

  It is. And he's obviously a very good cinematographer.

• 1:57:05Griffin Newman?

  He literally.

• 1:57:06David Sims?

  He's got some wacky ass credits.

• 1:57:09Griffin Newman?

  Yes. He also, this movie felt like, uh, an opportunity for him to do some wacky ass shit. Where he was like, hey Ramsey, here's some stuff I've always wanted to try. What if you literally set lenses on fire?

• 1:57:21David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 1:57:21Griffin Newman?

  They did that Ben. They were like, let's experiment with like burning lenses and like camera gates.

• 1:57:27David Sims?

  Uh, you know, they shot it in Academy, which is a classic thing to do. I think when you're dealing with like inside, you know, like doors, well, trees, like things that are vertical.

• 1:57:37Griffin Newman?

  It's also so funny that that was just the standard kind of like prestige ratio for so long and any type of movie could fit in it. And now if a director's employing it, it's like psychological claustrophobia.

• 1:57:48Speaker 03

  Yeah. Yeah.

• 1:57:49David Sims?

  What movies look like.

• 1:57:50Speaker 03

  We're trapped in the frame.

• 1:57:51David Sims?

  Instead of a square frame versus a wide frame.

• 1:57:54Speaker 04

  Can I make a comment based on that information? That's, that's a hot shot.

• 1:57:59Griffin Newman?

  It's a hot shot. These are some hot shots.

• 1:58:02Speaker 04

  And then I just walk off.

• 1:58:03Griffin Newman?

  The camera was, I want to make clear Ben, the camera was not on fire while they were filming. They weren't like lights.

• 1:58:08Speaker 04

  Oh damn.

• 1:58:09Griffin Newman?

  Camera matched action, but the sort of like inky quality to it. He was trying to see what would happen if they caused that kind of intentional damage.

• 1:58:18David Sims?

  They shot on reversal stock, which I think is a huge pain in the ass to use because

• 1:58:24David Sims?

  you can't control light very well with it. And so the night scenes, they didn't, but otherwise McGarvey wanted to fuck around. He wanted a non-naturalistic thing. Indeed, he was burning lenses, uh, which created an inky look that he thought was cool. He shot Kevin, but I guess not. Uh, you were never really here?

• 1:58:44Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:58:45David Sims?

  Which was shot by Thomas Townend, not someone I know. Um, I had another thing to say. Oh, is Joker played by Joaquin Phoenix?

• 1:58:57Griffin Newman?

  Arthur Fleck.

• 1:58:58David Sims?

  The fourth or fifth best Joker on, in films? Like, it's like, he's not even top three, I don't think.

• 1:59:05Griffin Newman?

  Most of what? We're saying Ledger's number one?

• 1:59:07David Sims?

  Nicholas at the top.

• 1:59:09Speaker 03

  You know, I haven't seen the Nicholson one for so long. I really need to revisit.

• 1:59:13Griffin Newman?

  It's pretty good.

• 1:59:13David Sims?

  I mean, I guess you can put Phoenix in three.

• 1:59:16Griffin Newman?

  No, but I-

• 1:59:16David Sims?

  I feel like you would easily just put like Mark Hamill cartoon Joker.

• 1:59:19Griffin Newman?

  Mask of Phantasm was released in theaters. Hamill is a lock for third.

• 1:59:22David Sims?

  Right.

• 1:59:23Griffin Newman?

  Many people would argue he should be higher than third, but there's no way that he's above, that he's below Phoenix, a man who won the second man only in history. That's what people don't realize. Only two men have ever won an Oscar for playing the Joker.

• 1:59:37David Sims?

  More people should do it.

• 1:59:38Griffin Newman?

  Isn't that crazy? There's only ever been two.

• 1:59:42David Sims?

  So, okay, what's what happens in Dumbass?

• 1:59:45Griffin Newman?

  Can I go back to the wedding first?

• 1:59:46David Sims?

  Yeah, no, that's, I mean, that is a vital, that's like the big,

• 1:59:50Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 1:59:50David Sims?

  You know, thing in the movie, the big sequence.

• 1:59:52Griffin Newman?

  Sort of like the big final battle of like, can we construct a set piece to make her happy? Right? Like if we have this wedding and we presumably invite all our friends from our past lives.

• 2:00:02David Sims?

  Right. And then you'll fuck me, right?

• 2:00:04Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 2:00:04David Sims?

  It'll be our wedding.

• 2:00:06Griffin Newman?

  We're literally putting pageantry around this.

• 2:00:08Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:00:08Griffin Newman?

  And we're kind of like owning the country western thing in a hipster way, rather than the full immersion that you have been struggling with. And it was where I kind of, the first time watching it, started to be able to fill in some of the blanks on their backstory of just seeing the guests at the wedding and being like, oh, these are their friends from their past life. There is whatever percentage of like family, but here are all the friends they have not been seeing, who are down with their weird shit, who are into like, yeah, they do weird fucking dancing and look at their outfits and whatever. And then she just takes it too far. She gets too loose. It stops being funny.

• 2:00:45David Sims?

  It's not funny. She's going kiss me, kiss me like, mm.

• 2:00:48Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:00:49David Sims?

  You're like, oh, my God.

• 2:00:50Speaker 03

  And she kisses, CC's basic.

• 2:00:52Griffin Newman?

  And also it's like, the baby is there. Like, everyone is like, she's still acting like this with the baby?

• 2:00:58Speaker 03

  Mm hmm.

• 2:00:58Griffin Newman?

  I know she's had some drinks, but like, we thought she'd kind of chill out when she was a mother. And then you feel like there's going to be a melancholia thing of like, oh, she's going to vindictively fuck someone else. Spoilers for melancholia.

• 2:01:11Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:01:11Griffin Newman?

  Because her husband isn't fucking her in her wedding night.

• 2:01:13Speaker 03

  Seems like it's going to be the guy, the front desk guy.

• 2:01:15Griffin Newman?

  Right. Who she invites up and then just listens to him play acoustic guitar. And you're like, this woman just like, does not know what she needs.

• 2:01:24Speaker 03

  But also, he lets her go up to the room by herself and just is like, I'm gonna apparently stay here at my wedding without you and just like, make nice with my family.

• 2:01:34Griffin Newman?

  I was gonna say, it feels like he's strategically like, I can't deal with whatever the fuck's going on up there. Let her do whatever the fuck she wants to do. I need to do damage control for all of our friends and family who I now embarrass myself in front of. And that's his priority is like the reputation over the relationship. Or even just like really kind of seeing her as a person. Well, I have to say about that.

• 2:01:59Speaker 03

  Yeah. What do we think about the John Prine song? It was all over the place. I feel like.

• 2:02:03Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 2:02:04Speaker 04

  Love that song.

• 2:02:04Speaker 03

  I do love that song.

• 2:02:05Griffin Newman?

  It's really John Prine.

• 2:02:06Speaker 03

  Really.

• 2:02:06Griffin Newman?

  Whole soundtrack's really, really good in this.

• 2:02:09Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:02:10Speaker 04

  Yeah, I was looking at a GQ article. Lynn did an interview talking about her process with picking music for her movies. There's some.

• 2:02:20David Sims?

  She always has great soundtracks.

• 2:02:22Speaker 04

  So the cream crossroads drop was actually suggested to her by Marty Scorsese.

• 2:02:28Speaker 03

  Hmm.

• 2:02:29David Sims?

  I mean, it makes sense that Marty might think of.

• 2:02:31Speaker 04

  It was like a song he always wanted to use. Yeah, yeah, for sure. The punk song in the beginning is her singing.

• 2:02:38Speaker 03

  Oh.

• 2:02:39Speaker 04

  As well as the cover of Love Will Tell Us So Tear Us Apart is also her.

• 2:02:45Griffin Newman?

  Is Jennifer Lawrence singing?

• 2:02:46Speaker 04

  No, it's Lynn.

• 2:02:47Griffin Newman?

  Really?

• 2:02:48Speaker 04

  Correct.

• 2:02:49Griffin Newman?

  That's wild.

• 2:02:50Speaker 04

  Isn't that cool? And I thought the the Joy Division cover was excellent.

• 2:02:53Griffin Newman?

  It's excellent. Yeah.

• 2:02:54Speaker 03

  It's really good.

• 2:02:55Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:02:56Griffin Newman?

  That is super fucking cool.

• 2:02:58David Sims?

  Yeah, Johnny Greenwood didn't do the music, though. But no, so carry on.

• 2:03:02Speaker 04

  The reprise at the end of the John Prine song and who's the other performer? We should say, yep, Irista Men was not planned. It was just something that she spontaneously decided to do on the day of shooting, which I think is really such a lovely scene and almost like a little moment of like being able to take a breath. And then unfortunately you have the ending.

• 2:03:27David Sims?

  Yeah, well, what, you know, I kind of like the ending.

• 2:03:30Griffin Newman?

  I love the ending because it's just sort of like.

• 2:03:33David Sims?

  It's the ending this movie has. It cannot be she comes out of the hospital.

• 2:03:36Griffin Newman?

  No.

• 2:03:37David Sims?

  And he's like, look, I fixed up the house and I'm being better. And she's like, oh, you know what? That's what I need.

• 2:03:42Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, literally.

• 2:03:44Griffin Newman?

  So worried it was gonna be that.

• 2:03:45Speaker 04

  This is so bad of me. I was there was a part of me like, can she just wake up? And it was all fucking dream.

• 2:03:52David Sims?

  Jesus. I just like that she's like, no, enough like, yeah, no, I fully do not want to do this.

• 2:03:59Speaker 03

  Like we've seen the forest on fire in the beginning. You gotta come back to the forest on fire at the end, you know?

• 2:04:03Griffin Newman?

  Right. And the final exchange with Nick Nolte of just like, you're kind of like returning to the earth, you know? Like you've lost your ability to engage with. The idea of society and like polite manners and social interactions and all these sorts of things. I don't read it as, and look, obviously there are many things we read bizarrely in the Rat Catcher episode, a thing that I have thought about since that episode came out. And I do think Sims, there was something weird to the fact that you and I both saw that movie really young. And I think kind of locked into our young reads of the movie, not being able to pick up on some of the more complicated things.

• 2:04:45David Sims?

  I guess so, but that was, I was not, that was no good that I was not like, speaking of that.

• 2:04:51Griffin Newman?

  No, absolutely. But I just, like, I was genuinely watching that movie from a weirdly naive perspective, that I just, in trying to rationalize it, I think has to come from like, well, when I was like 12, my like sense of context clues was much lower than what literally is being depicted on screen.

• 2:05:09David Sims?

  Completely missed that, like, in our description of it in the episode.

• 2:05:12Griffin Newman?

  Yes, yes.

• 2:05:13Speaker 04

  Specifically, just so you have context.

• 2:05:16David Sims?

  They're assaulting the character.

• 2:05:18Speaker 04

  There's these boys who are sexually assaulting this female character and we, I just think, missed the mark and, and sort of defining the dynamics.

• 2:05:28David Sims?

  Like, what, you know, we were kind of like, they are being bad, or they are misbehaving.

• 2:05:31Griffin Newman?

  I think I said sexually charged bullying, which I understand read as me minimizing a thing rather than me having a bad brain and not interpreting a thing correctly.

• 2:05:43David Sims?

  Right.

• 2:05:43Griffin Newman?

  But I, I don't, now, I apologize for my last incorrect reading.

• 2:05:49Speaker 04

  But I think I'm right about this.

• 2:05:52Griffin Newman?

  Yes. The movie's about trauma. No, I think.

• 2:05:56Speaker 04

  Oh, my God. Like Toxy?

• 2:05:57Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, it's about Toxy. It's about Toxy and Sergeant Kabuki Man, NYPD. That's why she's going into the woods because they're all hanging out there. Paltry geist. I don't read the ending as a suicidal thing.

• 2:06:11Speaker 04

  No, she's just done with it.

• 2:06:12Griffin Newman?

  Exactly.

• 2:06:13Speaker 04

  It's not her thing.

• 2:06:14Griffin Newman?

  It is metaphorical, but it's like metaphorically, it's metaphorically behavioral, if that makes sense. It is sort of like a. Worldview thing of like, I'm, I'm done playing the game.

• 2:06:27Speaker 03

  Well, also like it, you get her walking into the flames and then you get like the shot of the house with like the cake. Right. Like, doesn't it kind of, kind of like, there's, there's like.

• 2:06:38Griffin Newman?

  I think it says, welcome home mommy.

• 2:06:39Speaker 03

  Yeah, or something like that. Where I feel like there is a, you could read the other thing of just her leaving, like she is.

• 2:06:45David Sims?

  Yeah, it's like, yeah, because they're trying to be like, are you now ready to be mommy?

• 2:06:49Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:06:49David Sims?

  Right.

• 2:06:51Griffin Newman?

  And that story she tells, uh, to the, the therapist is about like seemingly kind of being abducted by a woman and feeling a relief at someone else taking her away from her parents, who never knew how to deal with her.

• 2:07:03Speaker 03

  Or just also that like this, this 10 year old girl, right? She says, she has like a 10 year old girl who like took me. The way like those girls on the beach want to take the baby, right? Are like, kind of like, oh, it's so fun to kind of play babysitter slash, you know, fake mom for this second.

• 2:07:16Griffin Newman?

  But is there like some acknowledgement even from a 10 year old who could not intellectualize these things of this kid needs something, like this kid is not being seen.

• 2:07:26Speaker 03

  Or, I mean, even that, like, but I feel like there is something there also. Like, we don't know if her parents yet, like the parents were the ones who are like, kind of like the mess here, or it's her memory of it, but like, that she was just like, seeing them as adults already, not just her parents and being like, you're so embarrassing. Like you're handling this so poorly.

• 2:07:45Griffin Newman?

  And I wish I didn't belong to you.

• 2:07:47Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:07:47Griffin Newman?

  That there is some feeling of her being like, you're gonna keep trying to drag me back to raise this child. And I don't know if I will ever be helpful to this child. I also think like in a movie where you're questioning how much of, of what you're seeing is, is real and it's so perspective based to a degree, all this fire is like super CGI and artificial. As we said, like they're shooting day for night, like all of that stuff.

• 2:08:17Speaker 03

  It also, it springs up all over the place simultaneously, right? Like, it's not like she, because she burns the diary, it starts a fire.

• 2:08:25Griffin Newman?

  No.

• 2:08:26Speaker 03

  The whole forest immediately comes up in flames.

• 2:08:28Griffin Newman?

  Right, right.

• 2:08:29David Sims?

  It's, it's a little.

• 2:08:30Griffin Newman?

  It is purposely unreal and it's, you know, speaking to an ecstatic truth.

• 2:08:36David Sims?

  Yep. Uh, the dialogue scene was, I'm just checking the.

• 2:08:39Griffin Newman?

  Oh, good. The dialogue scene was.

• 2:08:40David Sims?

  No, the, the thing you mentioned, the five page monologue, they're like, no, thank you. You know, Lynn Ramsey would do things like crawl around for a while, please.

• 2:08:49Griffin Newman?

  Mm hmm.

• 2:08:50David Sims?

  And.

• 2:08:50Griffin Newman?

  In this movie?

• 2:08:51David Sims?

  They would.

• 2:08:53David Sims?

  Johnny Greenwood, she can, who scored her last two movies was, was into it, was in Italy, was busy. He nearly came back. She obviously had the soundtracks, you know, the needle drops and stuff. She ends up not working with him. I don't know. It feels like it all sounds a little shambolic to me.

• 2:09:13Griffin Newman?

  George Vazquez.

• 2:09:15David Sims?

  Yes. Who's like a Nick Cave collaborator.

• 2:09:18Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 2:09:19David Sims?

  He's the guitarist from the Bad.

• 2:09:20Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, but there are three music credits on this, including Ramsey, but he seems to have handled the lion's share of the score, which I think is very good. Could not find

• 2:09:30Griffin Newman?

  the score from this movie anywhere. I don't know if it's been released in any form, but especially the final underscoring of the, the woods.

• 2:09:37David Sims?

  Is cool.

• 2:09:38Griffin Newman?

  Is really good. But yes, no, it does weirdly feel like probably just because of the engine of Jennifer Lawrence and especially once she got Robert Pattinson on board, this movie kind of came together very quickly.

• 2:09:51David Sims?

  Yeah. And obviously that's part of what we should talk about. Another thing is she plays music on set, the Cameron Corr thing. Peter Weir does that, you know, people do that, uh, just to am people up. Scores is very protective of her, uh, throughout. We love you, Marty. The film goes to Cannes. I don't know what the, I don't know if there is a listed budget. I don't, I can't imagine this costs a ton of money to make.

• 2:10:21Speaker 03

  No, it's not many locations.

• 2:10:23David Sims?

  Right. I, did you see the Cannes?

• 2:10:25Speaker 03

  I saw it at Cannes.

• 2:10:26David Sims?

  Did it change? Cause I heard that it was like.

• 2:10:29Speaker 03

  I mean, I, I think it did. I rewatching it, I, I.

• 2:10:33David Sims?

  Probably not drastically.

• 2:10:34Speaker 03

  Yeah. I felt like there were, especially in the opening sequences, it felt like it had been tightened up, but then I don't know, you know, but like, uh, yeah, it felt like it was like just barely done.

• 2:10:45Griffin Newman?

  She traditionally goes to Cannes and it's like, by the way, the movie's not finished.

• 2:10:48David Sims?

  Right. I'm still working. I mean, it was a, it felt, it was sort of a weird Cannes, but it was not a, it was fairly strong.

• 2:10:55Speaker 03

  Yeah. I feel like there are a lot of, there were a lot of great films. Uh, I think, you know, it was interesting. Yeah. Secret agent.

• 2:11:03David Sims?

  Awards wise, right? Yeah.

• 2:11:04Griffin Newman?

  And it like, it landed positively, but then the movie deals happen, happens and everyone's kind of like, are they, are they seeing something we're not getting here?

• 2:11:13David Sims?

  Well, I think what they, what I, I mean, I was from afar had not seen this movie. I was like, well, it has movie stars in it. Like, I imagine they think they can sell it based on that. And they did do a good job with the substance. And what's it about? It's about Jennifer Lawrence and Robert Pattinson, like getting naked and being crazy?

• 2:11:29Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:11:29David Sims?

  That sounds like something you could sell.

• 2:11:30Griffin Newman?

  Sure.

• 2:11:31David Sims?

  Right? I don't know.

• 2:11:32Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 2:11:32Speaker 03

  I mean, there was a lot of skepticism at Cannes about that.

• 2:11:36David Sims?

  What do they think?

• 2:11:37Speaker 03

  Number. Yes.

• 2:11:38David Sims?

  They, they bought it for a lot of money.

• 2:11:39Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:11:40Griffin Newman?

  I also, you know, I, I feel like I've talked to, uh,

• 2:11:45David Sims?

  They shot it last October.

• 2:11:46Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, it was.

• 2:11:47David Sims?

  And it was a can in May. So like, it was all pretty fast.

• 2:11:49Griffin Newman?

  Right. Like, yeah. The problem is when you hear something like Mubi bought the Lynn Ramsey movie for $20 million, a filmmaker who has never had a movie, really exceed $10 million globally, right? Even with two A-list stars, you're like,

• 2:12:06David Sims?

  All of her movies, in fact, have made about 10 million.

• 2:12:08Griffin Newman?

  Exactly. Uh, and like a million or two domestically. You sort of go like, what is the calculation they're doing here? And for people like us who are like very deep in the weeds on the movie industry, but also are not working in fucking distribution or whatever. You used to be able to read like Fox Searchlight has bought X movie for 12.5 million dollars and go like, okay, back of napkin math. They're hoping they can put whatever amount into marketing and get it to this amount domestically and assume that they can then sell the foreign rights to other people or DVDs or whatever it is. You hear like Mubi has bought a thing for $20 million. It's the same as like Apple buying Coda for Sundance out of Sundance for 25, which I still think is the record and going like,

• 2:12:54Griffin Newman?

  Well, that sounds like it doesn't make sense at all, but also they have obscured what the business model even is anymore.

• 2:13:01Speaker 03

  Right.

• 2:13:01Griffin Newman?

  Where who knows?

• 2:13:03Speaker 03

  Equals, question mark, profit, right? Like aspect, the streaming aspect where you're like, okay, I guess someone could argue that maybe Jennifer Lawrence's face on movie.com, you know, like.

• 2:13:13Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, that might be true.

• 2:13:15Speaker 03

  Yeah. I mean, like, I just don't know how to quantify it, right? It's impossible to quantify.

• 2:13:19Griffin Newman?

  Her next movie, that she's more likely to work with them.

• 2:13:22David Sims?

  What is the last movie Jennifer Lawrence made to have made $100 million at domestic box office?

• 2:13:27Griffin Newman?

  Did Passengers cross 100?

• 2:13:28David Sims?

  The answer is Passengers.

• 2:13:30Griffin Newman?

  And like.

• 2:13:30David Sims?

  Came out 10 years ago.

• 2:13:31Griffin Newman?

  101?

• 2:13:32David Sims?

  Did 100 even, domestic. Now, Dark Phoenix made 246 worldwide, but that was an unambiguous bomb.

• 2:13:39Griffin Newman?

  And made like 60?

• 2:13:40David Sims?

  65 domestic, very poor.

• 2:13:41Speaker 03

  Right. And like, Don't Look Up does not have box office.

• 2:13:45David Sims?

  It sure does not. Now, I think Don't Look Up like did well, right? Like on for Netflix, but like, you know, outside of her two franchises, which always did well, her last, and Passenger sort of scraped by.

• 2:13:56Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:13:57David Sims?

  But her last real fucking hit is American Hustle.

• 2:14:01Griffin Newman?

  Yep.

• 2:14:01David Sims?

  Which was like, a no kidding hit.

• 2:14:04Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 2:14:04David Sims?

  Crazy to consider.

• 2:14:05Griffin Newman?

  But she's also part of that.

• 2:14:08David Sims?

  She's part of it. And like before then, I guess it's Silver Linings.

• 2:14:10Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:14:11David Sims?

  She's got, and this is where I guess why I was thinking about Angelina, where I'm like, we all agree she's a movie star. She's someone people care about. She's still famous. She's taken kind of a break and hasn't made people disinterested in her. She's a little, she's not the cool young thing anymore, but she's still a thing. But you are kind of like, you know, if, you know, at the end of the day, like, I wouldn't buy her movie thinking, oh, Jennifer Lawrence will get me 40 mil, 60 mil.

• 2:14:40Griffin Newman?

  The big, the big thing, cause you know, the, the two franchises are the two franchises. And I would argue she added a tremendous amount to both of them, but you also can't give her full credit for those numbers. I would argue the thing that made her stats look so insane to everyone was. Silver Linings and American Hustle.

• 2:14:59David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 2:14:59Griffin Newman?

  That it's like even.

• 2:15:00David Sims?

  He's grown up.

• 2:15:01Griffin Newman?

  That's the thing. Even, even 10, 15 years ago, the idea of, oh my God, it's like a fucking dramedy that is R rated. That is crossing a hundred million dollars, even if she's not the only person there. She, in both cases, kind of came out of the movie with the most energy, was the sticky thing. And they were like, well, if she can do that, then she can fucking do anything. And then, as you said, like she pushes the limits and makes like a couple of movies that are more off putting. And immediately audiences are like, yeah, we're not going to go there with you. We'll go there selectively when you're doing something we're already interested in.

• 2:15:36David Sims?

  But I don't know what the strategy for this movie should have been. I guess.

• 2:15:41Speaker 03

  I mean, I don't think there was one. I really do think they were just like, maybe we can pull a substance, even though I'm sure everyone at the team at the time knew this was not going to be a substance level movie. Like it's just, the substance is like, I mean, I like the substance a lot.

• 2:15:54Griffin Newman?

  Sure.

• 2:15:54Speaker 03

  But it's like, a kind of like campy outrageous body horror.

• 2:15:58Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:15:59Speaker 03

  Dark comedy, you know, like.

• 2:16:00Griffin Newman?

  Lightning in a bottle.

• 2:16:01Speaker 03

  Yes, yes. And it had the kind of, yeah, I, I think, I'm sure they thought they could make the kind of meta narrative of like Lawrence as a mother and Lawrence coming out as this like serious actor again after this like time off. But like, that's less, that's a less kind of like.

• 2:16:16Griffin Newman?

  It's so different. That you've never taken Demi Moore seriously before.

• 2:16:19Speaker 03

  Exactly. Yeah.

• 2:16:20David Sims?

  Like, and the substance is quote unquote, like demanding in that it's very violent or whatever. But this is a, this is a demanding watch. It's not something you tell your friends to go see automatically.

• 2:16:33Griffin Newman?

  No, and, and Substance was demanding in a way that felt like a challenge that people wanted to take.

• 2:16:38Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:16:38Griffin Newman?

  Can you fucking handle the substance?

• 2:16:40Speaker 03

  People were like fainting in, you know, like screenings and things like that. Like, that's like a kind of dare as opposed to this, which is to be like, can you handle this movie? Because it's like grueling. Yeah.

• 2:16:51Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 2:16:51David Sims?

  It's her longest movie ever.

• 2:16:53Griffin Newman?

  You look at the Substance, which like opened well, but then really fucking held in there, right? And was seen as like, is this going to be on like the outside of maybe a best actress nomination? And then you're like, it gets fucking picture and director, she almost wins actress, like all this stuff. And what kept that movie alive did really kind of feel like it was the fucking memes, not to be reductive. But it was just like, huh, this movie has like crystallized five things that now you can just use the image as shorthand. And I did think that created some. FOMO of people who weren't in it being like, I gotta see what this fucking thing is with Demi Moore in the mirror.

• 2:17:31David Sims?

  No, I think so.

• 2:17:32Griffin Newman?

  Because everyone keeps saying this.

• 2:17:33David Sims?

  It's freaking.

• 2:17:34Speaker 03

  It had a legitimate cultural footprint.

• 2:17:36Griffin Newman?

  Right. And so if you're watching this movie at Cannes and you're like, fuck, Jennifer Lawrence and Robert Pattinson are doing weird, non-verbal things. Is this thing going to produce 80,000 memes? But that's not really understanding the relationship to memes that feed into the value of the actual project versus the things that become decentralized and completely removed. You can't fake.

• 2:17:59David Sims?

  It happens or it doesn't happen.

• 2:18:00Griffin Newman?

  Right. Totally.

• 2:18:02David Sims?

  How many Golden Globes has Jennifer Lawrence been nominated for?

• 2:18:04Griffin Newman?

  Really good question. Okay, so.

• 2:18:06David Sims?

  Including this film, of course.

• 2:18:07Griffin Newman?

  Yes. Winter's Bone. Did they nominate all the actual Oscars, American Hustle, Silver Linings, Joy?

• 2:18:15David Sims?

  Of course they did.

• 2:18:16Griffin Newman?

  Okay. And Die My Love is five. And they nominated her for Don't Look Up?

• 2:18:21David Sims?

  They sure did.

• 2:18:22Griffin Newman?

  That's six. And I'm trying to think anything else they would try. They didn't do any of The Hunger Games?

• 2:18:27David Sims?

  No.

• 2:18:29Griffin Newman?

  Do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do. Is there another one in there?

• 2:18:32David Sims?

  There is. There's one more. Comedy.

• 2:18:34Griffin Newman?

  It's a comedy. Oh, did they nominate for No Hard Feelings?

• 2:18:36David Sims?

  They sure did.

• 2:18:37Griffin Newman?

  That's kind of cool of them.

• 2:18:38David Sims?

  She's a seven time nominee. How many wins?

• 2:18:42Griffin Newman?

  She won for American Hustle?

• 2:18:45David Sims?

  She won for American Hustle, right? She has won three times.

• 2:18:49Griffin Newman?

  Okay, so she won for American Hustle. She won for Silver Linings.

• 2:18:52David Sims?

  Yes, of course. She won the Oscar, of course.

• 2:18:54Griffin Newman?

  Yes. And she won for, they didn't give it to her for Winter's Bone?

• 2:18:58David Sims?

  No.

• 2:18:59Griffin Newman?

  Did they give it to her for Joy?

• 2:19:00David Sims?

  They gave it to her for Joy.

• 2:19:01Griffin Newman?

  See, this is, that's a real Jennifer Lawrence, you gotta go away for a moment.

• 2:19:04David Sims?

  I really think so.

• 2:19:06Griffin Newman?

  But.

• 2:19:06David Sims?

  I sort of vaguely remember her being like, um, I'm sorry.

• 2:19:09Griffin Newman?

  Guys, come on, please.

• 2:19:10David Sims?

  It's best actress in a comedy.

• 2:19:14David Sims?

  But she, she beat Amy Schumer in Trainwreck and Melissa McCarthy in Spy, which are like, you know, genuine actress in a comedy movies.

• 2:19:20Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:19:21David Sims?

  And then like Maggie Smith, Lady in the Van, Lily Tomlin, Grandma, like, sure, you know, we can.

• 2:19:26Griffin Newman?

  But that's, that's a year kind of designed to make Judd Apatow mad.

• 2:19:29Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:19:30David Sims?

  It is a little bit.

• 2:19:31Speaker 03

  It is. Pretty much.

• 2:19:32Griffin Newman?

  It is. We were, we were, Alison and I were just on.

• 2:19:34David Sims?

  Enjoy, by the way. It's not a comedy.

• 2:19:36Griffin Newman?

  No, it's not.

• 2:19:36Speaker 03

  No, it's not.

• 2:19:37Griffin Newman?

  No. Like.

• 2:19:38David Sims?

  No.

• 2:19:39Griffin Newman?

  Arguably less so than any other David O. Russell movie, including his two war movies.

• 2:19:44Speaker 03

  Yeah, it has a kind of, I guess, like a sort of antique tone, but it has no jokes.

• 2:19:48Griffin Newman?

  It's not funny.

• 2:19:49Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:19:50Griffin Newman?

  But no, we just did a good one, Jesse David, Fox's podcast and talked about the Martian year being the year that broke everybody. And we're like, Martian's funnier than a lot of movies that have won Golden Globe comedy awards.

• 2:20:02David Sims?

  I argued that on Critical Darling.

• 2:20:04Griffin Newman?

  But, but it does feel similar to giving the award to Jennifer Lawrence, where everyone was like, you know what? Fucking enough is enough. This is just the year that breaks us. This isn't the most egregious case.

• 2:20:16Speaker 03

  Right. But Judd Apatow will never forget.

• 2:20:18Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:20:18Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:20:18David Sims?

  People were mad about it at the time. Now, what did it be?

• 2:20:22Griffin Newman?

  We went over this. Well, so Trainwreck was nominated.

• 2:20:24Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:20:25Griffin Newman?

  What were the other three, David?

• 2:20:26David Sims?

  Uh, like Best Pictures?

• 2:20:28Griffin Newman?

  Yeah. Musical or comedy?

• 2:20:30David Sims?

  Big Short, which like, why didn't they give it to that? Because that was a big Oscar contender that is a satire.

• 2:20:36Griffin Newman?

  That is actually a weird move.

• 2:20:38David Sims?

  Like it has dramatic elements, but like you can call that a comedy? Absolutely. And then Joy and Spy. Spy, a great comedy, very fun. And Joy, not very funny.

• 2:20:48Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:20:48David Sims?

  Bottom up.

• 2:20:49Griffin Newman?

  Yeah. Uh, can I throw out one other thing? Just because in, uh, executive producing Critical Darling and staying engaged with the feedback and everything, and us coming out of a winter fall where we had to cover some new releases that were more limited releases. I feel like there is always this dialogue I see with our listeners, uh, people who do not live in what are kind of deemed the major movie markets, uh, getting frustrated when they have to listen to podcasts that are talking about films that they feel like, I'm six months away from getting to see this. I don't know if this ever comes to my theater. I have to wait until streaming. And when you add on to that, the festival circuit and a movie like this where you're like, I'm seeing everyone I follow online talk about

• 2:21:30Griffin Newman?

  it in May. And then everyone who missed out on that basically gets to see it in whatever, September, October, and then I'm waiting all the way here to that. Why can't these things like be more democratic now? And the counter argument, and I'm not saying this in a positive. Or negative way, but it is just like a reflection of reality is like the flop ball problem. This happened, I would argue in 2021 as well, when the studios were still feeling so sheepish about theatrical and there were theaters that reopened, there were more screens than they had things to fill them with. And stuff like to 10 was like opening on 900 screens opening weekend.

• 2:22:10Griffin Newman?

  And there was this little moment of hope of like, maybe this just means that like smaller movies get out wider and faster.

• 2:22:17David Sims?

  They have the space for them.

• 2:22:18Griffin Newman?

  And because of the internet, we don't need to platform and this can just get out there. And what happened was that like most, if not all of those movies belly flopped. And like major financial baths were taken and it was sort of a necessary sacrifice to fill screens with things. And the data was accumulated and they walked away and then it happened again this fall, which I think was an end result of the strikes from like two years ago caused like a lot more gaps in scheduling. We finally got to the business end of that. There are because of post-production timelines, now finally the few tent pole movies that came on either side were interrupted by the strikes. And so there's a lot of like, guess what?

• 2:23:00Griffin Newman?

  Smashing Machine, 2000 screens opening weekend, die my love. And with these bigger stars also, especially

• 2:23:06David Sims?

  Movies, yeah.

• 2:23:07Griffin Newman?

  A lot of times these people write into their contracts, especially if they don't want to go to streaming. You buy this movie, you are promising. Wide release. A wide release. Now it doesn't promise you have to open wide in a lot of cases.

• 2:23:20David Sims?

  No, because that'd be crazy.

• 2:23:21Griffin Newman?

  But a lot of these distributors just go like, fuck, if we have to get to 2000 at some point, why just not do it now? And the, the negative is the thing bombs and then the headline becomes, why the fuck are these stars making these self indulgent movies that no one wants to see? This is a failed commercial play and it creates more conservatism in what gets made.

• 2:23:42David Sims?

  If Smashing Machine had been well reviewed, it would have opened bigger and done fine.

• 2:23:47Griffin Newman?

  I mean, if it had been another movie, basically.

• 2:23:51David Sims?

  That is true, but like, like, let's say that movie had gotten raves and it's basically the same movie. Obviously that wasn't going to happen because people didn't really respond to it that way, but like. I think the the raves and the you must see join Johnson play this athlete would have gotten enough butts in seats for it to make like, so what did it open to like?

• 2:24:09Griffin Newman?

  It was the lowest opening he's ever had it open to like five or six.

• 2:24:13David Sims?

  Right. And like probably would have gotten to like 15 or you know, like a more respectable kind of A 24 big open.

• 2:24:19Griffin Newman?

  Totally. There was the the fucking Taylor Swift album release movie totally sideswiped them. They were gonna get some default box office from being the only thing.

• 2:24:28David Sims?

  There was that too. Right. But like, you know, it's like, that was something where I was like, I think the reviews did it in die. My love felt more complicated. It was like, got good reviews, but the movie's a tough sell. No one knows what it's about.

• 2:24:39Griffin Newman?

  People knew it came out.

• 2:24:40David Sims?

  Advertising is weird.

• 2:24:41Speaker 03

  I'm sorry. It's it's it's hard to be like.

• 2:24:44David Sims?

  And it's hard to sell this.

• 2:24:45Speaker 03

  Yeah, that's it. Like, it doesn't sound appealing to a lot of people to be like, this is going to be a look into this woman's like, kind of like downward mental spiral.

• 2:24:52Griffin Newman?

  No, and like, if a movie like this is going to catch on, it kind of needs to catch on organically. You you can't sort of like build up ahead of like, need to see hype on it. You need to like, have this movie find its champions organically and have it dissipate. And it's like, you're releasing movies in a way where there's no ability for there to be, say, like, a letterbox growth, you know, of people claiming it early, of of seeing logs, of being like, huh, I agree with this person's taste most of the time. Like, things that are kind of this, you know, the distributors are trying to understand more of how to get more difficult films to catch on at the box office, which is like, there is a younger, more engaged,

• 2:25:35Griffin Newman?

  online cinephile audience, and how do you get through to them? And you can't just kind of fucking blitzkrieg them?

• 2:25:42Speaker 03

  Yeah, but I think also, you know, we're looking at like, A 24 obviously knows what they're doing, even if I feel like, smashing museum is unusual for them in having an actor like The Rock and kind of being like, how how is this gonna go? But like, Christie, you know, which got a wide release, a disastrous wide release, that was Black Bear, a new distributor, you know, they've been a production company, they haven't been in distribution very long at all.

• 2:26:06Griffin Newman?

  The movie doesn't sell at Toronto and they're like, fuck it, we're putting it out in six. Weeks.

• 2:26:10Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:26:11Griffin Newman?

  Why?

• 2:26:11Speaker 03

  Yeah. And so like that just felt like a kind of like really like hail Mary endeavor that obviously didn't work out for them.

• 2:26:17David Sims?

  That was crazy.

• 2:26:18Griffin Newman?

  There's that insane anecdote that like six weeks out or whatever, four weeks out, the movie was like testing to open to like three and they were like disaster and Sydney Sweeney goes like, great, I'll fucking amp up the promo mode. She does the most insane press tour anyone's ever done.

• 2:26:33David Sims?

  She didn't do the right press tour.

• 2:26:35Griffin Newman?

  But she does.

• 2:26:35David Sims?

  I know she did the press tour.

• 2:26:37Griffin Newman?

  And they were like, oh my God, the public awareness of this movie has gone from like eight to 98. And then it opened lower than it had been tracking a month earlier.

• 2:26:46David Sims?

  It's a two hour, 15 minute movie about domestic violence.

• 2:26:49Speaker 03

  Right. That's the thing is like.

• 2:26:50Griffin Newman?

  And the only thing like Sydney Sweeney succeeded in promoting in that press tour was her cleavage and what's going on here. It wasn't like, huh, I really want to see this performance.

• 2:26:59Speaker 03

  Yeah. Well, I mean, again, it is a movie where you're like, if you give a fair logline description, and I, I think it's a, I think it's, she's great in the movie, but it is like, this is a movie about a boxer that you probably don't know about unless you're deep in boxing.

• 2:27:13David Sims?

  No, not a.

• 2:27:13Speaker 03

  You know, and, uh, and the other half of it is going to be about how her abusive husband attempts to murder her.

• 2:27:21David Sims?

  Right.

• 2:27:21Speaker 03

  You know?

• 2:27:22David Sims?

  Like, really, it's like terrible. It's like a terrible scary movie.

• 2:27:25Speaker 03

  Incredibly brutal depiction of a controlling abusive.

• 2:27:27Griffin Newman?

  Right. Which is another thing with all these like flop fall, like movie star, uh, kind of prestige project failures is like, you guys want to see a Springsteen biopic? Yeah. It's about the period where he wrote the album. We don't talk about that much. And it's mostly him just kind of trying to work through his childhood trauma.

• 2:27:45Speaker 03

  Right.

• 2:27:45Griffin Newman?

  You're like, well, that's the least fun version of it you could sell me.

• 2:27:49Speaker 03

  Right.

• 2:27:49Griffin Newman?

  Smashing Machine, what's it about? It's sort of an addiction drama, but it's more about the guy just trying to kind of make peace with himself as the addiction stuff's going on in the background. And David and I have both like contended this whole time, I like that movie, have both contended, like, there is not one of those movies where it underperforming or flopping is inexplicable. Where you're like, people should have fucking shown up to this. There was just kind of a belief that they could like make Gabo happen. And I, I think it's all like a pipeline problem, you know? I think like you, you put Die My Love in one third as many screens as they put it in opening weekend, and it would have made the exact same amount of money. But in fuller theaters.

• 2:28:34Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 2:28:35Griffin Newman?

  You could probably have put it on one fifth as many screens.

• 2:28:37Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:28:38Griffin Newman?

  And it would have done the same.

• 2:28:39Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:28:40David Sims?

  Well, it came out November 7th, 2025. It opened number eight at the box office.

• 2:28:45Griffin Newman?

  It's a perfect Thanksgiving movie.

• 2:28:46David Sims?

  $2.6 million.

• 2:28:47Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, it ends up at?

• 2:28:49David Sims?

  Five domestic, 10 worldwide.

• 2:28:53Griffin Newman?

  So it is her-

• 2:28:53David Sims?

  Her classic number.

• 2:28:54Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, it's her highest grossing domestically.

• 2:28:57David Sims?

  Sure.

• 2:28:57Griffin Newman?

  But lower internationally than she usually does.

• 2:29:00David Sims?

  They all make ten.

• 2:29:01Griffin Newman?

  She's a tenor.

• 2:29:02David Sims?

  Except for Rat Catcher, I think literally all her movies have made $10 million. Number one at the box office is a pretty successful franchise sequel that is new this week.

• 2:29:13Griffin Newman?

  It's not Zootopia.

• 2:29:14David Sims?

  No, no, no.

• 2:29:15Griffin Newman?

  Cause you would describe that as a fucking juggernaut.

• 2:29:18David Sims?

  That was a very big movie.

• 2:29:19Griffin Newman?

  By the time this episode comes out, Zootopia has probably taken the crown as 2025's highest gross.

• 2:29:25David Sims?

  There's no question.

• 2:29:26Griffin Newman?

  It did the legs on that thing.

• 2:29:27Speaker 03

  And also, and they love it in China.

• 2:29:30Griffin Newman?

  Insane. I believe they've elected Zootopia to prime minister.

• 2:29:34David Sims?

  He's a good, he'd be a good prime minister.

• 2:29:35Griffin Newman?

  Yeah. Okay.

• 2:29:37Speaker 03

  Why don't they kiss, though? You've got the bunny and the fox, they have to kiss.

• 2:29:40David Sims?

  It just, it just raises a lot of questions.

• 2:29:42Speaker 03

  I know, but I'm just saying, they're-

• 2:29:44David Sims?

  I just think Zootopia is like, we are not ready to talk about hybrid marriage between species.

• 2:29:49Speaker 03

  But they're like, but they're like, we know you want to talk about it.

• 2:29:52Griffin Newman?

  Of course they know.

• 2:29:54Speaker 03

  You're thinking about it so much.

• 2:29:55Griffin Newman?

  The movie is wiggling its eyebrows, it's acting all coquettish. What do you mean? I would never. And you're like, you fucking have pages.

• 2:30:01Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:30:02Griffin Newman?

  That you're just not showing.

• 2:30:03Speaker 03

  Exactly.

• 2:30:03David Sims?

  Someone's got pages.

• 2:30:04Griffin Newman?

  You have files. Um, okay. It's fairly successful.

• 2:30:09David Sims?

  Yeah, this is like a solidly successful sequel.

• 2:30:12Griffin Newman?

  A two?

• 2:30:13David Sims?

  Nah, it's too complicated.

• 2:30:15Griffin Newman?

  It's too complicated?

• 2:30:16David Sims?

  It's too complicated. It's like-

• 2:30:18Griffin Newman?

  Is it like a tendril?

• 2:30:19David Sims?

  Yeah, it's like the latest of these movies. Uh, there've been like six or something. I don't know. Plus a couple of spinoffs and-

• 2:30:28Griffin Newman?

  Moderately successful.

• 2:30:29David Sims?

  It's new this week. It's opening at $40 million. We all saw it. We all thought it was pretty good.

• 2:30:33Griffin Newman?

  We also, we all thought-

• 2:30:34David Sims?

  I don't know if Allison saw it.

• 2:30:35Griffin Newman?

  Pretty good.

• 2:30:35Speaker 03

  It's gone from my brain.

• 2:30:36Griffin Newman?

  What did it end up at? This is so recent.

• 2:30:38Speaker 03

  Not the magician movie, is it?

• 2:30:40David Sims?

  No, it's not now, you see me. No, it ended up at 184 worldwide. Predator Badlands.

• 2:30:45Griffin Newman?

  Yep.

• 2:30:46Speaker 03

  I didn't see it. People like that movie, though.

• 2:30:48Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, it's a good movie.

• 2:30:48Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:30:49Griffin Newman?

  It is a funny way to describe that franchise that is 100% accurate. We're like, how many have there been? Five, eight, 10?

• 2:30:55Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:30:56Griffin Newman?

  Depends on your perspective.

• 2:30:58Speaker 03

  Isn't there like a, just a, the Predator, Predator, like with a, without a?

• 2:31:01Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, there's both Predators and The Predator.

• 2:31:03Speaker 03

  The Predator, yeah, yeah.

• 2:31:06Griffin Newman?

  Uh, no, it's a good movie.

• 2:31:07David Sims?

  It's a solid fun movie.

• 2:31:08Griffin Newman?

  It's fun, yeah.

• 2:31:09Speaker 03

  That's the best part of Anaconda, the Anaconda movie that they made, it's the new one, is when Jack Black is writing the script and he's like, "The Anaconda."

• 2:31:16Griffin Newman?

  I remember asking you, Allison, does it have any juice? And you said-

• 2:31:20Speaker 03

  Yeah, that's like, that's the one joke.

• 2:31:21Griffin Newman?

  He writes the word "the" and I laughed.

• 2:31:24David Sims?

  Number two is a romantic drama that I did not see, but heard was fairly unhinged.

• 2:31:30Griffin Newman?

  Uh, it's the Colleen Hoover one.

• 2:31:31David Sims?

  And what is it called?

• 2:31:32Griffin Newman?

  Is it called Without You?

• 2:31:33David Sims?

  No.

• 2:31:35Griffin Newman?

  Were any of those words right?

• 2:31:36David Sims?

  "You" was correct.

• 2:31:37Griffin Newman?

  Is it called Forgetting You?

• 2:31:39David Sims?

  Closer.

• 2:31:40Griffin Newman?

  Is it called Forgiving You?

• 2:31:41David Sims?

  No.

• 2:31:42Speaker 03

  I did not see it.

• 2:31:43Griffin Newman?

  Is it two words?

• 2:31:44David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 2:31:44Speaker 03

  I can picture the poster, though.

• 2:31:45David Sims?

  It's Something You.

• 2:31:46Griffin Newman?

  Regretting You?

• 2:31:47David Sims?

  There you go. Regretting You.

• 2:31:50Griffin Newman?

  I listened to The Big Pick, tried to explain what that movie was about, and I could not make sense of it.

• 2:31:55David Sims?

  Directed by Josh Boone?

• 2:31:56Griffin Newman?

  It was like someone trying to explain quantum physics.

• 2:31:59David Sims?

  Um, of, of course, The Faults in Our Stars and The New Mutants.

• 2:32:03Griffin Newman?

  Yes, of course.

• 2:32:04David Sims?

  Uh, with the big four, Alison Williams, McKenna Grace, Dave Franco, and Mason Thames.

• 2:32:09Griffin Newman?

  McKenna Grace has been working so much that I'm like questioning if there's a Hermione Granger, Time Turner thing going on.

• 2:32:14David Sims?

  I also kind of forget that, who she even is, but then I'm like, but who's this? I like, this is, this actress reminds me of someone, it's always her.

• 2:32:24Griffin Newman?

  Anyone who's a McKenna Grace type in a movie?

• 2:32:26David Sims?

  She had like five movies in 2025.

• 2:32:28Griffin Newman?

  She was in Five Nights at Freddy's.

• 2:32:30David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 2:32:30Griffin Newman?

  She was in Regretting You.

• 2:32:31David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 2:32:32Griffin Newman?

  She's in the fucking, um, Scream 7 coming out.

• 2:32:36David Sims?

  She's in that, that's true.

• 2:32:36Griffin Newman?

  Right, what else did she have last? It's insane.

• 2:32:38David Sims?

  I mean, shit that I've never heard of, What We Hide.

• 2:32:41Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:32:41David Sims?

  Slanted.

• 2:32:42Griffin Newman?

  Sure, of course.

• 2:32:44Speaker 03

  Oh, Slanted, Slanted is like, uh-

• 2:32:46Griffin Newman?

  Well, yes.

• 2:32:47Speaker 03

  Oh, a kind of horror comedy.

• 2:32:50Griffin Newman?

  Okay.

• 2:32:50Speaker 03

  About race, I believe, correct?

• 2:32:52Griffin Newman?

  Right, and she's, she's now the lead of the next Hunger Games.

• 2:32:54David Sims?

  It's about a Chinese-American high schooler who undergoes ethnic modification surgery.

• 2:32:59Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:33:00Griffin Newman?

  But yeah, she's the new Hunger Games heroine.

• 2:33:03David Sims?

  Yes, she's in The New Hunger Games, which is the Haymitch.

• 2:33:08Griffin Newman?

  Sunrise on the Reaping.

• 2:33:09David Sims?

  Right.

• 2:33:10Speaker 03

  Which Jennifer Lawrence is supposed to reprise her role in.

• 2:33:12David Sims?

  Yeah, supposedly, I think, I imagine in a scene.

• 2:33:15Griffin Newman?

  And, and the movie that will finally win Glenn Close her Oscar.

• 2:33:19David Sims?

  I said this before, I don't know why they did not try to get Glenn Close an Oscar nomination for Wake Up Dead.

• 2:33:24Griffin Newman?

  My guy, I rewatched that movie last week.

• 2:33:26David Sims?

  She's very solid in it. She's good. She's good in it. She has a major role. We nominated her for a fucking hillbilly elegy.

• 2:33:33Griffin Newman?

  It's so insane.

• 2:33:34David Sims?

  You can't just get her a fucking nom.

• 2:33:36Speaker 03

  It feels like they never thought about that movie in an Oscar.

• 2:33:38David Sims?

  It feels like they completely both.

• 2:33:40Griffin Newman?

  I really kinda love that movie.

• 2:33:42David Sims?

  Knives Out: The Glass Onion both got Oscar nominations. Like, Ryan Johnson is not unknown to them. And like Glenn Close is like big model. And I'm just like, are you not obsessed with getting her an Oscar? She wouldn't win. There's too strong.

• 2:33:55Griffin Newman?

  In the least arrogant way, though, that movie feels like Ryan Johnson rolling up his sleeves and going like, guys, I'm gonna try to make it easy for you. I understand the Glenn Close Oscar thing keeps butting up against the problems of the movie she's in are repellent dog shit. What if I make a movie that is respectable and I give her all the kinds of scenes you would want?

• 2:34:17David Sims?

  Yeah. Uh, The One Through the Box Office is a film we discussed a lot in a future episode, but I don't think either of us have seen. It is a horror sequel.

• 2:34:26Griffin Newman?

  Oh, it's The Black Phone 2.

• 2:34:27David Sims?

  Black Phone 2.

• 2:34:29Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 2:34:30Speaker 03

  The Grabber.

• 2:34:31Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 2:34:31Speaker 03

  Is back.

• 2:34:31Griffin Newman?

  You'll hear that in a couple of weeks.

• 2:34:33David Sims?

  Yes.

• 2:34:33Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 2:34:35David Sims?

  Which was a decent hit.

• 2:34:37Griffin Newman?

  Well, Mason Thames, of course, the McKenna Grace.

• 2:34:40David Sims?

  I assume it's Thames, right? Is it not pronounced like the river?

• 2:34:42Griffin Newman?

  I thought it was Thames.

• 2:34:43David Sims?

  I have no idea. I guess I never thought about it.

• 2:34:45Griffin Newman?

  No one's ever seen his face. But he had three number one movies.

• 2:34:49David Sims?

  He did.

• 2:34:50Griffin Newman?

  In 2025, and two of them are in this current top five you're reading. He is the male lead of both.

• 2:34:56David Sims?

  Of both regretting you. Or no, he's a, he's a male lead in regretting.

• 2:34:59Griffin Newman?

  He is the young male lead.

• 2:35:01David Sims?

  Sure. And The Black Phone 2 and How I Met Your Dragon, how I.

• 2:35:04Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, How I Met Your Dragon.

• 2:35:07David Sims?

  Number four at the box office is something I've never heard of.

• 2:35:10Griffin Newman?

  You've never heard of.

• 2:35:12David Sims?

  Is this? It is a, oh my God, a biological drama, biographical drama film.

• 2:35:19Griffin Newman?

  Biographical, is it faith-based?

• 2:35:21Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:35:21David Sims?

  It must be because Zachary Levi is involved, but it's Amazon MGM.

• 2:35:25Griffin Newman?

  Okay.

• 2:35:25Speaker 03

  Oh, no, this is that one. It's like a survival movie, isn't it? With like boats.

• 2:35:29Griffin Newman?

  Yeah. Uh, is it that one?

• 2:35:30David Sims?

  Uh, I don't think so. I don't see a boat. I see a dog.

• 2:35:33Griffin Newman?

  The survival boat one is weirdly directed by Joe Carnahan?

• 2:35:36Speaker 03

  Yeah, and, uh, Josh Duhamel is in it also, I think.

• 2:35:40Griffin Newman?

  Um.

• 2:35:40David Sims?

  That is not this.

• 2:35:41Speaker 03

  That is not this?

• 2:35:42Griffin Newman?

  Is this movie called like Inventing Sarah?

• 2:35:44David Sims?

  Sarah?

• 2:35:46Griffin Newman?

  Sarah's Oil?

• 2:35:47David Sims?

  Sarah's Oil.

• 2:35:48Speaker 03

  Oh.

• 2:35:48Griffin Newman?

  He was trying to hone in on that fucking Lorenzo franchise, see if he could make like an off-brand.

• 2:35:53David Sims?

  It's about, it's like a true story.

• 2:35:56Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:35:56David Sims?

  I, I don't really, I don't think I can summarize, uh, in time, what the fuck this is about.

• 2:36:03Speaker 03

  Lorenzo's Oil, though. Great joke in Splitsville.

• 2:36:06Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 2:36:07David Sims?

  Yes.

• 2:36:07Speaker 03

  Incredible joke.

• 2:36:08Griffin Newman?

  Cause what is it? They're two blank check movies that are major running jokes in Splitsville. And I, someone just posted on Reddit, you will never guess which two.

• 2:36:20David Sims?

  Well.

• 2:36:21Griffin Newman?

  Lot of Lorenzo's Oil. That movie's very funny.

• 2:36:23David Sims?

  Number five at the box office is a movie that a lot of people have been trying to beat the drum for as like the dad movie of the year that is good.

• 2:36:30Griffin Newman?

  Hmm.

• 2:36:30David Sims?

  It is not good.

• 2:36:31Griffin Newman?

  It's not good. You think it's bad?

• 2:36:33David Sims?

  I don't like this movie, as you know. Alex Ross Perry recently called it his second favorite movie of the year to us, somewhat as a joke.

• 2:36:38Griffin Newman?

  Oh, Nuremberg.

• 2:36:39David Sims?

  Film is Nuremberg.

• 2:36:40Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, I asked Alex Ross Perry what his top 10 for the year was, and he said, no point in wasting time.

• 2:36:48Griffin Newman?

  I will not dignify 10 movies with any positive endorsement. By the way, Nuremberg, Iron Lock on number two.

• 2:36:55Speaker 03

  I missed Nuremberg. Wait, what was his number one?

• 2:36:58David Sims?

  I think one battle.

• 2:36:59Griffin Newman?

  He was like, one battle.

• 2:37:00David Sims?

  He actually likes.

• 2:37:00Griffin Newman?

  Nuremberg number two, who can be bothered to rank anymore?

• 2:37:03Speaker 03

  After that, the movies ended. Cinema was over, so, yeah.

• 2:37:07David Sims?

  But Nuremberg, a very solid hit, uh, for given that it was, you know, sort of, I mean, maybe that's over the top because it made 14 domestic, but 44 worldwide.

• 2:37:16Speaker 03

  I mean, that's pretty good for a movie, yeah.

• 2:37:18Griffin Newman?

  Especially in.

• 2:37:19David Sims?

  Especially for a movie that like was not that well received.

• 2:37:21Griffin Newman?

  And I was gonna say, in the flop fall, you never would have predicted like Nuremberg is gonna like multiple like times out gross, uh, Smashing Machine.

• 2:37:30David Sims?

  Yeah. No, I mean, it did all right. Uh, it's long, it's boring, doesn't really have a grasp on stuff. And I really do think it makes the terrible mistake of having its arc be Rami Malek realizing that Herman Goring is not a good guy.

• 2:37:45David Sims?

  It's just insane.

• 2:37:46Griffin Newman?

  I'm

• 2:37:46David Sims?

  Other people have argued with me on this like, no, that's not what it's about. I'm like, it's a little bit what happens, though.

• 2:37:50Griffin Newman?

  I'm sure Russell Crowe is giving an effervescent.

• 2:37:53David Sims?

  He's all right. I mean, he's

• 2:37:55Griffin Newman?

  Feather light touch performance.

• 2:37:57David Sims?

  It's not feather light touch. Russell is an actor I basically always like, like I am rever against a Russell Crowe performance, even if I think he's phoning it in or he's being a little silly or whatever. And it's like a good use of him in that you're like, yes, Russell Crowe is someone I would kind of want to like me. Even if he were Herman Goring and I was not his friend.

• 2:38:19Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:38:19David Sims?

  Nor did I need to be.

• 2:38:20Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:38:21David Sims?

  Like, I mean, so then, yeah, okay. Number six, The Box Office. Was nominated for a bunch of Oscars, including Best Picture.

• 2:38:28Griffin Newman?

  Number six of The Box Office was nominated for a bunch of Oscars, including Best Picture. Is it Hamnet?

• 2:38:31David Sims?

  No, it's been out for three weeks. Made seventeen domestic, forty worldwide.

• 2:38:38Griffin Newman?

  Seventeen domestic, forty worldwide movie. What were you about to say about it? It's a

• 2:38:44Griffin Newman?

  who's the distributor?

• 2:38:46David Sims?

  Focus.

• 2:38:47Griffin Newman?

  It's a focus movie. Focus features.

• 2:38:50David Sims?

  You know, it's a director that makes movies.

• 2:38:53Griffin Newman?

  Oh, it's the director that makes movies. Okay.

• 2:38:56David Sims?

  He's got an actor who's been making them with him for a while at this point.

• 2:38:58Griffin Newman?

  Okay, so they're a team.

• 2:38:59David Sims?

  They've become a bit of a team.

• 2:39:01Griffin Newman?

  They've become a bit of a team. And it got a Best Picture nomination.

• 2:39:04David Sims?

  Yeah, and he got her her third

• 2:39:06Griffin Newman?

  Begonia. There we go.

• 2:39:09Speaker 03

  Recently discussed.

• 2:39:11Griffin Newman?

  Yeah. Yeah, seventeen. Did that hit twenty?

• 2:39:15David Sims?

  No, I just said the

• 2:39:17Griffin Newman?

  Seventeen was the total, the final and total. Okay, yeah.

• 2:39:20David Sims?

  But did all right.

• 2:39:20Griffin Newman?

  It's all right.

• 2:39:21David Sims?

  For a movie like that.

• 2:39:22Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:39:22David Sims?

  That's the thing.

• 2:39:23Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, that's the thing.

• 2:39:24David Sims?

  Do you guys like Begonia? I like it.

• 2:39:26Speaker 03

  Well, we just did an episode about it and I like rewatching it. I liked it a lot more than I had the first time I watched it.

• 2:39:34David Sims?

  Oh, interesting.

• 2:39:35Speaker 03

  I was like very, I was pretty down on it the first time I watched it.

• 2:39:38Griffin Newman?

  I, yeah, I was not on mic for that, so I didn't weigh in. Of course, woman was guest on that episode.

• 2:39:44David Sims?

  Ray Barden.

• 2:39:44Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, mayor. But mayor of Blank Town. I was, I was very frustrated while watching that movie. And then I got to the end and I was like, huh, I like the end. And like the ending, not just as like big swing, but like huh, it's kind of sitting with me. Well, and then I remember you and I texting about it that following week or two after we'd seen it since. And both being like, I'm liking chewing on it.

• 2:40:08David Sims?

  The themes of it resonate with me. I, I, I don't find it like the most pleasant watch.

• 2:40:12Griffin Newman?

  But I have wondered if I watch it again, will it grow for me? The first 85 to 90% of it, I was like, this just isn't for me. I'm just not into this. And then I, I did like it more with distance. So I don't know.

• 2:40:26David Sims?

  Number seven at the box office is an anime movie that was a solid hit. I'm sure Ben saw it or he wanted to at least.

• 2:40:32Griffin Newman?

  Okay. So does it start dogs and or cats?

• 2:40:34David Sims?

  No, I mean, I don't know who it starts. It's an anime movie.

• 2:40:37Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, but dogs or cats is a valid question for.

• 2:40:39David Sims?

  I know, but I don't know.

• 2:40:41Griffin Newman?

  It doesn't have animals in the picture.

• 2:40:44Griffin Newman?

  Is it an animated animal movie?

• 2:40:46David Sims?

  I don't think so, but I don't know anything about it.

• 2:40:48Griffin Newman?

  Your awareness is this low?

• 2:40:49David Sims?

  Yeah, I don't know about, yeah.

• 2:40:51Griffin Newman?

  It does. He does have a dog who's a chainsaw.

• 2:40:54David Sims?

  He's not in it a lot.

• 2:40:55Griffin Newman?

  The dog.

• 2:40:56Speaker 03

  Wait, the dog turns into a chainsaw?

• 2:40:57David Sims?

  Hmm. Well, he is, his head becomes chainsaw.

• 2:41:01Griffin Newman?

  He's kind of like.

• 2:41:01Speaker 03

  It's like the guy can turn into a chainsaw, right?

• 2:41:03David Sims?

  Multiple chainsaws.

• 2:41:04Griffin Newman?

  His head and his arms.

• 2:41:06Speaker 03

  Yeah, if he wants to be.

• 2:41:07Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:41:07Speaker 03

  I didn't know there was a dog chainsaw.

• 2:41:08David Sims?

  I realized it's actually kind of cute. We're out of the top 10. And they have a really nice dynamic.

• 2:41:13Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, the price were going this long.

• 2:41:14David Sims?

  Uh, die my love, uh, nine is, uh, delivered me from nowhere, uh, which is not very good, unfortunately. And 10 is Tron Ares, which is also not very good. You know, flop fall. They made some bad movies.

• 2:41:25Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:41:26David Sims?

  That was a mistake by them.

• 2:41:27Griffin Newman?

  Tron Ares is another funny one. Cause it's like the blockbuster version of what we're saying about the prestige movies where they're like, why had Tron Ares underperform? And I'm like, how much time do you have?

• 2:41:36Speaker 03

  Right, right. And also just like, how much hunger do you think there was for another Tron movie?

• 2:41:40Griffin Newman?

  Here are 20 road signs. I pulled off the freeway, warning you not to make this movie.

• 2:41:44David Sims?

  As someone who loves Tron movies, it's like, the appetite is low. So you better make a fucking exceptional Tron movie. If you want to do that, it better be so good. And they're like, oh, oh, we made it really bad. Did, did you not?

• 2:41:58Griffin Newman?

  It's weird that people didn't automatically want to.

• 2:41:59David Sims?

  We thought the Tron name would sort of carry it over the line. It's like, no, no, no, you need good. To get Tron over the line.

• 2:42:06Griffin Newman?

  They, you know, they put out like the hook in this movie is Tron comes to our world. Most of it takes place in downtime, Los Angeles. I'm like, well, that's the opposite of what I like about Tron movies.

• 2:42:15Speaker 03

  You know, like you're like, so we're not going to spend a ton of time in the incredibly cool looking digital world.

• 2:42:20Griffin Newman?

  My first thought there is, I guess that must have been a strategic decision because the last one was so expensive and it didn't quite hit expectations. So maybe that's the way to keep the cost down. And they're like, no, no, don't worry. It costs $220 million.

• 2:42:32David Sims?

  It's not a cheap looking movie.

• 2:42:35Griffin Newman?

  Go to jail. Why the fuck isn't this all inside the computer if you spent that much?

• 2:42:40Speaker 03

  Right, right. And then they're also like, you know, who should be the anchor of this?

• 2:42:44David Sims?

  You know who people love now?

• 2:42:46Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 2:42:46Speaker 03

  That Jared Leto.

• 2:42:47Griffin Newman?

  Right. They offered it to Brett Ratner and Bryan Singer first, right? And then they were like.

• 2:42:52David Sims?

  Now, Griff, as we wrap our short but eventful mini series on Lynn Ramsey, do you want to give me your top five Lynn Ramsey movies? Which is all of her movies because she's made five.

• 2:43:00Griffin Newman?

  Yes, that is true. I'm, I'm just going to go off the dome from my heart here.

• 2:43:05David Sims?

  Yes.

• 2:43:06Griffin Newman?

  You were never really here is my favorite.

• 2:43:08David Sims?

  Yes.

• 2:43:08Griffin Newman?

  I would put Morven Color at number two.

• 2:43:10David Sims?

  Yes.

• 2:43:11Griffin Newman?

  I would put, I could do Ratcatcher three, Kevin four, Die My Love five.

• 2:43:17David Sims?

  Right.

• 2:43:17Griffin Newman?

  I think she has made five excellent films.

• 2:43:21David Sims?

  I have Morven Color first. That's the film first that I truly adore. And then You Were Never Really Here and Ratcatcher third, Die My Love and Kevin.

• 2:43:30Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:43:31David Sims?

  Allison, do you firmly?

• 2:43:32Griffin Newman?

  Talk about Kevin.

• 2:43:33David Sims?

  I would rather not. Do you firmly disagree with either of these rankings?

• 2:43:37Speaker 03

  I don't know.

• 2:43:38David Sims?

  Or what is your favorite Lynn Ramsey movie?

• 2:43:39Speaker 03

  It would be Morven Color. Yeah. I think, you know, the, the scene of her going through the kind of nightclub with the headphones on will be like one of the greatest scenes in cinema that I can think of, so.

• 2:43:50David Sims?

  And your least favorite, Kevin or Die My Love? Or is it something else? Do you not like Hammerman?

• 2:43:56Speaker 03

  Probably Die My Love. I do like Hammerman, but I do feel like that movie always felt to me like.

• 2:44:01Griffin Newman?

  It could have gone on longer. Like, it just feels so boiled down. I don't know. But I do like Kevin. Here's the thing. That's the thing. I do like. Yeah. We need to talk about Kevin. I, I love how like tight and like stripped down You Were Never Really Here is, but after doing the episode and reading the dossier and like having completely forgotten that a totally different cut and a longer cut was shown at Cannes, I now I'm just a little frustrated that there's no way to watch that cut, that I imported my like expensive Australian 4K and still there's no. I just, I wish you, there was like a, a Terrence Malick criterion release of like, here's just like 10 different versions. I don't know which one counts. Right, right.

• 2:44:40David Sims?

  Well, we're done talking about Lynn.

• 2:44:42Griffin Newman?

  We're done talking about Lynn.

• 2:44:43David Sims?

  Next, we will talk about Peter Weir. We're going right to him because we moved Send Help up.

• 2:44:47Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:44:48David Sims?

  So, yeah.

• 2:44:49Griffin Newman?

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

• 2:44:51David Sims?

  We'll do the blankies. Yeah, we'll do the blankies next week.

• 2:44:54Griffin Newman?

  Folks, we'll do the blankies.

• 2:44:56David Sims?

  We'll do our awards. So there you go. So we do have a palate cleanser.

• 2:45:00Griffin Newman?

  We do have a palate cleanser. So there, Ben, I hope you're happy. Oh, I bet you're gonna eat it up. And we do, we did recently put a Ben's Choice on the calendar, but I think it will be

• 2:45:11David Sims?

  It'll be Patreon.

• 2:45:12Griffin Newman?

  On Patreon. But we have, we have quite a good one, I think. Pretty thrilled. Yeah.

• 2:45:15David Sims?

  Yeah. But, uh, yeah, that's, and then so next week, our Joe Reed Blankies episode will happen, one assumes. I mean, that's the plan. And then Haseman recorded it. And then, uh, are you writing songs? Get to work.

• 2:45:28Griffin Newman?

  I have been.

• 2:45:29David Sims?

  Oh.

• 2:45:30Griffin Newman?

  But more importantly, the Clem Dog, Sean Clemens, recent guest on the show.

• 2:45:34David Sims?

  He loves to punch him up.

• 2:45:34Griffin Newman?

  Sending me a lot.

• 2:45:35David Sims?

  There you go.

• 2:45:36Griffin Newman?

  You know, he's, he's not been.

• 2:45:37David Sims?

  He did write songs.

• 2:45:37Griffin Newman?

  Punch up. He's been sending me some voice memos. There's some really exciting shit happening in our text thread. I don't want to overhype it.

• 2:45:45David Sims?

  Yeah, sure.

• 2:45:45Griffin Newman?

  But we've been burning the midnight oil.

• 2:45:47David Sims?

  And then.

• 2:45:48Griffin Newman?

  By which I mean every six weeks, one text.

• 2:45:51David Sims?

  Uh, and then, yeah, The Cars That Ate Paris will kick off our Peter Weir mini-series and, uh, March Madness will kick off. That's probably about to be announced, right? I mean, it's February 22nd, so pretty soon. So look forward to voting for whoever we cover and all that. And that's that. And I'm done. And I'm done talking. Goodbye.

• 2:46:08Griffin Newman?

  Well, actually, that's not how the podcast ends.

• 2:46:09David Sims?

  I know. I've done.

• 2:46:10Griffin Newman?

  I regret to inform you. Allison.

• 2:46:13Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 2:46:13Griffin Newman?

  Thank you for being here.

• 2:46:14Speaker 03

  Thanks for having me.

• 2:46:16Griffin Newman?

  People should listen to Critical Darling.

• 2:46:17Speaker 03

  Yeah, please listen to it. We do so much talking on it.

• 2:46:21Griffin Newman?

  You know what? I listen to some of these podcasts. I queue them up. I press play for hours and people complain about our show being long. At least we're filling it up with words and I think you folks do an excellent job as well.

• 2:46:33Speaker 03

  Thank you.

• 2:46:34Griffin Newman?

  Talking on microphone, pressing record and making sure people can actually hear it later.

• 2:46:39Speaker 04

  So this episode is coming out on February 22.

• 2:46:44Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 2:46:44Speaker 04

  As far as the run leading up to the big award ceremony, where are you guys at?

• 2:46:52Griffin Newman?

  Pretty close.

• 2:46:52Speaker 04

  Pretty close.

• 2:46:52Griffin Newman?

  So like three weeks away though.

• 2:46:54Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:46:54Griffin Newman?

  Let me see. Let me see. A little sketchy here.

• 2:46:59Speaker 03

  That might be the secret agent episode.

• 2:47:00Griffin Newman?

  I think the, the, the secret agent episode will have just come out and the next episode will actually be a nice little bit of synchronicity. Our buddy Joe Reed talking sentimental value. And then, uh, yeah, yeah. The, the final three episodes of the season will be, uh, Sinners, one battle with some sort of final predictions and then a, and then a recap.

• 2:47:23Speaker 04

  There you go.

• 2:47:24Griffin Newman?

  Yeah. Allison, anything else you want to plug?

• 2:47:26Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:47:29Speaker 04

  You got great articles all over vulture.com. Go check them out.

• 2:47:34Griffin Newman?

  This is true.

• 2:47:35Speaker 04

  You reviewed Serat. You must have written that a while ago.

• 2:47:38Speaker 03

  No, I read it this morning.

• 2:47:39Speaker 04

  Fair enough. You reviewed Melania.

• 2:47:42Speaker 03

  I did.

• 2:47:43Speaker 04

  Thank you for.

• 2:47:45Griffin Newman?

  The things that I write.

• 2:47:45Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:47:46Speaker 04

  Yeah. You liked Send Help.

• 2:47:49Speaker 03

  I liked Send Help.

• 2:47:50Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:47:51Speaker 03

  Yeah. Yeah.

• 2:47:52Speaker 04

  There you go. I was just looking at your recent stuff.

• 2:47:53Speaker 03

  I appreciate it. Oh, uh, my Wuthering Heights review will go up on, I think, Monday. Yeah, it'll be up.

• 2:48:01Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, you've already filed it?

• 2:48:02Speaker 03

  I have filed it.

• 2:48:03Griffin Newman?

  But have you had a chance to, and this I guess goes to both of you, to try out Oak Berry's tie-in menu yet?

• 2:48:10Speaker 03

  I would love to have.

• 2:48:11Griffin Newman?

  Cause I feel like you can't really speak about the movie.

• 2:48:13Speaker 03

  This is a fair, this is a fair assessment.

• 2:48:15Speaker 04

  I don't even know what Oak Berry is.

• 2:48:16Speaker 03

  Yeah. Uh, I will say there was a point, and I included this in my review where I said that the. The interior design choices very much reminded me of Lily Allen's Brooklyn Brownstone.

• 2:48:26Griffin Newman?

  Interesting.

• 2:48:27Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 2:48:29Griffin Newman?

  I texted this to, of course, our friend, your former podcast co-host, a past Matt Singer yesterday, Oak Berry, which I guess is some chain that sells something.

• 2:48:38Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:48:39David Sims?

  Like a side bowl, a side bowl.

• 2:48:40Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, had a big sign outside, "A Love You Can Taste," and they have two items, a Kiss Me Bowl and a Hunt Me Bowl, and both of them are clearly cups and not bowls.

• 2:48:51Speaker 03

  Big lie. I mean, I'm happy for Matt because honestly, he ends up eating a lot of like pancake and burger based.

• 2:48:58Griffin Newman?

  This is health, this is a positive trend for him.

• 2:48:59Speaker 03

  Yeah, for someone who eats a lot of movie themed tie-in menus.

• 2:49:03Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:49:03Speaker 03

  It's good that he'll get some vegetable or some fruits at least.

• 2:49:06Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 2:49:06Speaker 03

  Some, yeah.

• 2:49:07Griffin Newman?

  And maybe if like Project Hail Mary can do like a Metamucil tie-in, these are just the things that would really help the Singer family.

• 2:49:13Speaker 03

  I think so, or at least like a Sweet Green or something like that.

• 2:49:16Griffin Newman?

  Yeah. Uh, maybe that's for Super Mario Galaxy. Um, thank you for being here.

• 2:49:21Speaker 03

  Thank you.

• 2:49:21Griffin Newman?

  Uh, thank you all for rating, reviewing, and subscribing. I'm thanking you for a thing I'm asking you to do, please. Uh, this will be ignored, much like Jennifer Lawrence plugging her movie at the end of a Hot Ones episode. Tune in next week for The Blankies and a special bonus treat. We want to kind of shout out, uh, Matt Johnson and Jay McCarroll of Nirvana, the band, the show, and Nirvana, the band, the show, the movie, now in theaters, one of our favorite movies in a long time. We, we got offered the opportunity to have them on the podcast, which we could not pass on, but because of our silly schedule, booking,

• 2:50:00Griffin Newman?

  and recording very far in advance, the thing it made the most sense to have them do was another Oops All Burger Report episode on Patreon, which we have titled Burger Report, the segment, the episode. So that is already out now on Patreon. We moved our schedule around to get that out fast. So, uh, the Wicked Films will be happening, uh, next month to finish off our Oz series, but as of February 21st, on the Blank Check Patreon, Burger Report, the segment, the episode, and we want to play you a little preview clip of that episode, little, little sample, little taster, a little slider for your enjoyment right here.

• 2:50:44Griffin Newman?

  We're here today to do something very important with two very important guests. This show going on for over a decade. There was one episode where I came in and said, I'm sitting on a really hot scoop. I went to the Apple Pan in Los Angeles. I was a trip to Los Angeles, was eating a burger at the counter. And who saddles up next to me but Chivo himself? Emmanuel Lubeski, Academy Award winning cinematographer.

• 2:51:10David Sims?

  Yeah, great artist.

• 2:51:11Griffin Newman?

  And I go Sims, I got something really hot to tell you in this next episode. You're never going to believe it. And I offer my report of seeing one of America's greatest living film artists, one of the world's greatest living film artists chomped down on a burger crunch. And Sims goes, you're never going to believe this. I went to Bear Burger over the weekend.

• 2:51:30David Sims?

  It was moo burger, but that's okay.

• 2:51:31Griffin Newman?

  Fuck. And I saw Michael Shannon.

• 2:51:34David Sims?

  Yep.

• 2:51:34Griffin Newman?

  Academy Award nominee.

• 2:51:35David Sims?

  Yep.

• 2:51:36Griffin Newman?

  Michael Shannon also eating a burger. And we decided this is a new segment. Every single episode, we're going to do a burger report and check in on which famous people, famos, as we like to call them, we have seen eating a burger in the last week.

• 2:51:50David Sims?

  Usually enough, nobody.

• 2:51:51Griffin Newman?

  The well ran really dry, really, really fast.

• 2:51:54David Sims?

  Right. We live in New York too. It's like, you know, it's not like you live in Hollywood. Well, yeah, go ahead, go ahead.

• 2:51:58Griffin Newman?

  But then we found out producer Ben, our own intro outro maester himself.

• 2:52:03David Sims?

  Yes.

• 2:52:04Griffin Newman?

  Had in past lives worked at celebrity hotspot restaurants with famed burgers and was able to reach into the archives and start giving us a burger report at the end of every episode. Eventually that well runs dry.

• 2:52:17David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 2:52:17Griffin Newman?

  And we decide we need to start soliciting from listeners. We set up a voicemail and then we forgot about this voicemail line for a couple of years.

• 2:52:26David Sims?

  Hmm.

• 2:52:26Griffin Newman?

  And so now basically every two years, once a year.

• 2:52:29David Sims?

  About every year.

• 2:52:30Griffin Newman?

  But the whole point is we don't remind people. And every time we do one, we act like that's probably the last one, right? Never doing it ever again. But today we are fucking opening up the voicemail bank.

• 2:52:41David Sims?

  Yep.

• 2:52:42Griffin Newman?

  And we're listening. To people tell us about times they've seen a famous person eat a burger.

• 2:52:47David Sims?

  So ridiculous that these guests are here for this nonsense.

• 2:52:50Griffin Newman?

  It's kind of, it feels kind of correct.

• 2:52:52Speaker 06

  Yeah, I agree.

• 2:52:53Griffin Newman?

  You're here, first of the, the, the big project of your life, but specifically the project that you're promoting right now is a similar kind of decades long investment into, into the mounting, the pyramid of bits. Is that fair to say?

• 2:53:09Speaker 06

  Yeah, we've been making this.

• 2:53:11Griffin Newman?

  The pyramid of bits?

• 2:53:12Speaker 06

  You say bits or bids?

• 2:53:14Griffin Newman?

  I said bits, but we could bit, we could bid on, on the bits. We could do a bit bid.

• 2:53:20Speaker 06

  Yeah, I understand the metaphor.

• 2:53:21Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, it's clean.

• 2:53:23Speaker 06

  This is a, a began as a bit.

• 2:53:25Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 2:53:26Speaker 06

  But I pyramid is not correct. It's more like, it's more like an, a bit organism that you keep feeding and becomes gigantic.

• 2:53:33David Sims?

  So like a sourdor starter, but it's, but it's out of control.

• 2:53:36Speaker 06

  Right. Bite of a burger turns into many burgers.

• 2:53:40Griffin Newman?

  That's how.

• 2:53:41Speaker 06

  And what seemingly starts as something very silly like, oh, it's just celebrities eating burgers.

• 2:53:48Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 2:53:49Speaker 06

  It becomes something. It's now become a show format.

• 2:53:51Griffin Newman?

  It's become a show format.

• 2:53:52Speaker 06

  Yeah, literally you have a format which could spin out and become a film.

• 2:53:54Griffin Newman?

  We're looking to sell. Honestly, we're looking really hard to sell. We feel like this is our, this is our exit strategy.

• 2:54:00Speaker 06

  Oh, in the big picture, like this is going to be.

• 2:54:02Griffin Newman?

  Well, that's a rival podcast. We don't want to talk about them, but, but in, in our big picture, we love them. We're friends, but competitors.

• 2:54:08Speaker 06

  You're right, right, right.

• 2:54:09Griffin Newman?

  Right. In our picture, it's like, we're looking for that golden parachute.

• 2:54:12Speaker 06

  And this may be it.

• 2:54:13Griffin Newman?

  Can we just fucking sell Burger Report? Can, can Carson Daly host it? You know? Is it a gotcha show? Is it like, is it?

• 2:54:23David Sims?

  Carson Daly's the guy with the juice right now. That's a good call.

• 2:54:26Griffin Newman?

  I feel like he's really coming to his own. I think he's kind of figured his thing out.

• 2:54:30David Sims?

  Carson Daly?

• 2:54:31Griffin Newman?

  Carson Daly.

• 2:54:32Speaker 06

  I thought he was done. I'm, I'm worried that you're making these burger episodes at the furious rate of one per year.

• 2:54:39Griffin Newman?

  If, if even that.

• 2:54:40Speaker 06

  And you're trying to now sell it as a format that in your own words is going to lead to retirement.

• 2:54:44Griffin Newman?

  It's a supply and demand kind of thing. That's the strategy.

• 2:54:47Speaker 06

  That's my point.

• 2:54:48Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 2:54:48Speaker 06

  That it doesn't seem like you have either.

• 2:54:51Griffin Newman?

  I think people are demanding it and we're going like, no.

• 2:54:53David Sims?

  Half of them also will not be about people eating burgers. It'll be more like, I don't know, I think I saw Sean Penny to Taco.

• 2:54:59Griffin Newman?

  Well, that's what you guys are here to do. We need to, we need to judge how successful these are as burger reports. And we should say, our guest today from Nirvana, the band, the show, and Nirvana, the band, the show, the movie, but also BlackBerry. And a thing I want to lead with, because I got questions. Matt and Bird break loose.

• 2:55:17Speaker 06

  Yes, yes. One of, one of, one of our high moments in terms of artistic achievement.

• 2:55:22Griffin Newman?

  Matt Johnson, Jay McCarroll.

• 2:55:23Speaker 06

  Yes.

• 2:55:24Griffin Newman?

  Are here.

• 2:55:25Speaker 06

  And we're so happy to be here. Thank you so much. Thank you for having us.

• 2:55:28David Sims?

  Genuinely thank you for being here.

• 2:55:29Speaker 06

  Oh, it's an honor. Do your listeners know what this place looks like?

• 2:55:33Griffin Newman?

  They got a sense.

• 2:55:34Speaker 06

  They've caught, they've caught glimpses, but what do you, why? What's your impression? I just want to give people an image that they can maybe assign to this podcast. We are backstage at a video game store or backstage at a toy store.

• 2:55:49Griffin Newman?

  Sure.

• 2:55:50Speaker 06

  Like just the behind the scenes. It's the most conducive environment to a conversation I've ever been in, in my life.

• 2:55:58Griffin Newman?

  Ben is blushing. Look at it. Look how proud Ben is.

• 2:56:00Speaker 06

  We were at four distinct and discreet, almost student style desks.

• 2:56:06Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, professional.

• 2:56:07Speaker 06

  Yeah, it's almost like for a draft, somebody who's like a professional draftsman.

• 2:56:11Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:56:12Speaker 06

  And they're, they're at perfect 90 degree angles to one another. And we're all facing each other in the middle as though we're about to judge something that's going to happen.

• 2:56:21Griffin Newman?

  We are, we're, we're going to judge these phone calls.

• 2:56:23Speaker 06

  Yeah, imagine the LAN party that we could have in here.

• 2:56:25David Sims?

  Oh, man. Let's bring in some CRT televisions.

• 2:56:28Speaker 06

  We really could.

• 2:56:29David Sims?

  Thick ass cables.

• 2:56:30Speaker 06

  Yeah. Anyway, yeah, it's an honor to be here and we're so happy to be here. And I don't think the burger format is going to travel outside.

• 2:56:38Griffin Newman?

  You haven't heard the calls yet, though. That's what I'm saying. And, and maybe I don't put this pressure on you.

• 2:56:43Speaker 06

  I don't, no, no, no, no. Listen, listen. I believe that the way to treat a friend is to give them the kind of advice that will truly improve their life.

• 2:56:50David Sims?

  I agree. I think that, I think that blunt talk is usually.

• 2:56:53Speaker 06

  And this isn't even blunt. Again, it may be incredible, but the idea that this is going to turn into like Carson. Daily, we're talking, this is insanity, guys.

• 2:56:59Griffin Newman?

  You guys got this hot movie, you're tapped into the culture.

• 2:57:04Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 2:57:04Griffin Newman?

  You know what the public wants.

• 2:57:05Speaker 06

  So you should listen to us.

• 2:57:07Griffin Newman?

  But I'm saying, you should listen to the calls.

• 2:57:09Speaker 06

  And see if maybe.

• 2:57:10Griffin Newman?

  And then I want to hear you go, hey, it's more of this, it's less of this.

• 2:57:13Speaker 06

  Maybe I'm leaving tonight with the rights to Burger Report.

• 2:57:16Griffin Newman?

  We'll cut you into this big time.

• 2:57:17Speaker 06

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 2:57:18Griffin Newman?

  Big time, because there's something here and we haven't quite cracked it.

• 2:57:21Speaker 06

  We made an entire episode of our show called The Burger, which.

• 2:57:25Griffin Newman?

  The Wall Burger.

• 2:57:25Speaker 06

  It's about Wall Burger, right? Which is centered around the magical properties of.

• 2:57:29Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:57:29Speaker 06

  Of biting a burger and making a wish at the same time.

• 2:57:31Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 2:57:32Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 2:57:32Griffin Newman?

  So that's, that's a thing we haven't worked into this format yet.

• 2:57:36David Sims?

  Are there still Wall Burgers in Toronto?

• 2:57:39Speaker 06

  I think there might be one at the airport. Okay. I think there's one at YYZ.

• 2:57:42David Sims?

  Yeah, it looks like that's about it.

• 2:57:44Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 2:57:44David Sims?

  Yeah, at the airport.

• 2:57:45Speaker 06

  I think, I think. There was nothing wrong with them. They were totally fine. I think it was a cultural mismatch, if I'm being totally honest. You walked in and it's a full standee of one of the Wallburg brothers standing there as though he's still in Boston being like, hey, Toronto, come on, these are the best burgers and Torontonians are too shy.

• 2:58:01Griffin Newman?

  Not the guy who'd be your first choice.

• 2:58:03Speaker 06

  I think we're getting down to third, fourth or fifth, but by, by the time you're at the guy who's been given a burger franchise.

• 2:58:10Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 2:58:10Speaker 06

  I, I don't mean to disparage them, the, the show at the very least was inspiring. We made a whole episode of our show about it.

• 2:58:15Griffin Newman?

  Great episode.

• 2:58:16Speaker 06

  But it was not a cultural match.

• 2:58:18Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:58:18Speaker 06

  They thought that maybe the East Coast ism of Massachusetts would drive all the way up.

• 2:58:22Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 2:58:23Speaker 06

  But there's a hard cut at the border.

• 2:58:25David Sims?

  It's like, you guys like hockey, like baseball, right? We're, we're, you know, we're near water.

• 2:58:29Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 2:58:29David Sims?

  Basically the same vibe.

• 2:58:30Speaker 06

  No, no, that's fresh and it's a huge, huge difference.

• 2:58:33David Sims?

  What's Toronto's best burger?

• 2:58:35Speaker 06

  That's, it's very touchy.

• 2:58:37David Sims?

  I assume that's a contentious, of course, as it always is.

• 2:58:39Speaker 06

  It depends who you ask. For the longest time, there was a place that was just, just outside the border of Etobicoke called Apache Burger. That, that is not changing the name. They don't give a damn.

• 2:58:49David Sims?

  I was about to say, like, something, something of a sensitive name.

• 2:58:52Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 2:58:52David Sims?

  That's right.

• 2:58:53Speaker 06

  And this place was famous for having burgers that were so great that oftentimes sports figures like the Toronto Maple Leafs would drive out and have the, their burgers here. But they recently switched from fresh to frozen and it was like they fell off a cliff. But I mean, look, they still have. Char Royal is. The way they were doing. Yeah, and it was old school, old school. Harbroiled. But now. Priest is, I think, the other one. Burgers priest sold to Harvey's. I think like everything changed. Oh, really? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That guy, that guy, that's Bollonge's buddy, by the way. He's got an unbelievable story, like unbelievable, a summer that they were at summer camp and they needed to set up on their own. Uh huh. This is not my story to tell, but all I will say is.

• 2:59:31Griffin Newman?

  Like camping, you're saying?

• 2:59:32Speaker 06

  No, this is. We've got him on the phone right here. Children's summer camp, okay? And the owner believed that his son had gone on a cocaine crazed rampage and was using the camp as a kind of orgy slash party zone. And in order to catch him, employed his, um, these two employees, one of which was the production designer of all of my films. The other was the guy who started Burgers Priest to develop and, and, um, instigate on their own. A closed network, hidden camera system throughout the camp where they could film and capture this renegade son doing all kinds of things. They did it and it worked and they were like.

• 3:00:10Griffin Newman?

  Caught him?

• 3:00:11Speaker 06

  They caught him. They were like 14 years old and they, they, they basically did a, a dragnet. What did they catch him doing? Yeah, they, they were. They got video evidence of his drug fueled party mania that was happening at a children's camp. And anyway, so this guy goes on. Oh, my God. But no, but this did not involve the campers. That was the big thing. It was like, he would bring in, he would bring in outsiders, counselors, these types of things.

• 3:00:34Griffin Newman?

  He was like a junior counselor?

• 3:00:36Speaker 06

  Uh, well, this was, this guy doing it was the son of the owner. So you can only imagine what his position in terms of the leadership.

• 3:00:42Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 3:00:43Speaker 06

  Yeah, it was, yeah, literally. It was, he decided this is mine to stomp on. He was like a prince, who's the guy in Game of Thrones, you know, who just gets it? And now he's going to be as despotic as he wants to be.

• 3:00:53Griffin Newman?

  I've never watched Game of Thrones. I've never seen it.

• 3:00:55Speaker 06

  Joffrey, yeah, right. It's just like, well, this is all mine. And so I bear no responsibility. I didn't build it. Anyway, Burger Priest is a phenomenon.

• 3:01:03Griffin Newman?

  It looks pretty good.

• 3:01:03Speaker 06

  Oh, the burgers were unbelievable and they're all, and they're closely associated with, uh, New Testament scripture.

• 3:01:09David Sims?

  Okay.

• 3:01:09Speaker 06

  The priest is not ironic.

• 3:01:11David Sims?

  Oh, so it's like, wait, so is there sort of a theme?

• 3:01:14Speaker 06

  Okay, okay. Their, their, their tagline is redeeming the burger one at a time. So it's all, it's all very like religious language anyway.

• 3:01:21David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 3:01:21Speaker 06

  But the franchise was a, like a instant hit in the city of Toronto. So much so that it has now sold to Harvey's, which if you don't know, Harvey's is the sister restaurant to Swiss Chalet.

• 3:01:33David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 3:01:33Speaker 06

  So, so these two like mega restaurants.

• 3:01:36David Sims?

  It's about to fall off a cliff.

• 3:01:37Speaker 06

  Well, who knows?

• 3:01:38David Sims?

  Okay.

• 3:01:38Speaker 06

  I don't mean to disparage them.

• 3:01:39David Sims?

  Harvey's has been around forever and it's delicious. Okay, yeah. I'll, I'll go next time I'm there, this is, yeah.

• 3:01:43Speaker 06

  But, but Toronto is, is, you want to think of it like as a, as a super mini New York in that there's like 50 different places doing their own special burgers. A place called Rudy's, there's, for a long time, Matty Matheson had a burger place called P and L.

• 3:01:56David Sims?

  Smash. I went there, I went there, I went to P and L.

• 3:01:59Speaker 06

  P and L Burger, now Matty's got his own burger place right just south of Trinity Bellwoods Park. I forget, it's called Matty's? No, Matty's Patties.

• 3:02:05David Sims?

  No, no, that's where I went, that's where I went.

• 3:02:07Speaker 06

  And those are great, but Happy Burger is also great. Like you come to Toronto looking for a hamburger, you could eat a different burger every single day and be happy. It, but we don't have like hamburger America.

• 3:02:16David Sims?

  Right.

• 3:02:17Speaker 06

  Like we don't, okay?

• 3:02:18David Sims?

  That place.

• 3:02:18Speaker 06

  We don't have the kind of stuff you have.

• 3:02:19David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 3:02:20Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 3:02:20David Sims?

  But that, but we didn't have that until very recently. Hamburger America felt like it was very much filling a, a hole.

• 3:02:25Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 3:02:26David Sims?

  The problem with that is it opened right by my office and I cannot, I have to like not go that out. That's not a problem. I could kill myself. That's only a problem of perception and your mind.

• 3:02:34Speaker 06

  I've never been in my life, I want to go so badly, I may even go right after this.

• 3:02:38David Sims?

  It's, I recommend it.

• 3:02:40Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 3:02:40David Sims?

  It's on, yeah. It's easy to get there, I'll, I'll tell you what train to take.

• 3:02:44Speaker 06

  Um, anyway, on the subject of burgers, it's completely right. Yeah, Toronto, Toronto's a great hamburger city and.

• 3:02:49David Sims?

  It's a great, great food city.

• 3:02:51Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 3:02:51David Sims?

  I, I mean, the first time I went to Toronto, I, I'm from New York, I grew up in London. I was like, these two cities have been merged into one city for me, is how I felt about Toronto. I was like, it's sort of a New York-y city with more of an English energy. Queen on the money. Like, I know it's neither really, but like. Always good.

• 3:03:07Speaker 06

  You, you, you want your money to have the types of people on it that are separated from you by dint of birth.

• 3:03:13David Sims?

  By, by just.

• 3:03:14Speaker 06

  Because in America.

• 3:03:16David Sims?

  Birth canal they exited.

• 3:03:17Speaker 06

  Yeah, it makes a big difference because here in America, like, you know, you see a bill and you're like, oh man, if I work really hard, I could get on this bill. In Canada, it's not, no, I'm sorry. It's not possible.

• 3:03:27David Sims?

  Well, they are. Are there nice Canadians on the backs of the bill or whatever?

• 3:03:31Speaker 06

  Yeah, they put some inventors. They put some inventors on there, but there are precious few of those. I think John McDonald is a little bit has a colored history, does he not? My point is that you're talking about our prime ministers. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, they put our prime ministers on the bill, but on the back of all of them is the Queen.

• 3:03:47David Sims?

  You've always got the, well, now the king.

• 3:03:48Speaker 06

  Is the Queen on the back of all of it? Used to be, but and all the coins, the Queen was on the back of every single one. Now.

• 3:03:55David Sims?

  Yeah, you switch into Charlie.

• 3:03:56Speaker 06

  No, I think that our country's done all kinds of bizarre things. They switched to a polymer bill, first of all. And and now it's all like. It's monopoly money. Yeah, I think I think.

• 3:04:08Griffin Newman?

  Rich Uncle Pennybags is on the back now, right?

• 3:04:10Speaker 06

  Yeah, which would be great.

• 3:04:11Griffin Newman?

  It'd be great. He's, I mean, that I just think.

• 3:04:13David Sims?

  He he equals money.

• 3:04:15Griffin Newman?

  He's good at business. He understands how to run a country like a business.

• 3:04:19Speaker 06

  So does the way the game work is that you're buying the properties from him?

• 3:04:24David Sims?

  Because. No, I don't actually know what role.

• 3:04:26Griffin Newman?

  Okay, but wait a second. No, this is a interesting take.

• 3:04:28Speaker 06

  Maybe he owns the bank. Maybe all, maybe, maybe you're all just dealing with his money.

• 3:04:32Griffin Newman?

  I've never considered this. It certainly feels like he owns the bank, but I also feel like you're buying the properties from him.

• 3:04:38Speaker 06

  It's funny because that is bad strategy. He owns the board. He could just hotel up everything right off the bat. He's he has the last laugh.

• 3:04:45Griffin Newman?

  But that's that. Exactly. That's the point. You never get to the end of monopoly. And if you do, no one's happy, right? You're playing in a world that this guy has already monopolized and he's like, have your fucking fun. Try your best.

• 3:04:57Speaker 06

  But it's all coming back to me.

• 3:04:59Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 3:04:59Speaker 06

  They're making they're making a big monopoly movie right now.

• 3:05:01Griffin Newman?

  Thank God.

• 3:05:02Speaker 06

  Like a big, big, big boom, like really big.

• 3:05:04Griffin Newman?

  Questions are going to get answered.

• 3:05:05Speaker 06

  Who would be good casting for him?

• 3:05:06Griffin Newman?

  For Rich Uncle Pennybags, Chris Pratt.

• 3:05:08David Sims?

  I I did. Throw him in there.

• 3:05:11Griffin Newman?

  I I used to do, I forget who the advertiser was, who the sponsor was, but it was some online banking company that I'm sure is super reputable and still in business. But I would do ad reads for them as Rich Uncle Pennybags, Moneybags, Pennybags.

• 3:05:24David Sims?

  Pennybags is the name.

• 3:05:26Griffin Newman?

  And then the bit became that he had been canceled and got replaced with Christopher Plummer.

• 3:05:31Speaker 06

  You're right.

• 3:05:32Griffin Newman?

  So in my mind, I'm like Christopher Plummer would have been the great prestige uncle Pennybags, but now he's dead.

• 3:05:38Speaker 06

  We lost our chance.

• 3:05:39Griffin Newman?

  We lost him.

• 3:05:39Speaker 06

  Anthony Hopkins?

• 3:05:40Griffin Newman?

  Hop- wow.

• 3:05:42Speaker 06

  Hopkins.

• 3:05:43David Sims?

  Starring Kevin Hart, the movie centers on a boy from Baltic Avenue on a quest to make a fortune? This is the Monopoly movie?

• 3:05:50Griffin Newman?

  And Bellettarre's directing this?

• 3:05:52Speaker 06

  Belly's dead.

• 3:05:53Griffin Newman?

  Belly's dead.

• 3:05:53Speaker 06

  Just died.

• 3:05:54David Sims?

  Well, he rapped and then he-

• 3:05:55Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, he rapped.

• 3:05:56David Sims?

  Oh, I see.

• 3:05:57Griffin Newman?

  It's an ice white song. And people are gonna question, like, was this his cut?

• 3:06:01David Sims?

  And it's a tight one-hundo minutes. Yeah.

• 3:06:03Speaker 06

  It's like many Bellettarre films.

• 3:06:05Griffin Newman?

  He really wants to go commercial. He wanted to make something his kids could see. And as always, I think the ultimate takeaway is, uh, Die My Love's box office failure was due to a lack of Oakberry tie-in.

• 3:06:17Speaker 04

  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, Ollie Moss, and Pat Reynolds. Our production assistant is Minic. Special thanks to David Cho, Jordan Fish, and Nate Patterson for their production help. Head over to blankcheckpod.com for links to all of the real nerdy shit. Join our Patreon, Blank Check Special Features, for exclusive franchise commentaries and bonus episodes.

• 3:07:02Speaker 04

  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.