Empire of the Sun with Bilge Ebiri

Our Spielbergian journey takes us to new dramatic heights with 1987’s Empire of the Sun, the film that brought us Christian Bale (discovered by Amy Irving!), unexpected Joey Pants and Ben Stiller appearances, and a perfect use of John Malkovich. Bilge Ebiri joins us (and the Five Timers Club) to chat about how underrated this film is within the Spielberg canon, and how this movie evolves Spielberg’s perception as a serious dramatic artist. Read Bilge's writing at Vulture https://www.vulture.com/author/bilge-ebiri/ 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?

• 0:20Speaker 03

  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?

  Can't remember what my podcast looks like.

• 1:42David Sims?

  It's a really sad line from the movie.

• 1:44Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:44Speaker 03

  Thank God we started out that way.

• 1:47Griffin Newman?

  Look, I mean, I was like, oh, you know, it feels like any line of dialogue is going to be said. Maybe I should do the tagline instead. The tagline is, "To survive in a world at war, he must find a greater strength than all the events that surround him." I'd say also a bummer.

• 2:00David Sims?

  I mean.

• 2:01Speaker 04

  Just try not to think so much. Surely there's a, there's a.

• 2:05Griffin Newman?

  That's a good line. Maybe I, yeah. I feel like I've always struggled.

• 2:07David Sims?

  Also, yeah, do you want to bust out a Malkovich?

• 2:09Griffin Newman?

  With Malkoviches. I feel like, we have not covered a lot of Malkovich. Our main Malkovich talk episode was Portrait of a Lady, which we're like, that's a weird application of Malkovich and does it unbalance the movie in a way. I was less into the movie, but more into his performance. Whereas I feel like you liked the movie a little more and felt his performance was working a little against it.

• 2:31David Sims?

  He is, he is. Look, casting John Malkovich is an aggressive thing to do.

• 2:35Griffin Newman?

  Repeat your, oh yeah. You had your great line in that episode.

• 2:37David Sims?

  Oh, I don't remember it. You have to tell me.

• 2:39Griffin Newman?

  He's sun dried tomatoes on a sandwich.

• 2:40David Sims?

  That's what it is. I really agree with that. And it's like, if you put five of those on a sandwich, you're eating a sun dried tomato sandwich. Doesn't matter what else is on that thing.

• 2:49Griffin Newman?

  Now, I, I'm just, let's forefront this. I think this is like a perfect application of Malkovich.

• 2:54David Sims?

  Obviously a great way to use John Malkovich as a, an American Fagin.

• 2:58Griffin Newman?

  It's arguably one of his best performances, but it's almost inarguably one of the smartest ways a movie has employed him.

• 3:04David Sims?

  Bill, go away and I don't know your Malkovich take. I don't know where you are on Malkovich. You can speak.

• 3:08Speaker 04

  Malkovich in this movie?

• 3:10David Sims?

  In this movie.

• 3:10Speaker 04

  I love Malkovich. I love Malkovich.

• 3:12David Sims?

  Same.

• 3:13Speaker 04

  And Malkovich has shown up in some of my favorite movies of all time.

• 3:16David Sims?

  What are some of your favorite movies of all time featuring John Malkovich? Well, I mean, he's in The Sheltering Sky. I bet you like that one. You love your Bernardo.

• 3:22Speaker 04

  Big fan of The Sheltering Sky.

• 3:23Griffin Newman?

  Secretariat, one of your favorite movies.

• 3:25David Sims?

  I feel like you see.

• 3:26Speaker 04

  In the Line of Fire, one of the greatest action films of all time.

• 3:30Griffin Newman?

  But that's one of the coolest Oscar nominations.

• 3:32David Sims?

  In the Line of Fire is someone making you a ham and cheese sandwich and then like putting one sun dried tomato on it in 1992 or whenever it is, three, and you're like, what's this flavor?

• 3:42Griffin Newman?

  It's bold.

• 3:42David Sims?

  Cause like, otherwise that movie is like pretty straight down the middle and really well done. And Malkovich is like, you're, this is a new kind of villain. I feel like this is spicy.

• 3:49Griffin Newman?

  But that's almost like putting sun dried tomato flavored potato chips on a sandwich.

• 3:55David Sims?

  Okay. What, Bill, what was your response? No, I, I like that take.

• 3:58Griffin Newman?

  Right?

• 3:59Speaker 04

  Well, the other thing about In the Line of Fire is it's so much Clint.

• 4:03David Sims?

  He's good though.

• 4:04Speaker 04

  Like it's no, no, I mean, it's great. I mean, that's the, that's, I believe the same year as Unforgiven.

• 4:09David Sims?

  It's the year after Unforgiven.

• 4:10Speaker 04

  It's a year after Unforgiven, but like when Unforgiven wins the Oscars.

• 4:14David Sims?

  Correct. It's, it's, it's the summer of.

• 4:16Griffin Newman?

  And Unforgiven obviously has one of those like infamously long, modern, uh, box office runs.

• 4:22David Sims?

  Right.

• 4:23Griffin Newman?

  Where it's in theaters for basically a straight year.

• 4:25David Sims?

  In the line of fire is the same vibe of like Clint being like, should I hang it up? Should I do 30 more years?

• 4:30Griffin Newman?

  Right. Um, I mean, everyone has said this, but it just is always interesting to talk about. I know we're nestling like conversation topic and conversation topic here. It is incredible that late period Clint Eastwood is going on 40 years now, that the demarcation point of when you're like, and Clint starts doing his like wind down sunset movies is like in its fourth decade.

• 4:51Speaker 04

  It's hilarious.

• 4:52Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 4:53Speaker 04

  I mean, and I mean, you read the reviews of those films at the time and not just those, like the later ones. I mean, I'm a big fan of true crime and the absolute power.

• 5:03David Sims?

  Well, no, I, I don't love, I love blood work. I think that is one of the best pre Mystic River, oh, Clinton, oh, tour again movies.

• 5:13Griffin Newman?

  You also love having blood work done. You text me and you're just like, I'm riding high.

• 5:17David Sims?

  Taken six miles today. Uh, I, true crime, I remember being kind of overwrought. That's the death penalty one.

• 5:23Speaker 04

  That's the death penalty. It has, uh, it, it, it, it completely shits the bed at, at the very end. Like it's, the climax is just like, we got it. We got to finish the movie, guys.

• 5:31Griffin Newman?

  Lenny and Daniels?

• 5:33David Sims?

  Sorry, who?

• 5:34Griffin Newman?

  Laura Linney and Jeff Daniels. Am I right?

• 5:36David Sims?

  Uh, is, I'm not, I'm going to look it up because I, I think Laura Linney for sure. Have you seen?

• 5:40Speaker 04

  Laura Linney is in absolute power.

• 5:42Griffin Newman?

  That's okay. Well, right. The witch is the one that Daniels is in, right?

• 5:46Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 5:46David Sims?

  That's right.

• 5:47Speaker 04

  Gene Hackman is the.

• 5:48David Sims?

  The president who's getting his dick sucked and, and, and Clint Eastwood is a cat burglar, which is my favorite part of that movie. Um, but true crime is, uh, the one where a huge, yeah, Daniels is really good in blood work.

• 6:01Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 6:02David Sims?

  True crime is the one where a major subplot is that Clint Eastwood, who's a newspaper reporter, I think, cucked Dennis Leary and cannot shut up about it. And when Dennis Leary's like, can I sign you a story? And Clint's like, sorry for fucking your wife. And it's like, Leary's like, I'm just trying to.

• 6:16Speaker 04

  That should, that specifically should be a plot point in two movies a year. Which one has James Woods in it?

• 6:24David Sims?

  James Woods is in True Crime.

• 6:25Speaker 04

  In True Crime, yes.

• 6:26David Sims?

  I cannot remember. He might be either the good guy lawyer or the bad guy lawyer.

• 6:31Speaker 04

  It's been, it's been a while, but anyway.

• 6:33David Sims?

  Anyway.

• 6:34Speaker 04

  These movies I'm allegedly a fan of, and I can't remember who's in them. But, uh, but no, but if you read the reviews at the time, and I remember the reviews were all kind of like, you know, harping on Clint's age and the fact that he's casting himself as, I mean, it's not, he's not really a romantic lead in those movies. But, but there is, I mean, you said that and it makes, makes perfect sense that they said this and it's kind of like, man, if he only looked like that.

• 6:56David Sims?

  Right. He's virile as hell in The Line of Fire or whatever.

• 6:59Griffin Newman?

  But it's the same thing of like looking at stills of Crystal Skull now. And you're like, this movie has jokes about him being old.

• 7:06Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah.

• 7:07Griffin Newman?

  You know, and like same with like Rocky V, like, yeah.

• 7:10David Sims?

  What are some other Malkoviches you love? Cause I was obsessed with Malkovich as a young person because of being John Malkovich, right? And like, that movie, I knew him from like Con Air or and Rounders or whatever. But like that movie is introducing Malkovich as like the prepackaged, like this is the most interesting character actor, right?

• 7:26Speaker 04

  Well, I mean, this is.

• 7:27David Sims?

  Of a generation.

• 7:28Speaker 04

  This is another one of them. I mean, Empire of the Sun.

• 7:30David Sims?

  Right. Which I didn't see until much later.

• 7:32Griffin Newman?

  Is it crazy for me to say, I had this thought while I had seen it before while rewatching it just now. I had the thought like, if this movie were better received, I think he would have won the Oscar. I know he didn't even get nominated, but it feels like this is Malkovich has been nominated.

• 7:48David Sims?

  Oh, he was nominated for it in The Line of Fire?

• 7:49Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 7:50David Sims?

  Then he's the only one.

• 7:51Griffin Newman?

  Places in the Heart, he has two nominations.

• 7:52David Sims?

  Does he have two?

• 7:53Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 7:54Speaker 04

  He was not nominated for.

• 7:55David Sims?

  Places in the Heart was like his breakout, right? That was, yes, and he was nominated.

• 7:59Speaker 04

  And that was a movie where a lot of people just didn't know who the hell he was.

• 8:01David Sims?

  Well, I think.

• 8:02Griffin Newman?

  Right. That's his first movie. Who is this guy performance and this coming after that, right? And it's like on paper, this is a role that almost feels designed to win someone an Oscar. And he is so good in it. And it's like, is it a little too early in his career combined with people being a little tepid on this movie? But watching it now, and we'll get into who beat him. I was like, it's kind of extraordinary. He didn't get nominated, let alone win.

• 8:24Speaker 04

  Wasn't it Connery who beat him? Was it Connery?

• 8:27Griffin Newman?

  Is this the fucking?

• 8:28Speaker 04

  I think that's on Touch Up was here.

• 8:29Griffin Newman?

  Is that true?

• 8:30Speaker 04

  I could be wrong.

• 8:31Griffin Newman?

  Look it up, Dave.

• 8:32David Sims?

  Wait, what, what year? Sorry. Who won Best Supporting Actor?

• 8:34Griffin Newman?

  Yeah. Is this the Connery?

• 8:35Speaker 04

  Eighty seven.

• 8:36David Sims?

  John Connery.

• 8:36Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 8:36Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 8:37Griffin Newman?

  So then no one was gonna fucking be.

• 8:38Speaker 04

  Eighty seven was a big year for my cinephilia and you know, in terms of like the Oscars.

• 8:45Speaker 04

  You know, Last Emperor is one of my all time.

• 8:47Griffin Newman?

  This is I was about to bring up your, what I consider your favorite movie of all time. Am I wrong?

• 8:53Speaker 04

  Last Emperor?

• 8:54Griffin Newman?

  Or at least like the movie that sparked your cinephilia, you've seen a billion times.

• 8:57Speaker 04

  I've seen it a billion times. I've seen it a billion times.

• 9:00Griffin Newman?

  And for you, that's, you've seen it even by Billgas standards a lot.

• 9:04Speaker 04

  There was a period in.

• 9:05Griffin Newman?

  You said a Billgas dozen is a billion.

• 9:07Speaker 04

  There was a period in 1987 when I was, and 1988 too, early, early months of 1988. When like alternating every week between going to see Empire of the Sun in the movie theater and Last Emperor.

• 9:20Griffin Newman?

  Oh.

• 9:21Speaker 04

  It was in DC. They were playing in the two nicest theaters. Uh, Last Emperor was at the Uptown, which is an enormous fucking screen. It's where I think 2001 had its world premiere, maybe. And, and then, um, Empire of the Sun was screening at this place called, at the time, I think it was just called the Cineplex Odeon Cinema, or maybe the KB, it might've been a KB Cinema. But again, these like single screen, old school picture houses. And, um, and after school, I would just, it's just every week or, you know, every other day it was kind of like, well, what should I see net today?

• 9:52Griffin Newman?

  Yeah. Empire or Emperor?

• 9:53Speaker 04

  Yeah. And of course they were both shot in China. So.

• 9:56Griffin Newman?

  I look, I love how deep we are getting into multiple areas right off the bat. I do want to just quickly say, this is Blank Check with Griffin and David. I'm Griffin.

• 10:04Speaker 04

  I'm David.

• 10:05Griffin Newman?

  It's a podcast about filmographies, directors who have massive success early on in their careers and are given a series of blank checks to make whatever crazy passion products they want. Sometimes those checks clear and sometimes they bounce baby. This is a mini series on the first half of Steven Spielberg's career, repaying the balance of a thing we started seven years ago. It is called Podrastic Cast. Today we're talking about Empire of the Sun, one of his kind of infamous bounces.

• 10:29Speaker 04

  Would you call, I wouldn't call this a bounce, but definitely a, um, not, not the success maybe he hoped for.

• 10:34Griffin Newman?

  Received at the time, and I remember, look, we, we mourn the death of the old box office mojo, interface and features very often on the show. A thing I used to love to do was how easy their dropdown was to be able to adjust for inflation in various different ways in any year. And I remember at some point. Probably in the late 2000s, being like, if you adjust to modern dollars, how many Spielberg movies don't make 100 million? And I was surprised by how many of the films that are considered flopped would have made 100 today. And in my memory, the only ones that wouldn't have made 100 were This, Always, and Sugarland.

• 11:17Speaker 04

  That like, 1941 would make 100 million in today's dollars or whatever.

• 11:20Griffin Newman?

  This is off of a memory, a thing I cannot source.

• 11:23Speaker 04

  Well, there is.

• 11:23Griffin Newman?

  It didn't lose money.

• 11:26Speaker 04

  It was, it was, it was, it was coolly received. I mean, I remember this. Um, it, it had kind of an initial wave of appreciation because the National Board of Review gave it Best Picture and Best Director.

• 11:38Griffin Newman?

  Which is often a weird kind of death knell of like them being early, they call it, people go like, does that mean it's a serious frontrunner? And then the thing like Peters, like I think of like Burton getting the Sweeney Todd Best Director Award. And people being like, holy shit, Burton's a player. And then you're like, wipeout.

• 11:54Speaker 04

  Yeah. Yeah. It, it's a strange thing. I mean, and I don't remember if the film had even opened by the time it won that award. Um, because obviously Spielberg at this point is, I mean, as far as box office goes, he's God, right? He's coming off, you know, a number of Oscar nominations and things like that. There is this anticipation that he's eventually going to make something that, that wins. Um, and I think Empire of the Sun initially looks like the kind of film that could be that movie.

• 12:23Griffin Newman?

  Absolutely.

• 12:24Speaker 04

  Right. Uh, cause, cause you know, Color Purple, I mean, I'm sure you guys have gone over all this stuff, but like Color Purple, you know, gets all these nominations. He doesn't get nominated, even though he wins the DGA.

• 12:35Griffin Newman?

  It is this weird, uh, and we should say our guest today is Bill Goeberry, the great Bill Goeberry, returning to the show.

• 12:41Speaker 04

  New York Magazine.

• 12:42Griffin Newman?

  Magazine. And, and is this now Bill Go's induction into the five timers club? Finally, having been on this podcast, the average number of times he watches a movie that he hates. The low end, the fewest times he ever watches any movie.

• 12:57David Sims?

  This is your fifth episode.

• 12:58Griffin Newman?

  Hell, yeah.

• 12:58David Sims?

  Dunkirk, Black Hat, Lorenzo Zun, Ferrari, and now Empire of the Sun.

• 13:04Griffin Newman?

  I feel like these are all very like important. You've never been on a passive movie for you.

• 13:08Speaker 04

  Yeah, you guys don't ask me for anything that I'm, I'm.

• 13:12Griffin Newman?

  They're all like your, your major guys, your favorite work by one of those guys or both.

• 13:17Speaker 04

  My guys, these are very much my guy, my guys. Um, but, uh, what were we talking about?

• 13:22Griffin Newman?

  Oh, the Color Purple thing. Right. Cause yeah, it's like Color Purple is a big success at the box office, but it gets a ton of nominations. He is snubbed and then it is historically up until that point in time, the most nominations without a single win. And this weird balance that we've been charting of like, Jaws gets best picture nomination, doesn't get director. Close Encounters gets director, but not picture. Raiders is the first time it gets both. He's basically always only winning technical awards for his movies.

• 13:50David Sims?

  Yes, he's seen as a great technician.

• 13:52Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 13:53Speaker 04

  And he wins, uh, he wins the Thalberg at some point, sometime around now.

• 13:56David Sims?

  That's true. As kind of a like this, the again.

• 13:59Griffin Newman?

  Thank you for the business.

• 14:00David Sims?

  An insult from the Spielberg, uh, to Spielberg.

• 14:02Speaker 04

  And he almost drops it. I remember he almost dropped it on the podium.

• 14:05Griffin Newman?

  But Color Purple was it like the first movie of his where they sort of did like the, here's it's nominated in every category. Basically we're treating it like a legitimate best picture contender, except for you.

• 14:17Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 14:17Griffin Newman?

  It does feel like.

• 14:19Speaker 04

  Steven Spielberg, who clearly had nothing to do with the quality of the film.

• 14:20Griffin Newman?

  Every time they were sort of going like, not yet, hold your horses.

• 14:25David Sims?

  He won the Thalberg the year after Color Purple and the year before this.

• 14:29Speaker 04

  Right. So, yeah, cause I remember that was a, I remember that felt like kind of a consolation prize in a way. And, and there was this general vibe that somehow the Oscars didn't like Steven Spielberg. I mean, you know how these like memes take over. It, it's funny now because now there's this vibe that like any Spielberg film will like, get an Oscar nomination, at least in the, in the nineties, early 2000s, there was definitely that vibe.

• 14:52Griffin Newman?

  But even now it feels like they take him for granted a little bit where you like, I, I.

• 14:58Speaker 04

  The only one film of his is ever one best picture.

• 15:00Griffin Newman?

  Yeah. And the Golden Globes, uh. The year of the post, Seth Meyers comes out at the beginning and says like, the post, a film Steven Spielberg made about the importance of journalism against presidential crimes starring Tom Hanks and Meryl Streep. And then they have an actor come out, holding like 40 awards. And he goes, not yet, we can't give them all the awards yet. And then that movie blanks.

• 15:22Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 15:23Griffin Newman?

  It doesn't win a single award.

• 15:24Speaker 04

  By the way, I just rewatched it again. That movie rules.

• 15:26David Sims?

  That movie does rule. I'm a huge fan of it. But I do feel like the reaction at the time was the reaction that he usually gets now. Kind of the reaction that John Williams gets. I watched that Disney documentary about John Williams where it's like, oh, he's so good. And he's got all his Oscars on his shelf. It's like, he hasn't won an Oscar since 1993. Because the Academy is always just like, yeah, you did a good job again. Fine.

• 15:48Speaker 04

  I mean, he did win a ton.

• 15:50David Sims?

  He won a bunch. But like the thing was that Williams won Oscars for, okay, Fiddler on the Roof. Like a bit of an odd early Oscar where it's like adaptation of a song score. But then it's like Jaws ET, Jaws, Star Wars ET Schindler's List. Where it's like, he won for big iconic scores. He should have won for Catch Me If You Can. That's, that's, that's a miss. Like, there's a couple of other scores where like, I think at that point, they were just like, well, we don't want to give it to him again.

• 16:16Griffin Newman?

  I mean, when Munich was coming out, there was this Time Magazine cover. Announcing that film, which he had made on such a quick turnaround, like started filming it after War of the Worlds came out, already had it done by December. And he openly says in that, I kind of want the third best director trophy. Like, he openly admits, like, I'm jealous of like, sort of like Hawks and Ford and the guys who have gotten more than two and being in that realm. And it feels like him saying that outwardly. Made the Academy go like, if you want a third one, you really have to fucking prove it to us. And Munich that year was like seen as the early frontrunner and then became like, a picture director also ran.

• 16:54David Sims?

  Munich is too alienating.

• 16:56Griffin Newman?

  Same thing with Lincoln though. Like, a year out, people were like, well, he's gonna win his third.

• 17:00Speaker 04

  He should have won for Lincoln. I love Lincoln. And, and I, I was very mixed on Munich when it first came out. I, I've come to appreciate it more, but I do. It does feel like they shot the first draft of the script for me with Munich. Lincoln is extraordinary. Lincoln is wonderful. And I was really surprised that Lincoln got so little.

• 17:19David Sims?

  But because it felt too obvious for them. I think they were like, really? We're gonna give it to the sort of homework movie?

• 17:23Speaker 04

  It did get Oscar nominations. I was surprised that like, like it got so little run in like the critics awards.

• 17:30David Sims?

  Yes.

• 17:31Speaker 04

  That was my first year voting in.

• 17:33David Sims?

  At the critic circle?

• 17:34Speaker 04

  Yeah, that was my first year voting in New York film critic circle. And there were almost no votes for Lincoln.

• 17:39David Sims?

  Well, Lincoln, right. Daniel Day Lewis won best actor. And that was the years you're a dark 31. Now, I wasn't a member then, but I feel like that's a movie that came on very late. And just like American Hustle the year after, which we, in my opinion, shamefully gave best picture.

• 17:54Griffin Newman?

  I know where you're talking about. Movies age perfectly.

• 17:56Speaker 04

  Were you there for American? I have a good American Hustle, uh, New York Film Critic Circle win story for you, which I can't share. I cannot share on microphone.

• 18:05David Sims?

  But like, like two years in a row, the critic circle went for kind of the last movie to screen, right? Like the movie that came in right at the end.

• 18:13Speaker 04

  Reese Witherspoon.

• 18:13David Sims?

  Get our attention and it worked.

• 18:15Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 18:15David Sims?

  A strategy that I feel like doesn't really work anymore.

• 18:17Speaker 04

  It does not work anymore. They tried it with, um, I mean, it's, it's, it's so funny because we're always thinking, oh, they're, they're scheming to do this. But in so many cases, the movies are like barely finished. But they tried that with Django Unchained. Uh, they tried it with, of course, Stacy's Silence.

• 18:34David Sims?

  They did? I remember I went to that screening.

• 18:35Speaker 04

  Yeah, I remember. That was a Sunday screening.

• 18:37David Sims?

  That's a thinker.

• 18:37Speaker 04

  I saw it twice that day.

• 18:38Griffin Newman?

  Right. That's a movie you need like five months to come around to.

• 18:42Speaker 04

  People were away for Thanksgiving and then the, I think we were voting like the next day or two days later or something. And I remember talking to people and most people hadn't seen it. Cause they were like, well, I was, I was like, you know, I was away for Thanksgiving.

• 18:54David Sims?

  And it's just not a movie where you walk out being like, well, I'm sold. You know, like, I love Silence. I think it's a great movie. I don't think it's a movie you need. You need like two months.

• 19:02Griffin Newman?

  But I, I talk about, we talk about this a lot.

• 19:04David Sims?

  Like staring into a pool of water.

• 19:06Griffin Newman?

  I agree. We talk about this a lot, but like, you know, the limited pool of like people who've won the Palme d'Or twice or have won like more than two Oscars, right? I'm like, I feel like there's this, whether it's conscious or not, sort of feeling from those boards of like, or at least this should be the standard. If you've already won that many times, you know, it's like. It either should be, this is so clearly above and beyond what you've previously done. It's executed at an exponentially higher level than the last time we awarded you. Or it is so different from what you've done before. We didn't know you had this in you. And I think at this point in our current day era, Spielberg is a little bit of victim of having proven that he could do anything. Like Schindler, they were like, you know what?

• 19:50Griffin Newman?

  We didn't know you could make something this somber and restrained. And then Saving Private Ryan, they were like, we didn't know you could make something this kind of visceral and like disturbing and, you know, but still with the uplift. Now, as opposed to the first half of his career that we're covering now, where it feels like, you even just look at the eighties as a microcosm for him, right? He makes E.T. and the Indiana Jones trilogy, the like peaks of commercial cinema. And then in between those, he's like doing experiments that the public is like, eh. You know, Color Purple, Always, Empire of the Sun. Like it's a little like back and forth where they're like, we prefer you doing the Spielberg thing. By the time he gets to the nineties, people are like, you know what? He can do anything he wants. We don't question him.

• 20:33Griffin Newman?

  We're not going to like every movie, but there's no like guard up against, he shouldn't try to make a historical drama. He shouldn't try to make a film about adults, et cetera.

• 20:41Speaker 04

  There's, there's, I think part of it is also Spielberg is himself a little unmoored during this time. The other thing I remember from this period is, you know, Spielberg actually enters a period that, I mean, I don't want to call it a period of decline, but there is a period when he's not kind of the king of the roost, right? Um, I mean, it kind of starts with this one. Uh, Always is, Always is terrible.

• 21:04Griffin Newman?

  Um, I kind of like it. I just saw it for the first time. I kind of like it. It, I, it does not.

• 21:10Speaker 04

  Every time I watch it, I'm like, I'm going to like it this time. I bet I'm going to like it this time. And I'm like, no, sorry. I've seen it three times. Um, but.

• 21:19Griffin Newman?

  That's actually, that's.

• 21:20Speaker 04

  I know, that's, that's really, that's, that's, that's my equivalent of a Leonard Maltin bomb.

• 21:24Griffin Newman?

  That's like turning it off after 10 minutes for most people.

• 21:27Speaker 04

  Um, first 10 minutes of Always are really good. Always starts pretty strong. It actually, that's what it is. It's every time I put it on, it's like, it starts and I'm like, oh, this is really good. I'm going to really like this. And then it just completely falls apart.

• 21:38Griffin Newman?

  Where do you stand on Last Crusade?

• 21:40Speaker 04

  Last Crusade might be my least favorite of the Indiana Jones movies. Because it's too kind of like straightforward and silly. That's the one where the ending doesn't work for me. A lot of people hate the endings of the other ones, but like the.

• 21:54Speaker 04

  It just, the cup, I like, I like, you know, this is the cup of a carpenter. Like, I like, I love that. That sense chills up my spine. But like, that whole finale and then with the night of the round table and all that. I, for some reason, also because, you know, there was this period where it seemed like there was such a kind of weird religiosity in Spielberg's movies and that one kind of just brought it home. I do like the movie. I've seen it many times. I've taken my son to see it at like whenever it's Metrograph.

• 22:22David Sims?

  It's very enjoyable.

• 22:22Speaker 04

  It's a very fun movie.

• 22:23Griffin Newman?

  It is my favorite, but I'm also like, I don't think it's particularly deep film. I think it's just exemplary Spielberg entertainment.

• 22:29Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 22:30Griffin Newman?

  And it's very on my comedic wavelength.

• 22:33Speaker 04

  Yeah, and it's, I mean, it is, it is a comedy. It's actually maybe the only time he's really pulled off a comedy.

• 22:39Griffin Newman?

  You know, we were talking about this and that is a great take.

• 22:42David Sims?

  We had this argument on 1941, not argument, we, I just sort of pointed out that like, basically, all of his worst movies are his cleanest attempts at comedies.

• 22:51Speaker 04

  Right.

• 22:51David Sims?

  1941, The Terminal, arguably always.

• 22:54Speaker 04

  He can't do comedy and he can't do romance.

• 22:56Griffin Newman?

  No, we were.

• 22:57Speaker 04

  Which is why always stinks.

• 22:58Griffin Newman?

  We were saying what's weird is that he's really good at applying comedy to non-comedy movies.

• 23:03Speaker 04

  Oh, absolutely.

• 23:04Griffin Newman?

  But when the assignment is full comedy, it doesn't work. I think Last Crusade, you are right, is his most successful comedy. And I feel like a lot of Indiana Jones purists and people who are the right age to grow up with them, talk about it in a kind of Return of the Jedi way, where they're like, that one comes out when I'm 17 and it felt kiddish and I was over it. And I think a lot of that is, it's very silly, but it's successful at being silly.

• 23:28Speaker 04

  At the time, it also felt to me like, and, you know, whenever I have this kind of take about a filmmaker, I realize I'm totally talking out my ass because it takes them a long time to get these projects off the ground. But it did feel like he had had a couple of flops and he was kind of going back to what worked. And he's, all right, here's a, here's an Indiana Jones sequel. Which, you know, maybe there was some of that, but, you know, knowing how these films get made and how long it takes, it's, you know, it's, it's more complicated than that. I will say, I have this, I've probably, I've probably talked to one of you guys about this, but I have this unified field theory of Spielberg.

• 24:05David Sims?

  Let's do this. This is the place to debut our Spielberg mini-series.

• 24:09Speaker 04

  No, I mean, I've, I've written about this in a couple of places, but I have this theory that early period of his career.

• 24:18Speaker 04

  You know, 70s, 80s, that his films really can be best be understood as being from the point of view of a child. And then there's this, the back half of his career, they make a lot more sense if you see them through the eyes of a parent.

• 24:33David Sims?

  I, I

• 24:34Speaker 04

  And I think, and one of the reasons

• 24:35David Sims?

  100% on board.

• 24:36Speaker 04

  And, and the fact that, I know, I know you guys are not fans of Hook, but I think Hook, Hook is the pivot point. It halfway through Hook, Spielberg realizes

• 24:46David Sims?

  I must put away childish things.

• 24:47Speaker 04

  Yes. And that's what Hook is about. And I later found out, because I had this idea. And then later I found out, or I was told that it's during the making of Hook, or right around then, that he reconciles with his dad.

• 24:58David Sims?

  Right. And kind of gets a fuller understanding of Seth Rogen's role in his dad's, you know, marriage falling apart and all that.

• 25:06Griffin Newman?

  I think you are right. And we will spend our time debating Hook in a couple of weeks. I will say, my exact problem with Hook is I feel like he makes that realization, like halfway through making the movie, and that realization comes with, I shouldn't have made this movie.

• 25:21Speaker 04

  I mean, he does not like that movie at all.

• 25:23Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 25:23David Sims?

  And Jurassic Park is about a guy learning to be a parent.

• 25:26Griffin Newman?

  Jurassic Park is the much better version of what the story that Hook is trying to tell.

• 25:30David Sims?

  Because Hook is him like monologuing to his son, being like, I should just play baseball with you. And I'm just like, can we have a sword fight?

• 25:36Speaker 04

  But, but like, if you look at, no, you're absolutely right. I mean, Jurassic Park, if you think about, yeah, I mean, it's all about Sam Neill learning to become a dad. Like, that's really kind of the full flower of Spielberg, Spielberg's change in perspective.

• 25:49Griffin Newman?

  And it's also so crazy, because it's like, this roller coaster movie that he was like, can I slip in like 10% of an emotional spine underneath this? And it's so kind of underplayed and unspoken. And it, yet it's so personal and revealing and deeply felt.

• 26:02Speaker 04

  10 years earlier, that movie would have been all about those kids.

• 26:05Griffin Newman?

  Correct.

• 26:05Speaker 04

  Right. And, and in fact, as I was rewatching Lincoln, there's that little moment I totally forgotten about where he, where, you know, Abraham Lincoln slaps his son, played by Joseph Gordon Levitt. And I was thinking about, there are actually a surprising number of slaps in Spielberg movies. You could really do a fun montage of them. But then I was thinking

• 26:25Griffin Newman?

  This has a huge one.

• 26:27Speaker 04

  Well, yes, absolutely. But I was thinking about the slap in Jaws, right? The mother who slaps Roy Shadur.

• 26:36David Sims?

  At the hospital.

• 26:37Speaker 04

  Yeah. And it's a great, great, I mean, great moment in Jaws, iconic moment in Jaws. But, you know, who do we identify with there? I mean, we identify with Roy Shadur because he's obviously the protagonist. But really, what we're identifying there is his humiliation, right? So it's very much like, almost like the humiliation of a little boy who's been slapped. And then the later films, it's like-

• 26:55David Sims?

  What are some other slaps?

• 26:58Speaker 04

  Well, watching the Joseph Gordon Levitt scene, I was kind of like, you don't really feel his, like, you don't really feel Joseph Gordon Levitt's humiliation. You feel Abraham Lincoln's, you know, anxiety.

• 27:09Griffin Newman?

  That's a pivot point.

• 27:10Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 27:11David Sims?

  God, Lincoln is so good. But I mean, I mean, everything about Lincoln is good. Every single thing, in my opinion, about Lincoln is good. But all the best stuff is just all his cabinet. I mean, I think I said this on our episode. Anytime they're like, what should we do? This is the most stressful shit in the world. And he's like, there was an old mill. And they're like, god damn it, will you stop with your fucking stories? You homie stupid lawyer.

• 27:34Griffin Newman?

  One time I found a pencil on a porch.

• 27:36Speaker 04

  I was watching it.

• 27:37David Sims?

  The fuck are you talking about? A man had a bucket of water and they're like, it's a civil war.

• 27:41Griffin Newman?

  Is this metaphorical or literal?

• 27:44Speaker 04

  I was watching with my son and he had such a great time watching it.

• 27:48David Sims?

  It's so fun.

• 27:49Speaker 04

  It's another-

• 27:50David Sims?

  It's about dirtbags, you know?

• 27:52Speaker 04

  It's another instance of him applying comedy in a situation where comedy would not- I mean, that's kind of the old Spielberg coming through, it's like, let's make this fun.

• 27:59David Sims?

  Spader, Hawks, like Three Stooges, Tim Blake Nelson shit.

• 28:03Speaker 04

  Yeah. It's also the original, I mean, it's not the original Oppenheimer, but like, it definitely has that Oppenheimer vibe of like-

• 28:09Griffin Newman?

  What if every single person is someone deeply important as an actor?

• 28:13Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. I love the thing you said about Oppenheimer, Griffin, on your episode, I think it was you, where you said, everybody in this movie has at some point been number one on a crush sheet.

• 28:24Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 28:24Speaker 04

  Which is, which is a great way to put it.

• 28:26Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, yeah. I, I, I love everything you're saying. And, and, and the sort of prism you're putting around this movie, because this is, I think, a big turning point movie as well. He has not yet done the perspective shift to that of the parent, but this feels like the movie of him trying to kill the child inside of him.

• 28:45David Sims?

  Well, it's a movie about the-

• 28:46Griffin Newman?

  It feels like him being like, I need to move on from this.

• 28:48David Sims?

  Well, it's a movie about the loss of innocence. I mean, it's a movie about the death of childhood, as is The Color Purple, but this much more explicitly.

• 28:55Griffin Newman?

  But the difference to me is that in this one, it feels like he's recognizing, I'm still like viewing this too much from the perspective of the child, rather than being able to look back on childhood as an adult. And that's what he's really trying to like change here. I feel like we, we commit to doing this. We put our schedule on the spreadsheet. I like typed your name in from months before we even reached out to you, where I was just like, that feels like a good fit. And I know Bill is one of the big, like, this is his most undersung movie defenders.

• 29:28Speaker 04

  Well, it's also, formally, the movie is so interesting to me because Spielberg has his vernacular, right? I mean, Spielberg has his language. He has his, his favorite shots. You know, he has the crane shots and the, you know, the tracking shots. And, and this film feels to me like him asking himself, how can I tell this darker, more mature story using my stuff? Using my language? And because there's a, I don't know if you guys have ever seen, there's a, there's a, there's a one hour making of, of this movie.

• 30:01Griffin Newman?

  Of this?

• 30:02Speaker 04

  Yeah, available on like the Blu-ray. I, I used to have this movie on LaserDisc.

• 30:06David Sims?

  My Digibook here, which also has a-

• 30:08Speaker 04

  It's in there. That's the one I have.

• 30:08David Sims?

  Warner at War DVD.

• 30:10Speaker 04

  I have not watched. That, that looks really interesting.

• 30:11David Sims?

  That is an Amblin production and 40, 47 minutes long. I bet it rules.

• 30:15Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 30:16Speaker 04

  Yeah. But it, uh, in this documentary, you know, you see him like directing these scenes. And it's, it's really impressive. I mean, the, the way they completely, you know, made over Shanghai to look like Shanghai back then. But then, you know, you, you see him shooting the scene at the camp, which is the kind of, the, the big, you know, emotional moment in the film where Jim sees the pilot, you know, the, the plane flying by.

• 30:39David Sims?

  Cadillac of the skies.

• 30:40Speaker 04

  Uh, yeah, Cadillac of the skies. And you see Spielberg directing Christian Bale and, um, you know, he tells him, he tells him, you're in a real cool action figure shot. Like that, those are the words he uses. And it is true. Like that's like, he's got that kind of, you know, that stance. And it's so interesting to me that, that Spielberg uses that.

• 31:04Speaker 04

  That language to define that shot because it is a cool shot, but it's such a dark moment. Right. And you see, and you also, I mean, John Williams is a scorer for this, obviously, which is magnificent as it always is. But in some ways, it's, it's like his most, it's his, feels like his most classical score to me.

• 31:21David Sims?

  Well, the biggest motif in it is one that he did not write.

• 31:24Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 31:24David Sims?

  Right. It's, it's what the him at the beginning of the film, which gets repeated in so many ways. Yeah.

• 31:29Speaker 04

  But then also like, it's, it's kind of this, like, it has this very jaunty playful theme. But then under it are these sort of very dark chords running through like, it really is Spielberg and his people, including John Williams. Trying to take like what they know about how to put together a movie and like just tip it just a little bit so that the story becomes a lot darker.

• 31:51David Sims?

  But then he makes Schindler's List and that I feel like erases this movie's in everyone's mind because that's a sort of more successful or more broadly like.

• 31:59Speaker 04

  Look back as this was the dry run before he totally cracked it on Schindler.

• 32:02Speaker 04

  But he also said, I'm not, but the other thing I remember on Schindler's List was he really restrained himself. Like, that's the thing that people will always.

• 32:09David Sims?

  He says that, but he's a fucking liar. Schindler's List is so liquid entertaining, even when it's so upsetting. Like.

• 32:16Speaker 04

  It is, but, but I will say at the time it did feel really restrained.

• 32:19David Sims?

  I get that.

• 32:20Speaker 04

  And, and, and they talked about how, I mean, he actually talked about how like technically speaking, he limited the amount. Yeah. Like he limited, you know, the amount of tracks he had.

• 32:29David Sims?

  But it still has incredible wonders and.

• 32:32Speaker 04

  Especially compared to the shit we get today.

• 32:35David Sims?

  The other thing about Spielberg, when I make my whole two wolves inside me. Well, but that's the, okay. Well, pinning that, but that's the whole wolves inside me thing about Schindler where I'm just like, this movie is so goddamn entertaining. And like, should there be entertainment about something like this?

• 32:49Speaker 04

  Well, this is the Hanukkah argument, but I mean, the whole thing with that movie is, and it feels almost like a reaction to people being like, not quite on Empire of the Sun. Schindler, the infamous thing is that he was like, I won't storyboard this. I need to like go there and be in the place and like engage with the emotions and feel it out rather than doing like.

• 33:07Griffin Newman?

  Puppet show kind of controlling shit. And that's the part of it that I think felt very restrained to him is he didn't allow himself the time to like math it out in advance. We, we, we did our color purple episode very recently. Great Denise Mobley as our guest. And she said this line, I thought summed it up really well, where she's like, the weird cognitive dissonance in this movie is like him shooting sexual assault scenes like they're ET. And to some degree, it feels like the, the locker room bully confrontation with the, in Fableman's. Right. Where he's just like, I don't understand why I make everything look like this. Right? That like, everything becomes too magical if I shoot it. This feels like the first movie where he successfully, to your point of what you're

• 33:50Griffin Newman?

  getting at, figures out how to shift his aesthetic a little bit so that it doesn't feel too like wonderful. And even just, you know, the most recent episode in weird record order we did right before this, earlier this week was 1941. And 1941 has that thing where you're just like, Jesus Christ, this is too expensive. You can't stop thinking about how big the production is. Hyperactive. The resources, so much going on. This has these insane long one-ers in like huge environments with hundreds of extras and planes flying overhead and knowing that stuff is logistically impossible. And yet I think it is the first time in his career, he can orchestrate something like that and not make it feel like he's playing with toys, not make it feel like he's showing

• 34:33Griffin Newman?

  off, make it feel like it's actually just kind of like immersive environmental recreation. I'd seen this once before. Our friend Connor Ratliff had never seen it and they were playing it at Metrograph, maybe like 10 years ago, a little less, very shortly after Metrograph opened and was like, this is what I want to do for my birthday. It is a very funny birthday movie. But he was like, it's a Spielberg blind spot. So everyone should come see Empire of the Sun with me. And we all were just kind of bummed out afterwards. But I was like, you know, I've heard this recent, people are kind of revisiting it and reclaiming it. And I saw it and I was like, yeah, that's interesting. That's interesting. I see what he was getting at, doesn't totally work. Watched it again today, like 15 minutes in, I was like, is this a masterpiece? Do I now put this on his top tier? Which Spielberg top tier is like.

• 35:18Griffin Newman?

  Is ridiculous. Is ridiculous and also is big. It's like, how many tiers are you creating of like? Unquestionable masterpieces versus near masterpieces or whatever. But there were a couple of things that really like unlocked for me, especially watching 1941 and Color Purple recently in relation to this. But the like Spielberg face, right? The sort of famous image of the Spielberg wonder face, the overhead, looking up at whatever.

• 35:46David Sims?

  His O face.

• 35:47Griffin Newman?

  His O face. This movie, even like thinking about him directing Christian Bale in that way. You have those moments where Christian Bale is doing the Spielberg face at the plane overhead, and yet he is now shooting him from below. He's tilting up. You're not in the perspective of the thing that the kid is looking at in wonder. You are on the ground, looking at a kid look up at something unseen ominously. And it's like, fuck, he's figuring it out. You're watching in real time, him figuring out how to, as you said, shift his language a little bit, subvert it a little bit, successfully create different types of emotion without just making everything feel magical and entertaining. It is the weird balance of him of like, he, it is hard for him to make something that

• 36:32Griffin Newman?

  is not entertaining. He has like such kind of like showman storyteller bones in him. That, right.

• 36:38David Sims?

  It's his Midas touch thing or whatever. It's like a bit of a curse sometimes.

• 36:41Griffin Newman?

  He wrestles with. And I think in this movie, to a certain degree, he's working so hard to fight against that, that that must have been frustrating to people at the time.

• 36:54Griffin Newman?

  David?

• 36:54David Sims?

  Yes.

• 36:55Griffin Newman?

  Mmm.

• 36:58David Sims?

  Is that the Cine's cow?

• 37:00Griffin Newman?

  The Cine's cow is back.

• 37:01David Sims?

  Haven't heard from her in a while.

• 37:02Griffin Newman?

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

• 37:07David Sims?

  Okay.

• 37:08Griffin Newman?

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

• 37:12David Sims?

  Wow.

• 37:13Griffin Newman?

  The cow likes chicken.

• 37:15David Sims?

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

• 37:21Griffin 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, one of my favorite movies of the year.

• 37:35David Sims?

  Absolutely.

• 37:36Griffin Newman?

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

• 37:42David Sims?

  That is a line in the movie.

• 37:43Griffin Newman?

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

• 37:45David Sims?

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

• 37:50Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 37:51David Sims?

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

• 37:56Griffin Newman?

  Uh huh.

• 37:57David Sims?

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

• 37:59Griffin Newman?

  Performances, friend of the show.

• 38:00David Sims?

  Friend of the show, Zach Cherry.

• 38:02Griffin Newman?

  Zach Cherry.

• 38:03David Sims?

  Also in it.

• 38:04Griffin Newman?

  This is true.

• 38:05David Sims?

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

• 38:15Griffin Newman?

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

• 38:29David Sims?

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

• 38:34Griffin Newman?

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

• 38:46David Sims?

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

• 38:58Griffin Newman?

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

• 39:03David Sims?

  Damn right.

• 39:08Griffin Newman?

  David?

• 39:08David Sims?

  Yes?

• 39:09Griffin 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.

• 39:30David 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.

• 39:50Griffin 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.

• 40:06David 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.

• 40:40Griffin Newman?

  David?

• 40:41David Sims?

  Yes?

• 40:41Griffin Newman?

  Ugh.

• 40:42David Sims?

  Uh-oh.

• 40:43Griffin Newman?

  It's November.

• 40:44David Sims?

  Ah!

• 40:46Griffin Newman?

  And you know what that means. The old stereotype about November.

• 40:48David Sims?

  Turkeys?

• 40:49Griffin Newman?

  One long sprint to the finish line.

• 40:51David Sims?

  Oh, of course.

• 40:52Griffin Newman?

  Packed schedule, questionable food choices, and somehow a social calendar that got way fuller than you planned. And I ain't talking about Sam Fuller. We're not covering him yet in the podcast.

• 41:01David Sims?

  No, although maybe we should.

• 41:02Griffin Newman?

  We might get there eventually.

• 41:03David Sims?

  I can't remember. Big Red One. You call it the Big Red Podcast.

• 41:07Griffin Newman?

  Listen, when things get complicated, not when life is easy, when you got time for a whole routine, right now, when everything is full and something has to give one scoop cold water every morning before anything else, as I like to say, scoop there it is.

• 41:20David Sims?

  You do like to say that every morning. You text me, scoop there it is. And that means I now know that you had your AG once.

• 41:27Griffin Newman?

  And I'm awake.

• 41:28David Sims?

  Uh, but yeah, you're, I know you're, you're a daily AG1 user and it's basically the, uh, the glue that holds your internal organs together at this point.

• 41:36Griffin Newman?

  It's not just marketing. AG1 Next Gen is backed by four separate gold standard clinical trials, not weekend a study.

• 41:43David Sims?

  Thank you for that.

• 41:44Griffin Newman?

  Four independent studies with key nutrient levels improved within three months of consistent use. This is the thing I like about AG1. They're not resting on their laurels. They constantly work to better themselves.

• 41:56David Sims?

  Um, yes, AG1, they've got now AG1 Pro.

• 42:00Griffin Newman?

  For the professionals.

• 42:01David Sims?

  Same daily drink now with a performance and recovery layer built in. So you've got five grams of Cre vitalis, a premium German made creatine monohydrate, and one of the most studied compounds in sports science, plus C A H M B for muscle production and zinc carnosine for gut support.

• 42:19Griffin Newman?

  Thank God.

• 42:20David Sims?

  Next Gen is the foundation. Pro adds what your body needs to recover.

• 42:24Griffin Newman?

  You might be having some big meals this November. AG1 is what you need to keep your gut in check. Keep things, as I like to put it, regular.

• 42:32David Sims?

  Yes. So for a limited time, visit drinkag1.com/chek and get a free immune support bundle, including omega three fish oil and vitamin D three plus K two with your first subscription of AG1 Next Gen or AG1 Pro. That's drinkag1.com/chek. And after checkout, be sure to let them know that Belank check sent you.

• 43:02David Sims?

  I want to resolve a few pins.

• 43:03Griffin Newman?

  Please take some pins out of the board, but I think this movie is excellent.

• 43:07David Sims?

  I think John Williams should have won the Oscar for best score on top of his, his wins that he I think largely deserved already. I think he should have won for Home Alone over Dances with Wolves. That's might be my most controversial take.

• 43:24Speaker 04

  John Barry, though.

• 43:25David Sims?

  The John Barry score for Dance with Wolves is very, very good.

• 43:27Griffin Newman?

  And, and hey, by the way, let's put a pin Kevin Costner. As we're taking some pins out, let's put some other ones in.

• 43:32David Sims?

  The Home Alone score, I think, has endured in ways maybe people didn't see coming in 1991. Anyway.

• 43:38Griffin Newman?

  I agree. And also you and I say that might be the single greatest, like, power boost of a score to a movie ever.

• 43:46David Sims?

  Right. It's a, it is a huge, yes, you're right. It's a huge help to that movie. I don't think he should have won for Saving Private Ryan. I think that score is very good, very sort of stately and, you know,

• 43:56Speaker 04

  Hans Zimmer should have won for Thin Red Line.

• 43:59David Sims?

  That's what's crazy. Hans Zimmer should have won for The Thin Red Line, although I think that score is sort of oddly deployed in the movie. It's an amazing score or it's unusually deployed in the movie.

• 44:08Griffin Newman?

  Well, it's the classic Malick thing where it was like scored and then he recut it and put pieces where they weren't written.

• 44:13David Sims?

  Right. And Zimmer's like, what the fuck did you do?

• 44:15Griffin Newman?

  But you listen to it as an album and it's one of the most unbelievable pieces.

• 44:18Speaker 04

  It's an incredible score and it becomes like the go to corporate trip. There's a, there's a funny story. I don't know if you guys have read this new biography of Terrence Malick that came out by John Bleece.

• 44:28David Sims?

  I want to read it.

• 44:28Speaker 04

  It's great. It's a really, really great. And he got a lot of access. Uh, but there's a very funny story in it about how, uh, Disney uses the score for The Thin Red Line. When they, uh, when they do the Pearl Harbor trailer.

• 44:43David Sims?

  It's what makes the Pearl Harbor trailer look like a fucking Best Picture winner.

• 44:47Griffin Newman?

  When people thought, right.

• 44:48Speaker 04

  And, and they didn't, they didn't get permission to do this.

• 44:51David Sims?

  Oh, really?

• 44:52Speaker 04

  And then years later, there was something, I, I wish I remembered this specific part of the story, but years later, there's something Malick needs from Disney and one of his assistants is like, you know, they're, they're being pains in the neck about it. And he, and, and he says,

• 45:08David Sims?

  He's like, play the card. Right.

• 45:09Speaker 04

  He says to them, send them a message with two words, Pearl Harbor.

• 45:13David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 45:13Speaker 04

  And immediately he gets what he wants.

• 45:14Griffin Newman?

  This is like the Ernie Sabella Pumba story I've told many times.

• 45:17David Sims?

  As if, like, Malick isn't just some, like, wide-eyed innocent wandering through the wheat. He knows how to play the game.

• 45:23Speaker 04

  This guy has been in the industry forever.

• 45:25David Sims?

  Um, I just, Life is Beautiful won that year, which is like an odd win, in my opinion. Um, I think Randy Newman's Pleasantville score is better. I think Saving Private Ryan is better. I think Thin Red Line is, is probably your actual winner there. He, he, in my opinion, all right, he probably was never gonna win in 2001 because Lord of the Rings wins. Uh, for best score then. Lord of the Rings, the Fellowship of the Ring.

• 45:48Speaker 04

  And that was for AI score?

• 45:49David Sims?

  He's nominated for both AI and Harry Potter. It's like the kind of one-two punch of like, Williams can give you an iconic theme for like a big family movie. He can also do his AI score. One of his most beautiful scores. So sad.

• 46:03Speaker 04

  But that was never gonna win at the time with how much people hated that movie. And also, I would argue that the score isn't always that well-used in the movie.

• 46:12David Sims?

  In the, in the movie, it's, again, it's a score I love listening to. In the movie itself, sometimes it overwhelms.

• 46:16Speaker 04

  It overwhelms the ending, I think. In a way that I think caused people to misread the film at the time. A lot of people who thought, yeah. I mean, I was, I was very mixed on AI when I first saw it. I, I, I, I, I, I like it a lot now. I still have some issues with how the two, the Kubrick sensibility and the.

• 46:34David Sims?

  It's a very strange Frankenstein.

• 46:36Speaker 04

  It's a very strange, and that's what makes it so unforgettable in a way. Still, whenever I watched it, I'm like, that one doesn't, that scene doesn't quite, that scene doesn't quite. We all agree he should have won for Catch.

• 46:46David Sims?

  He lost it, Elliot Goldenthal, the great Elliot Goldenthal, for Frida, which is lovely and interesting and like, sort of, you know, like, but.

• 46:53Speaker 04

  But this is ripple effect. If Elliot Goldenthal had won for Batman and Robin, then we wouldn't have been in this position.

• 46:58David Sims?

  Forever is his better Batman.

• 46:59Speaker 04

  I prefer the Batman Robin score.

• 47:01David Sims?

  But that's an iconic year. The score, well, his heat score is very cool.

• 47:06Speaker 04

  Although, who knows how much of it he wrote?

• 47:08David Sims?

  Right, I was about to say. Uh, but Far From Heaven, the Elmer Bernstein score for that is amazing. The Hours, very divisive, but the Philip Glass score for The Hours is like, you know, I love it.

• 47:17Speaker 04

  Philip Glass, kind of.

• 47:18David Sims?

  He's a king.

• 47:19Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 47:20David Sims?

  Uh, and Thomas Newman's Road to Perdition score. Yes, Thomas Newman often kind of hits the same notes, but a really good score.

• 47:26Speaker 04

  Yeah, I'm not a fan of that movie, but, uh, I like Thomas Newman. I don't remember that score. I liked that movie and that score quite a bit. I've only seen it once.

• 47:35David Sims?

  Anyway.

• 47:37Speaker 04

  That's like not seeing it at all. That's like, that's like me just pissing on a DVD of the movie.

• 47:41David Sims?

  Do you like Mendez generally? Cause I'm very up and down on it.

• 47:43Speaker 04

  You know, the Mendez I really do like is Revolutionary Road, which, which. See, that I need to re-watch. Everyone hates that. And I, I like, I think Skyfall is. I think Skyfall is his best movie. He's kind of, he should have just. There's some directors who I'm like, just do Bond movies. Yeah, he should have become, uh, what's his name? Who was the guy who did like 10 Bond movies in the seventies?

• 48:07David Sims?

  John Glenn?

• 48:08Griffin Newman?

  Or Lewis Hamilton.

• 48:09Speaker 04

  I'm like, he should have become one of them.

• 48:10David Sims?

  No, but the whole thing with Mendes doing Skyfall, which is a movie I love, is that helps Bond convince itself. It's become a prestige.

• 48:17Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 48:17David Sims?

  Like genre and it's like, maybe you guys actually need to chill out a little bit and go back to basics a little bit. Not be like two hours and 45 minutes long and have these.

• 48:25Speaker 04

  Yeah. It's a poser movie, but it kinda needs to have.

• 48:28David Sims?

  It's good to be clear.

• 48:29Speaker 04

  A negative effect on the next two movies though, maybe.

• 48:32David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 48:34David Sims?

  One last pin, the list, the nine directors who've won the Palme d'Or twice is such a weird list of like masters and kinda like right place, right time guys.

• 48:43Speaker 04

  Okay, so Osland.

• 48:44David Sims?

  Reuben Osland is a right place, right time guy in my opinion.

• 48:47Speaker 04

  I agree. Kustarica is one of my all time favorites.

• 48:50David Sims?

  I know you love him.

• 48:51Speaker 04

  Although he's like a monster now.

• 48:53David Sims?

  Um, oh, has he become a monster?

• 48:54Speaker 04

  Oh, he has been for a while.

• 48:55David Sims?

  Older European directors, it's always a crapshoot with those guys. You don't wanna give them Twitter.

• 49:00Speaker 04

  It was already evident in Underground, which is a film I love, but you know, the, the breakup of Yugoslavia really sent him, uh, and.

• 49:08David Sims?

  He's, he's a little hard right on that stuff.

• 49:10Speaker 04

  Yeah, he's a.

• 49:10David Sims?

  Dennis Miller effect.

• 49:13Speaker 04

  I mean.

• 49:13David Sims?

  Kustarica, Zricha.

• 49:15Speaker 04

  Kustarica.

• 49:16David Sims?

  Kustarica is, I've not seen, uh, When Father Was Away on Business. I have seen Underground. I don't know.

• 49:22Speaker 04

  Have you seen Time of the Gypsies?

• 49:23David Sims?

  No, I have never.

• 49:24Speaker 04

  Time of the Gypsies is fantastic. That's the one that's really, I mean, Underground I really love. I love When Father Was Away on Business, but it was seeing Time of the Gypsies, which I believe only won like best director grand jury prize or something. That really kind of knocked my socks off when I was a kid.

• 49:39David Sims?

  And then, okay, so Coppola, you mentioned obviously that, that he's, he's up there. The, it's, can you name the others?

• 49:46Speaker 04

  Dardens went twice.

• 49:47David Sims?

  Of course.

• 49:48Speaker 04

  Yeah. Is Conti won twice, I think, right? No? Does like Zinnaman win twice? Isn't there an old Hollywood director who won twice?

• 49:54David Sims?

  No, all right. I'll tell you the others.

• 49:55Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 49:56David Sims?

  Alf, Alf Schoberg, uh, that barely counts.

• 50:00Speaker 04

  Julie.

• 50:00David Sims?

  Loach. Julie and Torment and Loach.

• 50:02Speaker 04

  And Loach, that's right. Oh yeah, that's right.

• 50:04David Sims?

  Uh, which, uh, he's a great director, great filmmaker. I think both of those wins are sort of viewed.

• 50:09Speaker 04

  It's Barley and Daniel Blake?

• 50:11David Sims?

  Mm-hmm.

• 50:11Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 50:11David Sims?

  Here, Ben.

• 50:12Speaker 04

  I mean, I really, I really liked When the, When the Shakes the Barley. I saw that film very late. I remember at the time, people were really upset about its win. When I, when I finally saw it, I was like, oh, this is actually really good. Um, I, Daniel Blake, I was there for that can. That was my first can. And I remember. And I like I Daniel Blake.

• 50:28David Sims?

  It's pretty good.

• 50:28Speaker 04

  That was that that those Cannes awards were a war crime. And that was, you know, heartbreaking George Miller's jury.

• 50:36David Sims?

  George Miller, great, great guy.

• 50:37Speaker 04

  That was the year of Tony Erdman. That was the year of the Handmaiden.

• 50:40David Sims?

  It was the year that Tony Erdman was obviously going to win and clearly George Miller, or at least a couple of people in the jury were just kind of like not into it.

• 50:46Speaker 04

  Yeah, I mean, I was kind of, I was pulling for the Handmaiden that year.

• 50:50David Sims?

  Another great pick.

• 50:51Speaker 04

  I mean, there were a lot, it was a great Cannes and none of the big films won. And none of the really good films won anything, if I remember correctly. I mean, I Daniel Blake was fine. It's just, I would not have given.

• 50:59Griffin Newman?

  Fucking nature. I was gonna say, Tony Erdman, the character, the character in character feels like he would fit in in the wasteland. Like, you would imagine George Miller would take to that.

• 51:08David Sims?

  Yeah, sure.

• 51:09Griffin Newman?

  Be like, this guy could be the mayor of fucking Bullet Town.

• 51:11David Sims?

  That was, yeah, because it's when Xavier Dolan wins the Grand Prix and Matt Mickelson looks shocked.

• 51:17Speaker 04

  We get the Matt Mickelson face. And, um, what was it? The guy who directed, uh, Son of Saul.

• 51:24David Sims?

  Um, sure.

• 51:25Speaker 04

  Uh, Laszlo Nemech.

• 51:26David Sims?

  Yeah, Laszlo Nemech.

• 51:27Speaker 04

  Um, he was on the jury that year.

• 51:30David Sims?

  Uh huh.

• 51:30Speaker 04

  And, and the Xavier Dolan film, everybody hated, even the people who really liked Xavier Dolan.

• 51:35David Sims?

  Xavier Dolan fucking hated it, probably.

• 51:36Griffin Newman?

  But then was also angry that he had to share the award with Godar? Was that a different year?

• 51:41Speaker 04

  That's a different year.

• 51:41Griffin Newman?

  I hated that shit.

• 51:42Speaker 04

  But that, um, the, uh, at the press conference, somebody asked Laszlo Nemech something about, about that film, I think. But like, the question was different and he answered the question with the weirdest response, which was, yes, I know that some people think that because, uh, you know, because Xavier Dolan was on the jury last year and I won the grand jury prize, that I, uh, felt the need to give him the grand jury prize this year, but I assure you that that's not true.

• 52:13David Sims?

  And it was kind of, it was very much, yeah.

• 52:15Speaker 04

  It's very much how my T-shirt is, uh, asking.

• 52:17Griffin Newman?

  I did not fuck that cat.

• 52:19Speaker 04

  Yeah, exactly.

• 52:20Griffin Newman?

  Um, I have never fucked a cat.

• 52:22Speaker 04

  Yeah, because everybody was like, wait, what, really? Oh, my God, is this a thing? Um, I mean, I'm sure it wasn't, but it, it was kind of crazy that that movie won the fucking grand jury prize.

• 52:32David Sims?

  It's crazy.

• 52:33Speaker 04

  Did we go through all the?

• 52:34David Sims?

  The others are Billy August, who won very close together. Uh, and Best Intentions, kind of a weird winner. Pel the Conqueror, more of a traditional winner. Uh, Shohei Momura, who's a great filmmaker, uh, and The Eel tied with Taste of Cherry. So like, whatever.

• 52:48Speaker 04

  And The Eel is such a strange, that is a very strange movie to give a palm to.

• 52:52David Sims?

  Uh, and Mi- Michael Hanekah.

• 52:56David Sims?

  Um, you know, he's a, he's more in the, you know, master territory. Although like, I don't know, is he gonna make another movie? What's he doing? Is he old? Yeah, I guess he's pretty old.

• 53:07Speaker 04

  He, he had a career before he became kind of.

• 53:10David Sims?

  Was he like a carpenter or something?

• 53:11Speaker 04

  No, I mean, I mean, like he, he had made like, you know, films for television and stuff like that.

• 53:15David Sims?

  Sure, sure, sure.

• 53:17Griffin Newman?

  I would love to hear that, like John Carpenter style. He's like, yeah, no, I, he's on Xbox Live.

• 53:22David Sims?

  The Xbox.

• 53:22Griffin Newman?

  I'm playing with Hanukkah all the time. We're doing Halo together.

• 53:26David Sims?

  The last thing, and we'll say this as we talk about Empire of the Sun, right? But it is very strange that The Last Emperor and Empire of the Sun, these two movies that are like both kind of being sold with the like, no one's ever filmed in China before, like an American movie or, you know, are happening kind of at the same time? And kind of about the same period in history, a little like 10 years of art.

• 53:46Speaker 04

  Is this not also, is Hope and Glory not also this same year? Which kind of eats this movie's lunch on this sort of war from the perspective of a child thing?

• 53:54David Sims?

  Right, kid in war.

• 53:56Speaker 04

  I mean, critics, you know, critics liked Hope and Glory more. Yeah, no, I mean, it's a, it's a big year for, for those types of stories. But I think, I think China is also opening up during this period.

• 54:05David Sims?

  Of course, that's why it's happening, right?

• 54:07Speaker 04

  That's what happens with Bertolucci in Last Emperor where.

• 54:10David Sims?

  But Bertolucci is kind of getting one on Spielberg or Spielberg's like, I'm shooting in Shanghai. No one's shot in American production here. And Bertolucci is like, I got into the Forbidden City. The name is forbidden and I got in, you bitch. The whole first hour of my movies, what, yours is set in some bombed out hellscape? Mine's in the most beautiful palace ever built by man.

• 54:31Speaker 04

  That was a weird press conference too. Roberta Lucia calls Spielberg a bitch.

• 54:35Griffin Newman?

  He's holding up the belt. Ruthless aggression.

• 54:38David Sims?

  I think The Last Emperor is a better movie than this movie. Uh, but I like both.

• 54:43Speaker 04

  I would agree, cause I love Last Emperor.

• 54:45Griffin Newman?

  You've never seen The Last Emperor?

• 54:47David Sims?

  You haven't seen a lot of the Tony 80s epics that won Best Picture. You've never seen Out of Africa? You've never seen, well, Driving Miss Daisy isn't an epic, but another kind of like. Mill Brown.

• 54:57Griffin Newman?

  The eighties best picture winners, I'm weirdly kinda bad.

• 55:02David Sims?

  Last Emperor much better than Out of Africa or.

• 55:04Speaker 04

  Uh, yeah, I mean, Last Emperor I I love. It's not my favorite movie of all time. It's not even my favorite Bertolucci movie, but but I.

• 55:10David Sims?

  Well, you know what, Bilge? Fuck myself.

• 55:12Speaker 04

  Well, no, eighty seven is but eighty seven is the year I discover like Bertolucci. I was like fourteen and I discovered Italian cinema and French cinema. And then at the end of the year, The Last Emperor comes out and I'm just like in hog heaven. Um, but uh, but also.

• 55:26David Sims?

  You were the only person in hog heaven watching The Last Emperor.

• 55:29Speaker 04

  I'm sure I I don't even have to talk about how many times.

• 55:33David Sims?

  Everyone else is like seeing Repo Man or whatever. You're like, I'm in hog heaven with The Last Emperor.

• 55:37Speaker 04

  Uh, Repo Man is eighty six.

• 55:39David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 55:40Speaker 04

  Eighty seven is also, I think eighty seven is also Alex Cox's Walker.

• 55:44David Sims?

  Oh, very, a very chill.

• 55:46Speaker 04

  Which is another favorite movie that, and that's a movie everybody hated.

• 55:49Griffin Newman?

  What was your immediate response walking out of Empire of the Sun? Knowing you ultimately would then alternate and see it every other week.

• 55:57Speaker 04

  I I I I loved it when I first saw it. I mean, I I remember.

• 56:01David Sims?

  You've probably seen most of Spielberg's big movies.

• 56:04Speaker 04

  Yeah, because, you know, I mean.

• 56:05David Sims?

  It's ubiquitous.

• 56:06Speaker 04

  In the in the eighties, you you we were growing up with Spielberg.

• 56:08Griffin Newman?

  Right, and he's kind of growing up with you. Like, he's making more adult movies at the exact age that you're ready to start seeing more adult movies.

• 56:15Speaker 04

  Right, that's the other thing. As I was rewatching Empire of the Sun, you know, in preparation for this, it it dawned on me. I was like, oh, I like grew up with him, even though he's obviously much older than I am. But there is this like, he's making movies for kids when I'm a kid. And as his movies grow up, I'm growing up with them. And that really, you know, I'm like, that was that was really fascinating to kind of think about. Um, but he, uh, I I. You know, first of all, the first thirty, forty minutes of Empire of the Sun are masterful. Even the critics who didn't like the movie were like, I mean, I think even Pauline Kael was just like. You know, the first thirty minutes, like the, you know, the invasion of Shanghai. I mean, he stages that with such, such great control. And it's so funny, you were saying, um, it's it's like him learning to kind of give up his toys.

• 56:58Speaker 04

  And the scene is literally a boy like dropping his toy and then trying to get.

• 57:03Griffin Newman?

  That's where I think this movie is like not self critical, but like very self aware and sort of like scathing of his whole persona and worldview. Like this movie is this kid literally getting slapped to be like, fucking engage with the real world. Your chauffeur's not coming. You can't exist in your fantasy land of like Halloween costumes and toys.

• 57:24Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 57:25Griffin Newman?

  Um, I think I can't relate to.

• 57:29David Sims?

  And I'm gonna actually open the dossier. In the 1980s, Steven Spielberg befriended David Lean. David Lean would have been what? I'm looking up his age. I mean, like, uh, very old at this point, like in his 70s. He died at the age of 83 in 91. So he's in his like early 70s.

• 57:45Speaker 04

  If I remember correctly, um.

• 57:46Griffin Newman?

  It's a terrible present.

• 57:48Speaker 04

  I.

• 57:49David Sims?

  It's 16th of April?

• 57:50Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 57:50David Sims?

  Wow.

• 57:51Speaker 04

  I, uh, no, but David Lean does, uh, he does Passage to India in 84.

• 57:56David Sims?

  Right.

• 57:56Griffin Newman?

  And that's his last movie.

• 57:58Speaker 04

  Last movie.

• 57:58Griffin Newman?

  Okay.

• 57:58Speaker 04

  And he's like working on Nostrum for a while and then that doesn't happen.

• 58:02Griffin Newman?

  But this in theory would have been his last film. I mean, obviously not that he was planning it as such, but yeah.

• 58:06David Sims?

  But like Passage to India, though, I do feel like his people at the time is received by, by people being like, he's, this is a, this is a film from a person from another age. Like, yes, of course it's impressive. But, uh, David Lean is not exactly with the modern.

• 58:19Speaker 04

  Yeah, I remember seeing Passage to India with my dad.

• 58:22David Sims?

  And Alec the missus in brown face and everyone's like, why is Alec in brown face?

• 58:25Speaker 04

  Right. So my, my dad, you know, has always been a huge cinephile and I owe my cinephilia to him. But I remember seeing Passage to India with him and he was very mixed on David Lean. He was not a big David Lean fan. Um.

• 58:38Griffin Newman?

  He leaned back.

• 58:39Speaker 04

  And.

• 58:39Griffin Newman?

  As a viewer.

• 58:40Speaker 04

  I was leaning in, he was leaning back. But, um, as we were watching, or maybe this was, uh, we wouldn't have talked during the movie, but I do remember this exchange, which is the scene where, where the doctor is like on the train, where he's walking on the.

• 58:55David Sims?

  Okay. I had seen Passage to India one time, like 15 years ago. Sure.

• 58:59Speaker 04

  There's a shot of, of, of the doctor, um, whose name I forget, sort of walking between train cars on the outside of the train. Uh, and it's an incredible shot. And then I remember saying to my dad, how can you not like a movie that has a shot like this? And he, and I remember he said, I, I dislike it because there's a shot like this. Like, like he was like, this grandiosity is too much.

• 59:22David Sims?

  Is that the essential divide between you and your father as like film viewers?

• 59:26Speaker 04

  Does.

• 59:27David Sims?

  Cause you like grandiosity, okay?

• 59:29Speaker 04

  I like grandiosity. He actually likes grandiosity too. Um.

• 59:31David Sims?

  He just needs it to be earned.

• 59:33Speaker 04

  It was often, uh, we actually had a lot of really political disagreements over films. Uh, my dad was kind of a. At the time, I mean, he, you know, later changed his ideas on things, but he was kind of an old school communist back in the day. And we actually had a lot of arguments over Berdolucci films, over which ones were like true to the revolution and which ones weren't and stuff like that. Like, he was very much a 1900 man, and I was much more of a last emperor man. And he felt like Last Emperor, he liked the movie, but he felt like it kind of sold out a little bit.

• 1:00:03David Sims?

  It's too sympathetic to this imperial creature, right? Like, I don't know.

• 1:00:07Griffin Newman?

  But this is the thing I genuinely love about you as a critic, is that you are very discerning in what you will like wholeheartedly endorse as a fully functional, you know, masterpiece or whatever. But I do like your transparency in sometimes being like, there is an element of craft in this, or a performance, or a theme, or a feeling, that I like, it elevates this movie, even if maybe the movie isn't great, beyond some more functional films. I can't throw this out because there's something here that is sticking with me.

• 1:00:39Speaker 04

  Yeah, I mean, I imagine a lot of critics are like this, but there's like sometimes, there's some, there's something you love in a movie, and even if the rest of the movie doesn't work. I mean, you know, sometimes it's like, just like the score. You know, there's so many films I've seen where I'm like, oh, I love that movie. And then I watch it, I'm like, I think I just kind of like the score. But I like how the score is used in the movie, so I can't just listen to the score. I kind of have to see the movie.

• 1:01:02Griffin Newman?

  I'm not, I truly am not backhanding anyone in particular in my mind, but I do feel like, especially from like the experience of going to critic screenings and then reading those people's reviews, that sometimes you see people clearly enjoy a thing in a movie, but then their like analytical brain comes on and they're like, I can't fully endorse this as a thing that works.

• 1:01:23Speaker 04

  I have, I have, I have said this about certain films where I, well, I did this about, um, That's My Boy, where I went, have we had this conversation?

• 1:01:33Griffin Newman?

  No, but I'm like, when I went to see That's My Boy at a critic screening, I sat in that room with all these critics laughing their asses off. And I was sitting next to a couple of them, like,

• 1:01:44Speaker 04

  You laughed, you laughed, you laughed, you laughed. And then the next day you see their reviews and they're all trashing the movie. I'm like, you guys are fucking lying. You, you just sat, you sat there for two hours or hour and a half, or whatever it was, laughing your asses off. And my thing with the review was, listen, objectively, this movie is, you know, probably a piece of shit, but I laughed my ass off. What can I say? Same thing with Vacation, the Vacation remake.

• 1:02:07David Sims?

  You, you've always stood up for the Vacation remake, yes. But speaking of the Vacation remake, David Lean, uh, no, he's interested in J.G. Ballard's semi-autobiographical novel, which had just come out in 1984. He asks Spielberg to check in on the rights for him. I guess Lean is just kinda like sitting in his estate, being like, get that Hollywood guy on the phone.

• 1:02:26Speaker 04

  The sort of string of great older filmmakers who somehow, uh, collaborated with Spielberg, only for Spielberg to wind up directing their movies.

• 1:02:37Griffin Newman?

  Talk about the Billy Wilder Schindler thing in a couple of weeks.

• 1:02:39Speaker 04

  Yeah, or AI and Kubrick.

• 1:02:41Griffin Newman?

  Right. Knowing that he was so high-

• 1:02:43David Sims?

  Spielberg had good taste in these people.

• 1:02:45Griffin Newman?

  Well, this is what I was gonna say.

• 1:02:45David Sims?

  To seek them out.

• 1:02:46Griffin Newman?

  Him being so high level, being such a king of Hollywood, and also these guys knowing that he was such a cinephile and had such respect for the masters, all of them are like, if Spielberg extends his like check to me, I'm good. And it's a little bit of like Jordan Peele being like, I'm gonna hire Spike Lee to make Black Klansman so he can win an Oscar finally, you know?

• 1:03:04David Sims?

  Yeah. So Spielberg checks in on the rights to this for David Lean. It's at Warner Brothers, Harold Becker, the not great, the okay Harold Becker.

• 1:03:13Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, that's a, that's a puzzling choice there.

• 1:03:16David Sims?

  Director of Sea of Love and Taps, uh, is-

• 1:03:19Speaker 04

  A solid journeyman kind of studio guy.

• 1:03:21David Sims?

  Uh, and so Spielberg says like, yeah, it's tied up, like it's sort of spoken for. And then Becker drops out or whatever. Uh, and so Spielberg goes back to Lean, at least this is how Spielberg tells it, and says like, hey, it's available. And at that point, Lean is interested, as you say, in, uh, Nostromo, an adaptation of the Joseph Conrad book, which never happened. I guess Lean just got too old.

• 1:03:42Speaker 04

  Well, there was a, there was a BBC TV version of it made. And I don't know if it was, cause I think Robert Bolt had written this script. I, I read that screenplay once, I think. I used to work at the BBC and I remember I would just like steal all this stuff from them.

• 1:03:57Griffin Newman?

  What did you do with the BBC?

• 1:03:59David Sims?

  Lord knows what he got.

• 1:03:59Speaker 04

  It was like my first job out of college. I actually had a very funny job at the BBC, which we won't get into here because it's it's very, but I had to prepare like little dossiers for all the productions that they co-financed.

• 1:04:10Griffin Newman?

  It was a JJ.

• 1:04:10Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:04:11David Sims?

  So Lean is like, you, you do it. You know, I don't want to do that anymore, but you go do it. Lean said he lost interest. Quote, quote, this is a quote from Lean saying, this is a bloody well-written and very interesting diary. I don't think it has enough of a dramatic shape.

• 1:04:24Griffin Newman?

  Yeah. But Spielberg also said from the moment that Lean brought it to him, he was like, fuck, secretly, I kind of want to direct this. So I think he was thrilled when Lean threw it over to him.

• 1:04:33David Sims?

  Right. Lean, Spielberg also apparently was like, I'll produce Nostromo for you and started giving notes on a Christopher Hampton screenplay.

• 1:04:40Griffin Newman?

  That's probably the one I'm thinking of.

• 1:04:41David Sims?

  And Lean was like, fuck you. You don't give me notes. And Spielberg was like, okay, okay, okay. I just backed off. It was just like, I don't want to piss you off. Um, so Spielberg, um, is, why do you think he's intrigued by Empire of the Sun? It's through the eyes of a boy. Like, you know?

• 1:04:57Speaker 04

  An opportunity for him to make his definitive, uh, End of Innocence movie.

• 1:05:01David Sims?

  Right.

• 1:05:01Griffin Newman?

  Have you guys read the novel?

• 1:05:03David Sims?

  No, I never have. I've read a lot of J. G. Ballard, but never, uh, that one.

• 1:05:06Speaker 04

  And, and I've read no J. G. Ballard except for that one. Um, the, uh, it's beautifully written. It is beautifully written and it's so, you know, the landscapes and the action, everything is so vividly described. You can easily tell just by reading it, just through the language, why Spielberg thought, okay, I can, I can do something with this. Or for that matter, why David Lean thought he could do something. Um, it's very dark though. I mean, they have definitely sanitized it for, for, for the film.

• 1:05:36David Sims?

  This didn't happen to him. He did grow up in Shanghai, but he wasn't separated from his parents, right? Like there is some dramatic.

• 1:05:42Speaker 04

  Yeah, no, it's a novel. I mean, it is a novel, although it's, you know, autobiographical.

• 1:05:48David Sims?

  Right. He grew up in that period.

• 1:05:50Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:05:50David Sims?

  And he suffered through the, you know.

• 1:05:51Speaker 04

  You know, the, the stuff described in the film and in the, in the, in the book is, some of it is so gnarly and dark and. You know, you do wonder if, and I don't know if, you know, how the script, you know, transpired and how, what its journey was, but you know, when we talk about how Spielberg is taking this like darker story and not doing some of the things that, that he's been accused of doing in the past, there is definitely a lot of sanitizing happening and a lot of kind of condensing of characters and turning them into more of a, more of a Hollywood-y plot element.

• 1:06:29Griffin Newman?

  But I'll say this, not having read this book and also not having read The Color Purple shamefully, watching The Color Purple movie, you can tell in real time it's sanitized, even if you don't know the source material.

• 1:06:39Speaker 04

  This-

• 1:06:40Speaker 03

  Yeah, he dances around a lot of stuff-

• 1:06:41Griffin Newman?

  I'm not surprised to hear that, but I don't feel it while I'm watching it.

• 1:06:45Speaker 04

  Neither did I. I mean, that's, that's why I was so surprised when I, when I read the novel to find, you know, that it was, that it was so dark.

• 1:06:51Griffin Newman?

  But then there- The Color Purple, you can tell he's avoiding stuff. This, it doesn't feel that way.

• 1:06:54David Sims?

  Ben, if you ever read me JG Ballard, I feel like you would dig-

• 1:06:58Speaker 04

  Chris Benning, Warhammer-

• 1:06:58David Sims?

  Crash.

• 1:06:59Speaker 03

  Yeah, I read Crash.

• 1:07:00David Sims?

  High Rise you'd probably dig, Atrocity Exhibition, like, these are Benny tales, in my opinion.

• 1:07:06Speaker 04

  What's the best one?

• 1:07:07David Sims?

  I think High Rise is so cool, but that, it's a book that really-

• 1:07:10Speaker 04

  I feel like I'm the only person that likes The Wheatley movie.

• 1:07:14David Sims?

  I didn't mind that movie.

• 1:07:16Speaker 03

  The Wheatley movie is what?

• 1:07:17David Sims?

  Of High Rise.

• 1:07:19Speaker 04

  He made a movie of High Rise?

• 1:07:20David Sims?

  Oh, okay. High Rise is like, these people move into a really fancy new apartment building in like 70s Britain and it's like a weird nightmare zone that they can't escape from. It's very cool.

• 1:07:29Speaker 04

  As for society's collapsing-

• 1:07:30Speaker 03

  That doesn't sound like JG Ballard.

• 1:07:31David Sims?

  But I feel like you would dig it.

• 1:07:33Speaker 04

  Yeah, you would, yeah.

• 1:07:34Speaker 03

  I should, I should check it out. There's so many fucking books I need to check out.

• 1:07:38David Sims?

  Well, that's true.

• 1:07:39Speaker 04

  You're a good reader, though.

• 1:07:41David Sims?

  I'm, I'm, I'm getting back to-

• 1:07:43Speaker 04

  In your twenties, you were a big-

• 1:07:45Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, I mistakenly went to school for creative writing, thinking that was a smart idea that would lead to career opportunities. Uh, so I did a ton of reading then and, you know, over the years, I kind of fall off from time to time, but yeah, I'm getting back into the swing of things.

• 1:08:03Speaker 04

  Do you have a favorite novel?

• 1:08:04David Sims?

  Ooh.

• 1:08:05Speaker 04

  Or-

• 1:08:06Speaker 03

  That's a tough question.

• 1:08:07Speaker 04

  No, I know, it's a absurd question.

• 1:08:08Speaker 03

  What's your favorite novel?

• 1:08:09Speaker 04

  Grapes of Wrath, maybe?

• 1:08:10David Sims?

  That's a pretty good one.

• 1:08:11Speaker 04

  I don't know. I mean, it's, it's kind of my stock answer. Do you have a stock answer for a favorite novel?

• 1:08:15Speaker 03

  No.

• 1:08:16David Sims?

  All right, I mean, I would say-

• 1:08:21Speaker 03

  It's embarrassing at this point to say like on the road.

• 1:08:24Griffin Newman?

  On the road. Great.

• 1:08:26Speaker 03

  But I was such a huge fan of the Beats. That was like a very important era for me when I was a young man.

• 1:08:34Griffin Newman?

  That's awesome. That's awesome.

• 1:08:36Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:08:37Griffin Newman?

  I did. Everybody keeps telling me to read the Dharma Bums. Did you ever read the Dharma Bums?

• 1:08:42Speaker 03

  Sure. Yeah.

• 1:08:43Griffin Newman?

  How was that?

• 1:08:44David Sims?

  Other Kerouac book.

• 1:08:45Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, all of the other Kerouac stuff can be hit or miss. Trying to think the Subterraneans is a great novel and very short, but I love that one.

• 1:09:03Griffin Newman?

  David?

• 1:09:03Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:09:04Griffin 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?

• 1:09:21Speaker 03

  It is an iconic video.

• 1:09:22Griffin 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.

• 1:09:45David Sims?

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

• 1:09:56Griffin 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.

• 1:10:05David Sims?

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

• 1:10:08Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:10:09David 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.

• 1:10:16Griffin 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.

• 1:10:30David Sims?

  I'm something of an expert in cryptozoology.

• 1:10:32Griffin Newman?

  Well, of course.

• 1:10:32David Sims?

  Yes, but that's more of a hobby. 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.

• 1:10:50Griffin Newman?

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

• 1:11:06Griffin Newman?

  David?

• 1:11:06David Sims?

  Yes?

• 1:11:07Griffin Newman?

  Uh, uh, who are you wearing?

• 1:11:09David Sims?

  Uh, who am I wearing?

• 1:11:10Griffin Newman?

  I'm doing like an impression of a red carpet correspondent, asking who you're wearing right now.

• 1:11:14David Sims?

  Well, I am wearing Quince.

• 1:11:17Griffin Newman?

  Well, well, well, what a Quince, Quincy dense.

• 1:11:21David Sims?

  It's a Mongolian cashmere zip sweater.

• 1:11:25Griffin Newman?

  Okay.

• 1:11:26David Sims?

  It's a sort of a brown. Would you agree?

• 1:11:28Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, it's like, maybe like a, what would you, a chocolate?

• 1:11:31David Sims?

  Sure. I have been seated next to people wearing this item of clothing and they have brushed against me, not to brag, and gone like, so soft.

• 1:11:38Griffin Newman?

  Oh, a soft boy. But listen, the best pieces in your closet are the ones that you can count on, whether you're heading to work, going out, or keeping things casual. And this time of year, Quince makes finding something great for everyone else just as easy. This holiday season, it's where I'm shopping for myself and everyone on my list.

• 1:11:55David Sims?

  Quince does rock. It's got high-quality staples, made with these premium materials like 100% Mongolian cashmere.

• 1:12:02Griffin Newman?

  Like you're wearing right now?

• 1:12:03David Sims?

  14 karat gold, Italian leather.

• 1:12:06Griffin Newman?

  Mama mia.

• 1:12:07David Sims?

  All timeless, versatile pieces that feel special to unwrap and become everyday favorites long after the holidays. These cashmere sweaters, like the one I'm wearing, start at just $60. Lineup doesn't stop there. You've got premium down jackets, wool outerwear, cashmere accessories, everything you and your loved ones need to stay warm and look put together all season long.

• 1:12:27Griffin Newman?

  And everything at Quince is priced 50 to 80% less than similar brands. They work directly with ethical factories and cut out the middlemen, so you can give luxury quality pieces without the luxury price tag.

• 1:12:40David Sims?

  Um, so yeah, obviously I'm wearing Quince sweater right now. I've got Quince bedding at home. Ooh, they've got Christmas stockings.

• 1:12:47Griffin Newman?

  Oh, well, well, well. They got tree skirts. They got garlands. If you want to go Christmas mode. Your tree deserves to be dressed in Quince as well. And when it comes to gifting, Quince has a lot more than clothing. Think fine jewelry, leather bags, the aforementioned hotel quality bedding, chef-grade cookware, and five-star luggage. Basically, plenty of ways to find something special for everyone on your list. If you want to give the gift of quality this holiday season, download the Quince app for app-exclusive offers or go to quince.com. Get free shipping on your order and 365-day returns. That's a year. Now available in Canada and the UK, too. Ding dong. And when Quince asks where you heard about them, let them know it was blank check. It's the best way to support the show.

• 1:13:40Speaker 05

  Welcome to 215 Maple Drive. We just put this property on the market. Love the crown molding. Oh, wait until you see the walk-in closets and the bathroom tile. Does it have Verizon FiOS? You know, 100% fiber internet. No FiOS, but it looks like it's got cable. Let's check out the kitchen. No FiOS? Yeah, no, thank you. Don't you want to see the rest? Okay, bye-bye.

• 1:14:04Speaker 02

  Get Verizon FiOS because when you're moving, it's 100% or nothing.

• 1:14:12David Sims?

  So Spielberg's interested. He obviously had been trying to make a Peter Pan movie for a long time. Hook is the eventual Peter Pan movie he makes, but he's kind of like, this is the opposite of Peter Pan. This is me getting to like strangle my Peter Pan movie.

• 1:14:25Griffin Newman?

  A movie that literally opens with like a kid trying to goof around and someone being like, hey, stop it.

• 1:14:31David Sims?

  Um, yes. Uh, so he's also a war nerd. You know, he's like a history nerd, like so many baby boomers.

• 1:14:39Griffin Newman?

  And the thing we've already touched on that he felt like, uh, being able to watch war films gave him an understanding of his father.

• 1:14:47David Sims?

  Right.

• 1:14:48Griffin Newman?

  A vet who would not really talk about.

• 1:14:50David Sims?

  And his father, I believe, was in the Air Force. Uh, so airplanes in particular, interesting to him, I guess. Um, and, uh, he knows this isn't going to be a commercial project, really. Like, he's, uh, I guess, sort of aware of, like, I'm not about to knock out a big hit. But he's also kind of working on, like, another Indiana Jones movie. There's a Tom Stoppard script when he comes aboard. He gets Menno Menhez, Menno Menhez, who wrote Color Purple, to do a pass. But then Stoppard comes back in and, you know, does the other pass. He's the only credit on the movie, right? And Stoppard is kind of like, it's a masterpiece. And I kind of learned how to write movies with Steven helping me.

• 1:15:32David Sims?

  Like, you know, like as much as Tom Stoppard is obviously one of the most famous playwrights of his generation. Like, he becomes this kind of like Hollywood go to guy, especially for rewrites. And he's kind of like, I learned a lot working on that in terms of like where you don't need dialogue. Like writing screenplays where like you can let the pictures take over.

• 1:15:51Griffin Newman?

  Can I just sidebar very quickly here? Because now it feels too relevant to not bring up. Do you know what I'm gonna say, Ben?

• 1:15:56David Sims?

  Uh, no.

• 1:15:57Griffin Newman?

  You were just talking about your creative writing degree and how you've moved away from that. You did recently announce to us in group text that your resi for 2025 is that you want to become a produced playwright.

• 1:16:09David Sims?

  Yes.

• 1:16:10Speaker 03

  I always try to come up with a big resolution for myself.

• 1:16:15Griffin Newman?

  You might remember 2018 when Ben said he was gonna become a Goog.

• 1:16:18David Sims?

  Fell.

• 1:16:19Speaker 03

  Yes, he was gonna get a Goog.

• 1:16:21Griffin Newman?

  And I'm fellowship.

• 1:16:22David Sims?

  Yeah, that still hasn't materialized, but working on it.

• 1:16:24Griffin Newman?

  So, so these resolutions aren't always realistic.

• 1:16:27David Sims?

  But they're big.

• 1:16:28Speaker 03

  No, they're always big, though. Well, one year is to ride, ride on a horse.

• 1:16:31Griffin Newman?

  Right dang horse, you did ride dang horse.

• 1:16:33David Sims?

  I rode the shit out of that horse. I also made a fashion brand.

• 1:16:37Speaker 03

  Yes, that you did.

• 1:16:39Griffin Newman?

  Some of these haven't achieved.

• 1:16:40Speaker 03

  Yeah. How's the sleep podcast coming?

• 1:16:42David Sims?

  Let's not talk about that.

• 1:16:44Griffin Newman?

  So you could write a play about riding a horse.

• 1:16:48David Sims?

  I mean, I'll add it to the list, the idea bank. But yeah, I'm very much, I'm trying to, I'm trying to pivot to being a playwright.

• 1:16:57Griffin Newman?

  That's awesome. That's, that's really cool.

• 1:16:58Speaker 03

  We still need you producing.

• 1:17:00David Sims?

  Of course.

• 1:17:00Speaker 03

  Okay, good. So Ballard meets Spielberg loves him.

• 1:17:04David Sims?

  Well, but wait, I think there's a reason why you're bringing this up.

• 1:17:07Griffin Newman?

  Because we're talking about Tom Stoppard. It just being brought up as one of the, the great, most beloved modern playwrights. I was like, here's, here's an inspiration, Ben. Here's someone.

• 1:17:16David Sims?

  Because I was talking about him, though. Maybe this wasn't a conversation with you, Griffin. He technically produced like a spin off prequel of Shakespeare.

• 1:17:27David Sims?

  Rosencrantz and Guilders.

• 1:17:29Speaker 04

  And he directed, he directed the film version of it too.

• 1:17:31Griffin Newman?

  Oh, really?

• 1:17:31Speaker 04

  After this, couple of years after this and won like the big prize at, I want to say Venice?

• 1:17:36David Sims?

  Venice, I think it won Venice.

• 1:17:38Speaker 04

  Venice, right?

• 1:17:38David Sims?

  It's a play that I adore. I've never loved the movie.

• 1:17:43Speaker 04

  Saw it once. I don't remember much about it.

• 1:17:45Griffin Newman?

  But you're right. It's kind of the Lion King one and a half of Romeo and.

• 1:17:49David Sims?

  It's just a, it's a, it's a text that does not make sense as a movie.

• 1:17:53Griffin Newman?

  Hamlet.

• 1:17:54David Sims?

  It's fun to watch those guys do it.

• 1:17:56Speaker 04

  It's just funny as you, as you were saying, you were saying that Tom Stoppard kind of learned how to write movies from Empire of the Sun. I'm like, then he went.

• 1:18:03David Sims?

  Then he fucking went. But like doing your own play, it's often a bad.

• 1:18:06Griffin Newman?

  Right. And then he, right. Didn't he do like heavy uncredited passes on both Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith?

• 1:18:12David Sims?

  He definitely, I think that's the thing. He's in those, in, in the Spielberg Lucas like hangout.

• 1:18:18Speaker 04

  Say he's in those movies.

• 1:18:19David Sims?

  He's in those movies. He played Darth Maul.

• 1:18:20Griffin Newman?

  People forget that.

• 1:18:23Speaker 04

  He's in the Galactic Senate. You didn't see Tom Stoppard in the Galactic Senate.

• 1:18:25Griffin Newman?

  And his character's name is Tom Stoppard and he gets up there and he goes.

• 1:18:29David Sims?

  Um, stop.

• 1:18:29Speaker 04

  Stop Tom.

• 1:18:30David Sims?

  Ardenard.

• 1:18:31Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:31David Sims?

  Um, Amy Irving had worked with Christian Bale in a TV film called Anastasia, The Mystery of Anna. So she had, uh.

• 1:18:38Griffin Newman?

  That was his first acting job of any sort.

• 1:18:40David Sims?

  She recommends him to Chris, uh, to Steven.

• 1:18:42Griffin Newman?

  And this is his first theatrical film. Now I.

• 1:18:44David Sims?

  Spielberg still like auditioned 4,000 kids or whatever, but like, you know, obviously Bale is basically like the big find of the movie.

• 1:18:52Griffin Newman?

  Now I want to just, I need to say this.

• 1:18:54David Sims?

  Go ahead.

• 1:18:54Griffin Newman?

  In a future episode that we've already recorded, I go on a long tangent about Spielberg's weird failure to identify and break new male stars.

• 1:19:02David Sims?

  This is your bugbear with him, but it's a more recent bug.

• 1:19:05Griffin Newman?

  I don't hold against him, but I just think it's interesting that he has such a limited track record of it. And then I put this on this morning and I'm like, oh, right. He fucking found Christian Bale. This is the one huge exception to the rule that needs to be noted. So keep that in mind. When you listen to me five weeks from now, forget Christian Bale.

• 1:19:20David Sims?

  He's astonishing in this movie, but it is one of those like Spielberg kid performances where you're like, what is the alchemy here? Is Spielberg just so good with children? But then obviously Bale became such a talented actor.

• 1:19:31Griffin Newman?

  I was gonna say.

• 1:19:31David Sims?

  But he also says that he hated making this movie and it made him feel like he never wanted to make a movie again.

• 1:19:35Speaker 04

  And there is a period where. It is not a certainty that Christian Bale will become a star.

• 1:19:40David Sims?

  No, I mean, in the newsies, he looks like he has guns trained on him.

• 1:19:44Griffin Newman?

  Christian Bale had a bit of a parallel Henry Thomas arc where for a while it was like he can't come out from the shadow of him being a kid that Spielberg discovered, even though he had a little less baggage than Thomas did and a little more success. It's not really until Batman when people were like, he's safe as an adult actor.

• 1:20:01Speaker 04

  And he also, he takes on such risky material, you know, I mean, he does Velvet Gold Mine and he does American Psycho. He works with really interesting directors, a number of female directors, which is a thing that young male stars never do.

• 1:20:16David Sims?

  Nope.

• 1:20:17Speaker 04

  And even when the films aren't that good, there's like this body of work emerges that where he's doing like really interesting work.

• 1:20:26Griffin Newman?

  He is one of my favorite actors.

• 1:20:28Speaker 04

  Oh, he's, I recently, a couple of years ago, somebody asked me like, who's your favorite actor? And I couldn't, I was trying to think about it and I realized of actors working today, I think Christian Bale is maybe the one person I will watch him in anything.

• 1:20:41Griffin Newman?

  I agree, and he's in a lot of movies I don't like.

• 1:20:44Speaker 04

  Vice.

• 1:20:45David Sims?

  He's obsessed with being in bad movies recently.

• 1:20:47Griffin Newman?

  Right, he's not had a great run recently, but I'm like, I do always-

• 1:20:50David Sims?

  It's like he's been challenged.

• 1:20:51Griffin Newman?

  Find him interesting and I do think he is a guy who is to a certain degree now just taken as a given for a guy who had such a hard time for a long time carving out his space. Now it's like, yeah, well, Christian Bale's good. And I'm like, he's always doing weird shit and oftentimes in service of bad movies.

• 1:21:07Speaker 04

  He's almost like, there's, there's a bit of the Adam Driver thing going on with him.

• 1:21:12Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, but I also, I think he is, if not more transformative, more flexible than Driver, who is such a specific, you know, energy and presence and all of this. What I do find interesting, parlaying out to Henry Thomas, who has also had, you know, I love a lot of his work as an adult.

• 1:21:29David Sims?

  His career as an adult, but obviously not a Christian Bale type career.

• 1:21:31Griffin Newman?

  Yes, and it's also one of those cases where you hear about the making of that movie and there's a certain degree of this kid just being like an intuitive, emotionally intelligent, natural and Spielberg creating the right framework for him and Drew Barrymore. Drew Barrymore, someone who obviously has a major career, but you're like, this is a movie of like a little girl who's- Good on camera and then later when she becomes an adult movie star, that's a different thing. Right? Henry Thomas.

• 1:21:52Speaker 04

  And she has to go through the tortures of the dam.

• 1:21:54Griffin Newman?

  Totally. And I feel like Henry Thomas goes through a bit of a wilderness phase where what he settled into as adult actor is very different than who he was as a child. What is fascinating about watching this movie is it is just like Muppet Babies Christian Bale. You're like, this is the exact actor he still is today. As much as he talks about like having a difficult time making it, a thing I love about.

• 1:22:14David Sims?

  I think it's just tough to be a teenager making a movie. Yeah.

• 1:22:17Griffin Newman?

  Absolutely. And it's the classic sort of child star pipeline where there was a lot of like, his parents pushed him into it and he was like, expected to sort of help support the household and all this sort of stuff. And he had to go through a cycle of learning to love it himself. And a thing I love about Bale is that he always talks about that the, he like deflates the idea of his sort of self-serious methodness. And he always just frames it as like, look, this is a thing I did when I was a kid. I had to go through an arc towards like respecting it as an adult because it kind of came to me naturally. For me, I just need to put that much into it to feel like I'm actually doing a serious job and not doing something that feels frivolous. Like he's like, it's my own justification of not being lazy about this in a way.

• 1:23:02Griffin Newman?

  But you just feel that sort of intensity in this. Obviously this, in this film, I think it's a lot more makeup, but it's like when the second half, you have the time jump and suddenly you're dealing with like gaunt, haunted Bale. You're like, this is what we're used to. Bale shows up and he's lost a hundred pounds and his eyes are dead, you know? And he has that, like, he's got the looks and the feelings and like, it is the first version of what if he has any default mode as a movie star? The pieces of it are in this from the get-go.

• 1:23:34David Sims?

  I agree with you. I think, right? It's, yeah, it's grown up Bale. It's, I'm, what's the, what's the best analog for this? He doesn't play a lot of like sweet, relatable people anymore.

• 1:23:46Griffin Newman?

  I mean, my quiet favorite performance of his is, is The New World.

• 1:23:50David Sims?

  I loved him in The New World.

• 1:23:51Griffin Newman?

  Which I think is one of the all time great normal guy performances.

• 1:23:55David Sims?

  From him.

• 1:23:56Griffin Newman?

  Right. But also it's like, it's a character who fundamentally exists to come in at the end and be like, hey, I am relatively uncomplicated.

• 1:24:03David Sims?

  Right. That's a movie with my favorite actor giving maybe his best performance.

• 1:24:06Griffin Newman?

  Colin.

• 1:24:07David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:08Griffin Newman?

  I was gonna make a joke. Why?

• 1:24:10David Sims?

  Why? I mean.

• 1:24:10Speaker 04

  Yeah. Ben Chaplin.

• 1:24:13Speaker 04

  He is in it. He is in it. I'm pretty sure he was on set for like six months and winds up in like 30 seconds.

• 1:24:18Griffin Newman?

  There are a lot of incredible, yeah.

• 1:24:20Speaker 04

  Cut me corn. I'll see you later. I believe he basically gets decapitated at some point. Um, the, uh, what was I gonna say about Bale? Oh, the, when you were talking about Bale's experiences with this, it, it sounds almost a bit like what Jeff Bridges went through. Like Jeff Bridges went through this period after, I mean, he had actually like been nominated for an Oscar and stuff, but he, um, he actually was, was ready to quit.

• 1:24:44Griffin Newman?

  Kieran Golgins been talking about this too on his awards trail of like, I started doing this when I was four. I never really felt like I had agency in that decision. It came to me naturally. And because of that, I kind of didn't take it seriously. And it wasn't until succession that he was like, fuck, I think I actually want to be an actor for the rest of my life.

• 1:25:01Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah. No, that is, I mean, with, with child actors, that's the thing, especially with child actors who come from an acting family or to whom it comes, I mean, Jeff Bridges' whole thing was like, this was like the family profession. And I lucked into it and I was easy around it. It, it, it worked. And obviously he does like Last Picture Show and stuff, but then, but then he was like, I, I, I want to do something else. Like this, like I feel weirdly worthless.

• 1:25:27Griffin Newman?

  I think, right. Cause it's like, I, I think they feel like I'm playing pretend and people are like lauding me. And now I'm growing up and that feels childish. If I was good at doing it when I was 10, how can it be serious?

• 1:25:40Speaker 04

  I, I, I bet, I bet Joaquin Phoenix has a story like this too. Like I, I, I wouldn't be so, I mean, he's, you know, you also just, he's a guy much like Bale who the angst just, just exudes off of every performance.

• 1:25:53David Sims?

  Relationship to the thing he's good at.

• 1:25:54Griffin Newman?

  And his methody shit is a kind of similar, even though he's not good at articulating it in the same way as Bale, but it's just like, right. Uh, and Bale also has like a weird sort of like family structure in childhood. Like both of his parents were huge personalities without being actors in the film industry themselves. Yeah.

• 1:26:12David Sims?

  Uh, I hope he's good this year in The Bride, which is his only upcoming project. But it does kind of feel like the kind of thing where he could just lay it on really, really thick and, you know, be fun, but you know, maybe.

• 1:26:24Griffin Newman?

  Do you know what's an interesting thing that I think about? A fair amount. I remember some interview with Kathleen Kennedy a couple of years ago. Where they're probably talking about how Star Wars was good and normal and no one was complaining about anything. And she brought up how much she loved Ford versus Ferrari.

• 1:26:43David Sims?

  Sure.

• 1:26:43Griffin Newman?

  She obviously worked on this film.

• 1:26:44David Sims?

  Right.

• 1:26:45Griffin Newman?

  And said like, that is the closest to the real Christian I have ever seen on screen.

• 1:26:51David Sims?

  Or.

• 1:26:51Griffin Newman?

  She was like, he's so good at that. Obviously, he's doing things as an actor. But she was like, that is the closest to his personality. That is his most revealing performance.

• 1:27:00David Sims?

  He's really good in that movie.

• 1:27:00Griffin Newman?

  But that feeling of being so good at something and kind of fighting against it.

• 1:27:04Speaker 04

  That might be why, uh, cause, cause you know, mangled, obviously, you know, when he gets the call to do the Indiana Jones movie. I asked him like, what do you, why do you think they called you? He's like, I think it was because of Ford versus Ferrari.

• 1:27:15Griffin Newman?

  Yeah. Kennedy like loves them.

• 1:27:17David Sims?

  So they shoot this film in China, uh, as discussed, 21 day shoot in China, which was completely unheard of back then. Um, and it was really complicated. The most complicated thing being they couldn't process film there. So they shot everything without access to dailies, which is insane to consider.

• 1:27:33Griffin Newman?

  And especially for Spielberg, I'm sure that like felt scary to lose that part of the process.

• 1:27:37David Sims?

  Right. Like basically like they would have had to like ship the film off, get it processed in America, shipped back through customs, maybe get access.

• 1:27:46Griffin Newman?

  You're getting dailies two weeks later at great expense.

• 1:27:49Speaker 04

  One thing I remember hearing this years ago, and I don't even know how it would have worked, but I believe sometime in the eighties, they sold Technicolor sold all its labs to China. So maybe it was, I mean, this film isn't shot in Technicolor, so that wouldn't have been an issue, but, um.

• 1:28:04Griffin Newman?

  Was this when, when Ron Perlman bought Technicolor? Is he still on Technicolor?

• 1:28:09Speaker 04

  I don't know.

• 1:28:09Griffin Newman?

  Which became Hellboy.

• 1:28:10Speaker 04

  This was a long time ago.

• 1:28:11Griffin Newman?

  Billionaire Ron Perlman, owner of Revlon.

• 1:28:14Speaker 04

  But, uh, and there was speculation at the time of like the, the fifth generation filmmakers of why those films were so vivid. Color wise was because they had all these like Technicolor labs. And I, I, I'm probably sort of misremembering history here, but.

• 1:28:30David Sims?

  Let's talk about the film, Empire of the Sun, set during World War II, uh, during Japan's invasion of China. Jim Graham.

• 1:28:38Griffin Newman?

  Slightly more thoughtfully than the way he depicts it in 1941.

• 1:28:42Griffin Newman?

  The same day as Pearl Harbor.

• 1:28:43David Sims?

  Did it happen on January 7?

• 1:28:46Griffin Newman?

  I believe it's the same day as Pearl Harbor.

• 1:28:48David Sims?

  That's interesting. Yeah, certainly. It was pretty much concurrent. Obviously, Japan had been mucking around in China for decades and, you know, invades Manchuria in the early 30s and all that. But Jim Graham is a British boy, right? These are British expats living in the Shanghai International Settlement because Britain, but you know, basically during the Opium Wars, and I am not an expert on all this stuff, was just kind of like, we just get to have stuff here now. And China was like, what? And they were like, this is ours right here. And our boats go here and we're going to build some fucking schools and shit. And like, you know, like, that's just what Britain used to do. And post Pearl Harbor, Japan invades and they just don't get out in time, right? I mean, that's the sort of early part of the movie.

• 1:29:33Griffin Newman?

  But you're starting from the perspective of these kind of oblivious, out of touch colonizers in a country that is now being attacked that they feel ownership of. But now the actual rightful sort of citizens are like, fuck you most of all, you know? Like, it is a movie that starts with kind of like immediately dismantling these characters.

• 1:29:55David Sims?

  Yes. And I think there's that the scene with the where they're at the dinner party, where the the guy is kind of basically saying like, you know, you guys are just temporary here. Like, you don't you don't seem to understand that about like the you, British, like, right? I mean, that's they think that they're, I mean, that the British Empire will last for another thousand years, I guess, is is sort of the vibe, the innocuous vibe, not innocuous is the word I'm looking for. Passive, oblivious.

• 1:30:22Griffin Newman?

  But also, like, the Bale character's relationship to what, from his perspective, feels like his homeland, because it's where he's being raised.

• 1:30:30Speaker 04

  He's never been to England.

• 1:30:32Griffin Newman?

  No.

• 1:30:32Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:30:33David Sims?

  But he's this like, perfect little English boy singing choral music and, you know, in his uniform.

• 1:30:38Griffin Newman?

  The version of China he lives in is like a weird bubble that is disconnected from the reality of China. And like, from the get go, even just that like choral sequence, you're cutting back and forth between like him fighting the resistance to like muck around, right? His like, You know, schoolmaster or whatever, conducting the orchestra and telling them to focus up and then cutting to the reaction shots of like Chinese citizens in the pews who are like, what are we fucking doing here? What are we watching here? Why are we being forced to engage with this?

• 1:31:08David Sims?

  How much do you know about early 20th century Chinese history?

• 1:31:12Speaker 04

  Weirdly, we studied early 20, we studied Chinese history in middle school.

• 1:31:17David Sims?

  Okay.

• 1:31:18Speaker 04

  I don't remember a lot of it, but I-

• 1:31:19David Sims?

  Boxer Rebellion?

• 1:31:20Speaker 04

  Boxer Rebellion, the, you know, Sun Yat-sen's Revolution, Chiang Kai-shek, and then, you know, the Long March. I remember all this stuff, you know, I mean, I don't, you know, I haven't looked into it recently, but I remember I was, especially during this period, because, I mean, we'd studied Chinese history by the time 87 rolls around and I see this movie and The Last Emperor. So when I watched The Last Emperor, I knew exactly kind of the context in which it was taking place.

• 1:31:49David Sims?

  And you're watching it at a time when like, red China, you know, like the sort of block is suddenly opening up a little bit to the Western world and like, you know, whatever.

• 1:31:59Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah, it's opening up. I mean, you know, I remember there was this, there was this kind of almost iconic time cover of Deng Xiaoping and like, opening up China and, you know. So, yeah, I mean, I have, you know, I had some familiarity with the history at the time, but, but not as much familiarity with World War II history, interestingly enough. I mean, I mean, through osmosis, you learn about things from movies and stuff. And this is actually a thing I'm going through with my son now, because, I mean, he's 15, he's a sophomore in high school, but there's so much just like basic American history and world history that that he just, he hasn't been taught.

• 1:32:40Griffin Newman?

  I don't know what you're talking about. We are really good at teaching our own history in an honest and unvarnished way to our youngest and most-

• 1:32:48Speaker 04

  I mean,

• 1:32:51Speaker 04

  we're not even good at teaching the sanitized version of it.

• 1:32:54Griffin Newman?

  No, you're right.

• 1:32:54Speaker 04

  Yeah. But, um, you know, like, cause, cause, you know, now he watches some of these movies with me and I'm like, I'm like, do you know what World War II was about? And he only has like a vague idea. But then I'm like, well, did I, had I studied World War II at this point? I don't know that I had at this age, but I, but I'd seen Casablanca, I'd seen all these other, but like the, and obviously the Hollywood version of history is like, this is a monstrosity. It's not a thing you should ever use to teach anybody. But through osmosis, you kind of get this idea of what happened, you know? Like, my son is fascinated by presidential history and I'm trying to explain Watergate to him these days. And I'm like,

• 1:33:32Speaker 04

  my, my wife keeps saying, oh, you know, show him all the president's men. I'm like, you don't understand. All the president's men is made for an audience that already knows what happened.

• 1:33:40Griffin Newman?

  All the president's men ends with like, and then Watergate. Like it doesn't, it's not about Watergate, like unfolding in Congress.

• 1:33:47Speaker 04

  Yeah. Like if you, if you watch all the president's men and you don't know what happened at Watergate, you will be completely lost. This is why we were watching The Post, cause, cause I was like, all right, The Post is a movie that actually does kind of explain what it's about. You know, um, I mean, it doesn't explain Watergate, but, but it, you know, the, the, the political stakes are explained in a kind of clear manner. So you can actually understand what's going on.

• 1:34:09Griffin Newman?

  I mean, I always Nixon. Down with Nixon.

• 1:34:12Speaker 04

  Or Dick. I'm going to show him Nixon. Actually, we're thinking maybe Dick might be the way to go for it. I want, I want to show him Nixon too, but Nixon also like presupposes a lot of knowledge on the audience's part.

• 1:34:21Griffin Newman?

  Dick is a good entry point and really accurate depiction of exactly how everything went down. Uh, I always gently mock my, uh, grandmother for this, but her favorite thing to say is, you know, a war is really important, especially World War II, and no one ever talks about it. And I'm always like, what are you talking, it's the most talked about thing in global history and yet. It's not like I'm having this realization for the first time. Most of my genuine understanding of World War II comes from me cobbling together the prism of depictions and movies. And then being like, what if this is fake and what if this is real? And what's the real info I need to like tie together the accurate pieces?

• 1:35:00Speaker 04

  I mean, our whole culture exists in the shadow of World War II.

• 1:35:03Griffin Newman?

  Totally, in this way that is like very.

• 1:35:05David Sims?

  Understandably, to be clear, it was a world war.

• 1:35:08Speaker 04

  It was, it was, no, it was a massive, massive event in humans.

• 1:35:12Griffin Newman?

  And it's not even that it's like abstracted in the media, but it's like, it's stretched in so many weird ways, you know?

• 1:35:19David Sims?

  And it's also one of the things that like, I feel like very few Americans know about the Sino-Japanese War. And like, you look at like, you just sort of like start delving into that. And it's like, yeah, like five million debt, right? Like, and that's just like the Chinese theater, right? And it's like, no one even thinks about China in World War II. They think about like D-Day and like Pearl Harbor and Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Or, you know, like, they don't even think about like, yeah, there was a, this, this tiny, thin island invaded like the most giant country on earth. Like for 15 years. Uh, anyway.

• 1:35:49Griffin Newman?

  Right. Which you, you know, you can make the argument of like, why is like the, the biggest Hollywood sort of, uh, attempt to tackle that as, as a piece of this, uh, uh, you know, historic period told through the prism of a young, white British boy. But I also think that is the part of the movie that is Spielberg really trying to work through something, which is this character coming to realize where he stands in relation to this thing. Which is especially interesting coming right after Color Purple, where he's going through this whole thought process of like, am I the guy to tell this story? But that is him just trying to put himself in the headspace of a person he can't really directly relate to and experience.

• 1:36:30David Sims?

  He's not really the guy to tell the Color Purple story, I would say. He's more the guy to tell this story, but this is certainly a story where like, the Japanese character is entirely abstracted. Like you're not, there's no characters there really that the kid he makes friends with at the end a little bit.

• 1:36:44Speaker 04

  Yeah. Who's kind of a conglomeration of, of various characters.

• 1:36:47David Sims?

  Right. That Ballard encountered or Ballard's fictional alter ego encountered and like.

• 1:36:53David Sims?

  You, yeah, you, I mean, I do watch this knowing he's going to make Schindler's List being like, it's interesting that he finally did kind of maybe have that moment of like, maybe I should make a movie that more personally relates to my history versus like, I, Steven Spielberg, will dramatize the invasion, the fall of Shanghai.

• 1:37:08Griffin Newman?

  He's using the history almost allegorically to his own inner sort of life in this film versus Schindler. And the reason why it is the one that finally connects with everyone of like, congratulation, you did it. You made a grown up movie is that he's like pulling from something that is like a cultural trauma that feels personal to him.

• 1:37:25Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah. And, and, and he has to go through the gauntlet of this movie to be able to make.

• 1:37:30David Sims?

  I think that's right.

• 1:37:31Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:37:32David Sims?

  Um, but there's like, it's very good. In my opinion, very, very good.

• 1:37:35Griffin Newman?

  There's stuff just in the first 20 minutes where you're just like, he is like really taking the scalpel to himself of like this kid in his backyard, setting a toy plane on fire and like whirling around and smiling. His like smile when he sees the submarine out his window rising, like all of this is fun. Look, it's like the movies, you know?

• 1:37:57Speaker 04

  And I think a lot of critics at the time, or a number of critics at the time, like misunderstood that.

• 1:38:03Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:38:03Speaker 04

  Because they saw this stuff and they thought, oh, it's just Spielberg being Spielberg.

• 1:38:06David Sims?

  Right. Why is there a movie?

• 1:38:07Speaker 04

  I remember somebody saying something along the lines of, when will Steven Spielberg give up making movies about children on bicycles? And I was like, did you, did you, did you happen to notice what he's riding the bike through? You know?

• 1:38:19Griffin Newman?

  Totally. And it's like, it feels very like, not cynical, but very like, yeah, self critical is the word I keep coming back to. You have that moment where he's standing in front of the giant Gone with the Wind poster, right? And we talked about that when he was meeting with Alice Walker on Color Purple.

• 1:38:35David Sims?

  Yes. He offhandedly told Alice Walker, well, Gone with the Wind is one of my favorite movies. And she like wrote in her diary later, like, note to self, talk to Steven Spielberg about that horrible opinion.

• 1:38:44Griffin Newman?

  And presumably had some long talk with him, explaining why he couldn't make Color Purple in that image. And then just like on his following movie, he sets this scene where this little boy is being like, I need to stay in one place. My chauffeur is going to come to pick me up in one day. And people are like yelling at him, trying to figure out like his actual value as like basically an object and a commodity.

• 1:39:05David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 1:39:06Griffin Newman?

  Yeah. There's just like shit like that. And even just like, Him playing pretend in a like husk of a plane on the ground while wearing a Halloween costume or a, you know, a costume, a party costume of a different cultural identity that he is taking on, that is interrupted by actual troops coming up from behind the hill and acting like war for real. And the movie takes like 45 minutes to actually disabuse this kid of like, no, you're living through something horrible. None of this is fun. You are no longer protected. All of your like creature comforts were an illusion. And, and it's like collapsing. He still is just like, well, I'm rich and I'm not American. I'm English

• 1:39:50Griffin Newman?

  and these things mean something. And eventually all of this will come back to me.

• 1:39:54Speaker 04

  And it's interesting how at, at the camp, so many of the other characters are trying to do that as well. They're trying to sort of maintain appearances, maintain some sense of

• 1:40:04Griffin Newman?

  Malkovich's, you gotta watch after my stuff thing. Right. That, that's the whole thing that like, not to jump away, but Bale going to his bedside to talk to him emotionally while he's recovered from his injury. And they have this wonderful scene after five minutes. He's like, wait, you said you were gonna watch my fucking stuff. Malkovich's pile of junk is like symbolically all he still has.

• 1:40:25David Sims?

  So, right. Malkovich, who, I mean, we don't really know who Basie is, except for like some expat who is already probably something of a hustler before the fall of Shanghai, right?

• 1:40:35Speaker 04

  He's a, he's a, um, a, well, in the, in the novel, he's a, a plane steward.

• 1:40:42David Sims?

  Interesting.

• 1:40:43Speaker 04

  I believe, I believe in the film, they changed it to a ship steward. It's, it's offhanded mention, but it's funny because he seems like such a badass. I mean, you see, you know, he's basically the, the, the picture of that image on the cover of that comic book that he has with his hat and his sunglasses and stuff. And that moment when, I mean, getting ahead of ourselves, but, um, that moment when Basie is beaten and his hat falls off and you see that he's totally bald, which is a moment of such vulnerability. You know, he doesn't seem like a stud in that moment.

• 1:41:15David Sims?

  That, that's why Malkovich is such good casting because he is kind of unique, but he is also already, right? This kind of odd balding, like sort of. You know, I mean, he could already play the vulture for Sam Raimi if he wanted to.

• 1:41:29Griffin Newman?

  And he should have. Uh, no, and like, you know, I feel like the Malkovich superpower is the creepy calm. Right? Where you're just like, why is this guy so quiet and un-rushed and patient? And that can be equally well applied to having him play a menacing character or an endearing character. But either case, you're just like, his energy is a little odd in relation to everything else that's going on.

• 1:41:53David Sims?

  How many endearing characters has he played?

• 1:41:55Griffin Newman?

  Very few.

• 1:41:55David Sims?

  I mean, Of Mice and Men.

• 1:41:57Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:41:58David Sims?

  Sort of, obviously, sort of like a tech character tinge with, you know, some menace.

• 1:42:02Griffin Newman?

  I, I put his, a performance of his, I think is fairly underrated movie. I don't really like that. I know you've come around on. I think he's very good in Changeling, and that is a movie where it's surprising how much he is actually a figure of warmth in an otherwise hostile world.

• 1:42:16Speaker 04

  Yeah. Um, I mean, his character in The Sheltering Sky.

• 1:42:21Griffin Newman?

  I've never seen that.

• 1:42:22David Sims?

  That is a movie where you see his floppy penis, right?

• 1:42:24Speaker 04

  You do see his floppy penis.

• 1:42:25David Sims?

  I remember that very clearly because I watched that movie on the BBC.

• 1:42:29Griffin Newman?

  You see his Malka dick?

• 1:42:31David Sims?

  You sure do. Like, you know, as a young cinephile being like, oh, well, this Bertolucci movie is being shown on the BBC. And I just remember his floppy penis very, very vivid.

• 1:42:38Speaker 04

  Lot of floppy penises in, in Bertolucci movies. Um, but, um, but yeah, his character there is, I mean, tender isn't the word I would use, but, but, you know, you really feel for him, or at least I do.

• 1:42:51Griffin Newman?

  When he's playing villainous, the tenderness is the thing that makes it more interesting.

• 1:42:56Speaker 04

  Well, yes, that's the thing about In the Line of Fire.

• 1:42:58Griffin Newman?

  It's the creepiness that makes him a little more interesting.

• 1:43:00Speaker 04

  Thing about In the Line of Fire is that you ultimately feel really bad for this guy.

• 1:43:06Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:43:07Speaker 04

  Um, even though he's a total psycho.

• 1:43:09Griffin Newman?

  The hater Weekend Update impression where I feel like he describes it as like, I'm, I'm getting angry. I'm going to do a, um, a, a, a calm, bizarrely articulate rant. You know, like that kind of the Malkovich explainer thing, but the build even of just like, you know, you're watching like this kid's normal disappear, him in denial about it for a big chunk of the movie. Him trying to like ride his bike like everything's normal. Like the kid still thinks he's in a Spielberg movie. He's ignoring what's around him. Right? Then that Gone with the Wind scene where he's starting to like be seen as like, uh, you know, and as loot, as an asset is what scares him. Pantoliano pulls him out of that.

• 1:43:54Griffin Newman?

  Pantaliano is the first person in the movie to be like, kid, shut the fuck up. You are annoying, right? A thing that I think is really, uh, the value of Bale being such a good actor, even at this young an age, is that he can play someone who's annoying and oblivious and not actually be fully infuriating to the audience. And yet, when Pantaliano says that, it's like so cathartic where you're like, yeah, this kid needs to fucking calm down and get in touch with reality. And Pantaliano is like Joey Pants, is like, you know, this like, this forced transitioning us to the next level of the movie. So then when he brings him to Malkovich and it's like, oh, this is the real guy.

• 1:44:35Griffin Newman?

  And Malkovich is so much more calm and confident than like motor mouth pants, who has been the guy telling Bale, you need to fucking calm down. And he does such a great Spielberg kind of introduction of like, you know, we're sort of seeing Malkovich in the foreground as Joey Pants brings Bale up. And you're just kind of hearing Malkovich do other stuff, his like body out of focus. And then he turns around, but for a big chunk of it, his head is down. You mostly see the hat, you can't see his mouth. Like he builds up the reveal in a way that makes him feel so important. As you said, as almost this sort of like two-fisted hero.

• 1:45:16Speaker 04

  Yeah, and, and there's so much in Spielberg's early films, especially, you know, he's, he's kind of a horror director at heart too, right? In terms, I mean, his, his, you know, so much of his style is so well suited to horror, even though he doesn't do that much of it.

• 1:45:31Griffin Newman?

  They've actually made one.

• 1:45:32Speaker 04

  But, um, with Malkovich, the way he reveals Malkovich is almost like a character out of a horror.

• 1:45:38Griffin Newman?

  No, you're right. It's the weird balance and it's gang at the Malkovich persona where he, he introduces him both like he's Jaws and like he's Indiana Jones, which similarly has the like Spielberg taking five minutes to show you Indiana Jones in pieces before you really get the hero shot or three minutes, whatever.

• 1:45:53Speaker 04

  Yeah, and you don't, and, and like you said, I mean, we don't really know what Basie's ultimate aim is.

• 1:46:00Griffin Newman?

  No, which is this kid's perspective.

• 1:46:02Speaker 04

  It's kind of like, what's going on here?

• 1:46:05Griffin Newman?

  He's being brought to this guy. This guy is immediately sort of presented as like, here's your new surrogate father, or at least this is your new family structure. And from the perspective of this child, it's like, I don't know whether to like valorize or like villainize this guy, you know? I don't know whether I should be afraid or comforted now.

• 1:46:22David Sims?

  He is probably just going to abandon him. He wants to sell him, is probably going to abandon and then realizes he has, uh, he's from a stately home. He's like, great, let's go to the stately home. Turns out the state of the home is occupied by Japanese troops. That's the crazy sequence of the truck where they all start kind of like bashing the truck. And Pentoliano is like, it doesn't have a reverse and they have to like go forward and

• 1:46:44Griffin Newman?

  Is this the slap in the face sequence or does that happen earlier?

• 1:46:47Speaker 04

  Slap in the face.

• 1:46:48Griffin Newman?

  When he goes back to the home and the sort of home staff, he's like bossing them around and, and the woman just walks up and slaps him in the face and basically just soundly says like, that's not the structure of society anymore.

• 1:46:58Speaker 04

  She's carrying a trunk with somebody. They're, they're like walking down the stairs. And, uh, and I don't remember what he says, but it is very much a kind of like, what's going on here? You know?

• 1:47:10Griffin Newman?

  Make me breakfast sort of vibe.

• 1:47:11David Sims?

  He was being such a brat to her.

• 1:47:13Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 1:47:14Griffin Newman?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:47:14David Sims?

  So I don't feel necessarily in that moment, very much empathy.

• 1:47:18Griffin Newman?

  But I think this is all by design. Like this is a movie that is like dismantling this kid and attacking his like weird kind of blinded naivete.

• 1:47:28David Sims?

  But he's a kid. I mean, he doesn't know any better.

• 1:47:30Griffin Newman?

  I don't think it's villainizing him.

• 1:47:32David Sims?

  How old is he supposed to be? Like 12, maybe 11 or 12?

• 1:47:34Speaker 04

  I think he ages from like 10 to 14.

• 1:47:36David Sims?

  Sure.

• 1:47:36Speaker 04

  Or 11 to 14.

• 1:47:38Speaker 03

  Light a plane on fire and is laughing and she's chasing after him like.

• 1:47:43David Sims?

  Yeah, he's a little brat. Like that's exactly what he is. He's a little brat.

• 1:47:47Speaker 04

  I think that's also one of the reasons why this film didn't quite hit the way I think they wanted it.

• 1:47:52David Sims?

  He's kind of not likable in the way that like the ET kid is.

• 1:47:55Speaker 04

  That's the thing. You're absolutely right. He's not, you know, Spielberg doesn't make him full on annoying or Spielberg and Bale don't make him full on annoying. But the idea is that we are a little alienated from this character. Um, even though we're kind of embodying this perspective.

• 1:48:09David Sims?

  Parents ripped from him and it's so traumatic and you're like, who could, you know, not sympathize with this or whatever.

• 1:48:13Griffin Newman?

  But you don't put that scene in of the woman slapping him in the face unless that's the point of what you're going for. Right? Which is like this kid coming back and being like, time to get back to normal. And then being like, this has all been like a fucked up societal lie that we no longer need to go along with.

• 1:48:28David Sims?

  Right. The bubble is gone.

• 1:48:29Griffin Newman?

  Yeah. And, and when the character finally does become kind of relatable is when he's like hollowed out. It's when you do the time jump and you're like, this kid has just been beaten down. He's in pure survival mode. Yeah.

• 1:48:42David Sims?

  Um, but right. But first they go to the sort of, you know, it's not a camp, the processing kind of area and where they're all getting put on the truck. Uh, and it's just. Think again, very elegantly told from his perspective of like, he doesn't really know what the truck means, right? Like, he doesn't know where it's going. He doesn't really know if it's good or bad. That's very scary to watch as a parent when you're watching this movie.

• 1:49:05Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah, absolutely.

• 1:49:06David Sims?

  And like, he doesn't even know if Basie is good or bad. Like, should he stick with him? Like, should he not? Like, no one's giving him like, any guidance, obviously.

• 1:49:13Griffin Newman?

  There's that part where they're in like, I, whatever that shelter is, and Basie says, like, here, I got you a new pair of shoes.

• 1:49:20David Sims?

  It's the civilian assembly center. Yeah, where, yeah, he stole them from a dead body. And he's like, I don't want those shoes.

• 1:49:25Griffin Newman?

  He's seen it. Right. And, and everyone's just trying to say to him, like, this is the reality of the world we live in. You need shoes. They will likely come off a dead child's body.

• 1:49:35David Sims?

  Well, it's a woman's body.

• 1:49:36Griffin Newman?

  Oh, yeah. Sorry. Yes.

• 1:49:37David Sims?

  Yeah, very upsetting.

• 1:49:39Griffin Newman?

  But like that, and also the scene where he's trying to resuscitate the woman.

• 1:49:43Speaker 04

  Well, yeah. I mean, there, there's a scene later where he's, I mean, that's echoed later in the scene where he's trying to resuscitate the, the Japanese, the pilot, right? And that scene I've, I've always loved because of the way, you know, Spielberg allows the light to sort of shine through. I mean, it's beautifully shot. But that's again, it's the kind of thing that in another Spielberg movie, this would have been ridiculous, but like, he would have succeeded in bringing them back. I mean, so, so many Spielberg movies turn on like, almost a reversal of history, like Close Encounters, all, all the, you know, dead, all the missing flyers come back.

• 1:50:19Griffin Newman?

  Totally. Yes. I mean, Justin Schauin at the end of War of the Worlds, the thing I cite all the time. Yeah.

• 1:50:24Speaker 04

  Raiders of the Lost Ark, reverse Holocaust on the Nazis at the end, you know?

• 1:50:28Griffin Newman?

  Right. But it's like, first 30 minutes of this movie is like, here's a kid who like, lives in a bubble and gets to like, enact play scenarios, a safe version of war, and like, giggles his way, you know, all through it. And then there's like, 30 minutes of him basically denying that his reality has changed. And then at like, the hour mark, you have the sort of like, bail behind the barbed wire fence, looking gaunt, something has changed in this kid.

• 1:50:53David Sims?

  Right.

• 1:50:54Griffin Newman?

  There is like, a new normal. And even then, it still is him trying to fight it in these moments of like, I can bring someone back to life. I understand the stakes of the world I live in have changed. And the movie keeps and just, you know, the few Spielberg episodes that we have released at the time of this recording, a lot of the feedback has been like, it is fascinating to watch these early films, especially in a post-Fabelman's world, and see how much really Spielberg is kind of about some amount of emasculation, right? And this is happening to a boy, but I do think there is this chunk of the movie past the first hour where he's like, I get it, I need to grow up, I need to become a man.

• 1:51:39Griffin Newman?

  And he is continuing to live in a delusion of him thinking that becoming a man and growing up means that he can sort of fix everything. And he is constantly kind of being reminded, you're not the center of the story, you're not the most important person, you're not in that level of power.

• 1:51:54Speaker 04

  But he tries, he tries to kind of, you know, he becomes kind of the conduit through which everybody starts to get their stuff. I mean, he almost runs the camp in a way.

• 1:52:04Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:52:04Speaker 04

  Or at least imagines himself running the camp.

• 1:52:06Griffin Newman?

  And it's not a, like, he tries to make the best of it thing. It's a, okay, I get it, I have responsibilities now, I'm gonna do it really well. And yet he's constantly told, like, you don't get how this works.

• 1:52:15Speaker 04

  Well, and that's the other thing about Spielberg, and something he's always been fascinated by, is the idea of sort of trying to learn to live by the rules of a world you don't quite understand. And I mean, we see that, obviously, in a lot of the films, but, you know, later on, during that period when he's making these kind of more socially important films like Amistad and Schindler's List and Saving Private Ryan and Lincoln, you know, so many of those films turn on the idea of, I mean, Amistad and Lincoln, obviously, turn on the idea of, like, people as property, right? And they all become about, like, sort of...

• 1:52:55Griffin Newman?

  Schindler's does too.

• 1:52:56Speaker 04

  Yeah, I mean, they all, they all become about, sort of, people as items on a ledger, even Saving Private Ryan, the idea that...

• 1:53:02Griffin Newman?

  Absolutely. The whole point of Saving Private Ryan is like, this makes no sense, what we're doing, objectively. This is a war where thousands of people are dying, why the fuck would we commit any resources to this, like, lunatic, like, oh...

• 1:53:16David Sims?

  He has brothers who died. Who cares?

• 1:53:18Griffin Newman?

  But wouldn't it make a great narrative?

• 1:53:19David Sims?

  But also just like, isn't that what being a human and like what the point of this war is? Is to like have humanity like?

• 1:53:26Speaker 04

  Also War Horse is kind of this with a horse.

• 1:53:29Griffin Newman?

  Oh, yeah. War. I love War Horse.

• 1:53:30Speaker 04

  I struggle with War Horse, but I love.

• 1:53:32Griffin Newman?

  I'm kind of, I'm feeling a temptation to give it another spin.

• 1:53:35David Sims?

  Portion of War Horse so unambiguously.

• 1:53:38Griffin Newman?

  The Hiddleston?

• 1:53:39David Sims?

  Which I think Hiddleston is just astonishing in the movie. And I think that whole, and I just, you know, that's his understanding of World War I so well, where it's all these guys are gonna, we're gonna rock this war. And then they charge into battle and are destroyed.

• 1:53:49Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 1:53:50David Sims?

  And it's like, this is an entirely new war.

• 1:53:52Griffin Newman?

  That I love is the Toby Kebbell horse, like the two men in no man's land, meeting in the middle to save the horse.

• 1:53:57Speaker 04

  The whole movie is a process by which.

• 1:53:59Griffin Newman?

  That's the one section I love.

• 1:54:00Speaker 04

  By which kind of the, the, you know, the, the old world, the old world understanding of war is replaced by the industrial machinery of war. And it's just this, this process of just like more effective ways to destroy humans.

• 1:54:15David Sims?

  Absolutely.

• 1:54:15Speaker 04

  Um, I, I.

• 1:54:16David Sims?

  My problem with War Horse is mostly the beginning where it's like, wait, is that horse for sale? And Peter Mollina, rah rah rah rah rah, and you're just like, shoot me now.

• 1:54:24Speaker 04

  It has to be like that so that the film can progress. And then the ending, you know, everybody was always, I remember there were some reviews at the time saying, oh, you know, it ends with like a, you know, John Ford sunset, you know, cause it's like ending in.

• 1:54:36Griffin Newman?

  And I absolutely said that on our episode of that.

• 1:54:39Speaker 04

  Oh, did you say that? But yeah.

• 1:54:40Griffin Newman?

  I'm not saying you're crediting me for that.

• 1:54:42Speaker 04

  No, no, I haven't, I haven't.

• 1:54:43Griffin Newman?

  I was one of the many people saying that.

• 1:54:45Speaker 04

  But, but it's like, well, I mean, a red John Ford sunset is a sign that something awful is about to happen.

• 1:54:52Griffin Newman?

  You're not wrong.

• 1:54:52David Sims?

  Collie thing, not a normal thing.

• 1:54:55Speaker 04

  You see that sunset in The Searchers right before everyone's massacred. So the idea that the film ends on that, you know, it's not, it's not the gone with the end. It's not the gone with the wind finale. It's the kind of, it's the what comes next finale, you know? Um, but.

• 1:55:09David Sims?

  War Horse good.

• 1:55:10Speaker 04

  War Horse.

• 1:55:10David Sims?

  I guess. I don't know.

• 1:55:12Speaker 04

  I should go back and listen to that episode.

• 1:55:14Griffin Newman?

  It's a lot of us talking about how everyone in the movie wants to fuck the horse. That it feels like everyone relates to the horse in a very sexual way.

• 1:55:22David Sims?

  Well, they're just in love with that goddamn horse.

• 1:55:24Speaker 02

  Hey, what a beautiful horse there.

• 1:55:30Speaker 05

  Welcome to 215 Maple Drive. We just put this property on the market. Love the crown molding. Oh, wait until you see the walk-in closets and the bathroom tile. Does it have Verizon FiOS? You know, 100% fiber internet. No FiOS, but it looks like it's got cable. Let's check out the kitchen. No FiOS? Yeah, no, thank you. Don't you want to see the rest? Okay, bye-bye.

• 1:55:55Speaker 02

  Get Verizon FiOS, because when you're moving, it's 100% or nothing.

• 1:56:02Griffin Newman?

  As I was saying, this idea of, you know, kind of learning to navigate the rules of a world that that seems fundamentally kind of unjust or out of whack. You know, you see that here. I mean, the the idea of learning to sort of navigate the camp, right? Even though he's not aware of it, like, I think we're aware of it as as viewers. But as a character, I don't know that Jim is aware of it.

• 1:56:24David Sims?

  But the time jump is interesting in that we sort of jump ahead to the end of the war, where he's, you know, suddenly this much more gaunt, you know, hollow kind of boy. But like, he has now learned how to navigate the camp. And he has this like alliance with Dr. Rollins, the Nigel Haver's character, who's like, one of the most unambiguously good characters in the movie.

• 1:56:43Griffin Newman?

  And then he's an excellent performance.

• 1:56:45David Sims?

  It is excellent. I mean, he's such a, that guy just gives you Englishman, you know, so well. And but then you've also got like Ben Stiller with the crazy teeth and Joey Pan, you know, like, you know, all the little.

• 1:56:55Griffin Newman?

  Seeing it at the Metrograph, that was a true jump scare moment where the audience just was like, am I hallucinating here?

• 1:57:00David Sims?

  It's crazy.

• 1:57:01Griffin Newman?

  Which, of course, this is one of this movie's greatest, like, lasting legacies, is that this, this is what inspires Tropic Thunder. Do you know this, Ben? That Stiller, this is like one of his first things ever. And he spends his time on this set. And he's like, it is ridiculous, the actors on set who are trying to be like, I need to like get myself into the suffering of the character. I need to like get in the boot camp, like post-platoon, kind of like, I need to really go through the gauntlet. And being like, we're actors, we have trailers, there's craft services. You're never going to experience something as bad as being in proper war. And he holds on to that for 20 years to be like, I want to make a movie lampooning actors who are faking war and taking it seriously. And Tropic Thunder is directly from this.

• 1:57:44David Sims?

  I can see the inspiration for sure. Um, so it's just interesting that we don't, this is not a processy movie about like life, like building up these alliances or the sort of the way the environment develops. The environment is fully developed by the time we jump forward.

• 1:57:58Speaker 04

  Yeah, I'm trying to remember.

• 1:57:59David Sims?

  And it's the end of the war, so it's about to fall apart.

• 1:58:01Speaker 04

  I'm trying to remember if the book gets into, I mean, the book obviously gets into this stuff more. But yeah, I mean, the, the time jump is, is fascinating also because, I mean, it's, it's always so hard casting kids in roles like this. It's like, he doesn't, I mean, he looks different because he's gaunt, but he doesn't really age, you know?

• 1:58:20David Sims?

  He's the right age. They figured it out, I think. They sort of split the difference with whatever age he actually was and kind of it works.

• 1:58:26Speaker 04

  So, I mean, so, so, so much of Jim's growth, he basically just has to convey through performance.

• 1:58:32David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 1:58:32Speaker 04

  Which is, which is really.

• 1:58:33Griffin Newman?

  They found the right kid. He was ready to handle it. I mean, here's, here's my big post Fableman's take on this movie, right?

• 1:58:40David Sims?

  When he sees Nogus, the atom bomb, that's like Seth Rogen cucking his mom.

• 1:58:45Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, yeah, exactly. When he sees Seth Rogen holding hands with the atom bomb.

• 1:58:48David Sims?

  Go ahead. What's the take?

• 1:58:49Griffin Newman?

  You know, the, the sort of misread for many decades based on Spielberg's privacy over his family story, what was known publicly and what was held back until his parents passed away, you know, and he meant his relationships with them, was the notion like, oh, all these movies are just like him shattered in the wake of a divorce, right? That it's just like his family unit was broken and he never got over it. What I think, first the Spielberg HBO documentary and then Fableman's really clarified is like, no, the core trauma of Spielberg's childhood, which is not on the scale of, you know, being a child in a term camp in World War II, but is the thing that emotionally rattled him, they never got over,

• 1:59:30Griffin Newman?

  is that he observes this thing, right, through filmmaking with his mother and his father's best friend. And in that is pulled into the world of adults, that his mother basically acknowledges, you share this secret with me now.

• 1:59:49David Sims?

  And now you have to kind of be an adult.

• 1:59:51Griffin Newman?

  And now I'm like elevating you to basically being the third adult in this relationship, if not. Fourth adult in this relationship and him having this disconnect from his siblings who are still sort of protected and being seen as children while he holds the information. And there was a 60s minute, it's 60 minutes interview I keep citing that I pulled up and doing this series. Around the time of the release of Hook and I'm asking him like, why are you so fixated on childhood, fond memories? And he's like, I do not have a single happy memory of my childhood. And it's not like my childhood was sad. Once my parents split up, he was like, I felt sad and lonely and alienated my entire childhood. And then I was brought into the world of adults prematurely and was basically told, this is where you sit now. Right?

• 2:00:33Griffin Newman?

  Which then accelerates Spielberg to this track of A, having this weird relationship with both the children and adults in his life, feeling neither fish nor fowl. And B, accelerating for him like, I just have to focus on work. I'm going to learn my craft. I'm going to be the youngest person to get a deal at Universal. I'm going to show up on the backlot when I'm 17. Right? I'm going to like will myself into being adult faster, but then doing this thing that's high level, pretend playing and like, you know, toys and like. Giving a sense of control over the world that is false, that is illusory, but that he is able to sort of maintain. And him just being stuck in this space where it's like, he keeps returning to childhood stuff, not because he's fixated on it, but because it was kind of.

• 2:01:16Griffin Newman?

  Pulled for him before he ever really got to have any handle on it. That he is trying to recapture something that he never really had. And I think the more success he has, the more it's like. Spielberg has an office full of arcade machines and he's buying the rights to Casper and the Flintstones. Is like, A, maybe these like superficial pop culture things were the only things that gave him some moment of happiness. But B, he's trying to like mend the child who never really got mended because it was like, hey, too bad. You're grown up now. Which is in a much more extreme way, what this character in this movie is going through. And just keeps getting kind of knocked down over and over again, every time he thinks, much like in this post time jump. I got it. I figured out the camp. I'm in charge of everything and he has to be.

• 2:02:00David Sims?

  I can save people. I can still like bring some morality.

• 2:02:03Griffin Newman?

  Fair enough. The world told me I need to be a grown up now. I'm a little grown up now.

• 2:02:06David Sims?

  And when the plane flies in the Mustang, he still has the childlike excitement, you know, when it comes in.

• 2:02:12Griffin Newman?

  And as you're saying, like Spielberg doesn't get mended until. He resolves stuff with his father in like Hook Last Crusader, which then opens him up to be able to make Schindler a different level of adult movie.

• 2:02:25David Sims?

  No, but make Hook his best movie of my father.

• 2:02:27Griffin Newman?

  Well, sure, but this is the movie where it feels like he's finally kind of identifying all of the issues, if that makes sense, in himself.

• 2:02:34David Sims?

  I think he does have a lot of this, too.

• 2:02:38Griffin Newman?

  I agree.

• 2:02:38David Sims?

  Which we have not, for the listeners, is sort of the biggest psychological piece of Spielberg's puzzle, but we have yet to discuss it because we've been holding off on that episode.

• 2:02:49Griffin Newman?

  I, I, I will, you will have heard my ET take by the-

• 2:02:53David Sims?

  There is no roadmap to Spielberg's brain more than ET.

• 2:02:56Griffin Newman?

  I think these are very paired films.

• 2:02:59David Sims?

  Sure.

• 2:02:59Griffin Newman?

  I do think they're like him, sort of like at the front and end of the eighties, taking two stabs at a similar thing. And I think what's happened in the years in between is his own understanding of his own psychology has transformed a little bit. ET is, to me, the greater film. I think that is like his masterwork, period. But, but there's something really interesting in this as like a, a sort of dark twin to that.

• 2:03:29David Sims?

  Sure, that's interesting.

• 2:03:30Speaker 04

  There's also this, you know, what happens with his parents. How fascinating is it that cinema is the crucible through which all of this happens?

• 2:03:39Griffin Newman?

  The whole fucking thing.

• 2:03:40Speaker 04

  And also-

• 2:03:41David Sims?

  When he made The Pivots, I was like, you crazy motherfucker. This has been on your mind the whole time?

• 2:03:45Griffin Newman?

  He's like this anxious child who sees a movie that keeps him up at night and the only way he can conquer that demon is to like replicate it and learn film craft. And then that becomes his undoing because he recognizes in footage the dissolution of his family.

• 2:03:58Speaker 04

  Right.

• 2:03:59Griffin Newman?

  It's just like-

• 2:03:59Speaker 04

  So the idea that within cinema, there are dark corners that can destroy you.

• 2:04:04Griffin Newman?

  Correct.

• 2:04:04Speaker 04

  And this is a thing that I think-

• 2:04:06Griffin Newman?

  And also dark powers that makes the bully even angrier at you.

• 2:04:10Speaker 04

  And this is, I think, a thing that animates his career and also for a long time, he's trying to avoid these dark corners. He can't avoid the dark corners.

• 2:04:18Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 2:04:18Speaker 04

  In fact, what's, what's beautiful, I mean, we were talking about how he's kind of a horror filmmaker at heart.

• 2:04:23Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:04:24Speaker 04

  You know, sometimes you wonder, does he even realize that he's a horror filmmaker?

• 2:04:27Griffin Newman?

  I think he, and I've said this before in multiple episodes. I think there is a part of him that is genuinely scared by how effective he is at manipulating people's emotions through this medium.

• 2:04:40Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:04:41Griffin Newman?

  That he can actually make people feel anything he wants and that he just kind of has that innately in him and that the movies of his that are criticized are often criticized for doing that too much. And it's not something he's doing strategically. It is something he has to work to fight against.

• 2:04:59Speaker 04

  And I think in some ways, it's why sometimes he, you know, he airs on the side of sentiment or, you know, syrupiness because he is afraid of, you know, the dark potential of cinema. So he kind of almost overcorrects sometimes.

• 2:05:14Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:05:14Speaker 04

  It happens in Amistad.

• 2:05:15David Sims?

  It happens in Amistad. It happens in his endings as much as sometimes I defend some of his later movies, you know, where people are like, why are there three endings to this movie? I do think that's sometimes him doing that, being like, did you get it? Did you, you got it, right? I'll see you later. One more scene so that you got it? I mean, especially Lincoln, a movie I adore and I think is perfect. The ending is stupid.

• 2:05:37Griffin Newman?

  I think that movie is great.

• 2:05:38Speaker 04

  I love, I love.

• 2:05:38Griffin Newman?

  I think the ending is exactly what prevents it from being perfect.

• 2:05:41David Sims?

  Which is where they're all like, there he goes off to the play. We love you, Lincoln. He's like, bye, bye.

• 2:05:47Speaker 04

  And he loves the theater.

• 2:05:50Speaker 04

  But by that point, I'm so invested in it.

• 2:05:52David Sims?

  Me too. I love it.

• 2:05:54Griffin Newman?

  But it is kind of crazy that like, up until a point, all of his movies, we've been realizing this and focusing just in the first half of his career, all his movies up until a point are like, man, he gets out at just the right time.

• 2:06:07David Sims?

  This movie is a perfect example.

• 2:06:08Griffin Newman?

  He has the restraint of even.

• 2:06:10David Sims?

  The final scene is so devastating, muted, I would say, right? Like not really laying it on too thick, him just really, you know, being reunited with his parents. And then it is truly like, yeah, goodbye. Like, hope you like the movie.

• 2:06:22Griffin Newman?

  And there's a restraint of him being like, I don't need the coda. The audience knows I'm giving them the pieces and they can work out what the takeaway is.

• 2:06:28Speaker 04

  And arguably, the climax of the film is, is the, that one Japanese soldier getting shot, you know, which is such a kind of small, intimate and, you know, uncomfortable little scene, which is not kind of a big, I mean, it's a war movie. You expect there to be some kind of big.

• 2:06:46Griffin Newman?

  Big final sequence.

• 2:06:48Speaker 04

  But the bombast is kind of often happening in the fringes or the background.

• 2:06:52David Sims?

  Nagasaki, you know, thousand miles away being the most obvious example. That scene is crazy.

• 2:06:59Griffin Newman?

  Like God taking a photograph, which, you know, bring it back to the dark power of cinema.

• 2:07:04David Sims?

  Yes.

• 2:07:06Speaker 04

  I think this movie rules.

• 2:07:07David Sims?

  It's really good.

• 2:07:08Griffin Newman?

  I wonder what he thought of Oppenheimer.

• 2:07:10David Sims?

  Spielberg?

• 2:07:11Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:07:11David Sims?

  That's a good question. Has he, I feel, has he talked much about like?

• 2:07:15Griffin Newman?

  He doesn't really talk much about.

• 2:07:16David Sims?

  Nolan at all? Cause the thing that was interesting about him was that he laid it on so thick for Dune. Uh, and like did the DGA sort of talk back with Villeneuve being like, this is the best sci-fi movie I've seen in years. Right? You know, where like, and Villeneuve is kind of like a cousin to Nolan in terms of like modern epic filmmakers or whatever. But yeah, have I ever heard Spielberg talk about?

• 2:07:36Griffin Newman?

  I don't, I mean, I feel like I don't hear Spielberg talk about new movies that much, but I'm sure during like award season.

• 2:07:43David Sims?

  I do feel like he tries to not.

• 2:07:45Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:07:45David Sims?

  Put his foot on the gas too much in terms of like, he knows, you know, whatever.

• 2:07:49Griffin Newman?

  I'll say I Googled and the first result I got, and I think this was from the Nolan Villeneuve.

• 2:07:55David Sims?

  Yes. Where Nolan says he sent.

• 2:07:57Griffin Newman?

  You know, when I first got the 70 millimeter print, I showed it to Steven Spielberg of Oppenheimer. He was the first person he showed. He called me about something else. I just got the print as well. And I hadn't shown it to anyone. I mean, the studio had seen it, but we screened it for him on his own. I sat behind and watched him watch the film. It was a extraordinary experience.

• 2:08:11David Sims?

  It says he said some kind thing.

• 2:08:13Griffin Newman?

  The other part of it, obviously also is that.

• 2:08:15David Sims?

  Spielberg was like, be plus, I'll see you later, Chris.

• 2:08:20Griffin Newman?

  That, that Interstellar was developed by Spielberg.

• 2:08:24Speaker 04

  That's right.

• 2:08:24Griffin Newman?

  By Jonathan Nolan. And then he.

• 2:08:26David Sims?

  For Spielberg.

• 2:08:27Griffin Newman?

  Remains a producer, but I think mostly just because of his history tied on. I don't think.

• 2:08:30David Sims?

  And also that initial note Jonathan Nolan script for Interstellar is interesting, but is more Spielberg.

• 2:08:35Griffin Newman?

  Very. It's him trying to write a Spielberg.

• 2:08:38Speaker 04

  And, and the, the beauty of Interstellar is that those Spielbergian elements are.

• 2:08:42Griffin Newman?

  That it's got the AI thing.

• 2:08:44Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:08:44Griffin Newman?

  That it's got, yep, yep, yep.

• 2:08:46David Sims?

  That's why it's Nolan's.

• 2:08:47Griffin Newman?

  But it is interesting because you're right. They do overlap and yet it doesn't feel like it is communicated loudly. And you sort of imagine that Spielberg, it feels like Spielberg should be publicly saying, he is obviously my heir apparent.

• 2:09:02David Sims?

  Spielberg.

• 2:09:02Griffin Newman?

  We are doing events together.

• 2:09:03David Sims?

  Very different.

• 2:09:04Griffin Newman?

  They are.

• 2:09:05David Sims?

  In some ways, I like

• 2:09:06Speaker 04

  Very different senses.

• 2:09:07David Sims?

  I do feel like Spielberg, Scorsese, a lot of these kind of like benevolent old timers who make great movies still should just once a year, go on whatever Charlie Rose is now, not Charlie Rose, but whatever that is now, fucking Marc Maron, I don't care. And be like, here are my like, here are like the eight movies this year I really loved. I guess Tarantino could do it too.

• 2:09:24Griffin Newman?

  When I was, when I was on the set of The Pilot or Vinyl, the worst thing that Martin Scorsese's ever directed.

• 2:09:30David Sims?

  Possibly true.

• 2:09:31Griffin Newman?

  By default.

• 2:09:33David Sims?

  There's an argument for like Shine a Light.

• 2:09:35Griffin Newman?

  Never seen Shine a Light. I'll say maybe worse scripted thing.

• 2:09:39Speaker 04

  Has the, has the tide turned on Shine a Light? I did not like that movie at all.

• 2:09:42David Sims?

  I just think of Shine a Light as him in a little bit of his, I'm kind of like Marty, there's nothing here. Yeah. Like I like the Rolling Stones just as much as anyone, but like the, you know, Rolling Stones in their late sixties, like there's nothing here.

• 2:09:55Griffin Newman?

  I think Doc is a different category.

• 2:09:57David Sims?

  Anyway.

• 2:09:57Griffin Newman?

  But anytime he would be around set, like sort of just like hanging out and he felt

• 2:10:02David Sims?

  He would talk about movies.

• 2:10:03Griffin Newman?

  Accessible and approachable. He would. And I would turn to my, my friend Ephraim Sykes, who was also on the show and go like, I just want to ask him if he's seen like X, Y, and Z. I want to ask him what his top three movies of this year are. I want to ask if he likes Edge of Tomorrow. Like what is he like in touch? What is he watching on TV?

• 2:10:19Speaker 04

  Seen Den of Thieves two.

• 2:10:20Griffin Newman?

  All of it. I was just like, I want to know his opinion on everything and what he is engaging with and what he isn't. I agree with you that like the 10 movie brats who are still alive and are ostensibly now in old master positions.

• 2:10:31David Sims?

  Right. Tell me what you like.

• 2:10:33Griffin Newman?

  They should be doing a fucking Soderbergh list every year.

• 2:10:35David Sims?

  Well, like Spielberg sees everything.

• 2:10:37Griffin Newman?

  Of course.

• 2:10:37David Sims?

  Some of these, a lot of these, of course, he probably doesn't.

• 2:10:40Speaker 04

  Coppola, Coppola shares a lot of stuff on his Instagram of like films that he's seen and likes.

• 2:10:45David Sims?

  Yes.

• 2:10:46Speaker 04

  You know, it's actually very adorable.

• 2:10:48Griffin Newman?

  But all of these guys should have.

• 2:10:49David Sims?

  Generally sort of adorable old man, like.

• 2:10:52Speaker 04

  Yeah. I sincerely doubt it's actually him, but yeah.

• 2:10:55Griffin Newman?

  I want a podcast that's like the five of them once a week.

• 2:10:59David Sims?

  Paul Schrader.

• 2:10:59Griffin Newman?

  What are you watching?

• 2:11:00David Sims?

  Goes to see every single goddamn movie.

• 2:11:02Griffin Newman?

  Says normal things.

• 2:11:05Speaker 04

  Paul Schrader yelled at me for making him go see All We Imagine Is Light. He didn't yell at me. He didn't yell. He emailed me. He's like, why did you make me go see that?

• 2:11:12Griffin Newman?

  But the email wasn't all caps.

• 2:11:13Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:11:13David Sims?

  Why didn't he like All We Imagine Is Light?

• 2:11:15Speaker 04

  He didn't like, I mean, yeah, it's a different type of film for him, I guess, you know?

• 2:11:19David Sims?

  It's got a little bit of, whatever. What does he love this year, old Paulie? Paulie asks.

• 2:11:25Speaker 04

  He's posted about something. Oh, he really liked Conclave, I believe.

• 2:11:29David Sims?

  Oh, Conclave rocks.

• 2:11:31Speaker 04

  Liked Anora, but he had that, he had that sort of gripe with Anora that she, that she, that she negotiates for so little.

• 2:11:40Griffin Newman?

  He loved Twisters. That was.

• 2:11:42Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah. He went to see it in 4DX, right?

• 2:11:44David Sims?

  Yeah, I sat next to it. That might kill him. We don't need him in 4DX right now.

• 2:11:48Speaker 04

  No, he actually went to see it in 4DX.

• 2:11:49David Sims?

  Really?

• 2:11:50Speaker 04

  Yes. He posted about it on Facebook.

• 2:11:52Griffin Newman?

  Oh, my God.

• 2:11:53David Sims?

  He posts so much on Facebook.

• 2:11:55Griffin Newman?

  Pollyanna, he hated, right?

• 2:11:57Speaker 04

  He didn't even sit all the way through it, I believe.

• 2:11:59Griffin Newman?

  Right, that's right. He walked out of it. Yeah.

• 2:12:01David Sims?

  Salute. Empire of the Sun, are there any other sequences we want to talk about in Empire of the Sun, please? Before we start wrapping up.

• 2:12:08Speaker 04

  Miranda Richardson.

• 2:12:10David Sims?

  Very, very good.

• 2:12:11Speaker 04

  Wonderful actor.

• 2:12:12David Sims?

  Yes.

• 2:12:13Speaker 04

  Interesting, interesting career.

• 2:12:15David Sims?

  I was about to say, this is kind of right when she's beginning to emerge, right? And I feel like in the early 90s, crying game damage is when she's kind of like, has the most juice. It's like a big prestige actress.

• 2:12:25Speaker 04

  Did she win Best Actress at Cannes for Dance with a Stranger? Did I imagine this?

• 2:12:31David Sims?

  Uh, you did imagine that. That's her first big movie, the Mike Noll movie.

• 2:12:35Speaker 04

  Did she, did she win anything?

• 2:12:37David Sims?

  Mike Noll won the Award of the Youth at the Cannes Film Festival. She won Best Actress at the Evening Standard Awards, which is no offense to them.

• 2:12:43Griffin Newman?

  Award of the Youth, that's like Cannes, Nickelodeon Kids Choice Awards?

• 2:12:46David Sims?

  Exactly. It's a big French blimp.

• 2:12:48Speaker 04

  They slime.

• 2:12:49Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, did Jacque Odillard get slimed?

• 2:12:53Speaker 04

  He's actually the emcee.

• 2:12:55Griffin Newman?

  He has to do an interview with Stick Stickly.

• 2:12:56David Sims?

  It's like coming up, like crying game is her big sort of breakout and she wins some critic awards and then like Damage and Tom and Viv are when she's getting Oscar noms and then she's.

• 2:13:04Griffin Newman?

  She's kind of three Oscar noms?

• 2:13:06David Sims?

  Just two. Just the two.

• 2:13:08Griffin Newman?

  Crying game and.

• 2:13:09David Sims?

  Didn't get crying game.

• 2:13:10Speaker 04

  Did he get crying game? It is fascinating that she is the poster for the crying game.

• 2:13:15David Sims?

  Well, it's such an image, her wig.

• 2:13:18Speaker 04

  I know, but of all the characters in that movie, that she is the one on poster.

• 2:13:21David Sims?

  I think crying game is the movie that I think so many people who've only seen the poster, turn it on and they're like, Forrest Whitaker is like the lead of this? No one told me Forrest Whitaker was in this movie. He's doing an Irish app.

• 2:13:31Griffin Newman?

  That's a movie where like the cultural reputation, the memeing of it has morphed into something very different than what it actually is to watch it.

• 2:13:37Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:13:38Griffin Newman?

  I don't remember one of the, you know, every two year, New York, different theater does a semi-complete Robert Altman retrospective. And every time those happen, I try to go see some of my, my blind spots. But one of them, maybe at MoMA like 10 years ago, or MoMe or somewhere, I, I went to see Atlantic City, which I'd never seen before. And there was one of those like.

• 2:14:01David Sims?

  You mean Kansas?

• 2:14:02Griffin Newman?

  I'm sorry, Kansas City.

• 2:14:03Speaker 04

  Oh, yes, yes.

• 2:14:04Griffin Newman?

  Uh, and a very different movie. I apologize.

• 2:14:06David Sims?

  And a film that's much harder to like, watch.

• 2:14:08Griffin Newman?

  Correct. Now finally has a good bluer. Yeah, but at the time didn't. And it was one of those great like rep screening things where like, a new audience of strangers all has the same response to a movie in the moment and is kind of buzzing from it. Where I forget who I saw it with, but I was just like, holy shit, the Miranda Richardson performance in this, how did she not win everything? And then I heard like 10 other groups of people all saying that, like just kind of blown away. And you realize, even though that movie sort of had like, more of a push for Jennifer Jason Lee and for Belafonte particularly in terms of awards.

• 2:14:45Speaker 04

  It's also was not a successful film.

• 2:14:47Griffin Newman?

  No, was disliked. That, the movie's pretty excellent, in my opinion. But also like, that's the moment when she's kind of cresting in the 90s and she's almost getting taken for granted. And then she's become such a weird kind of like diffuse figure since then where she never has totally disappeared.

• 2:15:02David Sims?

  No, she's a very, very good working actor. She just.

• 2:15:05Griffin Newman?

  She'll pop up and you'll be like, oh, right. Miranda Richardson's incredible.

• 2:15:08David Sims?

  Um, she's amazing in The Lost Prince, which I think is one of like triumphs of British television. The Steven Poliakoff mini-series, The Lost Prince. Has anyone seen it?

• 2:15:15Speaker 04

  I've not seen it.

• 2:15:16David Sims?

  Uh, highly recommend. Have you ever seen any Steven Poliakoff? He is a guy who does not have a reputation in America at all. And it's.

• 2:15:23Griffin Newman?

  I, I, I know the name. What are the, what are the?

• 2:15:26David Sims?

  Well, he hasn't done a lot of movies. Like the movies he made were like Hidden City and Close My Eyes in the early 90s and stuff like that. He's a big.

• 2:15:34Speaker 04

  Close my eyes, I saw it.

• 2:15:35David Sims?

  With Clive O'Neil, young Clive O'Neil, but a big British TV, like, you know, director. And his best things are shooting The Past, Perfect Strangers, which I think had a different title here because of the sitcom. It was called Almost Strangers here. And The Lost Prince, which is like this sort of triptych about like memory and stuff. And I highly recommend all of them to anyone, but they're hard to find, I think. But The Lost Prince is the easiest to find because it like won an Emmy and is about the youngest son of King George V, who had epilepsy and was hidden away from the public and died very young.

• 2:16:08Speaker 04

  I think I heard about this.

• 2:16:09David Sims?

  And she plays Queen Mary, she plays his mother and she's astonishing in it. It's so good.

• 2:16:13Speaker 04

  She's such a good actor and this is a movie where you see what she can do because she doesn't have a lot of screen time.

• 2:16:20David Sims?

  No, she doesn't. And you barely understand sort of like who she is. And she's so, the camera loves her. Like, she's so beguiling and sort of mysterious and.

• 2:16:33Speaker 04

  She has like translucent skin. I mean, it's such a, you know, she's a very, yeah. And there's something very otherworldly about her whole presence in the film, so much so that when she dies.

• 2:16:44David Sims?

  In the movie.

• 2:16:44Speaker 04

  It's, it's, it's, yes, in the movie. When she dies, it really does feel like, like suddenly she becomes real in that moment, you know?

• 2:16:53David Sims?

  Like, like she's like, as a corpse, more earthly.

• 2:16:58Speaker 04

  Yeah, it's weird.

• 2:17:00David Sims?

  Yeah. And I don't know if there are any other, I mean, Leslie Phillips as Maxton, like he's, you know, he's, he's a British legend. He's very good. He's like a big carry on guy.

• 2:17:12Speaker 04

  Obviously Miranda Richardson's best performance is Mrs. Tweedy in Chicken Run. I just think that needs to be stated. And Chicken Run?

• 2:17:18David Sims?

  She's the villain.

• 2:17:18Speaker 04

  Mrs. Tweedy.

• 2:17:19David Sims?

  Yes. Yeah. Still haven't seen. Should show it to my daughter.

• 2:17:22Speaker 04

  Oh.

• 2:17:23David Sims?

  She got, and she got, she liked The Wallace and Gromit.

• 2:17:25Speaker 04

  Yeah. Yeah. You know what movie sucks?

• 2:17:27Griffin Newman?

  Chicken Run Two: Dawn of the Nugget.

• 2:17:29David Sims?

  But how do you feel about, um, the, well, the new Wallace, which I haven't seen?

• 2:17:33Griffin Newman?

  Liked it.

• 2:17:34David Sims?

  Uh, what's it called again?

• 2:17:35Griffin Newman?

  It is called

• 2:17:36David Sims?

  It's got the chicken guy back.

• 2:17:37Griffin Newman?

  Murder Most Foul.

• 2:17:38David Sims?

  Yeah, there you go.

• 2:17:39Griffin Newman?

  I will say, basically, all the Feathers McGraw stuff is great.

• 2:17:43David Sims?

  That character just

• 2:17:45Griffin Newman?

  He pops.

• 2:17:45David Sims?

  Undeniable.

• 2:17:46Griffin Newman?

  He pops, and it's just, you get the juice from, like, he hasn't been on screen in 25, 30 years.

• 2:17:50David Sims?

  Penguin ass.

• 2:17:51Griffin Newman?

  He's great. He gets, let me say this, he gives an incredible performance.

• 2:17:54David Sims?

  You know what's so funny in The Wrong Trousers? Whenever he has a gun, it's just this little penguin suddenly produces like a sort of human-sized revolver.

• 2:18:01Griffin Newman?

  It's basically funny anytime he interacts with any object, and Murder Most Foul knows that, and it gets a lot of mileage out of that.

• 2:18:09David Sims?

  Boy, oh, boy.

• 2:18:10Griffin Newman?

  It is incredible for how much people talk about, like, oh, it's amazing that Ardenman gets such a great performance at a grommet, and he doesn't even have a mouth, it's just his brow. And then Feathers McGraw doesn't even have a brow.

• 2:18:22David Sims?

  No.

• 2:18:22Griffin Newman?

  He's got a beak that doesn't open, and two beady eyes.

• 2:18:25David Sims?

  And a little round head.

• 2:18:26Griffin Newman?

  Yes, and it's truly just tilting the head

• 2:18:28David Sims?

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:18:29Griffin Newman?

  that gives him characterization. I think that film is in a weird space between feature and short.

• 2:18:33David Sims?

  Sure, it's like 60 minutes long or whatever.

• 2:18:35Griffin Newman?

  Right. It's a little padded for a short without having enough space to make a denser narrative as a feature. It's also like the first, uh, post, uh, what's his name, Peter Solis?

• 2:18:46David Sims?

  Oh, right, it's, he's dead, right, the voice of Wallace.

• 2:18:49Griffin Newman?

  So it's Ben Whitehead did it, who did a very good job.

• 2:18:51David Sims?

  Right, but it's not quite.

• 2:18:52Griffin Newman?

  And Nick Park directed it, but he co-directed it and he didn't write it, and there's a little bit of a feeling of, like, legacy sequel from other people. Have you seen the new Wallace and Gromit? I have not. I've heard it's fantastic.

• 2:19:02David Sims?

  Yeah, Allison loved it.

• 2:19:04Griffin Newman?

  I think it is solid. I, I will say, without, like, preloading a thing, my complaint about it is, I think they fail to, and they, you can tell they realize this at the end, because they tried to retrofit one. They fail to make the, um, the plot, the sort of, like, Indiana Jones-esque MacGuffin of what they're up against, directly relate to Wallace and Gromit's relationship.

• 2:19:28David Sims?

  Sure, which is usually

• 2:19:29Griffin Newman?

  Which, watching it, that is the crux, is the parallel of, like, the device that goes wrong, but really reveals something about how these two relate to each other, and Wallace's sort of ignorance about what Gromit means to him and needing to learn that. They, like, kind of tack it on at the end, and you're like, it sort of hasn't been that up until this point. I still think it is

• 2:19:48David Sims?

  Better than most things.

• 2:19:50Speaker 04

  I really want to see it. It's my son is at that age when he watches most movies with me.

• 2:19:55David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 2:19:57Speaker 04

  But also, he's like, you know, a busy young man going to school with homework and stuff like that. So it's, there's so many films where I'm like, oh, I need to watch this.

• 2:20:04David Sims?

  For movies.

• 2:20:05Speaker 04

  I should, I should wait until he can watch it with me and you know, so it's like.

• 2:20:08David Sims?

  So you're waiting to watch that one with him.

• 2:20:10Speaker 04

  Yeah, it's like, um, there's a lot of movies where I'm like, oh God, I should probably watch this for work, but.

• 2:20:15David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 2:20:15Griffin Newman?

  It is much better than Dawn of the Nugget, which I think is basically wall to wall bullshit.

• 2:20:20David Sims?

  Oh, The Chicken Run.

• 2:20:21Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, it sucks and is for losers.

• 2:20:23David Sims?

  Because Gibson's not in it. So you think, you know.

• 2:20:25Griffin Newman?

  Well, and, and. And here's the problem. They, they bumped him because of woke and they replaced him with some clean cut, uncontroversial figure. Let me check my notes here. Zachary Levi. That's the funniest part is that they were like, okay, who's like a safer choice than Gibson?

• 2:20:41David Sims?

  Empire of the Sun was given a plum Christmas release, awardsy sort of release, December 11th, 1987. It made only $22 million. It is the lowest grossing Spielberg film at that point, except for Sugarland Express.

• 2:20:56David Sims?

  And I think Spielberg was a little, did not think it was going to be like blockbuster, but was a little taken aback by how sort of tepid their general reaction was. Uh, Saris loved it. Uh, Huberman thought it sucked.

• 2:21:10Griffin Newman?

  Huberman, not the biggest Spielberg fan.

• 2:21:12David Sims?

  No, and Huberman called it the sorrow and the pity remade as Oliver, which is pretty funny.

• 2:21:17Griffin Newman?

  Uh, he really struggled with it. Talked about that. He thinks like the first 30, 40 minutes to hour is really strong. And then he's like, and then it becomes like this kid playing games in the middle of a war with John Malkovich. I don't understand what he's getting at, which I feel like is the way a lot of people talked about this, that it's like, oh, he can't get over the childlike wonder thing.

• 2:21:35David Sims?

  Paulie Kale gave it the review. I feel like she gave a lot of his movies at this point where she's like, it's majestically made. I don't really know what it's about, or if there's anything going on here.

• 2:21:43Griffin Newman?

  This was the standard line on Spielberg from a lot of kind of the high end critics at the time, you know?

• 2:21:48David Sims?

  Spielberg, you know, says fuck you to the critics, um, you know, in this way of like, basically like, stop trying to tell me what kind of movie I should make. Which I think is what the critics were often do. Like they would often be kind of like, stop trying to win an Oscar. Stop trying to make a serious movie. Go make the movies you're good at, you know? But then he would make those and they'd be like, ah, this kitty bullshit, like.

• 2:22:10Speaker 04

  It's how we do, David.

• 2:22:11David Sims?

  It is how we do, but especially how they did. And God bless the, the critical community of the eighties or whatever, but they were snarky, snarky folks.

• 2:22:19Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 2:22:19David Sims?

  And like, as critic circle chair, I went on a deep dive because it used to be like, you know, we didn't tweet out our winners, right? The chair would just call like the New York Times or whoever and be like, all right, here's who won. And especially if the chair was someone like Pauline Kael or Rex Reed, they would also sprinkle in a little bit of spice in terms of like, we got in a big fight about this, like, you know, and there's just a contentiousness to those days that there is not in our room when we vote.

• 2:22:46Speaker 04

  And I think, I think it was a smaller group.

• 2:22:49David Sims?

  A much smaller group and they're meeting at the Algonquin and they're getting drunk.

• 2:22:52Speaker 04

  Right. And I'm not even thinking specifically of the New York film critic, but like the, the critical community is a smaller group.

• 2:22:57David Sims?

  These like newspaper critics.

• 2:22:58Speaker 04

  And it's nationalized.

• 2:22:59David Sims?

  Yes.

• 2:23:00Speaker 04

  Right? I mean, we talk about the pilots and stuff like that. People will always talk about like, Pauline Kael would be like, all right, this is the movie we're getting behind and you know, um, I mean, it wasn't sinister in that way. It was like, you know.

• 2:23:10David Sims?

  It was clicky is what you're saying.

• 2:23:12Speaker 04

  It was clicky. Yeah. And, and we still do it, but less, less in a kind of overt clicky way. It's just, there are sensibilities that, that sort of gravitate towards each other. And yeah, I remember from the days of like Cinemasters and stuff like that, there'd be certain films that like, obviously all these people are going to hate this, you know? Like everybody, everybody hates Lost in Translation. And it was like, you know, you, you step out into the real world where people actually seem to really like a movie like Lost in Translation. But like my little pointy head friends were like, nope, you know? And that, that happened with Spielberg a lot.

• 2:23:44Griffin Newman?

  Let's also call out with Spielberg, there is this thing, and I think there are versions of this that still happen today. I think Nolan is sort of a version of this where it's like, hey, you know what? For better or worse, the kind of health of American films and the studio, like film as a commercial industry kind of rests on your whims.

• 2:24:01David Sims?

  Right.

• 2:24:02Griffin Newman?

  And there was this sense of like, you have a responsibility, which then turns into people saying, you should be doing this instead of that. Why can't you evolve into this? The sort of like push and pull of like. There's a health of this as a business that you're responsible for, but also if you have everyone's ears and eyes, shouldn't you be using that to try to elevate understanding and the art form and whatever? And it's impossible to please everyone in those positions. I also think, you know, like when we come back and do new release Spielberg movies, which we've done over the last seven years, he and Shyamalan are the two people who have made the most films since we've covered them. Put them out. Right. And very often people think that we're insane for liking Shyamalan movies more than most people do. And a lot of the Spielberg new releases we've covered, I have

• 2:24:47Griffin Newman?

  come off as like tepid to mixed on, right? And, and people will go like, why is he willing to forgive all of Shyamalan's like clear weaknesses and yet he's more critical on Spielberg? And I do think it is me falling into the same thing, which is like basically outside of Ready Player One, which I also rewatched. I like all of his modern movies, but I'm like rating them against the Steven Spielberg canon. And every time I sit down to see a new Steven Spielberg, I'm like, is this going to be the best movie ever made? It is hard not to go and preloaded with some version of that. And in this era, it's the most extreme version of that because I think it is this bifurcation between like half the time he

• 2:25:29Griffin Newman?

  makes the most culturally impactful blockbusters and then sometimes he wastes his energy trying to impress us that he is a grown up so he can win a fucking Oscar. And I think people were really, really cynical about that. As much as they were also criticizing for him for like infantilizing culture, they were even more critical when he tried to like wear a suit and play grown up. It's, it's a weird thing. Which is also why Catch Me If You Can is one of his greatest movies. Totally. Because that more than Fableman's to me is like the autobiography. Right. But it's like Schindler finally shakes that off of him where people are like, you can do whatever you want and we will judge it on its own merits. Maybe we hold you to a high standard, but.

• 2:26:13Griffin Newman?

  Whatever. You've proven yourself. You're in the room. You're settled.

• 2:26:16David Sims?

  I really, it's Schindler, but I really think it's Saving Private Ryan because after, obviously Schindler wins in the Oscar and wins him so much respect, but then he makes Amistad and Lost World, which everyone is kind of like eh. And then he makes Saving Private Ryan and everyone is like, you are now the poet laureate of boomers. Like, that's it. You did it.

• 2:26:32Griffin Newman?

  I think there's the other part of it, which is like Schindler is-

• 2:26:35David Sims?

  And I love Saving Private Ryan, to be clear.

• 2:26:36Griffin Newman?

  Or yes. Saving Private Ryan is, in my opinion, the single biggest shift in his signature style up until that point, which then goes like, oh, he can now change languages, which then you get like Minority Report, Munich, and all these films that are very different than the usual Spielberg thing. That's like to our earlier point of like giving someone a second Oscar. It's like Schindler is like, this is the best you've ever made a grown up movie. And then Saving Private Ryan is, we didn't know you could do that. And once he's proven he could do that, people are like, you can do anything.

• 2:27:07Speaker 04

  Yeah. Saving Private Ryan to me is, my response to Saving Private Ryan is actually not dissimilar to some people's response to Empire of the Sun, where I'm like, you know, first 30, 40 minutes, obviously, you know, incredible. And then the rest is kind of like, I like it. I don't, I don't dislike it. That's another movie we're gonna re-watch with, with my son, so he knows what the hell D-Day was.

• 2:27:29David Sims?

  Well, there's no better fucking movie to watch. I hate to sound like Mike. The weirdest thing especially is like, I was shown Schindler's List, Amistad and Saving Private Ryan in high school. All of those movies are inappropriate to be shown in our high school, like, you know, on the sort of like paper thing, right? But like, yeah, like, the rock.

• 2:27:46Griffin Newman?

  Yeah. And their incredible communications of, right.

• 2:27:49Speaker 03

  So, speaking of World War II history, I have a little thing to share here.

• 2:27:55Griffin Newman?

  I have no idea where this is going.

• 2:27:57Speaker 03

  So, my grandfather is a veteran of World War II.

• 2:28:03David Sims?

  Is he still alive? No.

• 2:28:04Speaker 03

  No, he's passed.

• 2:28:05David Sims?

  Okay.

• 2:28:06Speaker 03

  He was a Marine.

• 2:28:07David Sims?

  Sure. My grandpa was in the Air Force.

• 2:28:09Speaker 03

  He thankfully was really good at typing and so he was assigned to some, someone in leadership and never really ended up having to.

• 2:28:18David Sims?

  He was like way, way back. Right. Or sure.

• 2:28:21Speaker 03

  He spent most of his time, he always talked about just being like stationed at a large base in Samoa.

• 2:28:28David Sims?

  Sure.

• 2:28:28Speaker 03

  Yeah. Just like acting as a secretary. I don't remember their rank, but with some, someone in leadership.

• 2:28:34Griffin Newman?

  My grandfather booked talent for USO shows, which I've said before, it sounds like a bit.

• 2:28:38David Sims?

  Griffin Newman shit.

• 2:28:40Griffin Newman?

  He could not have been more dissimilar for me in personality. And yet, when I say that, people just picture me with a helmet.

• 2:28:47Griffin Newman?

  Be like, let's get some stand ups.

• 2:28:49David Sims?

  My maternal grandpa was in the Air Force. He was in France, but I think he was not, he was not like on whatever, the frontline either. He did a lot of like, but he was in France. I mean, I don't know. But anyway, carry on.

• 2:29:00Speaker 03

  And so my dad, when he was cleaning out the house, uh, which is a family house. And so a lot of times he'll discover stuff that my grandparents left at this house.

• 2:29:14Griffin Newman?

  Has been in your family for like 100 years, correct?

• 2:29:16Speaker 03

  Yeah. It, it was a cabin that was built in 1880 and has been in my family since.

• 2:29:23Griffin Newman?

  Like that's way more than a hundred years.

• 2:29:24Speaker 03

  Yeah. Yeah. Pretty crazy. He discovered this Japanese flag, which was, uh, I'm gonna totally not be able to pronounce the name of this properly. Yosigaki Hinomaru. But, uh, when Japanese soldiers were drafted into service, their family and friends would sign.

• 2:29:49David Sims?

  Say good luck flag.

• 2:29:50Speaker 03

  This flag.

• 2:29:51David Sims?

  Yes. It would look like this.

• 2:29:53Speaker 03

  Right. Yeah.

• 2:29:54David Sims?

  Right. Right.

• 2:29:55Speaker 03

  So my dad discovered. A flag and I, we don't think it's from a grandpa. We think it's from a relative, but we, we found this really cool nonprofit called Oban Society, uh, who is set up where they, they reconnect the flags with the family members and we sent the flag in. Wow.

• 2:30:16David Sims?

  To Japan, like, like, like we find the person.

• 2:30:20Speaker 03

  When was this?

• 2:30:20David Sims?

  Belonged to.

• 2:30:21Speaker 03

  So we just, uh, sent it in the mail and got confirmation through like a few days ago.

• 2:30:26David Sims?

  That is fascinating. So it was essentially they, they found this, this, whoever was found this flag and took it home being like, this is crazy.

• 2:30:34Speaker 03

  Right. And it's like, you know, in America, the flags were popular as badges of victory, get often given to mothers, sisters and or town mayors. I just found that weird. Why would you give that to your mayor?

• 2:30:45David Sims?

  Mayor's like, another fucking flag. What the hell?

• 2:30:48Speaker 04

  I mean, the person it belonged to probably died.

• 2:30:51David Sims?

  Almost certainly.

• 2:30:52Speaker 04

  In the war.

• 2:30:53Speaker 03

  Rightly, yeah.

• 2:30:53Speaker 04

  So this, this would go back. I mean, but that's.

• 2:30:56David Sims?

  That's fascinating.

• 2:30:57Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:30:57David Sims?

  It's fascinating that that exists. That's that there's like a service that finds, you know, reconnects these artifacts.

• 2:31:04Speaker 03

  It's awesome. I think it's great.

• 2:31:05David Sims?

  Interesting. My dad, I, my grandpa, I have a giant bag of his shit from the war, but it's all like weird money. And like the weird stuff that was given to servicemen of like, here's how to like behave in Britain or in France. Of like, you know, the cultures might seem strange to you. Like, you know, do you, you know, UGI from New York City or whatever.

• 2:31:23Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:31:23David Sims?

  Which is fascinating.

• 2:31:24Speaker 04

  That is fascinating.

• 2:31:25David Sims?

  Um, yeah. My dad's dad was too, he's like one of those in the middle guys. Like he was, um,

• 2:31:31Speaker 03

  Oh, too young for one.

• 2:31:32David Sims?

  Service age in between the two world wars. And my dad was born in 1941. His first memories, of course, were being bombed as he would tell me as a child.

• 2:31:40Speaker 03

  That stuck with him?

• 2:31:42David Sims?

  Well, honestly, his first memories were like his sister taking him into the shelter. Like,

• 2:31:46Speaker 03

  Wild.

• 2:31:47David Sims?

  Like, right. Yes. A hundred percent. And then his real memories are like post-war Britain of like rationing and like all that shit, you know? Um, we all grew up with these stories being told to us and Bill is right that like the next generation right there like, yes, that the story is told to me by Steven Spielberg.

• 2:32:02Griffin Newman?

  Right. They're a little disconnected.

• 2:32:04David Sims?

  Right. It's harder to be like, now I feel like I'll tell my daughter like, oh yeah. Did you know your great grandpa like was in France for, and she'll, it'll just sound like science fiction, right? Like it's sort of, yeah.

• 2:32:14Griffin Newman?

  Sounds like you're begging for another world war almost David. Like you're just.

• 2:32:18David Sims?

  Take it easy.

• 2:32:19Speaker 03

  And we should just mention, we're watching this movie. We're seeing these, uh, this internment camp.

• 2:32:24David Sims?

  Yes.

• 2:32:25Speaker 03

  Uh, just a reminder, uh, America did that to Japanese citizens.

• 2:32:29David Sims?

  Well, Japanese, American citizens.

• 2:32:31Speaker 03

  Yes. Yep.

• 2:32:32David Sims?

  Sorry. But, uh, but Japan did not cover itself in glory in World War II, sir.

• 2:32:36Griffin Newman?

  No, it's just a, a whole mess of a situation.

• 2:32:40David Sims?

  World War II.

• 2:32:43Speaker 03

  Well, one of my favorite pieces of literature very ornally is Hurricane Murakami is the wind up bird chronicle.

• 2:32:49David Sims?

  I don't know if anyone's ever read it. Have you ever read it?

• 2:32:51Griffin Newman?

  No.

• 2:32:52David Sims?

  Uh, which is a book about Japan's ignorance. It's not a book, I mean, mostly it's a book about a weird horny guy who doesn't know what's going on, which is what all his books are. Who like listens to jazz and is like, I can't find my cat, but it's really a book about Japan's ignorance of it. The atrocities it carried out in China, which like, as you read the book, you realize like, well, this is a book written in the nineties. And he's like, basically he's trying to be like, we still don't talk about this. And like, it's such a trauma that like, it's buried in our collective unconsciousness. And, uh, it's fascinating to see, you know, that, but that, and that's how I learned about that from a goddamn like fiction book.

• 2:33:28Griffin Newman?

  Right. And like, uh, remember come see the paradise, the Alan Parker movie about the Japanese internment camps? I mean, that was, you know.

• 2:33:35David Sims?

  What's that? That's Dennis Quaid, right?

• 2:33:37Griffin Newman?

  Dennis Quaid. Yeah.

• 2:33:38Speaker 03

  That's another movie with one of the.

• 2:33:39Griffin Newman?

  Noted Hollywood liberal Dennis Quaid.

• 2:33:41Speaker 03

  Well, one of the most used scores in other trailers.

• 2:33:45Griffin Newman?

  Oh, really?

• 2:33:45David Sims?

  Yeah. The Randy Edelman score, but like, that's a, that's a movie that came out in America and America was like, we don't want to think about like Japanese internment. Like, we don't want to think about it. Like, sorry, we're not showing up for that.

• 2:33:57Speaker 03

  But very much a kind of, you know, mainstream American studio release, like.

• 2:34:02Speaker 04

  You know, you're gonna learn about history from this.

• 2:34:04David Sims?

  Right. Um, a homework movie. I mean, that's, you know, that's my joke about that, that movie that Ralph Fiennes is Odysseus or whatever. What's it called? The Return?

• 2:34:12Speaker 04

  The Return?

• 2:34:12David Sims?

  That movie was created by the British government as homework.

• 2:34:15Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, but I, I kinda really wanna see.

• 2:34:17David Sims?

  Me? I got no beef with it.

• 2:34:18Speaker 04

  I saw it, I reviewed it.

• 2:34:19David Sims?

  It just feels like a movie where the British government was like, we decree that a new homework movie be made this year.

• 2:34:23Griffin Newman?

  Okay, but here's the counterpoint. The sell on that movie is also, what if Ralph Fiennes was fucking ripped?

• 2:34:29David Sims?

  He's ripped?

• 2:34:29Speaker 04

  He is ripped.

• 2:34:30Griffin Newman?

  What if he was ripped and he had nothing to lose?

• 2:34:33Speaker 04

  And traumatized.

• 2:34:34Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:34:35Speaker 04

  But, but it was funny though, when Nolan announced that he was doing The Odyssey and people were like, oh, who the hell is The Odyssey? And it's like, what a diss on that movie that is like literally invaders.

• 2:34:45David Sims?

  Yeah. Empire of the Sun got many technical, six Oscar nominations, but none above the line, as they say. The nominees for Best Picture that year are The Last Emperor, Broadcast News, Fatal Attraction, which is the big box office movie, obviously, Moonstruck, which rules, and Hope and Glory in what one might imagine is the Empire of the Sun slot.

• 2:35:04Griffin Newman?

  I gotta say, that's a nicely rounded five.

• 2:35:08David Sims?

  I do, I think it's a very solid five.

• 2:35:10Griffin Newman?

  But like, there's a good balance of shit there.

• 2:35:12Speaker 04

  Good year for movies. Full Metal Jacket also comes out that year, another movie that kind of is, you know, underperforms in a way.

• 2:35:20David Sims?

  I would say if people are too hyped for and people are kinda like underwhelmed by at the time, that's a movie year that, in my opinion, is transformatively good. Because all those movies are good, but it's also the year of Raising Arizona. So it's like the Coens exploding. It's the year of a little movie about a little metal guy with a heart of gold, Robocop.

• 2:35:38Griffin Newman?

  I mean, the, the great American film by a Dutchman.

• 2:35:41David Sims?

  It's also the year of like Evil Dead 2, like, and, you know, like, so it's like a lot of these like young, you know, hungry, future kind of like, you know, whatever poet laureates of American cinema like emerging.

• 2:35:52Speaker 04

  And that was, that's, oh, no, so I was gonna say, I've, I've, I have told this story many times. It's entirely possible I've told it here on this podcast too. But Raising Arizona is my gateway into like heavy duty cinephilia. Well, cause, because I had gotten into the habit of just like going to the movies after school. And Raising Arizona, I, I went to see Raising Arizona in the theater. I come home, and obviously it's Raising Arizona. I mean, what 14 year old doesn't love Raising Arizona? And then I, I come home and we had a issue of film comment with Raising Arizona on the cover. And I was like, oh, it's interesting. I'll, I'll read that through this. And, and I'm reading it and somewhere, there's an essay in it. Called Praising Arizona. And it's, you know, it's just a kind of

• 2:36:35Griffin Newman?

  Kind of

• 2:36:36Speaker 04

  An article about how great Praising Arizona is. Somewhere in it, they mention that the self-conscious style of the Coens is not unlike the self-conscious style of Bernardo Berdolucci in The Conformist.

• 2:36:47Griffin Newman?

  I mean, this is the

• 2:36:48Speaker 04

  We happen to have

• 2:36:49Griffin Newman?

  Yep.

• 2:36:49Speaker 04

  A VHS of The Conformist lying there. This is like

• 2:36:52Griffin Newman?

  So the tools were there for you.

• 2:36:54Speaker 04

  Yeah, like, yeah, everything was there.

• 2:36:55Griffin Newman?

  It was literally all on the table.

• 2:36:57Speaker 04

  Yeah, like, my, my parents are like, off at work. I'm a latchkey kid. I'm

• 2:37:00Griffin Newman?

  But you're able to like, sort of connect the chain links at this moment. Yeah.

• 2:37:04Speaker 04

  I take, like, literally, I take VHS of The Conformist. I watch it that day. And I'm just like, or that night. And I'm just like, I don't know what the hell this movie's about, but it's so gorgeous. I rewind it. I watch it again.

• 2:37:17Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:37:17Speaker 04

  Twice in one day.

• 2:37:18Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 2:37:18Speaker 04

  And by the end of the week, by the end of the week, I've watched it like six or seven times. And I become obsessed with The Conformist, which then leads to Italian cinema, Berdolucci, and then Last Emperor comes out later that year, as I mentioned.

• 2:37:29Griffin Newman?

  And then that's right.

• 2:37:30Speaker 04

  But yeah, like, raising, so like, Praising Arizona is such an important movie for me in that sense, you know?

• 2:37:35Griffin Newman?

  No, that role. I mean, not to be overly sentimental about, but I'm just like, thinking about that Oscar field and the other things buzzing around here, right? You have like, some of the greatest examples of genre cinema ever. Like, the highest level of genre filmmaking made by like, emerging filmmakers. You've also got the Carpe Diem Prince of Darkness. Totally. But then, like, even just the films they're awarding, there is a balance of, like, commercial entertainments that they are respecting, and respected movies that now are being elevated to commercial entertainment through the Oscars, where you're like, the public was seeing all these movies. And like, the Academy wasn't too snobby to like, acknowledge Fatal Attraction,

• 2:38:15Griffin Newman?

  but also could like, kind of anoint films and still be like, if this gets nominated, the public will see it. They'll go.

• 2:38:22Speaker 04

  And with, there, there was a little controversy at the time because of, because The Last Emperor was not released wide. Because it had been greenlit under a different, a different studio head for Columbia, right? I think it was Putnam had been running Columbia, right? And then, and then I, was it Don Steele came in? And so there, there was this kind of

• 2:38:43Speaker 04

  You know, they, they, they didn't want to spend a lot of money, you know, focusing on the stuff from the old regime. I think Open Glory was also Columbia, maybe. Um, but, um, but there was, uh,

• 2:38:55David Sims?

  Uh, yes, it was.

• 2:38:56Speaker 04

  So you awarded a movie that the public actually doesn't have any relationship to. Right. And there was actually, I think it might've even, it might've been at the Golden Globes or at the Oscars, but one of the producers or somebody involved in Last, Last Emperor was just like, now please release this movie.

• 2:39:10David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 2:39:10Speaker 04

  Yeah. I mean, it was in, it was in limited release.

• 2:39:12David Sims?

  Yeah. Yeah. Good morning, Vietnam that year.

• 2:39:16Speaker 04

  I believe that is the last time Sony Columbia won Best Picture.

• 2:39:19David Sims?

  That might be true. I did a deep dive on that one.

• 2:39:21Speaker 04

  They have a long run. I think that was the last time.

• 2:39:23David Sims?

  Yeah, I think you're right.

• 2:39:24Speaker 04

  Every once in a while they come close and.

• 2:39:26David Sims?

  Wild to consider. Yeah. The box office that week, Griffin, December 11th, 1987. It's opening at number nine at the box office on 225 screens. So, you know, not a super wide release. Number one that week is a film I think we will one day cover. Um, it is a black comedy. It's the directorial debut of its, uh, director and star.

• 2:39:49Speaker 04

  Is it Throw Mama from the Train?

• 2:39:51David Sims?

  Danny DeVito and Billy Crystal in Throw Mama from the Train.

• 2:39:54Speaker 04

  DeVito come up a lot in this mini series, Box Office Game.

• 2:39:56David Sims?

  He was.

• 2:39:57Speaker 04

  It's his era.

• 2:39:58David Sims?

  He was around.

• 2:39:58Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:39:59David Sims?

  Uh, a very funny, good movie. The Bradley Cooper of his day. And I do think.

• 2:40:04Speaker 04

  In so many ways.

• 2:40:05David Sims?

  We will cover him one day.

• 2:40:06Speaker 04

  We will. As Sarah Rubin said, short series for a little man.

• 2:40:10David Sims?

  Yes. Number two at the box office is, I think, the highest grossing movie of the year.

• 2:40:15Speaker 04

  Of 87.

• 2:40:16David Sims?

  If not highest, it's, it's the biggest American hit of the year or whatever. Uh, it's a comedy, family comedy with a crazy premise.

• 2:40:25Speaker 04

  It is Three Men and a Baby.

• 2:40:26David Sims?

  Right.

• 2:40:26Speaker 04

  Yeah. It was the, it was the highest grossing American film.

• 2:40:29David Sims?

  Uh, based on a French film, of course.

• 2:40:31Speaker 04

  Directed by Leonard Nimoy.

• 2:40:32David Sims?

  Directed by Leonard Nimoy, Goots, Danson, Selig.

• 2:40:36Speaker 04

  It just.

• 2:40:37David Sims?

  They have a baby. Well, by the way, actors directing. Yeah, that's right. Another example.

• 2:40:41Speaker 04

  But that's like a thing that actually just wouldn't make sense.

• 2:40:45Griffin Newman?

  To like a budding cinephile now who's trying to understand like culturally the decades before them. Where you're like, there was an era where the highest grossing film of the year could be handily out grossing blockbusters and sequels.

• 2:40:58David Sims?

  Right. Just like what

• 2:41:00Griffin Newman?

  Spock directing

• 2:41:01David Sims?

  Had a baby.

• 2:41:01Griffin Newman?

  Two TV stars and a middling comedy star in a very simple comedy premise.

• 2:41:07Speaker 04

  Juggernaut.

• 2:41:07Griffin Newman?

  Huge.

• 2:41:08David Sims?

  Because everyone could see it was a four quadrant movie, as they say.

• 2:41:11Griffin Newman?

  Those big, all three quadrants, the three men end up baby.

• 2:41:15David Sims?

  Number three, opening new this week is a film that you're kind of like, well, why wasn't that nominated for best picture? It was such a generational movie. It made a lot of money and it won best actor that year. And then you watch it and you're like, oh, because it's bad.

• 2:41:28Speaker 04

  It's not bad.

• 2:41:29David Sims?

  It's pretty bad.

• 2:41:30Speaker 04

  Are we talking about Wall Street?

• 2:41:31David Sims?

  We sure are. Oliver Stone's Wall Street, a very enjoyable movie that Michael Douglas is fantastic in.

• 2:41:37Griffin Newman?

  Not only didn't

• 2:41:37David Sims?

  But it's a bit obvious, even by old Ollie's standards.

• 2:41:41Speaker 04

  It is definitely obvious.

• 2:41:42David Sims?

  On the nose.

• 2:41:43Speaker 04

  So, so I think.

• 2:41:46David Sims?

  His follow up to Platoon. It was one year later.

• 2:41:48Speaker 04

  I know. And that's, that's, that's another case where people had very high expectations for that movie.

• 2:41:52Griffin Newman?

  In between his two best director ones?

• 2:41:54David Sims?

  Uh, yeah, he also made Talk Radio for this, but yes, pretty much, yeah.

• 2:41:58Speaker 04

  Wall Street. I remember at the time I was not a fan of Wall Street and then over the years, Wall Street has become Wall Street and Any Given Sunday are the two Oliver Stone movies I rewatch the most.

• 2:42:08David Sims?

  Any Given Sunday is a movie, movie. I will admit that at the time when I was a teenager, I was kind of like, this is a bit much. And now I kind of have a quiet appreciation.

• 2:42:17Speaker 04

  Yeah. It's like, Wall Street is kind of like that for me. It's, it's, it's such a great popcorn movie.

• 2:42:22Griffin Newman?

  Not only was

• 2:42:23Speaker 04

  But it is not, you know, you're expecting the guy, he makes Salvador, he makes Platoon.

• 2:42:27Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 2:42:28Speaker 04

  Wall Street is just kind of like, ah.

• 2:42:29Griffin Newman?

  It's a, it's a little bit of an indication of where things are going to go prematurely in his career.

• 2:42:34Speaker 04

  And then, and then he, you know.

• 2:42:36Griffin Newman?

  No, then he drills back down, but then you catch up to all of his movies kind of become Wall Street.

• 2:42:40Speaker 04

  Yeah. It's kind of like. You kind of were always this director, weren't you?

• 2:42:43Griffin Newman?

  Right, yeah.

• 2:42:44David Sims?

  He's had, he's had a little hack in him.

• 2:42:46Griffin Newman?

  Yeah. No, not only not nominated for Best Picture, but it wins Best Actor in that it's lone nomination. It is a weird, like, that movie was a big hit. It wins such a major award for such a major star. It was just blanked in every other category.

• 2:42:59Speaker 04

  He's also the star of Fatal Attraction, which is Best Picture nominee.

• 2:43:02Griffin Newman?

  Oh, God, what a year.

• 2:43:02David Sims?

  It's a hot year for Michael Douglas playing really relatable chill dudes. Uh, number four at the box office is a great comedy.

• 2:43:11Griffin Newman?

  A great comedy.

• 2:43:12David Sims?

  Probably cover this guy one day, too.

• 2:43:14Griffin Newman?

  Will probably cover this guy one day, too.

• 2:43:16David Sims?

  The director.

• 2:43:17Griffin Newman?

  The director. It's a great comedy.

• 2:43:20David Sims?

  Ah.

• 2:43:21Griffin Newman?

  It's not Tootsie. No, because that would have been nominated for Best Picture and everything. That's earlier.

• 2:43:25David Sims?

  I don't like Tootsie.

• 2:43:25Griffin Newman?

  Tootsie's in the E.T. year. Yeah, Tootsie's, I mean, I have a lot of.

• 2:43:29David Sims?

  This is a movie you love.

• 2:43:30Griffin Newman?

  This is a movie.

• 2:43:30David Sims?

  Ben loves, I'm sure. Uh, I say.

• 2:43:33Griffin Newman?

  Planes, trains?

• 2:43:34David Sims?

  Planes, trains, and automobiles.

• 2:43:36Speaker 04

  Hell, yes.

• 2:43:36Griffin Newman?

  The movie that should have won Best Actor this year.

• 2:43:38David Sims?

  Uh, for Candy. Candy's pretty amazing in it.

• 2:43:41Griffin Newman?

  Great movie.

• 2:43:42Speaker 03

  I didn't think to watch it this holiday season. It's something I try to.

• 2:43:45David Sims?

  The classic Thanksgiving movie.

• 2:43:47Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:43:47David Sims?

  Yeah. Uh, do you like Planes, Trains, and Automobiles?

• 2:43:50Speaker 04

  I do. We just, we just got the 4K of it.

• 2:43:52David Sims?

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:43:52Griffin Newman?

  It's a weird transfer. I don't know if you, if you put it in.

• 2:43:55Speaker 04

  I haven't, I haven't watched the 4K yet.

• 2:43:57Griffin Newman?

  It's a weird transfer.

• 2:43:58David Sims?

  Uh-oh. The AI Steve Martin?

• 2:44:00Griffin Newman?

  There's a little bit of, yeah.

• 2:44:02David Sims?

  Oh, boy.

• 2:44:02Griffin Newman?

  Upscale and smoothing.

• 2:44:04Speaker 04

  Oh, gosh.

• 2:44:05Griffin Newman?

  Um, but, but the thing is, on there is the, like, hour of fabled deleted scenes that for so long were a rumor that are like, you know, because there was always this, like, there's a mythical three-hour cut of the film. And then it, his children finally opened the vault and they were like, look, there was never like a functional three-hour cut. He just had so much good footage of Candy and Martin that his first assembly, he tried to use all of it. And then he correctly whittled it down. Everything he cut out should not be in the movie, but as just raw footage of Martin and Candy, it is unbelievable.

• 2:44:36Speaker 04

  That's the thing you are, you, you, I, I feel like that's usually the case when people talk, oh, there was originally a six-hour cut. I'm like, I'm sure, I'm sure most of that was just, it was just a sem.

• 2:44:43Griffin Newman?

  Right, yes, yes. Assembly needs to be used more often than in describing these things.

• 2:44:48David Sims?

  Or whatever.

• 2:44:49Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:44:49David Sims?

  Uh, number five at the box office is the other biggest hit of the year. We've mentioned it a bunch of times, it's nominated for Best Picture.

• 2:44:54Griffin Newman?

  Fatal Attraction.

• 2:44:55David Sims?

  Fatal Attraction.

• 2:44:55Griffin Newman?

  Fatal Attraction.

• 2:44:56David Sims?

  Uh, which is a pretty good movie. Uh, it's pretty silly, too. The roller coaster scene, right?

• 2:45:02Speaker 04

  It, it is funny how. Adrian Lyne has become kind of a, like, sort of retroactively inserted into the pantheon.

• 2:45:09David Sims?

  Imagine beaming through a time machine to 1993 and sitting down with the New York film critic circle and being like, you know, Sliver is gonna get like, like, critical attention and care.

• 2:45:20Speaker 04

  I bought the new 4K.

• 2:45:23David Sims?

  Beatrice wrote an essay and I wanted to read it.

• 2:45:25Griffin Newman?

  We were talking about this in our news and deals thread.

• 2:45:28Speaker 04

  I saw that movie.

• 2:45:28Griffin Newman?

  How much are you willing to spend on a Sliver 4K?

• 2:45:30David Sims?

  And I love you, Beatrice, and I'm excited to re-watch Sliver, but Sliver fucking sucks.

• 2:45:33Griffin Newman?

  It's terrible.

• 2:45:34David Sims?

  But it's fun.

• 2:45:36Speaker 04

  But I was like, I have to have this.

• 2:45:37David Sims?

  Yeah, me too.

• 2:45:38Griffin Newman?

  But here's the thing, like, even at the time, Adrian Lyne movies were getting nominated for Best Picture.

• 2:45:44David Sims?

  They were, well, that one was.

• 2:45:45Griffin Newman?

  What also being seen as, like, from the critics of, like, that's the Academy Academy-ing. And yet.

• 2:45:49Speaker 04

  There was always kind of like one weird, like, okay, this was a hit and, like, this was a little too sleazy.

• 2:45:55Griffin Newman?

  If there were four Slivers coming out in wide release a year, we'd be doing cartwheels. We'd be, I'm not just saying four Fatal Attractions, four Slivers and we'd be in hung, hung heaven. I was gonna say hog heaven.

• 2:46:11David Sims?

  We've also got The Running Man, which is being remade this year. It's an okay movie, a movie I've never loved.

• 2:46:17Griffin Newman?

  I was gonna say, that's a perfect example of a movie that should be remade.

• 2:46:21David Sims?

  I wanna love that movie.

• 2:46:22Griffin Newman?

  It's enough of a weird adaptation that there's a room to do a different one.

• 2:46:26Speaker 04

  And, and, and the original is, is not very good.

• 2:46:29David Sims?

  It's not very good, it's just a cool premise.

• 2:46:31Griffin Newman?

  It's got some stickiness.

• 2:46:31Speaker 04

  Yeah. I mean, I wanna, Paul Michael Glazer is one of those guys where I'm like, I really wanna like his movies because of the, the man background, the Miami Vice stuff, and every time I watch one of them, I'm like, ah, he just didn't quite have it.

• 2:46:46David Sims?

  His name, uh, he directed, among other things, uh, we've got a re-release of Cinderella, a film I've now seen 400 billion times, my daughter is obsessed with Cinderella, Cinderella, Cinderella.

• 2:46:57Griffin Newman?

  Is that her favorite of the princess, or at least the classic princess?

• 2:47:00David Sims?

  It's kind of the only princess one she's locked in with, I would say. She's not gotten to Snow White or Sleeping Beauty, is there another one I'm missing? Those are the sort of big princess movies, right? And Cinderella is the most classic princess one of them all because it's about, mostly about. Being friends with mice. That movie is like 80% mice. Uh, but then it's just, yeah, about like vibing in a party.

• 2:47:19Griffin Newman?

  Well, that's the wild thing about Sleeping Beauty is like 95% fairy.

• 2:47:23David Sims?

  Yes, well, Sleeping Beauty is so incredible.

• 2:47:25Speaker 04

  I mean, it's gorgeous. Did you see that 70 millimeter print they showed?

• 2:47:27David Sims?

  No, I wish I had. I would love to see that.

• 2:47:30Speaker 04

  I don't think I've ever seen a movie look that good. It's such a, it looked ridiculous.

• 2:47:34Griffin Newman?

  Right. They got amazing access to the 70 millimeter print that's rarely shown.

• 2:47:39Speaker 04

  And yeah, it's like, they bring it out every once every seven years.

• 2:47:42Griffin Newman?

  Right. And they ran at the Museum of Moving Image in Queens a couple of times and I went to see it. And there was a father who brought a daughter, probably around your daughter's age, David, you know, between three and five. And at some point in the movie, she like asked him a logic question as kids do during children's films.

• 2:47:58David Sims?

  Right. And everyone was like, shh.

• 2:47:59Griffin Newman?

  So like one guy scolded her so hard and everyone in the theater was like, let's step back.

• 2:48:06David Sims?

  Right.

• 2:48:06Griffin Newman?

  And think about what we're seeing Sleeping Beauty at 11 a.m. on a Sunday.

• 2:48:11David Sims?

  We're not allowed to wait in here.

• 2:48:12Griffin Newman?

  This is for her more than it is for us. Everyone chill the fuck out. But it was, it became people yelling at the guy for yelling at the kid.

• 2:48:20Speaker 04

  She is not living in our world. Yeah.

• 2:48:22David Sims?

  Yeah, 100%.

• 2:48:22Griffin Newman?

  It was just really funny.

• 2:48:24David Sims?

  Uh, right. If you bring your daughter to like, yeah, to Miami Vice, you know, at 10 p.m. And she's like, so wait, where does Jose Yarrow get off? Then you can shut her.

• 2:48:33Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:48:33David Sims?

  Uh, Eight is nuts. Uh, the Barbra Streisand, Richard Dreyfuss film. That's about pleasant people.

• 2:48:39Griffin Newman?

  Promising to see in still.

• 2:48:40Speaker 04

  I like that movie. I haven't seen it in a long time.

• 2:48:42David Sims?

  That's a classic to me. Uh, I'm at Block, or not Block, I'm at the rental store and I'm like, what is this? I just take it off the shelf.

• 2:48:48Griffin Newman?

  Leslie Nielsen's final dramatic role. That is the last time he, he did drama.

• 2:48:54David Sims?

  Wasn't, yeah. Number nine, Empire of the Sun. And number 10, one of the best movies in 1987 and one of my favorite movies, uh, Dirty Dancing.

• 2:49:00Griffin Newman?

  Oh, sure. Yeah.

• 2:49:01Speaker 04

  God, another fucking.

• 2:49:02David Sims?

  Another goddamn classic. Another movie that was dismissed by critics and now I watch it and I'm like, again, I wish, I wish there were five movies a year.

• 2:49:09Griffin Newman?

  Yeah. Yeah.

• 2:49:10David Sims?

  Uh, I don't know how you feel about Dirty Dancing.

• 2:49:11Speaker 04

  I like Dirty Dancing. I mean, I wouldn't necessarily nominate for best picture.

• 2:49:15David Sims?

  No, I don't think I have it.

• 2:49:15Speaker 04

  I enjoyed it at the time.

• 2:49:16David Sims?

  My five for 87 are Broadcast News, Raising Arizona, Moonstruck, Robocop, Made to One. I mean.

• 2:49:22Speaker 04

  Made to One, yeah.

• 2:49:23David Sims?

  Yeah, the John Seale movie.

• 2:49:24Griffin Newman?

  Two of my 10 favorite movies of all time are released in this year and a couple others that are really close.

• 2:49:29Speaker 04

  When Jason Bailey does that podcast, a very good year, I did 87. I don't remember which movies. I mean, obviously I'm sure, I'm sure we discussed Last Emperor, but um. I think we discussed Walker, actually.

• 2:49:40Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:49:41Speaker 04

  But yeah.

• 2:49:42David Sims?

  Yeah, I mean, other movie, Hellraiser, Ishtar,

• 2:49:47David Sims?

  Maurice, the James

• 2:49:48Speaker 04

  Oh, my god, yeah.

• 2:49:49David Sims?

  Predator is 1987.

• 2:49:52Speaker 04

  Predator and Robocop, yeah.

• 2:49:54Griffin Newman?

  God. I'm like, there's at least five of my top 25 in 87.

• 2:49:57Speaker 04

  Yeah, we didn't, we didn't know how good we had it.

• 2:49:59Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:49:59David Sims?

  No, we didn't.

• 2:50:00Speaker 04

  We used to be a proper country.

• 2:50:01David Sims?

  Bill, good, thank you for joining us.

• 2:50:03Speaker 04

  Thank you.

• 2:50:03Griffin Newman?

  Now, Bill, good, we've already gone long, but I have to say this, and I asked you before we recorded if we could talk about this, and I do feel like there is a responsibility to our listeners. You have seen Horizon: An American Saga Part Two.

• 2:50:15Speaker 04

  I have.

• 2:50:16Griffin Newman?

  You're in the limited pool of people who have seen it.

• 2:50:19Speaker 04

  It did premiere at Venice.

• 2:50:20Griffin Newman?

  It did. It's not, it's not a 10-person pool, but it is limited. We are here now six months plus from when our mini-series on Costner ended with us saying, hey, and next week, Horizon: Chapter Two in American Saga. We thought that episode would come out the following week, and the movie still is, at the time of this recording, no closer to being released. It has had another sort of wind, a third wind, from being put up on Netflix and being the number one movie on Netflix, after being the number one movie on Max and being the number one movie on VOD, when it went to all of those places.

• 2:50:54Griffin Newman?

  Unsurprisingly, his audience has shown up in the homebound ways that people assumed would happen, and yet it feels totally stagnant, and I just feel like I would be remiss if we did not allow you to talk at least briefly about the film you've seen that we're all dying to see. In our unresolved mini.

• 2:51:10Speaker 04

  I think it's a, I think it's a really great movie. It is, it is actually quite different, I felt, from Horizon Part One. Less of a spectacle. This one focused more on the women. And in fact, Ella Hunt?

• 2:51:22Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 2:51:23Speaker 04

  She's kind of the protagonist.

• 2:51:25Griffin Newman?

  I mean, that was my favorite narrative thread in the first one.

• 2:51:27Speaker 04

  And, you know, it's a, this one is so much darker than the first one.

• 2:51:31David Sims?

  Oh, cool. First one wasn't exactly a barrel of laughs.

• 2:51:34Speaker 04

  No, but this one is, this one is really dark.

• 2:51:37Griffin Newman?

  There's a scene where Luke Wilson rips someone's heart out of their chest. Make a joke about Temple of Doom being the darker sequel.

• 2:51:43Speaker 04

  What's interesting is that the things you thought about a lot of the characters in Horizon 1, you start to think differently about them. So he's kind of, he's kind of playing off that.

• 2:51:51Griffin Newman?

  This is what I want out of this idea of the experiment.

• 2:51:55Speaker 04

  Right. And one of the reasons why I put Horizon Part 1 on my top 10 list for the year. And in fact, in my mind, it's, I'm putting the two of them together, but really it's like, and as much as I liked Horizon Part 1, actually Part 2 made me think about Part 1 a little differently.

• 2:52:10Speaker 04

  I mean, I think, I think it's great, you know. So Costner was at the screening that I was at. It was kind of a private screening.

• 2:52:19Griffin Newman?

  The least intimidating man in the world.

• 2:52:21Speaker 04

  The least intimidating man in the world. And-

• 2:52:23Griffin Newman?

  Kind of a wallflower who just disappears.

• 2:52:25Speaker 04

  And I, and I, I asked him beforehand, I said, so is it, you know, like, have you shot Part 3? Or, you know, because, because I was curious, like, how far along he is in just shooting the stuff? And he's like, oh, no, no, you know, I, I, I have to, I still have to shoot Part 3 and 4. And, and he said, you know, I'm, I'm looking for a studio. And then, uh, I don't even know if I'm supposed to say this, but-

• 2:52:48Griffin Newman?

  If you need to, I'll cut all of it.

• 2:52:49Speaker 04

  So, so, uh, so Part 2 ends, much like Part 1 does, with like a montage of scenes from the next Horizon.

• 2:52:55Griffin Newman?

  Which I, from what I understand, that's basically what he shot for Part 3. That he had said previously that he had done like 7 days of filming on Part 3, but it's basically that stuff.

• 2:53:04Speaker 04

  Right. So afterwards, I saw him again and I said, well, it looks like you shot some of Part 3. And he's like, yeah, I, I only shot enough so that I could have that montage.

• 2:53:11Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 2:53:12Speaker 04

  And I was like, that's, that's weirdly adorable to me.

• 2:53:16Griffin Newman?

  Can you confirm to me, I feel like I had heard, or at least seen from other people who have seen it, that a lot of the sizzle reel stuff at the end of Part 1 is not really in Part 2 or not in that form? And that similarly, it was him being like, let me just get a taste of some stuff.

• 2:53:30Speaker 04

  There's, there's, there is some stuff that I expected to see in Part 2.

• 2:53:34Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:53:35Speaker 04

  That's not there, based on what I had seen in Part 1. Yeah. But I don't remember the specific things, but there were a couple of things where I'm like, huh. I vaguely remember a shot of this happening. The, the stuff at the end of Part 1 promises a very different film than what Part 2 actually is. The thing, you know-

• 2:53:52Griffin Newman?

  How much, how much for BC and the printing press do we get, without spoiling anything?

• 2:53:56Speaker 04

  Very little. Okay, so that's a great example of what you just said. It it it's kind of building up to more of that stuff. He's the Thanos. He hasn't assembled all the Infinity Stones. No, it it it ends actually with more of him and there is the sense that, okay, now, maybe now in part three.

• 2:54:10Griffin Newman?

  He got his hands on some more ink. Now he's really gonna be able to fly her.

• 2:54:13Speaker 04

  Um, the, uh, what was I gonna say? Um, it is, you know, it's such a, I mean, I love the movie. I love the project. It's it's such an interesting inflection point now because if he if he can't find a studio or if we can't find somebody to like, allow him to make the rest of it, this thing is gonna be, I mean, because it is, I mean, it's an incomplete movie. It is, it it is. It doesn't end. There there's no kind of, there's no world in which you're like, all right, well, whatever. We got parts one and two and we'll just accept that. It's kind of like, no, no, like, the story isn't finished yet and it's just gonna exist as such a weird little entity if he can't finish it.

• 2:54:52Griffin Newman?

  People were angry that when we did our part one episode, that so much of our talk was like, it's hard to talk about this because it's an incomplete object, right? And that we were sort of kicking the can on a certain degree of analysis. But it is, it is. And it's like, it's incomplete, but in a way that's by design because part of his notion was like, make them simultaneously and release them close together. And we did this episode and in like, reality, we were like, it's gonna be six weeks from when we're recording to when we see part two and do that. But in release schedule, they will be one week apart. So next week you will hear our episode with a more complete take. And much like the reality of watching these movies, that didn't happen. And I I find it fascinating that part two also does not give you like a clean cutoff point.

• 2:55:35Speaker 04

  No.

• 2:55:35Griffin Newman?

  But that's what I was looking for is like a building sense of like, the vision of where this is going.

• 2:55:41Speaker 04

  And it's, yeah, I mean, I.

• 2:55:44Griffin Newman?

  Which is a little hard to pin down watching the first one alone.

• 2:55:47Speaker 04

  It's also weird because, you know, we are in the age of sort of the, you know, the bifurcated blockbusters where everything's a part one or a part two or whatever. But those films do, even the ones that to me sometimes do feel incomplete, do feel like they have some narrative shape, some kind of narrative arc.

• 2:56:03Griffin Newman?

  They try to have a mini arc so that there can be some sense of resolution at the cliffhanger part, even if there's a bigger threat. And Horizon's refusal to do that,

• 2:56:12Speaker 04

  He is not doing that.

• 2:56:13Griffin Newman?

  I think is, is very off putting in a way that's interesting.

• 2:56:16Speaker 04

  Right. And, and a lot of people have said, you know, understandably, why isn't this just a TV series? Because it does have that, it does have that quality. And like, it's not a TV series because he wants it big, because it's a giant big screen western. It's, I don't know. I mean, if he ever finishes it, it'll be like no other movie ever.

• 2:56:35Griffin Newman?

  I agree. Now, just for a Big if. An even bigger if than Krasinski got.

• 2:56:43Griffin Newman?

  Terrible joke. I want to end this episode. By, by requesting. We have, we've been lucky enough through various means to acquire a couple of signed posters from directors of movies we have covered, we have hanging in the office. An Anglian, Seamus Hulk, a Campion, Power the Dog, a Selic, Wendell and Wild poster. I did win as a trivia prize at Nighthawk, a Horizon poster. Now, we obviously can't get Costner to sign it. But Bill, would you mind signing the Horizon poster and just writing, I have seen chapter two?

• 2:57:21Speaker 04

  Why are you doing this?

• 2:57:22Griffin Newman?

  I think this is worth doing. I think an immortalization of attention. This is the end of the episode. I said it was the end of the episode. You're pointing at the clock. It's the end of the episode.

• 2:57:30Speaker 04

  If, if, if. What are we doing?

• 2:57:32Griffin Newman?

  This is funny and everyone's gonna like it.

• 2:57:35Speaker 04

  You can sign it off mic. But if you ever get poor Kevin Costner to, to sign your

• 2:57:41Griffin Newman?

  This is what I think is funny.

• 2:57:42Speaker 04

  Who's this clown that signed my poster?

• 2:57:43Griffin Newman?

  This is what I like. That's our clown. Bill Gabery is one of our finest.

• 2:57:49Speaker 04

  You put your movie on a stop dead list, you jerk.

• 2:57:51Speaker 03

  Yeah. We will, uh, yeah, we'll do the signing, um, after we wrap up the episode.

• 2:57:56Griffin Newman?

  I'm just gonna, Bill, could do it on your own time here?

• 2:58:00Speaker 03

  Maybe Ben should finish your episodes. We should just like.

• 2:58:02Griffin Newman?

  I think this is worth doing. I think people are gonna like it. And I, I think in fact, the outrage at me doing it on mic is gonna lend, it's gonna add to the narrative.

• 2:58:10Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 2:58:10Griffin Newman?

  Cause now it's a thing that needs to be resolved, much like Horizon and American Saga. Bill, good. Thank you for being here.

• 2:58:16Speaker 04

  Thank you.

• 2:58:16Griffin Newman?

  Uh, anything specific you wanna plug?

• 2:58:18Speaker 04

  When does this go up?

• 2:58:19Griffin Newman?

  This will go up in March?

• 2:58:21Speaker 03

  March 16th.

• 2:58:23Speaker 04

  Uh, I just hope I'm still employed in March.

• 2:58:25Griffin Newman?

  Hey, uh, just, I, I'm always thrilled anytime, uh, a new piece gets published of any sort from you. It's always, uh, an exciting day. Uh, always love to read what you write.

• 2:58:38Speaker 03

  We'll link to your articles in the episode description.

• 2:58:41Griffin Newman?

  There's a lot of them.

• 2:58:42Speaker 04

  You can link to my writer page on.

• 2:58:45Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, that's a good.

• 2:58:45Speaker 03

  That's what I was talking about.

• 2:58:46Griffin Newman?

  Okay. Well, then I'm stupid. I don't know. I'm, I'm.

• 2:58:48Speaker 03

  Oh, my God. End the episode. End it.

• 2:58:52Griffin Newman?

  I wanna, maybe you should end it. Maybe if you think you're so good at ending episodes.

• 2:58:55Speaker 03

  Okay, yeah. So let's just then quickly shout out here at the end, we're in the midst of our March Madness tournament. Oh, I suppose that's true. So please, um, get involved if you wanna impact the. Rock the vote. Director.

• 2:59:12Griffin Newman?

  If you're online, stay online.

• 2:59:14Speaker 03

  If we're gonna cover, that we're gonna cover as well as. Okay, man, go to the March Madness poll. Participating on Patreon where we'll be voting for various different franchises.

• 2:59:23Griffin Newman?

  The leadators. It's, it's, you're voting on the past candidates who have gotten close, but no cigar.

• 2:59:28Speaker 03

  Uh, we also are currently in the midst of our Star Trek Picard era commentary series.

• 2:59:36Griffin Newman?

  We're engaging with those films.

• 2:59:37Speaker 03

  Is our insurrection episode.

• 2:59:40Griffin Newman?

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:59:40Speaker 03

  Yep, yep. About the heroes of January 6th.

• 2:59:44Speaker 03

  Uh, just a few days ago, we, uh, put out a Spielberg bonus episode. We're covering his segment in the Twilight Zone movie as well.

• 2:59:53Griffin Newman?

  Just that one.

• 2:59:54Speaker 03

  As, uh.

• 2:59:55Griffin Newman?

  Amazing stories.

• 2:59:56Speaker 03

  Amazing.

• 2:59:56Griffin Newman?

  His amazing story segments. Yeah.

• 2:59:58Speaker 03

  Anyway, just get some housekeeping out.

• 3:00:00Griffin Newman?

  I know, appreciate it. And thank you all for listening. Tune in next week for Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, correct? Yeah. Uh, and as always, I, I think the poster thing was good and worth doing.

• 3:00:17Speaker 03

  Blank Check with Griffin and David is hosted by Griffin Newman and David Sims. Our executive producer is me, Ben Hostly. Our creative producer is Marie 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 Minnick. Special thanks to David Cho, Jordan Fish, and Nate Patterson for their production help. Head over to blankcheckpod.com for links to all of the real nerdy shit. Join our Patreon Blank Check Special Features

• 3:00:59Speaker 03

  for exclusive franchise commentaries and bonus episodes. Follow us on social @BlankCheckPod. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter, Checkbook, on Substack. This podcast is created and produced by Blank Check Productions.

• 3:01:12David Sims?

  In this montage, John Huston is getting an award for, I think, Sierra Madre?

• 3:01:19Griffin Newman?

  I think so, yeah.

• 3:01:19David Sims?

  And in the introduction, and I forget already who's introducing him.

• 3:01:23Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 3:01:23David Sims?

  But I think it's the critic, I think it's the critic is saying like, "And what a rare and interesting phenomenon. He wrote and directed the film. Like, we really need to celebrate the unique artistry of a director who wrote his own movie. It's being treated like he's some savant."

• 3:01:38Griffin Newman?

  It's being treated like he invented the camera.

• 3:01:42David Sims?

  Like, really? And, because it was just so rare.

• 3:01:44Griffin Newman?

  That was a big deal. That was a big deal.

• 3:01:45David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 3:01:47Griffin Newman?

  Anyway.

• 3:01:47Speaker 04

  Part of what, you know, part of what gave rise to the all-tour theory was, you know, these directors who actually exerted more control beyond just direction.

• 3:01:55David Sims?

  Yeah. And then it's John, Jack Huston just sucking our dick for two minutes, being like, "Well, I think that your critics shine a light on..." It's great. You know, he's so nice to us.

• 3:02:03Speaker 04

  I was, the person I was sitting with, I was like, "That's John Huston, right?" And he was like, he's like, "Is it? Doesn't sound like him." I'm like, "You have to remember, in our minds..."

• 3:02:11David Sims?

  It's younger Jack Huston, right?

• 3:02:12Speaker 04

  Yeah. "In our minds, John Huston is still just like Chinatown, even though we've seen him in a million other contexts."

• 3:02:17Griffin Newman?

  But also, in our minds, he sounds like the impressions of him.

• 3:02:20Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 3:02:20Griffin Newman?

  Right. Where you listen to Connery and you're like, "Doesn't sound like him." And you're like, "'Cause it's Daryl Hammond Connery."

• 3:02:25David Sims?

  Right, right. He doesn't sound like the bug in Men in Black. He was just middle aged.

• 3:02:30Griffin Newman?

  Right. It's like watching young Michael Caine.

• 3:02:32David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 3:02:33Griffin Newman?

  It's like.

• 3:02:34David Sims?

  Young Michael Caine. That's a fine treat.

• 3:02:36Griffin Newman?

  I know. Oh, so hot. Yeah.

• 3:02:38David Sims?

  Um, yeah, we might as well just kick off the episode reminiscing on my.

• 3:02:42Griffin Newman?

  This is not how we kick off the episode.

• 3:02:43David Sims?

  Oh, okay, fine. Well, we're recording it.

• 3:02:45Griffin Newman?

  I know, but you put it at the end of the episode. Things must be done in proper order. Or how about right in the middle? No context. You want to. Roll right in. You want to place a 15 minutes in to give people time to finish their dinner?

• 3:02:55David Sims?

  That wouldn't make sense for The Empire of the Sun, because The Empire of the Sun is not a movie that's like, let's mess with like the formal, you know, storytelling approach, really. Like, this is a pretty traditionally told film, I would say.

• 3:03:05Griffin Newman?

  Okay, let me start. Let me start the show properly.